Chapter 6.

I left Mrs. Statham's house with a full stomach for the first time in I couldn't remember.

I'd mostly survived the trip to Montana with nothing more than junk food and a questionable chicken salad sandwich from a gas station.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a good, home cooked, real meal. It's hard to remember things like eating when you spend most of your waking hours in bouts of anxiety and the rest of your time sleeping to escape from it all.

As I'd left from Mrs. Statham's front door, she'd pulled me in for an awkward hug that lasted four seconds too long.

She'd begged me to come back by anytime, and I'd lied and told her I would. I knew though, that there was no reason for me to return. I'd gotten what I needed from her.

I used to feel bad.

The first few times I sank low enough to resort to stealing. When I could no longer afford to see a doctor who would prescribe the things I needed to get by, I didn't have much of a choice. Even when I did have money to make an appointment, they no longer wanted to give me what I asked for. I assume they knew what I know too.

I've got a problem.

I know that as I fist that bottle in my coat pocket. I know I'm depending on pills to keep me moving. I know I'm in too deep. I know it's not good or helpful or safe.

But the thing is, I don't really care.

I don't care that it's wrong or bad or illegal what I'm doing anymore.

Part of the problem, of course, is knowing if I tried to stop...I would probably end up like my mother.

I can't do that though.

I'm too afraid of not knowing what happens next to take that step. I don't like the idea of opening that door without knowing what's going to be on the other side.

I've done so many things now in my life that I should be ashamed of, but the pills help. They help me close off what I don't want to feel. They help hold me in warm safe arms. They tuck me away from the world and protect me from all of the demons inside of my skull.

I've passed the point of wanting to get better. I'm not even sure there is a better for me. At least, like this, I can just go away.

I breathe, I move, I walk through this life like a living corpse just waiting and biding time until I can be at rest once again.

She will realize what I've done.

She will notice the missing pills.

This is something I'm certain of, but by then I'll be gone. Her disappointment in me and my wrong against her will fade. She'll forget all about the girl who came into her home and discarded her kindness just for a quick fix.

With these pills...I can try to forget too.

I make my way to my car and go to get inside to take cover from the snow that's now falling with vengeful urgency. It cuts at my face like sharp little daggers and blurs my vision into nothing more than a white merciless fog.

I grapple for the handle of the drivers side door when I feel it connect to paper instead of metal.

I swat at the snow to pull the note away and blink quickly trying to make sense of the runny ink.

"You're not welcomed here."

It read in big block letters scribbled in a messy scrawl.

"Go home or be next."

It read at the bottom.

I turn around sharply, looking up and down the street around me, crumpling the note in my shivering fingers.

"What the fuck." I whisper to myself. Then jump when I get a reply.

"Oh good, you got one too." Someone calls from across the street.

I take two steps towards the road, squinting through the snow to see the girl standing under the covering of her front porch of her house.

"Did you put this here?" I yell back and I see her shaking her head.

"No," she calls back. "But I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who gets harassed in this shit town."

I look both ways before I cross the street and walk up the driveway of her house, stopping at the bottom of her stairs.

She's slender and tall, with sharp features, and her big brown eyes look me up and down.

"Did you see who left this note on my car?" I ask her, trying my best not to freak out.

Again she shakes her head, her long black braids swaying with the movement. With one hand she collects them all and pulls them over one shoulder, toying with the ends.

"Nah," she says. "They're usually pretty sneaky about it."

"What do you mean they?"

She huffs. "Everyone." She rolls her eyes. "I'm assuming yours doesn't say go back to Africa." Her sharp features harden, making her flawless skin look like it's made of stone. "These people act like they've never seen a black person before."

I nod, understanding. "Well, this is Faulkner." I say, looking down at the stairs in front of me. "They probably haven't."

At this, she laughs. It's deep and doesn't match her delicate exterior, but it also sounds real.

"You're probably right." She agrees with me. "It's been a shit show since I moved here and with everything going on right now it's gotten worse the last two days."

I furrow my brows. "What do you mean with everything going on?"

Her eyebrows shoot up and she waves a hand in the air. "Girl, you must not be from around here." She shakes her head. "Those two girls are all anyone can manage to talk about."

My stomach sinks low into my belly and nausea spreads through me like a bad wave of motion sickness and dread.

"T-two girls?" I ask, already trying to shut off sound to my ears, not actually wanting to hear the answer to the question I had just asked.

"Yeah." She says, sounding bored. "Some girl from near here was reported missing a day ago and now today there is a girl from Faulkner too. Everyone is freaking the hell out over it, saying shit like oh no it's happening again and things like that. It's got the whole damn town locking their doors and staring out of their windows for the boogie man."

My chest heaves and I double over, trying to keep the contents of my stomach firmly inside of my stomach.

"Why did he do it?"

"How did he choose his victims?"

"How could you not know?"

Two missing girls.

Two girls, just gone in a matter of days. Not even days, hours from each other. It's just like it was then. It's exactly the same.

If what she's saying is true, then it's not just a town going crazy. It's not just in my head. I'm not imagining this feeling of doom.

What if it really is happening again?

I lower myself even more, down in a squat now, my breathing coming in big gulps as my lungs struggle to take in oxygen but no matter how hard I try I feel like nothing is happening. I'm suffocating right here, my lungs are collapsing in on themselves.

"Hey," the girls says, walking towards me. "Hey, come on, breathe girl."

She squats down beside me and I try to tell her I can't. I'm clutching at my chest and clawing at my jacket, trying to release myself from all of the hands holding me down. My heart is beating too fast. Im having a heart attack. I'm dying. But my words all come out in clipped gasps and yells.

"You're not dying." She tells me, putting a hand up under my arm. "Not on my front lawn." She heaves me up and my body feels like it's full of static, my limbs tingling, feeling like they've been drained of all my blood. "Seriously, breathe. I cannot have a white girl dying at my house, you hear me? You are just having a panic attack. It happens. It's fine and you're fine."

We're okay, we're okay, we're okay.

"Now you're gonna walk inside with me, ok?" She asks but she's already pulling me. "Has this happened to you before?" She's saying as she pushes her front door open and tugs me along with her.

I nod furiously, my head bobbing all around as my vision goes double.

"You usually take something?"

I nod again, trying to slap at my pocket.

She leads me to a couch and I collapse against it while she fumbles through my jacket, going to the wrong pocket first and I'm yelling something.

"You're good." She says. "Just breathe, ok, it'll pass. This isn't forever this is just this moment and then it'll be over. Ok? You're okay."

We're okay. We're okay. We're okay.

She finds my bottle finally and pours some of the pills out into her palm, her long fingers moving the different colors and shapes around. "Which one?" She says and I struggle to sit up right.

"Two white, don't care...which."

She passes me two white pills one round and one oval. She comes back seconds later with a glass of water but I've already started chewing them. The chalky bitterness doing nothing for my nausea but I need this to work faster.

"There ya go." She says, sitting beside me on the couch and rubbing a circle between my shoulder blades. "It's gonna pass."

I nod, trying to believe it. Trying to slow my breathing. Trying to stay alive.

"I'm...sorry." I say, shaking hands taking the glass from her hand and trying to drink it without spilling from my tremors.

"Don't even worry about it." She says cooly. "Used to happen to me all the time."

I sniffle, not even realizing I'd started crying. "Really?"

She nods. "Literally all the time. From the time I was like eight." She laughs. "I'd get sent home from school. One time," she says with a smile. "I had one so bad in public that they had to call an ambulance and take me to the emergency room to convince me I wasn't in cardiac arrest."

I smile around the grimace on my face. "Unfortunately I have done the same."

"How bad did that bill hurt when you got it?"

"So bad I let it go to collections and haven't thought about it since."

"A girl after my own heart." She laughs, sitting up to look at me. "What happened back there?"

I don't want to think about it. I don't even know if I can put the words out of my brain. I'm out of practice with socializing. Particularly about anything like this.

"Those girls." I say instead. "Have they found them yet?"

I turn to look at her and she frowns at me, her full lips pursing. "No." She says. "They probably just ran away."

I scoff. "That's always what they say." I tell her. "Anytime a teenage girl goes missing, the first thing on everyone's mind is 'oh they must have been a wild child who ran away. Give it a few days and they'll turn up.' Right up until they start finding the bodies."

"Guess I was wrong about you." She says, shaking her head and taking the empty glass from me to set it on the glass table in front of us.

"What do you mean?"

"Earlier I said you must not be from around here." She explains. "But you have that stench of PTSD all over you." I'd be offended if it wasn't for the smile on her face. "You grew up here?"

"Yeah."

"You know any of those girls that got killed?"

"Yeah."

"Damn." She breathes, leaning back onto the couch cushions and propping her socked feet up onto the table. "That's heavy."

"Yeah." I mutter, letting myself fall back into the couch too.

"But it's not like it can be the same guy, right?" She tilts her head to look at me. "He went to prison, right?"

"He's dead." I nod.

"Exactly, so I don't know why everyone wants to make it a thing like how it's happening again? You know? Like it's obviously not the same dude back to haunt this town from the grave."

"The people around here don't forget anything." I sigh. "It's still fresh on so many minds. You don't know what it was like to be a kid here while it was happening."

"Were you scared?"

"All the time."

"How many of them did you know?"

"Four."

"Damn." She says again, drawing the word out. "How many was there?"

"At least twelve."

"Shit." She sits up. "I can't wait to get out of this whack ass town."

That's about the moment I look around and realize where I am. I sit up straight again, the table against the far wall is covered with pictures of the Martins.

"Why are we here?" I ask.

"What do you mean?"

"This is the Martins' house."

She laughs at me. "Oh yeah their bodies are tied up in the basement. I thought I'd see how long I could get away with living here before this entire town figures out I've taken over their lives."

I laugh, relaxing back into the couch. "But really." I smile, my body starting to feel nice and warm from the pills.

"You know Mrs. Martin died two years ago." She says and I shake my head. Of course I didn't know. I've had no connection back to this town and it's constant circulation of everyone's business. "Well, she did. And a few weeks ago, so did Mr. Martin."

"So you bought a house here?" I gape at her. "And left all of their stuff still sitting out." I point around the room. "Your story about them being in the basement seems more believable at the moment."

"You got me." She holds up her hands. "You ready to have your mind blown?"

"Please."

"Mr. Martin is my dad." She smiles from ear to ear. "Or, shit, I guess was."

Confusion takes over my face. "But they didn't have kids and..."

"And they were two snooty rich white people?" She laughs at me and then nods again. "I know. But what Mrs. Martin didn't know is Dave had a side piece in New York." She slaps my leg. "He put my momma up good and would spoil the shit out of her when he was in town on his business trips."

"You're lying." My jaw hung slack.

"Girl I wish I was." She says. "You think I wanna be in this town?"

"Then why'd you come?"

Her face turns serious. "He left my momma the house and money, and she gave me the house. I needed...I needed to start over someplace new."

"I get that." I tell her, and I do. "But why here? As you've mentioned, it's not exactly..."

"Welcoming?"

"Yeah, that."

"Girl, I'm from New York." She tells me. "I didn't realize places still this stuck in the past existed. I'd just wanted to see the mountains, have a fresh start. I went through...I guess I've had a lot of changes, if you catch where I'm going with that...changes that I thought might be easier to accept somewhere else. Somewhere they didn't know me, or the me I was before I was this me."

I study her, taking in her long slender arms and legs, that sharp bone structure to her face, and the remember the deepness of her laugh and I nod.

"Well that sucks." I sigh.

"What?" She laughs but I can hear the uncertainty in her tone now. Nothing at all like that spark of confidence and command she had earlier.

"You're finally you and you chose to come here, the least accepting town in the continental US."

The tenseness of her shoulders relaxes. "Well you got a lovely note today too, so I guess you're also a town pariah."

"You have no idea."

"Can't be worse than being me."

"You want to bet on that?"

She narrows her eyes. "I did want to, but that look on your face makes me think I'd lose." She tells me. "And I'm only a betting woman when I know my deck is stacked in my favor."

"Trust me, this is one you want to sit out on."

She turns her body to me fully. "Ok fine, stranger." She says. "I'm Kelsea, by the way." She throws in. "You look normal enough. So what is it that you did to earn the wrath of Faulkner?"

I take a deep breath. "I was born."

"Uh, girl, I'm gonna need a little more than that if I'm supposed to be picking up on what you're putting down?"

"My name is Missouri Jacobs." I wait for realization to cross her face but she just shrugs. "My father was..." I don't want to tell her. I don't want to ruin this one moment of not feeling like shit and talking to someone who doesn't know all about me and my family already. "He was John Jacobs."

"Ok, and mine was Dave Martin." She laughs.

I'm stunned for a moment that even though she isn't technically from here, that she doesn't seem to have a clue what I'm talking about.

"The man who killed all of those girls before...that was John Jacobs...I'm the daughter of a killer."

"Well that sucks." She echoes my sentiment from earlier.

I huff out a laugh. "Why?"

"We don't get to choose our families and we aren't responsible for the rights or wrongs they do." She says. "You're just a person, not the daughter of a killer. What he did shouldn't fall back on you."

"Tell that to the rest of the world."

"Preaching to the choir." She sighs. "I guess I get your melt down now."

"Yup." I lean my head back and close my eyes.

"What did your note say?"

"Go home or be next." Saying it out loud sends the shivers back up my spine.

"Damn." She says, again letting the word drag out with a breath. "You know what you need?"

"What's that?"

"I feel like we should get high."