September Mourn Read online

  Slain bodies weren’t in my job description.

  My initial instinct, once the cadavers had started lining up, had been to ditch Battle Lake. That was the same bail instinct that had kept me out of serious relationships and in the bottle for the last decade or so, following in the footsteps of my father, one Mark James, prolific drinker and real-life crash test dummy, who ended up killing himself and another person in a head-on collision before my junior year of high school. After that, I was a pariah in Paynesville and only too happy to leave the second I graduated.

  However, a series of events had convinced me to stick it out in Battle Lake despite the bodies piling up with freaky irregularity, however, and as much as it scraped and chafed, that was what I was going to do. It was a new idea, this sticking-it-out approach. It looked good on paper. At least that’s what I thought until the lights flat-lined in the Dairy building at the exact moment I noticed something odd about Ashley through the viewfinder of my camera. I pressed the shutter button just as the room went inky black, not sure what I’d seen.

  The initial State Fair assignment had seemed pretty cherry, offered to me by Ron Sims, publisher, editor, marketer, layout director, and chief reporter at the Battle Lake Recall. Even though I was a part-time reporter, he acted all-the-time bossy. Go to St. Paul and cover the Milkfed Mary pageant. Write about all the Battle Lake farmers showcasing their work. See what the 4-H kids are up to. We’re having a special State Fair issue, and it’ll be chock full of your articles.

  He’d sweetened the pot by offering me his camper trailer, which I could park on a State Fair lot paid for by the Battle Lake Chamber of Commerce.Without a good reason to turn down an all-expenses-paid week Cities, I had established Mrs. Berns, my recently reinstated assistant librarian, to run that show, coaxed my friend Jed to stay with my cat Tiger Pop and Sunny’s dog Luna at the double-wide, and driven the camper to the northeast end of the fair.

  I’d arrived early enough to snag a spot underneath the water tower, near where the bathrooms and showers were housed. I’d set up camp yesterday afternoon, feeling like it wasn’t a bad deal. That is, until the Dairy building went black, compressing my highest-pitched fears into one convenient package.

  I couldn’t keep the yelp from escaping.

  I was mortally terrified of being trapped in dark spaces, specifically haunted houses, but a Dairy building would do in a pinch.

  Here’s why.

  Right before my sophomore year of high school, Jenny Cot had invited me to the State Fair with her family. My dad was still alive. By that point in my life, his drinking had affected most of my friendships; I couldn’t have people over and so they eventually stopped including me in their lives outside of school. Jenny’s invitation was an unexpected treat, a thrilling opportunity for a fifteen-year-old to leave her dysfunctional family and travel to glamorous St. Paul. No one would drink and then expect me to get in the car with them, the adults wouldn’t fight on the trip down and back, and people would actually care where I was going and when I was going to return. It was a slice of TV-ready perfection that I was at pains not to screw up.

  In fact, I hadn’t slept the night before, twisting in my sheets as I imagined all the ways the trip to the Cities could be thwarted: Jenny could change her mind about me in the middle of the night and choose to bring a closer friend. Even if she still wanted to bring me with, I might say something inappropriate in the driveway and her parents would realize they’d rather not bring me with. Or, my dad would stumble out drunk and shame us both, and the Cots would drive away without me.

  The list was endless, spinning and growing in my brain and striking down hope wherever it hid. When Jenny and her family arrived to pick me up the next morning, I was bone-tired and edgy. I gritted my teeth when my dad went out to meet them, still sure he was going to mess it up somehow.

  But he didn’t.

  And I got to go.

  The car ride to the State Fair was exactly as I’d imagined it. Her parents even held hands and joked with each other. We played “I Spy” in the backseat for most of the trip. Outside, the sun shone warm and clear. It was the ideal fair day, Jenny’s dad, Craig, kept reminding us with a smile in the rearview mirror. Jenny and her brother told him to lay off after about the sixth time, and I pretended to laugh at him along with his kids, but I couldn’t stop looking back at the mirror to catch his occasional playful glance. That’s how a dad is supposed to act, I told myself.

  Once inside the fairgrounds, I found myself pleasantly overwhelmed by the crowds and the smell of fried foods and the buzz of a thousand conversations happening at once. I’d never been far from Paynesville except when our volleyball team, for which I was a perennial benchwarmer, played away games. The busy, loud, and colorful State Fair environment was both scary and thrilling. I tied the joy at discovering the largeness of the world to Mr. and Mrs. Cot, who had brought me there.

  I would have done anything for them that day.

  They bought us food—a corndog for me and cheese curds, fries, and pizza for their kids. My stomach still rumbled after I ate the corndog, but I saw how much that food was costing them and so turned them down when offered more.

  I’m good, I’d said. I had a big breakfast. Thank you, though.

  We walked the Midway together, and then Craig and his wife offered each of us $10 to do our own thing. Jenny’s brother was seventeen and grabbed the money and ran. I was reluctant to leave the Cots, but Jenny was excited to explore without her parents, and she was tugging relentlessly at my arm. We agreed we’d all meet up at the Space Tower in two hours.

  I let Jenny lead us, and she did—straight to the haunted house. I’d never been in one before and felt a chilly apprehension like a wet lick up my spine as we stood outside the gray Victorian mansion. It was surrounded by a black, wrought-iron fence that was as welcoming as bones jutting from a graveyard. The windows of the two-story building were curtained with rotting lace, and a permanent cloud seemed to hang over the turrets that graced the second story like devil’s horns. Faint screams emanated from inside. The overall impression was of a ravenous gray monster biding its time until someone was stupid enough to walk into its belly.

  Couldn’t we go on the River Raft ride, I asked, or check out the crazy drum music we heard walking past the International Bazaar?

  But Jenny was dead set on the haunted house, and I was her guest. I took a breath and reevaluated the situation. Sure the house was maliciously terrifying, but other than that one cloud directly over it, the day was warm and sunny, and laughing groups of people stood in line waiting for their chance to get scared. I could do this. After all, Jenny was the reason I was here. I slapped on a brave smile and got in line. When it came our turn to enter, we handed $5 each to the teenager working the door.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, raising his eyebrows at us. “No one gets out alive.”

  Ignoring him, we went in as a pair, creeping along the dark hallway. The lighting was a mixture of shadows and electric candle flickers. We clung to each other, picking our way through. The carpet felt soggy underfoot, and the air had a sinister, metallic smell, like spilled blood. Ahead, a low moan made Jenny jump and then giggle. Surprisingly, her fear made me less scared.

  This is just a pretend house, I told myself. Relax and enjoy it.

  We soldiered on, through sticky cobwebs and feathers set near the floor to brush against our naked ankles. Mirrors lined the halls, reflecting moaning faces in excruciating pain, their eyeballs hanging out, grisly mouths gaping. The wallpaper seemed to melt and bend as searching fingers pushed through it, stopping just short of groping us.

  Our steps grew tiny until Jenny was nearly riding me piggyback, pushing me to go first. I did. The very next second, I was greeted by Jason Voorhees, bloody axe in one hand and knife in the other.

  I screamed, my stomach and heart switching places, and grabbed Jenny’s hand. She buried her head in my back and we dashed past, catching our breath.

  “What was it?” s
he squealed.

  “Jason from the Friday the 13th movies.” I laughed, adrenaline pounding through my veins. “Let’s see what’s up ahead.”

  “I don’t want to go any farther.”

  Looking back, I should have caught the tone in her voice. She wasn’t joking any more, but I was too pumped up on my fear rush to catch her switch in mood. “They don’t let you turn back,” I said.

  I dragged her along, happy to no longer be paralyzed by fear. We found ourselves in a dimly lit room the size of a large walk-in closet. Blood poured down the walls, and in the outline of a door, a dismembered skeleton dropped goopy intestines from one bony hand to another like a macabre Slinky. I was pulling Jenny toward the grody doorway, the only apparent exit, when a creak behind us announced danger. Before either of us could turn, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy grabbed Jenny around the neck with one hand and revved his chainsaw with the other.

  The closeness of the gruesome stranger made my knees weak until I saw the Voss label emblazoned on his machinery, marking it for the child’s toy it was. I laughed shakily and reached for Jenny’s hand to haul her away from the monster and out of the room.

  I clasped it just as she fell to the ground in a dead faint.

  Her head hit the floor with a ripe thud, and in the dimness of the room, it looked like her real blood was joining the fake gore around us. I tried to drag her away from the man with the chainsaw who was suddenly remade terrifying by his inaction. He laughed in our direction and twisted to greet the gaggle of kids approaching from behind.

  In a reaction I still can’t explain to this day, I pulled Jenny out of that small room instead of calling for help. It was a primitive animal instinct, wanting to protect her and hide her from the monster, but part of me also wanted to flee from people discovering what had happened. Her parents would be so disappointed in me for allowing her to get hurt.

  They’d told us to take care of each other.

  It was the bride of Frankenstein who stopped me at the next station. I was dragging Jenny by her arms, her head lolling toward the floor. The bride appraised the situation quickly and flicked on the lights in the hall, revealing a worn and dingy space that was as impermanent as a stage. She grabbed a phone from behind a panel and called for help, and Jenny was whisked outside and into an ambulance within minutes. It took me longer to find her parents, and then her brother, and the four of us hurried to the hospital.

  Jenny received ten stitches on her scalp, and I took her and her parent’s quiet demeanor during the long ride home as anger at me.

  They never invited me out again.

  Afterward, in a ridiculously exaggerated response to any mention of haunted houses, my feet started to sweat and my intestines went soft and rumbly. It was a crazy reflex, I knew, but one I carried with me through the rest of high school. Even now, almost exactly fifteen years to the day after the event, that fear is as powerful as a sleeping giant inside of me, which was exactly what I was thinking as the lights snapped out in the Dairy Barn, bringing me precariously close to reliving the terror of that long-ago day in a darkened building crowded with panicking strangers.

  True, the Dairy building was bigger than the haunted house and none of the farmers and suburban moms crowded around were going to yank out a chainsaw or tickle me with Freddie Krueger blades, but the sensation was just as I remembered it. Blackness. Strangers. Little sparks of panic flashing like fireflies, igniting waves of fear. The smell of the fair faint but constant inside the building—mini donuts, animals, dust.

  I wasn’t the only one terrified by the sudden darkness. People in the Dairy Barn pushed like one huge creature toward the entrance. I was falling but there was nowhere to go. Someone yanked at the camera around my neck. I clutched it closer. A woman yelled for Isaiah, and then a little boy yelled for his mom. The dairy smell, which before had been faint, was made sour and amplified by the darkness. I thought I heard a growl, a low, primal, dog sound.

  I was just about to scream when a brilliant sliver of light sliced through the absolute black. Someone had cracked a door. We all sighed. We were in a building, civilized humans. Two more seconds, and every light in the building switched back on, washing the interior in a safe, yellow glow.

  At first, none of us in the Dairy building made eye contact. I think we were all embarrassed. No one likes to discover they’re two minutes of darkness away from crazy.

  Around me, people chuckled uneasily and cracked bad jokes. How many cows does it take to change a lightbulb, anyways? I kept my head down and made for the one lighted exit in my line of sight, just a little to the right of the butter-carving booth. The floor of the booth was at shoulder level, and it looked empty except for some blocks of butter that were knocked over. Milkfed Mary and the sculptor must have panicked when the lights went out and started flailing for a door.

  Oh well. They were no more a coward than the rest of us.

  A scream began near me and tore across the cavernous Dairy Barn. I figured it must be a delayed reaction, or somebody had just discovered their purse had been stolen when the lights were out. I kept moving forward and was beside the booth when a second shriek, this one a long, continuous wail, escaped from behind the blue curtain to my left.

  The yell was loud, wordless, and female.

  I was reaching to yank open the curtain when something in the butter-carving booth snagged my eye: a cherry-red hand sticking out between two felled blocks of butter in the spinning booth.

  Two

  Had Milkfed Mary been crushed by falling butter in an ironically dairy-themed re-creation of the Wizard of Oz?

  The booth turned inexorably, bringing first her blonde hair into view, and then her eyes, open and sightless. The woman next to me was also staring into the booth. She gurgled.

  “Do you have a phone?” I asked her, my eyes hot.

  She nodded at her purse but made no move to open it. The crimson and completely dead Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy had her transfixed. I dug into the woman’s purse and dialed 911 for the second time in my life.

  “What is your emergency?”

  Sweet Jesus, I hadn’t thought this through. My best bet was to make it swift and vague. “I’m at the State Fair. In the Dairy building. Milkfed Mary was getting her head carved out of butter, and something terrible happened to her.”

  “What happened to her, ma’am?”

  “I think she’s dead. Send someone quick.” And I hung up, dropped the phone back in the woman’s purse, and made for the blue curtain from which a scream was still emanating, though it had grown fainter.

  Before I continue, let’s get one thing straight: I wasn’t going back there to be a hero. The truth is, I’m no Wonder Woman. What I am is a lifelong prisoner of guilt, sometimes on work release but never far from my cell. How that shakes out is that in a crisis, I usually know what the appropriate action is, which leaves me one of two choices:

  act immediately, or

  prepare to get squashed beneath so many “what-ifs” and so paralyzed by fear of karma catching up with me that I will spend the next lifetime wishing I had acted, turning the missed moment over and over in my head like rosary beads.

  Thank you again, Jenny Cot and Leatherface.

  So I yanked that blue curtain back, scared as a kicked dog. I’d expected to discover loads of people squished like Milkfed Mary, a room full of bright red Flat Stanleys with only one person inflated enough to still be shrieking.

  Imagine my relief to see only the butter-head artist sobbing and being comforted by another, red-suited woman with a cell phone in her hand and a strange expression on her face. Behind them, hundreds of boxes of spoons lined the wall, which ended in a door.

  Gurgle.

  With the sculptor being comforted, that left me with the short straw job: I needed to step into the gruesome booth and make sure nothing could be done for Milkfed Mary.

  Though I had recently vowed to avoid corpses at all costs, I had to be 100 percent sure she was beyond suffering. Da
mmit. I swallowed my fear and forced myself up the steps that only the sculptor and a reigning Queen and her court should ever travel.

  I opened the door.

  A wash of icy air chilled my skin.

  Goose bumps popped up all over my flesh.

  Inside, the floor turned, slowly and relentlessly, ignoring its ghastly cargo: Milkfed Mary, one Ashley Pederson of Battle Lake, Minnesota, lay sprawled on the floor, red as an apple and still as a rock.

  Only minutes earlier, I’d watched her in her full youthful glory, hamming it up for the cameras and basking in the attention she’d earned. But now, her lifeless body curved around the white carving station in the middle of the booth. Two butter slabs pinned her right arm and another trapped her left leg. Only one hand wore a mitten.

  The room was chilly, but not cold enough to freeze the oily yellow smell of one thousand pounds of butter. I was hopping forward to check her pulse when I was pushed roughly from behind.

  It was the woman who had been comforting the sculptor. She was all business in her red power suit, grimacing at me from under her perfect helmet of hair. “The State Fair EMTs are here. They need to get at her.”

  I moved out of the way but not before looking through the glass of the booth at the hundreds of people staring up at me. For a moment, I had a flash of Ashley’s last moments, on display like a crown jewel.

  Or a two-headed goat.

  It gave me a shiver that stuck with me as I was hustled out of the booth, away from the curtain and down the long hall of spoons. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to take a bath in Purell. But even in my benumbed state, I wondered what had turned Ashley’s skin that color. Was it some sort of dairy virus, or a latent but deadly Oompa-Loompa gene triggered by a constant 38-degree temperature and slow, constant circular movement?