Maybe the police would succeed in discouraging the late-night dares and the rumors threatening to whip the town into a frenzy. But nothing would stop the curious gazes that burned the back of my neck. Nothing would stop the calls from journalists that made my mom unplug our outdated landline and forced my dad to add “veterinary business only” to his contact page.
As the only living descendants of Malachi Rivers, we were the hot ticket in town this summer.
“The twins want to meet us at Sawmill,” Lindsey said, checking her phone. “Can we detour? I’m hungry.”
I glanced back at the headless carcass, wondering how Lindsey could summon an appetite right now. But I decided to drop it. I could picture the sheriff teasing me for calling to report dead livestock in a pasture. He’d been my dad’s best friend since their middle school days.
We hit the trail again. I couldn’t shake the sense that Lindsey was pacing herself to avoid leaving me in the dust. A healthy sense of competition had been the foundation of our friendship ever since we’d borrowed our teacher’s stopwatch to race across the monkey bars during third-grade recess.
I wanted to snap at her for going easy on me. I was too fast for her to go easy on me.
She was barely panting by the time we stepped off the trail into an overgrown meadow and crossed the country highway to Sawmill, our town’s famously ramshackle barbecue joint.
The Dixon twins waited for us at a picnic table outside. The hot metal bench burned my bare thighs as I plopped down next to Abbie with my sweet tea and pulled pork sandwich. She smelled like freshly applied sunscreen, but her round, ivory face seemed to only get pinker as the sun bore down on us.
“Y’all want to do a group trip to Toledo Bend after church this Sunday?” her sister Faith asked, bending the brim of her ball cap to shade her equally sensitive face. Her button nose was still peeling from the last sunburn. “Or will you be too busy training like overachieving dorks?”
“Y’all are begging to get massacred out on those trails,” Abbie added before either of us could answer.
“Technically that would be murder, not a massacre,” I pointed out. “And we’re not boys, so we’re safe. Which is pretty ironic.”
“Come on, people!” Lindsey smacked her palm on the table, rattling the condiments. “No one could ever prove that Malachi and her friends killed those dudes, and even the copycat murderers would be old by now, if they’re still alive. Nothing is going to happen.”
She was right about the first two things, and probably right about the third. Malachi Rivers and three other girls had faced trial for fatally poisoning a dozen men—including Malachi’s father—with Communion wine in a church sanctuary in July of 1921. The motive was there, but the conclusive evidence was not. Though the men had clearly partaken of the wine just before they died, the police found that it didn’t contain any identifiable toxic substances. The girls were acquitted.
Malachi had been the leader of the group, and thus the unanswered questions had circled back to her. She’d tried to make a normal life for herself after the trial, but she disappeared permanently just a handful of years later, leaving a husband and young son—my great grandfather—without a word.
And then a second massacre happened exactly fifty years after the first.
The twelve victims were, once again, all male. Unlike the first time, they were mostly young, in their teens and twenties, and hadn’t committed any heinous offenses, as far as anyone knew. And unlike the first time, there was evidence of a struggle in the sanctuary: bruises and lacerations on the victims’ wrists suggesting they’d been held against their will, several broken bones between them, plus destruction of church property. The actual cause of the deaths was still unknown; forensic testing proved beyond a doubt the wine contained nothing but harmless herbs.
The cases were more like kissing cousins than identical twins. Due to the discrepancies, investigators labeled the second massacre a copycat crime. And even though Malachi had been legally declared innocent, it was clear the copycats had been inspired by the rumors of her magic. Thus, the investigators lumped the events together and dubbed them the “Malachian Massacres.” Both remained unsolved.
And now, the semicentennial anniversary of the massacres was creeping closer.
The town’s unspoken questions had been like keepsakes tucked away in the attic. Did Malachi and her three friends have something to do with the deaths of the men who had traumatized them in 1921? Who had mimicked the massacre in 1971?
And most importantly, were the fanatics out there today? Would the people who revered Malachi’s legacy strike again?
As if reading my thoughts, Abbie spoke up in a voice that would have paired well with a flashlight and a campfire. “Maybe the Malachians have been recruiting in secret this whole time. Maybe someone we know is one of them. It’s kind of interesting to imagine—”
“Interesting?” Lindsey cut her off, instantly serious. “Real people died, Abbie.”
“I know that, Lindsey,” Abbie retorted. She rolled her blue eyes and jabbed at her potato salad. “Our great-great uncle died in the first massacre. He was a jerk and he deserved it, but it’s not a joke to me.”
The glare in Lindsey’s chocolate-brown eyes melted away. “Anyway, Nat would know if the Malachians were still active.”
“How would I know?” I asked, devouring a bite of my messy sandwich. I’d always been interested in the massacres from a historical standpoint, but I wasn’t obsessed or anything.
“Because they would try to recruit you,” Lindsey explained, as though it were obvious. “They believed Malachi Rivers could do magic, and you’re related to her. Has anyone ever tried to drag you out to the woods for a creepy ritual or anything?”
“No.”
“Then the cult is dead,” Lindsey declared. She arched her dark brows at Abbie and slurped the last of her Dr Pepper.
“All the more reason to have some fun,” Abbie said. “We know we’re not in any real danger.”
Faith had been studying her split ends, but she flicked her ash-brown braid over her shoulder and planted her elbows on the table. “Everyone’s talked this topic to death. Are y’all in for the lake trip? With the usual crew?”
“And Levi,” Abbie added. “He’s back in town.”
I’d already spotted the weathered blue pickup in the Langford family’s driveway, but hearing his name made a pang pinch between my ribs.
Lindsey eyed me sidelong as I swilled my tea and crushed ice between my teeth. Only she knew what had happened between Levi and me before he left last August.
He’d been slated to start his freshman year at college in Dallas when his father had died suddenly of an aneurysm. Levi’s mom and sister had hoped he would defer for a semester. But he didn’t. He’d left.
And since finding his letter in my mailbox on the morning he’d driven away, I hadn’t heard from him once.
That letter had been a stoic farewell, its careful words the cool cobalt of distance and forgetting.
“Did you hear Levi got two of his poems published in, like, a prestigious poetry review?” Faith asked. “Mrs. Langford was bragging on him at the potluck last Sunday.”