The Unsolved Case of the Woman in Black
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When we were alone, my brother and I had a conversation that ended with me giving him an ultimatum: He could either help me get out from under Dad or he couldn’t stay. It was as simple as that – no more excuses about being too young to know right from wrong because at fifteen years old all it took was one look around the room for him to see what I saw every time we came home.
So if he wanted to be here when things went bad for our family, then he’d have to do some work. The first step would be to keep Dad away from me. And the second would be finding me the perfect place to live.
We didn’t talk about it until much later on that night. My head felt thick and heavy but my eyes burned so fiercely that I could barely hold them open. All I really wanted to do was fall asleep. But my brother refused to give up even after Dad got into bed, leaving me alone in the living room where my parents slept soundly upstairs.
That made it easier. If I hadn’t been able to hear them, they might not have noticed when I snuck away after he left. They might have just thought I’d fallen asleep there instead. And maybe I wouldn’t have had to tell anyone anything at all.
It’s still not clear why I chose to leave at midnight on Christmas Eve rather than wait for New Year’s Day. Maybe it was something to do with my birthday being three months earlier and the way people seemed to think Christmas was the only time someone was really supposed to be with their family.
There are plenty of stories told by those who don’t believe in Santa Claus about how kids get kidnapped and killed before the holidays. We’ve probably all heard them at some point; we may have even believed them when we were children. After all, we’re raised in a society where almost everyone believes these stories are real, whether they actually happened or not.
But there’s nothing like hearing a child scream for help to convince you otherwise. Even if there wasn’t enough evidence, we knew the story was true because it was happening to us. So while it’s safe to assume my dad must have planned his attack carefully, I can’t imagine what he might have been thinking.
He was never a man prone to violence and he had always loved spending time with his grandchildren. How could he have done something so terrible?
I remember feeling a deep sense of dread as I approached the front door of our house on Christmas Eve. As soon as Dad opened it and I slipped inside, he turned to my brother and demanded that he come along.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “We’ll bring her back.”
He didn’t say where they were going, which meant there was every chance I might be left behind to fend for myself. When my father tried to follow after me, my brother blocked his way. He looked over my shoulder and said, “If you don’t go away, I’m calling the police.”
That stopped him cold for a few seconds and I took advantage of my opportunity to slip through the door and head down the driveway as fast as I could run without tripping. It was a short distance and my footwork was flawless, making the journey feel almost effortless.
As I ran, my mind raced with thoughts of what might happen once I got free. First I’d need to make sure my father couldn’t get near me again. Then I needed somewhere to hide so I could plan my next steps. Finally, I decided to stop running and start walking. I figured I’d walk around town until it was dark enough to sneak into someone’s window.
And just when I was starting to relax, I heard my name called out.
“Hey, there!”
A young girl’s voice jolted me from my reverie and I realized that I had almost forgotten why I’d gone outside in the first place. The voice belonged to the teenager who lived across the street. She was tall, thin, and pale with long black hair that reached halfway down her back, and she had the darkest blue eyes I had ever seen.
She was probably only ten years old or so, but even then her eyes reminded me of ice crystals. And she was wearing the same clothes every time I saw her. A green sweater dress and knee-length brown boots matched the color of her eyes perfectly.
In fact, the only difference between our outfits was that the buttons on my jacket were different colors. She was always buttoned to the top and I always kept mine undone.
She was standing in the middle of the road just beyond the sidewalk. I couldn’t quite see her face, but I could make out her hands cupped together as though she was holding something precious. She held herself perfectly still while she called out to me in a singsong voice that sounded far too sweet to be coming from someone who appeared to be half frozen to death.
The last time I’d walked past her, I’d wondered exactly who the heck she was. Now I remembered. Our parents used to call her Baby Bird. They said she was an angel sent to keep us safe from our monster dad.
They said she would watch over my mom until she came home. But Baby Bird didn’t care for me one bit; she never said a word or offered to take me inside, despite how freezing cold it was outside.
Instead, she stood perfectly still like a statue in the snow, staring at me with her dark blue eyes. She waited until I was close enough and then she waved a small white hand at me.
“Hello? Hey?”
Baby Bird’s voice broke off suddenly and I felt a pang of fear for a split second. But she quickly recovered and continued talking. “You don’t look well.”
Her words sounded sincere, so I nodded and smiled politely. It seemed as good a response as any other to explain my current state of mind.
“Is anything wrong?”
I paused briefly before answering and thought about lying. But I figured that wouldn’t do anyone any favors. Besides, my mother had told me not to tell lies. There was no point trying to pretend that nothing was wrong with me. I was shaking like a leaf in the wind, but my teeth weren’t chattering and my eyes were dry. That wasn’t right.
But then, as if my thoughts had conjured her up, Baby Bird asked another question. “Have you been outside all day? You’re freezing.”
When I shook my head, Baby Bird frowned slightly but remained silent. And instead of saying anything else, she pointed across the road to the treehouse.
“Why don’t you come inside for a while? I can make some tea.”
My stomach clenched at the idea of being alone in a warm house, but I couldn’t deny the appeal of hot food and coffee and a place to sit for a while. So when I turned to leave, she caught my arm and spoke in a whisper.
“Be careful. Be very careful. Don’t fall asleep.”
With a final smile directed at the teenager, I hurried down the driveway and across the road, leaving Baby Bird to guard the street afar.
***
Dad had driven me here earlier that morning and now he followed behind me with his usual speed limit drive, keeping himself in the left lane on the interstate. He was driving too fast again for comfort, even in this weather. His car swerved a little in the snow and his knuckles were white against the steering wheel.
I could feel him glaring at me through the rearview mirror. We drove in silence, except for the occasional groan coming from Dad’s throat when the heater in his car failed to work properly.
By the time we arrived at the school, I was exhausted. Not just because of the early morning, but also because I’d been forced to spend hours in Dad’s company. I hadn’t wanted to bring him along, but my mother had insisted that he accompany me to the police station. After seeing the news footage, she’d decided it was time to take the next step.
After parking, Dad got out of the car and looked at me intently. Then he put on a stern expression, which he must have practiced somewhere along the way during his years in the Marines, and spoke quietly.
“If they hurt you… I’m going to kill them.”
The comment brought instant tears to my eyes, but Dad wasn’t done yet. He reached into the trunk and retrieved two suitcases—the old suitcases that I used when I moved around so much.
“We’ll need these,” he said in a firm voice, as though the contents of the suitcases would magically solve everything.
And after Dad had gone inside, I realized that there were more items stacked up beside the garage door: A backpack, a pair of boots, and a thick coat. He must have bought them yesterday after Mom had left with the FBI agents to search the woods. Now that he’d mentioned it, I realized I was still wearing my own jacket, but he was clearly much better made.
I stared at them for a moment longer, trying to figure out what exactly they would be useful for, but then decided it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was figuring out why Baby Bird had tried to warn me about falling asleep. Was she telling the truth?
Did the killer somehow know that I was planning to sleep at night? What else did he know? Would he strike tomorrow morning and risk getting caught by my father? Or was he waiting until I’d slept for several hours so he could finish the job without any interruptions?
It was almost five o’clock when we arrived at the school. I watched as Dad went into the main entrance of the building and disappeared behind the security desk, where he talked with one of the teachers who had apparently arranged this excursion with the sheriff’s department. They were discussing something serious, judging by the way that Dad kept glancing in the direction of the front doors.
I sat in his car for a while after Dad had left. In fact, I sat there for ten minutes or so before I finally got out of the car and walked over to a bench near the tennis courts. It seemed unlikely that anyone would approach me while I was sitting there with my back to the wall—and I was determined to wait until my body started showing signs of exhaustion before I approached the office and asked for some hot chocolate.
The sky above the school buildings was turning dark as I finished off the last drops of my cocoa and took three sips of water from the bottle I’d stolen from Dad. But despite the late hour, the streets were still packed with cars and the parking lot was full, which gave me an excuse to avoid meeting any strangers who might be looking for someone with my particular skill set.
But it was hard to ignore all the noise in the area. I knew it probably meant nothing in terms of danger since everyone was here because they lived close by, but it was impossible to shake off the feeling that someone was watching me.
Every time I glanced over my shoulder, I expected to see Baby Bird’s pale face staring at me through the windows of every passing car. She never did appear, but her words echoed in my ears: “Don’t fall asleep”. And then, just before Baby Bird turned away to follow a group of kids heading towards the baseball diamond, she’d whispered another thought.
“…you’re not safe here.”
I closed my eyes, wondering what on earth this cryptic message meant. Was the killer already in the school? How would he get past all of those armed cops standing guard outside the building? Had he somehow learned about Dad’s presence here?
If that was true, then I’d better do everything I could to stay alert, and ready for anything. My father might look like a harmless retiree, but he was capable of protecting himself in any situation. That, or I could try to distract myself by talking with a few of the other parents who were gathered around the parking lot.
I’d always enjoyed chatting with adults when I was younger—but that was probably because I couldn’t talk to my mother, who always spent half the day with her friends in the kitchen.
The first person I approached was a man I recognized as being in charge of the local Little League team, but he immediately noticed that something was wrong when he spotted my red-rimmed eyes and swollen cheeks. He introduced himself as Mr. Ruggieri, but even when I told him that I was the daughter of Sheriff Bowerman, he didn’t offer me any sympathy.
Instead, he told me that he was happy to meet me, as he was a huge fan of both Little League and the Pittsburgh Pirates (which I found rather amusing), as well as the local high school baseball program, as long as none of his kids had been drafted into the major leagues, which he admitted was unlikely.
As we talked, his wife approached us and told me that Mr. Ruggieri hadn’t seen his son play in months, as his team was busy preparing for the upcoming Little League World Series. Then she smiled at me as she told me to come and help in the kitchen if I wanted to earn a little pocket money during lunchtime.
As soon as she’d wandered off, I moved on to a woman who looked as though she’d once been a model. I didn’t bother asking whether that had turned out to be true as I doubted she’d ever admit to such a thing—or maybe she’d only been interested in men who made more than $500,000 per year.
She also seemed to think we should have met earlier in the evening because she said that she was going to go home as soon as the game ended. When I asked her if I could accompany her, she said no, politely and kindly, as she pointed out that I was too young to be wandering around town alone.
She must’ve assumed that I was trying to escape from Baby Bird, which wasn’t entirely untrue—but the real reason I’d been sitting around for so long was that I was too afraid to leave.
Then there was an old man who was wearing a pair of wire-frame glasses and a T-shirt with a cartoon of a cat on it. I couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d managed to get the top button of his shirt undone as the rest of us were beginning to feel the cold, but he insisted on telling me all about his cat, which he referred to as “Mr. Fluffy”, although he’d lost track of him a couple of years ago.
This led to a very strange conversation between us. He told me about his cat’s habits as she sat down in the grass under the bleachers and began eating the sandwiches a woman had brought for her daughter.
The old man then told me that the cat had disappeared without warning two days previously and refused to say where he’d taken Mr. Fluffy as he didn’t want her to find the poor animal again.
“Why?” I asked.
His answer was brief. “Because she’s cruel.”
Baby Bird had spoken to him about that, too, and he said that she’d called the girl “a piece of crap”. Then he laughed and added that he liked Baby Bird. It was clear that his wife had been right to call him an oddball.
There were many more people around but most of them were elderly and didn’t seem particularly interested in me. Most of them just wanted to spend time with their grandchildren or watch the game.
They didn’t care about anything else. And then a voice broke into the silence around me as a young man came up behind me and asked me if I’d like to join a group of students heading to the bowling alley.
I glanced around to see that several kids were gathering together in the middle of the field. They appeared to have come to a consensus as they all stood shoulder to shoulder with their arms folded against the chill. As I tried to decide whether this was some sort of new form of protest, one of them held a sign aloft and shouted: “Let the kids play! Let the kids bowl!”
When he saw that I wasn’t moving, he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me towards him.
“You can join our group if you’d like,” he told me. “Otherwise, go over there,” he directed, pointing to another group of kids huddled together as they watched the baseball game on television. “They’re planning a strike of their own.”
My head felt like someone was standing on it, and my throat was sore.
All I wanted to do was lie down somewhere quiet until things cooled off. But I was stuck on that football field surrounded by people who seemed quite happy to discuss the pros and cons of a strike and not pay attention to the fact that one of their numbers had suddenly started choking, and was now writhing on the ground, vomiting blood onto the freshly cut grass.
The End