Page 13 of The Sister's Curse

Jasper pulled on his flippers. “So, you don’t think this was an accident?”

I lifted a shoulder. “ER says he had mud in his lungs. Seemed like he was hung up on something in the pond. I had a hard time hauling him to the surface. Maybe snapping turtles?” I wasn’t going to say anything more than that. Nobody needed to think I was crazy. But I felt like I owed him some kind of warning, at least.

“Weird,” he agreed. “But let’s see what’s down there. If there’s a monster turtle in that pond, I’ll find it.”

Jasper stood, and I helped with his tank. I walked with him as he waddled to the pond’s edge and dropped in with a controlled splash. There were no shallows here, just a sharp drop-off.

Jasper’s back and the tank were visible as he floated around theperimeter, taking pictures. Gradually, he disappeared from view. The light of a flashlight swept under the surface, like a spotlight among clouds.

Here, in daytime, it was hard to believe something monstrous lurked below the surface. I wanted to believe that last night had been just a terrible accident. Something tragic had happened, certainly, but perhaps Jasper would return with evidence of a freakishly large catfish or snapping turtle. No matter what, there would be a logical explanation.

Was it too much to expect that I would never dream of my parents again? I wasn’t sure. No one besides Nick knew that Stephen Theron, the Forest Strangler, was my father. Once upon a time, my psychiatrist knew, but she was dead. I wished she were still alive, so I could ask her about my dreams. I’d assumed I’d done all the psychological processing I needed to do last year, when I began to recover my childhood memories…I thought my memories were complete, and I had moved on, establishing that my father and I were separate entities. My father’s Forest God, that antlered shadow in the forest who had exhorted him to kill, had gone silent.

My father was dead. I didn’t feel his presence, the weight of his crimes and love and expectations, any longer. Now I thought of him only when I watched Nick sleeping at night, and bile rose in my throat at the pain he’d caused the man I loved.

I wanted to be free of him, to feel nothing. But all I felt was the hate. He had died a free man, but he’d deserved so much less than that.

My hands curled into fists. I refused to fall into those murky depths of fear and darkness once again. I would stay on this side of it. What I’d felt last night was a fluke, a blip. There was a rational explanation for all this, one that would be revealed with enough persistence and clearheadedness.

I couldn’t fall into the realm of monsters. Not again.

I waited at the edge of the water while strings of bubbles rose to the surface. At last, Jasper emerged, gave me the thumbs-up, and then plodded toward the bank. I helped him climb awkwardly through the cattails with his massive flippers. He sat down on the shore, and I unbuckled his harness.

“What did you see down there?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Not much at first. Low visibility. But then I saw something weird.”

“Yeah?”

He extended a closed hand to me and opened his fingers. In his palm was something slimy and irregularly shaped.

I picked it up with gloved fingers. It was wing shaped, with a luster graduating from gray to brown.

“It’s a pearl,” he said.

I blinked at him. “But that’s a pond.”

“Right. So, this is the cool thing…there are a few species of bivalve mussel that live in fresh water in Ohio. Rarely, they can produce pearls. I’ve never actually seen any outside of a museum, or when I was younger…” he trailed off.

“Do you think it might have come from someone’s jewelry?”

He shook his head. “I think it’s a natural anomaly unrelated to the case, but interesting.”

I agreed, but still bagged it as evidence, just in case. “Did you find anything else?”

“Not much. The bottom of the pond is very soft. I was able to plunge my arm up to here in it, and it was difficult to remove.” He tapped his shoulder, and mud glistened in the seams of his suit’s sleeve. “The bottom terrain is dish shaped, with a lot of debris…looks like someone’s been dumping their old Christmas trees there. Lots of carp and bluegill. Nothing that’s good to eat.”

“Anything that could hurt a child?”

“No. I didn’t see anything that big.” He sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at the pond.

“Do you think the debris could catch a child?”

“With bad luck and in darkness? Potentially.” His gaze drifted to the house, and he frowned.

“What?” I prodded him. Jasper had excellent instincts; if he saw something wrong, I wanted to know about it.

“Nothing concrete. I just don’t like this whole situation. It’s possible for a kid to get hung up on some debris, sure. Unlucky drownings happen all the time. But people who live in a house like that are lucky.”