The Piper's Graveyard

Cessy returns home to search for her missing sister.

She finds a half-abandoned town under siege by unexplainable threats: Attics and crawlspaces stretch into endless tunnels. Corpses turn up riddled with holes—holes that slither through flesh like insectile parasites. It all leads deep into the abandoned coal mine.

Cessy’s sister disappeared while investigating the vengeful voice on the radio. To find her, Cessy will have to unravel the dark mystery wriggling up from the coal mine.

The Piper’s Graveyard is a “gripping tale of small town terror” (Kirkus Reviews), from “one hell of a writer” (Shirley Jackson Award Winner Daryl Gregory).

Chapter 1

A rusty storm door creaked loose on its hinges.
It was the final barrier between Detective Cessy Timms and her biggest arrest of the year.
Still, Cessy’s mind lingered elsewhere.
“SWAT’s twenty minutes out.” Her partner, Detective Landis, wiped at the foggy glass to peer inside.
Thick August humidity draped over everything like a moist blanket.
They’d crept behind the neglected rear of a three-million-dollar McMansion. Virginia creeper coated dull brick in sickly greens and browns. A looming willow oak kept the evening sun from beating down on the guest house which hid their suspect.
Cessy checked her phone. Still nothing. “We can’t wait for SWAT.”
Landis exhaled, bristling his graying mustache. “Slow down. Where exactly would Peterson run off to? Through us to his car? Or out the back, across the golf course? We’ve got time.”
“I don’t.”
Softness entered Landis’ face. His fatherly instincts struck at Cessy’s ego. He was only ten years her senior--she didn’t need another dad.
“I’ll help you find her,” Landis said, “after we bring in Peterson.”
Cessy’s baby sister had graduated from American University, started her dream job as a tenants’ rights advocate, and then disappeared.
This evening marked two weeks since Cessy had heard from Kate. One week since she’d noticed. Two hours since she’d checked Kate’s apartment to realize Kate wasn’t just ignoring Cessy--she was missing.
“It’s not your fault,” Landis said. “She’s probably off visiting friends.”
“Which is it? My sister going missing isn’t my fault, or she’s not really missing?”
Landis rolled his eyes. Probably the same look he gave his teenagers.
Cessy should have noticed earlier. She shouldn’t have assumed Kate was avoiding her. She was an inattentive detective and a neglectful big sister.
Sirens in the distance, but slow and whining. A fire engine, not SWAT.
Cessy looked through the guest house windows. The foggy glass blurred movement inside.
She needed this arrest to be over so she could get back to Kate’s apartment, turn the place upside down.
The call from Peterson’s coal-lobbyist father had interrupted Cessy’s earlier search. The prodigal son had returned, and was out back in the guest house.
Peterson had put two tellers and a security guard in the hospital. He’d made off with twenty-eight thousand dollars, less than he received in a month from his trust fund.
Selfish thrill-seeking motivated him, which meant he was dangerous.
Cessy reached for the door handle.
Landis gently grabbed her wrist. “We’ll find her. Twenty minutes won’t make a difference.”
She knew that was true, but she couldn’t sit around for that long, basking in worry and guilt. She’d rather distract herself with what she was best at. “I hear Peterson escaping out the back,” she lied. “No time to lose.”
Cessy yanked open the door, swept the room with her pistol. “Police!” she warned.
Landis covered her rear. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“You need hearing aids, old man.”
A cat fled from the front room, scampering over leather furniture nicer than anything Cessy would ever own. Its claws scraped over the kitchenette’s tile, and then the hallway’s wood flooring.
Cessy followed the cat, Landis close behind.
Peterson stepped out from a bedroom. Sunlight silhouetted his overweight form against a window at the end of the hall. Cessy intently watched his raised hands. Empty.
“Don’t shoot!” he yelled.
A tinny shriek assaulted Cessy’s ears.
It warbled like a train passing, but scraped and whined and gurgled like the train was dragging a mountain of barbed wire through sticky mud. The sheer volume of it hurt, but it was the nightmarish sound itself that clawed over Cessy’s skin, raised goosebumps and made her want to scratch like a crack addict.
The light in the hallway did not change, but it felt darker, like on a summer day when approaching storm clouds are already tinting the sky a darker blue.
Instinct took over against the invading noise. Cessy covered her ears. She needed to flee the thing she didn’t understand.
She looked to her more experienced partner for guidance, but he had his ear buried in his shoulder, his hand over the other. “What?” he pleaded. His voice was muffled, far away.
This wasn’t natural. There must be a hallucinogen in the air.
Cessy refocused on Peterson, who was doubled over, clutching his ears. Cessy ignored her throbbing ear drums and itching skin to dash at the bank robber. The sound slowed her strides like water. She tackled Peterson, letting his bulk absorb their impact with the floor. Handcuffs clicked into place.
She yelled into his ear. “Where’s the speakers? What did you drug us with?” She heard the contradiction, but didn’t care. She’d take any escape from this violating, squelching thrum.
Peterson twisted his head to shove one ear against his shoulder, and the other against the carpet.
“Turn it off!” she yelled.
A hand on her shoulder sent ripples across her tingling skin.
“Timms.” Landis, still covering his ears, had amped up the concerned father look. He pointed at her pocket.
Cessy pulled out her cell phone. The sound exploded. The phone’s speakers vibrated her hand.
The screen showed the active call animation, with a ticking duration of eight seconds. Her sister’s name on the screen: Kate.
The shock didn’t dull the auditory assault. It clawed at her. She clawed back. “Kate?” she screamed into the phone. “Are you there? Where are you?”
She jammed the volume-down button, and the screen showed the volume decreasing, but the tiny speakers pulsed at impossible levels.
Underneath the pounding and wet scraping: a voice. Male. A winding, unhinged rant, but the only word Cessy caught was, “vermin.”
Landis snatched the phone and ended the call.
The hallway emptied of noise.
Cessy’s lungs lifted and lowered her shoulders. The guilt of her failure with Kate blended with the shock at the offensive noise.
“What was that?” she whispered.
Landis leaned over, hands on his knees, chest heaving. “How’s your speakerphone so loud?”
Cessy didn’t know. The phone didn’t have the power to make that level of noise. And no noise should have the power to make Cessy’s skin crawl and the hallway seem darker.
The cat appeared in a bedroom doorway to hiss at Cessy, then sprinted past them. The storm door squeaked and slammed.
Peterson groaned. “I was surrendering. What the fuck was that?”
Landis rested his boot on the side of the younger man’s gut, applied pressure to squeeze it against the floor. “Watch your language, son.” His fatherly instincts expressed themselves differently with criminals.
Cessy caught her breath. “Give me my phone.”
Landis scratched at his arms. “We should get someone to check it out first.”
Cessy’s skin still tingled. Despite the sunlight coming through the window, the dark feeling of the hallway persisted. But Cessy could worry about that weirdness--and the technical feat of her phone--after she figured out why that noise came through a call with her missing sister.
She snatched the phone out of Landis’ hand.
She tapped the screen to call Kate back. Straight to voicemail.
Cessy was comfortable with Landis. She didn’t have to hide fear like she did with most of her colleagues in the Fairfax County Police Department. But right now, she did anyways, because she didn’t want to face it herself. She knew a threatening call when she heard one. A ransom demand might follow. Or just a corpse on a river bank.
She inhaled deeply. Fear was overcome by resolving the situation.
“Think we can get a warrant for the phone records?” Cessy asked. “Find out where that call came from? It’s her work phone, if that’d make it any quicker.”
“Sure. A guy in cybercrimes owes me a favor. We’ll piggyback off another warrant.” He checked his watch. “Might even get it today.”
Cessy couldn’t imagine a judge would sign off on that, but Landis was a well-loved veteran. His pull consistently surprised her. “That would be amazing, thank you.”
Peterson had gone still, wide eyes over pudgy cheeks curious at the problem that had overshadowed his arrest. “You don’t have to wait for that to find out where she is.”
Cessy and Landis looked down at Peterson.
“You lie there quietly,” Landis ordered.
“Now hold on.” Cessy crouched down close enough to smell Peterson’s deodorant. “Do you know something about my sister?”
“No!” For the first time, Cessy saw how young he was. Barely over twenty. Even younger than Kate. “Nothing but what you’ve said right here.”
“Then why wouldn’t I need to wait for a warrant?”
“He’s trying to rattle you,” Landis said. “Thinks he’s a Batman villain.”
“I’m being helpful so you’ll go easy on me. I don’t want to sit in jail.”
“You robbed three banks.” Landis was getting distracted.
Cessy cut him off. “Be helpful, then. How can I tell where my sister is without a warrant for the phone records?”
“You’ll get me a deal to stay out of prison?”
“I’ll do everything in my power as an officer of the law.”
Landis started to interrupt but Cessy swatted his ankle.
“Alright,” Peterson said. “You said she had a work cell phone, right?”
“Yes.”
“Call in and pretend to be her. Get them to reset her voicemail password. Then listen to her voicemails.”
“What’ll that tell me?”
Peterson shrugged. “More than you know now. If that doesn’t help, get her credit card company to tell you her last transactions. Or I don’t care, wait for the warrant.”
Landis asked, “Did you start out stealing identities before you turned to banks?”
Peterson laughed. His chins jiggled. “I never admitted to robbing banks.”
Cessy called Kate’s office.
“Whoa,” Landis said. “Right now? Let’s get him in the car first.”
“He can wait.” The guilt still wriggled in Cessy’s gut, now agitated by the unnatural noises she’d heard from the call with Kate. She couldn’t let it fester.
Kate’s office answered. Cessy raised her pitch, hid the gruffness that fourteen years of police work had caused, and managed to pass for her sister who was thirteen years her junior. The receptionist believed she was Kate. The HR rep asked about her sick mom. Kate had given them a lie before disappearing--that was good news. They asked when she’d be back in, and Cessy stumbled over an answer, but they gave Cessy the password. Cessy called Kate’s phone, interrupted the voicemail greeting with the star key, then put in the new password.
Landis grumbled and pulled Peterson to his feet. “One thing at a time, Timms.”
Cessy ignored him.
Kate had four messages. The most recent three were from clients complaining about landlords. The oldest was a familiar voice.
Cessy’s heart dropped. Peterson flinched away from her.
“Kate, it’s me again.”
The young male voice paused. A sound of fingernails scratching beard stubble.
“Did you get my email? You see what I’m talking about?”
Cessy knew that voice. She’d sat across from it at Christmas dinner five years ago, and listened to it demean her little sister.
Jackson Wilder.
“I need you here. You heard the email. You’re coming, right?”
“Who says ‘hear’ an email?” Peterson humphed. “I don’t like him.”
“Timms? You look like you’re ready to strangle someone.” Landis stepped between her and Peterson. “Who’s the hillbilly on the phone?”
“Kate’s high school boyfriend.”
“Bad news?”
“Yeah.”
“Violent?”
“Not five years ago. But he was headed that way.”
“Your sister’s not missing,” Peterson crooned. “She’s heartsick.”
Cessy put her phone in her pocket. “Rough him up a bit for me, would you?” Landis didn’t have it in him, but Peterson didn’t know that.
Landis rubbed his brow. “Where are you going? We’ve got to bring him in.”
“I guarantee you that shitstain Jackson never left our hometown. I know where Kate is. I’m going to Hamlin.”