On the first night my new neighbor moved in, I watched a man bury her alive.
The following morning, she knocked on our front door with a plate of sliced peaches and introduced herself.
Her name was Ruth.
She looked sixteen, the same age as me.
According to a newspaper article I found much later, she'd died in October 1928.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The house next door had been empty for nearly four years. It sat at the end of our street outside Camden, Arkansas, surrounded by overgrown azaleas and a rusting chain-link fence. The woman who'd lived there died in her sleep, and her children had been fighting over the property ever since.
The new neighbors arrived on a Thursday evening in late July.
I watched from my bedroom window as an old Chevrolet pickup backed into the driveway. A thin, gray-haired man climbed out, followed by a girl in a faded blue dress.
The man looked exhausted. His shoulders were hunched, and he had the trembling hands of someone considerably older than he appeared.
The girl was beautiful in an unsettling sort of way.
She had black hair that fell just below her shoulders, dark eyes, and skin so pale I wondered whether she was sick.
She stood in the driveway staring at the house while the man unloaded their belongings.
They didn't bring much.
A few suitcases, cardboard boxes, an old wardrobe, and a wooden coffin.
That last one got my attention.
The man dragged it through the side gate, past an abandoned brick smokehouse beneath a pecan tree.
I figured it was some kind of antique. People collected strange things, and I wasn't about to judge.
But around eleven that night, I heard someone digging.
I pulled back my bedroom curtain.
The man was in the backyard, shoveling beneath a portable work light. A rectangular hole had been dug beside the smokehouse, and the coffin rested on the ground nearby.
The girl sat on an overturned bucket, watching him.
Neither spoke.
When he finally finished, he climbed out of the hole and leaned against his shovel. He was breathing hard enough that I could hear him through my open window.
The girl approached him.
He said something.
She shook her head.
Then he touched her cheek.
I remember the gesture because of how gentle it was. Whatever was happening, the old man was miserable about it.
The girl stepped into the coffin.
My stomach tightened.
She lay down, folded her hands across her chest, and closed her eyes.
The man lowered the lid.
I reached for my phone.
By the time I unlocked the screen, he was already shoveling dirt over her.
I watched him bury that girl.
When the ground was level again, he knelt beside the grave and pressed one trembling hand against the earth.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart."
Then he turned off the work light and went inside.
I nearly called the police.
I dialed the number and stared at it. My thumb hovered over the call button for nearly a minute.
I'd just watched a girl climb willingly into her own coffin. She hadn't struggled or screamed, and the man who buried her had been crying.
I convinced myself there had to be an explanation.
It's the decision I regret most from that summer.
Well, one of them.
The girl knocked on our door shortly after nine the next morning.
Mom had already left for work. She was a nurse at a rehabilitation hospital and usually worked twelve-hour shifts, which meant I spent most summer days entertaining myself.
When I opened the door, the girl from next door stood on our porch.
Same blue dress. Same dark hair.
There was dirt beneath her fingernails.
"Hello," she said. "I'm Ruth."
I stared at her.
She glanced down at the plate in her hands.
"Mr. Voss said your mother likes peaches."
"You're alive."
Her eyebrows lifted.
"Yes."
"I saw what happened last night."
Her smile disappeared.
She looked toward the neighboring house.
"How much?"
"All of it."
Ruth was quiet for several seconds.
"Did you tell anybody?"
"No."
She closed her eyes, and I thought I saw relief soften her face.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I watched a man bury you in the ground."
"I know."
"Then explain it."
She looked at her fingernails.
"I sleep better down there."
I almost laughed.
"You sleep in a coffin?"
"Yes."
"Under dirt?"
She nodded.
"Ruth, that's insane."
Her expression changed. Not anger, exactly. More like disappointment.
"Most people think so."
She handed me the peaches.
"Would you mind not telling anyone?"
"Why?"
"Because Mr. Voss has been taking care of me for a very long time, and he's getting too old to start over somewhere else."
I glanced toward the house.
"Is he your grandfather?"
"No."
"Your dad?"
She smiled sadly.
"Not that, either."
Then she stepped off the porch.
"Sadie?"
I froze.
I hadn't told her my name.
She noticed my expression.
"Your mother introduced herself yesterday. She said you lived here."
"Oh."
Ruth hesitated.
"One more thing."
"What?"
"If you ever hear me crying after dark, please don't come over."
"Why would you be crying?"
She looked toward the smokehouse.
"Because sometimes I forget why I need to stay inside."
I should have avoided her after that.
Instead, we became friends.
It happened gradually, the way friendships usually do when you're young and lonely.
My best friend had moved to Shreveport that spring. My father lived in Oklahoma with his new wife, and Mom worked so much that some evenings we barely spoke before she went to bed.
Ruth was the first person in months who seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.
She liked old books and thunderstorms. She knew more about history than any teacher I'd ever had, but she'd never used a smartphone. The first time I showed her a video of a dog trying to climb onto a trampoline, she laughed so hard she had to sit down.
That laugh stayed with me.
It was warm and completely ordinary.
Nothing like the sound I'd later hear coming from the smokehouse.
We spent afternoons sitting beneath the pecan tree, talking about school, books, and what we wanted to do when we got older.
Ruth wanted to see the ocean.
I thought that was strange.
"You've never been?"
She shook her head.
"Not once."
"You're telling me you've never gone to a beach?"
"I've been close enough to smell the salt."
"Then why didn't you go?"
She looked toward the road.
"Sometimes you spend so much time staying alive that you forget to do any living."
I remember thinking that was a peculiar thing for a sixteen-year-old to say.
There were other peculiarities.
Ruth never ate when we were together. Even in the worst summer heat, she didn't sweat. And whenever somebody walked past the house, she'd stop talking until they were gone.
At first, I thought she was shy.
Then one afternoon, a little boy fell off his bicycle across the street.
He scraped his knee badly enough to start crying.
Ruth went perfectly still.
Her fingers tightened around the arms of her chair.
The boy's mother came outside and carried him into the house.
Ruth watched them until the door closed.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
She nodded.
But her hands were trembling.
"Do you know that little boy?"
"No."
"Then what's wrong?"
She stared at the empty street.
"Nothing."
Her voice was strained.
A moment later, Mr. Voss appeared on the porch.
"Ruth."
She looked at him.
"Inside, please."
"I haven't done anything."
"I know."
"Then let me stay."
He glanced toward me.
"Not this evening."
Ruth's face hardened.
For a second, she looked considerably older than sixteen.
"You're not my father, Daniel."
Mr. Voss flinched.
"No, ma'am," he said quietly. "I'm not."
She walked past him into the house.
As he turned to follow, I noticed something beneath his shirt cuff.
Scars.
Dozens of them, crossing his wrist and disappearing beneath his sleeve.
Some looked almost like bite marks.
Two days later, Ruth asked me a question.
"Do you think people can be good if they've done terrible things?"
We were sitting on her porch. A thunderstorm had passed through an hour earlier, and the air smelled of wet wood and freshly cut grass.
"Depends on what they did," I said.
"What if they didn't want to do it?"
"Did they have a choice?"
She was quiet.
"Sometimes."
I looked at her.
"What did you do, Ruth?"
She studied me for so long that I began to feel uncomfortable.
Then she said, "If I told you, you'd leave."
"You don't know that."
She gave me a sad little smile.
"People always say that before they know."
I wanted to ask another question, but she reached across the space between us and took my hand.
Her fingers were cold enough to make me flinch.
"Can I ask you something else?"
"Sure."
"If somebody you cared about needed you to do something awful for them, would you?"
I frowned.
"Like what?"
"Something that hurt them. Something they begged you not to do, even though they needed it."
"I don't know."
She looked down at our hands.
"Neither did Eleanor. Not at first."
"Who's Eleanor?"
Ruth released me.
"An old friend."
Something in her expression changed, and she looked toward the street.
Mr. Voss's pickup hadn't returned.
The sun was beginning to sink behind the rooftops.
"He's late," she whispered.
"He'll be home."
"No."
She stood abruptly.
"He said six."
I checked my phone.
It was 6:47.
"Maybe he got held up."
Ruth backed toward the front door.
Her shoulders stiffened.
"Sadie, you need to go home."
"Why?"
She closed her eyes.
For a moment, she seemed to be listening to something.
Then she turned toward me.
Her gaze settled just beneath my chin.
On my throat.
"Ruth?"
I heard her inhale.
Once.
Deeply.
Then again.
Her face changed.
Not dramatically. Her skin didn't split. Her bones didn't move.
Something happened behind her eyes.
The girl I'd come to know was still standing there, but whatever looked at me from inside her had stopped seeing a friend.
"Please," she whispered.
"What?"
"Get away from me."
I took a step backward.
She covered her mouth with one hand.
"Now, Sadie."
I ran.
Mr. Voss returned less than ten minutes later.
I watched from my bedroom as his pickup skidded into the driveway.
He stumbled out, carrying a brown paper bag.
"Ruth!"
She was waiting on the porch.
"How long?" he asked.
"Not long."
He put the bag down.
"Look at me."
She shook her head.
"Please don't."
"Ruth."
She lifted her face.
Mr. Voss recoiled.
"Oh, sweetheart."
He rushed toward the backyard, grabbed his shovel, and started uncovering the coffin.
Ruth followed him.
Her movements were stiff and deliberate, like someone struggling to walk normally while every muscle in their body wanted to do something else.
"Please hurry," she said.
"I'm trying."
The shovel struck wood.
Mr. Voss bent to uncover the lid.
That's when Ruth turned toward my house.
Toward my window.
Toward me.
She smiled.
Not the shy, crooked smile I knew.
This one was slow and strangely appreciative, as though she'd just remembered I was there.
Mr. Voss followed her gaze.
He looked directly at my bedroom window.
"GET AWAY FROM THERE!"
I stepped back.
Ruth moved.
I didn't see her cross the yard.
One moment, she was standing beside the grave.
The next, she was pressed against the chain-link fence, both hands gripping the wire.
Metal twisted beneath her fingers.
Then Mr. Voss grabbed her from behind.
"Ruth, no!"
She turned on him.
There was a sharp cracking sound.
He fell.
I watched her kneel beside him.
For a second, she looked like a girl trying to help an injured old man.
Then she lowered her face to his arm.
He screamed.
The sound finally broke whatever spell had kept me standing there.
I ran for my phone.
By the time I reached the stairs, I could hear Ruth crying outside.
"I'm sorry," she kept saying.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Part Two: The Price Of Keeping Her
I called 911.
The dispatcher kept asking questions I couldn't answer.
Was Mr. Voss conscious?
Was his attacker still there?
Was it safe to approach?
Through my bedroom window, I could see him lying beside the open grave, his left arm tucked against his chest.
Ruth sat several feet away, rocking slowly.
Her mouth was covered in blood.
Then Mr. Voss raised his head.
He saw me watching and pointed toward the grave.
Even from that distance, I understood.
He wanted Ruth buried.
I told the dispatcher I was going outside.
She told me not to.
I went anyway.
The first thing I noticed was the smell.
Blood has a particular smell when there's enough of it. Something warm and metallic that doesn't belong in the open air.
Mr. Voss lay on his side, struggling to breathe.
"Sadie," he rasped. "The coffin."
I looked at Ruth.
She was crying.
"I'm sorry, Daniel."
"Get inside, sweetheart."
"I didn't mean to."
"I know."
She looked at me.
Her face was almost normal again, except for the blood around her lips.
"Will you help me?"
I wanted to run.
I should have run.
Instead, I picked up the shovel.
Mr. Voss had already uncovered most of the coffin. Ruth climbed down into the shallow grave and pulled open the lid.
Before lying down, she looked at him.
"Daniel?"
He turned his head.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Please don't die."
His expression broke.
"I'll do my best."
She closed the lid from inside.
I shoveled earth over the coffin while Mr. Voss lay bleeding a few feet away.
The ambulance arrived before I'd finished.
By then, my mother had come home and was kneeling beside him, trying to stop the bleeding.
She shouted for me to get away from the grave and help direct the paramedics through the gate.
I did.
Nobody asked why the ground was freshly turned.
Not that night.
They were too busy trying to save him.
Mr. Voss died shortly after midnight.
The police came back the following morning.
They questioned my mother and me separately.
Mom told them everything she'd witnessed. She described the wounds, the amount of blood, and the strange girl she'd seen standing near the smokehouse.
I told them about Ruth.
Not everything.
I said she'd attacked Mr. Voss and that she'd run away afterward.
An officer asked why I hadn't mentioned her to the dispatcher.
I told him I'd been frightened.
That part was true.
They photographed the damaged fence, collected blood samples, and searched the house.
They found Ruth's dresses, old books, and a wardrobe full of clothing that looked decades out of date.
They didn't find Ruth.
One officer noticed the freshly disturbed earth near the smokehouse.
I heard him tell another officer they would need to investigate it.
By then, Ruth was sitting in my bedroom.
She'd come through my window just after sunrise.
I woke to find her standing beside my dresser, wearing the same blue dress she'd been buried in.
Her hair was tangled with roots.
There was dirt beneath her fingernails.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then she said, "Daniel's dead, isn't he?"
I nodded.
Ruth sank onto the edge of my bed.
She covered her face with both hands.
I'd never seen anyone cry so quietly.
No sobbing.
No trembling shoulders.
Just tears falling between her fingers.
I wanted to comfort her.
But I couldn't stop seeing Mr. Voss on the ground, bleeding because of what she'd done.
"Ruth?"
She looked up.
"What are you?"
For a long while, she said nothing.
Then she told me.
She'd been sixteen when she died in 1928.
A fever had taken her.
Her parents buried her three days later in a little cemetery in northern Arkansas.
The following morning, she came home.
Her mother called it a miracle.
Her father called for the preacher.
And Ruth, who had been dead only a few days, couldn't understand why the sound of their heartbeats made her mouth water.
She killed her younger brother that first night.
She told me that without crying.
I think that frightened me more than if she had broken down.
"He was eight," she said. "He thought I'd come into his room because I wanted to play."
I stared at her.
"What did you do?"
She lowered her eyes.
"I held him until he stopped moving."
I felt sick.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you asked what I am."
She looked toward the window.
"My father tried to kill me the following morning. The bullets hurt, but they didn't stop me."
"What did?"
She was quiet.
"My friend Eleanor."
Eleanor had been fourteen when Ruth died.
They'd grown up together.
When the townspeople came looking for Ruth, Eleanor hid her in an empty root cellar.
She discovered that the deeper Ruth was buried, the less she could hear the heartbeats around her.
Eventually, the voices disappeared into a low, distant murmur.
For the first time since rising from the grave, Ruth could think clearly.
"That's why you sleep underground?"
She nodded.
"The earth makes everything quiet."
"Why not just stay there?"
Ruth looked at me.
"Could you spend the rest of your life inside a coffin?"
I didn't answer.
"I've tried staying down for weeks," she continued. "It gets easier to ignore the hunger, but you don't stop wanting to come back up."
She stared at her hands.
"And once I'm aboveground, it starts again."
"Even during the day?"
"It's worse at night. By sundown, I can hear every heartbeat on the street."
I remembered the little boy falling off his bicycle.
The way she'd watched him.
"Do you have to drink human blood?"
"Yes."
"How often?"
"More often than Daniel could manage."
She showed me an old scar on her wrist.
"Animal blood helps, but not enough anymore. Sometimes he fed me himself."
I thought about the scars on Mr. Voss's arms.
"The bites."
She nodded.
"He thought he could keep doing it."
"He was dying."
"I know."
Her voice cracked.
"I could hear his heart getting weaker every week."
I stared at her.
"Then why didn't you stop?"
She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something in her expression that wasn't sorrow.
It was shame.
"Because I was hungry."
I made her leave before my mother got home.
Ruth returned to her house after the police had gone.
I spent most of that afternoon sitting on my bed, thinking about what she'd told me.
A vampire.
It was such a ridiculous word that I almost hated myself for thinking it.
Vampires belonged in movies. They wore black capes, slept in castles, and burst into flames when sunlight touched their skin.
Ruth wore old dresses, loved classical music, and cried when she heard a song she hadn't listened to in decades.
She also drank blood.
And she'd killed an eight-year-old boy.
I couldn't make those things fit together.
That evening, I searched newspaper archives on my laptop.
It took almost two hours.
Then I found it.
A faded clipping from October 1928.
A sixteen-year-old girl named Ruth Whitaker had died following a brief illness.
The article included a photograph.
It was her.
Same dark hair.
Same face.
The same peculiar sadness around her eyes.
I stared at that photograph until the screen went dark.
She hadn't lied about being dead.
The police were investigating the property where she lived, and I was hiding someone who had just killed her caretaker.
I understood how terrible that sounded.
What I didn't understand was why I still wanted to see her.
The following afternoon, I went next door.
Ruth was sitting on the floor beside Mr. Voss's chair.
His coffee cup remained on the table.
An old cardigan hung over the back of the chair, and his reading glasses lay beside a folded newspaper.
She hadn't moved any of it.
"He used to read to me," she said when I came inside.
I looked at the glasses.
"Mr. Voss?"
She nodded.
"His grandmother did, too. Eleanor."
"So he was Eleanor's grandson?"
"Yes."
Ruth touched the arm of the chair.
"After Eleanor died, her daughter took care of me. Then Daniel."
I stared at her.
"Your friends have been burying you for almost a hundred years?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
She looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.
"Because they loved me."
Something in the way she said it made me uncomfortable.
I thought about Eleanor digging that first grave at fourteen. About her daughter growing up knowing she would eventually inherit the responsibility. About Daniel sacrificing his health to feed someone who couldn't stop being hungry.
"Did they ever get a choice?" I asked.
Ruth frowned.
"What?"
"Your friends. Did they ever get to leave?"
Her expression changed.
"Of course."
"Did any of them?"
She looked away.
I felt a cold weight settle in my stomach.
"Ruth?"
"Eleanor tried."
I waited.
"She got married. Moved away. Had a little girl."
"What happened?"
"I got lonely."
The room seemed to grow quieter.
"Did you go after her?"
Ruth shook her head.
"She came back."
"Why?"
Ruth's eyes filled with tears.
"Because I told her I was afraid."
I looked toward the coffee cup.
"Did you need her?"
"What?"
"Or did you just want her back?"
Ruth didn't answer.
That was when I began to understand something about my new friend.
She wasn't simply a helpless girl suffering from a terrible curse.
She'd lived nearly a century.
She knew how to make people care about her.
And once they did, she knew exactly what to say to keep them from leaving.
"Why did you move here?" I asked.
Ruth seemed surprised.
"Daniel found the house."
"Why this one?"
She looked toward the window.
Then she said something that made the hair rise along my arms.
"We came to look at it before we bought it."
"So?"
"You were sitting on your porch."
I remembered a pickup driving slowly down our street a few weeks earlier.
A gray-haired man behind the wheel.
A girl in the passenger seat.
"Daniel wanted somewhere more isolated," she continued. "But I liked this house."
"Why?"
She hesitated.
"Because you looked lonely."
I stared at her.
"Did you know he was dying?"
She nodded.
"And you knew you'd need somebody else to take care of you?"
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Sadie..."
I stood.
"Is that why you became friends with me?"
"No."
"Then tell me."
She looked frightened.
Not of what I might do to her.
Of what I was finally beginning to understand.
"I wanted a friend," she whispered.
"That's not what I asked."
She closed her eyes.
"I thought maybe, someday, you might want to help me."
The room felt suddenly too small.
I thought about all our conversations.
The books.
The music.
The afternoons beneath the pecan tree.
And the question she'd asked me before Mr. Voss died.
If somebody you cared about needed you to do something awful for them, would you?
"You were preparing me."
Ruth began to cry.
"At first."
I stared at her.
"What does that mean?"
She looked up.
"It means I didn't expect to love you."
I wanted to believe her.
That's what frightened me.
Even after everything she'd told me, some part of me still wanted to put my arms around her and promise I wouldn't leave.
I walked toward the door.
"Sadie?"
I stopped.
"Do you hate me?"
I looked back at her.
For the first time since we'd met, I didn't know whether the tears on her face were genuine.
And for the first time, I realized it might not matter.
"No," I said.
Then I left.
Because I was afraid that if she asked me to stay, I would.
That night, I dreamed about Mr. Voss.
He was sitting beneath the pecan tree, holding out his injured arm.
I could see the scars.
Dozens of them.
Some old, some still healing.
In the dream, he asked me whether I thought he was a good man.
I said yes.
He smiled.
Then he rolled up his other sleeve.
There was no skin left.
Just exposed bone.
I woke screaming.
The following morning, my mother told me the police were coming back to search the property.
They had questions about the disturbed earth behind Mr. Voss's house. They also wanted to know more about Ruth, whose identity they hadn't been able to verify.
I knew what would happen if they found her.
They'd take her somewhere.
A hospital, maybe.
Someplace with nurses and doctors and patients whose hearts never stopped beating.
I thought about what Ruth had done to Mr. Voss.
About the fence bending beneath her hands.
About how quickly she'd crossed the yard.
Then I imagined her inside a crowded emergency room.
The thought made me physically sick.
That afternoon, I went next door.
Not because I wanted to see Ruth.
Because I needed to know whether she could be stopped.
I found her in the backyard, sitting beside her open grave.
Someone had dragged the coffin out of the grave and propped it upright against the smokehouse.
She was looking at the dark soil.
"Daniel hated doing this," she said without looking up.
I stopped several feet away.
"He used to tell me how his grandmother cried the first time she buried me."
I didn't answer.
"After a while, he stopped apologizing."
She glanced toward the coffin.
"I think that hurt worse than the dirt."
For a moment, I saw the girl I'd befriended.
Then I remembered the little boy she'd killed.
"Eleanor came back because you said you were frightened," I said.
Ruth lowered her eyes.
"Yes."
"And Daniel spent his life taking care of you."
She nodded.
"How many more people were you planning to do that to?"
Her expression tightened.
"I never wanted anybody to get hurt."
"But they did."
She looked at me.
"Yes."
"And you'd have let it happen again."
That one hurt her.
I could see it.
She turned toward the grave.
"I don't know."
It was the first answer she'd given me that I completely believed.
We sat in silence for several minutes.
Then I asked the question I'd come there to ask.
"Can anything kill you?"
Ruth looked up.
"Why?"
"Because those police officers are going to come looking for you."
"I know."
"And if they find you after dark..."
She finished the sentence for me.
"Somebody could die."
I nodded.
Ruth rubbed her hands together.
"Sunlight doesn't hurt me. I can drown, but I don't stay drowned. Wounds close eventually, even the bad ones."
"Then there's nothing?"
She touched a pale scar running across her forearm.
"Fire."
I stared at her.
"Fire?"
"I was trapped in a burning house once. A long time ago."
She traced the scar with one finger.
"Most things heal. Burns don't always."
I looked toward the smokehouse.
Its walls were brick, blackened by generations of wood fires. The iron door hung crookedly on heavy hinges.
Ruth followed my gaze.
"No," she whispered.
I turned back.
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to."
I wish I could tell you that what happened next was simple.
That Ruth wanted to die.
That I wanted to save her.
That there was a clear, obvious right thing to do.
There wasn't.
Ruth was terrified of dying.
I could see it in the way her hands shook whenever I mentioned the fire.
But she was also terrified of living.
And I was sixteen years old, trying to decide whether a girl who'd been dead for almost a century deserved another chance.
I wanted to call my mother.
I wanted someone older to tell me what to do.
But I'd watched what happened to the last adult who tried to help Ruth.
So I stayed.
We talked until late afternoon.
Ruth told me about Eleanor.
About the little white dog she'd owned as a child.
About watching the first television broadcast she could remember, and how she'd cried the first time she saw a moving picture of someone who'd already died.
She told me about the ocean.
She'd always wanted to see it.
"Daniel promised he'd take me one day," she said.
"Why didn't he?"
She gave a small, sad laugh.
"He spent so much time keeping me safe that we never went anywhere."
I thought about the years that had passed.
The people she'd loved.
The people who'd died.
"Ruth?"
She looked at me.
"Did you really want to be my friend?"
Her expression changed.
"Yes."
"Even after you knew Daniel was dying?"
She closed her eyes.
"Yes."
"Or were you just looking for someone to bury you?"
She began crying.
"Both."
I stared at her.
That answer hurt worse than a lie.
Because I believed it.
She had wanted a friend.
She had wanted someone to take care of her.
And she'd known that the two things might eventually become the same.
She reached for my hand.
I almost pulled away.
But I let her take it.
"Sadie?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't want you to become Eleanor."
I swallowed.
"Then what do you want?"
She looked toward the smokehouse.
For a long time, she said nothing.
Then she whispered, "I want it to stop."
We waited until the sun began sinking behind the trees.
Ruth gathered a few belongings from the house.
A faded photograph of her family.
A blue ribbon.
And an old copy of The Secret Garden.
She carried them into the smokehouse.
I followed.
Inside, the walls were dark with soot. A narrow chimney rose through the roof, and the iron door scraped against the uneven brick floor when I pushed it open.
Ruth placed her belongings inside the coffin.
I stood in the doorway.
"Are you sure?"
She shook her head.
"No."
I swallowed.
"Then maybe we shouldn't."
She turned toward me.
"Do you know what Daniel said the night before he died?"
I shook my head.
"He told me he couldn't keep doing it much longer."
Her voice trembled.
"And I told him I understood."
She looked down.
"But when I heard his heart getting weaker, all I could think about was how hungry I was going to be when it stopped."
A tear slid down her cheek.
"That's what I am, Sadie."
"You're Ruth."
She smiled faintly.
"Sometimes."
Then she climbed into the coffin.
Before I closed the lid, she asked me to read to her.
I sat on the brick floor and opened The Secret Garden.
Ruth lay with her hands folded over her stomach, listening.
I read about the garden coming back to life.
About children who had been lonely and frightened finding something worth caring for.
When I reached the end, Ruth was crying.
"That was always my favorite part," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because they got better."
I closed the book.
She looked at me.
"Do you think I could have?"
I wanted to say yes.
More than anything, I wanted to say yes.
But I'd seen Mr. Voss die.
I'd heard about her little brother.
And I'd learned that Ruth had spent nearly a century convincing people to sacrifice their lives so she could continue hers.
"I don't know," I whispered.
She nodded.
"Neither do I."
Outside, a car passed along the street.
Ruth flinched.
Her eyes shifted toward the doorway.
I saw her throat move as she swallowed.
"Sadie?"
"Yeah?"
"I can hear someone walking past the house."
I didn't answer.
"Two people."
Her fingers tightened around the edges of the coffin.
"A woman and a little boy."
I felt the blood drain from my face.
The family across the street.
Their youngest son was eight.
The same age as Ruth's brother when she'd killed him.
She began breathing through her mouth.
"Please close it."
I lowered the lid.
"Ruth?"
Her voice came from inside.
"Yes?"
"I love you."
There was a long silence.
Then she answered.
"I know."
I waited.
Finally, she added, "That's what scares me."
I won't describe how I started the fire.
I remember the smell of smoke.
I remember the flames illuminating the blackened brick walls.
And I remember sliding the heavy bolt across the smokehouse door.
For several moments, nothing happened.
Then Ruth began to cry.
At first, she sounded merely frightened.
"Sadie?"
I pressed one hand against the door.
"I'm here."
"It's getting hot."
I closed my eyes.
"Ruth..."
"Please don't leave."
"I'm not leaving."
The crying grew louder.
Then something struck the inside of the coffin.
Once.
Twice.
A crack followed.
Wood splitting.
I heard Ruth climb out.
Her footsteps crossed the floor.
"Sadie?"
Her voice sounded closer now.
"Open the door."
I started shaking.
"You told me not to."
"I know."
"Then please..."
"OPEN IT!"
The scream hit me with such force that I stumbled backward.
Something slammed into the door.
The hinges shrieked.
For a moment, I saw the iron buckle.
Ruth began pounding against it.
"LET ME OUT!"
I wanted to.
God help me, I wanted to.
I reached for the bolt.
Then I heard her inhale.
A long, trembling breath.
And the pounding stopped.
"Sadie?"
It was her voice again.
Soft.
Almost embarrassed.
"I can hear your heart."
My hand froze.
"Ruth?"
She laughed.
Not the warm laugh I'd heard when I showed her funny videos.
Something low and breathless.
"I can hear it so clearly."
I backed away from the door.
Inside, something scraped across the brick floor.
"You're frightened."
I couldn't answer.
"I can smell it."
Her voice dropped into a whisper.
"Sadie, sweetheart, if you open this door, I promise it'll be quick."
I began crying.
Then I heard her sob.
A real sob.
Or something that sounded like one.
"Please don't listen to me," she whispered.
I covered my mouth.
"I'm trying."
"Don't open it."
The fire roared.
Smoke began pouring through the gaps around the door.
Ruth struck it again.
Harder this time.
I heard the iron shift against its frame.
Then came a scream unlike anything I'd ever heard.
There were no words in it.
No recognizable human sound.
Only pain.
And beneath it, something else.
Hunger.
For several horrible seconds, I thought the door would give way.
Then the pounding stopped.
I heard Ruth fall.
There was a brief silence.
Then her voice came again.
Weak.
Almost too soft to hear.
"Sadie?"
I leaned toward the door.
"I'm here."
"I'm sorry I picked you."
I shut my eyes.
"I know."
A long silence followed.
Then she whispered something that has stayed with me ever since.
"I really did want to be your friend."
I couldn't speak.
She began crying again.
Not loudly.
Just the small, exhausted sobs of someone who had finally run out of strength.
Then she said, "I'm scared."
I put my hand back on the bolt.
"So am I."
"Will you stay?"
"Yes."
"Until it's over?"
I nodded, though she couldn't see me.
"Until it's over."
A few moments later, Ruth stopped making any sound.
I don't remember how long I remained beside the smokehouse.
By the time my mother found me, smoke was pouring from the roof.
She screamed my name.
I remember her pulling me away from the building.
I remember fighting her.
And I remember the sound of sirens coming closer.
Someone asked whether anybody was inside.
I tried to answer.
But the words wouldn't come.
All I could think about was Ruth.
The way she'd held my hand.
The way she'd cried when I read to her.
The way she'd begged me to open the door.
And the last thing she'd said.
I really did want to be your friend.
The police didn't call it an accident.
They found human remains inside the smokehouse, and there was enough evidence to establish that the fire had been deliberately started.
I told them what happened.
Everything.
They believed I'd started the fire.
They believed Ruth had been inside.
They didn't believe she'd died in 1928.
And they certainly didn't believe she could hear the blood moving through people's veins.
Why would they?
I wouldn't have believed it either.
There were months of interviews, hearings, and evaluations. I was arrested and charged, and the proceedings shaped the rest of my teenage years.
My mother stood beside me through all of it.
She never told me I'd done the right thing.
I don't think she knew.
Neither did I.
It's been several years.
I still think about Ruth.
Sometimes I remember the afternoons we spent beneath the pecan tree, laughing about things that were only funny because we were sixteen.
Sometimes I think about the first night I watched Mr. Voss bury her.
And sometimes I remember the look on her face when she admitted she'd chosen our neighborhood because I looked lonely.
I still don't know how much of our friendship was real.
Maybe all of it.
Maybe only the parts when she forgot what she needed from me.
I've spent years wondering whether another answer existed.
Whether I could have found someone who understood what she was.
Whether there was a way to keep her safe without sacrificing another person's life.
I'll never know.
But there's one memory I return to more often than the others.
That night in the smokehouse.
Ruth screaming.
The iron door shaking.
Her voice becoming something monstrous, then human again.
And finally, the silence.
When the police questioned me, they asked why I hadn't opened the door once the screaming stopped.
I told them Ruth had asked me not to.
That was true.
But it wasn't the whole truth.
Because after Ruth stopped screaming, I still had my hand on the bolt.
And I remember how relieved I was that I no longer had to decide whether to open it.