Nobody's Fool Y'all

53

 She gulped fresh air the instant the mountain caved in. The sound of the weight of all that rock and earth was deafening. She collapsed on the ground. The force of whatever just happened had thrown her face-down in the dirt. The three adults had to have been swallowed up by the earth. That much was certain. But Hadley's heart broke for the little child who had not made it out with her.

"You sure can move fast for an old lady."

"Ollie! How did you escape?"

"Never you mind that, Granny," the child said.

Hadley grunted and rose to her feet. Ollie took off his hat and rubbed his forehead with his hand.

"You're a girl!" said Hadley.

With those words, the little child faded before her eyes.

Hadley looked at the spot where Ollie had stood only moments before.

Am I losing it, she wondered? Concussion? Hallucination? Psychotic break with reality?

The sun filtered through the leaves. A patch of silver shined in the tangle of grass near a low waterfall. Hadley bent to investigate. It was a battered flashlight that looked like it had come from the 1920s. Scratched on the side were the letters: K. O. S. ~ Ollie.

Kate Olivia Shearling! It had to be the missing girl's. Hadley noticed the slant of the rocks where the water cascaded down in sheets of sparkling white. Something about a pile of rocks to one side of the falls did not look natural. They were stacked too symmetrically to ever have been laid by the hand of Mother Nature. Hadley picked at the pile of rocks. She found an old shoe and some coins.

She rubbed the dirt from them. They were dated in the 1910s and early 20s.

Had she stumbled upon the grave of the lost girl from Kyrk's Ridge?

Then, she remembered the pamphlet she'd found at the indoor pool.

The mysterious verse. The oddly bold capital letters at the beginning of some of the lines.

KATE IS HERE.