Excerpt of The Foxglove Killings by Tara Kelly

Alex saw it first.

We were cutting through Neahkahnie Park, the morning sun warm on our backs. I was telling him we should take his grandpa’s El Camino SS and drive down the coast to California for the summer.

“He left that car to you,” I said. “You know he did.” I reached over to muss his light brown hair. It always stood straight up afterward, as if he’d been electrocuted.

“We can’t, Nova. I—” He stopped walking, his eyes widening at the playground.

Clumps of fur blew across the grass, like the cotton blooms did in July. I didn’t think it was real at first. Some kid’s stuffed animal, maybe.

But the stench was unmistakable. I’d practically been raised in my grandpa’s diner. I knew the smell of meat past its prime. Raw. Metallic. Even a little sweet.

A deer’s carcass was a twisted heap in the playground, its legs jutting out like winter branches. Bits of flesh, ranging in color from pink to dark red, were strewn across the wood chips. The head of the deer sat on the middle bucket swing. A misty film covered its eyes, and its mouth was open, as if it were gasping for air.

My stomach muscles began to knot.

I saw a dog get hit by a semi once. The scene replayed in my mind for months. The thud of the impact, the way he’d yelped. The last second of that dog’s life seemed to echo forever.

This was worse. Someone planned this. Put it on display, like it was entertainment.

“What the hell…” Alex said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Don’t look.”

Alex had been on an animal-saving crusade since birth. He’d tried to bring a rabbit back to life the day I met him.

In fifth grade he’d called the police on his neighbor for yelling at her cat.

This wasn’t something he could handle. Especially not now.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I said, the words slipping out automatically.

“I know. I’m not nine anymore.” He glanced down at his busted Vans. Years of skateboarding had turned them from black to gray.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, you did.” He held my gaze this time. His eyes looked almost yellow in dull light. Usually they were green.

I knew whatever came out of my mouth wouldn’t be the right thing to say. He’d been so weird since his grandpa died last month. Happy one minute. Pissed off the next. Sometimes he didn’t talk at all.

I slowly moved toward the deer, wishing I could ignore its vacant eyes, the drone of the flies pecking at its belly. My gramps used to clean up crime scenes back in the day. He swore by downing a few dozen peppermint Tic Tacs, claiming it obliterated his sense of smell. He was also a chain smoker…

A handful of mints wouldn’t take this image out of my head. Nothing would.

“We should call someone,” Alex said behind me.

Neither of us had a cell phone. He couldn’t afford one, and my mom thought they caused brain cancer.

I held my breath, trying not to gag. If I wanted to be a detective one day, this was the crazy shit I’d be dealing with. Too bad I’d inherited my mom’s weak stomach. Something bright purple sat on top of the deer’s limp tongue. Darker spots peppered the inside, like a rash.

As I leaned closer, I realized it was a wilted foxglove. Or deadmen’s bells, as Mom called them. They were bell- shaped flowers that grew all over coastal Oregon. When I was little, she told me not to eat them or I’d end up like Sleeping Beauty. I used to think they belonged to the fairies. The evil ones, anyway.

A chill swept across my skin, the kind that came from inside.

Laughter echoed from the hiking trail that led out of the woods. Matt Delgado and Jenika Shaw emerged from the shadows of the trees, shoving each other playfully. I could already smell Jenika’s cheap off-brand cigarettes.

They were probably on their way to the first day of summer school. Jenika and Matt cut so much school they always had to make up a class or two. “You think they did this?” I asked Alex.

“I don’t know…”

Emerald Cove bragged about its low crime rate, but that could be said for the entire Oregon coast, since it was 363 miles of boondocks. My gramps said this area was cursed, a magnet for psychos and other things that went bump in the night.

Jenika, Matt, and their friends wreaked their share of havoc around here. They were all about destroying property and beating up the “cakes,” what us locals called the rich kids who lived and partied here every summer. But animal mutilation didn’t seem like their style. Most of their destruction had some message about “sticking it to the man.” They grew up together in the Pacific View trailer park—same as Alex and his sister. But unlike Alex, they thought the world owed them an apology for it.

“What’s up?” Matt called out. His cowboy hat hid his dark eyes, but his wide smile was unmistakable. The silver rings around his bottom lip made it appear to glow.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told Alex, not in the mood for Jenika’s shit. I was already late for my morning shift at the diner—we could call the cops from there.

Alex kept his gaze on the deer’s head, like he was in a trance.