Page 23 of Cruel Cravings

My foot jerks on the brake, and the wagon skids to a halt, tires crunching on gravel.

He’s gone when I blink and look again. It’s just shrubbery gently swaying in the wind.

“Get it together, Jael,” I mutter to myself. My grip tightens on the wheel, knuckles aching.

I turn up the radio. The static fades out for a twangy country song. Not at all my favorite—actually, my least favorite genre—but it’s better than the paranoid silence. Better than the noise inside my head. All the endless questions about my sister andeverybody who’s after me. Spiraling thoughts about the shadow man…

Hitting the road again at even faster speeds, I do my best to sing along to the chorus of the song playing.

I’m off key. I get the lyrics wrong. A couple minutes later the song ends and a new one starts up, but it doesn’t even matter.

It takes my mind off everything I’m trying not to focus on.

Dozens of miles and a few hours later, I pull into the parking lot of a diner with a throat raw from shouting over the music. The sign above the door readsDarla’s Dinerin faded pink neon, with smaller letters advertisingHome of the $1 Slice of Pie.

My stomach growls at the thought. I’ve barely eaten in two days. The only thing I’ve had was the bag of chips, the soda, and a few cups of muddy coffee.

The place smells like sugar and bacon grease. Two scents I welcome since I’m starving. The waitress behind the counter winks hello at me; she’s wearing a button-up waitress uniform that’s the same pale pink as the sign outside. A handful of people sit scattered throughout the diner. Some in booths. Others at the counter.

I take a stool at the counter next to two older men hunched over coffee and a newspaper.

“Latest victim was some big-shot editor at the Easton Times,” the guy on the left, a wiry man with a weathered face and thick glasses, says.

“Winston something,” the other man grumbles, scratching his beard. “They say it could be a sign the Cleaver’s still among us.”

“Matches the other guy he killed at that bar, right?”

The second guy grunts his answer.

I’m so busy listening to what they’re saying that I don’t notice the waitress approach.

“Can I get you something, darling?”

I flinch, blinking over at her. “Oh, yeah… I think I’d like some pie.”

The corner of her eyes crinkle with humor. “First time here? We’ve got it all. Cherry pie. Apple pie. Peach pie. Blueberry pie. Lemon meringue pie. It’ll be Thanksgiving soon, so we’ve even got the pumpkin and sweet potato ready to go?—”

“How about cherry?” I say. “And a milkshake. Chocolate.”

The waitress—whose name is Darla I realize, glancing at her name tag—wanders off. The men at my side are still in the middle of their conversation.

“Cleaver’s been busy this year. What’s the toll now? Fifteen? Sixteen people?”

“If you ask me, the boys in blue are pinning stuff on him,” says the second man. “All these unsolved murders they’ve had hanging over their heads. It’s easy to say he did ’em all.”

“You think they can make that stuff up, Bert? They ain’t pin nothing on him that wasn’t him.” He fixes his glasses and folds up the newspaper they’ve been poring over. “Besides, anybody that he offed doesn’t sound like they were too good themselves.”

“Why do you care?” I ask, my voice sharper than I intend.

Both men glance over at me, startled.

“What?” Bert says.

I shrug, reaching for my knife and fork rolled up into a napkin. “It sounds like you gentlemen have spent plenty of time talking about the Cleaver. But why do you care? If he’s only after bad people like you claim, then you have nothing to worry about… right?”

“I suppose…” answers the second man.

“Then no use talking about it. You’ll never know the answer either way. Who can say why the Cleaver does what he does?”

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