The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller. Kate Horsley

I’d missed a press release or something, if new details were about to emerge. Else why would the meat flies be swarming around me? It freaked me out.

      “Excuse me.” Pushing my chair back, I started to get up.

      “How are you coping?” Aurelia asked, the American word coping sounding labored in her accent. “It must be so hard.”

      “Do you want something?” I asked, trying to sound naive and bewildered.

      “It must be a very hard time waiting for your niece to be well again, not knowing …” She frowned sadly. “But the sisters say she has every chance of being well. If she … when she wakes, what will be your first words to her?” She smiled expectantly.

      I sat half on, half off the chair. I couldn’t believe I was so slow to see what was going on—she had an audio recorder hidden on her somewhere and she was baiting me for a quote. Once I knew that, looking sideways at her was like looking at some weird, ghoulish, really well-dressed reflection of myself. This is what I did, sneaking up on people, asking sympathetic questions designed to pry revelations from them. Being on the other side of the questions made me realize how icky it felt to be soft-soaped. Jeez, I thought, I hope I’m more convincing than this woman.

      “Look …” I began in a firmer voice.

      “Stop that!” A man stepped between us. He was beautifully dressed, in a dark suit and fedora. Inspector Valentin. He glared at our reflections in the mirror. “Get out.”

      “Sorry,” I said, stumbling up. I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be rumbled. And here it was, flung from the hotel, never to be allowed back in the hospital.

      “No, not you, Mademoiselle Perkins,” said Valentin. He turned to the journalist, glowering, and said something angry in French.

      She retorted just as angrily, her glossy red lips spread in a defiant grin. Valentin took out a piece of paper and flashed it at her. Whatever it said made Aurelia get up and move at speed from the bar. She hurried back to the table where the other hacks slumped with their beers, almost breaking a kitten heel. When she was out of earshot, Valentin climbed into the chair she’d vacated.

      He took off his hat and laid it on the bar. “I am sorry about that.” He smiled apologetically.

      “Don’t worry, I’m getting used to it,” I said, gulping down the last few drops of whiskey, suspicious that he had changed his tune so much since we met in the café.

      He ran a hand through his hair. “Journalists in the case are behaving reprehensibly—sneaking into the hospital, telling lies to the nuns to get information, and worse, sneaking in here to bother the girl’s relatives. I have told this woman she will face jail time if she pushes this further. Terrible, n’est-ce pas?”

      “The worst,” I said, gulping. There was something about him that made me nervous. I didn’t know if it was my justified fear that he was onto me, or his annoying gallantry.

      As if to underscore that point, he summoned the barman and ordered two more whiskeys.

      “Is one of those for me?” I asked.

      “It’s the least I can do,” he said, patting my arm.

      Back to that again. I just wanted to go up to my room and take a shower and dream up my next move on the case, but I remembered Bill saying I should press my advantage wherever I could. When the Jack Daniel’s came, I chinked my glass on his.

      “To … this place,” I said, for want of a better toast.

      He stopped midchink. “The Napoléon? St. Roch? Be more specific.”

      “To St. Roch, your beautiful town.”

      He rolled his eyes and downed the whiskey in one. “Mon Dieu. If you only knew the reality. This town is nothing but trouble.”

       Quinn Perkins

      JULY 16, 2015

       Blog Entry

      There’s a sense of dread that settles on a house; not just houses with creaking roof beams and forbidden Bluebeard doors, or even houses where you get pinched on the wrist for sticking up for yourself with guys. You know what I mean. The fear: that weird foreboding, the plinky-plink of horror movie sound effects, the camera zooming out giddily as you realize how bad things are.

      I remember it from the days after Dad left, watching my mom drift around with her bandaged wrists, her eyes blank as the windows of a derelict house. She tried to protect me, never crying where I could see. She reorganized the things in their bedroom over and over as if it would bring Dad back, or hide him away. Later, in group therapy, I found that was one of the signs that someone was planning to kill themselves: putting their affairs in order. She gave Dad’s suits away to a neighbor and, in a moment of sheer eccentricity, repotted all our houseplants in the park across the street with his Louis Vuitton shoes buried underneath.

      I’d ask if she was okay; she’d say she was so tired. I knew what she meant, even if I didn’t yet know the word to explain the endless creep of her fatigue, or mine, or our shared need to sleep hours into the day; the secret cutting we both resorted to, a little slice on the inner thigh to relieve the pain inside and a SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aid to cover our tracks.

      If I blamed my dad for leaving us, he blamed me for inheriting the shame of Mom’s illness. Worse than that: he blamed me for watching her slide down into the darkness and doing nothing to stop it. Or maybe he was just projecting his guilt onto me—at least, that’s what the therapist said to make me feel better. The day Mom died, the air was so thick with fear I couldn’t see straight, and every moment leading up to the one in which I found her was a little car crash: the world slowing down for the collision as if it wants to watch just a bit more carefully. The shards of glass hitting you so gradually you don’t notice that you are bleeding until later. Like when your guilt-stricken dad has slung you in the nuthouse for six months to “get well.” If there’s one thing you get in a psychiatric hospital, it’s time to dwell.

      Whether because of the weird texts, or what happened yesterday (and the day before and the day before that), or just my meds not working, the fear has come to visit me once more, falling fine and plentiful as dust in an abandoned building. I lie in bed. It settles on me. I get up in the morning and it clouds my vision.

      Today someone left a book on my bed. A weird kind of bloodthirsty guidebook about some local caves called Les Yeux. When I went to take my turn in the bathroom, there was nothing on my bed except for rumpled-up covers, my iPod, and earbuds. When I came back, there was the book.

      Flipping through it, I don’t really grasp a lot of the French. But I get the gist. There were murders there long ago. Witches walled into the rock. All the illustrations inside are really disturbing. I mean, I know I watch horror movies by the fuck-ton, but this is like a how-to guide for Spanish Inquisition wannabes. I stand spellbound for I don’t know how long, clutching the book with sweaty hands, hearing the plinky-plink music, feeling the shaky zoom-out camera.

      A knock on my door. I drop the book. Noémie pokes her head around.

      I bite it off. “You put this here?” I hold up the book.

      She shrugs. “No.”

      I take a step towards her, hands shaking. “Know who did?”

      “No. Are you … okay?” She swallows nervously.

      “Yeah … I just feel like. I don’t know. Someone put this here to freak me out or something.”

      She closes the door behind her. “Listen. What happened yesterday—”

      “You going to tell me off, too? Because Freddie’s an ass-hat and I’m glad I slapped him. I mean, you know that creep sent me texts and this awful