Hungry Girl

Cassie figured it was pretty stupid to go hunting a ghost called Hungry Girl on an empty stomach, but here she was. She crouched by the edge of Locust Lake, flicking her boyfriend’s stolen lighter with a shaking hand until each of the dozen candles came alive in their hastily placed circle, just like the rhyme instructed. Somewhere in the night behind her, Rick was shouting her name, a clarion beckoning any park ranger for miles. The noise startled a flock of…somethings from branches stretched over the wind-stippled water.

Undaunted, Cassie kicked off her shoes. Then she tossed her socks atop them.

She tugged the zipper on her insulated band jacket and took her first step into the lake, making it a big one, the kind where the other foot had to follow or she’d fall right in. She bit her lip as the icy mountain water sunk its teeth into her flesh. One thought drove her: You better be out there.

The cold insisted that she stop, but she had committed. Her left foot splashed down near the right, spattering her denim-clad knees and thighs. Rick, acting tough, might have called it “bracing.” Cassie’s description fell closer to, “holy shit shit shit,” which felt more accurate if less poetic. The water enclosed her ankles and calves in a vise that flashed from freezing to searing so fast that her first shivers faltered before exploding through her body.

She bit down harder, sucked air between her teeth in a hissing gasp, and scanned the forest on the far side. Beneath a sky full of stars, she could make out the nearest branches, which loomed over the water’s edge, dark shapes against the deeper darkness beyond. She lowered her eyes, locking her gaze on a point near the center of the lake, where the moon danced. Hungry Girl had never made it that far, and Cassie wouldn’t, either. It would serve as an anchor, a place to focus on, but not a destination.

Rick yelled again, not any closer than before but still searching. Cassie resisted the urge to close her eyes and reminded herself that there would be no ranger. When Labor Day came, the state dropped a wooden beam across the park entrance and called it a season. That sent a clear enough message to most visitors, but the enterprising kids of Locust Grove were well-accustomed to crossing the ridge east of the lake and using the campground as their personal preserve. Every now and then the sheriff intruded—and there were rumors that state police once broke up a party that had gotten too big and involved bonfires—but for the most part the authorities just chalked it up to “harmless teenage fun.”

It was just Cassie and Rick, then, despite his cries, and Cassie didn’t think she had to worry about him. Not really. Rick was just drunk and frustrated by the fact that she’d brought him to the lake for more than s’mores and making out under the stars (and maybe she had let him believe that’s what tonight would entail—and it probably would have if he could have shown a little patience).

The more frustrated he became, the more he drank, and the more he drank, the more he pushed her for the real reason they had come out here if it wasn’t to keep each other company in a shared sleeping bag. The more he pushed, the louder he got, increasing his frustration and leading to more drinking. She watched him go through half their weekend’s beer supply in about an hour. Her attempts to demur provoked him further, leading to more of the same until it finally came out. She spoke the words aloud for the first time since piecing it together herself. When he repeated it back, she had fled, stopping only to grab her bag of candles and swipe his lighter on the way, not seeing anything but tree trunks, fallen leaves, and half-glimpsed stars until she reached the lake.

She could still hear the cutting disbelief in his voice when he asked, “Wait, Hungry Girl is your mom?”

***

Cassie tried not to think about the hot dogs that had already been on sticks next to the campfire. She poured her will into moving her toes and exhaled in relief when they responded. Imported sand filled the spaces between them in a queasy sloosh, bringing a shocking reminder of the temperature of mountain water to previously sheltered spaces. The tiny swirl of motion at her feet reminded her that people fished this lake. There were crayfish, too. They couldn’t hurt you, but they could draw blood, which stung like hell.

For a moment, Cassie could only stand, shivering and remembering, justifying her questionable decisions to a personal jury of one. She’d chosen the urban legend of Hungry Girl as a topic for her senior paper. Her first surprise had come when she learned that the legend was just seventeen years old. Growing up, Hungry Girl had always just been there, a part of childhood in Locust Grove. The adults never discussed local ghost stories, which was to be expected; Cassie and her friends learned about her from older teens in the usual way. But as Cassie dug deeper, her curiosity withered into horror.

A site called Ghost Story Origins provided final confirmation in the form of a lengthy article on “The Case That Inspired the Legend.” Cassie stared at the photo beneath the headline for the better part of an hour before scrolling down. Origins described the case as “a homecoming prank gone horribly awry,” which Cassie thought was like saying Carrie White had a wardrobe malfunction at the prom, but she had already begun to piece together a more personal nightmare. The dates lined up too well, Cassie’s grandparents’ last name, Leighter, couldn’t have been a coincidence, and her father’s reaction when she broached the subject—white hot rage before driving to work an hour early in a cloud of gravel chips—had banished any lingering doubts.

Enough, she commanded herself. Move it.

Her right foot slipped forward, the lake devouring her leg to the knee, and she let her eyes roll up to stare at the dizzying array of stars overhead. Every pocket of heat vanished as what felt like early winter raced up her calves, soaking her jeans. Her lungs threatened to mutiny. Shivers thrummed through her, rattling her empty stomach against every frozen, jagged organ adjacent to it.

Cassie endured the misery. Part of her welcomed it. Tears stung her eyes as she thought, This is what she felt.

That drove her forward in a way that Rick’s continuing shouts could not. Unlike her late mother, Cassie had a change of clothes and an insulated sleeping bag waiting in a tent just a short walk from shore. There was also Rick, who would happily serve as a space heater after he calmed down enough to pass out next to her. Inch after bitter inch, Locust Lake took in more of Cassie’s legs.

She forced her eyes back to the anchor point she had selected about halfway out. She took another step, and she allowed herself to think about the teenagers. It wasn’t just the death of a teen mom that had created a ghost story, of course. Twelve months to the day after Sandy Leighter’s death, three young men from nearby Townsend’s Gap were found floating in the lake at the spot where Cassie now stood. Their fishing gear lay at their campsite, unused. Each body sported bite marks that the coroner could not identify as belonging to any indigenous animal. Word spread that they had been lured into the water, and with her first documented victims the legend of Hungry Girl was born. Thereafter, local kids attributed every missing hiker or lost runaway to their resident ghost.

The cold of a mountain lake in autumn is a unique brand of misery, and as the water soaked the crotch of Cassie’s jeans, she stopped again, for the first time wondering what in the hell could be worth this. Her breath caught in her throat, her body rigid with a mounting pressure that caused her eyes to bulge. She held her arms above the surface, teeth chattering despite her clenched jaw.

She could go back, she knew. Everything from her empty stomach to the cold to the eagerly tugging water was telling her that she should, in fact. But she knew the one thing—the one person—that could make all of this worth it, and she might be just a few uttered words away. Cassie needed to speak the rhyme.

You couldn’t just say “Hungry Girl” three times like she was Bloody Mary or the guy with the hook and the bees. You had to know the rhyme, which, of course, every child of Locust Grove learned growing up.

The hunger as she wasted away,

The cold she felt beneath the waves,

The rage that cannot be contained.

Light twelve candles, say it true,

Hungry Girl will feast on you.

Hopefully a little less of that last part, Cassie thought as her words drifted into the night.

Then, that final errant thought cast into the universe, she went perfectly still. She held her breath. Stopped blinking as she stared at her anchor spot. Even her endlessly tumbling thoughts fell silent. Her bundled emotions yielded to anticipation.

A light wind blew down the mountainside, swaying branches of pine needles and tenacious autumn leaves in a susurrus that might become a whisper. Something splashed in the water. Eddies tugged her gently, side to side. She was vaguely aware that her legs had lost sensation.

Cassie had time to wonder for the first time, Would Hungry Girl recognize her baby?

From behind, thunderous, stumbling footsteps stirred fallen leaves and snapped dry branches. Rick had made his way to the lake, and judging by his speed, he had seen her. Outwardly, Cassie remained unmoved, but inside, her stillness flashed into anger. Her eyes stung with fresh tears.

“Dammit, Mom,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

***

“Cassie?”

She did not look back. If she looked back she would scream, and then she would have no chance of seeing… Of meeting…

Cassie couldn’t finish the thought. The weight would be too much. She couldn’t wait until the next anniversary a year from now before trying again. She couldn’t wake up tomorrow wondering whether Rick had already told their friends what had happened—about who her mother was—and all for what?

Nothing, she thought with a bitterness that would have surprised her on any other night. The word formed in her mind, a weapon she would wield against Rick for ruining this moment and stealing something so precious. All he needed to do was lie in a sleeping bag and hold her, tell her that he cared about her and provide a little warmth. Maybe cook a hot dog without blackening it while she froze her ass off meeting her mother. How was any of that too much to ask?

His footfalls shifted from grass to damp sand. He asked in a tone softer than she expected, “What are you doing?”

Was that concern? Cassie swayed with the gently shifting water, aware that a part of her mind which remained focused on basic survival had begun to question whether she could rely on her numb legs to turn her around with falling. She noticed something else, too. The forest had fallen silent again. Probably it was Rick’s drunken charge from camp to lakeside, but that didn’t explain the wind stopping. Or the way every dark branch now hung at the same angle towards the lake, as if lowered in reverence.

No, Cassie felt sure of it.

She’s here.

And then another thought struck her, something that had been real in a factual sense that abruptly landed with the full force of emotion.

This is where she died.

Her mother’s abductors had grabbed her outside the homecoming dance and driven her a short distance down back-mountain roads before letting her go. Maybe they had intended to scare her before taking her home and lost track of her in the night, or, as Cassie liked to imagine it, Sandy had escaped them and chosen the wilderness over whatever they had planned for her. Either way, she had wandered for days through the forest. When she came upon the lake, she was so disoriented by starvation and exposure that she had no idea her home lay just over the next ridge. The campground was closed for the winter; no one, not even a park ranger, had walked this way in over a month. In despair and unspent fury, Sandy Leighter walked into the water and let the darkness consume her.

Rick spoke again, his voice a mix of awe and horror. “Is that…her?”

Cassie tried to whirl, but her legs moved sluggishly, directed by the movement of her hips and nothing more. She got around far enough to see Rick on the shore, and he was not alone. A woman stood next to him, clearly lit in the glow of candles circling her feet. Both Rick and the woman stared back at Cassie.

It’s her, Cassie thought, suffering a stab of jealousy because Rick had seen her first. But jealousy be damned, Cassie drank in the sight. Still a teenager herself, unchanged from the instant of her death, Sandy had Cassie’s hair, her long arms, her runner’s legs hugged by tight jeans. She even stood the same way, the way Cassie’s father said, “showed her attitude.”

My mom looked just like me.

Except it wasn’t a family resemblance. Though similar, this wasn’t the young woman whose picture had appeared beneath the splashy title on Ghost Story Origins. Cassie knew every lock of hair, the slight head tilt to the left; she recognized those exact jeans and the insulated band jacket—from her bedroom mirror. On instinct, Cassie glanced down and saw not her own coat and jeans but a torn, stained homecoming gown of a style that had been fashionable seventeen years ago.

Wait, Cassie tried to say, but her jaw refused to move. Her stomach rumbled as if food were a scant memory. Pain surged up from her bare feet, where a lattice of new cuts formed.

The woman in the circle of candles stretched out a hand to Rick, and he, looking very sober now, took it in both of his. He stared into her eyes in terrible understanding, loyalty writ in every line on his handsome face. He would shoulder this burden with her. They had seen the truth together, and he would not flinch from it.

Cassie raged. She thought, Where was that loyalty twenty minutes ago? and, How could you do this to me? and, You’re my mother! Her questions had clear answers. Rick needed to see for himself, just as Cassie had. Now, he knew. As for the girl in the band jacket, Hungry Girl had died young, and she craved the same thing as all young people: more life. Understanding only served to fill the gnawing emptiness inside Cassie with deeper anger, an endless font of it that frightened her, because it was not her own.

“Babe, I didn’t…” Rick’s words faded away.

“I just needed to see for myself,” said Sandy Leighter from the circle of candles, seeming to pluck the words from Cassie’s thoughts. Her voice, like her face and hands and clothes, was not her own.

Sandy peered up at Cassie’s boyfriend, all eagerness. The smile she gave him was wolfish. Rick, a wolf himself, returned it in kind, seeing s’mores and more in his future. He tugged her forward, and she left the circle to press against him. As she crossed the barrier of light, every candle guttered in unison, and Cassie’s last shelter from a cold more severe than the frigid mountain lake was obliterated.

Cassie’s stomach cramped, doubling her over with its sudden ferocity. Something under the surface tugged a foot from beneath her. She opened her mouth in what surely would have been a feral cry, but water rushed in. Her fingers bent into hooks, partly from pain but also in the desire—not at all her own—to grab the warm, living man who had left her here and carve both sustenance and revenge from him. As the water splashed over Cassie’s face, she watched Rick slip a warm arm around her mother’s shoulders, and the original Hungry Girl’s final, furtive glance back, her smile full of teeth.