No matter how determined I was to leave work at a reasonable time, I got home well after nine o’clock that evening. As usual, the house was dark and quiet. I immediately peeled off my clothes to shower but couldn’t wash away the thoughts of Cora Landry and what happened to her in that train yard. The world was a dangerous place even for a little girl from small-town Iowa.

I stepped from the shower, toweled off and put on my favorite pair of sweatpants and a University of Grayling Wolves sweatshirt. All I wanted to do was go to bed but instead I poured myself a glass of wine, opened my laptop and logged into the hospital’s secured online system. I pulled up Cora Landry’s medical records and learned that Cora was born at the hospital five weeks early. She spent some time in the NICU and made several follow-up visits to the pediatric specialty clinic over the years.

I jumped to the clinic visit just prior to her attack. Eight months earlier she saw one of the docs for a routine checkup and overall Cora appeared healthy. Height and weight measures indicated that Cora was quite a bit smaller than her peers. The physician wrote that Cora conveyed feelings of extreme anxiousness and worry when it came to school and relationships with her peers. When he broached the subject with her parents, they chose to forgo any sort of psychological or pharmaceutical treatment at the time.

The doctor also noted that Cora had a series of scratch marks at various stages of healing on the inside of her forearms. Cora explained that they were from her cat and the doctor suggested an over-the-counter antibiotic ointment.

I closed the laptop and flipped on the television. I scanned the channels in hopes of finding some mindless sitcom but landed on a video of a reporter standing in front of the emergency room of the hospital. The tagline read Urban Legend Main Suspect in Train Yard Attack on Preteens?

I sat up and increased the volume. The reporter spoke into a camera while a flurry of insects buzzed around the bright red emergency room sign above his head. “Two twelve-year-olds are the purported victims of a decades-old urban legend known as Joseph Wither. Sources say that at least two Pitch girls were hospitalized early this morning after a brutal attack at the abandoned Pitch, Iowa, train depot.

“Though police and hospital officials remain mum on the investigation and the condition of the girls, an anonymous source tells KQIC News that at least one of the victims pointed the finger at Joseph Wither.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I murmured and increased the volume on the television.