Chapter One
One
I should be standing in front of the largest ball of twine.
Harper and I planned a trip for the summer before graduation years ago, vowing to see a little bit of the world together before it inevitably pulled us apart.
We spent most of middle school making the itinerary, alternating stops. Harper chose the twine for Kansas. I went for the cowboy museum in Oklahoma. According to the itinerary, today was twine. Tomorrow, cowboys.
Instead, I am on a stiff chair behind the counter of my aunt’s bookstore. After six hours and only a handful of customers, I’d give anything for that ridiculous collection of twine.
The bookstore, affectionately named the Stacks, sits smack in the middle of Blackridge’s main street, sandwiched between a boutique so expensive I don’t even glance through its windows and a literal sandwich shop.
Clad with thick red carpeting and dark brown wooden shelves, full of a few too many sets of bookcases, the store has a vaguely claustrophobic feel that is only acceptable in a bookstore.
Really, it isn’t the worst summer job I could end up with.
It just wasn’t the plan. The plan was Harper and my car and a bunch of weird tourist attractions.
But my crappy car is a pile of metal in a junkyard, Harper is buried in a cemetery three hundred miles away, and I’m here, making an airplane out of a sheet of paper with last week’s inventory on it.
With a sigh, I send the badly folded airplane across the store.
It soars past a middle-aged couple pondering cookbooks and a woman with her young son in the children’s section, then lands beneath the community board across from the door.
I ease off the stool behind the counter and wind through the stacks to the board, pulling the paper plane off the dark carpet.
When I stand up and lift my head, I am staring into a pair of light eyes.
The board, alongside its collection of job offers and events—dog walking, babysitting, a pet-themed Beatles cover band called the Beagles—is covered in missing person posters. And they’re all kids.
A boy looks back at me from a faded one.
His photo has been edited to account for aging, and some of the lines of his face are blurred, but his eyes are a blue so light it’s almost clear.
An announcement for the town’s high school band covers the bottom half of his poster, but I know his name. Finn.
There’s also Sloane, a girl Margot’s age with fierce eyes and light hair.
Aisha, with a giant smile. Ingrid Halstead, who, despite disappearing years ago, has a brand-new poster.
The oldest, Jerome McCaffrey, tucked away in the corner.
Jerome’s poster is half-covered by a flyer for a support group for the families of missing children; in another town, such a meeting wouldn’t have enough attendees to fill the chairs, but not in Blackridge.
All the kids were long gone before we moved here for good, but there’s a familiarity about them. My family had stopped coming to Blackridge for the summer three years ago, but I wonder if I ever crossed paths with them. If their faces were etched somewhere in my brain ages ago.
Behind me, the door chimes as someone enters the store, bringing in a cold rush of air that hits the back of my neck. It was balmy and warm yesterday, but the rain this morning missed that memo.
Footsteps squeak on the mat inside the door and a platinum blonde sidles up beside me.
Even in my periphery, her blood-red lipstick is visible.
In the three weeks I’ve been working alongside the only non-Griffin employee of the Stacks, I’ve learned that, at least on Nora, who graduated this year, red lipstick goes with anything.
Including the black leggings and bulky gray sweatshirt she’s wearing today.
Nora is exactly the kind of girl I’d have fawned over before last December.
Girls with bright smiles and boys with pretty eyes have always been my kryptonite.
Now I feel a surge of anxiety when I see her.
I know what she wants. She wants what everyone wants.
To talk, to listen, to be let in. And I can’t give that to her.
Nora turns her nose up at the board and huffs. “What kind of person covers up a missing kid’s poster?” She peels a flyer for trombone lessons off the half-covered photo of the blue-eyed boy and crunches it into a ball.
“A horrible one,” I say.
Nora snorts and absently runs a finger across a few of the posters, an unfocused expression pulling on her soft features. Her stark white bob swishes as she shakes her head.
I know the hollow, aching look in her eyes. The grief that collects on your skin like condensation.
I almost ask her if she knows one of them—lost one of them—but hold my tongue. Opening that can of worms might mean opening my own. And I don’t need to ask. No one makes that expression without the pain to back it up.
“There’s so many of them,” I say.
Nora purses her lips. “They’re so young. Some of them practically babies.”
Almost a month in Blackridge, and I’ve seen how the ghosts of the missing kids permeate each inch of town. The playgrounds too empty for the summer. The posters and billboards urging caution. The sunset curfew for anyone under eighteen.
Some towns have scary stories about creatures in the forest. Blackridge’s lore is based in reality, but the Shadow Man who snatches up kids is as much of a legend as any other. A creature who only enters the light to pull someone out of it.
Nora swallows and reaches up to tuck her hair behind red ears.
“Look, I know it’s kind of the worst thing to say, but I’ve been wanting to say…I’m sorry about your friend. If you ever wanted to…” She gestures at nothing and chews on her lip.
It’s an opening, and before I can even consider whether I want to take it, the memory of Harper’s casket being lowered into the ground wraps its vines around my throat, and I shove it—and Harper—away.
“How do you know about that?” My voice is harsher than I mean it to be, but the damage is done too quickly to wipe away.
Nora averts her gaze as she says, “Your aunt. She’s chatty. I swear I didn’t go prying or anything like that, but…” She clears her throat. “It’s a small town. These people feed on gossip.”
Translation: everyone knows about the skeletons in your closet.
Which is why I’ve made a point to avoid the rest of the town. My routine is simple: home, work, and back home. Occasional trips to the store or park with my siblings.
My throat constricts, and I must be making a face, because Nora stammers out, “Wait—Jo, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” I say, shoving my half-smushed paper airplane into my pocket. One of the edges slices through my fingertip, sparking a blaze of heat. “I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re on, right?”
Her shoulders drop again, and the disappointed purse of her lips stirs guilt in my already twisted gut. The constant knot pulls tighter, and if I don’t get out of this store in the next five seconds, I’ll do something stupid, like cry or talk about Harper.
“Yeah.” Nora’s gaze flits around my face as if she’s searching for something, but she’s not the only one who knows how to put up her guard. “See you tomorrow.”
—
Aunt Paige’s house, and now my house, is two blocks off the main street.
It makes walking home easy, which is convenient seeing as I’m carless and likely to remain that way for a while.
Mom offered to go half with me on a replacement after the accident, but ten minutes into car shopping, I almost threw up behind the wheel.
I haven’t been in the driver’s seat since.
So I’ve become a walker. As long as I make it home before sunset, my mom and Paige don’t protest.
Nothing in this town feels like home. The streets Harper and I raced bikes and learned to drive on are hundreds of miles away. The trees here are thicker and taller, and the air smells like pine. The playgrounds are empty. It’s a different world.
The walk is mostly open space and a two-lane road that stretches into the endless forest. A handful of homes are scattered on either side of the cracked road, but the streetlights stop at the end of the main block.
Everyone has bright porch lights, and two of the houses have string lights woven into their trees, their glow only visible at night through the leaves.
At the end of the street, backing up to the forest and the edge of town, sits the historic Griffin residence, as declared by a tiny golden plaque nailed over the broken doorbell.
The massive redbrick home is straight out of the Victorian era, all curved corners and a thousand windows and a turret.
If not for Harper and her architectural obsession, I doubt I’d know what a turret was.
I ease up the whining wooden steps to the porch and past the rustic rocking chairs, slipping out of the cold night and into the foyer.
Despite the warmth inside, a chill washes over my shoulders; the house is always too cold.
Mom attributes it to the old house and a draft.
Something shifts in the corner of my eye, but when I turn, the hall is empty.
I attribute that to my little brother, three feet tall and always on the move.
To my left, in the curved section of the room where Dad’s grand piano sits, Margot misses a note and tries to disguise it. A few more keys and the song ends.
“Getting rusty,” I say as I pass her on my way to the swinging kitchen door. The light tease might have landed well a year ago, but I realize too late that it won’t now.
“Eat glass,” Margot replies, pushing off the bench and slamming the lid on the keys. If I weren’t guaranteed an eye roll, I’d give her hell for being so rough with the instrument.
In the kitchen, the remnants of half-hearted dinner prep are piled in the sink. The house is ancient, but Aunt Paige replaced the old kitchen fixtures and appliances years ago. The tacky floral wallpaper and curtains managed to hang on.
The Cranberries’ “Zombie” crackles out of the speakers, though I know my mom probably tried to change it to her seventies station.
“Joanna?” My mom’s voice rises from the mudroom, the three syllables of my full name making me wince. Jo caught on quick and easy a decade ago with everyone but Mom.
I didn’t give you a name so you could slice it into pieces. She’s always had a penchant for the dramatic, and it jumped over me and into my sister.
“Hey.” I lean into the doorway, arms folded. I jerk a chin at the stereo. “Cranberries, huh?”
“The spirits hate anything made after the turn of the century, apparently,” she says, but it’s clear she doesn’t believe it’s actually a supernatural entity screwing with the radio.
“Purists,” I say. Mom snorts.
She sits at a small card table, her glasses sliding down her nose and glowing blue from her laptop’s screen.
Papers are spread around the table, along with two paper coffee cups.
She took over the finances for the Stacks when my uncle left, and though as far as I know we’re in decent shape, she twists herself into knots over the papers at this table.
I don’t think she knows what to do with herself if she’s not stressing about something.
She smiles, brushing hairs that have escaped her ponytail out of her eyes. “How was your day?”
Boring. Monotonous. “Good.”
She purses her lips. Nods to the bag over my shoulder. “Any progress?”
The notebook of unfinished lyrics and notes weighs heavy on my shoulders as I say, “Actually got pretty close on one song. One verse left.” It’s a lie, but a harmless one. It’s easier to bend the truth. Honesty is too big a pill for her to swallow. For anyone to swallow.
“That’s amazing. I’d love to hear it once you’re done.”
Considering I can count the number of times I’ve touched my piano or guitar since we moved in—once—it’s not likely, but I know how to play my part.
“Of course.”
She smiles again. I don’t even feel guilty for lying anymore. It’s better than the alternative.
“Where is everyone?”
“Paige went to that conference in Denver,” she says. “She should be back tomorrow night.” She nudges the laptop closed, an effective end to what was probably a few hours of staring at numbers. “Paige claims it’s for visibility for the store, but I’m fairly certain she’s knee-deep in signing lines.”
“She’d better bring us back something good.”
“Knowing her, they’ll fill up the trunk.” She pauses as footsteps echo over our heads.
“Jasper?” I ask.
“The house settling. Your brother made a bold proclamation about never sleeping again and promptly crashed on the couch. Margot carried him up.”
“You’d think after a hundred years, the house would be settled.”
Mom smiles.
“Any plans tomorrow?”
“Just the store.”
“What about Nora? I’m sure she’d like to get together. Or Cecily? Holden said she was back from college. You could invite her over for a movie night.” Mom is trying. She’s been trying. Playing friend matchmaker and nudging me out of my cocoon like I’m a butterfly and not simply broken.
“Maybe I’ll ask,” I say, but the frown that tugs on her lips means she knows I won’t. Before she can pepper me with any more questions, I turn, stopping when she says my name again.
She seems to toss the words over on her tongue, and a long moment passes before she says, “There are leftovers in the fridge.”
I give a thin-lipped smile and nod.
I look to the fridge, my gaze stalling on the magnetic letters across its door, the kind little kids use to learn to spell. A handful of the letters have been lost over time, so anything we try to spell out takes creative liberties.
Tonight, it says Crful Aft Drk. I frown.
I open my mouth to inquire, but before I can, my mom says, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
I hmm softly. “Careful after dark?”
My mom squints at the letters. Nods. “Could be.”
“I guess the spirits take curfew seriously.”
She laughs, and I force a smile, but too quickly the characteristic quiet slips back into place.
Mom doesn’t add anything else, but whatever she wants to say hangs heavy in the air between us. I don’t ask, and she doesn’t push, so after three seconds, I head back through the kitchen and toward the stairs before she changes her mind.
The lights overhead flicker as I ascend. I pause on the third step from the top and the flickering stops, too.
I know that this house is wood and nails, old and crumbling in places, but no matter what I do, I can’t shake the feeling of being watched. Like the walls have eyes that catch every movement.
I almost expect a response out of the foundation, but the house stays quiet. Maybe it has nothing to say. Maybe I don’t know how to listen. Or maybe it really, truly is just a house.