Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Only when my eyes are dry and stinging—and I’ve fallen deep into local-crime conspiracy blog posts about missing children—do I shove my laptop away. Three hours have slid past without me realizing.
As much as I hate to admit it, a good chunk of that time was spent on forums dedicated to the biggest ghost story in Blackridge: the creature without a face.
Most people say it lives in the woods and has been around much longer than any of the human residents.
Some swear it’s the angry spirit of a hiker who died violently back in the nineties.
I’m not even sure what I’m trying to find.
I don’t expect to somehow solve a decades-old mystery with a few hours of Google and too many Dr Peppers, but there has to be something.
Something to explain why three missing kids are trapped on my aunt’s property.
Where are the rest? Over a dozen have disappeared in the last twenty years. Once a year for the last seven.
If Harper were here, she’d know what to do. What to look up, which random tidbits to grab on to from the countless articles. Whether or not to buy into what may be simple coincidence and tragedy.
“If you feel like giving me any answers, Finn…” I say, rubbing my eyes.
There is a blur in my periphery, and then Finn is standing next to the bed, apparently as confused as I am. He looks like he always does, but after a week, it’s still weird to see him in the same clothes. Like animated characters on TV shows with their trademark T-shirts. It makes him less real.
He meets my eyes, his own widening, his hands rising in surrender.
“Okay, I swear, I am not peeping—”
“Finn.”
“I was minding my business downstairs, watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta with your mom—”
“Will you please be quiet?” I say. “Wait, did you say you were watching TV with my mom?”
He shrugs. “She doesn’t exactly know we’re watching together, but yeah.”
I sit up on the bed, folding my legs beneath me, refusing to smile at the image of him and my mother watching television on the couch. “I thought you weren’t a demon.”
Finn leans back, shaking his head. “Well, hello to you, too.”
“No—I’m pretty sure I summoned you.”
He drops onto the edge of my bed, licking his lips. “Summoned me? What, like, with a pentagram and candles?” He sweeps his gaze around the floor.
Heat creeps up my neck and over my cheeks. I’ve backed myself into a corner and am only now seeing it.
“Oh, please go on,” he says, far too smug for my liking.
“Let’s forget it. The housewives are waiting for you.”
He scooches farther up onto the bed. His sneaker passes through my knee. He doesn’t notice, but I can’t look away from the spot we should have touched. “What happened?”
I swallow thickly, my tongue having doubled in size in the last three seconds. He isn’t even a corporeal being, but having another person this close opens the latch on my panic.
“I was doing some research, driving myself crazy, and I must have said your name, and then—” I gesture at him. “Poof. You’re here.”
He pauses, and a smile bordering on mischievous lights up his face. “Thinking about me, huh?”
I narrow my eyes.
Finn clears his throat, bobbing his head at me. “So, what, you say my name three times, Bloody Mary–style?”
“One time,” I say. I press my tongue into my cheek, half my focus on figuring out how to get out of this hole I jumped in.
He flops onto his stomach, propped up on his elbows a few inches from my knee. He looks up at me and bats long, dark lashes. “This is for scientific purposes, Jo.”
I like the way he says my name, matter of fact, not dragged out like the last syllables are struggling to hold on.
I hate that he’s charming. That he’s nice. That he’s funny. If he were horrible, I could write him off entirely.
“Fine,” I say, because maybe it’ll get him out of here faster. “I said, ‘If you feel like giving me any answers, Finn…’ ”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He humphs and pushes off the bed. “Let’s test it again,” he says. “Give me five seconds.”
“Wait—” I start, but he’s already gone, blinking out like a light. With a sigh, I count to five, and say, “Um…Finn?”
He materializes a few feet from where he vanished, and I flinch despite expecting it. “No way!” he says. “Let’s go again.”
After two more attempts, one from the backyard and another from the basement, Finn is convinced of what I knew two tries ago. He drops onto the bed on his back, arms out, like he’s wiped.
“That’s sick,” Finn says. “It’s like I heard your voice like you were right next to me, but you weren’t.”
“I’m glad we proved that incredibly useless skill.”
Finn flashes me a grin. “Hey, I think it’s cool.” He pushes up, twisting so he’s sitting cross-legged and facing me. “You said you were asking if I could give you answers or something when I showed up. What answers?”
I sneak a look at my laptop. “I was…” I clear my throat. “I was looking into your disappearance.”
Since the moment he appeared, literally, Finn has had a near perpetual smile on his face. He’s always in motion, always in a good mood. But now he is still, and his face is stony. And I know I’ve messed up.
“Why?”
“Not just yours. Aisha’s and Sloane’s, too. And the others, before you. But there’s nothing. No witnesses, no leads, not even, like, a scrap of clothing. All of you vanished into thin air. How is that even possible?” I push to my feet and start pacing at the end of the bed.
“It’s a bad idea—” Finn starts.
“And I know you said you don’t remember what happened to you—”
“No,” Finn says sharply, so sharp I almost flinch.
Immediately after the word leaves his mouth, the anger follows, and he deflates.
He runs a hand over his face and finds my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— I…” The emotion clears from his face.
“I don’t remember any of it. So even if I wanted to help you, I can’t. ”
“You don’t remember?”
“No,” he says.
“Nothing? You meet some tragic end, and you don’t remember any of it?” I’m being harsh, pushing too hard, but I can’t stop. If it were me, I doubt I’d ever stop trying to remember.
“What do you want me to say?” He throws his hands up.
“I was out for a run one night near the creek, and I heard a branch snap, and then I woke up in the backyard, and I was like this. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s what it is.
I’ve spent three years trying to figure out what happened to me.
And I’ve hit wall after wall. There’s just… nothing.”
He’s working hard to appear unaffected by what happened. I have my own skeletons, and I can’t force him to open his closet door without having to open my own.
But he didn’t die in the house. I have a dozen questions, like whether he’s isolated to the house and its property, which backs up to the creek, and if so, how far the boundary goes. Finn isn’t the only ghost in this house. He isn’t the only place to find answers.
“Leave it alone, Jo,” Finn says, his voice and expression pleading. “Some bodies want to stay buried.”