Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emery
Libraries have always been my safe haven—hushed with old paper, lemon polish, and the low murmur of voices. Even in a place as unsettling as Crowsbridge Hollow, the Baxter Free Library doesn’t disappoint.
The town’s Creepy Christmas theme has left its mark here too.
Garlands of pine and dried berries wind around the banisters, skull-shaped snowflakes dangle from the windows, and a Christmas tree is tucked beside the reference desk.
The ornaments are…unusual, though. Skeleton keys, tiny iron bells, and black ribbons that look less festive the longer I stare at them.
Tucked safe inside the town’s quirky library, last night’s cemetery oddities seem miles away now. The sweet comfort of my second maple apple crumb muffin doesn’t hurt either.
This is the sensory reset I needed after last night’s chills, thrills, and swoons.
Mr. Baxter, the archivist—and a descendant of the library’s founder, if the nameplate out front is any indication—is a delightful older gentleman with spectacles perched on the end of his nose and a passion for local history that borders on obsessive.
He nearly burst with excitement when I introduced myself as a “researcher,” especially after I swore I knew what microfilm was and promised I wouldn’t touch anything without supervision.
I’m in my happy place, surrounded by leather-bound ledgers and stacks of old newspapers.
First, I start with obituaries, then cross-reference with old police blotters.
Slow, methodical work. The kind I’ve always been able to get lost in for hours.
They also store an impressive collection of historical death, birth, and marriage certificates.
It’ll certainly make my job easier if I don’t have to tangle with New York State’s Vital Records Department.
Mason isn’t the first person to disappear in Crowsbridge Hollow.
At first, it looks like the usual grab bag of small-town tragedy.
A teenager lost to the river in the sixties.
A car wreck on the ridge in the eighties.
A runaway case in the nineties that no one followed up on.
A scattering of drownings, falls, vanishing hikers.
All the kinds of accidents a skeptical brain like mine can easily categorize.
A girl in the eighties disappeared after a dare—friends admitted she was last seen climbing the hill toward the Widow at midnight.
In the sixties, another girl, bright smile in her yearbook photo, was last spotted near the covered bridge.
A line in a gossip column from the forties makes my pulse stutter.
“Local youth continue the tradition of testing their courage by whispering in the Weeping Widow’s ear.
” The twenties—another teenager gone, her mother begging the sheriff to listen, the brief police report dismissing her with a chilling line: “No evidence of foul play found despite family’s claims of unusual circumstances. ”
A pattern emerges from the brittle pages.
Every twenty years or so, a girl or woman between sixteen and thirty disappears under circumstances tied, at least in rumor, to the Hollow’s legends.
Each story is different, yet eerily the same.
Last seen near the Widow or the bridge. Families whispering.
Police dismissing. A neat gap, then it happens again.
I lean back, frowning at my notebook and press my hand against the pendant at my throat.
Cold iron against warm skin. My professional brain scrambles for rational explanations—optical illusions, mass hysteria, anxiety-inducing infrasound noises, photo manipulation, or irrational fear that warps memories. None of that applies here.
The girls who’ve disappeared…the dates line up too neatly to ignore.
Dates.
I check the names again.
My pen stops when I land on the early 2000s.
Lena Sterling.
I blink, sure I’m misreading the faded type. But there it is again in the police blotter. “Sterling, Lena. Reported missing. Last seen at cemetery. No evidence of foul play. Investigation closed.”
Sterling.
Declan Sterling.
The dates…ages. Lena must have been his sister.
The muffins in my stomach turn to lead.
The pieces of the puzzle click together in an uncomfortable way. Declan’s silence, his annoyance with my questions, the panicked way he dragged me out of the cemetery. He’s not a grumpy tattoo artist trying to brush off a nosy YouTube pest.
He’s a grieving brother.
A sharp prick of guilt slides under my skin. I glibly hounded him like he owes me answers about his hometown, when in reality I was prodding at the raw wound of his family’s tragedy.
I glance across the room. Mr. Baxter is hunched at the reference desk, fussing with the microfilm machine, humming to himself. For a moment I debate staying quiet, leaving this puzzle piece unspoken. But curiosity digs in its claws.
“Mr. Baxter?” My voice sounds thinner than I’d like.
He straightens, adjusts his spectacles, and shuffles over. “Yes, Miss Corbin?”
I slide the blotter across the table with one finger. “This girl—Lena Sterling. Is she related to Declan? The owner of House of Ink and Iron?”
Mr. Baxter’s genial expression falters, the lines around his mouth deepening. “Yes. His older sister. Bright girl.” His voice drops. “She was Miss Crowsbridge Hollow her senior year.” His gaze flicks toward the window, then back to me. “It was a hard time for everyone when Lena…disappeared.”
His explanation fills me with even more guilt. I can’t look away from the neat black letters of her name. Lena Sterling.
Why didn’t I dig up this information before I cornered Declan in his shop? I promised myself and my audience I’d never do grief tourism, that I respected boundaries. Yet I showed up here bumbling around with all the subtlety of a crow picking at a carcass.
Heat climbs my throat, shame curling in on itself. I was so eager to debunk the Hollow’s myths, to be the first to prove them false, that I forgot the people tied to them aren’t characters in a story. They’re flesh and blood.
I’ve never felt lower.
The shriek of unoiled hinges fills the library.
Heavy bootsteps echo over the old wood floors.
The pendant shifts against my chest, tugging slightly to the left.
My skin prickles with awareness. It’s him. It has to be.
“That’s enough digging for one morning, Emery.” Declan’s voice drops into the quiet like a stone in a calm lake.
I snap the blotter shut and flip over my notebook. Mr. Baxter side-eyes me but remains silent.
Declan stops behind me, close enough to raise the hair at the back of my neck. I stare straight ahead at the stacks of papers and ledgers, guilt threatening to crush me as I pretend I didn’t just stumble across his family’s tragedy.
The pendant warms, tugging harder. I curl my fingers around the iron until the teeth bite my palm. I can’t turn around. If I face him, I’ll crumble into a blubbering mess of apologies.
“It’s just research,” I whisper. “Completely safe.”
He rounds the table and drags the chair across from me out, dropping his heavy frame into the seat.
He slides his hand across the table. His hand dwarfs mine, warm fingers grazing the back of my knuckles.
The warmth of him bleeds through until I can’t tell if it’s his heat or the iron’s tug that has my pulse racing. “And what have you learned?”
I shake my head, unable to meet his eyes. Instead, I stare at the intricate ink at the base of his thumb, climbing up his arm. “Old reports. Gossip columns. Obituaries.” My laugh scrapes out, brittle as glass. “The usual small-town tragedies.”
With his free hand, he reaches for the pendant, his knuckles brushing against my skin. My breath stalls. I flick my gaze up to meet his.
“The usual?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Really?”
His dark gaze holds me in place. There’s no anger, only his usual quiet intensity, daring me to share the morbid details.
I swallow hard. “A lot of people have gone missing over the years,” I rasp.
He nods slowly. “And?”
I shift my gaze toward Mr. Baxter who’s standing rigid as a flagpole with a book in his hand, head tilted toward us, pretending not to listen to every word.
Declan follows my line of sight. “Put the books away.” He squeezes my hand once. “I’ll walk you out.” The command in his tone leaves no room for discussion.
Normally I’d bristle at being ordered around or toss out some creative version of fuck off. But all protests tangle in my throat. Shame, curiosity, and the strange, magnetic pull I have toward him snuffs out my usual fire.
Everything I’ve uncovered this morning blurs together as I stand. I clutch my notebook to my chest, legs unsteady, heat still crawling over my cheeks. He doesn’t even check if I’m following, just assumes I will.
And the worst part is—I follow. I can’t argue with him now. It’d feel too much like admitting I’ve lost control of the story.