Chapter 33
Two years after I removed Marianne Keller from her body, Cleo Price attempted to drown her daughter in her bathtub while her husband was at work. Unfortunately, this unpredictable change in behavior can happen when a possession has lasted longer than six months.
—Methods of Modern Ghost Hunting: A Tactical Guide to Containing and Vanquishing the Dead by Donald Dellman
It’s not true. It can’t be.
Billy’s a liar. He’d say anything to hurt Nico, or to hurt me. That’s what he does. Finds the softest parts of people and digs his fingers in until they bleed.
Nico saved me from that entity in the parking lot. He made me earplugs. He brought me soup. Those aren’t the actions of someone who has urges like Billy, or who wants to hurt anyone else.
I run up the stairs, my legs burning as I push through the basement door. Bob is waiting for me, and I scoop him up, his little body warm in my arms as I sprint to the library.
I set Bob on the ground. He watches me as I flip through the files—Gacy… Gallego… Gein. No Grady.
Maybe it’s under Boy Next Door? I try the Bs—Berkowitz… Brooks… Bundy. If Billy was telling the truth, why aren’t there any records? Maybe Donny keeps them in his office.
Unless Donny doesn’t keep files under the host’s name.
Billy Lundby’s file is thick, and the pages are soft and yellowed at the edges. I flip past the initial case summary, past his upbringing and childhood, until I reach the victim list. All the way at the bottom, seven names are dated to 2019:
Allison Chambers - 16, Camden Hills Regional High School. Abducted on October 2nd while walking home from art club. Body buried in Acadia National Forest, never recovered.
Lila Miller - 17, Camden Hills Regional High School. Disappeared on October 15th. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
Emily Dao - 18, Bates College student. Vanished on November 28th from a campus parking lot. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
Jennifer Santos - 18, University of Maine. Disappeared during a morning run on January 10th. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
Rebecca and Katherine Harmon – a 45-year-old mother and a 19-year-old daughter. Murdered in their Camden home, February 22nd.
Celia Wilson - 21, Bates College. Abducted from a gas station on March 3rd. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
All of these murders are attributed to Billy Lundby. Not a single mention of Nicholas Grady.
Why would there be? Nicholas Grady must have been Billy’s host. Billy was the one pulling the strings. But not everybody will see it that way.
I pull out my phone. The keyboard feels too small for my thumbs as I type in the search: Nicholas Grady Boy Next Door Killer.
The results load, and I click on a Reddit post with shaking fingers:
r/TrueCrimeObsessed · 3 months ago
Posted by u/BellyBean33
Where did the Boy Next Door Killer go??
Today marks seven years since the Boy Next Door Killer case went cold, and I’m still losing sleep over it. How does a 17-year-old kid rape and murder seven women in SIX MONTHS and just disappear?
You would’ve had to be living under a ROCK to have missed the news on this, but in case you have been:
Nicholas Grady was a senior at Camden Hills Regional High School in Camden, Maine, with good grades and no disciplinary record. Mom was an accountant. Dad was a high school history teacher. His twin, Nora, was a senior at the same school.
Nobody saw it coming. That’s what makes this so terrifying.
HIS VICTIMS DESERVE TO BE REMEMBERED.
The victim names follow—the same seven from Billy’s file, but here, they’re credited to Nicholas Grady.
I keep reading, each word punching the air from my lungs:
Despite one of the largest manhunts in Maine’s history, Grady disappeared.
Grady is presumed dead, but the FBI regularly updates their age-progression images (latest attached below), and honestly? I think he’s still out there.
IF YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN HIM: DO NOT APPROACH. Grady is considered extremely dangerous. The FBI tip line remains active, and there’s still a $250,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
Everyone in the comments on the post has a theory about where he disappeared to. Some think he’s dead. Some think he changed his name and is living a normal life somewhere. Some think he never stopped killing.
There are photos attached to the post. I see the FBI age-progression first, which is computer-generated and doesn’t look quite like a real person.
The man’s hair is reddish brown. The computer smoothed out his face too much, made his skin look waxy and artificial, like those creepy reconstructions of Egyptian mummies you see in museums. His jaw is square, his nose is wide, his eyes are green, and he has the same dimple in his chin as Nico does.
My hands start shaking so badly that I almost drop my phone.
I scroll down to the yearbook photo, needing to see it, needing to prove myself wrong, except the second it loads, I know I’m not wrong at all.
He has to be sixteen or seventeen with a scattering of acne across his forehead, and that boyish softness teenagers still have in their faces.
His hair is the same color as in the age progression photo, and he’s smiling so big with his teeth showing and his eyes creasing in a way I’ve never seen on the Nico I know.
He looks so young. So normal.
But it’s him.
The room tilts sideways. I grip the cushiony armrest so hard my knuckles go white because if I don’t hold onto something solid, I’m going to fall right out of this chair.
I swipe to the next photo, and this one shows him at a track meet. The caption reads: Grady competing in the 5K at regionals three weeks before the murders began.
The next photo shows him standing with his family in a school hallway.
His mom has graying auburn hair tied in a neat bun and kind eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses.
His dad is tall but still inches shorter than his freakishly tall son, with the same sharp features and serious expression.
A girl with chestnut hair stands on Nico’s other side, wearing heavy stage makeup and holding a bouquet.
Nora. She has the same eyes as Nico, or at least what his eyes used to be—green and bright and exuding happiness.
I wonder if being twins meant Nico and Nora were extra close.
If Rosie had been my twin, I have no doubt we would’ve been.
Compared to her, I was shy. I might have been a yapper and known for opening my mouth before thinking, but that wasn’t exactly endearing.
Rosie had this electric energy about her, always the first to dance in public, compliment a stranger, and make comments that made every adult she knew talk about what a firecracker she was.
Did Nora notice what was happening to Nico? Did she notice warning signs nobody else caught, or was she just as blindsided as everyone else?
I scroll down to find seven faces staring back at me.
A collage of the victims, arranged in the order they died.
They all have the same black hair I have.
They have my pale skin. My wiry build. Allison has my freckles.
Emily’s got the same pointed chin. All of their faces blur together, and all of a sudden, I’m looking at alternate versions of me, all lined up in a row.
I’m his fucking type.
Billy’s. Billy’s type.
Nico didn’t choose these girls. Billy picked them. Billy made Nico approach them, hurt them, kill them.
This must be why Nico wanted me to leave. Why he was nice to me in the parking lot, before he knew I’d be joining the team.
It’s because I look like them.
I search for more articles. The results multiply across my screen like a hydra—kill one search result and three more take its place.
Inside the Mind of a Teen Monster
How Nicholas Grady Lured His Victims
Boy Next Door Killer’s Brutal Methods Revealed
That last article describes how he approached them in public places, doing things like offering them rides home or helping with groceries, then he smashed them over the head with a tire iron and dragged them into his car.
He drove them to an isolated location and beat them with any blunt object he had, before he—
I drop my phone on the desk.
Bob whines from his chair, but I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears.
Did Nico feel it when he raped them? Did Billy make him enjoy it, or was Nico screaming inside his own head, begging his body to stop while his hands kept moving?
I hope it was the second one. I hope he was trapped and terrified and hating every second, because the alternative…
DJ must know. Same with Griffin. How could they know and not tell me? After everything I’ve been through with Stanley Daniels, after watching my family get murdered, they brought me here to live with someone who killed seven girls and didn’t even warn me?
How has Donny gotten everyone in this house to keep Nico’s secret when they could get a quarter of a million dollars for turning him in?
I snap the hair tie hard against my wrist repeatedly until my skin turns pink.
Because nobody here is a monster willing to turn in an innocent person for money, that’s how. Nico would be imprisoned for life, but he’s a victim, too. Billy possessed him. Used him. Destroyed his life and killed seven people with Nico’s hands. Of course Donny’s protecting him.
But that doesn’t explain why nobody thought I deserved to know.
The anger feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of my body, but I don’t know where to direct it. At Billy for being a monster? At Donny for keeping this from me?
“Have you seen Eden?” Nico’s voice carries through the door from down the hallway.
I need to leave before Nico can look in here. I scoop up Bob and run to the door, yanking it open to find Nico already standing there.
Nico fills the doorway with his height and broad shoulders, which seem more threatening than anything else right now.
His eyes meet mine.
I watch realization dawn across his face—the exact moment he understands that I know.