Chapter 25
A FAMILIAR ARTIST
We meet in the basement of Evermore Books where we won’t run in to any of our parents. Just Maggie, who won’t blink twice when Twig tells her we’re having some guests on the podcast.
Jude and I are the last to arrive.
The solitary lightbulb casts a spotlight upon Naomi, Twig, and Harper sitting at the table, which is large and pockmarked, with crisscrossing wires connected to microphones and sound equipment.
“It’s Emma Rollins and Sienna Clark,” Harper tells us, looking—as Mrs. Calloway would say—very peaked.
“I know,” I reply.
It’s all over social media and I was added to a massive group chat.
Most people at the barn party were included.
I skimmed the conversation on the way over.
Apparently, Emma told her mom she was sleeping over at Sienna’s and Sienna told her mom she was sleeping over at Emma’s.
Neither mom realized anything was afoot until late this morning when their calls went unanswered.
Emma and Sienna went to the barn party last night and that’s the last anyone has seen of them.
I keep picturing them in the hospital waiting room on Halloween night, dressed up as Wednesday Addams and Chucky’s Bride, tears streaking through their costume makeup as they cried over their friend, Callie Reese, who is still recovering in Morgantown.
Now, they’re missing.
With no more chairs to sit on, Jude grabs one of the wooden crates lining the far wall. He sets it at the table for me, then grabs another for himself.
I can’t sit, though.
I have too much energy inside my body for sitting.
Jude doesn’t sit either.
“So, what happened?” I ask Harper.
“Jake woke me up this morning wanting to know if I was at the party. He told me two girls had gone missing, but he wouldn’t name names. He said he couldn’t, which totally freaked me out because—” Her voice catches.
Naomi reaches across the table to take her hand. “You knew we were there.”
Harper wipes at an errant tear. “He called it bad timing. Can you believe that? Bad timing? Then he started grilling me like some sort of interrogation. Did I know about this party? Did my friends go? Who got rides home with whom? He told me to stay home and keep my mouth shut. But if I hear anything weird—anything at all—to call him right away.” Harper finishes her monologue with a huff, and a pointed look at each of us.
“Anything weird, huh?” I say with a grimace.
“Does an alternate dimension count?” Twig asks. “Or the potential for an evil doppelg?nger?”
“Two evil doppelg?ngers,” I correct. “Griffin came back last night, Harp. And he had the same marks on his wrist as Lainey.”
With a slightly maniacal laugh, Harper plunks her elbows on the table and cradles her head in her hands.
I pull a small journal out of my coat pocket and set it in front of her. We made a pitstop for it on the way over. “I’m not sure why I didn’t think to show you this sooner.”
“What is it?” she asks.
“Simon Vandenberg’s journal.”
“You mean…” Her attention darts to Jude.
“My cousin,” he says. “Once removed.”
I slide the journal closer, already skipping pages, my fingers trembling with adrenaline.
“You can read as much of it as you want, but for the sake of time, I’d skip to March twelfth.
It’s not as convincing as the evidence we have in the crypt, but it’s still evidence.
” While she reads, I reach again into my pocket and hand her two photographs.
One, a copy of my mother’s yearbook photo.
The other, a glossy four by six from Simon’s disposable camera.
“Who is this?” Harper asks.
“My mother. Or, as Simon called her, Daisy.”
Harper’s eyes widen. “Your mom was going out with Simon Vandenberg?”
“It’s a relatively new discovery, but yes. She was. And five years ago, she came back. She visited the estate. And I think—I think something got her.”
“Got her?”
“A monster.”
Harper’s mouth falls open.
I begin a short-routed pace and tell her about the creature and the seed and the visions—both of them.
“You think she’s still in there, trapped with Simon?”
“She might be,” I say with a quick glance at Jude. He thinks Rafe is behind the visions. He thinks it’s a trick.
Harper bites her lip, her face going a bit more peaked. “So, if Lainey isn’t Lainey, who is she?”
“She could be a changeling,” Twig suggests.
“What’s a changeling?” Naomi asks.
“A paranormal substitution.”
She rubs her temples. “In layman’s terms, please.”
“Imagine a supernatural creature takes a human child,” Twig begins, “or in this case, a human teenager, and leaves a different creature in the teen’s place. An exact double.”
“For what purpose?”
“According to lore, the supernatural creature requires the human child for something. In this case, however, it seems like they’re using the supernatural replacement to… lure more in.”
“Lure more in?” Harper repeats weakly. Never mind peaked. She is officially white as a ghost.
Naomi throws up her hands. “Who is they?”
I snap my fingers and point. “That, right there, is the question.”
Who is they?
“At Night of the Howl, Mistress Bramble said we woke a great hunger. Now it will hunt.”
Never mind peaked.
Harper is officially white as a ghost.
“Which makes me think Lainey and Griffin are hunting.” Like the Hollow Hounds, only they’re human. Or, human substitutes. “But who are they hunting for?”
“Rafe,” Jude says.
I shake my head. “I think it’s the same thing that hunted my mom. Maybe it’s been in some kind of hibernation. Maybe the fight we had with Seraphina on Halloween night woke it up. Now it’s hunting our classmates.”
For a long moment, nobody speaks.
Harper stares at the journal, her fingers tracing the edge of each page. Jude stands in the shadows with his arms crossed. Naomi sits just as rigidly. Twig scratches his elbow nervously. And me? Questions pop inside my brain like hot kernels of corn.
Naomi breaks the silence first.
“Please, Harper,” she pleads. “You have to believe us. It’ll be so much safer for you if you do.” She presses her hand against her chest. “I would never make something like this up. Twig and Selah, maybe. But me?”
Twig and I vehemently object.
We don’t make up stories.
We loathe hoaxes.
They stand in direct opposition to everything we’ve been trying to accomplish for the past two years on our podcast.
Naomi ignores us.
Her gaze is fixed on Harper, who looks at each of us in turn, as though considering. I think it’s Jude who finally convinces her. He isn’t the type to believe in ridiculous things. Whatever the case, she exhales long and loud.
“Fine,” Harper says. “I believe you.”
Naomi melts with visible relief.
Harper doesn’t seem to share the emotion. She’s too busy wringing her hands. “So what now? Are Emma and Sienna going to come back like Lainey and Griffin, or are they going to turn up dead like Ivy?”
I shake my head, because there’s no way of knowing.
The only certain thing?
Something horrible is targeting Foggy Hollow. Mistress Bramble said it herself—evil has come to this town. I can feel its hunger the same as I felt it when I was the monster chasing my mom.
“Did you find anything at Lainey’s?” Twig asks.
“Oh, we found something,” Jude mutters.
“The ruby?”
“A rift,” I say. “It was open in her basement. But then it closed. Violently. Lainey tried opening another with the mark on her wrist, but she wasn’t able to.”
“Should I tell Jake about this?” Harper asks.
“He isn’t going to believe you,” Naomi replies. “We could barely get you to believe us.”
Harper slumps in her chair.
I sink onto one of the crates and a panel on the side falls open. Several items spill onto the concrete floor.
Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Embroidered napkins. A porcelain butter dish. And a really old roll of ticker tape with short and long rows of faded ink marks marching down the paper.
“What is that?” Harper asks.
I scoot off the crate. “If I had to guess, donated items Maggie can’t use but refuses to throw away. Probably from estate sales.”
“Look at this,” Twig says excitedly, coming out of his chair to pick up the roll of ticker tape. “Do you know what this is?”
“Telegraph tape,” Naomi replies.
Harper pulls out a hand mirror with a tarnished silver backing and a hair brush with boar bristles. “How old is this stuff?”
“Really old,” I say, lifting the lid off the other crate Jude pulled to the table. We’ve never bothered looking through these crates before. They’ve always just been here, a fixture of the room. I pull out a lava lamp. “This, on the other hand, is a bit more recent.”
“Ooo, I love these,” Harper says, grabbing a Magic 8 Ball.
The discovery has turned into a pressure release. The air has been taken out of a very tense balloon. Even Jude joins in as I rifle past a dream catcher, a baggie of glow-in-the-dark stars, and a boombox, along with a collection of cassette tapes and CDs.
“Check out this phone,” Harper says, picking up the handset of an old-fashioned hot pink telephone with a cord. She holds it to her ear, then lets out a yelp and slams it onto the base.
We all stare at her.
“I swear, I just heard a voice.”
Twig picks it up and listens.
From his expression, I don’t think he hears anything.
But I can’t help but wonder…
I glance at the handheld mirror. What if Rafe is here, listening to our conversation? What if it was his voice Harper just heard?
“A sketchpad,” Jude says, pulling it out, along with a set of graphite pencils. It’s filled with dark, disturbing images, and as he flips through the pages, I’m struck by a sense of familiarity, as though I’ve seen the artist’s work before.
Then I notice it.
A signature at the bottom of the page.
I have seen the artist’s work before.
Upstairs, on the second floor of Evermore Books. In a display about the Vandenberg Cold Case. A sketch of a faceless man, submitted into evidence and then mysteriously redacted.
A drawing by Lily Vandenberg.