Chapter 39
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Someone shakes my shoulder—light but persistent, like a pesky fly.
With a groan, I turn over in bed.
“Selah,” Twig says.
I squint against a flood of daylight. The tree branches framed inside my window are covered in white.
A snowblower runs outside. By Dad, presumably, who was really upset last night.
Maybe more upset than I’ve ever seen him before.
Of course he was. His daughter dropped off the radar.
Given the escalating disappearance rate for teenage girls in this town, I should have known how panicked it would make him.
I told him it was a foolish lapse of judgement.
I was so excited that Jude came home early from his trip, I went to his house and completely forgot to leave a note.
I felt so small, so ridiculously inconsiderate, standing there in the spotlight of his stunned disbelief.
The memory of it makes me want to burrow underneath my covers and never come out again.
But Twig is here, in my bedroom. “A third girl is missing.”
“What?” I croak.
“Lola Hayes.”
I sit up too quickly, my ribs smarting in protest.
“It’s all over the news,” he says. “Her mom is talking to reporters, accusing the police department of malpractice. Chief Perry just made a statement.”
I peek at my bedside clock.
It’s 10 a.m.
Last night, the news was buzzing about Brady Keller and Caleb Briggs falling through the ice and failing to resurface. So why is Twig talking to me about Lola Hayes? “What about the quarry?”
“That’s on the news, too. All of it. It’s the perfect storm.
Everything that’s already happened, plus Brady and Caleb, plus Lola?
We have reached critical mass.” At the blank expression on my face, he continues, “You know who I’m talking about, right?
Black eyeliner. Skull necklaces. She was always smoking with that older guy behind the maintenance shed in the trailer park. ”
And vaping in the bathroom.
I picture her with her bare foot propped on the sink while she painted her big toe black.
Twig sits on the bench seat inside my window.
“Nobody’s seen her since she left school yesterday.
I guess her mom reported it to the police when she got home from work last night, but the police were preoccupied at the quarry.
They didn’t send out any sort of alert, and now her mom’s talking with reporters, threatening litigation. ”
Her mom.
Who listens to Blake Shelton.
Twig sets his elbows on his knees and asks me about last night. I take a drink of water and tell him the whole story. By the time I’m finished, the town of Foggy Hollow has gone absolutely viral.
In the days that follow, the quarry is dragged.
Neither Caleb nor Brady are found.
Active recovery operations are put on hold due to hazardous conditions.
The search will resume when these conditions improve.
AKA, the spring. Meanwhile, the search for Lola Hayes, Emma Rollins, and Sienna Clark intensifies.
Helicopters circle overhead. The FBI comes to town.
An onslaught of media, too. Mayor Ridley makes a valiant effort to maintain calm, to keep the worst of the panic at bay.
There are meetings, vigils, prayer circles.
A town curfew is instated. But there is only so much one man can do.
Parents are upset. Several pull their kids from school, like the mere act of stepping outside will result in another tragic headline. All the while, Lola’s mother continues her warpath, as if a late night police alert would have saved her daughter.
Twig is right—it’s the perfect storm, a goldmine for conspiracy theorists everywhere.
A girl found dead in the river.
Three others missing.
Two young men falling through the ice, their bodies unrecovered.
Not to mention, a couple female hikers vanishing in close proximity.
And undergirding it all, the Vandenberg Family Cold Case.
True crime podcasters and paranormal investigators swarm like flies on roadkill. Every now and then, a stranger strolls past the estate and stops to peer through the gate. Reddit threads and TikTok posts buzz with half-baked theories. Links to our podcast episodes often show up in the comments.
Questions ranging from benign to bizarre flood our inbox.
Requests for interviews. Fans wanting merchandise.
A spiritual practitioner offers to read our auras.
A pregnant mother asks us to name her baby.
Someone with a dodgy email address sends us a file labeled PROOF with instructions to open immediately or we will die by Christmas.
On Wednesday, Twig receives a phone call from Dr. Adrian Hale, host of Threshold Static, a podcast Twig listens to religiously.
The man wants exclusive rights on our episodes about the Vandenberg family.
He sends us a licensing deal, which has Twig losing his mind and me, hitting the brakes.
Dr. Adrian Hale, academic turned paranormal investigator, has a large following.
I don’t think it wise to give the watching world more reason to flock into town.
The only good thing about all the attention?
It puts a cramp in Lainey and Griffin’s sinister plans.
At first, their identities are kept under wraps. Nobody knows who witnessed Brady and Caleb falling through the ice because the witnesses are minors. But then Naomi has the idea to leak their identities. Twig does so anonymously and reporters have been trailing them ever since.
All the while, I keep my distance from Jude.
A decision he respects.
Until Thursday night, when he sends a text message I can’t resist.
Did you know Tales from the Crypt has a Christmas episode?
It’s only one of the best Christmas TV productions of all time.
Season one, episode two, cheekily titled And All Through the House—an outlandish mixture of horror, humor, and holiday cheer. Seriously, what better way to get into the Christmas spirit than watching a serial killer Santa deliver some much-needed comeuppance to a woman corrupted by greed?
His response undoes me.
We should have watched this instead of A Christmas Carol.
I picture him in his bedroom, watching the episode by himself, his room dark but for the glow of his television and the lights on his Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
The yearning this drums up inside me—to be with him, laughing as Mrs. Denby wraps her husband’s dead body in Christmas paper while psycho Santa slides out from under the tree—is so acute, I feel like I’m back in the icy waters of the quarry, being stabbed by a thousand knives.
I power off my phone and start counting sheep.
The next day, when we pass each other in the hall, his hand brushes mine with a shock of heat.
I slip inside an empty classroom and nearly come undone.
After several horrifying minutes where all I can do is envision the black tendrils on his chest wrapping around his neck, I resolve to ignore any and all future messages.
There is a Jude-sized hole in my life, one Rafe seems very eager to fill.
Wherever I am, there he is, too. Finishing my Christmas shopping with Harper and Naomi?
We run into him inside Bogaard Antiques.
Catching a production of the Nutcracker ballet at the Opera House with my dad and the Calloways?
There he is in the back row. When I grab a peppermint mocha from Hollowed Grounds Cafe and he shows up craving a gingerbread latte, I reach my breaking point.
“Are you stalking me?”
He just smiles his crooked smile. “Would you like it if I were?”
I shift away from the curious barista and lower my voice. “Seriously Rafe, why are you keeping tabs on me?”
I expect him to respond how he always responds—flippantly. With a tease. A taunt. A saucy wag of his eyebrows. Instead, he holds my gaze with such intensity, I have to look elsewhere. “Would you believe me if I said you’ve gotten under my skin?”
Warmth gathers under my collar.
Folding my arms, I turn my back on him. “Not for a second.”
“You have a talent for finding danger.” He steps behind me and whispers in my ear, “Maybe, Selah, I don’t want you to find it.”
I grind my teeth.
The barista hands me my drink. I take it with a polite thank you, then turn to face the scoundrel. “I think you’re trying to get under my skin. I think you’re trying to get under Jude’s, too."
He shrugs lazily, like only time will tell.
I don’t wait for him to get his latte.
I push out the door, into the cold, determined to ignore Rafe Vandenberg.
Now it’s Monday, the twenty-second of December—our first official day of winter break.
Christmas Eve is right around the corner and Dad and I have been invited to spend it at the manor.
Jude extended a personal invitation to my father, who has no idea we broke up and therefore had no reason to decline.
Jude invites the Calloways, too. Along with Naomi and Harper and both of their families.
Isabel insisted upon reviving the old tradition, wherein the Vandenberg family would host a Yuletide soiree—a formerly exclusive affair involving a fancy dinner, the founding families, and the town mayor.
It came to an end thirty years ago, when the Vandenberg family vanished into thin air.
Now it’s being reinstated with a few modern alterations.
Personally, I think Isabel cares less about restoring traditions and more about her reputation as a hostess.
The last party she threw ended in chaos.
I’m almost positive this is her attempt to leave a better impression on the more influential people in town.
Jude agreed to play along on two conditions: he could invite guests of his own, and Isabel has to be nice to them.
With so many in attendance, I think I can probably avoid him?
But I don’t feel super confident about it.
I lean against the front counter of Evermore Books, drumming my fingers while Twig swipes through notifications on his phone.
I keep peering at the front door, half expecting the bell to jingle and Rafe to appear.
I roll my bottom lip between my teeth and turn my gaze to the two girls lingering near the staircase in the back.
I don’t recognize them from school, but they look to be our age.
They keep stealing glances at me and Twig, which makes me suspect they aren’t here for the books.
If I had to guess, they’re interested in the Vandenberg exhibit on the second floor.
There’s been such an influx of interest in this particular display, Maggie posted a sign on the door that reads “Second Floor Exhibits by Appointment Only.” She also hung a velvet rope stanchion across the top of the staircase.
“This will really keep ‘em away,” Walt had teased, a drill whirring in his hand while he installed the wall hook.
“Listen to this one,” Twig says, scrolling through the comments on yet another social media post. “‘I think there’s a massive sinkhole under the quarry. Maybe it spreads underneath the entire town. No bodies were found because they were sucked inside the sinkhole. The girls could have fallen in, too. Maybe even that Vandenberg family.’”
“Who wrote that?” I ask.
“Some guy who calls himself ConspiracyCarl.”
“He’s not too far off, is he?” I mutter, eyes still on the girls.
Twig continues scrolling, faster this time, comment after comment after comment. “Everyone’s looking for an explanation.”
“Do you think we should give them one?”
He looks up from his phone.
When I don’t wink or even blink, he peeks at the girls, then leans closer. “You want to tell the truth?”
“We were going to before Lainey returned.” But then she came back and the idea of sharing the truth has turned into a game of tug-of-war. Twig is ready. I object. I’m ready. Twig objects.
“Selah, if we released a podcast episode claiming there’s a monster in an alternate dimension kidnapping teenagers, only the crazies and the conspiracy theorists would believe us.”
He’s right, of course.
More of them would flood to town, which wouldn’t get us any closer to Vorat or his prisoners.
It would only add more steam to this pressure-cooker of a situation.
I place my hands on either side of my face and drag them down my cheeks.
With each passing day, I grow increasingly restless.
It feels like we’re just sitting around, waiting for the next attack to happen.
I watch the girls slowly making their way to the front of the store. I catch the taller one’s eye, and this time, instead of looking away, she takes her friend by the arm and pulls her to the checkout counter. “Are you Selah Whitlock?”
“Yes,” I say, my response sounding more like a question.
She turns to Twig. “And you’re Spencer Calloway?”
He nods.
The girls exchange an excited look. Then the taller one launches into her pitch. “We’re from Elkins. My name’s Addie and this is JoJo. We’re obsessed with your podcast, and we’d love to ask you a few questions about these new disappearances. Maybe an exclusive interview for our high school paper?”
I can tell Addie is working hard to maintain a look of sobriety. What’s happening in our town is serious and tragic, and yet she vibrates with ill-suppressed curiosity—the kind unique to unsolved mysteries.
She’s so hopeful.
So naive.
So very much like myself before all this supernatural stuff got really, really personal.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But we’ve put a moratorium on interviews.”
Addie visibly wilts.
I feel bad. I hate to say no, but as Twig just pointed out, the truth is too outrageous. Still, the idea of sending them back to Elkins empty handed doesn’t sit well. I give her an apologetic look and extend an olive branch. “I could show you the display upstairs if you wanted?”
This seems to cheer them right up. They whisper excitedly behind me, anyway.
At the top the creaky staircase, I unclasp the velvet rope from the wall hook, clip it to its post, and flip on the light.
Addie and JoJo go straight for the Vandenberg exhibit.
“Oh my gosh,” Addie whispers, pressing her hands against the glass. “There’s the drawing.”
“That is so totally creepy,” JoJo replies.
They’re referring to Lily Vandenberg’s sketch of the faceless man, one I’ve seen plenty of times. And yet, the sight of it now has something niggling in the back of my mind. It takes me a few beats before I realize what it is.
“He doesn’t have a face.”
Addie and JoJo look at me.
I didn’t mean to speak the words out loud.
A flush climbs up my neck.
Not from embarrassment, but excitement.
According to Rafe, Dr. Psycho didn’t have a face either.
“Where’s the clock?” Addie asks.
I blink. “What’s that?”
“The clock,” she says, showing me her phone. A photo of the display fills her screen. “The one that stopped after Maureen Vandenberg dialed 911.”
I lean over the exhibit.
Sure enough, the clock is gone.