IX
Harvey and Ford were hunched over the open hood, sleeves rolled and hands stained with grease.
As I climbed out, Penny leaned over the passenger seat.
“Good to have you back, Maddie. See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I echoed.
I watched her pull away, but as the sound of her engine faded, the normalcy went with it. Heaton’s warning crashed back into my thoughts like a door slamming open in a room I’d been pretending didn’t exist.
Harvey stepped back from the engine, grinning with the wild, boyish energy he only got when he had won an auction he absolutely shouldn’t have joined.
“So?” He gestured toward the wagon as if he had resurrected it himself. “What do you think?”
“It’s very . . . green.”
“Green’s the color of victory,” Ford offered, wiping a smudge of grease from his cheek with the back of his glove.
“And it has a tape deck,” Harvey added proudly.
I brushed my fingers along the door—cool metal, flaking paint.
“Thanks, Dad. You didn’t have to.”
A genuine smile cut through the fog in my head.
“It’s actually kind of great.”
His expression softened, that worn tenderness peeking through the grime on his face.
“Well,” he said, “we can’t have your senior year completely sucking, can we?”
Senior year.
I looked away, eyes drifting toward the dark line of trees.
In Mapleton, our name was its own kind of campfire story. The Octobers: gadgets, graveyards, and grief. Harvey’s research had long since morphed into local legend—part ghost story, part cautionary tale. In a town that loved a haunting almost as much as it loved a touchdown, we were the main event.
Ford slammed the hood with a satisfying thunk. He pushed a hand through his hair, leaving a streak of grease near his temple.
“Runs better than it looks. She’s got history, though, so keep jumper cables handy.”
Harvey clapped his hands together. “Hop in. Take her for a spin. Ford already called shotgun.”
“Did not,” Ford muttered, though he was already moving toward the passenger side.
I slid behind the wheel. The seat creaked in protest, and the steering wheel felt worn smooth by a stranger’s years. A cassette waited in the player, its label half-peeled.
The Smiths — Louder Than Bombs.
Harvey leaned through the window, eyes gleaming with that half-hope he wore when he desperately wanted a new start to stick.
“You’ll love her once you get to know her.”
“That’s what you said about New Mexico,” I reminded him.
He barked a laugh and stepped back.
I turned the key.
The engine coughed, hesitated, then roared to life with the stubborn determination of something that refused to die.
Harvey climbed into the back, stretching his legs across the cracked vinyl.
“All right. Show us what she can do.”
Ford buckled his seatbelt with the solemnity of a man preparing for battle.
“Just don’t stall her. She spooks easy.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Someone’s gotta keep you humble.” He flashed a grin—warm and easy. It was nothing like the biting cold that had been trailing me all afternoon.
The driveway dipped into the main road, sunlight flashing across the hood as I eased onto the gas. The steering wheel vibrated beneath my palms—old car, old bones—but the engine held steady.
We rolled past the edge of town where the asphalt dissolved into dirt. Hot dust and oil drifted through the open windows. The road curved through a corridor of cottonwoods, sunlight strobing across the dash.
For a minute, the only sound was the steady hum of tires.
“All right,” Harvey said, voice a little too casual. “Big day. Tell me everything. Kids normal? No one weird or . . . intense?”
I kept my eyes on the road.
The truth rose first—icy hands and a voice like a blackout—but I pushed it down.
“Totally normal,” I lied. “A few stares, but that’s just first-day stuff.”
Harvey exhaled, soft and shaky with relief.
“See?” he said, leaning back. “Told you it would work out. Old town, new start.”
Ford said nothing, but his eyes lingered on my profile as if checking for cracks in the story.
Normal was safe. Normal meant Harvey wouldn’t pack the truck at two in the morning because he thought someone was following us or after his work. I wanted to tell him the truth, but the relief on his face was too fragile to break.
Instead, I poked at the mystery.
Just a little.
“Hey, Dad . . . have you ever heard of a place called Winter Quarters?”
Harvey didn’t just freeze.
The surrounding air seemed to thicken.
His hand stopped mid-gesture, fingers going still against the headrest.
“The ghost town?”
Ford straightened in his seat, hazel eyes flicking between us.
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my voice light. “My history teacher mentioned it. He’s apparently your biggest fan. He gave us a list of local ghost towns for a semester project, and I thought—”
“Pick another one.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror.
The wild, boyish energy was gone, extinguished as if someone had flipped a switch.
“What? Why?”
“Because Winter Quarters isn’t a ghost town.” Harvey’s voice went flat. “It’s a graveyard. The ground is a honeycomb of lethal drop-offs and old mine shafts.”
His hand tightened on the headrest, knuckles white against cracked vinyl.
“Some places are meant to stay buried, Madeline. Stay away from that side of the mountain.”
I forced a laugh, brittle enough to crack.
“Relax, Dad. No hauntings. Just homework.”
He smiled, but the tension in his eyes didn’t soften.
And the name lingered, like a splinter beneath my skin.
Winter Quarters.
Even after we returned home, the air felt wrong.
The chill in my bones and the echo of Heaton’s voice remained, like a frequency my body had tuned into and couldn’t shut off.
The ceiling fan hummed in lazy circles, slicing through the stuffy heat of my bedroom. I lay across the mattress, textbooks open but untouched, sticky notes stuck to my arms like paper reminders of everything I was avoiding.
A light knock clipped the doorframe.
Ford leaned against the jamb, balancing a paper plate with two still-warm chocolate chip cookies.
The scent of vanilla and melting chocolate cut through the stale air, a brief distraction.
“Let me guess,” I said, pushing myself upright. “You made too many and your conscience wouldn’t let you eat them all yourself?”
“Nah.” He stepped inside and nudged the door half-shut with his heel. “These are just for you. You’ve been up here for hours, and I’m ninety percent sure you forgot I exist, let alone dinner.”
I bit into a cookie, focusing on the granular crunch of sugar—anything to stop my brain from spinning back to the shadows behind the gym.
“Coach Baker is already trying to drown me in assignments.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of his thing.”
Ford dropped into my desk chair, spinning halfway around.
He nodded toward my scattered notes.
“Has he assigned you a ghost town yet?”
I hesitated.
The name sat dry on my tongue.
“Sort of.”
Ford’s eyebrows lifted, his playful spin grinding to a halt.
“That’s weird. I had him junior year, and the man is a creature of habit. He’s been recycling the same twelve mining towns since forever.”
He shook his head.
“But Winter Quarters? I’ve never heard him mention that one before.”
My pulse skipped.
“Huh. Guess he’s branching out.”
Ford gave me a long, searching look—but before he could push, his phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen, and his expression tightened.
“Gotta take this,” he said, already backing away. “Just . . . promise me you’ll eat something real, okay?”
I watched him disappear down the hall.
Another one of his little projects. You know. The broken ones he likes to fix.
Sasha’s poisonous whisper flashed through my mind, followed by the image of Heaton’s silver eyes.
Stay away, he had said.
It’s a graveyard, Harvey had warned.
And now Ford, saying the name shouldn’t even be on the list.
It wasn’t on the list.
An icy dread washed over me. The assignments on my desk stared back, accusing and unfinished. But I didn’t reach for my highlighter.
Down the hall, behind a door I hadn’t opened in weeks, a file was waiting.
And a few minutes later, I was barefoot in the hallway, the floorboards cool beneath my skin. The house was quiet enough to hear crickets whispering through the window screens, a restless end-of-summer chorus threading through the stillness.
The office door opened without a sound.
Harvey didn’t really work up here anymore. The basement had swallowed his hours, his new projects multiplying in the dark while this room sat suspended in time. Shelves sagged under binders that hadn’t moved in years. A pen rested exactly where it had rolled to a stop.
It felt less like an office and more like a mausoleum.
I didn’t linger on the wall of degrees or the yellowing newspaper clippings. I moved straight to the filing cabinet crouched in the corner, its drawers labeled in Harvey’s cramped, blocky script.
FIELD RESEARCH. EMF READINGS. CASE STUDIES.
The metal handle was cold against my palm.
The drawer groaned as I forced it open.
LOCAL—GHOST TOWNS.
My fingers drifted along the alphabetized tabs until they paused between TOPAZ and WOODARD.
WINTER QUARTERS.
The folder was thin—disturbingly light.
A few brittle clippings, a map with missing corners, and a single page of notes waited inside.
The ink trailed off mid-sentence, as if the writer had been pulled away.
I flipped the page.
Blank.
A chill skated down my spine.
Every other folder in the drawer overflowed, but this one was hollow.
Gutted.
A floorboard groaned in the hall.
I didn’t breathe until silence swallowed the sound.
Then I returned the folder to its place, eased the drawer shut, and retreated.
The hallway was longer on the way back, shadows reaching with thin, grasping fingers. Inside my room, I shut the door and leaned against it, listening to the steady, indifferent tick of the clock on my desk.
My pulse didn’t slow until I was sure I was alone.