Chapter 1
THE STAKEOUT
“Today is Saturday, August ninth. I’m positioned one hundred yards southwest of our trail cam. The time is ten-oh-six p.m. So far, no signs of paranormal activity.”
And no sign of Twig, either.
Which could be considered paranormal, as Twig is nothing if not punctual.
I push pause on the small recording device and swat at a mosquito buzzing by my ear.
A lock of auburn hair falls in front of my eye.
I blow it out of the way and peer through my binoculars.
They don’t have night-vision, so all I really see is the dark outline of trees, and if I squint really hard, the vague impression of headstones poking through fog.
The scent of damp moss and decaying leaves hangs in the air.
Thin shafts of moonlight poke through the canopy above.
They trickle through what’s left of the windows, empty eye sockets of shattered stained glass, and stretch down charred beams and crumbled stone.
Crickets chirp uneasily, occasionally interrupted by the haunting hoot of an owl.
This is where we do our stakeouts—inside the ruins of St. Fortuna’s church, a once-sacred space that’s being slowly consumed by time and the Monongahela National Forest. Foggy Hollow is nestled in a valley of the Allegheny Mountains.
The ruins sit on the outskirts of town and offer an elevated view.
I lay on my stomach, elbows propped on the tarp spread beneath me, peering at the cemetery in search of my target, the Woman of the Woods.
A ghostly figure with long, raven hair and a white flowing gown who has been rumored to wander the cemetery on nights when the moon is full.
Over the past two years, Twig and I have made it our mission to capture her on camera.
A bat flits through St. Fortuna’s skeletal frame. I’m not afraid. I welcome the bats. I would prefer more, honestly. Anything to get rid of these mosquitos.
I swat at another.
I’m wearing a long-sleeve dry-fit top, black leggings, and black combat boots.
Everything is covered, except for my hands and my neck and my face, which would maybe be sufficient at any other time.
But this is August, peak mosquito season, and they’re especially bad in these particular ruins, where puddles of water sit stagnant.
I could use some bug spray.
At the moment, I could also use a Xanax.
“There has to be a solution,” I mutter to the night.
One that doesn’t involve moving.
Away from Twig.
Away from this town.
The knots in my stomach tie tighter.
Foggy Hollow has been my home for seven years.
And while I didn’t move here willingly—my nine-year-old self convinced that leaving Ohio would mean losing my mother forever—it took no time at all to fall head over heels in love with the town and the boy who introduced me to it.
It felt like destiny, coming here. Like Twig and I were meant to be best friends, and Foggy Hollow was meant to be my home.
But now, I might have to leave. Right on the cusp of my favorite season, too.
Fall in Foggy Hollow is a magical time any year.
But this year, we’re celebrating our bicentennial.
Not its birth, but its rebirth, when the town rose from the literal ashes of a devastating fire.
Which means all the festivities will be bigger and better.
The reenactment, the lantern ceremony, the Phoenix parade, the fire festival, the masquerade ball.
Not to mention Halloween, which will occur under the blaze of Dante’s comet—an astronomical event that only comes once every two hundred sixty-eight years.
There’s a distinct possibility I won’t be here for any of it, which makes me want to stand up and scream into the void.
My rage toward Evergreen Landscaping Solutions swells.
Due to the company’s mismanagement and mounting debt, they went under.
And my dad’s paying the price. I’m paying the price.
Seven years as a faithful employee, and not even a severance package to show for it.
Bills are piling up on our kitchen counter and our landlord keeps lurking like a vulture.
Yesterday, I offered Dad my car money. I’ve been working extra hours at Evermore Books to save up.
It’s not much, but it could buy us some time. Pay some of the bills.
I should have kept my mouth shut. The offer only seemed to make Dad more desperate, because tonight, after dinner, I overheard him conversing with his cousin on the phone.
He needs a job.
His cousin offered him one.
In Illinois.
I bite my lip and scan the tops of the tombstones.
“Think, Selah. Think.”
But my brain boycotts. It’s done nothing but frantically think for the past few weeks, ever since Dad came home with the awful news. Now it’s exhausted and desperate and filled with panicked static. A hard lump settles in my throat as a red-eyed glow bounces through the fog.
Not the Woman of the Woods, but Twig with a headlamp on his forehead. The red light bobs up and down in rhythm with his tall, gangly frame as he weaves his way toward our hiding spot in the ruins. His face materializes beneath the headlamp’s glow, which turns his brown skin into molten copper.
The lump in my throat tightens.
I can’t bear the thought of leaving him. Twig Calloway has been my best friend since my first day at Riverbend Elementary.
A book brought us together. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz.
Not the tattered copy I had at home, with my mother’s name scrawled inside the cover.
But a newer version from the school library.
All the fourth graders were selecting books for silent reading after recess, and we were the caboose in a very long checkout line.
Me, the new girl in Ms. Lyman’s class. Him, the Black kid in Mr. Brunson’s.
He kept casting furtive glances from my hair, which had been cut painfully short two days earlier, to the book I clutched in my hands.
Perhaps, if a group of girls hadn’t taken cruel turns making fun of my hand-me-down clothes at recess, I would have introduced myself.
Instead, I was trying very hard to keep the tears at bay.
To this day, I can still remember how lonely I felt, how very out of place.
Perhaps this was why I’d opted for a book I already had—the familiarity of it brought a sense of comfort.
Sometimes I wonder how things would have panned out if I’d chosen a different book, one that wouldn’t have caught his eye so determinedly. As shy as he’d been back then and could still be to this day, would he have struck up a conversation if I’d been holding a copy of Nate the Great?
Whatever it was, whether the book or destiny, the next time our eyes met, he pushed his glasses up his nose and blurted out, “My name’s Spencer. But everyone calls me Twig.”
The nickname was unusual enough to distract me from the mean girls at recess. When I asked why everyone called him Twig, my chin only wobbled a little.
“Because I look like one,” he said, looking down at himself. And it was true. Twig was as stick-thin then as he is now, with knobby elbows and ashy knees.
“Do you like to be called Twig?” I asked. “Because if you don’t like it, I can call you Spencer.”
He seemed to seriously consider the question, as though nobody had ever asked him before. After a moment, he gave his head a singular, decisive nod. “I like the way it sounds.”
I introduced myself then, officially with a handshake. His was a bit noodle-like, but I didn’t hold it against him.
As we shuffled forward, he peeked at my book. “Do you like scary stories?”
“I love them.”
That’s when he told me all about the Woman of the Woods, and when he finished, he told me he liked my hair, too.
Normally, I didn’t mind my hair. But something about the haircut made it look extra red.
I looked around at my new classmates—the ones in front of us still waiting in line, and the rest quietly scrambling for the limited selection of bean bag chairs.
“I think I’m the only ginger in our whole grade. ”
“I’m the only one with brown skin,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t match anyone. Not even my family.” At my puzzled expression, he told me he was adopted. And as we made our way to a table—by then, all the bean bag chairs had been taken—he invited me to ride bikes with him after school.
He brought me to the Vandenberg Estate.
I remember peering through the wrought iron bars of the black gate, beholding a home that might as well have been a castle while he told me about the family that went missing. When he finished, I told him about my mother.
A sting pinches my temple.
I smack the spot. My hand comes away with a smear of blood and a smushed mosquito, injecting me with a momentary surge of vindictive glee.
I’m not normally a murderer of living things.
If I find a spider and don’t like where it is, I’ll catch it in a cup and move it elsewhere.
If I’m put in charge of a plant, I’ll go through extra pains to ensure it doesn’t suffer under my watch.
Once, I accidentally ran over a squirrel and assigned it an entire human life, complete with a squirrel husband and squirrel daughter waiting for its squirrel mother to come home.
I spent the rest of the day in mourning. But I draw the line with sanguinivores.
I wipe its guts on the tarp.
Twig ducks under a crumbling archway and slides the proton pack off his shoulders.
It’s not really a proton pack. It doesn’t suck up ghosts like the one from Ghostbusters.
But it does house our most important supernatural gear—a full-spectrum camera, a night-vision camcorder, an EMF meter, and a temperature gun, along with glow sticks and flashlights and an air horn in case of emergency.
This was Carl Calloway’s idea—Twig’s dad—who isn’t nearly as concerned with ghosts and cryptids as he is about a potential run in with a territorial bear or a mean coyote.
I unzip the front pouch, where Twig keeps our non-paranormal essentials.
He apologizes about being late and takes a seat beside me.
The tarp rustles beneath him. I dig past spare batteries, a power pack, a Swiss army knife, a first aid kit, some granola bars, and grab the can of bug spray.
Squeezing my eyes shut and holding my breath, I spray my face, my hands, and the air around us with no sympathy at all.
Die, bloodsuckers. Die.
When I’m finished, I wave my hands through the toxic cloud.
“Any sign of her?” Twig asks with a cough.
“Not yet,” I reply.
He removes the night-vision camcorder from his bag, along with a folded up tripod.
I tear open a granola bar. “So, why the late arrival?”
“Mom needed help cleaning up after the parade committee meeting, and I got cornered by Mrs. Tibbs, who went on a full tirade about her workload.” He lifts a finger and launches into the perfect Mrs. Tibbs impression.
“There’s only so many pioneer frocks one retired teacher can sew!
By the time we got her out the door, Dad was just getting home from his bowling league.
And get this.” He pushes his glasses up his nose, a habit leftover from elementary school.
“He told me that Denis Tulane is looking for a groundskeeper.”
I nearly choke on a bite of granola bar. “What?”
“He heard it from Red. Apparently, he did some repairs on the estate a couple days ago, and Mr. Tulane asked if he knew of anyone who might be interested in a groundskeeping position. Red mentioned Benny, but of course, Benny already has a job working for the city. So Benny told Red to tell Mr. Tulane about your dad.”
My mind has gone spastic—a swirl of chaotic energy.
Mr. Denis Tulane is the recluse I’ve been pestering with emails and handwritten letters ever since Twig and I started our podcast, Accounts of the Uncanny.
He’s the former butler for the Vandenbergs, the last known person to see the family of four alive before they vanished without a trace thirty years ago.
For five years after, the estate sat abandoned.
Then reports of trespassing and vandalism had Denis moving back in.
And there he has lived ever since. All by himself for the past two and a half decades.
“Why would he be looking for a groundskeeper now?” I ask.
“Because,” Twig says, his eyes twinkling in the dark. “A new Vandenberg family is moving to town.”