Out of the Swells #13 – Hillview Academy for Children of Excellence (part 2)

I stared into the dark doorway, the tall man having disappeared inside. 

“We need a couple minutes,” Eric called to him. A moment later the door slammed shut. 

“Again,” I said in a low voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to document what’s happening so I can get appropriate help for the family.”

“But you’re a tech guy, you’re not a researcher.”

“It’s a good question,” Judith commented. “And you’re sleeping in their guest room.”

“And with your history,” I pointed out. “ I thought you weren’t going to mess with this stuff anymore.”

Eric kicked at a crack in the pavement. Avoiding our eyes.

“You need to go home,” I said, quietly. 

“It will follow me,” he replied. “I can’t do that to Noah.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I had a dream, about a week before I got the footage from that ghost hunter. I’d never even heard of this place before then. But I had a dream about that building with the gymnasium. I was in there, shooting baskets, and these boys came out onto the court. They started teasing me, you know old high school stuff, making fun of me for being gay. It got nasty and they attacked me. It was incredibly vivid, but when I woke up I figured it was just a stress induced dream. I was achy though, my head hurt. When I went into the bathroom and saw my reflection… I had a black eye and my nose was bleeding. I had bruises on my legs and arms.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this before now?” Judith demanded.

“It scared me. I didn’t tell anyone. I haven’t been involved in this world in a long time, except for occasionally cleaning up footage for the guy who reached out to me about this place.” Eric blew out a breath in frustration. “So I had the dream and a few days later that guy, the one whose team attempted to stake out the gymnasium called me and asked me to take a look at the footage they’d captured. He wanted to see if I could brighten it up a bit. I agreed and… when I watched the footage, I recognized the gym. It was the same exact one from my dream. 

“I called the guy and he caught me up on what was happening on the property and, it felt like more than a coincidence that it had been six teenage boys who were said to haunt that building. It had been six kids who beat me up in my dream.”

“Yikes,” I muttered. “Strange, it’s not like you have any connection to this place.”

Eric looked guilty.

“Or do you?”

“Edgar Locke was my uncle. My mom’s brother.”

“Stop it!” I exclaimed, unable to keep in nervous laughter. “What in the world?”

“How’s that for a family secret?”

“Did you know this?” I asked Judith.

She shook her head, “This is the first I’m hearing it.”

“Hold on, that is weird. The two of you seem to be running parallel investigations here but aren’t sharing anything with each other. Why?”

“You don’t understand this place yet,” Judith explained. “It creeps up on you, it’s sneaky.”

“Ok, there you go, right there. Neither of you are acting like yourselves.” 

“We should go inside,” said Eric. 

“Oh, they can hang on a minute,” Judith snapped. “They act like we’re on the payroll.”

I eyed her. “I cannot stress enough how freaking weird the two of you are being.” I turned to Eric. “But back up, you looked at the footage, realized it was from your dream and knew it was your uncle’s place?”

“No, I didn’t know he was a relative until I came down here and did some research at the historical society. There wasn’t much information about the guy online, but there was plenty in the town newspaper.”

“So it was the dream that pushed you to come down here?”

“That and… the thing in our yard.”

I let out a noise of frustration. “I feel like I’m pulling teeth! What thing in your yard?!”

“There’s someone that looks like me that we kept seeing at the property line. Noah saw him – or it – first. He was outside with Hamish and saw me back in the woods. When I didn’t answer him when he called he walked towards where I’d been and apparently I disappeared after walking behind a tree. He said I was there and then I was gone and the thing that freaked him out was that Hamish didn’t follow him when he went to get me, Hamish went to the back door and scratched to be let back inside. 

“I saw the double on my way back from a run. At first I thought it was just another guy out jogging, but then I realized that we were, like, synchronized. We were in lock step. I stopped and he stopped. I put my hand to my side because I had a stitch and he did the same. It was freaky. His back was to me and I held a hand up to wave, to test it, to see if he would do the same. He did and then he turned around to look at me. I realized we were even wearing the same clothes, an old ratty Something Natural t-shirt I got ages ago on Nantucket. It was impossible. It was me. He just stared, then turned and jogged off down the road.”

“Oh,” I said, dread trickling through my body. I glanced over to my car, wanting to get in and speed home.

“Oh?” Judith parroted. “Does this ring a bell with you?”

“Maybe… Chris thought he saw me behind our house, past the fence. He was adamant it was me, but I wasn’t back there, I mean I never go back there. There’s no need.”

“You bury your medals at the fence line?” Judith guessed. 

I nodded.

“Well at least you know your protections are holding up.” 

“Cat had a little blond demon in her bedroom,” I pointed out.

“Because she invited it in,” Judith countered. “You cast it out.”

“Hold on, it presented as a little blond girl? You didn’t tell me that,” Eric said to Judith. 

“Why?”

“It’s in that house,” he said, motioning to the imposing structure beside us. “I’ve seen her. I thought it was weird because this was an all boys school and there is no record of Locke having his own children.”

“Maybe it’s not the same one,” I suggested hopefully. “I mean, they all seem to use the same playbook.”

“Do you really think there could be this many coincidences?” Judith said skeptically.

“Fine,” I acknowledged. “I get why you’re here,” I pointed to Eric. “But what does this place have to do with me? Or you?” I said, gesturing to Judith. 

“I had a dream too,” she admitted. “I was in that awful Chapel, walking down the center row towards the front and I saw myself, my double, walk out from behind a curtain and step up to the pulpit. In the dream I ran out of the church to get away from it and followed that path all the way up here. Right where we’re standing. But there was a sign, over there,” she gestured to the front of the house, “on it was the name of the school. When I woke up I looked the name up, did a little reading, but couldn’t find any significant connections to me, and then Eric called me that afternoon.”

“Geez,” I breathed.

“Have you had any weird dreams lately?” She asked.

“No, well, I mean, yes and they’re wicked vivid, but nothing about this place.”

“What are you dreaming about?” Eric asked. 

“Well, I had one dream where it had been pouring for days and I looked out our kitchen window and a river of water had washed away parts of our fence, the power lines were down all over the street and there was a massive tree on top of the car in the neighbor’s driveway.”

“Oh, I’m having those too,” Judith said, dismissively.

I shrugged. “Stress dreams.”

She shook her head. “No, glimpses.”

“Of what?” 

“What’s coming,” she said, sounding a touch annoyed. “You know what those things in the sinkhole told you a while back. Every sensitive I know isn’t so much sleeping now, as future tripping every night.”

“What things in a sinkhole?” Eric asked, wide eyed. [Check out Ghost Story #61, I swear to God, if this means we have to move again to hear what some sinkhole gnomes had to say about our future.]

“It’s a long story,” I offered, “But I mean, who trusts a gnome though? Right?” 

“I really regret losing touch the last few years,” Eric said, sincerely.

I chuckled. 

“What did they say would happen?”

“End times stuff,” I offered, vaguely. 

“What kind of end times stuff?”

“Lots of water,” I sighed. 

“Water,” Eric said quietly. 

I  looked at him and was about to ask what else he wasn’t telling us when Judith cut in.

“The simplest answer is that the veil is incredibly thin right now, and whatever’s been set into motion is accelerating. It’s either the actual end, or the last hurrah for these demons. ‘Darkest before the dawn’ keeps pinging through my mind on repeat.”

“Right, I said, absently.

“So you agree?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, something is coming, right? It’s been coming. It’s here. It’s like energizing this stuff. I don’t know. But yeah, I agree, the darkness has only begun.”

“You guys are freaking me out,” Eric muttered. “You’re saying everything’s going to get worse?”

“Yup,” we said in unison.

“Much worse,” Judith continued.

“I don’t know,” Eric pushed back, “Things might turn around.”

I pursed my lips. Not wanting to push too hard. It wasn’t fair to spread doom and gloom. It wasn’t fair to tell him that I’d stopped prepping. Aside from a week or so’s worth of food, the hand crank radio and some extra water, I didn’t see a point anymore. Every generation had its end time fear, the difference now was climate change. Judith may be hearing “darkest before the dawn,” all I hear is water. It wakes me up at night. A slow drip. A roaring tide. Devastation. Destruction. Despair.

“What are you thinking about?” Eric asked, “You look scary.”

“Nothing,” I replied, shaking my head. “Should we go in and get this over with?” 

“They’re not going to listen and they won’t leave,” he said.

“So what is our objective?” Judith asked.

“If they don’t want help, that’s on them,” I argued. “I’m more concerned with the two of you, I think you’re both under more that a touch of oppression. What if we just left now? I’ll call Biddy and she’ll get in touch with Father McGonagle.”

Judith and Eric exchanged a look. 

“It’s probably not a bad idea,” Eric admitted. 

“We have to give it one more shot,” Judith argued. “This family needs help.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Guards up,” Judith said as we climbed the steps.

“But I was so looking forward to meeting Eric’s psychotic uncle,” I replied dryly.

“He’s in the Chapel,” Eric said without missing a beat. 

Judith knocked at the door and we waited a surprising amount of time before it opened, a little boy stood there staring up at us.

“Hello, Crane,” Judith said. “May we come in?”

“Who’s that?” The boy asked, staring daggers at me.

“I’m Mrs. Sower,” I replied, disliking the child immediately. 

“Have you seen them too?” He asked.

I shook my head. “Who?”

“The ones who made him sick?”

Eric made a noise of disbelief. 

Judith cut in, “May we please come in,” she stepped around the boy without waiting for him to answer. Eric and I followed. The kid slammed the door harder than necessary then scurried up the stairs to the second floor. 

Judith continued down the central hallway, leading us to a dark kitchen at the back of the house. The tall man who’d come outside earlier sat at a kitchen table, a mess of papers and books scattered before him. 

“Well, what did you think?” He asked, directing the question towards me. 

“Um, the property is beautiful, I-”

“Hunter, this is Liz,” Judith interrupted, “She was able to confirm the accounts of ritual sacrifice in the Chapel. Additionally, she may have information about the location of the two missing boys. We’ll reach out to the local police to pass on the information she gathered.”

“Are they here? On the property?” A woman asked, making me jump. She’s appeared in the doorway to the adjoining dining room. She wore her extremely long dirty blond hair half up, her deep set ice blue eyes were bloodshot. She looked gaunt, fragile. 

“No,” I said, reassuringly, “They aren’t here. But I believe they are on a nearby property.”

“In the pond, right?” Said a small voice.

A boy, about nine or ten years old, peeked out from behind his mother. 

“That’s right,” I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. 

“In our pond?” Hunter demanded, standing.

“No,” I began. 

“What do you know about the boys?” The woman asked, turning on her son.
“Nothing,” he said quickly, running off. 

“Baron!” She yelled after him.

“Amelia,” Hunter said, his voice stern. “Let him go.”

We all stood there, unsure, the quiet stretching out. Finally unable to stand it any longer, I said, “Yeah, so, you all should move.”

Hunter crossed his arms defensively and shook his head. His wife said, “That’s not possible.”

“Anything’s possible,” I replied, trying to keep my tone light. 

“Financially, we can’t make a move right now,” growled Hunter. “Regardless, we are committed to the renovation of this property.”

“Just the house?” I asked, “or are you messing with the campus buildings as well?”

“We plan to address all the buildings on the property,” Amelia replied. “We believe once the campus is restored we can either rent or sell it to a private school and-”

“And get more children killed,” Judith cut in.

“We would never do anything to put children in harm,” Hunter argued.

“You have your kids living here now,” I pointed out without thinking then apologized. 

“I think it’s best if you all wrap things up and go,” Amelia said, her voice shaking. “We appreciate your help, Eric. I understand your interest because of the family connection, but I don’t know what else you are hoping to accomplish here.”

“Amelia’s right,” her husband added. “If you can’t offer any suggestions other than to simply pick up and leave everything we’ve put into this place behind, then I think we are done here.” 

A creaking pulled my attention and I looked over at a large wooden door. 

“The basement,” Amelia supplied, staring at the door. “Our oldest, Bree, has been down there all morning, woodworking.” She offered a tight smile. 

The door opened slowly and an eleven year old girl stepped up into the kitchen, gently closing the door behind her and sliding a chain lock in place before turning to look at us.  

“Sorry,” she said, apparently apologizing for interrupting the adults. 

“No problem, honey,” her mother offered, obviously anxious. 

The girl glanced around the room, staring at me for too long a moment so I introduced myself. She smiled and left the kitchen without another word. 

Hunter and Amelia exchanged a glance and I went ahead and dropped the guards I’d put back in place before I’d entered the house. The energy was absolutely dreadful. Tense, thick, oppressive. Enough to squeeze your throat to keep you from speaking. Judith began to explain to the couple what we’d discussed as we walked the property but I turned my attention to the house. 

I watched as the basement door opened, despite the chain lock, though no one else seemed to notice it. A short man with severely side swept, stiff hair stepped into the kitchen. He wiped his hands on his dark slacks. As he closed the door behind him I noticed that his leather shoes tracked something dark onto the kitchen floor. He moved across the kitchen to a door at the back of the house and stepped out onto a narrow enclosed porch. I followed. 

He stood, surveying the backyard, that strip of woods that stood between his property and the school campus. I heard low voices and rustling coming from the woods and continued to follow him as he strode across the yard. Stepping over a low stone wall, he continued on a path for a few steps, disappearing around a tight bunch of pine trees. 

It occurred to me for the first time since stepping outside that it had become nighttime. I wanted to back out of the woods, but felt compelled to follow. I regretted it the second he came back into view. Six boys stood motionless in the darkened woods. In a single file line they kept their heads down as though not daring to make eye contact with the man. 

I didn’t notice the figures on the ground until Edgar Locke kicked at each one in turn. 

“You’ve done well,” he said, in a low, dangerous voice. 

The boys remained silent. 

“Did anyone see you?”

The boy at the head of the line offered a quiet, “No, sir.” 

The bright moon reflected brightly on the pond visible through the trees behind them. 

“Move silently, quickly along the treeline,” Edgar ordered, “You’ll carry them to the Chapel and we will begin.”

Without a word the boys split into two groups. Picking up the dripping bodies off the ground. A boy to each arm, one to carry the legs. They moved efficiently, unnaturally quiet through the underbrush. 

Edgar watched them for a time before heading out towards the pond, where he stood hands behind his back, as though appraising the campus. After a time his hand moved to his hip, pushing aside his overcoat. He pulled out a dagger. I could see it clear as day in the moonlight. He strode purposefully around the pond, behind the dormitory obviously headed for the Chapel. I stood frozen in place, unwilling to follow him to witness how the nightmare would continue to unfold.

“Liz?” Judith’s voice called, gently. 

I closed my eyes, rubbing at them with my hands, desperately wanting to erase what I’d just witnessed. When I looked around me again it was daytime, branches around me whipped in a bitter wind. The gray sky above, threatening icy rain. 

“I’ve seen things before,” I said shakily, “but not like this. It’s one thing to see some dead people, or gnomes, or talk to a fucking demon in a finished basement, but I did not sign up for this.”

Judith tried to take my arm, to lead me out of the woods, but I shook her off and stormed back towards the house. Eric stood in the yard a few steps beyond the fieldstone wall. Hunter and Amelia, just outside the back door. 

“What is it?” Amelia called.

“Give us a minute,” Judith called back. Then to me, “What did you see?”

“Those boys. I saw those fucking little boys, again!” I said, unable to keep my voice down, despite Judith holding her hands out as if to calm me.

Eric was at my side. “What happened?”

“They drowned those little boys in that pond. Your uncle had the older ones carry them to the Chapel. I don’t know, I don’t know what they did to them, but they were a sacrifice. He… oh my God,” I said, attempting to calm myself down. “I’m never going to sleep again. I’m never letting my kids out of my sight again. How can these fucking people stay here when they have children?”

“Shhh,” Judith admonished. 

“No!” I said, anger an easier choice than the panic and fear that threatened to overtake me. “Your kids are in danger.” I stalked across the yard to the couple who looked frightened – of me of all things. “You are idiots if you stay here. That man is still here and he’s active and powerful. Not to mention the little hench teens that he’s got holed up in that gym. If you don’t get your kids out of here immediately then whatever happens to them… their blood is on your hands.”

“It’s not that simple,” Amelia began.
I spun around, unwilling to listen.

I knew I probably looked like a raving lunatic. But I was terrified. And pissed. I would never get those images out of my mind. I was angry with Eric and Judith and those two half possessed people. But mostly I was angry with myself for letting my guards down and ignoring Judith’s warning because I couldn’t ignore my curiosity. As it was I struggled, and I mean struggled, to let my kids out of my sight. School shootings, kidnappings, child trafficking, pedofiles, people driving while texting, the risk of choking, or drowning, or not looking both ways and stepping off the curb at exactly the wrong moment. Though none of it had happened, thank God, I could still see it all in my mind in horrible possibility. 

“Goddamnit!” I muttered, stalking around to the front of the house. I could hear Eric talking to Amelia and Hunter, and sensed Judith following right behind me. 

I started the car remotely with my key. 

“Liz!” Judith demanded. “Slow the fuck down.” 

“I’m not spending another second here,” I said. “I can’t take it. I passed a diner in town on the way here, please, just… meet me there okay?”

It had been so long since I’d had a good old fashioned panic attack that I didn’t recognize what was happening until I was a few miles from the house. I sat in the car in the diner parking lot, breathing slowly in an attempt to calm down. I checked my phone, no messages. It was two-forty five, the day had flown by. The kids would all be home from school in a few minutes. I promised Chris I would be home well before dark. If I left by four I’d make it with time to spare. I went inside the diner. 

“Well, that was exciting,” Judith said a few short minutes later, sliding in beside me as Eric took the booth across from us. 

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“I’m fine, embarrassed, but a million times better now that I’m away from that hellhole,” I admitted. “What did they say?”

“You scared the hell out of them,” she said. 

“Ugh, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You may have shocked them out of whatever spell they’ve been under. Maybe they’ll see straight and get their kids out of there.” 

A waitress came over to take their orders. I’d already ordered a coffee and a stack of pancakes, having missed lunch. 

“I feel like you guys were tiptoeing around those people,” I said. “Were you afraid of them?”

“That little one scared the hell out of me,” Eric admitted.

“Really though,” I said, after sipping my coffee. “You both need to do a cleansing or something. You are definitely being influenced.”

“Maybe so,” Judith agreed, “so what’s the answer? Why were we all called down here.”

“Eric had a psychotic uncle, you had a dream and then you called me.”

“Are you forgetting that we caught Cat’s name on thay EVP?” Judith pointed out.

“Well, I mean, did you though? What did it say, ‘Cat’s cradle will fall?’”

“That’s quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”

“How involved are you with all of this?” I asked Eric. “I mean, the paranormal investigations. Are you totally back at it?”

“Not really, I do a little tech stuff here and there when people ask, but yeah. This is the first time in a long time I’ve actually gotten personally involved.”

“Right, well,” I said, sighing, “I think this is explained easily enough. Your uncle was a demon worshiping psycho who conjured something terrible on that property. It was bound to reach out to you at some point to try and drag you in. It worked. Then you,” I looked to Judith, “Had a dream, and as you admit, we’re all having weird dreams right now because the veil is thin because the fucking apocalypse is on the horizon, 

“Who said anything about the apocalypse?” Eric asked, nervously. 

“Not me,” Judith said, raising her hands defensively.

“It’s just a little theory I’m working through,” I said.

The waitress returned with my pancakes, Eric’s scrambled egg plate and Judith’s coffee.

“Yum!” I enthused digging in.

Eric pushed his plate to the side. “Are you saying this because you’ve had some sort of psychic download or dream or are you saying this because it’s your opinion?”

“I’m not psychic,” I corrected, before taking a big bite. 

“But you’ve had prophetic dreams,” he pointed out.

“We all have,” Judith commented. “You’ve had them too.”

He stared at her wide-eyed. “How do you know that?”

“Because I am psychic. Liz just gets pings of knowing and talks to the dead and… other things.”

“What did you dream about?” I asked, a very bad feeling running through me.  

“The Chapel…”

“And?” Judith prompted. 

Eric leaned forward. “A wave,” he said in a low voice. “It starts on the coast, the east coast, I think… I’m pretty sure. It plays out like a flip book of images. It’s dark out, but it’s a weird dusky dark, not natural. The beach, birds flying inland, the wave, but it’s not a normal wave, there are things in the water. People, both dead and alive. Then water flowing through streets, in a coastal town, I think maybe in Maine? Then New York City. It must be after because the streets are flooded. It’s silent. Then a flash and I am at the edge of a corn field. There is a beautiful, clear blue sky overhead. The temperature is perfect, there’s a nice breeze, it’s the perfect day. And then I hear something overhead, it’s not a plane, I’ve never heard anything like it before, and there is a huge boom. It brings me to my knees. The entire ground shakes. I open my eyes and I am in San Francisco. Up at the top of a hill looking down. It’s nighttime and there are no lights. No power. I can hear someone screaming and then gunshots and then more screaming. I turn around and there is a line of troops behind me but as they come closer they are in black uniforms so I’m not sure if maybe they are police? One of them lifts their weapon, ‘You are in violation of curfew.’ I close my eyes waiting for the end and when I open them I am back on the beach. The wave is coming towards me and it all plays out again and again and again.”

We sat in silence. I’d lost my appetite. 

“Is it the same every time?” Judith asked. 

“It had been,” Eric admitted. “Until last night.”

“Oh great,” I sighed.

“What changed?” I pressed. 

“Just the very beginning, but the new part didn’t repeat through like the rest of it does, it was just the first cycle. So I don’t know if it means anything.”

“What was it?” Judith asked gently. 

“I was in a field, a sports field, behind a high school. It is so vivid, it feels more like a memory. So I’m with a group of people, not just high school kids, it’s like a gathering, a celebration. There’s a countdown happening on the football field scoreboard. There are four minutes and eight seconds left when I first look at it. A woman comes by with a basket of glasses, I take a pair and she hands them out to all the people around me. She’s saying, ‘Don’t look at it without those glasses!’ in a happy voice and she has a southern accent. 

“There are kids running through the crowd with these cute headbands on, a sun bobbing on one side and a moon on the other. I’m thinking what a nice community it is, there’s music playing but I don’t really notice until someone turns it off and says ‘Let the countdown begin!’ The sky darkens slowly as we count down from sixty. Everyone has their glasses on, it gets darker and darker. I should be looking up but I’m not, I’m looking around at everyone else and all of a sudden I am terrified. There are ooh’s and ahh’s as we get down to zero. Zero hits, there is silence, and then I am on the beach and the cycle begins.”

“They’re showing you when,” Judith said after a long moment of silence. 

“Maybe it’s just a dream,” I suggested, trying to convince myself. 

“It doesn’t feel like a dream,” Eric admitted.

“But maybe it’s just symbolic,” I pressed.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Eric asked.

“I suggest we pay the bill and go home,” Judith replied.

“I need to pick up some things back at the house,” Eric said.

Judith shook her head. “You have a chance to leave, and you need to take it. I’m not saying that family isn’t in trouble and deserves help, but we aren’t going to be the ones to give it. I’ll have Biddy send McGonagle down there-”

“They don’t trust religious figures,” Eirc pointed out.
“Neither do I,” said Judith, “But given the way this has all played out, I think we are all being given a chance to focus our attention on what actually matters. This is like a specifically designed trap to keep us distracted.”

“Maybe it’s just a distraction for you, but I know there’s a reason I came down here. Edgar Locke was my uncle.”

“One you didn’t know anything about until you started looking into it, right?” I argued. “Did you even know you had an uncle?”

“No, my mom never even mentioned having a brother. But would you bring him up if he was your brother?”

“No,” I conceded. “But something is just… off here. Everything in me wanted to turn around the second I started the drive down. We shouldn’t be here. None of us.”

Eric shook his head. “I can’t just leave this unfinished.”

“But what else can you possibly do? You’ve been here two weeks, you’ve documented all you can, they won’t listen to your advice.” 

“The family-” he began.

“Judith will call in an exorcist. You’ve done your best, there is absolutely no reason for you to put yourself in any further danger.”

Eric slammed his palm against the table. “I hear you, alright? I get it. I’m not just going to abandon the campus.”

Judith and I exchanged a look. 

“There it is,” she said quietly.

Eric closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m exhausted.”

“And you’re not thinking clearly,” I pressed. “Please listen to us.”

“Besides,” Judith added, “if that recurring dream of yours holds even an ounce of accuracy, why would you want to waste another second on this demonic uncle of yours? Let him rot. We’re going to need all the energy we can get to face what’s coming.”

“Hey.”

Startled, I looked over, expecting to see the waitress. It was Claire.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded.

“Everything is fine. But you need to head home.”

“What happened?”

“Who is she talking to?” Eric asked, looking thoroughly freaked out. 

“Her guide,” Judith said, moving so that I could get out of the booth.

I reached into my jacket pocket for my wallet and took out money to put on the table. As I did, my cell phone began buzzing. 

I looked at Claire. Panicked. 

“It’s fine,” she insisted.

“Hello?”

“Hey! Are you home already?”

“No, what’s going on?”

“Huh, Max just called and said you were standing across the street?”

“Why aren’t you home?” I nearly screeched.

Chris explained he had to pick up a set of keys in Needham from a client and that he’d left Max in charge. 

“I’m still in Connecticut,” I told him, my voice shaking. “How long will it take you to get home?”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Call me as soon as you get home. Go right inside. You told them to stay inside, right?”

“Yeah, Joey saw you and went to open the door but Cat stopped her.”
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m leaving right now, I’ll be home in two hours.” 

“What’s happening at home?” asked Judith. 

“The girls saw me standing across the street from the house.”

“Shit,” Eric muttered. 

“Who the hell is that?” Claire asked, moving back from the table.

“That’s Eric, he worked with Biddy, he’s fine. I’ve known him since-”

“Not him, that guy,” she pointed just to the right of Eric, who looked positively terrified watching me talk to what he only saw as thin air. 

I stared, and then a face came into focus. There was a man, sitting beside Eric in the booth. 

Judith gasped. 

“What? What the hell are you looking at?” Eric yelled, causing a few diners to stare.

“I didn’t know he was here,” I said.

“How could you miss him?” Claire demanded. “I’m going back to the house to keep an eye on things. I think they’re safe. Nothing can cross the protections you have in place.”

And she was gone. Leaving us with Edgar Locke’s ghost.

“I think you have an attachment,” Judith told Eric.  

The ghost snarled.

Eric shook his head. “Not possible. I never take my medallion off, it’s been blessed.” He pulled a chain holding the St. Benedict’s medal out from under his shirt.

“That may be, but he’s there all the same.”

“Who?”

“Your uncle,” I said, quietly, sliding back into the booth beside Judith. “You need to go home, I’ll call Biddy on the way. We need to get out of this place.” 

“I can’t bring something home to Noah.”

“Then you’ll stay at a hotel until it’s sorted,” Judith said matter-of-factly. “Liz is right. This has been a distraction to get us away from home.” She motioned to the waitress for the check. “You go,” she told me. “I’ll follow to make sure he makes it back safely.”

“I need to pick up equipment at the house,” Eric argued.

“You have to get out of here while you still can,”  I insisted, knowing deep in my bones that it might already be too late.

Out of the Swells – Hillview Academy for Children of Excellence (part 1)

I assume you are here with me right now because you like a little scare, but nothing too… violent or disturbing. I’m sure we all have images from movies or TV shows (or Stephen King novels for that matter) that scarred us. The ones that let us know where our personal line is in terms of horrific content. I have several images that haunt me because it took me a long time to learn what to stay away from in the thriller/horror genre. For example, Tina in the body bag being dragged by an unseen hand down the high school hallway in Nightmare on Elm Street. The entirety of Natural Born Killers, I literally do not remember anything about that movie, I fully blocked it out, but I know it really really bothered me. That scene in American History X. And the cafeteria fight in Lean on Me. I watched that one home alone, far too young. That man’s head… Jesus. 

I actually think that scene was the first where I thought, fuck, I will carry that with me forever. I can’t ever unsee that. I don’t have many vivid memories from childhood, but that is one of them. After watching that scene, and in my defense, that movie comes at you fast, I ran out of our family room, away from the television and stood beneath a door frame in our kitchen. As if my instinct was to hide from what I’d seen. The realization washed over me that I would have to work really hard to not envision what I’d just watched over and over and over again. And I was right. Even now, those scenes I just mentioned were just waiting right in the wings of my mind for me to pull up. Since then I’ve honed my personal list of red flags that let me know when a piece of media isn’t for me and I need to stop it before I watch something my brain will torment me with for years. 

I’m not talking about current events. Bearing witness to the world, to history repeating itself, to our present reality is different. There are things I know I need to see and know and try to understand and learn from and change. What I’m talking about here is avoiding ever again seeing anything close to Se7en. The spaghetti. The dangling car air fresheners. Ugh. Another image just came to the forefront that I’d forgotten. Interior car door locks sharpened into points and slicing into fingers. I thought that was from Se7en but I looked it up, it’s from The Bone Collector. Another movie I had no business watching. What I’m getting at here is that I don’t want any more of it. However, those personal red flags don’t stop me from clicking the button to uncover a post on social media offering a warning of disturbing content. My curiosity almost always wins out. 

The drive to north western Connecticut to visit the grounds of the old Hillview Academy for Children of Excellence was… anxiety ridden. To distract myself on the way down I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Pod Mortem. This isn’t an ad, you all just know I like sharing the things I like, because we all seem to enjoy similar things. So, in keeping with the theme of my curiosity about horror, but knowing I have a line, Pod Mortem, recaps horror movies – in fun, funny, smart amazing detail – which allows me to know what happens without actually having to watch them myself. I’m fine to watch movies I personally deem horror light, like found footage, all those Conjuring type movies, monster movies like Jaws or Cloverfield. I can take a moderate amount of violence as long as there is make-believe involved. But slashers, home invasion or abduction movies, The Purge and Saw of it all… count me out. I have to be careful with books too because once I start, if the story is good, I have a very difficult time putting it down because, again, I need to know what happens. However, words on a page instantly become a movie in my mind so, for instance, my brain simply loves to occasionally drag out a couple of scenes from Jack Ketchum’s, Off Season, a bloody misogynistic romp into cannibalism, and play them over and over again. Likewise, I should have put down Anybody Home? By Michael Seidlinger immediately. I knew it would be too much for me. But it was so compelling that I plowed ahead, mental health be damned. 

So in Pod Mortem, I found a sneaky little cheat code in my never ending quest to find out what happened. For instance, without it I would have no idea what happened in Hereditary (listening to their recap actually gave me the courage to try watching it, though I still fast forwarded through most of the film), The Purge, well, turns out I’m not really missing anything there, but Talk to Me – I knew I couldn’t watch it, I even had to even skip over a couple parts in the recap, but I was so happy to listen to the hosts tell me the story start to finish. 

All of this rambling about curiosity and knowing when I absolutely need to pump the brakes because I’m headed towards something I won’t be able to shake has been on my mind because the feeling I had about going to Hillview Academy is the same feeling I have when I know I need to shut the book, turn off the television, quickly scroll past the post. I was right. This rambling on and on is my anxious, round about way of offering a content warning. We aren’t in cozy horror land anymore. We’re far out of the Swells. This ones demonic. We’re headed to an old school, which obviously involves kids. Consider this your moment to choose “skip episode” or “listen anyway.” 

Okay, for those of you who are still here (I bet you kept listening to the Black Eyed Kids story too, which, come to think of it, is actually kind of a coincidence actually. You’ll see…), here is a little background. 

Hillview Academy was in operation from 1963 through 1976. Thirteen short, horrific years. So over the top awful, in fact, that it was closed for endangering children in the seventies. Let that sink in. Serving young men in grades six through twelve, the school motto was Excellence at all costs. Though it was built to house and educate up to 250 boys, enrollment never climbed to above 65. When it was finally shut down, there were just 32 students enrolled. 

Hillview Academy Headmaster and founder, Edgar Locke, believed young minds were to be molded to reflect the coming age. The coming age he envisioned was one of increasing centralized global power and wealth and all the necessary bloodshed that implied. His intention was to raise young men who could not only survive, but thrive in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. By the time the school closed, two boys had gone missing and seven people were dead, including the Headmaster.

I know, it didn’t sound very Connecticut private school to me either, and it wasn’t really on anyone’s radar – until it was. Students came from around the country, Edgar Locke having a seemingly preternatural ability to identify wealthy families with a similar worldview. You might ask why you’ve never heard of Hillview Academy, I did. The answer is as unsatisfying as it is predictable. Hush money and lots of it. 

I won’t go into detail about the location of the old Academy, because it now serves as the personal home of the Ashcroft family (dad – Hunter, mom – Amelia, daughter – Bree, 11, son – Baron, 9, and son – Crane, 5 – all names changed, of course). Suffice it to say, the Academy grounds lurk between the edge of a massive untamed forest and the outskirts of a rural town. A place you might rightly assume where the town people wouldn’t have the desire or time to pay any attention to what was happening on that remote campus for privileged children. And that was by design. Edgar Locke couldn’t carry out his plans with prying eyes. 

It won’t surprise you to hear that I am a touch directionally challenged so I had a bit of a time finding the entrance to the campus. Service wasn’t great and my Waze app had some difficulty. I once actually took a wrong turn on my way home from Boston to Syracuse, I was listening to a book on tape (literally, it was the days of books on cassette tape) and I called my dad to tell him I was seeing signs for the Geo Washington Bridge, an abbreviation my dumb brain didn’t realize was for the George Washington Bridge. I’d made it damn near to New York City before it even dawned on me that I’d driven the wrong way for hours. 

Anyhow, I eventually found the entrance off a long forest lined road, the drive narrowed by the encroaching woods. The drive had obviously been neglected for some time. I was too distracted by avoiding the potholes to pay attention to the building ahead. I parked behind a forest green Jeep Wrangler and got out of the car to stretch. 

As I pulled on a warm hat and oversized scarf, I took in the surroundings.  A stately brick Georgian home stood at the top of the curve of the driveway. What struck me was the quiet and I wondered if maybe my car bumping along the drive had scared the birds away. I took a few tentative steps towards the house, unnerved, no desire at all to approach it. 

Thankfully, the sound of a car coming down the drive caused me to turn away from the house. Judith parked behind me and got out, hands full with a tray of coffees. 

She kicked the door of her SUV closed behind her. “Have you been here long” 

“Just got here,” I replied, accepting a coffee. 

“You made good timing,” she commented, looking at her watch. I had. It was only eight-thirty.

Just then the front door to the house swung open. A man stepped outside, shutting the door behind him, a big smile on his face. “There you are. You brought coffee!” 

“Morning, Eric. How did you sleep?”

Eric? It took me a beat to recognize him. 

“How are you, Liz? It’s been too long.”

 “You have a beard!” I said dumbly, giving him a hug. 

He rubbed a hand over his cheek. 

“Sorry, I didn’t recognize you right away,” I laughed. “What are you doing here?”

“I got a lead on this place, spent some time here and realized what a problem these people had on their hands so I reached out to Judith.”

“But, I mean, I thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with anything like this after what happened,” I said. [Eric was Biddy’s old ghost hunting team’s tech guy. For the horrific thing that happened to him, listen to Ghost Story #14 Kids are the fucking worst] 

“Old habits die hard,” he joked. 

“I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” I said looking between them. 

“You know how small this world is,” said Judith.

“How are you? How is Noah?” I asked, referring to his husband.

“We’re good, really good.” Eric took his phone out of his back pocket. “Look.”

“Shut up!” I exclaimed, grabbing the phone from him for a closer look. “A westie!”

“I’ve been meaning to text you a photo. His name is Hamish.”

“Of course it is,” I laughed. “He’s perfect.”

“You still have your guys?”

“Oh, no, they passed a couple years ago. We had a little girl westie, too. But she’s gone. We have Wallace now,” I got my phone out. “And Bernie and Ivy.”

“That’s quite the crew.”

“Hodge podge,” I laughed. “Anyway, it’s good to see you. What’s the story here? I hate it already.”

“Let’s walk,” Judith suggested, glancing up at the house. I followed them to a brick path that curved around the side of the house. In the back yard it transitioned to a dirt path that passed through a pretty thick line of pines and oak trees, before opening up to a view of the campus. 

Before us was a roughly oval shaped pond, its edges filled with cattails ( I couldn’t remember what they were called so I just googled “what are those pond plants that look like hot dogs” and google knew exactly what I meant, the internet is a wonderful thing). 

Beyond the body of water, (“Gray Pond,” Eric supplied,) there was a large three story brick building, set back to its left a smaller two story brick building and set back to its right a long narrow  building that extended far back into the woods beyond. Plywood covered most of the first floor windows. The grounds were overgrown, but the grass to either side of the path had been weed-wacked allowing us to walk beside one another.

“The one in the center held the classrooms, the one to our right was a gym/cafeteria/infirmary, and the four story on the left, Astaroth Hall,” Judith emphasized, “was a dormitory with beds for 190 students.”

“Astaroth?” 

Eric already had his phone out, he read, “From Wikipedia, ‘Astaroth is the prince of accusers and inquisitors… yada yada, uh, he is depicted as a nude man with feathered wings, wearing a crown, holding a serpent in one hand, and riding a beast with dragon-like wings and a serpent-like tail.’”

“Who named it?”

“The headmaster,” said Eric. We continued on the path beside the pond. “Take a look at the statue above the entrance.”

Sure enough, there was a stone sculpture of a crowned naked, winged man clutching a snake and sitting atop a dragon. 

“That’s a little on the nose,” I said. “Does the family own this entire campus?”

“Yeah, they told me it was a good deal because the town didn’t want it falling any further into disrepair. In purchasing the campus along with the main house, the Ashcrofts agreed to keep up the grounds.” 

As we curved nearer the dormitory, I could see the buildings were in rough shape. “So they’ve just closed the buildings?” I assumed. 

“Oh, no. They’re working to refurbish them,” Judith corrected.

“For what?”

“To honor the school’s history,” Eric said, his tone somewhat sarcastic.

“I take it the whole place is brutally haunted,” I guessed.

“Yeah, and the absolute worst of it is in the house.”

“Are we walking back into those woods?” I asked. The feeling of dread had been increasing with every single step we took. 

“No, there’s another building we want to show you,” Eric explained. 

“No Claire, huh?” Judith asked.

“No, she, uh, said she wasn’t interested in visiting a demon nest.”

Judith nodded. “Kind of like that house on Rockridge.”

“You went to that pond?” Eric said, obviously upset. 

“Not the pond, a house on that street, there was… a demon there. Hold on,” I said, stopping in place. “You think he’s here?”

“No, no. Not necessarily,” Judith replied, “but, as we know, the guides tend to stay away when there’s a really powerful demon around.”

We continued on the path, Eric detailing some of the strange practices at the school.

“Parents were discouraged from contacting the kids. Letters were allowed weekly, sent on Monday mornings only. Incoming mail delivered to the boys on Wednesdays. All communication in and out was closely monitored. Phone calls were discouraged except under extreme circumstances.”

“So the children were being abused,” I guessed.

“Absolutely. I’ve spent some time in the historical society in town. There isn’t a lot of information about the school, until the missing kids and the deaths came out, but once that was exposed a lot of people from town wanted to share things they’d observed. A man who worked on the grounds witnessed organized fights between the boys, apparently the teachers and headmaster looked on as the kids fought it out with what he described as ‘savage brutality.’ A woman who worked in the cafeteria came upon a group of boys standing around a squirrel they’d obviously stoned to death and just as she began to admonish them, the headmaster strolled up and told her to mind her station. It was her opinion that he’d been watching the boys and let them do it. She was fired later that week. There are rumors of corporal punishment, but no proof. The kids completely clammed up when the authorities questioned them. Whatever they’d been told, or threatened with, they didn’t speak a word of what really happened here.” 

“And the parents had no idea?”

“They must have had some idea of how militant Locke was in his beliefs. But from what I could uncover anyway, none of them admitted to knowing just how brutal things were here.”

“You have your guards up?” Judith cut in abruptly.

It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me. “Oh, yes. I do.”

“Good.”

When she didn’t elaborate I said, “It’s so damn quiet. You’d think these woods would be a bit noisier. I mean my street is super busy and the bird chirping is distracting there.” 

I’d been looking into the dense stretch of trees beside us, as we curved around the back of the building Judith and Eric stopped. Both staring ahead.

“What is that?” I breathed.

“The Chapel,” Eric answered in a low voice, as though he were afraid the building would hear us. 

The woods had all but reclaimed the small wooden structure. Trees towered above, moss covered its roof, that vine you find in New England woods, I don’t know what it’s called, again I Googled and I think it might be Bittersweet, draped itself over the building. It being early February, the forest was all mushroom gray bark and vine, so it looked as though the building, painted a similar shade, was a part of the landscape. 

“Don’t see a lot of dark gray wooden Chapels,” I said, making a weak attempt at humor. 

Judith moved forward without a word. 

Eric and I followed. 

The closer we got the more that, “turn off the movie, put the book down, scroll past the post you idiot,” feeling grew. 

I stopped when we were ten feet from the Chapel entrance. “We’re not going in there are we?”

“That was the idea,” Judith said shortly. I knew she wasn’t annoyed with me, but that she was feeling just as tense as I was. 

“Catch me up, first. What in the hell happened here?”

Eric began to speak but Judith shushed him. “See what you can see,” she directed.

I shook my head.
“It’s why we’re here,” she pressed.

“Fine,” I huffed. I closed my eyes and let my guard down. 

The first thing that I noticed was the noise. Birds began chirping. I opened my eyes, “Oh!” I said, “there they are.” 

Eric shifted beside me, taking a step back.

I gazed around the Chapel, counting five cardinals and three blue jays. There were sparrows too. Some in the trees, some pecking on the ground. Rustling in the underbrush startled me. A squirrel and then three rabbits took tentative steps towards us. 

“Oh! Hello,” I said quietly. “They mustn’t see many people, no fear.” I commented. And then, from out of the shadows behind the building came a parade of cats, several dogs of various breeds, and a fucking goat.

“Oh no,” I whispered. The animals stood before us, watching. “No, no, no. I can’t do this. This is too much.” 

“What do you see?” Eric asked, having taken another step back. 

“What the fuck is this place?” I demanded, to no one in particular. 

“Edgar Locke created his own brand of devil worship.”

“What the hell are you seeing?” Eric demanded.

“Animals, a lot of animals,” I said, sadly. I walked forward, the sad menagerie eying me warily. “I’m sorry,” I offered. “You all can go.” I reached out to a small ginger cat, who rubbed against my hand. It felt like a tingle. “Go on now, you don’t have to stay here. Thank you for showing me. I am so sorry.” 

Slowly, the forest quieted again as the birds faded away. I let out a sob as a dog nuzzled my arm and faded away. 

“You really can see this stuff,” Eric said, sounding genuinely surprised. 

I wiped at my eyes and stood, taking a deep breath before turning around. “You could have warned me,” I said to Judith.

“We weren’t sure,” Eric offered. “There were rumors of sacrifice and-”

I held up my hands. “Stop. I have a pretty good idea of what went down here, I do not want details.” 

“Daily mass was mandatory,” said Judith. “Offerings were made on Sunday evening service.”

I shuddered. “In front of the kids?”

“They had them participate,” said Eric.

“And the parents had no idea?” I said, equal parts skeptical and horrified. 

“They knew they were sending their children to an incredibly strict, supposedly Christian values based military adjacent type learning environment,” Eric explained. “None came forward to say they knew about the, uh, violence that happened here.”

I took a deep breath, “Okay. So do we have to go in there or what?”

“No way,” said Eric, as Judith said, “We probably should.”

“Well, then,” I laughed. 

Eric sighed and put his hands on his hips. “We need to decide our ultimate objective here.”

“To help the family,” Judith replied. 

“Sure, but how are we supposed to do that? What was described to me before coming was a typical demonic infestation. I thought we were coming to document and clear things out. I don’t think that is possible anymore.” 

“Agreed,” said Judith.

They both looked at me. “What?”

“We’re at an impasse and need you to weigh in,” said Judith. 

“Ok, this place feels like the literal edge of hell and no one should live here. Ever again.”

They exchanged a look. 

“I’m not going in that building,” I said after a length of frustrated silence, “Let’s keep going.”

We continued along the path that curved in front of the creepy Chapel. The trail led us towards the building that held the gym, cafeteria and infirmary. Most of the windows in the back of the campus buildings were not boarded up like the ones out front. The dark windows reflected the winter woods. It was unsettling. 

I fought the urge to run back to my car and get the hell out of there with every step. 

“How long have you been investigating this place?” I asked.  

“This is my second week,” said Eric. 

“Sleeping here?”

He nodded.

“I’ve been back and forth since mid January,” Judith said. “But I stay in a hotel a town over.”

“Are you just documenting?”

“Yes, and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Did the family reach out to you?”

“The grandfather requested a wellness check. He’s in New Jersey and couldn’t get in touch with them for two full days. They’d pulled the kids from school and had begun homeschooling them about a month prior, which from what he said was out of character for them, so he got worried. 

“The police went in, mom, dad and the three kids were fine. Odd, but fine. One of the police officers who came for the check is a member of a local ghost hunting group. She asked if the family would ever be open to letting the group run an investigation on the property. She was local and had heard stories. The dad was hesitant but mom pushed to allow them to do it. She’d seen strange things in the woods when she’d walked the property and she kept finding sharp objects stuck into the furniture and floors.”

“Sharp objects?”

“Scissors, knives, a metal ruler, pencils.”

“Geez.” 

“The ghost hunting team came in late January, with three investigators, one of them is a guy I know from way back, that’s who pulled me into this,” Eric continued. “Their plan was to set up their equipment on a Friday afternoon, camp out in the gymnasium through the weekend and pack everything up Sunday.”

“It must have been freezing in that building.”

“I’m sure it was but they didn’t even make it through the first night.” 

“I’m not surprised,” I commented, picking up on the godawful vibes from the hulking building beside us.

“They’d done the initial walk through and were in the middle of setting up cameras in different parts of the building. One of the guys was trying to get proper placement for a camera in the infirmary and their teammate who was watching the feed to help direct the placement saw-”

Suddenly there was loud splashing behind us. I spun around, letting out a yelp. 

Eric latched onto my arm. “What?” He yelled out, “What the fuck?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Jesus, you’re jumpier than I am.”

“You’d be jumpy too if you’d spent two weeks here.” 

“What happened?” Judith demanded. “What did you hear?”

“Hold on, what’s going on with you? Why aren’t you experiencing anything?” I demanded.

“I’ve got my walls up, high and tight. I’ve seen plenty.”

I just stared at her. 

“So what did you hear?” Eric pressed.

“Big splashing in the pond, and maybe a boy’s voice call out.”

They exchanged a meaningful look. 

“What?”

“Did you read anything about this place before you came down here?” Judith asked. 

“The six dead children?” I guessed.

“Do you know how they died?”

“Let me guess, it had something to do with that pond.”

“It was a suicide pact,” Judith replied. “They believe one boy coerced the others, but we’re certain Edgar Locke influenced them.”

I stared at the pond’s murky waters, those hot dog topped reeds along the edge bobbing in the cold breeze. A small hand pushed a clump of weeds aside. A boy, water dripping from his hair stared at me, his face expressionless. I took a step forward, resisting the urge to run over and drag him out of the water to get him inside, to warmth. 

“That little boy didn’t make a suicide pact,” I whispered.

“The kids who died by suicide were all older teens,” Eric offered.

“Then who…” I trailed off as something bobbed to the pond’s surface. The boy in the reeds watched the form float in the gently rippling water. “Fuck,” I breathed. “Two kids went missing, right?”
“Third graders, they never found them. The school pushed the narrative that they’d wandered off into the woods. Search dogs scented the pond and did lead the team to one of the boy’s shoes a ways back behind the Chapel.”

“They’re not in the woods. That was an attempt to throw off the search. They’re in a pond.”

“They can’t be in that pond, it was-” Eric began.

“They’re not in that pond, they were killed in this pond but… there’s another small pond, a really small pond. Just outside of town. Behind a farm… um, with brown and white cows. They were almost found when we had that drought a couple summers back but now with all the rain…” I closed my eyes for a moment, it was so awful. When I opened them the boys were gone. 

“I’ll get in touch with the guy I know in that ghost hunting group that came here, that police officer will want to talk to you.”

I nodded, turning away from the water and we walked by silent agreement back towards the front of the property. 

“You hadn’t picked up on any of that?” The question was directed at Judith.

“No. I’ve only tried to get a sense of the family home since I encountered the six boys in that gymnasium building on my second visit here. I shut myself down on the campus grounds after that. ”

“I’m guessing those six kids are why the ghost hunting team didn’t make it through the night?”

“Yup,” Eric affirmed. 

“Their spirits are being held,” Judith explained. “They’ve become tainted. Corrupted.”

We’d made it back to the driveway, the path having led us all the way around the campus. The wind had picked up and I pulled my scarf up over my nose. The brick home towered before us. 

“How can a family live here?”

“The activity took its time revving up,” explained Eric. “Small things led to big scares they couldn’t ignore. The parents are… loopy. The kids-”

“Influenced,” Judith supplied.

“By that headmaster?” I guessed.

“Undoubtedly.”

“Ok, so what is the debate, exactly? Bulldoze this place, burn it, just let nature reclaim it.”

“The town doesn’t want that.”

“Then let them set up town offices here, see how long they last,” I argued. “I mean, at least get the family out of here.”

“They won’t leave,” Eric said quietly, staring up at the house. 

I followed his gaze towards a second floor window. A curtain twitched back into place behind the glass.

Suddenly, the front door slammed open and an incredibly tall man stomped out onto the front step. 

“You walk the property?”

“We did,” Eric called back. “This is Liz, she came down to lend us a hand.”

The man nodded towards me in acknowledgment then stepped back into the house without another word, leaving the door open behind him. An obvious invitation for us to follow.

Excessive Coffee

Life is funny. One minute you’re banishing a demon from your youngest daughter’s bedroom, the next you’re vacuuming up dust bunnies in the living room preparing for a PTO coffee. I’d offered to host the auction kick off meeting in an attempt to lure more volunteers to the effort. I enjoy hosting get-togethers. Well no that’s not accurate. I enjoy preparing to host get-togethers. I like picking out the treats I’ll serve and the platters I’ll arrange them on, and I like cleaning the house and karate chopping the pillows and arranging flowers and getting everything just so. And then, honestly, I’d love to be able to greet the guests, get them settled and then offer a pleasant, “Have a great time, don’t worry about cleaning up when you’re done. Enjoy!” Then walk out of my house and treat myself to a coffee and scone and some uninterrupted time with a paperback cozy mystery.

Alas, people would think that was weird and so the suggestions of my social anxiety were foiled again. I like people. I like the people I’ve met and built relationships with at the girls’ school, it’s just that the little voice in my brain is quite convincing in all its reasons that there is no chance those people could possibly share the sentiment.  I do my best to ignore it.

Of course I would have canceled the PTO coffee if I thought there was any chance, no matter how slim, that the women I’d invited over would be in danger. But the demon was gone. Completely gone. Judith showed up as promised the morning after and confirmed as much. Kat and I were in an ongoing conversation about strangers and safety. I was stressed to the fucking max. The move loomed on the horizon, we found someone to buy our house and we finally had an offer accepted on a cute Cape close to our old neighborhood. My writing, as usual, took a back seat to everything else and the world in general was becoming increasingly terrifying, unpredictable and heart breaking. I’d made a commitment to myself to turn back the final draft of the book by January 1st. It was the beginning of February. 

So I volunteered to host a PTO coffee and I was grateful to do it. It was a task I could handle. Clean the house, get pastries and coffee, arrange some hydrangeas.

I wanted to pretend, if only for a morning, that my life was one of normal tasks. Of checking things cleanly off a to-do list. Of concrete, straightforward everyday mundane demon free chores. 

“You’re the one who says she can see ghosts.”

I felt my face arrange itself into a tight smile. I didn’t know the woman and I didn’t recognize her. Though that isn’t saying much, as I’ve mentioned before, I have a touch of the facial blindness. But still, she wasn’t even a smidge familiar. 

“That’s me,” I said, exchanging a glance with my friend Margot. 

The meeting had wrapped up, everyone was finishing up their Dunkin Donuts coffee and treating themselves to one more Quebrada cinnamon bun.

“Are there any here with us now?” The woman asked. 

“Nope,” I replied, earning a disapproving snort from Claire.

“Huh. I’d go is a shrink’s office if I started seeing ghosts.”

“I tried, they couldn’t do anything about it,” I replied, wiping crumbs off the counter into my cupped hand.

“That’s kind of rude,” Margot piped up.

“Oh, sorry, I mean, I did go-”

“Not you,” margot said. “The word ‘shrink,’ it’s diminishing.”

“Oh, well, we can’t really say anything anymore without someone getting offended,” the woman scoffed. 

“I can’t really remember a time when you could say offensive things and not offend people,” Margot replied without missing a beat. 

“I’m just saying,” the woman I didn’t know said defensively, “if I started seeing things, I’d be worried I was going crazy.”

“I worry about that all the time and I don’t see ghosts,” another woman said, her forced laughter a hint that she was trying to lighten the mood.

“Words matter,” Margot pressed on undeterred. “Therapy can be life saving, speaking of it in outdated, judgemental ways deters people from seeking help.” 

“So now I’m killing people?” The woman scoffed.

“No one is killing anyone,” I spoke up. “Who wants to bring home these extra scones? I have ziploc bags.”

The woman, who I probably still couldn’t pick out of a line up, left shortly after and the mood lightened. 

I chatted with a couple of friends and was winding down when Jenny Blight approached me. I knew her in passing and only then from her contributions to the monthly Walk, Ride & Roll to School mornings. 

“I don’t know how I never put it together that you were the one who interviews people in town about their hauntings,” she said as I dumped a handful of mini scones into a bag. 

“Guilty,” I joked. 

“Sorry about [the woman who shall not be named]. She can be a little harsh.”

I just shrugged. I’d lost steam and I was at the point where I just wanted everyone out of my house. 

“I wonder if maybe you might… no, sorry, nevermind. You’re obviously busy.”

I suppressed the sigh that was desperate to escape. “What’s up?” I asked, my tone light and airy. The opposite of how I felt. 

“I just moved into a new house, like four months ago. And this is going to sound ridiculous, but… it’s haunted.”

“Doesn’t sound ridiculous at all,” I offered.

“Tell that to my husband,” she said bitterly. “He insists that it’s all in my head and he has our son convinced that I’m losing my mind.”

“Sounds like the start of a horror movie,” Margot joked.

“Would you ever consider, I mean, I don’t want to put you on the spot and you can totally say no, but would you ever come over and just take a peek?”

Feeling completely put on the spot and unable to say no, I said, “Sure, no problem.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Oh, um, sure.”

She took out her phone. “What is your number? I’ll text you my address.”

***

In a town full of very nice neighborhoods, Cliff Estates is a very, very nice neighborhood. It’s quintessential New England streets curve this way and that, meandering beautifully beside gorgeous houses set far back from the street. Perfectly landscaped, its lush front lawns give way to mature landscaping that hides massive yards with pools and sport courts.

Jenny’s home had recently undergone significant renovation. A New England colonial, it had been altered and given some Cape Cod architectural flair. Black roof and shutters, gray shingles and a curved crushed seashell driveway (utterly luxurious in its impracticality) all set in a bed of sea grass, hydrangea and a pretty assortment of pine, the house told me one thing for sure; Jenny Blight was rich rich. 

“Hi, sorry, my cleaners don’t come until tomorrow, so the house is a little, pff,” she made a noise of discontent. 

“It’s beautiful,” I assured her. 

We passed a living room awash in light to our left and to the right was a dining room whose walls were papered in bright beautifully colorful floral wallpaper. I followed Jenny into a kitchen of dark green cabinets and butcher block counters that opened to a big family room (soft gray couch with taupe pillows, rattan coffee table, soft taupe gingham swivel chairs before a huge, fieldstone fireplace). Through a grand archway, the space extended to a window lined enclosed sunroom full of white wicker furniture. 

“I love those shutters,” I commented, indicating the white wooden window coverings. 

“Do you? I just asked them to come take them off. They aren’t working out the way I’d hoped.”

“How so?”

“They won’t stay shut. I am forever closing the bottom half only to find them open the second I turn my back.”

“Huh,” I replied, wondering if that was a part of the haunting.

“I didn’t know what you’d want so I Doordashed. I have lattes with either skim or soy milk, black coffee or iced – decaf and regular, earl gray and hot chocolate.”

I took in the two filled carriers of Dunkin Donuts coffee cups. “You ordered all of this for me?” 

“I can totally order something else-”

“No! No, thank you. I’ll have the soy latte.” I pulled the drink out of the carrier and dumped in two sugar packets. 

Jenny moved the carriers to the sink and began removing the caps from the cups. 

“So you found a house?” She said as she poured out the drinks one by one. 

“Uh, we did, actually,” I replied, fascinated and a touch disgusted. I felt like I should stop her from wasting all those drinks, but it was so strange I wasn’t quite sure what to say so I gave her the address of our new house.

“Oh, I walked through that one at the broker open. Big yard. Are you taking it down?”

“The house? No,” I laughed. “I think we’re just going to paint. Are you looking for another place?” I wondered why she would have taken the time to go to the open house for our new place. Her current home was at least three times the size and three times the price.

She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. “I’d like to move, but my husband won’t hear of it. He loves it here.” 

“When did you move in?”

“August. I hated it the second I walked through the door.”

“Because of the haunting?”

“Not at first, no. We bought it a year prior and went through all the renovations. But… it’s all little stuff. The floors, they pull orange. Do you see it?”

I looked down at the hardwood. Now that she mentioned it, I actually did see an orange tint to the stain. I said, “I think it looks nice.”

“I hate it. And I thought it would be good to have a gas fireplace, but it’s so phony. I miss wood fires.” 

I made a noncommittal noise.

“The light fixtures aren’t to scale, these look like they belong in some downtown industrial loft,” she pointed to the pendants above the island. “I asked for soft close cabinets, paid for the upgrade, didn’t get it. Look at that crown molding. Again, not to scale. It should be at least an inch thicker.”

“I hear you, but honestly, I wouldn’t have noticed any of that unless you pointed it out. Everything is stunning.” 

“Pfft. You sound like my husband. But now that I’ve complained about these things I feel like everytime I bring up something weird that’s happened he thinks I’m lying just to build a case to move again.” 

“Did weird things happen right when you moved in”
“At first, no. It was more of a feeling. There isn’t a cozy spot in this entire house. I feel like I can’t sit still here. Like I just have to pace. Everything is so… agitating.”

I looked around us, the home was beautiful, warm, the definition of cozy. I wanted to pull the Agatha Christie out of my bag and curl up on the couch. And I hadn’t sensed anything off at all, like ghost wise.

She needs to get out more, I thought. “Aside from the feeling that things are… off. What else is going on?”

She sighed. “It’s so annoying. No one else has experienced anything, I’m the only one.For one thing, stuff doesn’t stay how I left it.”

“The shutters?” I guessed.

“Exactly. They will not stay closed.”

“That’s creepy,” I offered, thinking maybe they were faulty in some way and she was using the idea of a haunting as another dig at the house.

“I spend half my day reopening those damn things.”

“They’re open now,” I pointed out.

“Just wait,” she replied, knowingly.

“Ok, what else?”

“We have constant water issues. A pipe burst in the powder room and flooded the basement. I am forever coming home to the faucets running full blast. It just happened yesterday morning, I got back from dropping Teddy off and the faucet in his bathroom was running.”

“Could he have forgotten to turn it off?”

She shook her head. “The same thing happened in the third floor guest bath, we don’t know how long it was running, but it leaked all over the floor and soaked through to the laundry room on the second floor. We had to have the ceiling ripped out.”

“Ugh, that sucks,” I offered.

“And the washing machine, it fills up when we start a new load and then just stops.”

“Have you had it looked at?”

“We replaced it.”

“Is it tripping a fuse?”

“No,” she huffed. 

“Sorry, these just sound like annoying house issues. And you did just renovate, maybe you’re working out the kinks.”

“You sound like Charles.”

“Your husband?”

She nodded.

“Sorry,” I apologized, feeling like a jerk. 

“Look, I can’t explain it. There is something here. It watches me and it does things to deliberately screw with me. Don’t you see anything? Or get a vibe? Something?” She pleaded, gesturing around us with her hands.

I drew in a breath and let go of some of the boundaries I’d put up before answering her. I sensed nothing. I mean, that’s not completely true, I could sort of sense what she’d been talking about. Restlessness and agitation. The feeling that we weren’t alone. 

“I kind of see what you mean about the vibes being off,” I offered. 

“Thank you, right?” She moved across the kitchen. “Come in here.”

I followed her to a bookcase and Schumacher wallpaper lined office. “Wow,” I said, involuntarily. 

“Look, see?” She pointed to an overturned house plant before a window that overlooked the backyard. “I was just coming in here to see if you’d sense it, but look.”

“Oh, does that happen a lot?” 

“Things like this happen all the time, books and frames fall off the shelves. The paper began peeling, here. See?”

A loud bang behind me made me nearly jump as high as the tasteful lantern chandelier above the desk. 

“What the hell was that?”

Jenny stared wide eyed at a mug on the carpet. “That’s my coffee cup.” 

“Did it fall off the desk?” I knew it was a stupid suggestion. The desk was six feet away from where the cup landed. 

“I left it in my bathroom this morning.”

“How… wait, what are you saying?”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about. Things move by themselves. Like they appear in different places.”

“Apportation.”

“What?”

“It’s what it’s called when something spontaneously disappears from one place and appears in another. You’re saying that happens here?”

“Yeah, it just happened with my car keys. I left them on the table in the front hall. I know I did. No doubt about it. But then they weren’t there and I searched and searched and that night Charles found them hanging on the bar in his closet.”

“Oh.”

“He called me scatterbrained,” she said bitterly.

I took in our surroundings but didn’t pick up on anything more than that same restlessness. Agitation. But I could definitely understand what Jenny meant by wanting to move, to pace. 

“What about your son, um-”

“Teddy? He hasn’t really experienced anything. I mean, he hasn’t slept through the night since we moved in, but then two mornings ago – the day before you had that coffee at your little house. When he woke up his desk had moved. He told me when he came downstairs, I went up to look and it had. It was across the room, in front of the window.”

You caught that too though, right? My ‘little house.’ Uh huh. Noted. I asked, “Could he have moved it?” 

“No, he’s only seven and the thing is massive. It has attached bookshelves. The weirdest thing is that nothing was out of place on the shelves. I’d just styled them. There were books and some stuffed animals and one of his minecraft Lego sets. They were all exactly how I’d placed them.” 

“Uh oh.”

“Right? See what I mean.”

“What did your husband say about the bookshelf?”

“He’s out of town.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“Why? So he can just tell me, ‘keep trying, Jenny, we’re not moving’?”

“Sorry,” I said, though it wasn’t my place to apologize for her husband’s shittiness. “Listen, this is just a guess, but I’m wondering if you have a poltergeist. That you maybe, might be causing some of this – unconsciously, of course, but if you are really uncomfortable here, some of this could be an outward manifestation of your, uh, discontent.”

She stared out a large window that overlooked the backyard, seeming to consider the idea. “So it’s my fault?”

“No, no that’s not what I’m saying. Your feelings aren’t your fault, you might just have the ability to project them outward. Some people do.”

“When I was little I-” she stopped abruptly. “Do you feel that?”

Immediately creeped out, I said, “What?” A tad more sharply than I’d intended.

“A breeze.” 

She left the office for the kitchen. I followed right behind her.

“I knew it, do you see this?”

The shutters on the porch were all open. And both sets of French doors were wide open to the back yard.

“Wow,” I breathed. Joining her in the room. 

She pulled the doors closed and bolted them. 

“I can’t stand being in the backyard,” she said, rubbing her arms against the chill. “I can’t stand it for even a second. We had a firepit and a spa put in and I haven’t spent more than two minutes out there. It’s the worst, just the worst vibes.” 

“Does Teddy play out there?” I asked, indicating the large wooden playset at the far right corner of the yard, set tastefully into the landscape.

She shook her head. “He won’t. He played for like fifteen minutes out there the day we moved in and he won’t go back out.”

“Does he say why?”

“He said he feels like he isn’t alone. He hears people.”

“Geez,” I muttered. “Voices?”

“Yes, and stomping around.”

“What about your husband? Does he use the spa? Or do you ever grill?” 

“He says the spa doesn’t get hot enough. The gas grill is just for resale. The landscape architect insisted we put it in.” 

“Well, I mean it is an absolutely stunning backyard,” I said, taking it in. 

Jenny shook her head. “I’m working with a new landscape architect and he should be able to rip all of this out in April so at least we’ll have a clean slate. 

“Rip it out?” I said, in disbelief.

“Yeah…” she sighed, moving to push the wooden shutter slats open on the windows to our left. 

Beyond the sparkling French doors, I was looking at, I mean, conservatively, a quarter of a million dollars of yard work. There was a brick patio and some really, like really nice field stone retaining walls, the stonework held the spa and the large grill, incorporating them into the design so that your eye moved past them easily. All of it set among plush evergreen shrubs, sea grass, hydrangea, and a mix of birch, pine and oak trees. The tall ones in the back were obviously original to the property, but there was a gorgeous staggered line of ten foot tall trees that did a great job of shielding the yard from the neighbors to the back. 

God, I’m obsessed with landscaping. Aside from yanking out some scraggly old evergreen shrubs and compulsively planting hydrangeas everywhere I go I haven’t much experience in it. But one of my joys is disassociating on Pinterest by scrolling through images of yards that have been designed so perfectly and so obsessively but look as though they’ve just grown up on their own. I get it, it’s utter luxury. Gross excess. But… you know, it’s really pretty to look at.

“What are you planning to do out there instead?” I asked.

“I think we’ll level it. You know, grade the whole thing and go very minimal.”

I am not a violent person, but I felt like slapping her. 

“Well that’s too bad,” I said, managing to keep my tone even.

“Do you think so? I just feel like the yard is so… cluttered. Busy.”

“No, it’s beautiful.”

` “Well, we’ll see,” she replied, flipping the last shutter closed.

My eyes landed on the far left corner of the yard. Standing atop exposed rock ledge were two statues. Tall ones, probably, like four feet high. Made of a well weathered gray stone, their faces were smooth, void of features, and they wore full length hooded robes. By the detail they were likely antiques, and expensive ones at that. The one on the right held its featureless face up to the sky, its hands out before it, palms up as if it were praying for rain. The one on the left stared down at the ground, its hands held out before it palms down as if it were calling something out of the ground. 

“Those are pretty, are they saints?” 

“I think so, but we’re just CEO Catholics, so don’t quote me on it.” 

“What’s that?” I imagined Jenny and her husband in business attire, sitting in the pews with their laptops on their laps, working on spreadsheets for the church during mass.

“CEO. Christmas and Easter Only,” she explained.

“Oh, got it.” I stepped closer to the doors to get a better look at the statues. “Where did you get them?”

“Um, hmm… you know I’m not sure. I think the landscapers may have put them in for us. Or, actually, they might have been here when we bought the place.”

I suppressed a sigh. The woman literally didn’t give a damn about the opulence surrounding her. 

I was about to suggest she try therapy and meditation to diffuse the energy I incorrectly suspected she’d been sending out into her environment when I saw two little men step out of the statues. Carbon copies of the statues themselves, the gray men walked forward, their robes swaying gently in the breeze.

I gasped and took a step back. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I wonder if you could get the landscapers to take those back?”

“The statues? Why?” She tilted her head, studying them. “I guess they are a little ticky-tack.”

In the time it took me to glance at Jenny and then back out the window the little men had closed half the distance between us. 

“Are these doors locked?” I asked, stupidly. A lock wasn’t going to protect us from whatever the hell was out there.

“Can we talk in your kitchen?”

“Sure.”

I beat feet out of the enclosed porch into the kitchen, moving to the far side of the island to put as much space as I could between myself and those things. 

“What’s wrong?”

“You need to get rid of those statues.”

“Ok…”

“They are real,” I said, knowing I sounded crazy, but too terrified to make sense.

Jenny went to peer out the window over the sink. I wanted to scream at her to stay away from the window but knew it was pointless. 

“Are you sure they came from the landscapers?”

She turned back to look at me. “You know, I actually don’t know. I feel like they have always just been there. But they couldn’t have been because we did so much work in the back it was down to the dirt for a while. Except for the rock ledge, of course. But I… I can’t think of a time when they weren’t there. That’s kind of weird, though, right? They couldn’t have always been there.”

“You need to leave that yard alone. Do not, under any circumstances, do any more landscaping out there. I wouldn’t even have the lawn mowed this summer.”

“Are you saying the statues are cursed or something?”

I shook my head. “They aren’t statues.”

“Oh god, what are they?”

Movement beyond the window behind Jenny made me jump. The two little statue men stood shoulder to shoulder atop the gas grill. 

I couldn’t help it, I giggled. Then immediately apologized. 

“I don’t think they are happy with what you’ve done on the property.”

“Huh, them and me both,” Jenny said bitterly.

“This is serious,” I snapped. “You need to just let everything be. Let it settle down. Um…” It wasn’t that I could hear the little guys, but I knew what they wanted. “Put out a couple bird feeders-”

“Gross. Birds carry disease.”

“I’m just telling you what they want,” I said evenly. “Drain that spa, the chlorine smell is toxic to them.”

“If it’s toxic to them shouldn’t I just dump more of it into the water? Maybe that would get them to go away,” she suggested.

“They can’t go away,” I said.

“Fine. So they’re the problem then?”

“For sure.”

“Ok, good. Would you tell him?”

“Who?”

“My husband, Charles.”

I shook my head. “No, you should just talk to him about it.”

“I’ve tried. He won’t believe me,” she whined.

“Honestly, I think if you try making it more comfortable for those… things, then you might be able to live comfortably here. They don’t want to hurt you, they just want you to stop… modifying things.”

“With or without those things I hate it here.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.

She stared out the window in contemplation. “I could always just burn it down.”

I laughed and took a nervous sip from the now cold soy latte.

***

I was out for a walk around the block with the dogs when I spotted the woman from the PTO coffee who shall remain unnamed up ahead on the sidewalk. Yeah, I actually recognized her from her hair. She was headed in the same direction so she had her back to me. I was stuck. There was no turning the dogs around, I barely had control of them when we were simply moving forward. We were walking twice as fast so we caught up to her pretty quickly.

“Hello,” I said, as friendly as can be.

“Hello there,” she replied with a smile. “Are all of these yours?”

“They are.”

“Where were they the other day?”

“I sent them to camp.” 

“Must be nice. Can they see ghosts too?” she drawled, obviously making fun of me. 

There was a ghost beside her. An old man watching our interaction. He smiled at me and held up a hand, opening and closing his fingers, miming a mouth talking away. 

I hid a smile. “See you later, these guys are on a mission.” 

When I finally got back home and had the dogs settled I thought I deserved a little treat, so I pulled out my Maxwell House International Vanilla Bean Latte Café-Style Instant Coffee Beverage Mix (not sponsored) made a cup and curled up on the couch to reread The Mysterious Affair at Styles. So I was feeling nice and cozy when my phone buzzed on the coffee table with and incoming text from Judith. 

What are the chances of you taking a little day trip down to Connecticut?

Slim, I typed.

We need to clear this place

Feeling snarky I simply typed back We?

Any sign of that demon?

No

Nothing at all?

No

A sound file titled, Goshen, Hillview Academy 2.3.24 came through. But no text. 

I sent two question marks.

Sorry, Judith wrote. I was ordering a coffee. That’s a recording from last night’s investigation.

A spike of pure anxiety shot through me. I put my phone down. 

It began vibrating with an incoming call. 

“Hi.”

“Did you listen to it?” Judith asked.

“No.”

“Well… brace yourself.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, you always show up for me when I need you, I want to help but I’m just not in a place where I can drop everything and drive down to Connecticut for the day. The kids-”

“That’s just it.”

“What is?”

“Your kids. Last night one of the investigators caught ‘Wellesley’ on a recording and then some generic growls and then… it’s the recording I sent.”

I blew out a breath in frustration. 

“Whatever is on this property is demonic so it’s obviously connected to whatever is in Wellesley.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Look, I got two calls just this morning, one from a Reiki healer and another from the neighbor of a woman I helped a couple of years ago. They need help. Something is brewing.”

“Something demonic.”

“Mm, something.” 

We sat in silence for a moment, each lost in our own thoughts. Finally I said, “I just had coffee with a woman who has these creepy saints statues in her yard but they definitely weren’t saintly.”

“There it is again, demonic.”

“No, I thought it felt more elemental.”

“Catholic saints being mimicked?”

“They didn’t seem that malevolent.”

“How was the woman?”

“Malevolent,” I acquiesced.

“Infestation to oppression,’ Judith said matter-of-factly. “And you’ve had all that alien nonsense popping up. Something’s coming. Something’s off.”

“If that’s true, then what good will playing wack a mole do?”

“Probably nothing for the grand scheme of things, a medium I trust told me she can’t see a thing past April.”

“Oh, come on.”

Judith sighed. “All that is neither here nor there. What concerns us right now is what’s on that recording. Listen to it and then we’ll talk.” 

The second she ended the call I was filled with dread to the point that I feared it was the beginning of a panic attack. I stood and went to the kitchen, made another hot cup of chemicals that tasted like sugar laced latte and sat at the island. I scrolled Pinterest, checked my email, looked at my progress on my 2024 Goodreads goal. 

Finally, I listened to the file. 

A slight hum of white noise, someone clearing their throat and then a deep voice I recognized but couldn’t place. “Is there anyone here who wishes to speak with us?” I rolled my eyes as I continued to listen. A growly low voice responded. “Wellesley.” The voice of the investigator. “What is your name?” Growling, low, grumbly growls that made my chest tighten. Then, the investigator, “Give us a sign of your presence.” A shuffling noise. Then Judith, “That was me.” The investigator, “Noted.”  Another shuffling noise, this time sounding closer to the person recording. The investigator, “Shit, was that you too?” Judith, “Nope.” Then a sharp voice, “Cat.” Followed by a gravelly growl of a voice, “Cat’s cradle will fall.” Followed by the investigator asking “How many of you are here with us?” The sharp voice again. “Many.” Then the abrupt ending of the recording. 

I began typing a response to Judith then stopped. Deleted the words and started again.

As I typed away, Judith’s text came through. I’ll send you the address. See you tomorrow. 

As I re-salted the front and back doors I tried to come up with a way to present this whole mess to Chris (both the fact that a demon in Connecticut had muttered our daughter’s name and that he was going to have to handle both pick up and drop off the following day).

I climbed the stairs to his office on the second floor and sat in a little arm chair to wait for him to finish a call.

“What were you doing in the backyard?” He asked, when he was done.

  “Nothing, I’ve been downstairs.”

“Since when?”

“Since I got back from dropping the kids off.”

“Haha. I just saw you walk behind the fence through those trees and go behind the garage. Were you looking for something?”

I shook my head. “Sorry.” The word came out as a whisper.

Chris stood and peered out the back window. 

“I have to go to Connecticut tomorrow,” I said. 

He actually laughed. “What?”

“Judith called and asked me to-”

“You said she was at some demon school.”

“Right.”

“It has something to do with what’s happening here?”

I nodded. 

“How?”

“I don’t know. Sorry.”

“You’ll be home before dark though.”

“Promise.”

I am telling you right now, that motherf*cker is not real.

“Why didn’t you tell me that she could see you?”

Claire shrugged. “It didn’t feel like my business to share.”

“She’s six years old! She doesn’t have business,” I snapped. 

“Who has she interacted with, aside from the garage ghost, and Claire-”

“And the alien down the street,” Claire added.

“Right,” Judith sighed. “And the alien.”

“She hasn’t interacted with the alien, thank God. The garage ghost-”

“Mr. Darby,” Claire interjected.

“Yeah,” I acknowledged. “He warned her to stay away from that thing. Other than that, I don’t know what she’s seen. It was such a shock to hear her talking about ghosts… I tried to play it cool so I didn’t freak her out or make her feel like I was as freaked out as I am.”

It was the morning after Kat shared with me that she could not only see Theodore the alien across the street, but that the ghost of the man who used to live in our house had warned her not to go anywhere near him. I texted Judith as soon as I could and we arranged to Zoom. She was in Connecticut consulting on a house exorcism. Like, for real. 

“It’s so weird that you can see Claire over zoom,” I commented.

“It is.” 

“Jump scare!” Claire exclaimed, appearing beside Judith on the screen. 

“Don’t do that!” Judith admonished. 

“That’s so creepy,” I said through my laughter. 

“Space and time are but an illusion,” Claire intoned, earning a chuckle from Judith. Then, she groaned, “Ick. The energy around you is awful,” before reappearing beside me. 

“You’re telling me,” Judith agreed, “The house I’m working on is one of the darkest I’ve ever encountered.”

“That’s saying a lot,” I commented, “What’s going on?”

“The property used to be a part of an old boarding school. The house I’m working on belonged to the headmaster and, as Satanic panic as this sounds, I think he may have been into ritual sacrifice.”

“Good Lord,” I muttered. 

“He was sacrificing the kids?” Claire exclaimed. “How did  no one notice?”

Judith snorted. “No, not kids. Animals. It’s really dark sided, I don’t know how they’ve managed to live there. I wouldn’t make it one night in that place,” she shuddered. “The family has three little kids and honestly, they creep me out almost as much as the house does. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Be careful,” I offered. 

“I always am,” she replied dismissively. “So… what are we going to do with little Kat?”

“I feel so guilty that I didn’t notice that she was talking to ghosts.”

“And dogs,” Claire said, matter of factly. 

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure she can talk to your dogs.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m serious. That little terrier one-”

“Wallace?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t give a shit about what you want from him, but Kat literally talks to him like he’s a little person and he listens.”

“Is that possible?” I directed the question to Judith.

“Sure, why not?” She replied.

“There is one other thing, she can see auras.”

“Oh,” Judith drawled “Wow.”

“‘Sure, why not?’ To talking to dogs, but seeing auras gets an ‘oh, wow’?”

“She’s powerful, especially for a six year old.” 

“How do you know she’s seeing auras?” I directed the question to Claire.

“She said her dad glows blue surrounded by yellow.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. 

“I don’t know, Google it.”

I groaned in frustration. “How can we put the brakes on this?”

“On what?” Judith asked.

“Kat’s abilities, she’s way too little! I didn’t start with all this until I was in my thirties.”

“I wonder what your imaginary friends would say to that?” Judith asked, eyebrows raised. 

“How did you know I had imaginary friends?”

“I didn’t but you’ve just proved my point.”

“It’s not fair,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “She’s too young.”

“She doesn’t seem to mind,” Claire offered.

“Well, I mind!” I said, too harshly.

“What are you afraid of?” Asked Judith.

“That she’s going to see something that really scares her. That she’ll hear something she’s too young to handle. That kids are going to notice that she’s different and avoid her. That she’ll get depressed, or anxious, or angry. That it will interrupt her sleep, or her learning or her healthy development. That it will ruin her life!”

My rant was met with silence.

I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks. “She’s just a little girl. She shouldn’t be talking to strangers regardless of whether they’re dead or alive.” 

“If you try to repress her gifts it will unquestionably harm her mental health, even if the damage isn’t felt until later, it isn’t fair to stunt her like that. There are no mistakes, she’s been given these gifts for a reason, we’ll just have to find a way to protect her.” 

I nodded. 

“I’ll keep an eye on her, and I assume she’ll develop a relationship with her own guides sooner rather than-” 

Claire’s voice was drowned out by the dogs’ crazed barking.  

“Bernie!” I yelled ineffectively. “Wallace! Shut up! Stop!”

“See, they don’t listen to you,” Claire commented knowingly.

“You’re moving again, right?” Judith asked. 

I nodded.

“You’d better be real careful where you land this time. I just got a knowing.” She paused, looking down at her lap for a long moment before continuing. “Choose well, looks like you’re gonna be there for a while. No more running.”

I could only sigh in response. 

***

The following week I found myself sitting in Tatte across from a stunningly gorgeous woman. Sofia Cruz looked like she’d just stepped out of a North Face rock climbing ad. She was a relatively recent transplant to Wellesley and she’d learned of my ridiculousness from a friend of an acquaintance and asked to be put in touch. 

Hi, I’m Sofia. Noel gave me your number, I hope you don’t mind. I’m dealing with a situation and would really love to get your input. Could I treat you to lunch at Tatte  – my schedule is totally flexible! I promise I’ll only take an hour of your time.

‘Only an hour of my time.’ Ugh. I didn’t have even fifteen minutes to share at that moment. But I also didn’t feel like I could say no to the request, I sort of felt obligated to the aforementioned acquaintance, Noel, because she’d helped me with this really annoying, time consuming PTO thing recently that no one else wanted to deal with. So if she’d shared my number that meant she knew the woman needed help and she’d definitely hear about it if I blew off this woman’s request. 

I hemmed and hawed for a second, considering pushing it off a week, but the devil only knew what other obligations were on the way so I determined that it would be best to just get the meeting over with. But an hour was precious to me at the moment. Yes, I know how utterly absurd it is that we are moving again. But Chris and I have promised both each other and the girls that this will be the last move (until they are out of high school. Probably. Most likely. I mean, we promise that we’ll settle down in this next house for at least… like, five years). And then, I know everyone is both sick to death hearing me talk about it and skeptical that it even exists at this point, but I have finally pulled myself together enough to figure out how to re-write the book I’ve been working on for years. When I got the text from Sofia I was right in the middle of the chapter by chapter final edit/tweak. 

It’s my own damn fault this book has taken so long. The story started up as a straight cozy mystery (i.e. woman moves to new town, trips over a couple dead bodies, and figures out which neighbor did it), but then morphed into cozy horror, and then I went full horror. There are characters I love and couldn’t let go so I had to figure out how they fit into each iteration. 

It goes without saying that I really don’t know what I’m doing. But, aside from moving constantly and fucking up that book over and over again, there is one other thing you can count on from me, I love hearing people tell me their scary stories. So I allowed myself a couple moments of hemming and hawing and ‘poor busy me-ing’ knowing the whole time that I was going to say yes.

I’d be happy to meet up at Tatte. Does Tuesday work?

Yes! Thank you! 11:30am?

Perfect

So, there went another precious hour. Probably more. Which was fine, really. I can’t share interviews with you if I don’t have interviews to share. 

So there I was, sitting across from a gorgeous, obviously nervous woman.

We’d ordered lunch (me a chicken pita, Sofia the biscuit and egg sandwich) and were waiting for our meals, our order numbers displayed in their metal stands on the table. 

“How long have you been in Wellesley?” She asked.

“Hmm, I think it’s been about ten years. How about you?”

“Since August,” she replied, her smile a touch tight and forced.

“It’s an adjustment,” I offered. 

“It is, but the school’s been great and I’ve managed to get us completely unpacked.”

“That’s quick. Where’d you guys move from?”

“Seattle.”

“Wow, that’s a big move,” I said, stating the obvious. I was trying to get a read on her situation, but I’d sort of shut down my abilities as best I could. Claire wasn’t around, sometimes she just isn’t, and I didn’t want to go into meeting this woman wide open. Tatte is always packed and I wasn’t in the mood to attract other people’s ghosts. 

“We moved to be closer to my husband’s family,” Sofia explained. 

Just then our sandwiches arrived so we took a few minutes to enjoy them and continue the small talk. She’s lonely, I thought as we chatted and my instinct to swoop in and fix the situation began to gnaw at me. I did my best to shut it down. 

I have a tendency to make assumptions, go all in and then find myself resentful and confused in a one-sided relationship that I’ve created. I keep my little social circle little by design. I have a wicked codependent streak and it has caused devastation in the past, so I keep my walls up pretty high. I don’t trust myself not to misread signs then overwhelm people then get overwhelmed myself and then ghost. I do best in settings where expectations are laid out very clearly. And if I’m ever feeling too lonely I can always find a dead person who’d be happy to chat. 

So, I could sense that Sofia was lonely, but I could also acknowledge that it wasn’t my responsibility to fix that for her. If we became friends, we did. But it wouldn’t because I made one of my little projects out of trying to make her happier.

I was chewing the last bite of my sandwich when Sofia admitted. “I’ve been seeing something really weird. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I heard about your blog from some moms at Schofield and I was going to just email you but thought it might be better to reach out through someone you know. So I asked around and one of the moms put me in touch with Betsy who gave me your phone number.”

She said it quickly, like a confession.

“I’m glad you texted,” I reassured her, “I don’t check the email tied to the blog as often as I should.”

She nodded then took a sip of water. 

“I hear really wild things all the time,” I offered reassuringly. 

“Right. No, I know, sorry.” Her eyes darted around the cafe. I had my back to the room while she sat facing out. I fought the urge to turn to see what she seemed to be scanning for. Instead, I allowed myself to open up a little bit, just to be sure I could sense if there was anything creepy lurking around. But everything felt relatively normal. 

“Here goes,” Sofia began, “So, we were on our way back from Stowe. It was a really nice weekend. We used to spend so much time outdoors back home. Vermont felt… familiar. It was nice.

“Don’t get me wrong, Wellesley is nice too and we’ve been surprised to find so much trail space in town. But it’s just different. You know, the move has been an adjustment. It’s fine. I mean, it’s good, and being closer to family, my husband’s parents are in Needham, but… you know. We thought they’d want to be more, not involved, like we didn’t think they’d be watching the kids or anything, but we thought they’d have more interest in getting to know them. I’m going off course here, sorry.” 

“No, I totally get it,”

She sighed. “I thought maybe once we were spending more time together they would move past surface level interactions with the kids. You see other grandparents, like… sorry, it’s not fair to compare. We end up listening in depth about their lives and it’s all laced with expectation, you know? Meanwhile God forbid I mention something going on with us, it’s just met with freaking platitudes.”

“Family,” I offered. 

“I’m sorry. I barely know you and I am airing my dirty laundry.”

“I have that effect on people,” I joked. “I’d always rather talk about everyone’s dirty laundry. It’s honest. I want to flip the table listening to people go on and on about their fabulously talented kids’ soccer schedules or how stressful it’s been having their kid apply to five Ivy Leagues. Worries are much more interesting.”

“Huh, I agree,” Sofia said, looking only slightly relieved. “It’s only been a couple months. I think it’s just the shock of so much interaction and so little support. My therapist says I’m supposed to work on my ‘boundaries and expectations.’” 

“Same,” I chuckled. 

“So, okay. I’ll get back on track. The thing that happened on the trip home from Stowe. It’s the only thing that might have caused what’s happened, I mean, what changed… how I’ve changed.” 

Sofia’s eyes darted around the cafe again and she scooched her chair forward. 

“We stopped at one of those rest areas on the way home from Stowe. Have you been?”

“To that huge rest stop with the food court? Yeah.”

She laughed. “I meant Stowe, but no it wasn’t the big one with the food court, we did stop there for lunch but then we pulled into this little one closer to home for the bathroom. It was just a small brick building, like just bathrooms and those rows of metal stands for vacation pamphlets. I was the only one who had to go so I zipped in, washed my hands, came back out and slipped on a wet spot near the front door. The next thing I knew I was staring up at a crowd of strangers. The kids were crying and Jim, my husband, was talking to a woman who happened to be a nurse. Someone else had apparently called 911, they were waiting for the ambulance to get there.”

“Geez, that’s awful. How long were you out?”

“A few minutes, maybe ten? Long enough that Jim got nervous that I wasn’t back to the car and came in to look for me. I was able to sit up, my head hurt and I felt incredibly nauseous, but I was fine.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“Well, right. I wasn’t fine. But I wouldn’t let the paramedics take me to the hospital over a concussion. I was okay to walk back to the car. But then I was really out of it for three days after the fall. I literally felt buzzed, like I’d had a couple glasses of wine, but it wasn’t any fun. And this horrendous headache settled behind my eyes. It was so bad that I had to wear sunglasses all the time, I was really photosensitive [Now, excuse me, but if I don’t get this out right now I may literally explode. At that moment, with Sofia, I did not yell out XXPULL FULL QUOTEXX  “The children are photosensitive” ala Nicole Kidman in The Others, and that was very difficult for me. When I hear that word, that iconic line demands expression. But I pinched my lips together and kept it in, and I think we can all feel good about that. But you know I had to take a moment to say it here. Mm hm. Ok. back to Sofia.] And then, out of nowhere, it broke. Like one minute I was squinting my eyes with the curtains drawn and then, poof, I was fine. Better than fine. This is going to sound unbelievable, but I didn’t need my reading glasses any more.”

“Whoa, really?”

Sofia nodded

“Did you get checked out at all?” 

“I went into my primary care that Monday. She said it was a grade four concussion.” 

“How high does the scale go?”

“Up to four. If you lose consciousness for longer than a minute you land in the top tier.”

“And you were out for about ten?”

“At least.”

“Sofia…”

“I know. But I made light of it because I don’t like anyone to fuss over me. The headache was gone after three days, I didn’t need my glasses anymore, and I felt amazing. Better than I ever have, actually. Almost euphoric.”

“Uh oh,” I commented, sensing that the bottom was about to drop out in her story.

“Mm. The first time it happened I almost didn’t catch it. That’s not accurate. I caught it, I just thought I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing.” She scanned the cafe again, leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Listen, some people are not people.”

The way she said it, the tone, the way she held eye contact. It chilled me to my core. I wondered if she might have knocked something loose in the fall. Something that had nothing to do with the paranormal. Something worse.

“I’m not crazy,” she said quickly, accurately reading the look on my face. 

“No, I know,” I replied just as quickly. “Oof, you just scared me a little.” 

“Sorry. I should have had you over to my house instead of meeting in public.”

No thanks, I thought. I said, “Why?”

“They might not like me talking about them.”

“The people who aren’t people?”

“Right. So, we live near the middle school and I walk there with my oldest most mornings. He’s… well, he’s very young for his age so he still likes doing that sort of thing with me. I’d just waved goodbye and was turning to head back home when I bumped into one of the other parents. A mom. She was headed into the school, it looked like she was dropping off something. At least that’s what I assumed, she was carrying a big reusable grocery bag full of clothing. 

“I knocked it out of her hands when we collided and I apologized and bent down to pick it up. When I looked at her to apologize again I saw it. She wasn’t in there. She’d been replaced. I knew immediately she wasn’t a person anymore. I could see the shimmer of the thing inside her. Like it was imposed right beneath her surface.”

“What was it?”

“I think, no, I’m pretty sure it’s aquatic? I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it shimmers a little, underneath, like when you’re looking down into a stream at a rock or something. You know? It’s so subtle. They float inside people. Like the person’s body is their body of water.”

“Whoa.”

“There’s another way to tell. You can sort of see it in the shape of their face. It’s stretched a little thin. Just a little, like it’s being pulled tight. Ugh. I’m not describing it well. You know how sometimes you’ll see someone whose face is puffy, like they’re retaining water?”

“Totally,” I said, wondering if she were, in fact, referencing my own puffy face.

“It’s not like that.”

“Oh,” I said, somehow relieved.

“It’s almost like their skull is straining against their skin. Like there just isn’t enough room for everything.”

“Oh,” I repeated, this time disgusted.

“But it’s subtle. Really subtle.” 

“Are there any of them here now?” I asked, realizing after I said it that it might come across as condescending. “Have you seen any this morning, I mean.”

“Yes,” she whispered. 

“Who?”

“You know that big wooden farm table? There are two women talking to each other. Both of them.”

I only had to turn my head slightly to see who she was talking about. 

I met the gaze of one of the women then lifted my hand in an awkward half wave before turning back to face Sofia. “I know one of those women. I mean I used to.”

“Oh no. I’m really sorry. Does she look any different to you?”

I resisted the urge to turn back around and stare. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s true though, your blog? You can see ghosts and… other stuff?”
“Yes.”

“But you’ve never seen anything like I’m describing?”

“No, not at all. I have no idea what would do that, it sounds like a possession, but different. I have heard of walk-ins, but that’s like a ghost or another soul coming in and taking over someone’s life when their soul decides they’ve had enough.”

“That can happen?”

I shrugged. “I’ve only read about it.”

“Well, I can definitely say that’s not what this is.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s alien,” Sofia whispered. “They’re aliens.”

“Aquatic aliens?”

“I’m pretty sure this is how they survive on land.”

“No way,” I said. “I just watched a show about USOs!”

Sofia shook her head, not knowing what I meant.

“Unidentified Submerged Objects. Like UFOs but in the ocean. The navy documented them. Some people think that there may be alien bases located along the ocean floor.” [For a fun deep dive into this topic check out Expedition X Season three episode 6 Aliens of the Deep and episode 7 Into the Alien Ocean. Josh Gates is one of my favorites]. 

“Really?” Sofia said.

“This makes so much sense,” I enthused. 

Sofia actually laughed out loud. “Oh my God, no it doesn’t, like at all, but I am so relieved that you believe me!” 

“It’s fucking terrifying, but it’s kind of brilliant if you think of it. Using us as, like, reverse wetsuits.”

“Gross.”

“Totally.”

“Oh shit. Oh no. They’re coming over here.”

I didn’t have to ask, I knew immediately who she meant. 

“Hi there,” we’ll call her Wellesley Blond #1.

“Hello,” followed Wellesley Blond #2.

“Liz, it’s good to see you?”

“You too,” I replied in as convincing a tone as I could manage.

Blond #1 introduced Blond #2. 

“This is Sofia, she’s new to Wellesley,” I offered. 

“Yet you two are already thick as thieves,” #1 commented.

I looked over and saw sheer terror on Sofia’s face. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

I looked back at at Blond #1. “Nice to see you, take care,” I said, attempting to dismiss them. 

The women stared down at us, their faces void of expression. It was eerie, their hovering over us like that, Tatte busy and swirling with life behind them. 

I was about to get up and drag Sofia outside with me when Blond #2 spoke.

“Welcome to town, do you do OrangeTheory?” 

Sofia blinked in confusion. “No,” she replied, obviously on the brink of tears.

“They have them in Seattle, no?” Blond #1 said, her affect utterly flat.

The women stood there, motionless for a beat, then turned in unison and walked, lock step out of the cafe. 

***

I’d stayed up way too late again that night scrolling through TikTok, the pit in my stomach deepening. I downloaded the app and deleted it every single day, swearing I’d take time off. Knowing I was letting time slip away as I scrolled, both numbed out and terrified by what I saw unfolding. The constant pull of the app reminded me of those nights not so long ago when I’d decided not to have a glass of wine every morning only to find myself pouring “just one” at night. Breaking promises to myself was never a good sign for my mental health.

Chris had a late skate, his hockey game didn’t start until ten p.m. so the house was quiet around me, save for Bernie’s little snores. I finally forced myself to look up from the screen and get up from the couch. Doing my usual rounds, I filled the coffee pot and set it to brew for five thirty hoping as I do every night that Ivy would sleep in just a little bit for once. 

I scooped up Wallace (he won’t climb up anything more than five steps) and deposited him on the second floor before continuing up to the third to check on my two oldest. Both were sound asleep in their rooms as expected. I switched off their bedside lights, grabbed three empty water glasses and headed back down. 

Kat’s door wasn’t closed completely, but close to it. That was unusual. She’s an all-the-lights-on-and-make-sure-the-door-is-wide-open, kind of girl. I heard a noise that I made out to be paper turning and the shuffling of colored pencils. 

“Buddy, it’s way past bedtime,” I said, nudging the door open with my foot. “What are you-”

Kat lay on the floor on her tummy, head bent over one of her little spiral notebooks drawing. 

There was a little girl beside her, watching her color.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, almost dropping all the water glasses. “Who’s this?” I asked, not wanting to scare Kat.

The little blond ghost girl sitting beside my daughter met my gaze and the gentle smile she’d been wearing turned into a snarl. 

“Claire?” I called out in a whisper. When there was no sign of her and no reply I demanded, “Claire!”

She was behind me an instant later. “I’m not going in there.”

“What is it?” I asked in a low voice, hoping to neither panic Kat nor trigger the thing emanating evil sitting criss cross applesauce on my daughter’s purple rug.

“It’s lower level, but that thing is demonic.”

“Where did it come from?”

When Claire didn’t reply I directed the same question to Kat, in an unnaturally sing-song voice. “Honey, where did you meet your new friend?”

Kat stared down at the page in front of her and kept scribbling. Which was not like her at all. My kids can be as kid-like as anyone else’s but they never ignore me. 

“Katherine,” I said in my serious mom voice, “Who is this?”

“Andras,” she said, without looking up. 

Claire gasped. 

“Kat, come here. Right now,” I demanded without another thought. 

“Mom.”

“Now.”

The little blond ghost girl who wasn’t a little blond ghost girl stood.

“Not you,” I said, trying very hard to keep my voice steady. “You are not welcome on this property. Leave. Now.”

The girl demon’s blue eyes didn’t just widen, they literally grew bigger. Standing in my little girl’s room was an uncanny valley version of a seven year old little girl. Some mother I was, scrolling away on TikTok while my daughter was upstairs coloring with a demon.

“I cast you out of my home,” I said as forcefully as I could. 

It growled. That got Kat moving, she jumped up, ran out of the room and beat feet down the hall to my bedroom. 

“Leave. This is my house. You have no authority here. I retract all invitations. Get out.” 

The thing growled again.

“We heard you the first time,” Claire said with all the force of an angry teenage girl.

The little demon turned away from us, walked to one of Kat’s bedroom windows, put a hand flat against the pane of glass, growled something terrible and then was gone. 

“Go sit with Kat,” I ordered Claire. 

I ran upstairs, woke the other girls and brought them down to our bedroom. I salted the doorways and window sills throughout the house for good measure and let them all watch their ipads until Chris got home. When he did we got the girls set up with blankets on our floor. When they were finally asleep I apologized for not telling him right away that Kat was like me. That I felt guilty and that it was all my fault. He was worried for her, but glad I’d talked to Judith about it and understood why it had been hard for me to tell him. And then I told him I’d just banished a demon from our house about forty minutes prior.  And then, he was really pissed. Terrified, beyond reason. But pissed.

“There is nothing in this house,” I reassured him. “I went through, it’s all clear.”

“How can you be sure that thing isn’t going to get back in here?”

“It can’t.”

“How did it get in here in the first place then?”

I hesitated, not wanting to place blame anywhere. “It’s possible, I mean, probable that Kat might maybe have invited it onto our property.”

“I thought we demons or ghosts or anything else couldn’t come anywhere near the house.”

It wasn’t the time to mention Mr. Darby. “They can’t, unless we invite them. Like, how Claire can be here.”

“We have to shut this down.”

My cell phone buzzed with an incoming text. 

“It’s Judith,” I told Chris. 

Claire’s here, what the hell is going on?

Kat may have invited a demon into the house by accident that she didn’t realize was a demon.

That apple didn’t fall far. You in the clear?

Yes

I’ll be there tomorrow. 10am. I could almost hear her sigh through the text.

I looked up at Chris. “What did she say?”

“She’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

“Thank God,” he said, which, as ridiculous as it sounds, given the circumstances, stung a little. I’d already taken care of it. As much as our religions and the movies and stories that I’ve shared in the past may lead us to believe, anyone can banish a demon who hasn’t had time to establish a foothold. You just have to mean it. Thankfully, Kat had only just met the thing so it hadn’t had long to work it’s confusing logic on her and convinced her she needed him. The second it growled at us it broke the little bit of hold it had over her, scaring her enough to change her mind about it. Then all it took was me telling it to get out and meaning it. And I really did. 

“I’ll call Father McGonagle in the morning,” Chris offered.

“Let’s hold off on that until we talk to Judith, ok?”

“There was a demon in this house.”

“Right, but it wasn’t like… Look, I don’t want to ask Father McGonagle for help unless we are really desperate and that is not at all what this situation is. Judith will talk to Kat about her new abilities and we’ll figure out how to keep her safe.”

“This is terrifying,” Chris whispered, almost as if he hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

“It is,” I agreed, leaning into his chest for a hug.

“I can’t go to sleep like this,” he sighed.

“We’ll watch one of your gold mining shows until you’re tired.”

“No, I mean, I have to shower. I can’t go to bed without showering after hockey.”

Realization hit me. “It’s ok. I’ll sit in the bathroom and read while you’re in the shower.”

The Harbinger of Halloween

Now, if there is one thing I’m gonna do when we move to a new neighborhood, it’s find all the new walking trails, new to me anyway, and track down all the creepy little parks. We’re close to town in a relatively tightly packed neighborhood so I thought I’d traversed most of the cut throughs and walking paths in the area, but there was one piece of conservation land that I hadn’t yet heard of, and that’s Cronk’s Rocky Woodland. 

The Wellesley Conservation Trust describes it as follows: Cronk’s Rocky Woodland was given to the Wellesley Conservation Land Trust (WCLT) in 1977 by Gertrude Cronk in memory of Corydon P. Cronk. This woodland preserve of native wildflowers was next to their home at 10 Crown Ridge Road and had been in their possession for nearly thirty years. Cronk’s Rocky Woodland is now fenced with a gate at the entrance on Crown Ridge Road and includes a rustic cabin and a marked nature trail. The WCLT works with wildflower and tree experts to maintain Gertrude Cronk’s vision for this woodland sanctuary… Some of the beautiful wildflowers found here are Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Pink Lady’s-slippers, Jacob’s Ladder, Yellow Trout Lily, Black Cohosh and many other varieties. 

How great are those flower names, right? The park even has its own Facebook page, chock full of darling posts of community events. Hot cider and donuts meetups each Autumn, smores roasts in the outdoor fireplace when it snows, images of baby birds in their nests. Very wholesome and cozy. 

That little park in an unlikely place may have once been home to the Cronks but now, something else has claimed the land.

I became aware of the park at this year’s annual Fall Fest. I think I’ve mentioned the elementary school event before. A festival of burgers and dogs, apple cider and apple cider donuts, cotton candy, a cake walk, and a Halloween costume swap, all capped off by an outdoor movie. It’s controlled chaos, it’s kids running around just this side of lawless, it’s overstimulation, it’s freezing your ass off sitting on a damp soccer field at night while the kids gorge on candy. I know I sound like Scrooge. But that’s because I am. Try as I might, I struggle to enjoy large scale children’s events. I think it’s a mix of anxiety and the fact that I suspect I never shook off a titch of the post-partum, that little voice inside shouting, “What were you thinking? This is too much, too fast, too scary! Why did you ever think you could handle this?”

But I have managed it, I am managing it. But the ceaseless stream of kid centric activities come at you fast, one after another and for someone who realized late in life that I am an introvert, these things can be, well a lot. Anyone will tell you that there is a great deal of acting involved in parenting. Acting patient. Acting interested. Acting as excited as everyone else around me seems to be. And I’m not a very good actress. My mask slips more than I’d like it too.  Most of the time I feel like the worst sort of phony and I certainly carry a lot of guilt about it, it’s not that I don’t want to enjoy myself for their sake, but so many times I find myself looking around in wonder thinking, how aren’t these people worried about all the things that can go horribly, irreversibly wrong right now?

I blame it on my wildly overactive anxious brain and its never ending mix of fearful and banal thoughts. These days, the stream goes a little something like this: I need to chill with the social media, but what is going to happen? It took hours for help to come for those poor people. Hours. I should be more fucking grateful that I have a house to clean and a healthy family to care for. My ass is getting flat. If I could just set a fucking schedule and stick to it like every other author the book would have been done three years ago. I’m so bad at texting people back, I need to try harder to maintain my miniscule social life and various dysfunctional relationships. I can’t believe what’s happened since. Those poor people. The horse has left the gate, how will anyone stop it now? What will happen next? I forgot to put the dry cleaning out. The girls are old enough to pack their own fucking snacks. I’m lucky to have a house. My God how could this be happening? How dare I complain about anything? Those people would kill to be here right now. Buck up. I’ll delete tik tok again. I won’t drink, it only buys me two hours of quiet and then the anxiety will scream me awake at 2:00am. I’ll have a valerian root tea. How can we all just sit here and pretend the world isn’t on fire? I’m going to buy a new planner and use a different pen. Make a to-do list. What the fuck is going to happen next? 

Racing, distracting, maddening thoughts. It’s a trade off. Have quieter thoughts but nod off when I sit down to write and desperately need to nap in the afternoon, or live in the loop. For now I’ve chosen the loop, give me a month or two and I sign back up for numbed our quiet again. 

But where was I? Parenting, anxiety, kid events – you know, that fucking elementary school parking lot is a death trap… Sigh… Ok, right, the Fall Fest. 

I worked the ticket table this year. I actually enjoyed it to be honest. I like the women I was with and it’s always best to have a job at these things. Idle hands and all that. I tasked Max with keeping an eye on Kat, but knew that might result in trouble. Not that she would intentionally ignore or leave her, Kat just tends to wander. Chris was coaching Joey’s soccer practice, so they showed up about an hour late. 

I’d finished my shift and was scanning the crowd for the girls when I felt a hand on my arm.

“You’re the ghost woman.”

Trying to hide the fact that I was startled, I forced a laugh. “Uh, I guess, yeah.”

“My sister in law was just in town and she’s obsessed with your stories. Are they real?”

I nodded while my eyes darted around us, still scanning for the girls. Where were they? It was getting dark out.  I should have spotted them already. It would be so easy for someone to take them. What if they’d wandered into that fucking parking lot?

“My wife took her to Quebrada then showed her MOPO.”

“Gotta hit the hot spots,” I replied, distracted.

“You guys just moved over this way, huh? We were at the kindergarten social you threw a couple years ago.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Why’d you move?”

“That was actually two houses ago, actually,” I explained, “We get antsy.”

“So this will be your kids’ first Halloween in the neighborhood, yeah?”

Where the fuck were the girls? Two more minutes and I was sounding the alarm. 

“Don! Come here.”

Another dad approached us, offering Ted a hearty slap on the back and me a cautious smile. 

“You heard about the blog about ghosts in Wellesley?”

Don’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, I think Margot reads it.”

“This is the woman who writes it.”

“Mom!” 

Oh thank God, I breathed inwardly. “Hi honey, I was worried that I couldn’t find you,” relief reverted back to panic, “Where’s your sister?”

“The cotton candy line, but we need more tickets.” 

I handed Kat a five dollar bill. “You come right back here with your treat, okay? Are you okay? Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she yelled over her shoulder as she sprinted for the ticket table. 

I was surprised that the two men were still standing there when I turned back. 

“So,” I began awkwardly. I didn’t want to be talking to two men by myself. Where the fuck was Chris? I wondered. He is just so much better in these situations. 

“She just moved over to [name of street omitted],” Ted told Don.

“Huh, first Halloween in the neighborhood then,” Don commented, mimicking Ted’s earlier statement.

“Yup. The houses are closer together here than they were in our old neighborhood. The kids are hoping for a big haul.”

The men chuckled. 

“Just keep clear of Cronks,” Don cautioned. I could smell alcohol on his breath. That definitely wasn’t coffee in his Yeti tumbler. 

“Who are the Cronks?” I asked, doing my best to hide my annoyance. Chatting with a couple of dad’s that I barely knew was fine, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to gossip with them.

“Not who, where. It’s a park at the top of Crown Ridge. You don’t want the kids going anywhere near it on Halloween night.”

“Why not? Are there Satanists putting needles in the candy or something?” 

“Hey Liz.” Trina, the mom of a boy in Joey’s class, joined us and slid an arm around Ted’s waist. “Isn’t this fun?”

I nodded, hoping I looked like I meant it.

“We were just warning her about Cronks.”

The smile fell from Trina’s face. “How did you get on that subject?”

Ted shrugged. “Someone should tell her.”

Trina gave her husband an annoyed look. 

“What’s wrong with the park?” I asked, beginning to be intrigued. 

“Some people say there’s a monster who lives there,” said Don. 

“It comes out before midnight on Halloween,” Ted added. 

“But only on odd numbered years,” said Don. 

Trina’s lips were pursed tightly. 

“They call it the Harbinger of Halloween and you can summon it to tell you the future.”

“Haha,” I laughed, feeling like I might be being made the butt of a joke I didn’t get. Were they making fun of me for writing ghost stories?

“We’re serious,” Ted insisted. “Just ask Trina, she saw the thing for herself. Show her your wrist, Treen.”  

Her eyes widened at the suggestion.

“Come on, she writes about this stuff,” Don pointed out. “You should show her.”

Trina was obviously pissed, but managed to fix her features into a semi-pleasant expression. She lifted her sleeve and showed me her wrist. Three thick lines curved from halfway up her arm down to the pad beneath her thumb. 

I stared for a moment then met her eyes. 

“It’s really a thing,” she said, pulling down her sleeve. “Stay away from that street Halloween night.” 

“Hello!” Chris boomed beside me, making me jump. “Sorry I’m late, a couple of the kids’ parents were late to pick them up from practice.” He kissed my temple. “Hey, I’m Chris,” he said, introducing himself around and shaking hands. 

We chatted with the group a few minutes longer then, predictably, when the girls did not report back after purchasing their cotton candy we found reason to excuse ourselves so we could round them up. 

“What was that about?” He asked when we were a far enough distance away from the group.

“I’ll tell you later,” I replied to buy myself time. We’d only been in the house for two and half months and he was already sending me Zillow listings and he didn’t even know about the ghost in the garage yet. If he knew there was a monster a couple streets over I’d be packing by the end of the week. 

The text from Trina came through at 5:13 the following morning. Game recognize game, I thought, reading the anxiety laden message. 

Hey! Good to see you last night at Fall Fest. Hoping your kids were able to calm down faster than ours were when they got home last night. I was hoping maybe we could grab a coffee next week, Monday or Tuesday? I know you’re probably busy, so whatever fits your schedule works. Thanks. This is Trina Sellers BTW.

I texted back, writing that Kat settled down after the Fall Fest just fine after throwing up hot pink halfway through the movie (eye roll emoji, crying laughing emoji) and Monday morning after drop off worked for me. 

Trina suggested Quebrada and I agreed happily. I was in the mood for a cinnamon bun.

“I know Lindsay, or should I say [real name omitted]. They moved last year and I haven’t spoken with her since, but I met her through the Wellesley Mothers Forum.”

I scrambled for a response, but Trina saved me.

“I liked the monster better,” she admitted. “Isn’t that awful of me to say? She was such an intense person when I first met her and unless you really knew her you might not even notice how subtly she’d mellowed. I’d just assumed she was microdosing or something. But then another friend of mine found your blog and we knew instantly who you were writing about.”

“Shit,” I muttered. Believe it or not I usually try to do my best to throw off some details so people who live here won’t have an easy time figuring out who I’m writing about. 

“It was the bangs,” Trina explained. “Once you or whoever you work with did whatever they did and, I mean, I assume they got rid of the monster, right? Because she reverted right back. Worse, I think. More rigid.” Trina leaned forward. “She tried to get a handful of books banned at the Bates library.”

“God lord,” I muttered. “I should have let that mimic stay.”

Trina laughed. “The monster was more kind.”

“And less ignorant,” I added, before biting into a warm cinnamon bun. 

“Speaking of monsters…” Trina began. “There’s one at Cronk’s Rocky Woodland of Terror.”

“I was meaning to go check it out yesterday, but the day got away from me,” I told her.

“I’d wait until after Halloween,” Trina suggested, her smile not reaching her eyes. “Just to be on the safe side,” she added. 

“What exactly is it?” 

She pursed her lips, then said, “I’ve done a lot of research over the years trying to figure it out. We call it the Halloween Harbinger, but the thing isn’t technically a harbinger, traditionally it would be considered an oracle,” She explained. “You know about the Mothman?”

I nodded.

“What am I asking?” she laughed. “Of course you do. Anyway, you know how a harbinger of doom might offer a warning of future events, useless and unintelligible though that warning might be? Like Mothman flapping around and scaring the shit out of people before the bridge collapsed. I mean who could possibly have guessed what he was trying to warn people about, right? So, on the other hand, an oracle, like those from Greek Antiquity, offer prophecies about the future. The prophecy might be coded or confusing, but it at least attempts to offer a hint. We don’t really have modern day oracles, we have psychics, but none seem all that great at accurately predicting things. So the Halloween Harbinger is more of a Halloween Oracle.”

“The Odd Oracle of October,” I suggested.

Trina offered a hesitant smile. 

“Because it only comes on odd numbered years,” I said.

“Oh! Right! Perfect,” she laughed. “Well, so… the Odd Oracle of October. Yeah so for the most part the legend seems to have died out, thank goodness.”

“Not for long once you publish her story,” Claire commented, making me feel guilty. She’d been excited all morning to tag along on this coffee. She loved Halloween stories. I suspected this was going to be an urban legend situation but Claire had a feeling it was going to be a good one. 

“My best friend Jenny’s older brother, Ricky, told us about it. We were at her house the afternoon of Halloween, early nineties. We were obsessed with Aladdin so we decided to go as Jasmine and Aladdin. We’d written the names on a slip of paper and I got lucky and pulled Jasmine,” she laughed at the memory. “We’d planned to go to another friend’s house early evening to watch Friday the 13th then go out and trick or treat.

“We were getting ready to go when Ricky poked his head into Jenny’s room to see what we were up to. He was a senior in high school, a little out there, called himself ‘Straight Edge’ you know, he always had a big black X drawn on the back of his hand in Sharpie.”

“Oh my God, core memory unlocked!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t thought about that in years!” 

“I know right? He was very sweet. He sat down on Jenny’s bed and asked where we were going. We told him the neighborhood, we all lived over in Poet’s Corners so he was surprised. ‘Stay clear of Cronk’s,’ he warned us. Oh, I can see him clear as day. So mature, so cool,” she chuckled. “Of course we took the bait and asked why. 

“So he told us the story. Two years before a girl at the high school, a Junior, had been killed riding her bike home on Weston Road.”

“Oh no,” I groaned. 

“It was really sad. I was in seventh grade at the time so I didn’t know her, but it was a town-wide tragedy. It had been a hit and run, she was coming home from Cross Country practice at the high school and it took months for the police to find the woman who did it. She was like, super popular, a three varsity athlete, volunteered for charity, just an all around nice girl by all accounts.

“She was killed in early November and kids started talking pretty soon after she’d died. That previous Halloween night there were rumors about something happening up at Cronks. We didn’t know what Cronks was, but apparently high school kids would park down at Roche then walk up there and sneak into the little cabin to drink and stuff. Ricky told us that there were rumors about Ouija Boards and Satanic rituals, that the girl had sold her soul but something went wrong. That a demon had attached to her from the Ouija Board. That she became possessed and had ridden her bike straight into traffic. 

“But Ricky claimed he knew the truth about that night. His friend Keith had been there. He was dating the girl’s best friend and he saw everything that happened in that cabin. It was Halloween night and three couples went up to the cabin to smoke pot and drink beer,” Trina raised her eyebrows up and down comically, making me laugh. “One of the guys actually did bring along a Ouija Board and they tinkered around with it a bit. Then Keith decided they should tell scary stories and it was the girl’s boyfriend, Chad, who told them about the Halloween Harbinger. He told them to all close their eyes and imagine a large, ancient being made of roots and rotting branches, hugging the ground just outside the cabin, waiting for its moment every other year on Halloween night for someone to call out to it. The creature was sinewy and strong and smelled of Autumn rot and it knew things about the future that humans had no business knowing. It could be summoned and would offer a truth or answer a question. 

“Chad told them to hold the image of the creature in their minds and open their eyes. He told them to repeat after him. ‘Harbinger of Halloween, come to us with the truth.’ He said it three times and they all repeated it together. They all sat in silence, waiting, probably giggling a little bit. Then Chad said, ‘We are ready for you,’ and something tapped at the door. Everyone screamed. They all looked at eachother, then started accusing Chad of playing a practical joke, but he was just as scared as everyone else. He opened the door thinking it would be one of their friends, but no one was there. 

“So he closes the door all freaked out and the girl, the one who ended up being killed, was like, ‘So do we get to ask it a question?’ Keith and his girlfriend were like, no way, but everyone else wanted to do it. So Chad had them all close their eyes again, imagine the being in their minds just outside the cabin door-”

“Holy shit,” I interrupted.
“What, have you heard this?”

“No. But, oh my god, plot twist! They created a tulpa.”

“Bingo,” said Claire.

“How’s that?” 

“They all focused their intentions at the same time, they were just scared enough and just believing enough to bring something that hadn’t existed before into being.”

“Huh, yeah. Maybe you’re right. It does sound like Chad had been making up the story as he went along until things took a turn.”

“And since the group believed him, they managed to summon it,” I said, excitedly.

“They sure did, at least that’s what Keith told Ricky. Anyhow, they went through the motions, the thing tapped at the door, this time when Chad went to open it, even though there wasn’t anything there they could see anyway, he invited it in to sit with them. He sat back down, and said, ‘Go ahead, ask it a question.’ After a minute, Keith asked if he was going to be rich, like jokingly. He said they heard a voice go, ‘In your early days you’ll want for nothing, in your later days it’s everything you’ll need.’”

“Oof,” I whispered.

“Yeah, so there were other questions, I can’t remember what they were but then Chad’s girlfriend asked, ‘Am I going to get into Boston College?’ The voice responded, ‘Your acceptance is guaranteed, but due to the wheels of fate, your attendance is not.’”

“Oh, no.” 

“According to Ricky, they all thought it was just another kid screwing around with them, you know talking through the chimney or something, and they didn’t really think too much about it until that girl’s hit and run accident.”

“Did she get accepted to BC?” I asked. 

Trina nodded. 

“Yikes,” I muttered. “That is so sad.” 

“It was. And Ricky swore to God that he thought Keith was telling the honest to God truth. He said Chad felt super guilty about what had happened. He felt responsible.”

“So you guys decided to go try it out.”

“Yup. We went to the little pre-trick or treating party then went out for candy and found ourselves at the top of Crown Ridge. Jenny and I decided to peel away from the group, we couldn’t convince anyone else to come with us. That park is small, but at night, with that dark cabin set back in there, it’s pretty terrifying. We followed the trail to the cabin and found the door unlocked. We were actually pretty surprised that there weren’t any kids back there. Now that I think about it, it is pretty strange, you know? You’d think some kids, whether they knew about the whole Harbinger thing or not, would be there trying to creep themselves out on Halloween.

“Jenny and I sat on the floor in that damp, creaky cabin and we imagined the thing and we chanted ‘Harbinger of Halloween, come to us with the truth.’ We sat there, basically holding our breath and then there was a tiny scrape at the door. Not exactly a knock or a tap, but something. We freaked out. It was the only way out of there unless we wanted to bust through a window. We were frozen, we didn’t know what to do. I was crying, Jenny was shaking, she was so scared. The scraping happened again and we both screamed at the top of our lungs. Jenny was like, we have to let it in and ask a question. It’s the only way it will go away.’ I tried pulling her back from the door but she was too determined.” Trina blew out a breath.

“She opened the door, nothing was there, that we could see, anyway, but something was with us. I could feel it.” 

“I was on the edge of hysteria, I was so terrified. Jenny said something like, ‘Can my parents keep the house?’ This sort of shook me out of the moment of terror. What was she talking about? Keep the house? She hadn’t said anything about moving. Then this smell filled the cabin, it smelled like damp and woods and Autumn leaves and a raspy voice that was all around us said, ‘The house is gone but the will of your father provides security once again.’”

“Shiver me timbers,” I breathed. “God, that’s scary.”

“I couldn’t take it, I started to leave the cabin, but Jenny insisted that I had to ask a question. I yelled at her that I didn’t want to ask anything, I just wanted to leave. The monster didn’t like that. As I walked through the door I felt something, a hand, but not a hand because it was rough and massive, grab my arm. I wrenched it away and it left those scratches. We both ran out of the park and down the hill and called my mom from our friend’s house to come pick us up.

“I hid the scrapes from my parents because it looked like a dog or something had scratched me and I knew they would be super uptight about finding the family with the dog and causing a whole scene about it. That’s why I think the scar looks so bad. If I’d treated it properly it probably wouldn’t be so noticeable now. 

I considered her for a moment. “Did it come true?”

“Her parents got divorced and they had to sell the house, they moved away, not far, but too far for us to see each other very often since we didn’t drive. Things were rough for them, Ricky had to put off college, and then about a year or so later her father passed away.” She smiled sadly. 

“The will of her father,” I said in disbelief.

“Yeah, he left everything to the kids including his life insurance.”

***

I was too curious to wait until after Halloween. When I went to check out the small piece of conservation land for myself, at eleven o’clock in the morning on a non-Halloween day, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do if confronted by the harbinger. Would I ask a question, or would I run? 

It was a gray overcast day when I walked up to the park. The place is about an acre or so of rocky woodland, set smack dab in the middle of a residential street. You can’t get too deep into the trees to not see the abutting homes, but still, it manages to give you a quiet feeling of isolation once you’ve moved toward the park’s center. A moss covered rock and tree root laden path carpeted by Oak leaves, pine needles, pine cones and acorns winds throughout the little park. Logs outline a trail that zigs and zags until you land in front of a small wooden cabin perched at the park’s highest point. Look up from the path (if you dare risk a twisted ankle) and you’ll see adorably simple wooden bird houses nailed to several trees. Look to the side of the path and you’ll find laminated informational sheets, stuck to posts in the ground or clipped to the foliage itself, with fun details about the park and its inhabitants. A full page spread offers the history of a hitching post, placed near the center of the park. It reads, “This hitching post was brought by Gertrude Green Cronk from her father‘s lumber business, the MD Greene lumber company in Auburn New York. It stood at the entrance to the house at 10 Crown Ridge Rd. then when Gertrude was 92 in 1986 it moved with her to Ohio and was placed in her daughter Carol’s yard. Carol has recently moved and wished the post to return to the post arrived back here from Ohio about five years ago.” Five years ago from when it didn’t say.

Kind of wild, right? A hitching post here, then to Ohio and back. I don’t know why, but I don’t like it. Other transplants exist along the zigzagging path. Someone seems to have repurposed a set of old wooden lawn chairs and placed them higgledy-piggledy along the trail. Like the wooden logs that line the way, the chairs sit and deteriorate in the elements. 

The cabin itself looks, well, harmless. But I certainly wouldn’t want to spend any time there after dark.

Before I left the park through the front gate I couldn’t help myself, I whispered, “What will happen next?” Then beat feet down the road.

The sky had been gray and threatening all morning, but the raindrops began the second I latched the gate behind me. By the time I’d made it home I was soaked. I dried off, slipped into cozy clothes, made ramen noodles and downloaded Tik Tok again, then scrolled through images of horror from distant lands until I had to go pick up the kids from school. We had soccer and reading, an architectural project and math homework to busy ourselves with. And I’d just bought a new planner. I could copy the birthdays and appointments from the old to the new. I’d give gel ink another try. It just might make everything easier to manage.