As I reach for a pen, I glimpse a plastic bag resting on top of books. It’s full of candy corn and Twizzlers. Bart’s bag.
So, someone else put the bag with chocolate in my mailbox. Someone else is passing out spoiled candy.
An all-staff email is a must. Watch out for worms in your Halloween chocolates!
I hit send and sit back in my chair, shuddering and flicking my tongue around my mouth to make sure no traces of chocolate are left.
IT’S AFTER THREE WHEN I leave work and race to the parking garage in the hope of beating the school bus. By early November, the sun will be going down as my last child gets home.
As I climb into my SUV and toss my purse into the passenger seat, I notice the corner of a business card sticking out of the side of the floorboard mat. I pick it up and turn it over in my hand. There’s only one thing printed on both sides—a URL: leviat.com.
Stuffing it into my purse, I try to recall where I got the card, but nothing comes to mind.
I stop off at the grocery on the way home to buy some beer—just in case Steel ever sets foot in my house again. By the time I arrive home, the girls are there. Bridget and Paris are shrugging out of their rain slickers.
“Hey, guys.”
“Mom, will you tell Annalen to stop trying to scare me?” Gretchen whines.
I drop my purse on the bottom step. “What’s she doing to scare you, Gretch?” My voice holds a sighing hint of I-really-don’t-care-but-I-know-I-should-ask.
“She keeps taking the dagger off the wall and chasing me with it.”
Now she has my attention. I shoot a stern look toward my oldest daughter. “Annalen, I’d better never hear about you taking that dagger off the wall again. You know better than that.”
Annalen laughs, but her smile fades as I intensify my glare.
“I left the cover on it. I couldn’t actually stab anyone with the cover on.”
“I don’t care. That is not to play with. It’s a real dagger, and it could hurt someone.”
“I know,” she says quietly. “I was just messing around.”
Gretchen’s brows furrow. “If it could hurt someone, why do you have it hanging on the wall?”
I tug at the sleeve of my sweater, pulling it down to cover a nasty bruise on my wrist. “It’s an antique. It belonged to your great, great, great grandfather.”
“And he killed seven demons with it,” Bridget announces. She knows the story too well.
“Well, he didn’t, but supposedly someone did. It’s just a story.”
Gretchen raises her hands to her hips. “But if it’s dangerous...”
“Okay, Gretch. Don’t worry about it. Your sister is not going to stab you or anyone else with it. No one is stabbing anyone.” I roll my eyes and huff out a sigh. “Where’s Paris?”
“Upstairs on your computer playing Apollo’s Cave.”
I tromp upstairs, eyeing the bruise on my wrist. Before I reach the bedroom, I hear Paris’s voice. It sounds like she’s having a conversation with someone.
“My mommy says that too. Do you have a mommy?”
I stop outside the door and listen.
She giggles. “No. My daddy doesn’t live here anymore.”
Who is she talking to? I swing around the threshold. Paris faces the screen. It’s a virtual meeting room, but whoever is on the other end doesn’t have their camera turned on. A circle with L occupies the space where the picture or image of a person would be.
“Paris, what are you doing?”
She swivels around in the chair. “Just talking to Levi.”
“Levi? Who’s Levi?”
She points at the screen. “The boy—well, he’s gone now—but he just popped up on the screen, and we were talking.”
I rush toward the computer, but by the time I reach it, the window closes and shrinks away.
I squat beside her. “Paris, you don’t ever, ever, ever talk to anyone online. Ever, do you hear me?”
Her hazel eyes search mine. “But he was like me, Mommy. My same age and everything.”
I shake my head. “I don’t care. Never, do you understand?”
What is going on with my kids tonight? First, Annalen with the dagger, now Paris talking to some random kid online? She’s six, yet she managed the meeting application on my computer. And who knows if this person was actually a kid? There are too many sick people out there pretending to be kids to reel in their prey. After several more minutes of grilling Paris on how she got online with “Levi,” I feel relatively confident it was a fluke.
I point at the meeting icon on my desktop. “But if this ever pops on again, you are to close out of it immediately.”
She nods. “Okay.”
Slowly, I straighten, and my lower back makes a popping sound. “We’ll order pizza tonight, so tell your sisters to figure out what kind they want.”
“Yay!” Paris leaps from the chair and scurries downstairs to join the others. Online chat forgotten.
My cellphone sings, and I reach into my purse to retrieve it. It’s a text from Bart.
Did you find out who gave you the wormy chocolate?
I text him back: No. Whoever it was, they were probably too embarrassed to fess up.
He replies immediately. My candy was better anyway.
Any worm-free candy would be an improvement. But thanks. I love cherry Twizzlers.
He sends a laughing emoji. Let me know if you need more. I have a bowl full of them in my office. See you in the morning.
Bart. Not that giving me Halloween candy is any big deal, but that’s not the only attention he’s paid me recently. Bart’s an attractive guy, but I’ve avoided getting too flirty with him. First of all, we work together. Second of all, he’s just gone through a divorce and is a single father too. It’s taken me a year to get where I am. Bart still has some healing to do.
As I set the phone on the nightstand, a piece of cardboard falls off the back of it—the business card I found on the floorboard. I flip it back and forth, staring at the URL, wondering again how it came to be there. Before meeting Steel, I’d collected more than a few business cards from tree and junk removal services—it could be one of those.
leviat.com
I bend over the chair back, pull up a browser, and type in the URL. Instantly, a window opens, and a field with gently swaying grasses fills the screen. One by one, lines of text appear.
Everyone has something to hide. Where do you bury your memories? What’s your hidden treasure? Explore your deepest, darkest secrets and experience the rush!
A red button fades in, inviting me to click on it: ENTER
What is this? An advertisement? I scan the words and hover my cursor over the screen, searching for a way to X out of it. My finger twitches, and the ultra-sensitive mouse clicks. Seconds later, a black screen pops up, and my heart lurches.
“Oh, shit.” I skirt around the chair, falling into the seat.
Great. Curiosity may have cost me ransomware. I slam my fingertip down on the escape button, but the pop-up enlarges, and an image materializes in video form. The point of view is from the person filming but creates the sensation that I’m the one walking into the room, viewing a table set for two, an open window, a television—the old kind, with rabbit ears and staticky reception. The room looks neat and orderly, if not dated.
I lean in, strangely mesmerized.
The anchorman on the TV speaks. “Why did you set the table? No one’s coming. No one likes you. No one would even think of eating with you.”
The camera shifts across the room to the window. A cup and saucer sit in front of it.
“Drink the tea. Go on, drink it.”
The camera focuses on the cup and lingers as the liquid turns a deep red and bubbles like lava. Special effects—amateur movie-making. But there’s something mildly disturbing about the images—familiar even, especially the voice.
“What is this?” I move my cursor, trying to find some way to exit out of the pop-up.
O
n the screen, the angle shifts to the other side of the room, where the window slides open, seemingly on its own. The sound of rain filters in. The camera pans across to the television. A weatherman points to red and green sections of the screen. Then he faces forward, addressing the person filming.
“It’s raining again. You’ll have to find your own company, won’t you? You’ll have to go out there in the rain and get them. Just like I showed you.” The weatherman steps up to the screen, his eyes ballooning, his mouth stretching. “You’ll have to bring them to you.”
A burst of static separates this scene from the next one. The face of a rubber blow-up doll comes into view. Her mouth forms an O as the camera draws back slowly, revealing that the doll is sitting at the table, dressed in a white button-down shirt. A blue ribbon tops her head. A cup of tea sits in front of her.
The doll’s open mouth closes and opens again. A tongue darts out from the folds of rubber and runs across her lips. A childlike voice beckons, “I’m your friend now. I’ll be your company. But you must bring me company too.” The doll is so still, so lacking in animation, her eyes dull and painted-on, but her mouth moves with human-like precision.
I draw back from the screen, and the air seeps out of me. What am I watching? An art student’s final project? Or something else?
A shivery fear rushes through me as I formulate theories. Am I witnessing something illegal? Criminal? I’ve heard about videos on the web created to look bizarre and creepy—wannabe horror movie producers trying their hand at scaring people into believing the film is real.
Another zig-zag of static cuts across the screen and the scene changes again.
Eyes. Staring into the camera—so close they’re blurry. A flicker ushers in black and white shots of random images. A field of people lying facedown, presumably deceased. A shovel. A steamer trunk.
Then the entire screen goes black. My reflection stares back at me. My mouth hangs open, and air rattles in my throat. The images and sounds were so macabre, so unsettling.
I’m tempted to research leviat.com on another site if only to find out the origin. But I’m worried that the video will pop up. And I do not want to see those images again.
15
The next day at work, I stop by Bart’s office.
“Hey.” I grasp the door frame.
Bart tosses his pen on the desk and leans back in his chair. “Hey. You’re here early.”
Reaching into my back pocket, I pull out the card with the URL. “Have you ever heard of this? leviat.com?”
Squinting, Bart rolls his chair forward. “What is it?”
“Last night, I tried the URL. It took me to this website that asked about delving into your deepest memories. Anyway, it brought up this video with all of these images—like a student film or something.”
Bart shakes his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I push the card back into my pocket. “Maybe I’m just getting freaked out because when I got home last night, I found my six-year-old in a virtual chat with some random kid.”
Bart grimaces. “Six, wow. That’s starting early. Who was she talking to?”
“I never saw anyone. Just a blank screen.”
“Guess they signed off when they saw you come in.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“But as for you...” Bart rolls back to his desk. “Be careful going to random URLs. Cyber attacks and all that. Don’t download anything.”
“I know. I’m not stupid.”
“And whatever you do, if someone messages you and says they’re from the IRS and asks you to go to the store and buy gift cards for them...” He lifts his eyebrows. “Don’t do it.”
“Ha. Ha.” I press my fingers against my temples. “It was just really weird. Some of the images and the setting where the video was taking place—it was familiar to me somehow.”
Bart turns back to the file on his desk. “There are a lot of crazies out there.” He points toward the hall. “Right out there. In the waiting room. You know?”
Holding onto the door frame, I swing into his office and swipe a mini Twizzler from the shallow dish on the corner of his desk.
Bart sinks back into his chair. “You know what else is really weird?”
“What?”
“Your wormy chocolate. I asked around. No one else in the office was doing the ghosting thing or giving out candy. At least no one that’s admitting to it.”
“Not even Heba?”
Bart shakes his head. “She put a bowl of candy out in reception, but that’s it.” He wiggles his fingers in the air and sings the song for The Twilight Zone.
16
I run my finger over the figurines salvaged from the shed. Seven are completely unharmed. One is missing a hand and the tip of a wing. Four of them I’ll display on my bedroom dresser, and four will go in my new fairy garden.
At a nearby nursery, I find an oblong planter of faux stone. A small ceramic mushroom is on sale, and miniature gnomes seem to be the gardening theme of the year. I buy two.
At home, I carry the planter to the deck, fill it with soil, and arrange the figurines. Eventually, in the spring, I’ll plant a gerbera daisy or two. For now, I position it on an outdoor table under the overhang.
Bridget pokes her head out of the back door. “Mommy, the doorbell’s ringing.”
I dust my hands off on my jeans. “Well, why didn’t you answer it?”
She shrugs.
I follow Bridget inside in time to hear the doorbell ring again. “Excuse me, why didn’t any of you answer it?” I raise my voice a notch.
Bridget plonks onto the living room couch. “Everyone else is in the basement.”
The basement. Where it happened. I haven’t been down there since that night.
Still wearing my coat, I stalk to the front door. Linda’s black hair fragments in the shapes of the beveled glass. When I open the door, she’s standing with her hands on her hips, her lips pressed together.
“Did you see what just happened?” She points to the street.
“No, what?”
“Thomas. Tearing down the lane like he’s late for an orgy.”
I suppress a laugh at Linda’s odd simile. “No, I didn’t see it.”
There is no amusement in Linda, however. She’s as angry as I’ve ever seen her. Hyo, Linda’s diminutive mother-in-law, stands on the sidewalk and shouts at her in Korean. Linda yells back at her. Shaking her head, Hyo turns and crosses the street.
“He nearly ran right over Amelia and Colton.” Linda jabs a finger behind her. “Ran right up on the curb. What if Bridget and Paris had been out there playing? He’s gonna kill one of these kids or someone else. I’ve had it. I’m going over there and telling Rich that he either grows a set and finds that boy some help, or we’re reporting them to the police and the HOA, and we’re slashing tires or doing whatever the hell we have to.”
“What?” I chuckle. “Linda, come on.”
Linda does not laugh. “Gen’s going with me. You coming?”
My shoulders slump as I waver. Thomas’s driving is a danger to the neighborhood—especially the children—but the last thing I want to do is be part of a mother’s mob pounding on the Frankensons’ door.
“I kind of have some stuff going on right now, Linda.”
She raises her hands to her hips again. “Are you kidding me? What’s more important than your kids’ lives, Claire? I don’t even have any small children at home, and I’m going over there.”
I hate feeling obligated, but there’s no way around it. I’ll have to go.
Pulling my coat around me, I follow her.
Gen stands on the sidewalk, her face compressed into a scowl. “Can you believe this?” her voice trills. “This is it. Enough. I don’t care if that kid’s got issues. He is not going to drive up and down this street like that. If his father doesn’t do something, then we will.”
We march forward, and I trail behind, my blood strangely cool during what I unders
tand should be a hot-headed and indignant protest against teenage reckless driving. But I can’t muster it. They’re right, of course. My girls could be hurt, killed. Something needs to be done. Even so, this hardly seems the way to do it.
“You know...” I try to keep my voice level. “I really think we should all calm down and talk about this rationally before we march over here and start accusing and threatening. There’s a better way to handle this, ladies.”
Linda scurries up the steps and hammers the door with her fist.
Seconds later, the door cracks open, and Agnes Frankenson’s narrow, pinched face peers out. “Yes?”
I’ve never seen her up close before, never formally met her. She hardly leaves the house. Agnes’s face is white, tired. Her gray hair is thinning, and the bags under her eyes are purple against pale skin.
“Now, Agnes, look,” Linda says, her hands jutting, searing through the air. “You know, and your husband knows, and your son knows too, that this has got to stop. Now. Today.” She points back to the street. “Thomas drove right up on that curb, and kids were playing there.”
“My kids.” Gen steps forward. “My kids, Agnes. Thomas could have killed them.”
“I—I’m sorry. I don’t...” Her soft voice fades off as her husband steps into the doorway.
“What’s going on?”
Gen and Linda continue their tirade, and I stand mute, hovering behind them, watching Rich’s facial features transform with concern, then sadness, then anger. He looks over at Agnes and reveals a yellow bruise covering his cheekbone. Another red contusion spreads like a port wine stain under his jaw.
“I’ve done all I can,” he practically whimpers.
I grab the iron railing. Gen and Linda drop their hands to their sides.
His voice brims with desperation. “I know Thomas’s driving is dangerous. I’ve called the police on him myself. What else do you want me to do?”
“Take the damn car away from him!” Gen screeches. “What’s the matter with you? You’re his father. Act like it, and do something. We’ve all had it.”
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