by Micol Ostow
“Maybe it wasn’t for us,” Daisy said. She was jittery, but then, so were we all.
“It was carrying a note,” Melanie pointed out. “Someone sent it out into the great wide yonder with deliberateness. Straight to the window of the Masthead office. If it wasn’t for us, then who?”
Daisy attempted a shrug, but I knew her well enough to see that she was trying a bit too hard to be casual. “If it were a prank, like Lena said, it wouldn’t have mattered what window it hit or who found it, right? It would just be meant to, like, mess with kids at Keene High, get them all worked up in the lead-up to Naming Day.”
I looked at Lena. “You really think that’s all it was?”
She frowned, considering. “I feel like … I mean, even just the fact that it mentions some random ‘curse’ … ,” Lena said. “That’s not even a thing. Hence: prank.”
“Maybe,” I hedged. “But if so, it’s a pretty elaborate prank, don’t you think? A carrier bird? A raven? You don’t see many of those around here, generally speaking.”
Except … Except for that nagging itch, still buzzing just below the surface, telling me that there was maybe something, some small detail here that I was missing.
I can’t lie: the prospect? It was unnerving, yes. But it was also thrilling.
A missed hint is basically the prologue of a mystery. Which meant that even if it was just a prank? I was for sure going to investigate.
“You’re saying you can’t think of anyone who’d put that much effort into a prank?” Melanie asked. “Have you forgotten last homecoming, when the football team managed to suspend the principal’s car from one of the goalposts on the football field?”
“Okay,” I agreed. “But that was hilarious high school hijinks. This is … disgusting, and obviously meant to freak people out. Possibly us specifically. So not only would the prankster need to be totally motivated to pull something like this off, he or she would also need to be hard-core anti–Naming Day in order to even want to upset us—or whomever the prank was specifically intended for, in the first place—so badly.” I look around. “Can any of us think of someone who might be cynical enough to do something like that?”
One by one, we all turned toward Theo. As he realized we were all staring at him, an angry flush crept up his neck. “God, no!” he protested. “I mean, yeah, I think Naming Day is lame, but I promise you, this is not my style.” He smiled wryly. “Honestly, I’m flattered you’d even think of me for this one, but I swear, I’m way too lazy to put in this kind of effort. For anything.”
“Fair,” I said. “Your words, not mine.” He didn’t flinch from my gaze; he was definitely being sincere. I considered what I knew of him. Theo’s op-ed pieces were on point, but he never, ever went a single syllable over his target word count. He wasn’t exactly industrious. So he was probably telling the truth now. But if not Theo, then who?
Just off the top of my head, I could only think of one other person who’d seemed as put out by Naming Day—or at least, by certain aspects of it—as Theo had.
“Caroline Mark,” I said, considering. “She completely flipped out yesterday on the quad when she didn’t get cast in the reenactment. Like in a big way. You guys saw.” I looked at Daisy and Lena, who both nodded. “What are the chances she has access to a fleet of birds?”
“It was definitely her,” Daisy said, jumping up. “It had to be. It’s like you say: She was furious, and this prank needed fury. Who else could it have been?”
Good question. I wasn’t sure I was so ready to close the book on our suspect list just yet, but Daisy was right—there were no other obvious suspects.
“She did have motive,” I said. “Jealousy’s one of the classics, after all.” It was means and opportunity I was wondering about, but Daisy was off on a tear by now.
“Exactly!” Daisy said enthusiastically. “It must be her! In which case, we have nothing to worry about.”
“Bird flu notwithstanding,” Parker quipped.
Daisy waved at him dismissively. “I realize you’re joking,” she said, “but trust me, Nancy didn’t touch that bird when she picked up the note. Our girl is way too careful for that.”
I shrugged. “It’s true.” I’m all too well trained in navigating a prospective crime scene.
“And obviously, Caroline Mark is just a sad, disgruntled wannabe who needed to get a little bit of sad—and gross—revenge before she could get over getting left off the reenactment cast list.”
“A sad, disgruntled wannabe who’s sending birds to their death in order to pass along creepy, threatening messages,” Seth pointed out. “I think we have to do something. We can’t just ignore this.”
“Do something like what?” Melanie asked. “Confront her? Tell the principal?”
He shrugged. “Or something. Right?” He looked at me. “I can’t be the only one who thinks that.”
I took a breath, considering how to respond. In my experience, I tended to have better luck investigating these things on my own than including the so-called authorities. But that note … even if it was a joke, it was sick. Disturbing.
“Just—not yet!” Daisy blurted. At Seth’s incredulous look, she went on, imploring. “I—I hear what you’re saying, and yeah, it’s weird, and okay, maybe we do have to tell someone. Eventually.”
“Dais—” I started, but she cut me off.
“Eventually,” she repeated. “But do we have to do it right now? Hear me out,” she said, seeing Seth open his mouth to reply. “If we say something to the principal, the reenactment might actually be canceled. You never know. It’s a small town. There are some majorly superstitious people living here. And even though some people”—she shot a dirty look at Theo—“think it’s just a stupid little folk tradition, I’ve literally been looking forward to my own reenactment forever.” She lowered her voice. “Please, let’s not mess up my chance to perform?”
Now she looked at me specifically, her eyes wide. “Please, let’s not do anything to ruin the festival. For me?”
For me. My stomach sank; it was the one thing she could say that would pretty much always get me to stop dead in my tracks. I knew Daisy better than I knew myself sometimes. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said she’d been waiting her whole damn life to be in the reenactment.
“Maybe … we could put a pin in telling anyone,” I offered finally. “For now. Wait and see.” I made my tone stern. “If anything else happens, though—”
Daisy cut me off. “If anything else happens, totally,” she gushed, relief pouring from her in palpable waves.
“If anything else happens, I have to admit, I’ll be curious to see it,” Theo said. “When you start with a dead bird, you’ve set the bar pretty high.”
“Agreed,” Parker said. He flashed a quick, unreadable glance my way. Was he sympathetic? Curious? Did he think I was wrong to agree to brush this incident aside? I couldn’t tell.
And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cared about some guy’s opinion this much either.
Joke’s on him, though. And Daisy, too.
Because the thing was: All I had agreed to was not saying anything about the raven to anyone else just yet. An easy concession to make, all told. I hadn’t agreed with Daisy that our culprit was definitely Caroline Mark. And I definitely hadn’t said anything about writing off this newly minted town curse as harmless, meaningless local lore. Personally, while I didn’t believe in anything not grounded in fact, I absolutely believed that almost all urban legends were grounded in truth.
Clearly, someone out there agreed with me. At least enough to stick that note on the bird, prank or no. Which meant that I had my work cut out for me.
First things first.
Dig into the details of this so-called Naming Day curse. There’s a story there.
And where there’s a story?
A mystery often follows.
CHAPTER SIX
I wake to the sound of rain: driving, insistent, heavy. I’ve left the windows open
, and moist air dances around me as the curtains gyrate in the wind. The house is still—so still, I’m instantly sure I’m the only one awake.
It’s not my bedroom, I realize, but it feels familiar, even though I couldn’t say how or why. The floors are wood, wide-planked and sturdy-looking, and beyond the windows, I hear a persistent banging.
I turn to flip the nightstand lamp on—small, glass-based, with a frilly lampshade more old-fashioned than anything my parents would have in our house. The room takes on a low glow. I tiptoe toward the window… . There’s an urgent sound, a rustling on the wind, and shadows play across the darkened walls.
Birds?
It shouldn’t be the first place my mind goes to (should it?), but now that it has, that rustling … It’s undeniable … It’s the sound of—
I step back, crouch down. Brace myself.
Birds. A flock of them. More. Black wings beating, the flapping causing that rhythmic patter in the background. They swoop through the open window, into the room, at me.
It’s a scene straight from a Hitchcock classic—dark, frantic wings thudding at my skin with startling force. Beaks darting and dipping, pecking at my flesh, leaving me pockmarked and bleeding. I open my mouth to scream, but the birds—their greasy feathers, the grit of the dirt that clings to their talons—they’re on my tongue, choking me, forcing me to swallow back silent shrieks and unshed tears.
The rhythm of the birds swooping through the window becomes increasingly frantic, and I hear their bodies pound at the walls, pushing and wriggling their way in like an impossible tidal wave. They fill the room like water, chirping and screeching hideously, making my skin crawl. Soon they cover every inch of the bedroom, and I’ve curled myself into a ball at the foot of the bed, my knees drawn to my chin and my arms cradling my head, ignoring the vicious pecking and the warm, wet sensation of blood oozing down my arms. I can’t scream; that much is clear. I don’t dare move a muscle. I’m trapped.
The floorboards groan under the weight of us all—the birds, me, the heat and the violence contained in this oh-so-finite space—and the floor beneath me buckles, and for a moment I truly fear it’s going to give way, sending me plummeting to whatever lies below.
And though the thought is chilling, it’s also something I might welcome, if it were to offer even a minute of relief from these birds—
“At ease!” I hear, a strong, steady voice. Confident. It calls to the birds, commands them, and incredibly, impossibly, they respond. Like the snap of my fingers, or the flip of a switch, they’re gone, and I’m alone in the room again, battered, gasping for air, trying to comprehend what’s just happened. I hear a rattling sound, tin, and I open my mouth again. What’s that? I want to ask, but I can still taste the feathers in the back of my throat, and the words seem to be stuck. I cough, prepare to try again, and—
* * *
I sat up in bed, panting and soaked with sweat.
What the hell?
A dream, obviously—or, more to the point, a nightmare. Which, for the record, I never have. But I guess there’s a first time for everything.
Leave it to my subconscious to be borderline lazy with its subtext. Dreaming about killer birds the same day a bird commits kamikaze outside of your classroom? Do tell me more, Dr. Freud.
It was a gross dream, yeah. But it was not a subtle one. And only a dream, at that. Still, though—I took a moment to sneak a glance at my bedroom window (my bedroom now, for real, yet another sign that back in the here and now there was literally nothing to be afraid of) and was almost embarrassed at how relieved I felt to see that the window was closed and locked.
Just a dream. Even if that weird feeling of déjà vu from the newspaper meeting was still lingering like seafoam after the crash of a wave.
I shuddered. I could still taste the oily feathers.
Sometimes having a vivid imagination is a blessing. Like when you’re solving a mystery. Examine every angle, consider every clue … Other times, it’s a serious burden. Like when you wake to the lingering effects of a nasty nightmare.
I took a deep breath.
The nightmare was gross, but it wasn’t really what was gnawing at me. My subconscious may have been ironically skating along at surface level, but I knew, in my gut, what was truly eating away at the back of my mind.
The Naming Day curse.
Daisy might not have wanted to dig deeper into this thing, but I wasn’t Daisy. Sitting on the sidelines has never been my thing.
The key to getting to the bottom of the raven? Getting to the bottom of the curse itself. And sure, it was, like—I glanced at the clock on my nightstand—1:47 a.m. But as the saying goes, no time like the present.
* * *
I padded into my dad’s study, taking care to avoid the squeaky floorboard just outside my parents’ bedroom on my way. He wasn’t wild about people getting into his personal space, but what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Normally, I’d just use my own trusty laptop, but it had done some weird freeze-y thing the other day and was still in the shop. Not ideal timing for an active investigation. I just had to hope no one woke up and asked me what I was up to.
One thing working in my favor: I knew my dad’s passwords—he rotated between variations on his and Mom’s anniversary and my birthday, which any security expert would no doubt say was a truly terrible idea. But he seemed to think everyone in his life was totally and completely trustworthy. It was cute, really.
Did that knowledge give me a twinge of guilt in my side as I tapped at the keyboard and watched as the password prompt gave way to an enormous wallpaper of the three of us, beaming away, the candles of my sixteenth birthday cake casting a glow over our smiling faces?
Sure. But just a twinge.
Horseshoe Bay curse. I typed the phrase into the search engine and hit return.
Immediately, three pages of hits appeared.
Jackpot.
Or, er—jackpot-adjacent? I frowned, scanning the headlines, which were all, maddeningly, about Dead Lucy. Okay, sure, she was famous—or maybe “notorious” was the better word. But she was just one dead girl.
Not to be callous. But one dead girl does not a curse make. A lurid headline or seven? Sure. A deliciously morbid urban legend? Absolutely. But a curse? Not so much.
And yet—a seemingly endless scroll of Dead Lucy headlines passed beneath the cursor as I moved the mouse.
It wasn’t until the last page of search results that I found it. One single, solitary hit that just happened to be about the Naming Day curse. An opinion piece in an old, now-defunct newspaper from Horseshoe Bay’s days of yore, the Horseshoe Bay Tribune. It had gone bankrupt when I was still in grade school, which seemed to be the way the tide was turning with print journalism. Not that that fact made me any less eager to study it once I went off to college. On the contrary—the idea that truth in journalism was faltering along with the media industry itself made me want to pursue it all the more. Call me a glutton for punishment.
One hit—but just the one. Any other reasonable, well-adjusted human being might have found that disturbing—or at least a mild bummer.
Me? I couldn’t resist a quick fist pump before I clicked the link. One hit is better than no hits, when you’re desperately searching for leads.
Loading … loading … My father was one of the most renowned lawyers in Horseshoe Bay, but he was also a low-key Luddite. My mother claimed she found it charming. But she was generally nicer than I was. I could admit it.
And then it was there, flashing. ERROR: 404. PAGE NOT FOUND. With a giant, blaring red X and a frowny face.
Interesting.
The “girl sleuth” side of me couldn’t help but see this latest roadblock as a challenge to be conquered, even as the “regular, curious person” in me was frustrated beyond belief.
This was the twenty-first century, after all. Putting aside my dad’s own weird, intermittent mistrust of so-called newfangled technology, how did an urban legend—no matter how obscure—ma
nage to avoid an online footprint?
Very, very interesting.
Frustration was quickly being overridden by that little shiver I get at the back of my neck just at the moment that I realize I’m on the trail of a new case.
So the Naming Day curse was a no go, at least as far as the Internet was concerned.
Okay.
I’d solved plenty of puzzles with way less to go on.
I closed out the browser tab, taking care to clear my search history. My father was alarmingly trustworthy, sure, but a good detective always covers her tracks.
The lack of information about the Naming Day curse was downright bizarre. And “downright bizarre” was my jam. I was going to do a deep dive, learn everything and anything there was to know about this curse. First thing tomorrow.
Maybe I should have been worried. Maybe I should have been scared. After all, at least one person had already tried to spook me (and the rest of my team on the newspaper) off the trail of this story.
But I don’t scare easily. Instead, I investigate.
And that’s just what I was going to do.
CHAPTER SEVEN Tuesday
I’m sorry, dear,” Ms. Beekman, our school librarian, was saying, sounding anything but. “It’s just that I can’t very well give you something I don’t actually have, myself. Surely you must understand that.”
“Surely,” I grumbled, hating to admit as much aloud. I took a deep breath, willing myself to be patient with her. If our school had been founded at the turn of the last century, Ms. Beekman would have been around and behind the reference desk at least since then. Or so the story went. She was sweet, but there was a scent of decay to her aura that was barely masked by the peppermint hard candies she kept in her desk drawer.
I adjusted my messenger bag against my hip, determined to at least give it another try. “It’s just—the Tribune. It was small, okay. Not winning any Pulitzers. But it was a legitimate Horseshoe Bay publication, and this town is not without its steadfast demonstrations of pride. Case in point: Naming Day.”
