by Kat Ellis
I definitely should not be doing this.
Something brushes against my hand and I jump, then realize it was just Carter trying to take it in his.
“Nervous?” he says.
“Thought you were a spider.”
Carter snickers. “Gee, thanks.”
My mouth is dry, in direct contrast with the line of sweat working its way down my back.
Carter puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me toward the rock face rising at the back of the fairground lot. “There.” He whispers, even though there’s nobody around. His hands run down my arms and squeeze.
“I can’t see anything . . .” But as I’m saying this the moonlight shines down onto a wooden facade set back into the rock. It’s hand-painted, like the rest of the signage in the fairground, but this one reads THE GONDOLIER.
Lorelei has been here. Stood where I’m standing now. Did Marie get this far when she tried to get into the cave to write her message for Mister Jitters? Am I walking in her footsteps, as well as Lorelei’s?
“It was never actually used as a ride,” Carter says, right next to my ear. “The cave was already here, so your dad put up this frontage and built the fairground around it.”
Classic Nolan.
“You said you know a way in?”
Carter pulls the edge of the facade from the rock wall, making a gap just wide enough for us to slip through.
“They padlocked the door on it,” he says as I slide past him into total darkness. “But they forgot to secure the hinges.”
There’s a smile in his words as he turns on his pendant light. It doesn’t illuminate very far—just enough for me to see we’re standing in a tunnel, rock on either side, on a path running deep into the hillside. It’s too narrow to walk side by side. But as Carter turns, the light catches the wall nearest to us, and I see writing on it—three lines, all written by different hands.
Lorelei is gone.
Lorelei is gone.
LORELEI IS GONE.
Hand shaking, I touch my fingers to the letters. They feel damp and cold.
Maybe I should write the message, too, so I don’t disappear like Marie . . .
Water droplets patter down from above our heads, falling in a persistent, irregular rhythm. It echoes around us, like snapping, chattering teeth.
It’s just the water, I tell myself. Just the water.
Carter starts to lead the way, but I’m the one who wants this—who needs to see what exactly is down here, in the dark.
“Give me the light,” I say. He hesitates a moment before unfastening it from around his neck. I hold it out ahead of me. Light bounces off the damp walls, that noise enveloping us in shifting waves as the size of the tunnel expands and contracts. The air tastes old and rotten.
“Watch the path here—keep to the right,” Carter says.
Now a channel of water fills most of the path. That’s where the sound is coming from—droplets hitting the surface. I pan the light upward, almost dropping it at the sight of enormous teeth jutting down from the cavern ceiling. The light shakes in my hand, and I force myself to steady it.
“Stalactites,” Carter says.
I’ve only ever seen them in pictures: rock formations created by rainwater coursing over the limestone for thousands of years. This place isn’t just old, it’s ancient. I think of what Cora said about Harrow Lake being dead, decaying. Standing here now, I believe her.
“You’re shivering,” Carter says. “Do you want to go back? The church isn’t far, but if you don’t like it in here . . .”
“I’m not going back,” I say, letting my determination ring out through the cave. “I want to see the church.” I need answers—about where Lorelei went, what she saw. About what darkness lies beneath this town’s surface.
Still, my hands shake. It’s the cold, I think. Just the cold. There’s no reason to feel grateful when Carter takes my free hand in his. But I do.
The path grows even narrower, and I stumble twice, my shoes getting soaked. Numbness has crept into my feet by the time we’ve entered a seventh or eighth chamber in the cave system. The noise of the caves beats on my nerve endings as my teeth chatter, like I’m trying to play a duet. With every step, I expect to feel the brush of razor-thin fingers on my neck.
“This is it,” Carter says, taking back the pendant and turning it off as we step out of the tunnel into a vast space.
The moon shines down like a spotlight, showing me a space maybe fifty feet across. The sides of the sinkhole rise up at a steep angle, and I see why it might be easier to rappel in from above. But at the center of this sunken stadium is a familiar scene: rough-hewn stone blocks lying where they’ve fallen, and one wall still somehow standing, albeit at an angle. Its three arched windows are as empty as button eyes. And there are gravestones—lots and lots of gravestones. These must have been set upright to film the church scene in Nightjar. I guess there was never a reason to knock them back over.
I hear water running nearby, but it’s different from the noise we left behind in the caves. I step out of the shadows to stand in the silvery light shining through the church’s vacant middle window. Adrenaline pounds through me. This is the place. This is where they killed her. Little Bird, I mean. Of course.
There would have been a camera somewhere up there in the empty window, back when Nolan and Lorelei were here with the rest of the crew. I see her standing exactly where I stand, her face stark in the silvery light before she ducks into the shadows to spy on the bloodthirsty townspeople. It was the last shot of her before she was dragged to the tombstone they used as an altar, and killed.
“It’s not the same in daylight,” Carter says. “You see too much. Cigarette ends, bottle caps—you know, signs that other people have been here, even if it was years ago. But at night it’s easy to imagine we’re the first people to ever find this place.”
He moves to stand on the far side of a stone plinth. It’s the altar. This is where Lorelei posed with her arm around a young Ranger Crane. Where Little Bird was torn apart in a frenzy of blood and fingers and teeth.
“Why was the church never rebuilt?” I ask. “Somewhere else, I mean?” From what I’ve seen, everything else in Harrow Lake was returned to how it was before the landslide, the pretense of nothing happened set hard and fast over the town. Why would the church be the one thing left to crumble?
“Maybe the people here thought they were beyond saving,” Carter says. I guess he’s joking, but it’s hard to say for sure. “I think the church was a ruin even before it slid into the sinkhole. Have you noticed none of the graves have dates on them? That’s weird, isn’t it? I’ve never found a record showing when the church was built, or even that it was in use at any time during Harrow Lake’s history.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, scanning the stones around us. He’s right. Although the markings are faint and worn, I can see there are no dates on any of them.
“I think the church predates the town.”
“But that would mean someone built it in the middle of a forest, miles from the nearest town. Why would anyone do that?”
“It’s just a theory,” Carter says hesitantly, “but I think people might’ve tried to settle here before, then realized it was a really bad idea.”
A chill runs through me as I get the same sense I had in the tunnels—that whatever evil there is in Harrow Lake has been growing here for a long, long time.
We shouldn’t be here.
The cave we’ve just emerged from is no more than a crack in the darkness.
“That cameraman went missing down here,” I say, thinking aloud.
It was a very meta way to die—Optimal, even: to become a story while making one.
“Yeah, I think so,” Carter says. “Your dad had the electric fence put in around the fairground after that—he must’ve wanted to make sure
no one else wandered in and got hurt.”
It’s more likely Nolan put up the fence in case the cameraman vanishing meant someone was trying to sabotage the film, but I don’t say that to Carter.
The altar is like a sarcophagus. One corner has crumbled, and the stone platform lies crooked. But it’s surprisingly warm with the residue of the sun’s heat. Warm, like a living thing. As if Lorelei just got up and left a moment ago. I lie back on it, taking her place.
There ought to be stars, I’m sure, but only the moonlight reaches us.
“Hey, I meant to tell you—Caw flew away,” Carter says, sounding almost proud.
I’m barely listening. “She did?”
“Yeah. She’s one tough little bird.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
I let my arms hang to the sides, feeling the hand-stitched waistline of my dress tug over my hips, my lack of underwear underneath.
“Is this right?” I ask. “Is this how she looked in the altar scene?”
“Little Bird?”
I nod, pleased that he knew I didn’t mean Lorelei. Pleased he knows there’s a difference.
“You know what,” Carter says after a moment, “I have a confession to make.”
My insides tighten, waiting for the punch. “What?”
“I’ve never seen Nightjar.” Carter winces as I’m struck speechless for a moment.
“You’ve never seen the movie that was made in your hometown?”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’m just not really a horror movie fan.”
His answer brings a smile to my face. Is this what it feels like to share secrets? I feel one welling up inside me in response.
“I have a confession, too. You know I told you about the imaginary friend I had when I was little?” I almost stumble over the words, they come so quickly. “Mary Ann? She’s back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s back. I’ve seen her. In my room. Out there. I don’t know what she wants.”
“Are you being serious right now?” Carter reaches out like he’s going to take my hand, then thinks better of it. “Lola, has this happened before? I mean, since she went away when you were little?”
He’s acting like I’m a skittish animal he has backed into a corner. He doesn’t believe me.
“Forget about it,” I say. “It was just a joke.”
I move to slide down from the altar, but Carter steps forward, boxing me in. His stomach presses against my legs, and the backs of my knees scrape against the stone.
“You’re hurting me,” I say, and Carter backs away.
“I didn’t mean to,” he says. “I’m sorry. Please don’t shut me out. I want to help—”
But my words echo through my head like a tidal surge—you’re hurting me . . .
Nolan, don’t! You’re hurting me!
What the hell? I’ve never said those words. Nolan has never, not once, laid a finger on me—yet I can hear them in my mind as clearly as if someone is screaming them in my ear.
“Lola?” Carter reaches out toward me but I swat his hand away. “Lola, what’s wrong?”
I don’t answer. There’s something in the blackness . . . stars? Just two specks of white light in the sky beyond Carter’s silhouette. Glinting like needlepoints. No, not in the sky. It isn’t the sky at all, but the black entrance of the cave. Those twin sparks of light recede, stepping back out of sight. I could be watching the video from the museum again, the one with the cut scenes from Nightjar running in reverse, and Lorelei’s haunted expression as she retreats into darkness. But this is no movie.
Those aren’t stars. They’re eyes.
Tiny, pinprick eyes just like the Mister Jitters puppet.
He was watching us.
I shove Carter away from me and scream. I scream and scream, and I can’t stop.
* * *
• • •
Carter drags me back through the caves. “Come on, Lola! Talk to me. Please?”
But I can’t think clearly, can’t speak. I try not to breathe in the darkness.
God, those eyes . . .
I stay quiet the whole way back to Grandmother’s house, and Carter gives up trying to coax me to talk. I leave him at the gate.
“I’ll come see you in the morning, okay?” he says. “Lola?”
But then my head clears, and I see what I need to do. I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t take another day of this. I need to get out. Harrow Lake is doing something to me, changing me. I was fine before I came to this town. Before the constant reminders of her everywhere. Of the monster she was obsessed with. Of her and Nolan and their life that didn’t include me. Of all the secrets buried here. I have enough of my own. The one I let slip out made Carter look at me differently. And then the monster came.
“Will you take me to the airport?”
Carter blinks in surprise. “What, now?”
“Yes. Please.”
He takes a deep breath. “I guess I could. But wouldn’t you rather wait ’til tomorrow? Maybe talk to your grandmother, check out flight times, that kind of thing?”
I don’t want to push him into a no.
“You’re right,” I say, and force a smile. “First thing in the morning, then?”
I watch him walk back along the lane, hoping this isn’t the last I’ll see of him. Grandmother’s snores rumble from upstairs when I go inside. I should try to sleep as well, but I’m too wired now that I have a plan to get out of here.
In my room, I find the photo I stashed in the closet, next to Lorelei’s copy of Alice. I take it to the living room and set the frame in the center of the mantel, next to my handwritten note. Maybe my grandmother will hate the picture because Ranger Crane is in it, but I hope not; this is the only photo I’ve seen in this house where Lorelei is smiling. The only photo of her that seems real. Lorelei and her friend, before that friend abandoned her. With a pang, I wonder if Cora will think that about me—that I’ve abandoned her. I hope not.
I tip back and forth in the rocker, back and forth. Maybe I drift off for a few minutes. When I open my eyes, the overhead light flickers with a sound like moth wings. But that’s not what woke me.
The white jitterbug sits open in front of the old radio, its legs tap-tap-tapping away at the inside of its shell. I must have put it there, though I don’t remember. I close the shell and slip it into my pocket, where it chatters away softly beneath the folds of my skirt.
It’s Lorelei’s favorite. I’ll take it with me when I leave Harrow Lake.
But as I look up, I see Mary Ann standing in the yard outside the window. She doesn’t move, but I feel her gaze on me. She wants me to follow her. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.
It’s still dark; Carter won’t be here for a while yet. I yawn sleepily and follow Mary Ann into the pre-dawn shadows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I smell it as soon as I open the door to the apartment: emptiness. Unless you’ve lived in a lot of different places, you probably won’t know what emptiness smells like. Stagnant air, ghost-scents of the last inhabitants, and some underlying sourness that you can only replicate if you lie facedown on an old rug and breathe deeply.
All the time I was in Harrow Lake I didn’t picture returning to the apartment like this. That it would be so still, so . . . hollow. I focus on the dim hallway, afraid I’ll throw up if I see any trace of Nolan’s blood webbing through the gaps in the parquet floor. I know Larry will have had the place cleaned, but knowing that and trusting it are two different things.
I wish I weren’t crossing this threshold alone.
I shut the door behind me, listening for the snap of the lock.
Déjà vu washes over me in an icy wave. Through the open living-room door ahead of me, I see that everything’s wrong. The furniture, the pictures on the
walls, the TV . . . it’s all gone. There are no crates and boxes stacked in the corners of the room as they were the last time I was here, when Nolan dropped his Didn’t I tell you about Paris? bomb. And we argued, and I left, and then I came home and found him lying there, and I had his blood all over me, under my fingernails . . .
Now the place is empty. Empty, except for the hall phone next to me and its blinking red light. Weird—there’s only one message. I push the button to start it rolling.
It isn’t from Grandmother, which I was half expecting. Or from Cora. Or Carter, who I should’ve stolen at least one kiss from—should’ve pretended for just a little while that I was the girl he’s looking for, and he might be the boy to make me feel free with my feet on the ground. It would’ve been a pretty lie.
There’s no sound at all for at least three beats after the beep, and then just static. A bad connection. Then the sound shifts, becoming a voice that’s no more than a whisper.
“Rat-a-tat-tat—such a terrifying sound!
With a jitter-jitter-jitter, he’s stirring underground!
Tick-tock, tick-tock—better watch out, he’s gonna snap-snap-snap your bones . . .”
It’s Lorelei’s song. Her voice.
The entire world shrinks, piling down, down on my back until I curl in on myself. Cheek against a polished tile floor. Lungs crushed against the cage of my ribs. I blink once, twice. Even the floor is wrong, I realize. The hallway of our apartment has a parquet floor, not tiled. But it is our apartment—a past apartment, a home that’s no longer our home.
“Lola?”
Mary Ann blinks her wide green eyes at me and holds out her hand, the little girl she used to be. I take it, and the weight lifts from me like it was never there at all.
The walls are the deep green of a forest—Nolan’s choice of decor when we lived in Chicago for one summer many years ago. Still holding my hand, Mary Ann puts a finger to her lips. Then I hear it: There are voices nearby. Nolan’s voice, and Larry’s. Together we creep toward the carved oak door to Nolan’s study (no puzzle door here, but still ornate) and peep in at the keyhole.
