Now Entering Addamsville

by Francesca Zappia

  Sadie said nothing for a long, breathless minute. Her lips turned white. The tears spilled over onto her cheeks.

  Then her lips curled back from her teeth.

  “Asshole,” she spat. “If you’re going to lie to me, at least come up with a better story.”

  She turned and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  18

  Not only did Sadie always have to take Dad’s side, but when I let her in on my side, she didn’t even believe me.

  Rain beat down hard. Hal’s dad called to let me know the shop would be closed. He was brief and to the point. He didn’t give me time to ask how Hal was doing. I texted Mads to ask, and after an hour-long silence, she sent a short text back to say Hal was drugged up, but okay.

  I didn’t bother asking Lorelei for details. She’d probably be too scared to answer.

  I ventured out of my room around eleven to find Sadie watching Cheers and knitting while Grim read a fantasy book with a spine as wide as his forearm. Sadie still awake at this time of night meant nothing good, and we didn’t look at each other as I passed. I had expected all my life that if I told Sadie about Mom’s ghosts, she wouldn’t believe me, but after this—after today and this afternoon and what we’d found at Grimshaw House—the reality of it felt like being kneed in the gut. I made myself a bowl of Fruity Pebbles and stood by the TV, and neither of them said anything.

  Finally I asked, “Where’s Dad?”

  “In town,” Grim replied after several seconds of silence from Sadie. “He said he was going to talk to Chief Rivera again.”

  He arrived home an hour later. The Chevelle’s engine growled louder than the storm, and he came in soaking wet. I’d peeked back out of the bedroom in time to see him hold his hands out, as if to show they were empty.

  “I scoped out the Fool and town center,” he said. “Then I went to talk to your Aunt Greta. That’s all, I promise.”

  “Why’d you talk to Aunt Greta?” I said.

  “To make sure she doesn’t believe you did it.” He took off his coat and hung it by the door, where it dripped on the linoleum. “Which she doesn’t, by the way. Count yourself lucky.”

  Of course she didn’t believe I’d done it, because she knew the truth. But that wasn’t what he’d gone out to find. He was surveying the damage, and from the slump of his shoulders and the way he nearly pulled his hair out by the roots, the damage was bad.

  Aunt Greta didn’t believe I’d done it, but the rest of Addamsville did.

  The next day, Sunday, I went to the hospital to see Hal. I knew what happened to him wasn’t my fault, but it felt like it. I had known about Ludwig. I’d wasted a whole night I could have used hunting to go look through Grimshaw House for hints about Mom. I should have acted sooner when I saw Bach at the parade, when I knew something bad was going to happen. I should have done something. Jumped in front of a parade float. Screamed my head off. Anything.

  I knew something bad was going to happen and I could have stopped it. It was my responsibility to stop it, no matter what the consequences to myself.

  The hospital was in Harrisburg, and had probably more ghosts than all the rest of the city combined. They loitered in hallways and doorways, stood at front desks waiting to check out, hovered around the emergency room doors. Ghosts were about the same everywhere, but ghosts in hospitals were especially chatty, and I’d always wondered if it wasn’t because they didn’t know they were dead. When I passed them, some tried to speak to me. There was no sound, just like always.

  Visiting hours were short on Sundays, and when I arrived, Mads and Lorelei were there. They swung around when I stepped through the door, tipped off by the change in Hal’s expression.

  Bandages wrapped Hal’s left arm and leg, both raised off the bed, and a smaller bandage covered the left side of his jaw. A bit of his hair had been singed, too, and he was bruised and cut up. He was awake, though, and nursing a little cup of orange juice.

  “Hey guys,” I said stupidly. I fiddled with the small Tupperware bowl I’d brought. “Hey, Hal. I made you some soup. It’s probably terrible, but my mom used to make it for me when I was sick, and I thought you might—I know you’re not sick. Sorry. I wanted to check and see how you were doing.”

  “Hey, Zora.” Hal’s eyes followed me as I sidled past Lorelei to put the Tupperware on the bedside table. Lorelei huddled her shoulders up around her ears. “I feel a little crispy, but otherwise fine.”

  I rubbed my knuckles on my right hand. “They don’t know who did it yet,” I said.

  There was another long pause. Then Mads said, “Why’d you run?”

  “I was chasing Bach.” Lying about it wouldn’t get me back in their good graces. “I saw him before it happened, acting sketchy. I thought he might have had something to do with it.”

  “And?” Hal said.

  I shook my head. This I could lie about. “I lost him.”

  Hal made a noise. “I talked to my dad this morning. He said it was just like the Firestarter Murders. No chemicals, no pressurized air, no gasoline. Nothing that would make an explosion like that. And you need those to make an explosion like that, right?”

  “Liquid gasoline doesn’t explode,” I said. “But you need something, yeah.”

  Hal waved his cup around. “Well, that’s just it—my dad said that the cops checked the whole float. They even brought in the bomb unit from Harrisburg. No one found anything. No accelerants, no debris. And here’s the other thing: those floats ride on metal trailer frames. The frame burned, too. All of it, up in flames, immediately. It’s not right.”

  “Then it’s like Mr. Masrell’s house,” Lorelei said.

  Her voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear her, and I was standing right next to her. Lorelei curled a length of her hair around her hand.

  “My dad was complaining the other day because Chief Rivera hadn’t found any accelerants at Mr. Masrell’s house, or even what might have been the source of the fire.” Lorelei twisted the hair tighter around her hand. “It may not mean anything, but he thinks they should have some kind of evidence by now.”

  I could imagine Buster raging around his house like an angry pig, but he wouldn’t have only been angry that they couldn’t find accelerants or a source. He would have been angry that they hadn’t been able to find accelerants or a source that linked this all to me.

  Hopefully the town knowing this much of the evidence and linking it to the Firestarter Murders would be enough to convince Forester to let Bach help me.

  “That’s really weird,” I said, my legs suddenly aching. “Anyway, I just wanted to stop by. If you need anything, seriously anything, let me know. Okay? I—” Denying I’d done it would only make me seem petty and scared. Like I needed to defend myself. The urge to raise shields was so strong, and none of the three of them had even accused me out loud yet. But I could see it on their faces. Wariness. Hesitance.

  How could you convince people of the truth when they had already decided what version of the story they wanted to believe?

  Hal, Mads, and Lorelei stared at me, and I stared back. I had nothing.

  “What are you going to do?” Mads asked.

  I realized none of them actually expected me to say anything. I knew what the question meant, and I had no answer. I had not made a reputation for myself as a person who said things. I was a doer. I always had been. Want something? Take it. Fear something? Fight it. Bored? Get the Chevelle. Annoyed? Yell at a janitor.

  Angry? Hunt firestarters.

  But doing had gotten me deeper and deeper into this mess until I couldn’t tell right from left or up from down. A firestarter knew me, and was not only framing me for its fires, but threatening my family and friends if I didn’t leave it alone. I knew how to struggle against the confines of the old Addamsville, but this new version had teeth.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I have to go. I’ll see you guys later, okay? Get better, Hal.”

  Their mumbled good-byes told me ever
ything I needed to know. We worked in the same building, but we came from very different places. It wasn’t safe to be friends with me. It wasn’t even safe to sympathize with me.

  The hospital hallway was empty except for a few ghosts and a nurse who disappeared inside a room. I hid in the alcove by the bathrooms, fists pressed to my forehead, my prosthetic fingers bent to follow the slope of my nose.

  When you feel alone, you don’t admit it to anyone. If you do, they’ll either use it against you or they’ll pity you, and it’s a toss-up which one is worse. You keep loneliness inside, squeezed so tight in your chest it hurts. If you’re lucky, you can forget about it for a while. If you’re unlucky, you are surrounded by things that make you think of it all day long: people who don’t believe anything you say, people who make fun of you, people who blame you for things without regard for whether you actually could have done them.

  And loneliness brings fear. Fear that there are things out there you don’t understand and you’ll have to face them by yourself. Fear that no one will be there to help you when you get lost. Fear that the truth will be more than you can handle.

  I stood, straightened my clothes, and glanced in the reflective surface of a nearby door to make sure my face looked okay.

  Get it together, Novak, I thought. You’re not alone yet.

  Artemis was on my side. And I always had Dad, as much of a hypocrite as he might be.

  It wasn’t time to give up.

  19

  Happy Hal’s reopened Sunday afternoon, and Hal’s dad, despite any of his suspicions, didn’t say a thing about me not coming to work. I showed up for the afternoon shift, said hi to Mason, the manager picking up Hal’s lost hours, and took my window.

  Mads and Lorelei were both there. Neither of them brought up the fires or the hospital, and it was probably for the best; the shop was swarmed all afternoon and straight into the night. The Dead Men Walking crew was doing their Forester House investigation, which meant plenty of fans and thrill seekers were setting up at Hal’s for the unobstructed view of Black Creek Woods. It wasn’t as if you could see the Forester House from here—you couldn’t see anything except trees and the red blinking lights of the radio tower farther north, toward Piper Mountain—but I guess they thought this was better than nothing, and the ice cream was a bonus. Officers Norm and Jack had parked themselves at the bridge and weren’t letting anyone pass over Black Creek.

  The tops of the trees rippled in the wind, making a roar loud enough to hear even from this far away. Somewhere in there was my mother, hunting for secrets, lost to the darkness and the snagging branches. If I thought hard enough, maybe I could pull her out. Pull her back here so I didn’t have to go after Ludwig alone.

  “Zora.”

  I jumped at Mads’s hand on my arm and let go of the lever on the soft-serve machine. Ice cream trailed over my glove. I hissed through my teeth and took the napkins she offered me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, fine.” I said it too hard and too fast. “Sorry. Thinking.”

  “Okay, well, put your game face on. Bach just pulled in.”

  His Mustang was indeed parked in his usual spot, and he was visible behind the wheel. All the ghosts in the vicinity had fled, including the old town council members. The chief had questioned him about yesterday, too, and found nothing. I busied myself and kept Bach in my peripheral. He stopped and tilted his head up as if he was reading the menus nailed above the windows, but he always knew what he wanted.

  There had been a time when, despite his history, I’d have been giddy that Bach was waiting for me. Most of the time I loved that I was only aesthetically attracted to people who fit the gothic vibes of your eighties’ movie vampires, but when the person you like is an actual supernatural creature, it feels like there’s something wrong with you. Like natural selection had determined I would be the easy kill.

  I had long since decided that natural selection didn’t own me or my sexuality. There was nothing wrong with me when he was the one lighting people on fire.

  When he got to my window, he said nothing, just slid me a picture and walked back to his car. It was a photo that must have been taken around the same time, if not the exact same day, as the picture of the Foresters we’d found with Mom’s notes. It was the Forester mansion again, with workers moving in the background and a tiny Sam Forester tottering through a gravel driveway. Behind him, in the same clothes as before, was Bach, standing with a woman and another man.

  The man had short gray hair, light skin, and a brown suit. He looked like a bad lawyer, maybe. The woman was statuesque. I couldn’t make out details of her face because of the fuzziness of the picture, but she had waves of dark hair, brown skin, and a black trench coat. Scrawled on the back in long-faded pen, not in my mother’s handwriting, were three names and a year.

  BACH

  LUDWIG

  HILDEGARD

  1973

  I turned it over and looked at the figures again. Ludwig, in an earlier body, before Hildegard banished him, and Hildegard, before she herself had disappeared. I couldn’t even begin to fathom the reasons for that, but if she could create something like Sam Forester and control other firestarters, I wasn’t begging for her to come back.

  I stuffed the picture into my jacket. “Mason, I gave a customer wrong change. She’s sitting outside; I’m gonna go correct it.”

  Mason didn’t look up from the Oreo topping dispenser, which had gotten clogged again. “Okay, make it quick.”

  I hurried out the back door and jammed to a halt. Bach was already there, standing by the dumpster, and he wasn’t alone. With him was a shorter man, who next to Bach looked positively delicate. Wire-framed glasses perched on his birdlike nose, red from the cold. He wore a button-down shirt and khakis, like any upper-middle-class suburban dad, and his dark hair was neatly trimmed. He turned glittering black eyes on me.

  “Who’s this?” I said.

  “Zora” —Bach motioned to the man— “this is Sam Forester.”

  There was something not quite human about Sam Forester. Something writhed under his skin, a shadow that disappeared when I looked too closely. He smiled as he watched me.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” he said.

  I had to force words out. “You came out of the woods.”

  Forester clasped his small hands in front of him. “I hope I didn’t startle you too badly. After Bach told me what happened, I thought it might help if I came with him to explain.”

  This was the man who had killed twelve people, including all the members of his own family. This was the man who now fed off their souls, corrupting their ghosts. He smiled as if there was nothing wrong in the world.

  “Zora,” Bach said. “The photo.”

  “Right.” I handed it back to him. “Are you here to say you’ll help me with Ludwig?”

  “Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.” Forester held up a hand, cheerful as a Sunday school teacher. “We should take a moment to get to know each other before we start talking about partnerships. I knew your mother, and Bach tells me that you have the same abilities she did and have taken up her mantle. Is that right?”

  “To a degree,” I replied, jaw tight. I had the entirety of the parking lot behind me, and somehow Forester still made me feel like I was backed against a wall.

  “True or false: your mother told you the truth of the so-called ‘Firestarter Murders.’”

  I looked to Bach for any hint if this was a trap, but he stared at the ground, unmoving. “True,” I said.

  “I long suspected she spent a lot of her time searching for Bach’s entrance. This, as you can probably guess, was not ideal for us, but we didn’t worry that she would find it, and as long as she didn’t try to out me to the town, I didn’t mind what she did. Besides, she cleaned up others of our kind who came through here looking for a meal—firestarters, you call them?—and kept them from revealing us. This town is like a beacon for them, because of the mark my mother left, so
there were always more that threatened us.

  “I don’t consider myself a dangerous person. I think it’s important for you to know that. I love this town. It’s the only home I know. I don’t leave because my mother will come back one day, and I have to be here for her. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “If Ludwig is such a threat to you,” I said, “why don’t you just have Bach get rid of him? His entrance is in the mines; Bach can swing an axe probably better than I can.”

  “I would,” Bach replied quietly, lifting his head, “but it’s easier for you to find him.”

  His head yanked down again, as if there was a collar around his throat. My fingers brushed the handle of the door behind me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We know you find firestarters by communicating with the ghosts of the people they kill,” Forester said. “Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, the dead don’t come near us. And Ludwig is at least smart enough to keep his distance while we’re around.”

  I swallowed. “So I find Ludwig and you help me get rid of him. What about your mother? Hildegard? I knew she had disappeared, but I didn’t know you expected her back.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. If Hildegard does return,” Forester said, “she won’t be any trouble to you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she’s my mother,” he said simply. “And Bach’s. And as long as nothing threatens us, she’ll pay no attention to you. But if she does come back and this mess is still going on, I can’t promise we can protect Addamsville.”

  I was smart enough to catch the warning in that. The murderers wanted me to find another murderer so a third murderer wouldn’t show up and murder everyone, including me. Cool.

  “What happens between us after I get rid of Ludwig?”

  “We all go back to our lives,” said Sam Forester, unruffled, “just as they were.”

  With him feeding on Addamsville’s dead, and me trying to look at lit matches without panicking.

  A spark of flame flashed behind Bach’s sunglasses. He winced and said softly, “Sammy . . .”