In one, I’m standing in the dining hall. A man is yelling, pounding his fist against the table. A young man yells back, his face red with anger. A woman cries for them to stop, please stop, while a teenage girl fumes in silence. The very air in the room seems to feast on their emotion. It shimmers and darkens, then turns into the same terrifying black hole that sucked up my mother. I watch in horror as it does the same to John and Maureen, Simon and Lily.
It sucks them right off their seats and swallows them whole.
33
REHEARSALS
As the week deepens into the middle of October, the season arrives in full force, with pumpkins on porches, leaf bags on curbs, and Halloween decor in every window. The Monongahela forest has become a tapestry of blazing red, golden yellow, fiery orange, and deep green. The days grow shorter, the parade floats come together, and sweater weather is here to stay.
Twig’s been busy helping his dad at the auto shop, so I spend most of my free time with Jude. We’re still digging through his family archives, though the search has grown tedious and muddled. What are we even looking for anymore? Clues about the portrait? Evidence of rift encounters? Another link between the two? Jude’s focusing on the symbol, which we found on my mother, and the gemstones, since we’re racingRafe toward a finish line neither of us understands. I keep an eye out for Ezra’s revelation, written the same year his son was born.
Honestly, I’ve grown bored with the library. I much prefer our other endeavor—searching for keyholes. AKA, an excuse to explore the manor. There’s so much to discover, from secret passages to hidden hallways used by servants long ago. The basement has been the creepiest by far—a labyrinth of stone corridors with walls that sweat.
According to Tulane, no one’s gone down there in years, aside from the occasional trip to the cellar, which is dark and musty and lined with barrels of aged wine and whiskey. So it’s interesting, then, to run into Rafe nowhere near the cellar. More interesting still to find him looking on edge, like it’s been days since he’s had a proper meal or a decent night’s sleep. It gives me a boost of morale. A glimmer of hope. Whatever he’s up to, it must not be going well.
On Friday evening, I take a break from the Vandenberg mysteries to help Mrs. Calloway. Twig and I sit at his kitchen counter, stapling together parade packets. When we reach the end, Jude calls.
He invites us over.
Not only has Twig been dying to get inside the manor, he’s been dying to use our EMF meter inside the manor, an idea that has Jude rolling his eyes so hard, his irises practically disappear. Sowhen he extends the invitation, I know he’s doing it for me.
Twig jumps off the stool like it’s a hot stove.
We head over with our proton pack.
And what transpires has both of us losing our minds. The meter jumps wildly between low and high frequencies. One minute, it emits a long, shrill tone as if detecting a massive, constant field. The next, it falls silent without any input change at all. The LED lights remain stuck on red. It doesn’t matter which room we’re in or what level we’re on.
Jude thinks the meter must be broken.
But later that night, Twig sends a video of it working just fine in his bedroom. Along with a million-and-one follow-up texts.
Ding, ding, ding.
One after the other.
The readings defied physical law.
Magnetic pulses don’t appear in short bursts.
They don’t reverse polarity.
Electromagnetic fields are supposed to be consistent. Directional. With a clear source.
Selah. It’s coming from everywhere and nowhere.
In the morning, he sends more. Charts. Graphs. Screenshots. And what can I say, other thanFoggy Hollow’s always been strange.We devoted an entire podcast episode to it. Our town has a long history of lost signals, weird static, andphantom broadcasts. Radios patching into distorted sounds. Dropped calls. Glitchy electronics. Phones that pick up disembodied voices. EMF meters don’t act normal in Foggy Hollow.
But last night was something else.
The results were fascinating, creepy, and ultimately … unhelpful. The rift could be hiding in any of the rooms. Which makes sense, I guess. According to Simon’s journal, it opened in multiple places.
The real question is:
How did it open?
And why?
The questions circle in the back of my mind as I grip the cool balustrade of the ballroom’s balcony and gaze toward the ceiling, where crystal chandeliers hang in perfect line, casting fractured rainbows across the polished parquet flooring.
