Everything inside me stills.
“Nicholas Grady,”Billy says.“Go ahead, search his name if you don’t believe me.”
I slam my hand down on the return button. Billy’s laughter echoes as he gets sucked back into the containment unit, and the chamber seals with a click.
CHAPTER 33
Two years after I removed Marianne Keller from her body, Cleo Price attempted to drown her daughter in her bathtub while her husband was at work. Unfortunately, this unpredictable change in behavior can happen when a possession has lasted longer than six months.
—Methods of Modern Ghost Hunting: A Tactical Guide to Containing and Vanquishing the Deadby Donald Dellman
It’s not true. It can’t be.
Billy’s a liar. He’d say anything to hurt Nico, or to hurt me. That’s what he does. Finds the softest parts of people and digs his fingers in until they bleed.
Nico saved me from that entity in the parking lot. He made me earplugs. He brought me soup. Those aren’t the actions of someone who has urges like Billy, or who wants to hurt anyone else.
I run up the stairs, my legs burning as I push through the basement door. Bob is waiting for me, and I scoop him up, his little body warm in my arms as I sprint to the library.
I set Bob on the ground. He watches me as I flip through the files—Gacy… Gallego… Gein. No Grady.
Maybe it’s under Boy Next Door? I try the Bs—Berkowitz… Brooks… Bundy. If Billy was telling the truth, why aren’t there any records? Maybe Donny keeps them in his office.
Unless Donny doesn’t keep files under the host’s name.
Billy Lundby’s file is thick, and the pages are soft and yellowed at the edges. I flip past the initial case summary, past his upbringing and childhood, until I reach the victim list. All the way at the bottom, seven names are dated to 2019:
Allison Chambers - 16, Camden Hills Regional High School. Abducted on October 2nd while walking home from art club. Body buried in Acadia National Forest, never recovered.
Lila Miller - 17, Camden Hills Regional High School. Disappeared on October 15th. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
Emily Dao - 18, Bates College student. Vanished on November 28th from a campus parking lot. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
Jennifer Santos - 18, University of Maine. Disappeared during a morning run on January 10th. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
Rebecca and Katherine Harmon – a 45-year-old mother and a 19-year-old daughter. Murdered in their Camden home, February 22nd.
Celia Wilson - 21, Bates College. Abducted from a gas station on March 3rd. Body recovered in Acadia National Forest.
All of these murders are attributed to Billy Lundby. Not a single mention of Nicholas Grady.
Why would there be? Nicholas Grady must have been Billy’s host. Billy was the one pulling the strings. But not everybody will see it that way.
I pull out my phone. The keyboard feels too small for my thumbs as I type in the search:Nicholas Grady Boy Next Door Killer.
The results load, and I click on a Reddit post with shaking fingers:
r/TrueCrimeObsessed• 3 months ago
Posted by u/BellyBean33
Where did the Boy Next Door Killer go??
Today marks seven years since the Boy Next Door Killer case went cold, and I’m still losing sleep over it. How does a 17-year-old kid rape and murder seven women in SIX MONTHS and just disappear?
You would’ve had to be living under a ROCK to have missed the news on this, but in case you have been:
Nicholas Grady was a senior at Camden Hills Regional High School in Camden, Maine, with good grades and no disciplinary record. Mom was an accountant. Dad was a high school history teacher. His twin, Nora, was a senior at the same school.
