In the days that follow, the quarry is dragged.
Neither Caleb nor Brady are found.
Active recovery operations are put on hold due to hazardous conditions. The search will resume when these conditions improve. AKA, the spring.Meanwhile, the search for Lola Hayes, Emma Rollins, and Sienna Clark intensifies. Helicopters circle overhead. The FBI comes to town. An onslaught of media, too. Mayor Ridley makes a valiant effort to maintain calm, to keep the worst of the panic at bay. There are meetings, vigils, prayer circles. A town curfew is instated. But there is only so much one man can do.
Parents are upset. Several pull their kids from school, like the mere act of stepping outside will result in another tragic headline. All the while, Lola’s mother continues her warpath, as if a late night police alert would have saved her daughter.
Twig is right—it’s the perfect storm, a goldmine for conspiracy theorists everywhere.
A girl found dead in the river.
Three others missing.
Two young men falling through the ice, their bodies unrecovered.
Not to mention, a couple female hikers vanishing in close proximity.
And undergirding it all, the Vandenberg Family Cold Case.
True crime podcasters and paranormal investigators swarm like flies on roadkill. Every now and then, a stranger strolls past the estate and stops to peer through the gate. Reddit threads and TikTokposts buzz with half-baked theories. Links to our podcast episodes often show up in the comments.
Questions ranging from benign to bizarre flood our inbox. Requests for interviews. Fans wanting merchandise. A spiritual practitioner offers to read our auras. A pregnant mother asks us to name her baby. Someone with a dodgy email address sends us a file labeled PROOF with instructions to open immediately or we will die by Christmas.
On Wednesday, Twig receives a phone call from Dr. Adrian Hale, host ofThreshold Static, a podcast Twig listens to religiously. The man wants exclusive rights on our episodes about the Vandenberg family. He sends us a licensing deal, which has Twig losing his mind and me, hitting the brakes. Dr. Adrian Hale, academic turned paranormal investigator, has a large following. I don’t think it wise to give the watching world more reason to flock into town.
The only good thing about all the attention?
It puts a cramp in Lainey and Griffin’s sinister plans.
At first, their identities are kept under wraps. Nobody knows who witnessed Brady and Caleb falling through the ice because the witnesses are minors. But then Naomi has the idea to leak theiridentities. Twig does so anonymously and reporters have been trailing them ever since.
All the while, I keep my distance from Jude.
A decision he respects.
Until Thursday night, when he sends a text message I can’t resist.
Did you know Tales from the Crypt has a Christmas episode?
It’s only one of the best Christmas TV productions of all time.
Season one, episode two, cheekily titledAnd All Through the House—an outlandish mixture of horror, humor, and holiday cheer. Seriously, what better way to get into the Christmas spirit than watching a serial killer Santa deliver some much-needed comeuppance to a woman corrupted by greed?
His response undoes me.
We should have watched this instead of A Christmas Carol.
I picture him in his bedroom, watching the episode by himself, his room dark but for the glowof his television and the lights on his Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The yearning this drums up inside me—to be with him, laughing as Mrs. Denby wraps her husband’s dead body in Christmas paper while psycho Santa slides out from under the tree—is so acute, I feel like I’m back in the icy waters of the quarry, being stabbed by a thousand knives.
I power off my phone and start counting sheep.
The next day, when we pass each other in the hall, his hand brushes mine with a shock of heat. I slip inside an empty classroom and nearly come undone. After several horrifying minutes where all I can do is envision the black tendrils on his chest wrapping around his neck, I resolve to ignore any and all future messages.
There is a Jude-sized hole in my life, one Rafe seems very eager to fill. Wherever I am, there he is, too. Finishing my Christmas shopping with Harper and Naomi? We run into him inside Bogaard Antiques. Catching a production of the Nutcracker ballet at the Opera House with my dad and the Calloways? There he is in the back row. When I grab a peppermint mocha from Hollowed Grounds Cafe and he shows up craving a gingerbread latte, I reach my breaking point.
“Are you stalking me?”
He just smiles his crooked smile. “Would you like it if I were?”
