“Didn’t expect that from you, Shipley.”
“Guess we’re both full of surprises.”
A small grin tugs at the corners of his mouth, and for a moment the tension between us melts away.
I sweep the flashlight over the trees. When I see the first birdhouse, I step off the main trail and hurry among the trees. “C’mon. We’re close.”
Even closer than I realize. Ten steps later, the cabin appears in the yellow beam emitted by my flashlight. The studio sits small and stark against the trees, barely visible beneath the tangle of overgrown vines and brambles pressing in on every side. In the dark, it looks like an abandoned skeleton, its weathered wood as gray as bone. It’s cordoned off by police tape, but that’s no real deterrent. We easily slip underneath.
Inside, the air is musty and the silence is heavy, broken only by the faint creaks as the floorboards adjust under our weight.
“You know,” drawls Chase, “if you wanted to get me alone in the dark, you could’ve just asked me.”
I scowl at him, then shine the light right in his eyes on purpose. “You wish.”
He laughs. He knows he’s getting to me. That’s the last thing I want, because it means he’ll only be more of a jerk.
It doesn’t take long for me to realize I’m not going to be making any breakthroughs here. The studio is completely bare, strippedof anything personal or familiar. It’s nothing but rough wooden planks lined with lingering shadows. In the center of the floor is a gaping hole where the boards were pried up, leaving behind splintered edges and nails jutting out like teeth. This is where the police discovered my father’s sketchbooks and a small cache of items belonging to his victims. Now it’s just an empty pit, a dark scar in the heart of the cabin.
It feels like a tomb, gutted and abandoned, and I can’t fight the sinking disappointment in my chest. Naively, I’d expected a barrage of memories to come flooding back. Moments with my dad, some forgotten clue, some hint as to why he thought I knew what he’d done with the bodies.
But the studio was probably cleared out a decade ago. There’s nothing here now.
“What’s wrong?” Chase asks.
“Nothing,” I mutter, avoiding his gaze. “Let’s go.”
“Seriously? We hiked all the way out here for, like, three seconds? That’s it?” His voice carries a note of irritation.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would be empty.” I turn toward the door.
This time, the walk back is completely silent. When we emerge from the path, the big house coming into view, I stop for a moment, staring at the back porch. Then I square my shoulders and walk toward it.
“What, we’re going in here now?” demands an increasingly annoyed Chase.
The back door is boarded shut, so I hurry around to the front of the house. I push open the storm door. It looks like the lock was broken a long time ago.
I glance over my shoulder at Chase. “You coming?”
He joins me on the porch without a word.
I step inside my childhood home, hovering in the doorway for a moment because my feet cease to move. But then, as I arc the beam of the flashlight around the living room, I feel surprisingly fine. It doesn’t look like my old house, which always had a roaring fire in the fireplace this time of year. I barely recognize it with all the furniture gone or in splinters on the ground. The piles of debris everywhere. Nothing here reminds me of the place I grew up.
That gives me the confidence to take the next step. And then the next.
My heart beats faster when I reach my parents’ bedroom. I shine the light inside. The bed I hid under is gone. It’s just a room, filled with trash. Unrecognizable. I remember Zed saying you could still see the bloodstains. The spot where my mother bled to death. But it’s too dark for me to make out anything.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Chase says from behind me.
I shrug. I don’t really know. I was hoping the studio, and now the big house, would jog my memory. That I’d recall a secret compartment or something. A special nook in a closet somewhere, a loose floorboard, a forgotten spot where my dad might have left me a clue.
But I have nothing. No recollection of any such thing. The general layout of the house is as I remember, but that’s all. I have a hard time believing I ever lived here. It’s cold, impersonal.
“This was a stupid idea” is all I manage to say. I brush past him and head back to the living area.
Suddenly, Chase reaches out and grabs my arm. At first, I don’t know why, but then I hear it—the sound of an approaching car.
Headlights slash across the main room, temporarily blinding me. Chase takes my flashlight and clicks it off, bathing the room in darkness. Then he sidles closer to the window and peeks out.
