Page 10 of Some Kind of Haunted

“I couldn’t find any local delivery.”

“Logan. If you wanted to slowly kill me, couldn’t you have just locked me in a shipping container and hoisted me into the ocean?”

“Too expensive,” he retorts, still not looking up from his papers. “But I’m starving. Hurry up and get ready or I’m leaving without you.”

I take a long time getting ready, just to irritate him. I do my hair and makeup carefully because it makes me feel better and less like my sleepwalking and issues are stamped across my face.

With the right armor finally applied, I am Lexi Darling, totally with-it textile designer and normal functioning human being.

On any other day, Logan would have left without me. But when I return to the kitchen, he’s still sitting there. A reminder that last night was a lot like that period of time when we were kids and my various night terrors and anxieties seemed to touch . . . everything.

Obviously, we don’t mention it.

We step out into a warm, sunny morning. The exact opposite of what it was last night. I dressed for a frigid October winter and it feels like the dog days of August now. I am immediately sweltering. “What the hell? Why is it hot?”

I glare at Logan. Naturally, he’s dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. Like he knew. He shrugs at me, and this is so par for the course I can only sigh and start walking. With daylight streaming down, the grassy yard seems almost cute. There is, indeed, a decorative gnome peeking out from the brown weeds. And the alley next to the knitting store no longer looks like a fast track to my own doom. It’s just an alley between two buildings.

Just as I am a little bit psycho, as my therapist manages not to say directly.

I try not to think about it.

But the minute we get to where we parked our car on the street, I can’t help but notice that the clock tower of doom is looming there again. Still. It’s nearly glowing white in the sunlight, which feels scalding against my skin. The black of its face is just as shiny and the gold of its arms glitters in the sun.

What is that monstrosity doing in this otherwise unremarkable little town? I guess it must be like all the other towns around here, assuming there are other towns around here. And despite the fact there was precious little evidence of any such habitation on the highway last night.

I remember the barren fields and desolate, abandoned remains of old structures, and shiver.

We cross the narrow main street that seems a lot more small-town America than horror show in the morning light, though I am a New Yorker and can easily confuse the two. But the ominous, dark buildings from last night are much cuter in the sun. They are all different varieties of old brick, with long, narrow windows on the second and sometimes third stories. Many of the shops on the bottom are painted in bright colors. There are awnings and cute signs and old-timey-looking black lampposts—none of which I can recall being lit last night, or at least, not lit as brightly as they should have been. There are signs of fall everywhere, from hay bales and pumpkins to scarecrows propped up in the shop entryways.

I decide I do not really like scarecrows, but then, maybe that’s what I saw in the window last night. A stray scarecrow.

Right across the street from the mouth of our alley there is a building that houses a diner and an . . . antique shop? They seem to be the same business, or at least, they both have real estate on the same sign, with various arrows. Swamp Fox Shoppes, the sign says at the top.

I’m not sure I want to know what a swamp fox is, particularly in Iowa—a place I don’t exactly associate with swamps. Not that I have spent a lot of time thinking about Iowa or what to associate it with.

I’m sweating from a walk across the street, and not because I’m out of shape. I am used to walking. I am not used to being dressed inappropriately for walking. I shove my sleeves up to my elbows and curse myself for knitting my colorwork sweater—one of my own designs—with the warmest merino/cashmere blend I could find at the iconic Purl Soho yarn shop in Manhattan before it closed.

Inside, there’s some relief from the heat, but only some.

“Wi-Fi. Blessed Wi-Fi,” Logan says, because he hasn’t looked up from his phone throughout the entire trip from our door. There’s a sign that tells us to wait to be seated, but Logan doesn’t see it because he’s connecting his phone to the internet as he slides into the nearest booth. Because nothing is more important to him than his ability to make his seven thousand daily calls.

“We’re supposed to wait—” I tell him.

But the short waitress with a close-cropped cap of red hair, who’s pouring coffee two tables over, waves it away. She’s wearing a name tag that say Marleen, which feels right. “Go on and sit right there,” she says, not so much kindly as matter-of-factly. “Someone will be with you guys in a minute.”

Of course. If I’d done it, Marleen probably would have scolded me right out of town.

I slide into the booth, surprised to find it . . . not sticky. There are menus already on the table and I pick one up. It is sticky. But there’s an array of breakfast offerings and I am starving. Not enough to eat the Meat-splosion Breakfast Sampler, but I wouldn’t say no to an eggs Benedict with spinach and hollandaise on the side. A decadent upgrade from my usual egg white omelet with extra veggies.

The menu offers neither. The coffee selection also leaves quite a bit to be desired, as they don’t seem to do anything but drip. With half and half, cream, or whole milk. That’s it.

I flip the plastic menu pages, past the questionable pot roast suppers, grilled cheese bombs, and loose meat sandwiches—whatever that is, the horror—to the back. Then again. “This can’t be the whole menu.”

“Looks good to me,” Logan says cheerfully. “And here comes our server. I’m ordering whether you’re ready or not.”

Our server this time is not the woman who greeted us, but a man. Dressed in battered boots, faded jeans, and a T-shirt with a screen-printing of that damn clock tower on it.

I’m not sure how long I stare at his chest before he seems to notice.