Page 20 of Some Kind of Haunted

It must be a trick of the sunlight, because I certainly don’t see movement in the mine opening. We’ve already established that my mind loves nothing more than playing tricks on me. Or maybe it was local wildlife, not an uncommon occurrence out here in the country, one would assume. It could be any innocuous thing.

Like raccoons, I can’t help but think. Like back at the knitting shop.

Which doesn’t settle me any, but I don’t want Logan to look back that way and get mesmerized again, so I keep marching us back along that indentation masquerading as a trail.

We get back into the car and I slump in my seat. I’m exhausted. I’m somehow hot and cold at once. And I’m worried, because that glazed look on Logan’s face is nothing I ever want to see again.

Everything inside me seems to lurch queasily.

“We have to go home,” I say, quietly and firmly, once Logan gets us back out to the highway. I want my apartment. I want the familiar. I want to see my dad and not ever mention our secret grandmother or Iowa ever, ever again.

Logan blows out a breath, but at least he doesn’t smile. Or give me some more of that malicious compliance that makes my teeth hurt from clenching them so tight. He sounds like the real Logan. Intent, if slightly shaky underneath it. “There are all these weird things here that make no sense, in this place that we clearly have a connection to whether we knew it until now or not, and you want to run away instead of find the answers?”

“As fast as humanly possible.”

“Not in the cards, Lex.” He spares me a serious look. “I think, deep down, you know we need to see this through.”

I want to argue, because this is unsettling and I can’t believe we’ll come out on the other side of whatever this is unscathed. I open my mouth to start. To mount a hundred arguments of how there’s absolutely no need to engage with any of this.

But I think about the way my always easygoing and confident brother somehow lost control of knitting needles in a yarn shop.

And then, worse, seemed like he was being pulled into that mine.

Into a terrible darkness that I didn’t have to get any closer to myself to understand I wanted no part of it. To know that we needed to run far, far away and stay away.

I think about that slack, awful look on his face when I snapped him out of it.

And that thing that moved just beyond the opening, like it had been lying in wait.

What I know is that I can’t leave my twin brother here with all of this, not least because he thinks I’m the crazy one. He’s the one who takes care of me—he always has—but I’m the one who sees the creepiness, where he assumes he can smile his way through.

I don’t care if Logan thinks I’m having yet another episode.

What I can’t have is anything happening to him when I could stay here and see it coming and maybe keep it from happening, like today.

Maybe it’s my turn to look out for him.

Even if that means staying in this weird place a little longer. At least I’m not pretending it’s charming when I’m pretty sure it wants to kill us.

Chapter Eight

Logan drives back along the main highway, then takes the turn into Midas. We start heading down the narrow street. In the daylight I can see that there’s a river down there, a silvery whisper at the bottom of the hill.

Then there’s that sharp curve in the street and we drive under the imposing stone gate.

It’s been open each time we’ve driven in or out, but it bothers me.

Or maybe what bothers me is how quickly it could close, locking the town up tight.

It makes me wonder why something like this would be necessary.

“Why would anyone want to trap everyone on Main Street?” I ask out loud, peering up at the massive slab of concrete.

“It’s not a trap,” Logan informs me, likely feeling chatty again since my lack of argument about staying here could be taken as an agreement to stay, and . . . I guess it is. “It’s to save the town from floods. I read up on it last night when I couldn’t sleep. I guess floods are a big deal along the Mississippi.”

For a man who was riveted by a creepy old mine shaft, he’s pretty blasé about an entire river engulfing a town.

Except apparently this giant, fortress-like wall will stop it.