Page 39 of Some Kind of Haunted

He moves away from the mantel where he’s been scowling at all the pictures, and shoots me an exasperated look. “I don’t know, Lex. Maybe the fact these people are asking me to believe in collective dreams and demons and feeding on souls.”

He says it with a certain kind of derision that has all my muscles tightening in anxiety. Logan has always, always been the one person who didn’t treat me differently because of all my . . . problems.

Will other people believing me . . . change that? I can’t stand the thought the answer might be yes. I sit up, trying not to sound uncertain and desperate, even though I feel that inside me. “But you . . . do believe it? Right?”

If Logan doesn’t believe my dreams are real, I’m going to have a hard time believing it myself, no matter how many Midas residents do.

“I don’t want to. I have no reason to. But . . .” His expression is strange, then. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do. Or what to believe—and that has never once been Logan Darling.

I’m pretty sure he was making executive decisions in the womb.

That’s how he made it out three minutes ahead of me.

He moves over to the coffee table and picks up his tablet. “Last night, after I got you back to bed, I did some research. It occurred to me that local newspapers might have archives of when . . . Well, if Mom was here, there should be a story about her. Some . . . inkling she existed here.” He clears his throat and holds out the tablet to me. “She did.”

I take it and read the headline of this old news article he’s unearthed, because of course, Logan has.

Local Woman Dies in Abandoned Mine.

The minute I see the abandoned mine part, I don’t want to read about it. And I especially don’t want to read it when I see the name Laura Darling. Our mother.

I shake my head as I stare at the article, trying not to think about Logan at said abandoned mine yesterday. “But Dad always said . . .”

“That she died in childbirth. Giving birth to us.”

“That’s the story,” I say, but the way Logan looks at me, I find myself second-guessing that.

“Is it really?” he asks. “Because I can’t actually remember anyone saying those words. Do you?”

I open my mouth to say that of course I do, but stop. Because the only memory I actually have is knowing she was dead. Always. We knew she was dead before we knew what it even meant. Maybe Logan and I just assumed we were why she died, because otherwise she’d have been there.

And maybe no one ever corrected that assumption because she was not a topic of conversation anyone encouraged. It was too sad. It still is.

“It’s the same mine we went to,” Logan says quietly while I stare at my mother’s name there on the screen without engaging with any of the other words. “I don’t know what I felt when I was there. I didn’t like it. But it was something. Something . . .” He blows out a breath. “Scary.” I know it’s hard for him to admit that, but then he looks at me.

His eyes are the same brown as mine, ringed with gold. And they seem particularly intense, suddenly. “And you’ve never been crazy, Lex. This explains . . . you. How can I deny that, even if I want to?”

A lump forms in my throat.

But he’s not done. “No matter how the things you told me sounded, I never thought you were nuts. Maybe I didn’t understand what you said sometimes, but I knew it wasn’t bullshit. A lot of those psychiatrists Dad sent you to, on the other hand, I always thought had their own problems.”

On some level I’ve always known this. Or I wanted to believe he supported me like this, because for the most part—outside of some typical brother shit—Logan always did. He was always willing to fight for me while Dad was always worried about me being okay.

Dad’s approach came from a good place, but it weighed heavily. So heavily that Logan became my only safe ground, and even then, he was so much like Dad that in the back of my head I always worried one day he’d wake up and see me for what I really was, too.

I let out a slow breath. But he hasn’t. He won’t. We’re here, where people give credence to everything that’s haunted me my entire life, and Logan is on my side. And not just because he felt something at the mine where our mother died, apparently.

But because he believes me, and always has.

“Come on,” he mutters then, clearly not wanting to get any further into all the emotional land mines of this any more than I do. “We’ve got to meet what’s-her-name so we can figure out what the hell is going on in this godforsaken town. Because I might be considering buying in to the idea of demon deals, but I’ve got a hell of a lot of questions to ask on the way there.”

“You know her name,” I reply, caught between frustrated and entertained at his insistence on being so weird when it comes to Nora.

But I follow him outside, hugging myself against the chill of a dark night. I don’t hear any slurping, for which I praise all attendant gods, but I look around all the same. I’m half expecting to see yellow, glowing eyes in every shadow.

We cross the grassy space between the house and the knitting shop. The back door of the shop is wide-open and light streams out into the grip of the dark fall night. Nora is waiting inside, standing in the brightness of the back room like she’s in no hurry to wade out into the darkness.

She smiles at us, but I’m sure I can see a little desperation around the edges. Maybe it’s because I recognize it. I wish I understood what was underlying all her nervous, anxious energy.