Page 62 of Some Kind of Haunted

But I wake up in bed the following morning knowing I didn’t somehow sleepwalk anywhere, so I guess the protections Nora showed me work.

And my dreams are sometimes just dreams.

More importantly, they’re not my fault.

The days tick by, deeper into the dark embrace of October and closer to Halloween. The leaves keep shifting their colors, bright golden yellows and warm oranges, and splashes of deeper reds. In the diner, I hear about a grisly crash on the bridge with no survivors and strangely, they say, no alcohol. There are whispers of a missing teen from the next town who everyone thinks was involved in drugs, but Jack only shakes his head, and I think about my night on the flood wall. Meanwhile, leaf-peeping tourists fill in all the empty spaces in town, flooding the streets, crowding the sidewalks, wandering wherever they please with sulky children and their phones out to take pictures of Midas’s charms and never seeming to sense the watching shadows.

Marleen kept her word and presented me with my very first scotcheroo the morning after Knit and Sip. She even waited there while I took a bite, her arms crossed. I was determined to like it no matter how it tasted, obviously.

But it was glorious. A Rice Krispies treat, basically, but with peanut butter and a whole chocolate butterscotch situation—pure bliss, in fact.

“You’re not really taking this off the menu, are you?” I asked with my mouth still full.

“Not you, too,” Jack muttered, but he looked pleased.

Marleen reserved comment, as usual.

But the scotcheroos stayed on the menu. For the moment. And while Marleen continued not to speak, she does not pretend I’m not there anymore. I get a nod, a wave. Not a smile, not a word.

It’s progress. I think maybe she’s protective of Jack, and how can I not support that? I feel that way, too.

I do my best to live like I don’t know Halloween is coming and, currently, we have no plan. Sometimes, during my breakfast shift on the stool in Jack’s kitchen, I wonder.

Do we know that everything will get better if the deal is broken? What if it doesn’t? What if breaking the deal only returns Midas to chaos?

What if it gets worse? What if I’m just crazy and people just die and crash their cars and that’s part of life, not a demon deal that’s been forced on an otherwise charming Iowa town?

But I keep questions like that to myself, and not only because I’m personally invested in the demons being real, too.

The studying I’m doing with Harrison doesn’t seem to help me achieve any higher level of understanding or insight. It’s history, that’s all. It doesn’t connect to my dreams, and it certainly doesn’t give me any bright ideas on how to undo a two-hundred-year-old deal with evil forces.

I’m reminded of what Jack said to Logan when they first talked to us about this. Did you think it was going to be easy?

I’m feeling broody as I sink into my usual seat in the antique store and pretend to read through the never-ending stack of books Harrison prepares for me daily. If I really dig into my mood, I can admit that it’s possibly only half to do with feeling like I’m spinning my wheels here as the literal drop-dead date draws closer.

The other half probably has a lot to do with Jack resolutely not bringing up my dream notebook, though he always gives it back to me each day so I can keep it updated and leave it with him again. There has been no more hand holding, either.

He places it on my stool every morning and puts my latte on top, and takes it back before I go in to see Harrison.

So efficient, I think now, and not in a complimentary fashion.

I could ask Cleo or Nora if he’s mentioned it to them, of course. We knit together after the shop closes a few times a week now, but I’m always afraid to introduce the topic of Jack. Our de facto leader, who hasn’t seemed very leader-y lately.

Then again, the diner is packed at all hours now. There’s a new Midas festival every weekend and themed weeks, and they all bring in the crowds. On the surface, I feel like I should enjoy them all. It’s like living in a Hallmark movie every day, except mostly, it just seems like a lot of people all up in my space.

Ironic for a New Yorker, I know.

This just doesn’t seem the place for it. There’s no infrastructure here for teeming people. They are always in the narrow streets. They wander into private areas, like our yard, and seem baffled when we try to shoo them back to a public sidewalk.

Then again, the point is the teeming, I’m well aware. This is all so the demons can feed, not because Midas is the Fall Festival Capital of the World as some of the promotional flyers claim.

I realize I’ve wandered off in my own head when it’s clear that Harrison has been talking to me for a minute. I try to tune in, only to find that he’s telling me the story of a foundling who jumped off the flood wall in the early 1920s. Everyone chalked it up to losing her husband in World War I.

“Suicides were covered up in those days,” Harrison tells me. “Some say she made sure to do it in a way that couldn’t be hushed up.”

The last thing I want to talk about is a suicidal woman jumping off the flood wall. That flood wall.

I change the subject. “Has anyone ever done any research to where these girls come from?”