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His dad liked to joke. So did Ollie’s dad. They got along amazingly. “Ha,” said Brian. “Come on,” he added to the girls. “Let’s wash up.”
As they were heading out, he heard his mom calling. “Brian—Brian,” she said. “Did you leave anything on the front porch?”
Brian stopped. Beside him, he felt the girls go still.
Brian turned around. “Um, no,” he said. His tongue felt sticky. “Why do you ask?”
“Nothing, really,” said his mom. “Just found this on the ground in front of the door. Thought I’d check before I chuck it in the bin.” She held it up. It was a round black piece of paper about the size of Brian’s palm.
Brian hesitated. Then Ollie said clearly, “That’s mine, Ms. Battersby. I dropped it. School project.”
“Well, great,” said his mom. “Glad I could find it before it got wet.”
She held it out. Ollie glanced at her watch, as though for guidance. But her watch didn’t do anything, and Ollie marched over and took the black piece of paper from his mother’s hand.
“Hm,” said his mom, frowning at all three of them. Brian supposed they still looked a little freaked, from the darkness and the scratching footsteps. “Are you okay? Probably hungry, huh? Go get washed up. I’ll set the table.”
They went into the washroom. The second the door closed, Coco said, “Ollie, what’s that?”
Ollie was eyeing the thing in her hand with puzzlement. “A piece of paper. Look, someone charcoaled this side. That’s why it’s black.” She held up a black-smudged hand to demonstrate.
“What about the other side?” said Coco.
Slowly, Ollie turned it over. The back of the paper wasn’t charcoaled. There were a few words written instead, in delicate, old-fashioned cursive.
bell, it said. Then, dog saturn day flower moon.
And then, Consider yourselves warned.—S.
One shiver chased another up Brian’s spine.
“Who is it from?” whispered Coco. They looked at each other. “Is it—is it him?” Her voice went shrill. When they first met him, the smiling man had called himself Seth, and he had seemed nice. He wasn’t, though. Not at all. Coco’s finger traced the spidery cursive S.
Another knock broke the silence of the bathroom. All three of them stiffened, glancing instinctively at the bathroom mirror. But nothing moved in the mirror but them. The knock had come from the front door. Again? But the lights were on.
Brian felt the hair rise on his arms.
The front door creaked. They all held their breath. And then a chorus of adult voices—“So glad you could make it, come in, come in . . .”
They relaxed a little. “It must be your parents,” said Brian. “Dinner party time.”
Ollie was still considering the smudged black paper, turning it over in her fingers. “What do you think this means?”
“It’s a riddle,” said Coco. “And I guess a warning, like it says.” People often underestimated Coco. She was very small, and her eyes were pale blue and watery. She cried a lot. She was possibly the bravest person Brian knew. “The smiling man likes games and riddles,” she added. Coco would know. She’d played him at chess once, with Brian’s life as the prize. “Any guesses?”
They shook their heads. Brian frowned. There was something tickling the back of his brain. Something about bells. Bells and dogs and spots. Black spots? But it slipped away before he could grasp it.
Coco said, “Maybe our parents would know?”
The other two looked at each other. Their parents didn’t know anything about the smiling man.
Brian silently ran over a speech in his head. One he’d thought out a million times since that fall. Since the three of them—and their entire sixth grade—had disappeared into a foggy forest.
Hey, Mom and Dad. Remember when our whole class vanished for two days and then reappeared? When no one remembered what happened to us?
But me and Ollie and Coco lied. We remember what happened—
“No,” Ollie broke in fiercely. “We can’t tell them. It’s too dangerous. The smiling man messes with adults too. If our parents believe us, if they help us, it might put them in danger, and we are not”—here she stopped to glare around at her friends—“putting my dad in danger. Or anyone’s parents.”
