“Don’t you think we should call the police?” suggested Claire. “They can help. Just to be safe.”
“No,” said Matthew, adamant. “That’s the last thing I need right now.”
By Ian’s estimation, Matthew was not striking the pose of a worried father. But Ian didn’t have kids, so what did he know about teenagers and when and when not to be worried?
“Okay, then let’s go after Sam and help her,” suggested Ian again.
Then, not waiting for a response, he went to the van and lifted out his equipment pack—who knew what might be needed at Havenwood?—shouldered it and headed out into the woods. He remembered the way there just like it was yesterday.
Had Liz been here with him, she would feel the energy from the ground beneath their feet. He didn’t remember feeling it when he was a kid, before he knew about vortexes and energy centers, ground that had been scarred and disrupted by battles, or murders, or any manner of human misery.
But he felt it now, a kind of agitated vibration, as he let the trees behind Merle House swallow him, Claire at his heels.
6.
Do you know what today is?” asked Avery March.
She was dressed down in faded jeans and a black hoodie, hiking boots. In the daylight, her eyes were the same stormy gray as her hair, rimmed red as if she had been crying.
Matthew looked in the direction of the woods, where his two childhood friends had disappeared into the dark between the trees, following his wife, who was following his daughter. He should be running after them; distantly, he knew that. But a strange heaviness, a deep lethargy, had taken hold.
“What?” he asked irritably. “What’s today?”
“It’s Amelia’s birthday. Our birthday.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing at first. Then: “That must be hard.”
She blinked at him. Man, she was a weird one.
“Did you ever meet Amelia?” Avery asked.
No one had ever asked him that after the first night they were questioned, because he hadn’t lived here full-time, hadn’t gone to school here. He’d grown up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, only spending the summers at Merle House. But, yes, in fact, he had met Amelia. Mason had brought him to the pizzeria where she’d worked, said they might get some free slices.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
She nodded, keeping those strange stormy eyes on him.
“I’ve been doing a little reading,” said March. “About your troubles back at home. That missing woman, the one with whom you were having an affair.”
Matthew didn’t say anything. That was best, he’d found, always. Say nothing.
“Seems statistically unlikely that someone would be connected, however loosely, to two missing women. And now your daughter has run off.”
He was about to make some vague denial when yet another car pulled up, a loud, beat-up old muscle car, black primer for a paint job. A young man whom Matthew had never seen before climbed out. He wore jeans and a retro Yankees jersey; not a young man, a kid, someone who looked barely old enough to be driving.
What now?
“Can I help you?” asked Matthew, annoyed, and growing more anxious by the second, about Avery’s questions, his missing daughter, and whoever the hell this kid was.
“I’m Eldon?” the kid said, running a big hand through floppy curls, looking up at the house.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“I’m a friend of Jewel’s.”
Oh, Eldon. Really? Matthew knew his name from the texts on Jewel’s phone. Some kid she’d met online. Perfect.
“Is that so?” said Matthew with what he hoped was an intimidating frown.
Eldon looked down sheepishly. “I—uh—we met online. I think she might be in trouble?”
“Why do you think so?” asked March, of course leaping on the moment.
It came out in a ramble—how they’d met on one of those ridiculous games, started texting, getting closer. She’d told him how they’d moved out to some house in the middle of nowhere, that she thought it was haunted. He went on about the online Ouija board, how the Dark Man had killed her on the game. And the last thing she texted him. He read it out loud:
“I see the girl again, the one from the graveyard. I think she needs my help. I’ll text you in a bit.”
Matthew hadn’t read anything like that. On the other hand, he hadn’t checked Jewel’s texts in a couple of days, caught up as he had been with his own issues. Then, when he’d checked the app after he’d discovered her missing, it was blank. All of it. As if things had been deleted. The app was glitchy in general. He clicked on it again. Still blank.
“When I didn’t hear from her again, I got worried,” Eldon was saying, talking fast. Rambling, really, the way kids did. So he’d done a little detective work and found out more about her, about Merle House. She’d mentioned the name of her new town once. He didn’t live far, just two hours away. He came because he was worried about his online friend, a girl he’d never met in the flesh.
So much for all that internet safety they’d taught Jewel, thought Matthew. If this kid could find her, then anyone could. He felt a rush of fear. What if she hadn’t just run off to create drama?
“When was that?” asked March.
“Late last night.” Eldon glanced at his phone. “A little after midnight.”
Last night? Jewel had been missing since last night and neither one of them had noticed? Parents of the year.
“I wasn’t sure what to do,” Eldon went on. “I mean, I don’t want her to think I’m stalking her or whatever. But from the things she said, I thought I should come try and help her.”
Matthew didn’t say anything, just stared at the kid, who shifted nervously from foot to foot. Eldon went on, his voice a little wobbly. “In the game, you know, she always
