Of course, that was his story. But then there were the rumors, the whispers, that lived on. He killed her. He meant to. Or it was an accident, a fit of passion, a push too hard. Or like Daniel told us: The monster made him do it. It lived in the woods, and this was its home, and it would speak to you only in a whisper that sounded like your own echo.
Either way, this place shut down, the generator burned out, and the trail of lights turned off for good—and with it, the town revenue. There used to be more of a tourist draw. The caverns nearby, the mountains all around, and the river cutting through. Johnson Farm and the sunflowers within driving distance—people pulling onto the shoulder of the road, walking through them like a maze, cameras strung around their necks.
We still had the draw of the mountains, the view, the way of life that people found quaint. But the town twenty miles away had a railroad with a cartoonish train and a scenic day trip, and it also had the river and the mountains, the proximity to Johnson Farm, therefore taking all of the remaining visitors.
They bolted the metal gates into the mouth of the caverns, tied it up with chains and a padlock, stuck a sign out front. Danger. Forbidden. Keep out.
Like catnip, a goddamn Bat Signal in the sky—Teenagers! Come!
And come we did.
The gates and the padlock were mostly for show. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had a key. There were probably eight different copies of that key floating around by the time we graduated, passed down like a rite of passage, senior to freshman—the dares, the bets, the dark privacy of the rooms losing their appeal after graduation. When those seeking privacy and secrets outgrew the cold walls, the damp floor, moving on to the motel halfway between this town and the next.
When Corinne disappeared, the cops couldn’t search everywhere. There was just too much area and too few resources, until help from the state arrived. Especially for an eighteen-year-old with no definite sign of foul play. They couldn’t rule out the possibility that she’d run.
But the caverns were close to the main road between the fair and our town, a semi-paved access road from when it had county funding. It was a convenient place to leave a body.
Jackson was the one who suggested it as the cops organized us into search parties two days after Corinne disappeared: Did anyone check the caverns? They couldn’t not check. Not with us all standing around, about to head out on our own with flashlights and desperation and an illegal key.
We were there when the cops went in: Bailey beside Jackson, her face resting against his chest, his T-shirt already stained with her eye makeup; Tyler, his fingers laced with mine, his grip too tight; Daniel, his arms folded across his chest, sullen and anxious. The police had this big tool ready to cut the chains, but they didn’t need it. The padlock was open, the chains unwound, the gate hanging slightly ajar—the darkness beckoning.
Jimmy Bricks went down with a big spotlight, and Officer Fraize tried to keep us all back as we stood with the gathered crowd. We waited forever, the waiting tightening my throat, the summer air too thick and filled with the scent of decay.
They were down there for over an hour, but the only thing they brought back up was the ring.
The ring was beautiful, one of a kind. Interlocking silver bands with a row of tiny blue stones between them. They’d slid it across a table in front of me the next day in a sealed plastic bag.
“Take a closer look,” Officer Fraize had said.
Some of the stones were blackened, coated with dried blood. I’d closed my eyes, shook my head. “Not hers,” I said.
In the following weeks, they tried to track down its origin—we heard about it from Officer Fraize, who was married to the school secretary, who told her book club. They tried to link it to Corinne, then to Jackson, with a receipt or an ID from a pawnshop. But the ring appeared just like Corinne had vanished.
From nothing.
Into nothing.
Bailey said it wasn’t Corinne’s. Jackson said it wasn’t Corinne’s. But the police clung to the idea of it, that there was something we didn’t know about her. Something that had led her here, and she’d seeped into the cavern walls—her bone the smooth rock, her teeth the jagged stone, her clothes disintegrating in the darkness—the only thing left behind, the metal of a ring and the blood it clung to.
Why else would Jackson tell the police to search there? It’s what the guilty do when the guilt threatens to drown them. It’s human nature to want to tell. To be absolved.
Then they sealed the caverns back up: fresh chains, fresh gate, new lock. No keys. As far as I knew, they hadn’t been opened in the last ten years.
* * *
I THOUGHT MAYBE THAT was what the kids sleeping in the clearing were here to do last night. I thought they were here to look for Annaleise as we once searched for Corinne. That maybe they knew something more, something they were scared to tell. But no.
We’d scoured the earth when Corinne disappeared. When the police couldn’t, when they wouldn’t, we kept looking. We threw ourselves so deep into her disappearance that some of us never managed to climb back out.
The monster lives in there, Corinne used to say. Then she’d grab my hand and pull me in, all breathy laughter. Come find us, she’d call, and we’d hear footsteps—from Jackson or Tyler—tiny beams of light cast about the floor as we darted out of their paths.
I stood in front of those gates now, my hands encircling the rusted iron bars, listening to the breeze rush into the darkness and echo back in a low-pitched howl. The lock was closed, the chain covered in a coarse moss that slid off too easily, coating my palms.
I traced the path of the chain to the padlock. I tugged at the bars, but they didn’t give at all against the stone. Barely made a noise as the padlock and the chains resisted. My fingers tightened on the bars and I stepped close, my face pressed up against the iron, my eyes focused on the place the light disappeared around the corner. “Hello?” I whispered, listening to the word bounce off the walls. I cleared my throat and tried once more: “Annaleise?”
Nothing but my own voice echoed back.
I tried the gates from a different angle, pulling the metal bars parallel to the rock, seeing if they’d give, slide. I gripped the bars and shook until I heard a girl mumble from somewhere nearby. “Did you hear that?”
I slipped into the trees before she could notice.
* * *
I HAD A MOMENT of panic—that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back home without a path to trace. It had been so long since I’d done it on my own. But it all came back. The downtrodden walking trail to the clearing where I used to meet Tyler, to the sounds of the river, which I followed home.
The heat wave hadn’t broken, and I was sweating and dirty by the time I reached my backyard.
Seeing Daniel’s car parked in the driveway, I froze at the edge of the woods. I walked to the back door outside the kitchen, trying to get a sense of where he was. Heard him on the phone, his shoes pacing on the hardwood. “Just tell me if she’s there.”
A pause. More pacing.
“Just no bullshit. Tell me she’s okay. We had a fight, and . . . she’s . . . I don’t know. Not doing well.”
The pacing picked up.
“No, I showed up and her car’s here and all her shit’s here, but she’s nowhere.”
“Daniel?” I pushed through the back door, same way I came out.
He rounded the corner, the phone pressed to his ear. “Never mind,” he said, sliding the phone back into his pocket. “Hey, Nic,” he said, all drawn out and slow. Hands on his hips, feigned relaxation. “Where were you?”
“I was out for a walk.”
His eyes strayed to my clothes, same as yesterday’s, and he frowned. “In the woods?”
“No,” I said. “Down the road.” I cleared my throat. “Hey, do you know, did anyone check the caverns?”
The line between his eyes deepened, the corners of his mouth tipping down. “What are you talking about?”
“The caverns. Did the police ever look inside?”
Daniel looked me over quickly, and I balled my fists to hide the dirt and moss.
“I think we should let them do their job,” he said. “Doesn’t do any good getting involved.”