She tossed and turned, her room unbearably hot. Kicking away the sheets, she pressed her face into her pillow and tried to keep her eyes closed, trying to stay inside her dream. In it, Timothy Steinway was holding her hand. He had her cornered against a locker inside the hall of her future high school, and his lips were parted in such a way that Vee was sure he was going to kiss her. But her anticipation of that long-awaited kiss was derailed. His facial features shifted from Tim’s to something darker, more mysterious. You’re beautiful. Onyx waves replaced Tim’s sandy brown hair. Intense, pragmatic brown eyes gazed out at her from beyond Tim’s greens. The boy whispered against her skin: Just like an angel. She could almost feel his exhalation drift across the curve of her cheek as he enfolded her in his arms. The soft creak of his leather jacket was so real, too real. It pulled her out of her dream just long enough to notice the skin-crawly feeling of someone watching her from not so far away.
She peeked open an eye, half expecting her laptop screen to illuminate the room like a giant night-light with its bright blue glow. But the screen had turned off due to inactivity.
Hours before, Vee had plucked the laptop off the floor from next to the mattress and opened the lid. In her inbox, the email from her mother was still waiting to be read. She had ignored it, hit the COMPOSE button on the left side of the browser window, and typed Tim’s name into the TO field. She’d only emailed Tim once before, and it hadn’t been a real email like the one she was determined to write. It had been a link to a list of New York State’s most haunted places; nothing spectacular, nothing personal. She had vacillated on the subject line, from Hi Tim, it’s Vee to I’m living in a haunted house to mimicking her mother’s email: Hello from Washington. But the longer she thought about what she wanted to say, the less urgent her message had seemed. It was as though those smiling strangers in the photographs she’d studied all night were whispering from beyond their graves: Keep us a secret, keep us to yourself. We belong to you. Only you.
The email never got written. She had clicked over to another browser tab—one she left open from earlier that night—and stared at a group photo of ten people standing in front of her current home. And then she had scrolled down the page and stopped on an old picture of a young, handsome man. Charming. His half smile full of promise and understanding. Vee chewed her lip as she memorized the contours of Jeffrey Halcomb’s face. He looked a little like Jack White and Johnny Depp, kind of vampiric with his pale skin and black hair, sexy in a quiet yet dangerous sort of way. Nothing like Tim.
Despite Tim’s penchant for horror movies and an interest in the paranormal, he looked like an ordinary kid. But Jeffrey looked like someone out of those movies in the most alluring way. Because he was dangerous. He killed people. And yet, rather than being repulsed by that fact, she only stared longer. Because what would it have felt like for Jeffrey to care about her when he had the capacity of hurting others? Did a murderer give more care to those he loved because he did away with the ones he didn’t care anything about? What did his voice sound like? Vee had opened up the music app on her computer and streamed some of her favorite tracks, stuff her mom hated because the lyrics were about death and beauty and eternity. But those sounds were perfect for the strange mystery that exuded from the gorgeous and grinning Jeff.
She then tried to sleep, but her regret was refusing to let her rest.
I know what this place is.
Her father had turned pale as cream when she dropped that bit of info. Boom. He looked almost ready to puke all over the grass, and she had been glad. He deserved the discomfort; he had brought it on himself. Her mother had warned her while helping Vee pack up her stuff. He’s going to lock himself away, you know. He always gets carried away. And she was right. Vee knew it was only a matter of time before she lost her father to his study, to his work. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference whether she was living with him or not. And so, before he could make up some infuriating excuse as to why he had dragged her to a death house, she had left him standing in the dark, bounded up the stairs, and locked herself behind her bedroom door.
He had come upstairs a few minutes later and knocked. Jeanie, open up. We need to talk. Come on, kid, give me a break. I’ll explain. Jeanie? He’d given up after a few minutes. If he wanted to come into her room, he’d have to kick down the door.
But here came second thoughts. Because now that he knew she knew, things would be different. He’d feel obligated to move them to a new place. Except, they didn’t have any money, which meant they’d probably end up living in some cramped one-bedroom apartment in Pier Pointe for the rest of the summer. Zero privacy. Zero ghosts.
Damn it.
She pressed her face into her rumpled sheets. Had she stopped to think what confronting her father would mean, she would have never gone downstairs. Sure, she was spooked that a bunch of people had died downstairs. Anyone would have been at least slightly weirded out. Logic dictated that she pack up her stuff and insist her dad move them out, stat. But the dark corners of her brain were bubbling with excitement. Not only was the place haunted, but she had actually seen things far beyond creaky walls and footsteps down the hall. Despite her own fear, Vee wanted to stay right where she was.
She had gone to bed a little after two in the morning, flipping off the lights but leaving her laptop open. Her music streamed into the darkness as she tried to fall asleep.
But now the room was silent, her playlist having reached its end. The darkness was heavy—the same weighty murk that had made it hard to breathe the night before. And just like yesterday, Vee’s itch for ghost hunting was gone. She squeezed her eyes tight, not wanting to look at who may have been standing in the night shade of her room. Because you’re an idiot, she thought. You’re a coward, that’s all. A spineless kid who wants to be tough, but when it gets even a little bit scary, you wuss out. For a girl determined to stay living in a haunted house, she was the epitome of a fraidycat. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been able to construct a proper email to Tim. She was terrified of everything. Ghosts. Boys. Divorce.
Open your eyes.
She couldn’t tell if she was urging herself on, or if the suggestion had slithered from the inky gloom.
Open your eyes.