CHAPTER 13 
The phone rings downstairs, waking me with a jolt Sunday morning. Before I’m even out of bed, I’m thinking about time: three days till dark moon. Three days, three days, I think with each step down the stairs.
I hurry to the kitchen and pick up our ancient phone from the cradle. (We have an old answering machine, too—all left over from some unknown owner of the house years ago.)
It’s Germ. She’s out of breath, and her words spill out all in a rush.
“So sorry I didn’t call yesterday. After soccer, when I got home, I tried to convince my mom that ghosts exist and told her that we talked to a bunch of them last night. But now she thinks I’m having seizures. She looked it up on WebMD, and it says when you have seizures, you hallucinate. So now she’s not letting me out of the house. Like, except tonight for the Fall Fling. She said I couldn’t call you because we just ‘egg each other on.’ She thinks I’m calling Bibi right now.”
“You’re allowed to call Bibi?” I blurt out, more hurt-sounding than I want to be, feeling betrayed by Germ’s mom.
Germ pauses for a second. “Because of the Fall Fling. We have to organize for tonight. Do you think…” She hesitates. “Do you think you still might be able to come?”
“What?” I ask. My promise to go to the Fall Fling has completely slipped my mind until just this moment.
Germ pauses. “I know, I know, it’s really crazy to ask, with everything going on. It’s just… I can’t back out because of Bibi, and… it’s going to be a disaster and I’m going to be humiliated. But I know it’s not a big deal compared to… everything. I know.”
I’ve never heard Germ sound so agitated. She took on ghosts last night with relative calm. Now her voice quivers with fear. I feel a tinge of disappointment that Germ even cares about any of this stuff right now.
And then I think, If I’m not there to comfort Germ if she does get humiliated, which is fairly likely, who will be?
“I’ll be there,” I say, keeping the disappointment out of my voice. “Of course.”
I can practically hear her sigh of relief at the other end. “Thanks, Rosie.” She pauses. “I did do a bunch of internet research on witches and stuff like that yesterday. But sorting out make-believe stuff from real witches is, like, impossible. There are all these books that say witches don’t float. And I read a bunch about the Salem witch trials, which just sounds like people back then were afraid of women who did what they wanted. I’m gonna keep looking.”
Behind her, I can hear the news, which she always has on, and then the doorbell.
“Uh-oh, that’s Bibi at the door. My cover’s blown—gotta go.”
She hangs up before saying good-bye.
I sit there for a moment, engulfed in jealousy I don’t like and that I wish I didn’t have.
Get it together, sweetie, I tell myself.
And then I look at the clock. It’s already eleven o’clock.
By afternoon, I’m on my bike riding alone to the hospital, in the rain, in an oversize raincoat I borrowed from Mom since I don’t have one. I wear my Lumos flashlight under my coat for good luck.
I pull off the ramp where I’ve always seen the decrepit sign that reads SAINT IGNAT SPITA, and wind down a woodsy road. It’s deserted, and I wish again that Germ were with me, because she always makes me feel at least 75 percent braver—but I steel myself and keep pedaling. Whenever Germ is afraid, she says she thinks of gummy bears with ketchup on them, and it’s so disgusting that it helps. But it doesn’t work for me.
In the dim rainy light, I marvel at the loneliness and emptiness of this place. It must have felt to my mom, when she came here to have me, like she was going to the ends of the earth to hide.
I pedal on and on, and it looks like nothing is back here until the moment that, up ahead as I round a bend, the hospital looms up from the woods.
I brake, and catch my breath.
No wonder Homer said this was a dead end.
The building stands in the middle of a clearing carved out from the surrounding woods, its walls jagged and crumbled like old teeth. It looks like it’s been in a fire—black smudge marks snake across its white stone. It’s covered in ivy and moss, and its doors are blocked with yellow tape, though most of the tape lies sagging along the concrete landing. The building is surrounded by an overgrown field that must have been a lovely lawn once. A few of its windows are boarded with plywood. On one of them there’s an eviction notice. In the wetness, mushrooms have sprouted everywhere.
This is the place where I was saved, by a secret. I wish a place could share its memories the same way people do. I wonder what The Witch Hunter’s Guide, with all its talk of magic, would say about that.
I take a deep breath and walk into the tall grass. The front doors, behind the tape, stand propped open. I step up to the threshold and lean forward to peer inside.
An empty hall with waterlogged papers all over the ground, a few overturned silver trays. I step gingerly inside, wind down the hallway and then through a series of rooms where old bedding lies in drifts against the walls. Broken glass crumbles under my feet. It’s clear right away that I’ll find nothing here—no records, no sign of the lives that used to be lived here. And Homer says none of the ghosts know the answers.
At the back corner of the building, I find the long suite of rooms that once made up the maternity ward. I walk past one room after another, peering in. The rooms are painted white but have gone a dingy gray. After toeing through some trays and cups on the floor of one of the rooms, I find my way through a door and out into a small courtyard.
I wander along the stone pavers, then turn to look back at the empty building behind me. An old broken clock hangs over the entrance. My heart sinks. Whatever saved me that night, whatever secret spared me that might help me again when a witch comes for me, there’s nothing here to find.
It’s dusk by the time I get home, and ghosts are floating up Waterside Road as I pedal up the drive. The light from the attic window where my mom sits glows like a beacon. There’s a circle of ghosts playing cards by the pathway to the front door. There are two ghost children playing tag in the yard. They all nod a wary acknowledgment to me as I move past.
In the parlor I find the knitting lady and the washerwoman already sitting on the couch passing the time, talking about how a ghost they know lost his life to killer bees, and how that compares to dying of typhoid.
Walking into the kitchen to make dinner, I tune them out as they move from one topic to another, and I only vaguely overhear snippets.
“You know, Crafty Agatha, I hear she sucks the meat off children’s bones,” the washerwoman says.
“No, she doesn’t,” the knitting lady—Crafty Agatha, I suppose—says. “But I do hear she cooks people in pots. I hear she hides in a big hollow tree with a cauldron hanging from one of the limbs.”
I’m beginning to realize what a gossipy, superstitious lot they are—just as Ebb said. When they’re not talking about the weather, or each other, they’re talking wild theories about witches, the Moon Goddess, and what lies past the pink haze of the Beyond. In any case, they sound like they are going on half wild rumor and half fact, and it’s impossible to tell which is which.
“She hides inside a volcano in Hawaii,” a voice says from the other side of the room. I turn to see that the drowned sailor in the rain slicker is passing through the room, and now he hovers by the couch. “She was left behind by the others because she lost something the rest of them have, some way of getting to their hiding place, so now she’s stuck hiding here on earth. I’ve heard it from several reliable sources.” He gives me a sheepish look. “Sorry, little one. I know it’s probably unpleasant to hear.”
“What do you know about it, Soggy?” Crafty Agatha says.
“Are you talking about the Memory Thief?” I interject nervously, and they all turn to look at me. “The one who was left behind and can’t go where the rest of them go?” The two women on the couch look at each other meaningfully. I’m curious. I wish they could tell me where the Memory Thief hides. Then if I ever figured out how to fight her, I could find her before she found me first. Still, I can’t tell what parts are idle gossip and what parts are real.
“Never you mind, little one,” Crafty Agatha says. “I’m sure all will be well.” They exchange another look that says they really don’t think all will be well.
Subtle, I think.
Just then, another ghost drifts in and whispers to them, looking at me.
“She was?” Crafty Agatha says, looking over at me with one eyebrow arched.
I sigh. Now, I guess, I’m the subject of the gossip.
“What?” I finally ask.
“Some spirits saw you riding home from Saint Ignatius Hospital just after sunset.”
I nod. Annoyed. I don’t like everybody knowing what I’m doing all the time.
“Well, it’s just, it’s a good thing you weren’t there at night,” Crafty Agatha says. “Hate to see you caught out by the Murderer so far from home. That could just about frighten you to death, I imagine.”
My skin prickles.
“The Murderer?”
The washerwoman and Crafty Agatha nod.
“What would he be doing there?”
“Oh.” Crafty Agatha waves her ball of yarn in the air. “Well, he’s always either there or here. He comes and goes between the two all night long.” I blink at them, waiting for more of an explanation, which they finally seem to realize they should give.
“We don’t really know why,” the washerwoman says. “Only that he does the same thing every night.”
My stomach sinks. Never tell, the Murderer always says, like he’s keeping a secret. Homer said none of the ghosts know anything about what happened at the hospital that night. But what if there were one ghost, I suddenly realize, who’s decided to never tell? Could what happened the night I was born, and the Murderer’s secret, be linked?
I look toward the basement door, and steel myself to approach it.
“Leave him be, child,” Soggy urges me, floating up beside me. “Ghosts have ways of hurting you, no matter what Ebb says. If they’re angry enough. Haven’t you ever heard of falling chandeliers? Plates flying across a room? If a ghost is angry enough, he can kill. And trust me. That one is angry enough.”
I swallow before I take the last steps toward the door.
I open it, and peer down the stairs, then walk down them, one by one.
I look around, dreading the sight of the Murderer, the coal-red eyes, the rash around the neck.
But the basement is empty.
He’s not here.