A fog lay thick over Gray Grove, and the demon was still asleep in the muck of the marsh the night the girls arrived.
They rode side by side in silence, Rumi in the passenger seat, slumped against the window, fitting a fresh battery into her video camera, and Kaitlin with her hands locked in a white-knuckle vise grip around the steering wheel. The headlights of the truck snared on the eyes of animals in the brush. A cat. A possum. Perhaps a deer, or something wearing its skin.
The two girls found their way to Gray Grove as part of their shared podcast, Girls and Ghosts, which launched investigations into the many haunted locations throughout the South. Tonight’s episode centered around Kyle Adams, who was said to have disappeared at Gray Grove more than forty years prior.
It was a big night, their first time recording an episode on-site, but Rumi wasn’t in the mood for filming that evening. The day before, while Kaitlin had been partying at a friend’s house, Rumi had pulled an all-nighter to finish her research on Kyle’s case.
Kyle had been a blond-haired, blue-eyed varsity quarterback who had found his way to Gray Grove while chasing William Jones, a Black boy he’d been bullying for the better part of the school year. William was the last person to see Kyle alive, and in the wake of his disappearance, many suspected William of a murder they couldn’t prove. Ultimately, he wasn’t imprisoned for Kyle’s death, but that wasn’t to say he walked away unscathed. He’d gone down on drug possession charges and remained behind bars for the rest of his life.
Rumi recalled the day she’d interviewed him at the beginning of that very summer. She’d driven up to the Northborough Georgia Penitentiary for the occasion, during visiting hours. William was waiting for her when she arrived, sitting on the other side of a plexiglass window, dressed in a lurid orange jumpsuit. He was older, pushing sixty, and looked almost nothing like the frightened boy Rumi had seen in the black-and-white newspaper photos, beneath headlines like MURDER AT GRAY GROVE? And QUARTERBACK KILLER. But his eyes were still wide and soft.
“How did things escalate between you and Kyle that night?”
“His girl was sweet on me,” William said into the receiver in a broken whisper. “Kyle didn’t take that well. He followed me home one night, after my shift at the docks. But you have to know it wasn’t me who killed him. Kyle was out for my blood, but I didn’t want his spilled.”
“Then what happened?”
For the first time, William had locked eyes with Rumi. “That night, when Kyle pulled his switchblade from his pocket, something from the marsh protected me. I don’t know what.”
Kaitlin pulled Rumi from her memories and back into the present. “You know we’re doing a good thing here,” said Kaitlin. “For Kyle. For his parents.”
And for the listeners and the brand sponsorships they afforded, Rumi wanted to add because she knew that was nearer to the truth of it. But she bit that back. “Kyle’s parents have been dead for twenty years.”
“Well, his siblings then.”
“He didn’t have any. And both sets of his grandparents died—”
“Rumi, enough. You know what I mean. We’re here doing a good thing. Kyle was a victim, and he deserves justice, and tonight we’re going to give him that by allowing him to tell his own story. We’ll let the dead speak for themselves.”
Rumi wanted to argue that if every cold case could be solved by talking to the ghosts of those involved, there wouldn’t be any cold cases. But she knew that would turn into a fight, and they couldn’t afford that tonight.
“Are you mad at me? Again?” Kaitlin asked at last, squinting through the windshield at the fog-hazed road. A devout supernatural enthusiast, it was usually Kaitlin who let her fears get the best of her, Kaitlin who suspected paranormal activity where Rumi only saw shadows and tricks of the light, Kaitlin who was most afraid. But tonight things were different. She seemed impervious to the dark legends of Gray Grove, and it was Rumi who felt afraid.
“I’m just tired. I was up all night researching Kyle … It left a bad taste in my mouth. William was right, he was a racist dick.”
Kaitlin’s hands shifted around the steering wheel. She didn’t look at Rumi. “Well … yeah. But everyone was racist back then. It was the eighties.”
This was one of Kaitlin’s most common refrains. As long as the racist in question was older than them, their racism could be excused, if not forgiven entirely.
“Besides,” Kaitlin said, “he’s dead. So we’ll never know for sure. Not unless we ask him anyway. And we’ve got the spirit box for that. I think it’s going to change everything.”
Rumi fought the urge to roll her eyes. Every time Kaitlin mentioned the spirit box, all she could think about was how that money could’ve gone toward new sound equipment instead of what was essentially a digital Ouija board. According to Kaitlin, and the description she’d read on eBay, the spirit box was a radio device purported to transmit the frequencies of the spirit world into decipherable sounds, even full sentences. The plan was to use it during that night’s séance, in the ruins of the Gray Grove plantation house, to commune with Kyle and discover what had happened on the night of his disappearance.
Kaitlin kept driving.
The darkness that enshrouded Gray Grove plantation was unlike the darkness Rumi had experienced anywhere else. Here there were no streetlamps. The sky—what little could be seen of it through the dense canopy of the moss-draped oaks—was untouched by the distant taint of city light pollution.
Rumi could smell the marsh long before they approached it, a familiar sulfurous stink that made Kaitlin wrinkle her nose and crank up the air-conditioning. Kaitlin was new to the South. She’d moved only three years before, halfway through their freshman year, when her father, a Marine officer, was transferred from Alaska to Paris Island, a military base off the coast of South Carolina.
After years in the South, Kaitlin was still greatly bothered by things most Northerners noted—the pollen and the persistent humidity, the marsh stink and the sand gnats that descended in hungry swarms as the sun set. Prone to sunburn and heatstroke, with an allergy to mosquito bites and a terrible fear of snakes, Kaitlin was wholly unprepared for life in the South. It was Rumi who’d befriended her when she’d first moved into their neighborhood. Rumi who had taught her to scrape away the tentacles of a jellyfish with a credit card after she’d been stung by one and rub wet sand on the sting to ease the pain. Rumi who’d taught her to stay out of high grass for fear of ticks and rattlesnakes. Rumi who’d translated the intricate linguistics of the South, carefully explaining the meaning of cattywampus and the importance of a well-placed yes, ma’am when talking to your elders.
But despite their initial kinship, lately Rumi had felt a distance yawn open between the two of them. The rift was widened by little things, like who Kaitlin chose to sit with at lunch or what she made of her closeness with Rumi when questioned by the friends they didn’t share (all of them white girls with no friends who looked like Rumi). Sometimes she felt that Kaitlin was more invested in what Rumi could do for her—bolster her online presence, edit her vlogs, build the platform she yearned for—than the pure friendship they’d once shared. But Rumi couldn’t bring herself to say that to Kaitlin. Lately, there were a great many things she couldn’t bring herself to say.
Kaitlin rounded a tight corner, and Gray Grove, or what remained of it, appeared, cast in the beam of the headlights. The entire east wing had crumbled to rubble. Allegedly, it had collapsed amid an earthquake that struck the night those enslaved at Gray Grove revolted. From the road, Rumi could see that the west wing was mostly intact, whole rooms still standing, some of them half-furnished with the leavings of the last owners of the house, eerily pristine despite the passing centuries. Unlike other abandoned plantation houses, which were often graffitied or occupied by the homeless, Gray Grove was remarkably untouched.
In fact, the left side of the building was so pristine that Rumi half expected to see people behind the windows living their ordinary lives, tucking children into bed, washing their faces and settling in for the night. In comparison, the right half of the house was a startling contrast to the left. Nothing more than the rubble of bricks, half toppled into the marsh. When the tide came in, Rumi imagined the brackish waters would swell high enough to drown the ruins. The whole house looked like it was one strong hurricane away from being entirely swept out to sea.
Kaitlin pulled the truck to a stop in front of the ruins. She cut the ignition, pulled out the keys, and for a while, the two girls sat there in stony silence, staring through the fogged windshield, watching the ruins. Perhaps they had known then, without really knowing, the way their night would unfold. But if they did, if they had some small suspicion, neither of them voiced it then, content to let the silence lapse between them, until Rumi opened her door and stepped out into the road. Kaitlin followed suit.
Once one of the most prolific rice plantations in the South, Gray Grove had spanned more than nine hundred acres. Over four hundred men, women, and children were enslaved there, and the plantation had passed through several generations before it was razed in the fracas of the Civil War, destroyed by the very enslaved people it had exploited. Over the years, it was said that the souls of those people still roamed the ruins and the grounds that surrounded it. For many years, these paranormal sightings made Gray Grove a favored haunt of drunken high school students, sent there on dares, and paranormal investigators who traveled from hundreds of miles away to try to record the supernatural activity rumored to occur there.
Rumi, a true skeptic, didn’t believe in the folktales and urban legends. Her investigations into Gray Grove had centered on the tangible horrors, accounts of the enslaved people who had lived and died there, the crimes of their masters, and … of course Kyle.
“Did you ever get that filming permit?” Rumi asked, folding her arms over her chest. It wasn’t cold, but she’d been plagued with chills ever since they turned off the highway.
“We don’t need one. My sister’s best friend didn’t when she got married in the west wing.” The house’s west wing was a favorite wedding venue of Southern brides (and a few Northern ones too) who favored Gray Grove for its haunting beauty. “That was a whole-ass wedding, and they took loads of pictures. All we’re doing is recording a quick episode, and then we’ll be out of here.”
Rumi said nothing as she clipped a microphone to the camera and tested the sound. Girls and Ghosts was a podcast, but lately, Kaitlin insisted that they film everything they could so they’d have further evidence of their paranormal findings. Privately, Rumi suspected Kaitlin’s budding fascination with filming instead of just audio recording had less to do with assembling evidence and more with her hopes of launching a solo career as a vlogger.
Kaitlin rummaged through the contents of the duffel bag slung over her shoulder and then touched up her makeup. She’d done a dramatic winged eyeliner look with a deep damson lip, wanting to channel what she called a “chic nouveau-grunge ghost-hunter aesthetic.” She’d attempted to dress the part too, wearing all black with Doc Martens platforms that she’d borrowed from Rumi and never bothered to return.
“I have a good feeling about this one,” said Kaitlin, starting toward the house.
Over the years, many ghost hunters, paranormal reality TV shows, low-budget horror movies, and urban explorers had covered the horrors of Gray Grove. But Kaitlin was confident they’d capture what no one else had. That night, at the heart of the Gray Grove ruins, they would record a séance, one that Kaitlin firmly believed would solve the mystery of Kyle’s disappearance. Kaitlin had called this idea brilliant, a way to set their podcast apart from the dozens of others that had covered Gray Grove in the past. To Rumi, it was a gimmick, but she didn’t say that to Kaitlin.
Together, with their flashlights in hand, Rumi and Kaitlin tramped through the ruins of what might’ve once been a front porch but had now been reduced to a heap of rotting planks. As they approached, their spirit box, which normally emitted nothing more than the roaring static of a TV set to channel zero, picked up a snatch of what sounded like voices.
“Holy shit!” Kaitlin shrieked and clapped her hands. “Did you hear that?”
A chill carved down Rumi’s spine. “Yep. Sure did.”
They ducked under a collapsing threshold and stepped into a wide grand foyer with what had once been a double staircase but was now just one set of steps curving up to the second floor, the other side having crumbled away with the rest of the eastern wing. To the left, the west wing of the house, strangely undisturbed and sparsely furnished. To the right, an empty wall open to the marsh.
“Wow,” said Kaitlin, looking around. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s surreal,” said Rumi, and she made sure to capture it, raising the camera to take sweeping shots of the room, panning left and right to capture it from all angles. The light clipped to the top of her camera lit the room beautifully. She zoomed in on the furniture: The scraps of a Persian rug, blooming with algae and reeking of mildew. The dust-frosted table that ran along the wall by the entrance to a corridor, the lamp standing atop it. The crystal chandelier dangling precariously overhead.
“I can’t believe no one bothered to rob this place,” Rumi said from behind the camera, still filming. “All this stuff must be worth a fortune.”
“They say it’s cursed,” Kaitlin said. “A museum once emptied the house of all its furniture. Days later, it burned to the ground, and the only items left intact were those stolen from Gray Grove. The curators returned the furniture to its proper place in the ruins of the house to end what they called a ‘horrible haunting.’” Kaitlin delivered this line—wide-eyed and grave—as though she were the one who’d written it, and Rumi gave her a thumbs-up from behind the camera.
Just then, the spirit box roared, picking up what sounded like the fragments of an ongoing conversation. Rumi was quite certain she caught the distorted jingle of a car-insurance ad, a riff from a rock song, a radio host laughing. But there were other sounds too, beneath those, daisy-chained together into an eerie chant. “It’s … coming. It’s … coming…”
Kaitlin shrieked and dropped the spirit box, but Rumi caught it a split second before it struck the floor.
“See!” said Kaitlin, pointing at it. “They’re talking to us. They know we’re here.”
Rumi held the camera trained on Kaitlin, stabilized thanks to the expensive gimbal they’d splurged on a few months ago. In her other hand, the spirit box roared and shrieked, a harsh cacophony of static and what sounded like a chorus of voices, the gospel hymns Rumi had heard sung in her grandma’s church as a kid. “I don’t like this,” she said.
“You’re … scared?” said Kaitlin, her eyes wide with relish and delight.
Of the two of them, Rumi was the one to keep a cool head amid their investigations. But Gray Grove was getting to her in a way other places didn’t.
Kaitlin snatched the camera and turned it on herself. She was so busy gloating, it seemed she’d entirely forgotten to be afraid. Rumi cringed back and held up her hand to cover her face as Kaitlin came closer, laughing. She zoomed in close enough for viewers to count Rumi’s pores. Camerawork had never been Kaitlin’s gift, and she certainly hadn’t made a point to practice or improve her skill in any way.
“Stop,” said Rumi, but she laughed a little too. “You know I hate being on camera.”
“Well, the people want to see you,” said Kaitlin. “They keep spamming the comments under all our posts asking for more footage of you.”
“I’m not the talent,” said Rumi, and she snatched the camera back. She cut the spirit box off, tired of the roaring static. “Now let’s film the intro and quick. You’ve got a séance to perform.”
Kaitlin delivered the lengthy intro in a near-perfect single take. She was good in front of the camera, Rumi had to give her that. With practiced ease, Kaitlin recounted the history Rumi had written about Gray Grove and its inhabitants. About Kyle and William. “Kyle’s body was never found. After a years-long investigation, William was cleared, and Kyle’s case was closed. In the wake of the investigation, William was imprisoned on charges of marijuana possession.” Kaitlin paused slightly, and Rumi thought she saw her wrinkle her nose. “William died two weeks ago in the solitary confinement cell where he spent the final years of his life.”
“That was great,” said Rumi, lowering the camera. Her voice came out small and strained, and she swallowed the lump in her throat. Talking about William always made her sad. He’d died just a few weeks after she’d last spoken to him.
Kaitlin frowned. “I think we should cut that last bit. About William.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re not here for him. We’re here for Kyle.”
“But he took the blame for what happened to Kyle. He didn’t do it—”
“Exactly. He didn’t do it. He’s not why we’re here. He was just some drug dealer who—”
“Drug dealer?” Rumi demanded, stunned. “Did you even read the case summary I sent you? I spent hours compiling all that research.”
“I read … some of it.”
“And let me guess, you skimmed the rest?”
“Whatever,” Kaitlin snapped. “I read enough to know that William was found with drugs in his room the night he was arrested. That’s why he was in jail.”
“Weed,” Rumi corrected her. “He was found with weed in his room. That hardly makes him a drug dealer. Any more than it makes you one for smoking at that party last night.” Rumi had seen her Snapchats. “And by the way, while you were having the time of your life, I stayed up to finish my research on this case and write the script for this episode.”
“Here we go again,” Kaitlin said, and she started for the staircase, which, like the rest of the west wing of the house, was miraculously untouched. “Let’s just get to the ballroom and film this séance so we can leave. The humidity is getting to me. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
They turned the spirit box on again as they climbed the steps. For a while its hissing static was the only sound. Every minute or so, Kaitlin asked it a question, but the only answer she received was more static. At the top of the stairs, a long hallway delved into the dark of the west wing. Kaitlin brandished her flashlight in silence and started toward the ballroom, or what remained of it anyway. It was a large space, cleaved down the middle, as though split in half with a giant axe.
Kaitlin made quick work of setting up the séance. From the duffel bag slung over her shoulder, she produced a hefty box of table salt, which she poured in a wide ring at the center of the room. Also from the duffel bag, she removed several thick pillar candles, which she arranged at the center of the salt ring and lit. As Kaitlin worked, Rumi set up the mics and cameras around different angles of the room, fidgeting with the tripods, checking the night vision. Kaitlin insisted that she take a temperature check, and the room registered a full fifteen degrees lower than the reading they’d taken downstairs—a sign of paranormal activity.
Encouraged by this evidence, Kaitlin turned up the volume on the spirit box, which began to emit a series of earsplitting shrieks that sounded a lot like the wailing of a baby. Or perhaps the screams of a mother who’d had her baby ripped from her arms.
“Holy shit,” said Kaitlin, her eyes wide with what Rumi could only describe as … delight. She was enjoying the screams. “It’s Kyle.”
Rumi stepped into the salt ring. “What makes you so sure?”
“I mean, isn’t it obvious? These are cries of pain.”
“Kyle’s disappearance wasn’t the only bad thing that happened here. This was a slave plantation. Other people suffered too. Why are you so sure it isn’t their voices carrying over that spirit box?”
Kaitlin rolled her eyes. “Here we go again. You just care about them because … because—”
“Spit it out,” Rumi demanded. “I know you want to say it. Because they’re Black, right? You think that’s the only reason why I care.”
“It’s just that ever since we first arrived, you’ve been fixated on making Kyle out to be the villain of his own murder. It’s victim blaming.”
Rumi felt a flare of anger tear up her spine like fire. “Kyle was a raging racist.”
“So, you’re saying he deserved to die?”
“I’m saying that if we’re here to tell his story, then we should at least tell the truth while we’re at it. Kyle chased William here, a boy he tormented for months leading up to his death. Moreover, this isn’t just an artsy wedding venue. This is a slave plantation. Kyle wasn’t the first person to die here. He wasn’t the first person to suffer. If his story deserves to be told, then so do theirs.”
“No one’s stopping you,” Kaitlin shot back, tossing an arm to the camera. “I just think we should focus more on the actual victim of this story? Instead of, you know, giving listeners a high school history lesson about the people who destroyed half this house—”
“This house was built by those people. It was theirs to destroy.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t. It’s just that … violence is never the answer.”
“Isn’t it violence that brought you here tonight?” Rumi demanded, almost screaming at her now. She wanted to cry, she wanted to rage—she wanted to tear down what remained of the wretched Gray Grove plantation house brick by brick. “You came here because you think this is where Kyle died. I suppose violence isn’t the answer unless, of course, it breeds the kind of content fodder you need to get your views. Because that’s what all this is about, right? You don’t give a shit about the rest of it.”
In the flickering light of the candles, Kaitlin’s big blue eyes turned strange and ugly. “The podcast belongs to both of us. If what you’re saying is true, you’re no more innocent than I am. At least I admit what I want. You can’t even do that.”
Rumi’s cheeks felt hot with shame. As much as she wanted to make Kaitlin take back that ugly accusation, deep down Rumi knew she was right. She did want the views and attention as much as Kaitlin did. Maybe more, even. After all, it was Rumi, not Kaitlin, who had sunk countless hours into the preparation for this podcast. It was Rumi who’d spent weeks building their small audience from the ground up. The podcast had been her idea to begin with, and every comment, every listen, every new episode they uploaded felt like the hard-won spoils of her efforts. And still, she wanted more.
The truth was, Rumi hadn’t come here for William or the nameless souls who’d revolted in Gray Grove years before. She had come to gawk and spectate, to process their pain and grief, their fear and their anguish, and turn it into digestible content for public consumption.
It was wrong, Rumi realized then; all of it was so wrong.
“You’re right,” said Rumi, lowering the camera. “I can’t keep doing this. I quit.”
Kaitlin’s face contorted into a nasty sneer. She seemed to want to say something, but the words got stuck behind her teeth, and—in a moment of frustration—she lurched forward and ripped the camera from Rumi’s hand with so much force that Rumi tripped over an upturned floorboard, and fell, clipping her head on a loose brick as she struck the ground.
She felt a sharp pain, saw a scattering of stars. The darkness and the marsh smeared sickeningly before her eyes as her vision failed her. Stunned, she touched her temple, and her fingers came away sticky with blood.
Rumi looked up at Kaitlin, and when their eyes met, something died between them. But it would be a long time before Rumi allowed herself to mourn it. Kaitlin seemed to sense it too because she clamped her mouth firmly shut, finally falling silent.
It was the first death of the night. But it wouldn’t be the last.
Kaitlin took a half step forward. “Rumi, I—”
The wind began to howl so loudly, it drowned the rest of what Kaitlin said. The spirit box screamed along with it, and beneath the roar, Rumi heard a horrid chorus of voices singing hymns. All the candles went out. The salt ring scattered. The light on the camera flickered and dimmed.
Then the wind died.
A moment’s quiet, and then downstairs, from the direction of the marsh came the sound of water bubbling. Through the break in the wall, Rumi watched in horror as the waters of the marsh appeared to boil, steam rolling off its surface in thick clouds. What still remained of the Gray Grove plantation house began to shake violently. Kaitlin lost her footing, dropping to her hands and knees beside Rumi. The house kept shaking. Plaster fell in sheets around them, shattering upon impact with the floor. A voice rattled over the speakers of the spirit box: “He’s … here.”
Rumi locked eyes with Kaitlin. “We need to run.”
The two girls pushed to their feet and raced downstairs, dashing down the hall and clearing the staircase in a matter of moments. The first floor of the house appeared empty. Rumi saw a dark shape materializing from the murk of the mud and marsh water. Something big. Bigger than any gator she’d seen before.
Kaitlin saw it too. Hastily, she raised the camera and turned it on the water.
“What are you doing?” Rumi demanded. “Let’s go!”
Kaitlin ignored her. She held the camera fast, filming the creature as it scrabbled up from the marsh. It wasn’t human, not even remotely. Steam rolled off its hunched shoulders, thickening in the darkness around it, making it hard to distinguish its true form, but Rumi could tell it was tall (well over eight feet, even while doubled over) and wiry. Its flesh was the raw color of a freshly scraped knee, as if it had been skinned alive. The creature’s thin fangs looked like baleen, and they were slick with spit and chattering. It was hungry. Very hungry. As if it hadn’t had a proper meal in many, many years. Perhaps not since Kyle had ventured there, decades before.
It was William’s protector.
The Demon of Gray Grove.
Kaitlin’s eyes went wide above the camera. There was fear in them, but something else too, something worse … greed. She didn’t run. She didn’t move. She raised the camera higher, then turned the lens to zoom out, capturing the full scope of the creature. “We’re going to be famous.”
Rumi caught Kaitlin by the arm, trying desperately to drag her back. “No, don’t!”
Kaitlin didn’t listen. “Just let me get this shot—”
The demon sprang, and Kaitlin screamed when its jaws closed around her ankle. It tore her feet out from under her, dragged her toward the marsh as she thrashed and struggled helplessly. Somehow, she still held the camera fast.
“Rumi!”
Rumi—dizzy, still bleeding from the gash in her forehead—tried and failed to find her feet, watching in horror as the creature dragged Kaitlin through the ruins of the Gray Grove house and into the muck of the marsh. Kaitlin cried for Rumi; Kaitlin screamed and raged and tantrumed. But in the end, it was no use.
The demon felt no mercy. Only hunger. It disappeared into the murk of the water, and Kaitlin cut a final gurgling scream as it dragged her down with it. The last Rumi saw of her was her hand, still clamped around that camera.
The voices crackling over the spirit box fell silent. Gray Grove was quiet. Deep beneath the surface of the marsh, tunneling through the mud with Kaitlin’s leg between its teeth, the demon disappeared.
Rumi had always known that there was a special kind of frenzy reserved for disappeared and dead girls who looked like Kaitlin. But the media circus that followed the events at Gray Grove was worse than anything Rumi could have imagined. Millions of listeners flocked to the Girls and Ghosts podcast, picking apart every episode, analyzing each sound bite for evidence or an admission of guilt. All at once, Rumi found herself alone in the eye of a media storm so vicious, it threatened to tear her apart.
In her grief, Rumi did nothing to stop it. She released no statements, did no interviews, except the ones with the police and later with the lawyers Kaitlin’s family had hired to cross-examine her testimony. Rumi told the same story every time, a story that wasn’t her own, but one passed down to her from William and the others who’d escaped the Demon of Gray Grove unscathed more than a century before.
After an extensive search of the plantation, after the marsh had been pumped and the surrounding forest thoroughly searched, all the police had to show for their efforts was Rumi’s camera—badly mangled, the footage destroyed—and one of Kaitlin’s torn and bloody sneakers, both items recovered from the reeds at the far side of the marsh, half a mile from Gray Grove. An alligator’s den was found nearby, and after much speculation, the police concluded their search and declared that Kaitlin had been attacked and devoured. Rumi hadn’t challenged this declaration publicly … until now.
Rumi, now a senior in a college, set up a makeshift recording studio in the closet of her dorm room. She had spent weeks preparing for this night—squeezing in time to write the script between her classes and assignments—knowing she only had one chance to tell this story and tell it right. To clear her name and let the world know, once and for all, what had really happened. To tell Kaitlin’s story.
Rumi stared at the screen of her laptop. She adjusted the microphone and clicked the RECORD button. “Hi, everyone. It’s been a while, and I’m sure at this point you know the reason why. On today’s episode of Girls and Ghosts, which is the last one I’ll ever record, I want to tell you the real story of what happened to Kaitlin—”
Her voice broke on the name. It was the first time she’d said it aloud in years.
Rumi cleared her throat. Squeezed her fingers to still their shaking. She stared down at the script that lay on the desk in front of her, the words she’d typed blurring a bit before her eyes. She took a deep breath, willed herself to read them. “A fog lay thick over Gray Grove, and the demon was still asleep in the muck of the marsh the night Kaitlin and I arrived.”