Zane tried to put it out of his mind. Emma and his father had been rattled by the earthquake, but they hadn’t seen anything else out of the ordinary. Same with Leila, Hale, and Kev. No one else who’d been there had kicked up any fuss, if one didn’t count Mrs. Hyacinth triumphantly telling everyone that her sixth sense had told her that something bad was going to happen that day.
He must have hallucinated the whole thing. It was the only logical explanation.
And he would have allowed himself to believe this if it hadn’t been for Garrett, who couldn’t tear his eyes away from the spot underneath the statue, even after the workers lowered the memorial back to its original position. He hadn’t spoken to Zane about it—hadn’t talked to him at all, in fact—but Zane knew. He’d known from the instant Garrett had uttered the ghost’s name.
Only those who’d been at Stilgarth had felt the earthquake. The mayor had since determined that further investigation was necessary to ensure that the grounds were stable and had consequently ordered everyone away. Mr. Vink calmly presented Zane’s father with the deed to both the house and land and wished them all well. Zane glanced briefly down at the paper for what felt like only a second, but when he looked up, Mr. Vink was already gone.
The mayor told Zane’s father that evacuating the manor grounds was simply a safety precaution, then invited him out to dinner to “talk business.” Zane’s father had been reluctant at first, but eventually he agreed to a pizza and movie night for Zane and Emma after they promised to get their homework done.
“You’re unusually quiet,” Emma commented halfway through their dinner. She pointed at the TV. “And we’ve been watching Magical Snow Ponies, which I know you hate, for twenty minutes now, but you haven’t even complained. What’s up?”
“I guess I’m a little tired,” Zane said, which was partly true. “And I’ve been thinking . . . Emmy, you didn’t see anything weird back at Stilgarth Manor, right?”
“If you don’t count the earthquake and the house looking kinda creepy on its own, then no, not really.” His sister looked quizzically at him. “Why?”
“It’s nothing.” Zane crammed half a pizza slice into his mouth, ignoring the pained “Ew, gross” from Emma. It was totally his imagination. It had to be. Ghosts didn’t exist, and all this talk about the Gravemother must have put weird ideas into his brain. It was like all those people who’d claimed to have seen UFOs just because other people were also claiming to have seen UFOs.
Except no one else said they’d seen that woman, his brain reminded him.
“Shut up,” Zane muttered to himself.
“What?” Emma asked.
“Just thinking about something else.” Zane stood up. “I’m gonna go to my room and do my homework. You should be doing yours, too, by the way.”
“Already finished mine while you were daydreaming. You really are distracted today. Did something happen at school? Ooh, was it a girl? Was it a cute girl? Do you have the hots for some cute girl in—”
This was territory Zane knew he couldn’t win, so he rolled his eyes at her as he beat a hasty retreat, her laughter trailing after him as he trudged back to his room. His father had found a short-term rental in town, which meant they didn’t have to commit to staying in Solitude longer if they did decide to sell the manor. Zane closed the door to his room and then sprawled face-first onto the bed, breathing heavily into the mattress.
He wondered what they were going to decide. They were used to the city life, and Solitude was a far cry from what they had imagined small-town living would be. Not as many stores and places to eat at, not as many choices as he was accustomed to in NYC. Emma was taking it all in stride because she was used to her own company, and although Zane would like to spend high school in one place—actually make some real friends—he wasn’t about to get his hopes up. He didn’t think his dad was going to quit his consultant job just so they could move into a haunted manor.
It really had to be his mind playing tricks on him. There was no such thing as ghosts.
Zane spent an hour or so studying, then turned on his gaming console and played for a little while. He could hear the TV outside his room. Dad would freak when he found out how much TV Emma had watched.
Except it didn’t sound like she was watching Magical Snow Ponies anymore.
In fact, it sounded kind of like a white noise machine.
Puzzled, Zane paused his game and yanked off his earphones. The TV was loud when he stepped out, but the screen was spouting nothing but static. Small-town shoddy internet, he guessed. Emma was sprawled on the couch, fast asleep. Zane sighed and covered her with the wool throw; his dad would carry her to bed once he came back. He shoved the empty pizza box into the trash can and swept the crumbs off the table into a dustpan. Then he picked up the remote.
Was the streaming seriously that unreliable? He flipped to the home screen. All the other apps continued to generate that same noise. Great, no TV. Just what his dad always wanted for them. With a frown, he moved to shut it off—
—and for a moment, something warped into the screen.
It was only a split second, but he saw it clearly enough. The wide staring eyes. The stringy black hair that fell around her face. The unusual pallor of her skin. The gaping abyss of a mouth, because she had no lower jaw.
She stared at him through the TV. Her head was twisted to the side as if her neck was broken.
Someone was shouting, and Zane realized it was him. He leaped away from the screen, and the backs of his knees hit the couch, sending him tripping onto the sleeping Emma, startling her awake.
“Hey—wha—Zane, what are you—”
“Do you see that?” Zane spluttered, pointing at the screen.
Emma rubbed at her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
The television was playing Magical Snow Ponies. Zane stared, incredulous.
Emma poked him in the ribs. “Are you positive you’re all right? ’Cause you’ve been acting weird ever since we came back from the Stilgarth house. Did the earthquake do something to you? You’re not possessed, are you? Josie McKinnon got possessed by a demon in The Strangest Magic. You had to take a bunch of sage and burn it in every room to get rid of the—”
“Ghosts don’t exist,” Zane interrupted, and watched the TV like it might change again at a moment’s notice, though it never did. “And I’m not gonna take advice from some book you read, even if they do.”
“Whatever. Just thought you needed a laugh from whatever it is you’re so worried about.” Emma yawned. “Well, looks like Dad’s gonna be out longer than expected, so I’m gonna go to bed. Can you not be this weird in the morning?”
Zane waited several more minutes after Emma had returned to her room, but nothing else happened. He tried turning the TV off and on again, flipping through several channels. Still nothing.
“I’m tired,” he said aloud. “I need sleep. That’s it.”
By the time he reached the door to his room, he had already half convinced himself he was just over-tired. He stepped in—
—and the room wasn’t his own. It was older looking, with a four-poster bed in one corner and wooden furniture, a dresser and a wardrobe closet that he’d never seen before, on the opposite wall. The few posters he’d put up of his favorite indie rock bands and movies were gone. The wooden floor felt cold underneath his bare feet, and the only light in the room was a candle burning at a small table by the window.
And he wasn’t alone. He could feel a presence, hear its breath. The hair on the back of his neck pricked.
There was someone else there with him. Zane slowly pivoted to his left.
Even in the dark, he could see her. The woman had long black hair down to her waist, and she was dressed in an odd linen dress that looked like it had come straight out of one of the period dramas that his dad sometimes watched. She was looking out the window, her back to him.
Zane immediately turned to run out of the room, only to find that there was no longer a door behind him.
There was no way out.
Swallowing hard, he looked back at the woman. She hadn’t moved an inch. He still couldn’t see her face.
Slowly, he stepped toward her. He couldn’t feel any hint of air coming in through the window, but he felt cold from head to toe. There was something outside. From a distance, it looked like the Stilgarth memorial, the white stone gleaming in the darkness below them.
“Who are you?” he managed to ask, though his throat felt dry. “What do you want?”
The candle flickered, casting large shadows across the room that seemed to move of their own volition. They were starting to look like hands clawing at the walls.
Another step. Gulping, Zane reached his hand out for the woman’s shoulder. “Who are you?” he tried again. “What—”
The woman’s body snapped like a twig, collapsing and distorting itself into impossible shapes, like she’d been compressed inside a car-crusher machine. Just as suddenly, she righted herself, though she didn’t stand like any human being would, more like she was being strung up by invisible threads, a marionette.
Now Zane could see her face, or the ruin of one: the wide staring eyes and the missing lower jaw, though her upper lip moved up and down with a clacking sound, like she was biting down on something he couldn’t see. Her neck had sunk down to her right shoulder as if unable to support the weight of her head. Zane took a step backward.
Her bare feet slid across the floor toward him.
The candle on the table snuffed out without warning.
Zane took another step, then another, until he was pressed up against the opposite wall, unable to go anywhere else. A cold hand fell on his shoulder. There was the clicking noise again, accompanied by the rattling of broken bones as the apparition moved. The Gravemother’s hair brushed the side of his head.
Where is Emmy? the ghost whispered softly by his ear. Zane’s entire body went cold from her breath.
And then everything changed.
Zane was back in the middle of his room, which appeared exactly as he had left it—the video game he’d been playing was still paused—with nothing else to show that he hadn’t been alone. Only the cold that penetrated Zane deep into his bones offered lingering proof that something wasn’t right.