Without wasting further time, she continues her walk to Mrs. Crenshaw’s house, pondering the revelation. She drops the box at the bottom of the staircase and rummages around for her notebook. As she searches, Rachel recalls seeing something strange in one of her father’s journals—a name and number written in the corner of a page. She’d thought it an unrelated discovery at the time, due to the journal belonging to a teenaged Liam Cleary and because it came across as him finding the nearest piece of paper to write someone’s contact details down. But everything is connected.
“You look like a woman with a plan,” Mrs. Crenshaw says from the dining room’s doorway. Rachel blindly carries out the search for the notebook, rummaging around as Mrs. Crenshaw’s lip curls upward. “Care to share?”
“Diseases can spread if they’re left untreated,” Rachel says. She finds her notebook and pen, and quickly scribbles the words down over two pages, underlining the sentence several times for emphasis.
“Not to my house, it won’t.” Mrs. Crenshaw grins. “I do appreciate the sentiment, though.”
Rachel doesn’t respond. She places her notebook on the floor and continues her hunt, searching for the journal where she’d seen that name. What is it again? Something starting with an ‘M’ ... Melissa? No, not Melissa. It’s something else. Rachel finds the correct journal at the bottom of the box, pulls it out, and pages through to where the overuse of thick black marker obscures most of the entry’s contents. In the top corner, written in block letters, the name waits—Misty Robins.
“Mrs. Crenshaw, have you ever heard of a Misty Robins?”
Mrs. Crenshaw’s papery skin becomes almost translucent as the blood drains from her face. “I haven’t heard that name in years,” she says. “Listen, Rachel.” She takes a wary step closer, halts, and continues, “What you’re dealing with isn’t as bad as it seems; it’s a drop of trouble in an ocean of nightmares. Believe me, there are much more terrible things out there. So, whatever you do, don’t call Misty Robins unless the apocalypse is upon us. That’s your ‘get out of jail free’ card, your H-Bomb if there’s no hope to be found. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but who is she?”
Mrs. Crenshaw shakes her head. “Misty is a weapon of destruction, not a cure. Focus on curing the disease. You already have everything you need to figure it out. Just use your brains.” The old woman turns around and walks away, effectively shutting down Rachel’s Q&A session.
For most of the day, Rachel sits in the Sky Room and works through more of her father’s journals. Surrounded by cornflower-blue walls and white cumulus cloud murals, she reads more about Shadow Grove’s historical triumphs and failures. It’s a tedious chore, with little reward—a gamble if nothing else—but Mrs. Crenshaw has never been insincere when giving direction or advice. Rachel pushes through and absorbs as much information as she can possibly squeeze into her brain.
There isn’t anything pertaining to the Night Weaver in the journals. There are, however, other interesting tidbits of information—vague references—which may become important later.
Greg texts her around midday, asking if she wants to go over to Pearson Manor and look at some of the information he’s retrieved from the town council’s archive.
Around fifteen minutes later, Greg ushers her inside the manor for the second time in as many days. Pearson Manor harbors a familiar emptiness, though, which had descended over the house since her last visit. An otherworldly vacancy, not entirely of the inhabitants’ making, overwhelms her in an instant. The distinct feeling of being watched, faint but there nonetheless, accompanies the hollowness of the large house.
“Do you feel it, too?” Greg cautiously broaches the subject.
“Oh, yeah.”
It takes her longer to notice the bags under Greg’s eyes and the hopelessness he seems to carry on his shoulders. There’s a sense of trepidation in the air, fearfulness laced with panic. She’s sure it wasn’t there the day before, and she’s almost certain Greg hadn’t looked so exhausted either. As she follows him through the manor toward his apartment, she wonders how far Mrs. Pearson is into her personal decline. It can’t be too long, otherwise word would’ve spread around town by now.
Keep telling yourself that, Rachel.
“I regret to say, there wasn’t much to find in the archive,” Greg says, gesturing for her to enter his apartment first. “There were some records pertaining to the Mass Hysteria of 1811, a few mentions of the missing Eerie Creek Sawmill child laborers, but that’s about it.”
“Did you find anything about the Night Weaver?” she asks quickly, almost breathless with anticipation.
Greg closes the door behind them, turns into the apartment’s short corridor, and says, “Yes, but what do you want with old folk legends?”
“I’d like to cover my bases and make sure nobody’s hidden anything crucial in stories, songs, or poems. People often overlook the importance of those records,” she says, following him into the second bedroom. The utilitarian office space, decorated only with a wall of books on one side and an L-shaped desk in the opposite corner, waits. A large file is neatly placed in the center of the desk, which contains a stack of printouts that are already labeled and color-coded for efficient researching. Two chairs—one a swivel desk chair, the other a run-of-the-mill wooden chair—stand at the ready.
“Nice,” she says, glancing to the blind-covered windows.
“I don’t like visual distractions in my study,” he explains.
“Hey, I don’t like using colored pens in my revisions. I get it,” she says, taking a seat on the wooden chair. Rachel opens her saddle bag and removes her notebook. She places it on the table and searches for her pen. “Let’s get to it, then.”
“What exactly are we doing with all of this?”
“It’s vital for us to establish a timeline. We need to figure out exactly where things went wrong if we want to understand how everything connects.” Rachel writes down the most obvious ‘first event’—eight-year-old Dana Crosby’s disappearance, right after Christmas break—but scratches it out immediately. “The children going missing are a symptom of the disease, not the cause,” she whispers, staring at the black ballpoint pen in her hand. “What’s the cause?”
“How far back do we need to go?” Greg asks, opening the file. “Does Ms. Heely’s peach cobbler play a part in the greater scheme of things?”
Shadow Grove’s strangeness had only become a priority at Ridge Crest High when Tamsin Lansdale, the former Editor-in-Chief of the Ridge Crest Weekly, walked in on Ms. Annie Heely, the cafeteria lady, spicing the peach cobbler with a generous amount of rat poison. This was the same peach cobbler the cafeteria served at lunch to hundreds of students every week. It must’ve been going on for a while too, considering how many kids had been admitted to the hospital for food poisoning, or who’d stayed home because of stomach cramps the day afterward.
It’s probably just one of those stomach bugs doing the rounds again. Bulltwang Bill’s excuse enters her thoughts, riling her up anew.
One would assume the school would immediately dismiss Ms. Heely to avoid some sort of legal dispute with worried parents. At any other school, in any other town, the principal and school board would have tried to distance themselves from a homicidal maniac who likes to poison children. Not in Shadow Grove. In this town, people like Ms. Heely are given the benefit of the doubt, even with indisputable evidence from a reliable witness.
Tamsin Lansdale hadn’t had any of it, not when her reputation and a scholarship to Princeton University were on the line, so she’d set out to do an exposé on Ms. Heely.
How Tamsin learned about Ms. Heely’s sketchy past, nobody knows. She claims a reliable source had fed her the information to fill in the gaps in her research. Nevertheless, the Ridge Crest Weekly ran a fantastic, albeit disturbing, article on Ms. Heely’s life within a month of the peach cobbler incident. Turns out, not only had Ms. Heely been widowed thrice, but her dearly departed husbands had succumb
ed rather suspiciously, according to the autopsy reports Tamsin somehow got her hands on. Throw in a couple of dead stepsons and a few dead tenants over the years, who’d all keeled over while living under her roof and eating her food, and the pattern became clear.
Ms. Heely is a serial killer, a real-life Arsenic Annie.
Tamsin couldn’t definitively prove anything. The article did, however, expressly state that the bodies needed to be exhumed in order to verify poison had been used. That said, there was more than enough evidence to get a judge to sign off on the exhumations if the sheriff’s department cared to do their duty to protect and serve the citizens of Shadow Grove.
They didn’t.
Ridge Crest High, on the other hand, had no other option but to terminate Ms. Heely, thanks to the possible implications if the article had spread across the town’s borders. But no criminal charges were ever brought against her. The information in the article, according to Sheriff Carter, was said to be conjecture at best and slander at worst.
The students of Ridge Crest High survived Arsenic Annie, but they were forever changed.
No longer did they see the pretty illusion specifically designed to fool people into thinking Shadow Grove was an idyllic little town with a rich history and a lovely view. No longer did they believe they were safe simply because the adults said so. No longer were they going to stand by and do nothing.
Rachel shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Do you remember Tamsin Lansdale’s exposé in the Ridge Crest Weekly? If she’s right, and I’m pretty sure she is, Arsenic Annie’s been killing off her nearest and dearest for decades.”
“What about the Henderson tragedy? Should we go that far?”
Rachel recalls how Vince Henderson went insane one night and shot and killed his entire family before he turned the rifle on himself.
It was a burglary gone wrong; an isolated incident. Or so Bulltwang Bill claims.
“Maybe?” Rachel grimaces. “At first glance, the Henderson tragedy doesn’t seem to fit into the timeline itself but could it have somehow acted as a catalyst.” She recalls seeing Mrs. White—Vince Henderson’s younger sister—at Pearson Manor with her mother the day before and decides the event could maybe be considered important. “Let’s put it in just to be safe.” She writes down The Henderson Tragedy—2012 in her notebook. “When did the mom club start gathering?”
“About a year ago,” Greg says, already copying the same words into his notebook. “Maybe we should make a list of all the members and see if there are any patterns there?”
“I was going to suggest it in a minute,” Rachel says, smiling. “How would you feel about a visual brain map against your wall? I think it’ll help us get a better perspective of the big picture.”
“Don’t push your luck,” he mutters, head bowed and hand moving with precision as he compiles the list.
When Greg finishes, he slides his notebook across the table for Rachel to copy. She studies the names for a good long while, swallowing back the bile pushing up into her esophagus. She tries not to panic. Rachel knows each name on the list, and every one of those seventeen women’s lives—and their families’ lives, by extension—are in grave danger.
“What’s wrong?” Greg asks.
“I didn’t think there were so many.”
Rachel studies the names again, wondering what common denominator binds them together. They aren’t all moms, as Greg had inadvertently led her to believe. Carla Andrews is only twenty-three years old, the youngest member of the lot, while Mrs. Jenkins is the eldest member at sixty-eight years. Age clearly isn’t a factor. There are also a couple of women who live on the Other Side, which means social status isn’t an issue either. Some of the women have careers, whilst others are home executives. Some have families and some don’t have anyone.
“What do they have in common?” she asks.
“Grief,” Greg automatically responds, paging through the color-coded file. “From what I understand, they’ve all lost someone.”
Rachel gapes at him, both astounded and impressed. “How’d you figure that out?”
Greg turns his attention to her, the muscle in his brow twitching. “They were all part of a grief support group. After Luke died, your mom practically dragged my mom to the church’s basement twice a week so she could talk about her feelings,” he says. “Didn’t you know?”
“No,” she drags the word out. What other secrets has her mother kept from her? Rachel frowns, diverting her gaze to look at the members’ names again. “My mom was really in a grief support group?”
“For years,” he says, rubbing salt into her new wound. She meets his gaze, glaring daggers. Fully composed, he continues, “A few weeks after your dad died, your mom had a nervous breakdown in our living room. She was angry at everything and everyone, but mostly she was angry at God. Luke and I learned a lot of colorful words that day, words I won’t repeat. My mom somehow got her to calm down. Then she decided to call your aunt in Bangor, because your mom seriously needed to get away from Shadow Grove for a while, and right after that she set you up to live with Mrs. Crenshaw. I think you stayed there—”
“For nearly three months, I remember,” Rachel says. “Mrs. Crenshaw told me my mom had to go look after my aunt, not the other way around. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Luke said I shouldn’t, so I didn’t.” He shrugs. “You’d just lost your dad, Rach. The last thing either of us wanted was for you to feel like you’d lost your mom, too.”
Rachel’s eyes sting with tears as volatile emotions clog her throat. She inhales through her nose, picks at her thumb’s cuticle again, and pushes the chaotic feelings away. What’s the point of talking to people, of forging friendships and cultivating relationships, when everyone’s always keeping secrets? She knows how death works, has witnessed it firsthand. She’s been on both sides of the fence when it comes to the guy with the scythe. A hollow, euphemistic platitude, combined with guilt-ridden gratefulness hidden behind polite tears, is unavoidable when a traumatic event affects others. After all, social norm dictates a certain type of behavior in such circumstances, even if the general consensus screams: “Thank God it didn’t happen to us.” The receivers of these half-hearted, albeit well-meaning sentiments are typically expected to mourn with a semblance of dignity, to accept and move on because the world keeps turning.
Death has become a sanitized ritual; grief has an allotted timeframe.
Rachel is old enough to know all of this, so why do people continue to hide essential truths from her? She’s not some dainty flower that wilts at a sharp look. She isn’t sad—oh, she’s far from sad—but there’s a modicum of unhappiness coating her developing fury.
“I need to read what you found on the Night Weaver,” she says.
Greg fumbles with the file, and hands her a thin packet of printouts. He doesn’t say anything, hardly breathes beside her. She would’ve loved if he’d provoked her then if only to get rid of some of her anger, but Greg chooses his battles with infuriating proficiency.
She scans through the copies made of a timeworn, untitled text, where barely-decipherable handwriting covers nine pages, followed by a typed poem called, “On a Cave Called Black Annis’s Bower” by John Heyrick. A few reasonably accurate depictions of the Night Weaver follow, produced by unknown artists, seeing as nobody thought to sign their work.
Rachel goes back to the first page of narrow, cursive script. The words curl together and flow into one another as if the author had gone out of his way to torment the reader—or to dissuade them entirely. At first only words like tainted, banished, and alone stand out, promising a tantalizing tale with surreptitious undertones. Rachel hopes for a complete ‘How To’ guide on getting rid of the Night Weaver. She’s not jaded enough to believe a simple story could hold all the answers, but it would’ve made for a nice change of pace. Rachel sighs, gets comfortable on the hard chair, and reads the document from the beginning. It’s a slow process because the words sometimes seem to swim on the
paper, but after some frustrating restarts, her eyes adjust to the handwriting.
The Night Weaver feeds on pain of the highest order; the grief of a mother, the sorrow of a widow, the distress of a child. It answers their call when the night feels darkest, when the despair has weakened them to such a degree that they’ve become tainted with misery and will do anything for just another moment with their lost loved ones.
Misogynistic subtext aside, the passage gives Rachel the creeps. So, what? Mourning the dead will summon the Night Weaver? How unsympathetic. People across the world, for however long humans have existed, mourn their dead. Some cultures even celebrate the dead. They don’t have a Night Weaver to contend with, do they? Rachel reads on:
The Night Weaver is a master manipulator, an adept liar, a demon banished from Orthega, the home of the fair folk. Her dwelling, often a cave of some kind, is no more than a lair of evil where she fattens her sacrifices for slaughter, and consorts with her unintended worshipers. She sends her Darklings to those she owes a debt, disguised as the ones they’ve lost. Alone, she can destroy a village, but with a large enough following the Night Weaver can destroy the world.
She’d hoped her theory about the missing children being symptomatic of something far worse would be wrong, but this revelation—hard evidence, as it stands—confirms the adults as having been part of some sort of wrongdoing. Had her mother snatched an innocent kid off the street? Rachel’s heart aches as she realizes it could very well be the case. Her mother, who’d raised her to know right from wrong, may have actually kidnapped another woman’s child as an offering to the Night Weaver. For what? Midnight meetings with a monster whose shape somewhat resembles her father? Surely Jenny Cleary isn’t gullible enough to believe the Night Weaver can bring people back from the dead.
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