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Chapter Fourteen

It's midnight, and I'm at the laptop in my father's study, where I've spent the past hour scrolling through one paranormal website after another. As a result, my head is spinning. It turns out that shadow people aren't as easy to classify as their name suggests. They might be ghosts, or they might be imaginary, summoned by those who suffer from night terrors. Or they might be nothing at all. Just peripheral vision playing tricks on those who claim to see them.

Adding to the confusion is that, if the internet is to be believed, there are several subcategories of shadow people. Most, it seems, don't harm anyone. They just like to hide in corners and watch you, sometimes to the point of stalking. Others cause not physical harm but a sense of extreme fear and unease with their presence alone. And still others attack, sometimes beating and choking sleeping victims.

I'll admit to getting a shiver when I read that part, and feeling slightly better about being an insomniac.

Some shadow people roam, oblivious to the humans around them. Some only appear in the same spot. There are even shadow animals, though it boggles the mind how that works. As for what the trail cam picked up, it appears to be what's known as a forest shadow person.

If it's anything at all.

I'm not convinced that the trail cam snapped a picture of a shadow person, for a gazillion different reasons. It could be a glitch in the trail cam or the silhouette of an animal that just happened to look human in that moment or any of a hundred different things. Just because Billy wrote in a book thirty years ago that shadow people are real doesn't mean they are.

Or that he became one.

Then again, what if he did?

Because something weird has been happening outside. That's undeniable. Which is why I continue to scroll through paranormal sites with the restless intensity of a teenager looking at online porn. I search for plain old ghosts next. A mistake. There are literally thousands of websites about ghosts. So many that it brings on a stinging pain just behind my eyes.

I try to blink it away as I scan the search results, clicking one at random. It turns out to be a long list of all the different types of spirits known throughout the world. A very long list. Less than half of which I recognize. Wraiths and shades. Djinn and mylingar. Poltergeists and phantoms and apparitions out the ass.

After another hour of scrolling, clicking, and reading, I think I have a decent grasp on the situation. Well, a situation. One that would make anyone I shared it with worried about my mental state. Honestly, I'm a bit worried myself. As a teacher of English lit, I'm well acquainted with ghosts. Hamlet's father, requesting vengeance. The mind-shattering spirits of Shirley Jackson's Hill House. All the phantoms and spooks that sprang from Poe's imagination. But those were all made up. Just stories. What I'm contemplating is something else entirely.

Something utterly, impossibly real.

From my admittedly slapdash research, I've gathered that most ghosts have a purpose beyond scaring the shit out of people. In many cases, that purpose is to complete some form of unfinished business here on earth so they can move on. But that often requires help from the living, who can be oblivious to a ghost's presence or needs. To get their attention, ghosts sometimes resort to that most clichéd of actions.

They haunt.

Which isn't necessarily the kind of haunting you see in movies or gothic novels. Slamming doors and rattling chains and shrieking like a banshee down castle corridors. Ghosts are more subtle than that. They're also patient, sometimes waiting for the right moment in which to spring into action.

For Billy, this would be the perfect moment. Events beyond my control have brought me back here, to the place where Billy disappeared. The same is true of Ashley, who never thought she'd return to Hemlock Circle. It's slightly different with Russ and Ragesh, who never truly left, but even in their cases, life has kept them tied to this place.

All four of us were with Billy hours before he was taken. Now we're back on Hemlock Circle for the first time in thirty years.

At the exact moment Billy's body is found.

On what will soon be the anniversary of his death.

Looking at it from that angle makes it seem like not fate exactly, but something in the same ballpark.

What if it's all the work of Billy?

A crazy notion, no doubt prompted by his stupid ghost book and all the stupid websites I've spent the night skimming. But according to those websites, there's also some logic to it. If the primary goal of a supernatural entity is to resolve unfinished business on earth so it can retreat to the other side, then it stands to reason that Billy needs us to find out who killed him and why.

It's even possible that's the reason Billy's remains were found now and not five, ten, twenty years ago. That he's the one who allowed them to be found, because he knew the four of us had returned to Hemlock Circle.

More likely, it's just me he was waiting for. His best friend who left and never looked back. It would explain the lights going on and off around the cul-de-sac—not to mention the baseballs in the yard. That also could be Billy, resorting to one of his old tricks to gently nudge me in this direction.

What to do next, I have no idea. The consensus suggestion of the websites I've consulted is to try to establish communication. Carefully, of course. Make a mistake and all sorts of things could go wrong. And one of the most common mistakes is to approach communication without utter sincerity.

I shut my laptop, pull out my phone, and call the only person I know I can talk to about something so strange. I count the rings, knowing there'll be five of them before the call goes to Claudia's voicemail.

"Hey," I say after the beep. "It's me again. I know I shouldn't be calling you like this. But I have to tell someone or else I'll go crazy. Maybe I already am."

It's not until I say it out loud that I realize it might be true. Maybe everything that's happened the past few days, combined with the events of the previous years, have led me to insanity. It would explain a lot, including why I'm calling Claudia at one in the morning. Yet I keep talking, compelled to try to make some sense of it all.

"I think Billy might be haunting me, Claude." I pause, picturing her weirded-out reaction. "I know, it's ridiculous. But weird things are happening that I can't—"

Ping!

At first, I assume I've again exceeded the limit of Claudia's voicemail system and been cut off. The realization that I'm wrong comes a few seconds later, when I hear the familiar impatient beep from Claudia's voicemail. Only then do I understand the first noise.

It was an alert from the sole app open on my phone.

The trail cam has just taken another picture.

I freeze, the phone still pressed to my ear, paralyzed by—what?

Uncertainty?

Maybe.

Fear?

Definitely.

Because what if this is indeed real? What if I open the app and see Billy's ghost standing in front of the trail cam?

That thought alone is frightening enough, but there is also the bigger picture to consider. I don't know how to live in a world in which ghosts are a reality. Does this mean I'll start seeing more of them? Will they also try to contact me? Even more daunting, will I be able to contact them?

Bracing myself, I open the app. Instead of Billy, I see bare lawn and the forest rising behind it, with nary a shadow person to be found.

But something triggered the camera's motion sensor, and I need to find out what it is.

I leave the study and head to the kitchen, where I grab a flashlight from the cluttered all-purpose drawer. Outside, I step cautiously into the backyard and sweep the flashlight's beam across the grass and into the woods. The light catches something just beyond the tree line.

A blur.

Something in motion.

The sight of it elicits a yelp from me and more motion from whatever the hell is moving through the trees. In that moment, all I can think about are the stories about the falls and the lake and the ghosts of people who've died in it drifting over the water like fog. Is that what happened to Billy? Is he this blur of gray?

No, it turns out. For the thing in the woods quickly takes shape, turning from a gray blur into what's clearly a startled deer. In the flashlight's glare, I can easily see its white tail bobbing as it springs deeper into the woods.

Mystery solved, I remain in the yard, waiting. For what, I'm not exactly sure. Billy, I guess, stepping into the yard in ghostly form. Or floating. Or doing whatever ghosts do. Maybe he's here right now, invisible in the shadows, quietly biding his time until I notice him.

I look back on everything that has happened in the past few days—the lights, the baseballs, the shadow in the woods—and wonder, not for the first time, if there could be a rational explanation for all of it. If so, I haven't found it yet. Which, I suppose, is what makes something supernatural. That complete lack of rationality.

There's a chance that some of it could simply be my imagination, fueled by guilt, grief, and a form of magical thinking. Then, of course, there's Vance Wallace's unfortunate condition, which confuses his brain into thinking he's seeing things that aren't there. Even the baseball appearing in the yard while I stood there could have a logical explanation.

I shoot a glance to the old Barringer house, where a corner of the second floor is visible over the hedge. A single window there faces my backyard. Maybe someone tossed the ball from there, although I don't know who could have done it. No one currently lives there, and no Barringer has been inside since the mid-nineties. But it's at least a hint of an explanation. I'm sure I can think of similar hints for every single strange thing that's happened. It doesn't matter that my gut tells me the opposite, that it's all been the work of Billy himself.

I'm in the process of turning back toward my house when I hear something.

A rustle in the woods.

Light yet oddly loud in the otherwise silent darkness.

With it comes the same presence I felt two nights ago. This time, it's unmistakable.

Billy.

And not a memory of him. It really, truly, utterly feels like he's here with me right now.

With the flashlight gripped tight in my fist, I rotate toward the woods again.

Slowly.

So very slowly.

Slow enough that I can feel my thoughts changing from fearful to curious to borderline hopeful. What if it's really him? What can I possibly say after all these years?

I'm sorry, for starters. I shouldn't have said what I said and done what I'd done. And I definitely should have helped you, even though I had no idea you needed it.

Instead, once I'm facing the woods, the flashlight aimed at the trees, all I can think to say is "Billy? Are you out there?"

At first, there's nothing. Just the white noise of insects and the faint flicker of fireflies and a stillness so vast it's suffocating.

Then I spot a faint rustle in the trees and hear a whisper of leaves. Something emerges from the woods, low to the ground.

A baseball.

I lower the flashlight until it's latched onto the ball. I stare, hypnotized, as the ball continues to roll across the lawn toward my feet.

When it knocks against the toe of my shoe, I run.

Into the woods, crashing through underbrush, searching for the person who just put the ball in my yard.

But there is no person on the edge of the woods.

Just me.

Spinning in circles as the flashlight beam shudders through the forest, illuminating the ground, the trees, their branches drooping with leaves.

I return to the yard and pick up this new baseball, which in reality looks decades old. The leather is slightly yellowed, and the red stitching is frayed in spots. Turning it in my hand, I see a few grass stains and teeth marks likely made by a dog.

It is, I realize, the very same baseball Billy threw into my yard when he was still alive.

Gripping it now, I understand everything.

Billy is back.

He's been out here for days, trying to get my attention any way he can. Roaming the cul-de-sac, flicking on lights, tossing baseballs into my yard. And the meaning is the same now as it was thirty years ago.

It's time to play.

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