Chapter Three

Scriiiiiiiitch.

I bolt awake at eight a.m., breathless from The Dream.

Twice in one night.

Not a good sign.

At least The Dream isn't echoing through the bedroom like it did hours earlier. That's due to both the sunlight pouring through the windows and the roar of a lawn mower tearing across the front yard.

Most suburbs run with the precision of a Rolex, and Hemlock Circle is no different. Mondays are trash day, during which everyone wheels their hulking bins of garbage to the curb in the morning and drags them back to the garage in the evening. The same is done with the recycling every other Friday.

Tuesdays are when the landscaping crews arrive, swarming the cul-de-sac in ear-splitting cacophony. Lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers. Especially leaf blowers. If suburbia had an official sound, it would be the agitated whir of compressed air blasting across patios and driveways, clearing them of any cut grass blades or stray leaves that dare to rest on their surfaces. When the leaf blowers cease, the resulting silence feels momentarily unnerving. Too quiet. Too abrupt.

For now, though, the lawn mower keeps on trucking, moving from the front yard to the back as I shower, dress, and head downstairs to the kitchen to make coffee. As it brews, I try to shake off my latest encounter with The Dream, which has haunted me since the day after Billy's disappearance.

It's always the same, beginning in darkness that's just starting to recede. My surroundings soon grow clearer. Enough for me to see that I'm inside my old tent. The one Billy was snatched from when I was ten.

But Billy's still there, asleep beside me.

Above him, running the height of the tent, is a long gash.

Sensing the presence of someone just outside, I peer into the slash, finding only darkness beyond. Whoever it is, I can't see them, despite knowing they're right there.

Then I hear it.

Scriiiiiiiitch.

The sound of the tent being sliced, even though that part's already happened. It's a delayed noise, just like the way you see the lightning before you hear its accompanying thunder.

That's when I wake up. Every damn time. The horrible scriiiiiiiitch lingering a moment in whatever room I happen to be in.

Why I keep having The Dream and what any of it means is a mystery I'd love to solve. At first, I assumed it meant that when the tent was slashed, I was at least conscious of it happening, if not fully awake. But I have no memory of hearing it happen. No vague recollection of opening my eyes and seeing the gash in the fabric.

I honestly still don't know what to make of that. A stranger entered my yard, sliced through my tent, took my best friend. Is it possible I could sleep through all of that, noticing nothing, remembering absolutely nothing? The insomnia-racked me of today would say no, but ten-year-old me was a different story. Back then, I slept like the dead.

So the question is: Did I really hear something, see something? Or is The Dream imagined memory, formed by things I know? The tear in the tent. Billy gone. An unknown person responsible for both.

I tried my hardest to answer that question and give the police at least some small clue about what had happened. With my parents' consent, I was put under hypnosis a week after Billy disappeared, in the hopes some forgotten tidbit would bubble up from the dark depths of my subconscious. When that didn't work, I was taken to a dream analyst, who had me talk about The Dream and every other one I could remember having since the night Billy was taken. That also led nowhere.

After that, we all had to make peace with uncertainty. Maybe I didn't see anything, maybe I did. Maybe it was too traumatic for me to process and so I sliced it from my memory, with only The Dream to intermittently remind me of this self-edit.

Everyone understood but Mrs. Barringer, who convinced herself—and tried to convince me—that the key to finding Billy was buried somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain. One morning a month after Billy had vanished, she lurched into my yard. Worry had aged her so much that she looked like a stranger. Someone to fear.

Mrs. Barringer had dragged Billy's younger brother into the yard with her, likely too afraid to let him out of her sight. Andy, seven at the time, couldn't bring himself to look at me or his mother. He simply stared at the grass, scared and ashamed.

"Ethan," Mrs. Barringer barked, her mouth turning into an O of surprise, as if even she was shocked by how harsh she sounded. She dropped Andy's hand and hobbled toward me, her footsteps slick-swishing through the grass. "You need to tell them," she said, gently this time. "Okay, sweetie? Just tell the police what you remember about that night."

"But I don't remember anything."

Mrs. Barringer was within arm's reach now. I took a backward step toward the house, but she latched onto my shoulders with both hands. Her grip was tight and rough. The complete opposite of her still-soothing voice.

"You have to remember something. Even if you don't think you do. You couldn't have slept through the whole night."

Her grip on my shoulders became a pinch. She started shaking me, lightly at first, but growing more violent with each passing second. Soon I was being jerked back and forth, my head bobbing uncontrollably. Even though I was young and scared, I knew what Mrs. Barringer wanted from me. I wanted the same thing myself. Some clue, no matter how small, that might help find Billy.

But I remembered nothing.

I knew nothing.

"I'm sorry!" I cried. "I'm so sorry!"

At that point, my mother rushed outside and pulled me away from Mrs. Barringer's grip.

"He doesn't know anything, Mary Ellen," she said, not without kindness. I'm certain she saw a bit of herself in Mrs. Barringer's unhinged state. The way she gazed at our neighbor, my mother seemed to understand that, had it been me who was taken, she would be the one in their yard, shaking their son, pleading for information.

I'm taking that first, blessed sip of coffee when I realize the noise outside has stopped. No lawn mower. No leaf blower. In their place comes the jaunty chime of the doorbell. I answer it, finding one of the lawn guys on the front porch.

"Are Mr. and Mrs. Marsh home?" he says, using a rag to wipe sweat from his brow.

"They just moved, actually."

"Are you the new homeowner?"

"No," I say, because technically I'm not. Which makes me wonder what, exactly, I am. "I'm their son. I'm staying here until my parents put the house on the market."

It dawns on me that he might already know this and is gearing up to politely request payment for the lawn he's just mowed. I try to spare him the chore by saying, "How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing," he says. "Your parents paid in advance for the entire summer. I'm here because there was something in your yard this morning. It was no problem today. But in the future, I'd really appreciate it if you made sure your kids don't leave sports equipment in the grass when we come to mow."

"I don't have kids." I squint, confused. "What sports equipment?"

"This."

The man digs into a deep pocket of his cargo pants. He removes his hand and holds it out so I can see it.

There, resting in his cupped palm, is a baseball.