I laughed. “In certain circles.”
My eyes burned and my head felt foggy. Now that the ramped-up adrenaline surge I’d felt in the tower had subsided, the lack of sleep was catching up with me.
Pete was quiet as he concentrated on his pie.
“It’s amazing to me, really,” he went on after a minute, “that so many people believe in that kind of stuff.”
“And it’s amazing to me that so many people don’t.”
“And you?” he asked. “Do you really believe in all of it? Or is it just for show? You truly think there are monsters and cryptids and ghosts and ghouls out there in the world?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I do.”
“Have you always believed?”
I nodded. “Since I was a kid. My brother and sister and I, we had a monster club. We were obsessed: watching monster movies, going on monster hunts, reading everything we could.”
He smiled. “Sounds a lot like my son. He was into all that. Still is, I guess.”
“Yeah, he told me he’d had a monster club when he was younger.”
“Sure did. He’d lead all the kids on monster hunts. Some of them would go home in tears, all freaked out because David had led them into the woods and convinced them there were actual monsters out there. Man, did I get some phone calls from upset parents!”
I smiled. “I think kids especially are drawn to this stuff… the unexplained.”
Pete put down his fork and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You’re about the same age as me,” he said. “Remember that old show that used to be on TV, In Search Of…？ With Leonard Nimoy? Mr. Spock?”
“Of course!” I said.
“Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, ancient aliens… I loved all that stuff when I was a kid.”
“But not anymore?” I asked.
He laughed. “Guess not.”
“You grew out of it? Came to your senses?” I teased.
“You said it, not me,” he said, grinning.
“I guess I never did,” I said. “Grow out of it, I mean. All my life, I’ve been drawn to those same unanswered questions that fascinated me when I was young.” I took a long sip of black coffee, tried to picture him when he was a kid, sitting on a couch watching In Search Of… and believing monsters were real.
“And have you found any answers?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Just more questions.”
I thought again of what I’d found. I longed to go back to the campground, get a good look at the doll, flip through the book, try to figure out what it all meant. Had the monster left it for me as a clue? Just to taunt me, to remind me that I was always one step behind?
Was I already too late? Was that what the doll meant—that there was no saving Lauren?
I suppressed a shiver, wrapped my hands tightly around my coffee mug.
“Where’d you grow up, Lizzy?” Pete asked.
The most normal of questions. And one I’d been asked over and over throughout my life. But still, each time someone asked it, my body stiffened.
“Pennsylvania,” I said, a lie so practiced that it almost felt real. I could imagine a life there, in a cozy little house in a suburban enclave, at the end of a cul-de-sac, two parents who loved me very much, a brother and a sister. “A little town called Yardley, not far from Philly.”
He was quiet, nodding. And there it was again, that funny little frown: a look that told me he knew I was lying.