“Come with us,” Alejo said.
They exited the police station and crowded into the minivan, Brandon and Alejo in the front with Ashley in the back seat. The sky above the parking lot was speckled with faint starlight. Silence filled the tiny space, searing and thick.
“Why do you think it’s not human?” Brandon asked.
“I … we went out to the cabin a lot. The one across the lake. And we kept seeing things there.” Ashley swallowed hard. It was too late to skirt around the truth. “I’ve been seeing people that died. Tristan, Nick, Bug … they’ve been trying to tell me something. Logan told me you see them, too.”
Alejo gave her a small smile. “No fun, is it?”
“What does it mean?” Ashley asked. “If we can find out what the thing is that’s killing people, we can stop it. I just don’t know—”
“We’ve been looking into the same thing this whole time,” Brandon said. “Tracking the same deaths. The same killer.”
Alejo fixed his hair in the passenger-side mirror. “Maybe we should’ve swapped notes.”
“What did you find?” Brandon asked.
“It’s something to do with the cabin. I think the thing comes from there. When Logan … when she was underwater, I heard a voice saying we had to go back to where it all started. Maybe if we figure out how it started, we can get rid of it.”
Alejo watched Brandon, but Brandon continued to stare out the windshield with a grimace. His eyes were wide, fingers clenched too tight around the steering wheel. “Finally,” he said, “something I can explain.”
“Brandon,” Alejo warned.
Brandon looked at Ashley and the shadows on his face were sharp as a knife. “The thing you’re looking for is called the Dark, and I created it.”
35
The Dead And The Dark
1997
Brandon Woodley was a ghost in his own life.
Moontide Diner was unusually busy for a Sunday morning. Brandon sat in a red vinyl booth opposite his parents as they split a Moontide Breakfast. Like usual, they smiled at each other and ate in gross, contented silence. Brandon ate a singular waffle and wished his parents had just let him stay home. The diner radio played something upbeat and swingy. It smelled like hot grease and burned meat.
“Baby, you don’t have to sit there all bored,” his mother said. She popped another bite of egg into her mouth. “Why don’t you talk to your friends over there? We’re just figuring out the move, anyway.”
Brandon shrugged. He didn’t have friends. You had to be a person to have friends, and he was pretty sure he didn’t count. He was a shadow on the wall, a thought that never quite surfaced, a phantom of what a boy should be. He was like a stranger posted outside the room that the rest of the world lived in, and no matter how hard he pressed his fingers to the window, he wasn’t getting in.
He wasn’t an outcast; he didn’t exist at all.
Brandon looked across the diner anyway. In a booth identical to theirs, Tammy Barton and Alejo Ortiz shared their own Moontide Breakfast. They looked disgustingly happy together, a study in contrasts. Tammy’s hair was platinum blond and fell in loose curls down her back. Alejo’s hair was cropped close on the sides and, as always, he looked like the kind of person who meant it when he smiled. Frank Paris sat opposite them, shoulders broad as a brick wall. He said something to Tammy and Alejo and all three of them erupted into laughter.
That was the problem—they were too perfect to hate.
Brandon’s mother frowned. She glanced across the diner at the golden trio and her expression hardened. “Well, I guess I’ll say hello.” Before Brandon had a chance to stop her, she waved across the diner to the other booth. “Tammy Barton, is that you?”