Blaring music and strobe lights assaulted Natalie’s senses, temporarily disorienting her as she walked inside with her friends. Natalie instantly regretted her decision to come, but before she could back out Cassie and Thalia had her by the arms and were guiding her deeper into the building with Maya following closely behind. The hallway leading to the skating arena was practically ankle deep in red solo cups and discarded cigarettes. Thalia walked ahead and stomped a few smoking butts out on the ground.

         “People have to be careful about these! They could literally start a fire and we could all die,” she lectured.

         “Thalia, relax,” Cassie said. “The whole point of tonight was to do something new, and your whole motherly act is an old routine.” When Thalia scowled, Cassie threw her hands up. “I mean that in the best way.”

         Maya peeked around the corner of the hallway into the ice rink, casually sidestepping a couple making out against the door frame. She gasped. “He’s here!” she squealed.

         “Who?” Natalie asked.

         “Anthony.” Maya’s eyes lit up as she said his name.

         “Her new bae,” Cassie sighed. “Well, go on. Fetch.” Maya, oblivious to Cassie’s condescension, lit up.

         “Aww, I love you, guys! I’ll catch up with you later.” Maya winked and ran off.

         Natalie shifted uncomfortably in her skinny jeans, a light sweater, and jean jacket. Thalia had volunteered to do her hair and makeup. When she’d looked in the mirror, Natalie hadn’t felt like herself. She wasn’t used to looking like she cared what people thought anymore. Cassie had encouraged her to take off the jacket and show off a little more skin but Natalie hadn’t taken well to the idea. For so long, she hadn’t felt anything. But now she was actually nervous in an overwhelming way. Losing the jacket would be losing a refuge.

         “Why is the afterparty always in a slippery ice rink in the first place?” Natalie scoffed, desperately trying to think of something other than her outfit.

         Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s been a tradition for as long as I can remember. I think it’s because some popular senior hockey player started it. And then he died before he graduated so his friends kept it going in his honor. But besides, we’ve adapted.” She gestured to the ice, laughing. “Look, they even put carpets down this year.”

         Thalia stared at Cassie, bug-eyed. “Wait-a student died in his senior year? How come more people don’t know about that? Why wouldn’t the school tribute him or something?”

         “I don’t know.”

         “Damn, what a shit way to be remembered.” She shook her head and smiled. “Well, come on then. I mean, we are here for a reason now, right?”

         Natalie nodded and her reluctant agreement seemed to drive the girls forward.

                                   * * * * *

         The lights from a cheap strobe machine doused Natalie in a rainbow of colors as she slipped and slid onto the ice. Cassie, well adjusted to the slickness, strode onto the ice like a runway model. Thalia was just as helpless as Natalie, almost falling backwards. Luckily, nobody seemed to notice or they were having just as much trouble. Cassie expertly spun backwards, facing her friends. She took them by the hand and gently led them to the carpets.

         “It’s really not that bad, guys. I think you’re just imagining it’s hard so you make it way harder than it is.”

         Natalie shoved her expectations aside for a moment and found that it was less like ice skating and more like walking across a hardwood floor in socks, a really slippery hardwood floor. “She’s right, Thalia,” she admitted to her friend.

         Thalia scrunched her face up like a child refusing to go to her room. As soon as she was close enough, she jumped onto a carpet and relaxed.

         “Stubborn,” Cassie remarked. She gestured around. “Well, this is it basically.”

         “Hmm, climactic.” Thalia folded her arms over her chest. A kid with a man bun and spiky earrings danced around Cassie. She swiped a red solo cup from his hand and downed a shot of whatever was inside. The boy grinned, impressed, and skated away into the crowd.

         Thalia gasped. “Cassie, that could have been roofied!”

         “That’s why I have you guys to look out for me!” Cassie responded over the increasing volume of the music. She nodded towards a large collection of carpets near the black, brokedown stereo speakers. Maya and Anthony were talking intensely off to the side. Maya was usually steady on her feet but she pretended she was an amateur, falling forward so her crush would catch her and get even closer. Natalie rolled her eyes. Cassie laughed. “She’s something, isn’t she?” She shrugged and held out her hand. “Whatever! Let’s dance!” To Natalie’s own surprise, she found herself taking Cassie’s hand almost immediately, yearning for the sensation of losing herself. Cassie smirked diabolically and pulled Natalie into the jumble of people with her, headed for the dead center of the dance floor. Natalie looked back and Thalia reached out at the last minute, moving with her friends like a snaking chain into the sea.

         It was overwhelming. The music was shrieky and loud and the beat pumped through the ice, spiking Natalie’s heartbeat. She could smell the perfume and cologne and sweat of the dancers, each in their own little world, shaking around in eerie sync. Natalie loved it. She could hear the music getting louder and louder. As soon as the beat dropped, she started jumping up and down with her hands in the air. Cassie raised her solo cup high over her head so no one would tip it and cheered Natalie on. Thalia swayed awkwardly. Right when she would begin to get into it, someone would bump into Thalia from behind, and she’d lose her interest. Natalie felt bad for her and she hated it. She didn’t want to feel anything at all. She closed her eyes, shutting out Cassie and Thalia and Maya and her mom and the rest of the world banging down her door with kind words and casseroles. She shut out her guilt and her self-pity and her pain. She shut out the prayers and the pit of swirling despaired darkness. She shut out Jasmine, wanting to live for herself for a single moment. The music whisked her away to a different plane, a different world. Every nerve in her body released its vice-like grip of tension. This was how she always wanted to feel. Distantly, so far away it sounded like the buzz of a fly, she heard voices overlapping each other, fighting for attention. She didn’t know what the voices were or how long she had even been dancing but she didn’t care. Everything disappeared except the music, which was getting quieter. It reached a certain point and then climbed again, the beat getting faster and faster until it was raging. Any moment now…

         The beat dropped. And so did Cassie’s drink.

         A wave of red washed over Natalie, cold and sticky. Her eyes flew open and she screamed, frightened by the disruption of the dancing. Her clothes and the ends of her pretty, curled hair were drenched in punch that smelled like feet and beer. She picked at her outfit. She probably would have survived the soak and even the humiliation if it weren’t for the jacket. Natalie’s heart broke in half as she shook off the precious jean jacket that Thalia had given her, the sweet sisterly bond ruined by stupid seniors. The rink was dead silent. Natalie never knew that it could be so quiet when there was house music playing. Thalia and Cassie stood mortified on either side of Natalie, already gravitating towards her as if to help her. Maya was forcing her way between people to get closer. Natalie didn’t even have time to ask what had happened before the snickering started. All eyes were on her... and they were starting to squint with mocking, heartless laughter. The remaining sister was covered in what looked like blood. Jasmine’s little sis was turning into some psychotic Bloody Mary without her. What a screwed up family. Funny, huh? So much laughter swelling up like a tidal wave. Was that an iPhone camera?

         Natalie couldn’t take the humiliation one more second. She made a dash for the door. Thalia caught her as she ran into a barrier of dancing bodies. No one was laughing, just dancing. Natalie shook her cloudy head.

         “Natalie, wait! I’ll help you clean this up!” Thalia assured her friend over the noise.

         “Are you serious? I don’t care about that, Thalia! Everyone was laughing at me! I have to get out of here!”

         “Nat, what are you talking about? No one was laughing at you! You’re just freaked out!” But before Thalia could talk Natalie out of her confusion or before Cassie could even stumble over to join them, Natalie had disappeared out the door of the rink.

          Every hallway blurred together as Natalie stormed away from the rink and deeper into the building with tears in her eyes. Her jean jacket hung at her side, heavier than usual and dripping red food dye onto the floor like an open wound. She couldn’t process a single thought, not caring less about where she was or where she was going, just knowing that she had to escape.

         “Natalie!” Voices echoed behind her. A part of her wanted to turn around but her feet kept moving forward. She bit her lip hard to keep from screaming. She had never wanted to go to the party at all. She knew she shouldn’t have and she should’ve trusted her instincts. And yet there she was, dancing like an idiot, actually starting to feel good. She should’ve known it was all going to fall apart as soon as those feelings arose. Cassie was gone by the time she had that third drink in her hand and she just wouldn’t listen when her friends tried to help. And that’s when Natalie had gotten caught in the middle and soaked to the bone.

         Thalia sprinted down the hallway towards Natalie. She pulled on her arm, spinning her around. Natalie’s face was tear soaked and the light in her eyes, as faint as it had been dancing on the ice, had gone out. “Please, just stop and talk to us, Nat,” she begged in a soothing voice.

         Natalie pursed her lips. “Right, like you were talking out there? All you and Cassie ever do is fight and when someone gets in the middle, this is what happens!” Natalie thrust the jean jacket in her face. “Everyone just stared at me like I was some-some zoo animal!” She sniffled and her voice faltered. The other girls had caught up to Thalia now.

         Cassie reached out, less drunk but still not sober. “Nat, I’m so sorry…” Natalie swatted her hands away. Cassie frowned. “God, it’s not all my fault, you know. I mean, I totally get why you’re mad but if Thalia hadn’t tried to take my drink then-“

         “Oh, please, Cassie. You were about to drown yourself in whatever intoxicating nostrum it was spiked with. I was just trying to help. Sorry for being a good friend.” Thalia interjected.

         Maya piped up in her sweet, quiet way. “Guys, maybe you need to admit that you are all being a little selfish.”

         Cassie turned on her. “Okay. First of all, you can’t say anything, Maya. Where were you again? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Sucking face with another boy toy! And second of all, Thalia, what the hell is a no-nostrum?”

         Maya winced. “He’s not a boy toy!” She tried to defend herself through oncoming waterworks. “I told you, he’s different. He doesn’t treat me like every other boy who just thinks I’m a slut!”

         Suddenly, Natalie, of all people in her situation, was the only one with her mouth shut, standing stoic as her friends tore into each other. They hadn’t fought like this in a long time, and all of their pent up rage was bubbling over. Natalie couldn’t take it. The walls were starting to close in and her friends’ voices were starting to deafen the rest of the world. There was something else mixed in with the shouting-a whisper. It was soft, like the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings. Natalie couldn’t make out what it was saying but it was definitely there, alluring and maddening. She blamed it on the mounting panic attack and put her hands to her head. She could feel her control slipping away. Without thinking, she forced herself straight through her friends, pushing some of them aside. Cassie tripped over her own feet and tumbled into the wall with a loud boom.

         Natalie immediately stopped and looked back. Cassie was lying face down where the wall once stood, coated in plaster and wood. Natalie’s anger evaporated and she dashed to her friend. She fell to her knees at Cassie’s side. “Cassie? Cassie?” she coaxed. She realized Cassie wasn’t moving and lost all her breath. She put a hand to her back and anxiously shook her. “Cassie, wake up!” Maya put a hand to her mouth and Thalia looked paralyzed. “Cassie!”

         With a heaving cough, Cassie raised her head. The girls sighed in relief. Natalie helped Cassie into a sitting position and looked her up and down. “Are you okay? Does anything hurt? What the hell happened?” she badgered.

         “God, enough, Nat! I’m fine, really,” groaned Cassie, squinting and rubbing her temples. “I guess I just fell really hard into the wall when you pushed me.”

         “I’m so sorry!” Natalie shook her head furiously.

         Cassie smiled. “Why? I’m the drunk one.” Natalie smiled back.

         Thalia stood and studied the hole in the wall. “No regular wall should just collapse like this. It must have been boarded up.” She slipped out her iPhone and switched on the flashlight, aiming it at the hole. She narrowed her eyes. “Guys, I think there’s something in there.”

        Maya stepped back. “What?”

        “Some kind of room, I think.” Thalia wandered beyond the wall. Maya nervously watched from across the hall. Natalie gently let go of Cassie and walked after Thalia into the dark. Thalia was right. Behind the wall was an area a little bigger than the size of a walk in closet. Dust coated the wooden floor and a single shelf lining the wall. As Thalia shined her flashlight around, Natalie could make out shoeboxes of various shapes and sizes lined up on the shelf. It looked like the room hadn’t been touched in years.

         “You guys can come in, it’s okay,” Natalie gestured to Cassie and Maya. Cassie spun around off balance and limped into the room. Her jaw dropped.

         “Whoah.” Cassie grinned. “Awesome.”

         “Awesome? Are you serious?” Maya fired back incredulously, the last to enter.

         Cassie ran her fingers along the wall, making tracks in the dust. She looked down at her gray fingertips and cringed. “What do you think this room was used for? Storage? Some kind of janitor’s closet?”

         “I think the better question is: why did they close it off in the first place?” Thalia’s flashlight flickered. She banged her phone against her palm and the light was steady. She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been telling you guys I need a new phone. This one is so old that even at 25% the settings are failing.”

         Natalie took down one of the shoeboxes on the shelf. She looked around for someplace to sit. Thalia’s beam passed over a chair in the corner and Natalie made a beeline for it, hoping not to trip on anything getting there. Natalie sat down and took the lid off the box, setting it aside. There was a pile of what looked like pictures inside. Thalia’s light flickered again and then shut off completely. “What is wrong with this stupid device?” she growled under her breath.

         Maya started breathing hard. “Someone please turn a light on now,” she gasped.

         “Maya, you have to calm down or you’ll hyperventilate. We’re all here. You’re safe.” Thalia fumbled around on the walls for a light switch. “There has to be a light somewhere,” she muttered to herself. She jumped up and down, reaching for the ceiling. With a sound of triumph, she caught something in the air and pulled down. Dull light flooded the room. Maya relaxed. Natalie, ignorant of what her friends were doing, was still trying to see the pictures in the box. The light turned on and she dropped the box to the floor. The pictures spilled onto the ground, fanning out in black and white. Natalie’s stomach dropped and her face went pale. She clenched her mouth shut, swallowing back bile. Thalia rushed over to her and looked down at the photos.  She dropped to her knees.

         “Oh my God.” Thalia stared at the pictures and slowly picked one up. Natalie, too, slid a picture off the ground and into her hand. She held it to the light. It was an image of a girl, bloodied and beaten, tied to a wooden chair. She had a white cloth in between her cut up lips so she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t have screamed for help if she wanted to. Her clothes were still on her body, but in other pictures they weren’t. Every picture was a different angle of the same girl in the same position. In some, her clothes were different or missing, or the camera was focused on her face, contorted in terror. Natalie clenched her eyes shut, taking a few deep breaths before looking again. Cassie took hesitant steps closer. She saw Thalia choke something down and stopped right away. Somehow maintaining her usual collected composure, she shook a finger in the air. “Oh, no, Thalia. You don’t get to puke. I’m the drunk one. If I can hold it, so can you,” she slurred. Maya forced herself off the wall but that was as far as she could get before bursting into cold sweats and running out of the room. Thalia’s head snapped up.

          “Go,” Natalie encouraged. “We’re fine.” Thalia hurried after Maya. Cassie took her place, bending to the ground. She picked up another picture. She flipped it over. “Holy shit.”

         “What?”

         “It’s dated.” Cassie swallowed hard. “And named.”

         Natalie flipped over the picture in her own hand. Scrawled along the bottom edge of the picture was 11-4-81 and the name Sierra Mills. “What does that one say?” she asked Cassie.

         “11-5-81, Sierra Mills.”

         “More than a day, Cassie.”

         Cassie shivered. “How do we know they’re even real?”

         “We don’t.”

         Cassie stood, putting as much distance between herself and the negatives as possible. She stumbled back into the shelf on the wall and put her hand up to it to steady herself. She missed the shelf entirely and whacked the other shoeboxes, sending one to the floor. The lid collapsed off and more negatives peeked out. They were just like the ones from the box Natalie was looking at, but it was a different girl. Natalie’s eyes widened and she leaned towards the pictures, picking one up by its flimsy corners. Cassie shuddered and burped as she looked at the images, each one more grotesque than the next. She covered her mouth with her hand and lumbered out of the room. Natalie didn’t even seem to notice that she was alone. She flipped the image that she had in her hand over. The girl’s name was Rebecca Cleveland. She was blonde whereas Sierra was brunette. But it was always the same terrified expression, the same cloth in her mouth, the same photo angles, everything. Then, Natalie started to notice something in all of the pictures. Each girl was in the same place every time, posed in front of a brown wall on the same wooden chair. Realization dawning on Natalie, she looked up and twisted around. The same brown wall stared back at her. Her heart stopped. Flying into a panic, she ran to the other boxes, rifling through them. Every box was a different girl in a different month in the same exact place. The world shrunk around Natalie. She felt her solitude starting to crush her. Despite how scared she was, she could hear her breaths, slow and steady. That didn’t make sense. How could she be so calm? She stopped breathing...

         But the breathing didn’t stop.

         Natalie left the pictures askew and barreled out of the room with her head down, not wanting to see what might have been in the dark with her, watching her from just over her shoulder.

         Maya and Thalia stood side by side in the hallway. Cassie was sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall. Her arm caressed her stomach. Maya looked better but still freaked out. Natalie pulled Thalia aside, cutting Maya and Cassie out of the conversation. They both looked grateful. Natalie quickly filled Thalia in on her findings. “Every box is a different girl in the same place in a different month. The last one was in December of 1981, I think. Oh yeah, and that wasn’t just any room. That was the room.” It took Thalia a moment to catch on.

         “Jesus.” Thalia clutched her head.

         “How do you think I feel? I was sitting in the same chair!” Natalie screamed in hushed tones. “I need to go home and take like twenty showers. And hell, even then…” She quickly moved on. “We need to tell someone.”

         “No,” Thalia answered, to her friend’s surprise. “Not for something like this. I think in this case, it might actually cause us more trouble to report.”

         “Since when are they going to suspect four teenage girls as kidnappers and, well, possible killers of other teenage girls?” Natalie demanded.

        “It’s not about being suspected, Nat. Think about it. We were never supposed to be here in the first place. Remember that we snuck into this arena for some good times with alcohol and dancing. And may I remind you that we’re underage. If we turn in this stuff now, we’re going to have to tell them where we got it from and why we were there. How can you justify that? Yeah, we’re four teenage girls finding this shit by accident and we’re not possible kidnapping killers but we’re also not innocent.”

        “So? What we did is like a walk in the park compared to this,” Natalie hissed back.

         “But it would mean that we involved ourselves in something seriously messed up. Do you want to be pinned as witnesses and have to answer a thousand questions? I don’t. I want to stay out of this at all costs and I think you all feel the same.”

         Natalie processed that in silence. “Okay,” she concluded. “So, we don’t tell anyone. What do we do?”

         “We pretend we never found it. We let someone else figure it out.”

         “You want us to cover it up?”

         Thalia nodded and as much as Natalie wanted to protest, she didn’t.  

         Cassie yawned.

         Natalie nodded to her. “Let’s maybe hurry it up. If Cassie passes out, we’re done for. And that room-it doesn’t feel right.”

         “Well, yeah, considering what happened in it,” agreed Thalia.

         “It's not just that. It’s…” she shook off the feeling. “Nevermind.”

         Thalia headed to the room and Natalie reluctantly followed, frantically rubbing away her goosebumps.

          Home at last, curled up in bed, Natalie tried to ease her brain into a sense of peace, but it was almost impossible. She had told her mother that she had gone out late to meet up with friends for a bite to eat. It was the excuse she and the girls had agreed to use. It wasn’t too far off. Restaurants were packed after every football game, especially homecoming.

         After Thalia and Natalie had cleaned up the room and put everything back where they found it, they had needed to sober up poor Cassie, who had somehow gotten more drunk throughout the events of the night. If she were to go home with even a hint of alcohol on her breath, they would all be screwed. They had waited about a half hour longer, splashed water on her face, popped a piece of gum in her mouth, and she was good to go. But of course Cassie was their ride, so first Thalia drove Cassie’s car to her own house and got her own car, following behind Natalie to Cassie’s house. They had dropped off Cassie and her car, and then Thalia had driven everyone else home.

          It had been quite the night. For many reasons. She couldn’t get that room out of her head. She hoped Thalia was right and that it was smarter to let someone else find those pictures. She just didn’t know if it would be so easy for her to forget it all. She had almost caved just looking at her father in the hallway while he interrogated her about why she was so late, on the verge of grounding her. Her father was more protective than ever after Jasmine and it made sense. But it could drive Natalie crazy, and seeing him so upset just made her miss having a sister to spill all of her secrets to.

         Natalie slid off her bed and plopped down in front of her desk, opening her laptop. She pulled out a blank notebook and a pencil and opened a new Safari tab. She drew the curtains back at the window above the desk so a sliver of moonlight illuminated her work space. She took a minute to think about what she was doing and whether or not delving any deeper was healthy. At this point, it was less about health, though, and more about satisfying her curiosity.

         She couldn’t believe what she found. And the whole time, she could have sworn someone was whispering in her ear.

                                   * * * * *

         When Natalie woke up, she wasn’t in her bed. She was at her desk. The computer screen was black and her cheek was stuck to her paper. Her pencil was still in her hand. She raised her head slowly and rubbed her tired eyes. The October weather had delayed the sunrise so the sky was still a dusky blue.

         Natalie smiled at the Saturday weather. Looking down, her smile faded. She read what she had researched and written down. She made a grim decision and grabbed her cell phone off of her dresser where it was charging.

         We need to talk, she texted in the group chat.

         Thalia: About?

         Natalie: Don’t be mad but I did a little research on you know what

         Thalia: You’re kidding, right?

         Natalie: nope

         Maya: we promised not to talk abt it!!!

         Natalie: I know but this was important and I couldn’t stop thinking about it and those girls and I hate not telling anyone so I just needed to know for me

         She paused, and then: And I think we need to talk about what I found

                                   * * * * *

         Natalie closed the front door behind Cassie. They joined Maya and Thalia in the living room and settled in any available seat. The girls clenched their hands in their laps and chewed their lips, their eyes darting around the room as if they were seeing it for the first time. Natalie sat in a poofy armchair with her notebook filled with her ambitious research. She cleared her throat but didn’t say anything.

         “So, Nat…” Thalia drifted off in a stiff voice. “You had something to show us?”

         Natalie cleared her throat again. “Yeah, right.” As she opened her notebook and argued with herself about the best way to introduce her subject material, Thalia asked, “Why can't you just let it go?” The way in which she asked the question wasn’t angry. It was more heartbroken. Natalie stopped shuffling papers and looked up into her friend’s face. Thalia’s cheeks and forehead were severely lined and heavy bags hung under her dull blue eyes. Natalie softened, remembering that she wasn’t the only one questioning her morals. She was just the first to admit it out loud.

         “I think you know why,” she responded weakly. She faced the other girls. “But you all came here because we’re friends and we were all there and we all have a right to know what we got ourselves into.”

        “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” mumbled Cassie. “But you might as well spit it out.”

        Natalie flipped the cover of her notebook back. “So, I was going through some articles about the hockey rink when it was super popular in the eighties. There was nothing about the room in any of the articles or what people might have been doing in the rink. The only thing I could really find was this article that kept popping up about the high school senior that you said died,” Natalie nodded to Cassie, “the one who started the homecoming game after party. Yeah, turns out there might have been a reason for the school not acknowledging his death. I found this one article and I printed it out.” Natalie reached into the notebook and retrieved a stapled packet of loose leaf paper. She closed the distance between her and Maya, who was sitting near her on the couch. Maya didn’t even look down at the papers before handing them hurriedly to Cassie who was sitting right next to her. Cassie, decked out in sunglasses and sweatpants, half-heartedly skimmed the papers. She suddenly sat up, raising her sunglasses to reveal furrowed eyebrows. “No. Way,” she whispered. She raised her eyes to Natalie’s, as if asking for confirmation.

         “What is it?” Thalia snatched the papers from Cassie and looked for herself. She read aloud. “The memorable disappearances of five local girls from Grove Hill, Michigan, had police stunned and families locked behind closed doors. Each girl was said to have disappeared at the beginning of each month for the five consecutive 1981 autumn months. This horrifying story is finally revisited by authorities…” she skimmed ahead, “New evidence has surfaced that possibly reveals the crack to this cold case. Oliver Dougherty, a Grove Hill High School senior of class ‘82 and star Grove Hill ‘Gladiators’ hockey player, who was killed in a shocking incident just before his graduation, appears to have had a prominent part in the kidnappings of Rebecca Cleveland, Karen Ruth, Jennie Raymond, Sarah Robinson, and Sierra Mills…” more skimming, “After Clarity Dougherty put her house on the market thirty years after the death of her only son, she presented a camera that she had discovered beneath a loose floorboard in her late son’s room while she had been stripping it down. Going through the camera’s only roll of film, Dougherty uncovered a terrifying series of images detailing the torture the missing girls had apparently undergone at the hands of their captor.” Thalia gasped and continued. “Dougherty only released the images to the police five years after her discovery, claiming she had been attempting to protect her surely innocent son until her struggle over what to do with the evidence won out. Dougherty was charged with withholding evidence and criminal misconduct, receiving a heavy fine,” skimming again, “At this point in time, it is confirmed that the camera was in fact used by Oliver Dougherty but no other damning evidence has since surfaced. Authorities hope to soon be able to confirm the kidnapper’s, and possibly killer’s identity to allow the families of his victims long overdue closure.” She made a face. “There’s even a picture.” Thalia raised the paper and showed it to her friends. Oliver was smiling in the picture, like he was the most innocent person in the world. His brown hair flopped across his forehead and his smile was warm and welcoming. Who could have known better around him? His most striking feature was his eyes. They were so dark they were almost black. It was the only thing about him that might have given away his inner demons.

        Maya pulled her knees to her chest and laid her forehead on her knees. Thalia lowered the paper to her lap. “So, that room, those pictures, it was all him?”

        “I guess,” Natalie shrugged. “Just figured you’d all want to know.”

        “How did he die?” Thalia asked. She stared straight ahead, like looking anywhere else would send her over the edge.

        “Car crash. Right off the road into Royce Lake, actually.” Only ten miles away. “They only thought to drag the lake a little more than a year later. They found his car and a body inside that they suspected was his.”

         “What do you mean they suspected?” asked Maya quietly, like she was testing the waters.

         “Well, by the time they found him he was a skeleton and his whole skeleton wasn’t completely...there. So, they worked with what they had,” Natalie explained. Maya pursed her lips and huddled into the couch cushions. Natalie shook her head. “He was down there for a whole year,” she marveled.

         “Good.”

         Cassie blinked rapidly. “Did I hear that right, Thalia?”

         Thalia nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He was a killer. You saw what he did to those girls,” she reasoned. “He deserved it.”

         The living room lights flickered. Natalie glanced up, confused. It stopped just as quickly as it started. The girls sat in awkward silence for a minute, thinking to themselves. The lights didn’t really strike them as odd, but the drop in temperature did. A chilly breeze drifted in out of nowhere. Natalie wrapped her arms across her chest, struggling to conserve heat. Her breath escaped her body in visible puffs of air. “Does anyone else feel that?” she asked her friends. Thalia and Maya nodded, also folded into themselves and shivering. Cassie, comfortable in her heavy sweatshirt and sweatpants peered around, obviously indifferent to the cold. She breathed out and recoiled from the condensed air. “Weird,” she remarked. Her eyes lit up and a mischievous smile spread across her face. “I have a really bad idea. But we’d have to wait until tonight.”

          “This is so stupid,” Thalia said. After an hour and a half of begging and bribing, Cassie had convinced her friends to go along with her idea. When night had fallen, the girls returned to Natalie’s house, surprising Cassie who had expected at least one would have bailed. But none did-not even Maya, who agreed to come but refused to participate, if only to watch out for her friends.

         At 7:30, they all sat in a circle on the floor around the coffee table in Natalie’s living room, except for Maya who was perched on the edge of the couch biting her fingernails. Natalie honestly couldn’t believe she was sitting there. She hadn’t really meant for it to come to this. She had wanted to find closure after what they had seen. Speaking to the dead, especially a potential killer, wasn’t really what she had in mind, but there were questions she needed to ask for herself-questions that it seemed only one person might be able to answer.

         Cassie popped the lid off the Ouija box and laid it down. She reached into the box and pulled out the board, heavy and scratched up. She blew across the surface and clouds of dust dispersed into the air. Coughing, she said, “How long has it been since you’ve taken this thing out, Nat?”

         Natalie got a far off look in her eyes. “Jasmine and I used to play with it when we were kids. We never got anything out of it but we always used to try, anyway. We stopped doing that after Jasmine got to middle school.” She smiled sadly, her eyes glistening. “Apparently, she got too good for it or something.”

         Cassie put her hand on Natalie’s shoulder. Natalie rolled her eyes,  breaking out of a trance. “Um, but yeah. It’s old.” She reached past Cassie, centering the board on the table and pulling out the planchette, the small teardrop shaped cursor used to channel spirits. She placed it on the board and sat back. “Ok, so how are we doing this?” she asked around.

         “You got any candles?” Cassie questioned Natalie. Natalie nodded affirmatively and pointed to a kitchen drawer. Cassie made a beeline for it, searched it, and set down four candles and a lighter on the counter. She went to the lights and switched them off, bathing the living room in darkness. Maya gasped. Before she could protest, though, Cassie had lit the candles and was carrying them over to the table. “Don’t worry, Maya. I got you,” she reassured.

         Maya relaxed a little, but still glanced around, vigilant. “Why do we have to do this in the dark, anyway?”

         “Well, apparently the more electricity there is, the more spirits are repelled because their energy gets drained by it.” Cassie replied without missing a beat. Natalie raised an eyebrow. Cassie shrugged. “It was in the directions. We could have done it in the daytime, too, but I figured it would be more fun at night.”

         Maya scoffed loudly at that.        

         “Whatever. Let’s just get this over with,” Thalia interrupted. Cassie returned to her seat and laid two fingers on the planchette. Thalia and Natalie exchanged glances and then laid their own fingers alongside Cassie’s. Maya made no last minute move to join them so Cassie went ahead with the summoning. Just as she was about to open her mouth to say something, Thalia yanked her fingers back like she had burned them. “Why do we even have to put our fingers on it? Shouldn’t the spirits just be able to move it by themselves?”

         Cassie sighed. “The connection to us through the wooden thingy helps spirits channel themselves in the real world. That’s also in the directions, by the way, if you were interested in reading them at all.”

         Thalia gritted her teeth but eventually gave in and placed her fingers back on the planchette. “If anyone pushes this as some kind of prank I swear I’ll pulverize you,” she warned.

         “Great image in my mind now, Thalia. Thanks.” Cassie’s voice dripped with sarcasm. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The planchette glided to the word “Hello.” Natalie and Thalia paled. Cassie opened an eye. “Relax, guys. I did that. You have to open the session by saying hi.” Cassie closed both eyes again and spent a moment choosing her first question. Her voice came out steady. “Are there any spirits with us at this moment?”

         Dead silence. It was so anticlimactic that the girls actually found themselves disappointed. They didn’t give up right away and kept their fingers glued to the planchette, daring it to move.

         And it did.

         Slowly but surely, the planchette started sliding. Thalia and Natalie looked to Cassie expectantly, but they could tell by Cassie’s face that it wasn’t her this time. Everyone, even Maya peeking over her hands, stared intensely at the planchette as its circle of view landed on “Yes” and stopped. None of them could believe what had just happened.

         “Please tell me one of you just did that,” Thalia urged with frightened eyes. Cassie and Natalie shook their heads. Maya whimpered and hid her face again. Cassie proceeded. “Who is with us right now?” No answer. Even after a long minute, there was still nothing. Cassie’s lip curled. “Hmm, maybe I was too vague.” She coughed. “Here goes nothing,” she whispered to herself. “Is Oliver Dougherty here with us right now?”

         Natalie and Thalia instantly took their fingers off the planchette. “What the hell are you doing?” Thalia demanded.

         “Isn’t that why we’re doing this? To contact him? We might as well be honest about it. It’s probably bad luck to lie to spirits.”

         “I’m starting to think this was a bad idea,” admitted Natalie.

         “Starting to think?” Thalia asked incredulously.

         The planchette began moving again, but instead of hovering over “Yes” or “No” it glided down towards the alphabet. Cassie looked like she was about to faint. Her fingers shook on the planchette. “It’s not me,” she said under her breath. The planchette stopped on the letter “E” then “N,” “D,” “I,” and “T.”

         Natalie repeated the letters back. “E-N-D-I-T. End it? End what?”

         The temperature cooled again. It was almost unbearably cold. Cassie, like before, couldn’t feel the cold, but she saw her own breath and seemed to catch on to the point. Something was very close to them, like it had been during the first time they felt the chill. Cassie sat straighter. “You heard her. End what?” she asked. It just grew colder and colder, but there was no response. Natalie growled and threw her fingers back onto the planchette. “Tell us!” she shouted, fed up with the spirits. It was suddenly about more than Oliver Dougherty. It was about proof; proof that there was something after life, proof that she wasn’t alone, proof that she still had a sister. The chill became a breeze, blowing their hair and their clothes. The candles struggled to stay lit, the flames waving back and forth rapidly. Natalie clenched her jaw against the wind in a battle of wills. A thought struck her like lightning. In a last ditch effort for answers, Natalie called out. “Jasmine?”

         The breeze stopped. The candles burned normally and the temperature rose back up to normal. Natalie was breathing hard, her heart pounding like a jackhammer. Thalia, Cassie, and Maya listened and looked hard for other spiritual signs. The empty noise was almost scarier than anything else. But it wasn’t empty for long.

         An eerie moan, low and raspy, rumbled from somewhere distant and slowly crescendoed. Cassie and Natalie eyed the planchette like it was responsible but it was behaving in its own way. It turned in a full circle, forcing Cassie’s and Natalie’s fingers off of it. Even without their connection, the planchette kept spinning and spinning faster and faster. The moaning just kept getting louder and louder but they still didn’t know where it was coming from. Thalia screamed. Natalie whipped around to her. “Thalia, what’s wrong?” she yelled over the sound. Thalia was horror-stricken by something. Natalie followed her gaze. Maya’s eyes had completely glazed over and her mouth was stretched wide open. The moaning sound was coming from her. It wasn’t her voice, though. It was deeper, like an animal’s howl or someone in pain. Her mouth moved and formed the words “end it” over and over. It cut Natalie to the core. She had never heard anything so...depressing. “Maya!” she screamed. The moaning overtook Natalie’s voice so she couldn’t even hear herself. Natalie rushed to Maya’s side and tried to shake her out of it. “Please, Maya! Stop!” Meanwhile, Thalia sat frozen in fear. Cassie seemed to come to her senses and helped Natalie with Maya. They tried to get in Maya’s face but she didn’t move a muscle. Natalie’s brain was thinking at a million miles per hour. “End it” could have meant anything and yet that was what she couldn’t stop thinking about. In that moment, Natalie was sure they needed to know how to end it because ending it would hopefully end this. If spirits were controlling Maya and corrupting the board then they needed to go away. It needed to end-maybe the session needed to end. Natalie glanced at the board. She slammed her fingers down on the planchette, which just pushed back in an attempt to keep spinning. But Natalie was stronger. She forced the planchette across the board all the way over to the word “Goodbye.”

         But it didn’t stop.

         The Ouija board was just a toy, two pieces of wood and the alphabet. It wasn’t what has started all of this, not really. The girls had done that. They had called out to the abyss and something had responded. Someone. Natalie grabbed the board and slammed it on the floor. Cassie and Thalia screamed at the sound but Thalia kept screaming, her high pitched voice harmonizing disturbingly with Maya’s groan. Natalie didn’t know where to look so she looked up, reaching out to the only person who it could have been, the only one horrible enough to possess someone. “Let her go!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Oliver, please stop!” The planchette stopped moving. Maya opened her mouth one last time, uttering a monotone word.

         “No.”

         Then, her jaw shut and her eyes seemed to awake with her usual brightness. Scared and violated beyond how she’d ever felt, eyes darting around the room, Maya took one look at her friends’ faces and completely broke down. Cassie pulled Maya into her arms and let her cry. Thalia looked like she was mentally building a fortress around her brain. Natalie didn’t know what to think. Her head felt like it had exploded. After everything, she hadn’t even spoken to her sister. It was Oliver, attacking them in the only way he knew how-invasion and possession. And Natalie knew he wasn’t finished yet. Why else would he have said no? And if he didn’t mean to end the session, what did he mean by ending it?

          It had been a week since the Ouija board. That night had changed everything. They had all felt an indescribable fear, something they couldn’t shake even after the session had ended. It affected them. They split that night. They all digressed into their own minds and their own feelings. Maya had been the first to leave, wrapped in one of Natalie’s blankets and escorted home by Cassie and Thalia. Cassie went back from Maya’s to Natalie’s but Thalia didn’t.  She went straight home without a word. Thalia took everything really badly. She had always been sensible and everything that had happened opposed everything she had ever thought of the world and of the supernatural. Cassie had been the last to leave. She had thought it best to get some sleep and think things over more in the morning. Nobody did speak in the morning, though. The end of the weekend passed without a single word or text. So did the following week. Even at school, they didn’t sit together at lunch or acknowledge each other in the hallway. Seeing each other or talking to each other would just remind them of what they had done and seen and the time still wasn’t enough to wash it away. Natalie should have been more broken up about it. Her friends, her only other anchors, were no longer a part of her life at its craziest. She had a secret and now she didn’t even have the chance to tell them. The spirits that night had definitely made a connection to the real world through the Ouija board. They had tried to communicate and then when the session ended that connection had been severed. Mostly. If it weren’t for the spirits that might have stayed behind with Natalie.

         Every day since the Ouija board night, Natalie hadn’t been alone. She had been noticing things happening around her like the temperature dropping again, flickering lights, and this feeling that she was being watched. There was more than just that, though. At first, Natalie thought it was all in her head, like just some weird stressed hallucinations after the Ouija board. But it was insistent, so much so that Natalie couldn’t deny that whatever it was had stuck around for a specific reason, and it had chosen Natalie. If it was Oliver, as Natalie suspected, he had some kind of unfinished business with her and with her friends. Natalie worried about the signs, wondering if they were meant to be threatening or harmful, but those suspicions changed slowly over time. There was almost a certain sincerity behind them. That was when the newspaper appeared.

         Natalie walked back through the kitchen to the steps with a snack in her hand. It was Wednesday, more than a week since she had last spoken to her friends. It had been very quiet with her alone in the house while her parents were working and her phone sitting silently, her inbox devoid of group chat messages. Even the spirit attached to Natalie was momentarily at rest.

         Natalie passed the kitchen counter. She heard a clap of paper and stopped in her tracks. She slowly turned around. Lying on the marble counter was a newspaper that Natalie could have sworn wasn’t there before. She frowned and craned her head over it. The paper’s date read “October 31, 2018.” That was just about a year ago. What a year old newspaper was doing in Natalie’s kitchen, she had no idea. She or her parents surely would have dumped it long ago. Natalie casually flipped through it, scanning the contents without a thought. It appeared to be just like any other newspaper. Natalie swiped it up and tossed it into the recycling bin in the kitchen pantry. She continued upstairs. She opened the door to her room, stepped inside, and closed it behind her.

         Clap. It was the same sound she had heard downstairs, but muffled. It was coming from behind the door, in the hallway. Natalie gulped and set her snack down on her bed before walking back to the door. Her hand shook as she reached for the doorknob and she took a deep breath to steady it. But when she pulled the door in and looked out, she saw nothing but another newspaper, lying on the ground directly in front of her feet. She crouched down and opened the newspaper. Again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary except that the date was exactly the same as the last one-October 31, 2018. Flipping through it, Natalie was convinced it was just a typical stupid newspaper. She made a quick trip downstairs to dispose of it and then settled in her room, this time with the door open, just in case. It was odd, of course, but many odd things had happened throughout that week. Natalie shook it off and leaned against the headboard, chewing on her cereal bar in awkward silence.

         Clap. Again. This time, it was much more distant, like it was coming from downstairs. Natalie ignored it, clenching her eyes shut, trying to get lost in the darkness behind her eyelids.

         Clap. And again. But closer this time, like it was at the foot of the steps.

         Clap. Again.

         Clap. Over and over like footsteps, closer each time. With every sound, fear gripped Natalie like a vise, tighter and tighter. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, anticipating the next clap like seconds ticking until a bomb went off, and each time she heard it she jumped, clenching her hands into fists.

         Clap. Natalie held her hands to her ears.

         Clap. It didn’t help.

         Clap. She was about to scream just to cover up the noise.

         But that was it. As if on cue, nothing else happened, saving Natalie from a complete mental breakdown. It was quiet. Natalie cautiously removed her hands from her ears. Her pulse was still racing and she paused to take the time to slow it down. She forced herself to stand. She really didn’t want to look outside but she knew she had to. She had been through enough to know that by now. There was always a reason things just...happened.

         Natalie nodded to herself and approached the doorway. She held one hand against it and peered out into the hall.

         The floor was littered with newspapers. A long line of them stretched from just outside Natalie’s room down the hall to the stairs and, as far as Natalie could see, back into the kitchen.  

         Natalie made a sound like a scared dog and crawled to the first newspaper. It was dated the same as the first two, but was open to the real estate section with pictures of different houses and ads for real estate companies. There was nothing peculiar about it. She crawled to the next paper. It was open to the same section, but this time one of the houses was surrounded by a faint outline, like someone had tried to circle it with a dry pen. She moved on to the next one. On this one, the same house was circled again but in pencil. In the newspaper after that, it was circled in pen, and the one after that in red pen, and then in neat red Sharpie. At that point, Natalie was downstairs and in the hallway before the kitchen. The last newspaper was inside, lying on the kitchen counter exactly where the first newspaper had been. Natalie held it in her hands, feeling the thin paper and ink between her fingers as she stared at the real estate section. The same house was circled in red Sharpie like the last newspaper, but clearly different. The Sharpie was dark and heavy, and it fanned out in cracks around the house, like it was cutting everything else out, like it was the center of some dark web. That was when Natalie realized it wasn’t Sharpie at all.

         It was blood.

          Natalie knew what she needed to do. The message was clear. But it was also more confusing than ever. She didn’t know what to expect when she got there. She didn’t know what she was looking for or what she would do with what she might find. If the message was from Oliver it was more likely a threat. Yet everything she had experienced over the past week and a half had changed her entire perspective. It made no sense that all of the harmless sincere signs she had been given would suddenly warp into something so terrifying, something that could hurt her.

         Natalie had spent three days debating going to the house in the newspaper, practically going out of her mind. She eventually came to the conclusion that there was nothing stopping her from trying. Without friends and without Jasmine, she didn’t have much left to lose. She was willing to risk everything, even her life for the chance

that she would find closure in answers to something else’s question.

                                   * * * * *

         On Friday after school, Natalie told her mother she was going to Cassie’s

house and then straight to the game, and that she didn’t know how long it would be until she got home. Her mother had just nodded, desperately trying not to object. Natalie had looked at her and for a moment wondered if she’d ever see her again. She hugged her mother out of the blue. It had been so brief-too brief. But Natalie was never one for overdoing it so she had left right after that without even looking back to say goodbye.

         Natalie hit the road alone, forcing thoughts of her family out of her head, typing the address into Google Maps and cranking her playlist out of her car’s speakers. The drive was only twenty minutes. It wasn’t nearly enough time for Natalie to second guess her decision, which was probably best. Natalie “reached her destination” and pulled over to the side of the street. She unfolded the newspaper with the address circled in pen that she had taken with her. Across the street was a large red brick house with white trim and a manicured front lawn complete with flourishing flower beds. Natalie matched the home to its picture in the paper. She set the paper aside and stepped out of the car, locking it behind her. Natalie stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets as the autumn air nipped and she crossed the street to the house. It really was beautiful-almost too beautiful in a way. Too perfect. But Natalie walked up the steps to the front door, anyway, and rang the doorbell off to the side. She waited patiently until the door swung open. A man stood in the doorframe wearing a nice suit, a bit like a lawyer’s daily wear. He looked like he was in his fifties with salt and pepper hair and dark eyes. He struck Natalie as oddly familiar, but she couldn’t put a finger on where she might have seen him. He smiled. “Can I help you?”

         “Hi! Sorry, my name is Natalie. I saw the ad for your lease in the newspaper.” She reached out her hand for him to shake. He cocked his head but shook regardless. “Well, I’m afraid you’re a little late. We’re moving out, but we decided to sell the house instead of leasing it.  If you’re still interested, the house is for sale. My wife isn’t here right now but I’m sure we could arrange a time and place to talk.” Natalie frowned.

         “Right, of course,” she laughed awkwardly. “May I ask why you’re moving?” she asked.

         “Oh, you know. Eventually, you outgrow the home and you’ve just got to start looking for something fresh. And we want to send our daughter to the best school, so we’re relocating to Clemence.”

         “Well, you’re right. Clemence is a beautiful town. I wish you the best.”

         “Aww, so no interest in the house?” The man chuckled.

         “No, unfortunately. Sorry again.”

         “Oh no, worries, sweetheart. Have a good day now,” he smiled kindly again and backed into his house.

         “You too,” Natalie returned. The man closed the door and Natalie turned on her heel. She cursed herself. She stomped across the street, unlocked her car, and plopped onto the seat. She plucked the keys from her pocket and slid them into the ignition. With a flick of her wrist, the car engine rumbled and the air warmed up. She was going to go. Her foot was poised on the gas pedal and her hand was brushing the gear shift. She was going to give up and pretend that she hadn’t wasted her hopes on a middle aged man moving to Clemence.

         But she just couldn’t. Something gnawed at her. After everything Oliver had made her suffer through just to get her to come here, there had to be something more. She couldn’t leave now. She took the keys out of the ignition and leaned her head back. She adjusted her seat and crossed her legs on the dashboard. Her eyes drifted over to the house and she studied it like she could see right through the walls.

          Natalie must have drifted off at some point because when she opened her eyes, it was 8:00 and pitch black outside. She tiredly examined her surroundings. Nothing had changed. Her car was parked in the same spot across the street from the house she was supposed to have been watching. Guiltily, she blinked rapidly and stared down the house. Maybe she made a mistake by staying behind. There was nothing off with this house or this family. They were absolutely normal and Natalie was completely invading their privacy.

         She stabbed her key into the ignition but didn’t turn it because at that moment a flicker of movement in the house caught her eye. In one of the second floor windows facing the street, a girl about Natalie’s age paced the floor. She looked stressed, like she was arguing or fighting with someone. Another face came into Natalie’s field of view-it appeared to be her father. The man who greeted her at the door and his daughter were hashing it out badly. There was obvious screaming and inappropriate finger signs and just tense glaring sessions. Through it all, Natalie observed from the sidelines. For a while, the fight seemed to have ended.

         Instead, it escalated.

         The father got closer and closer to his daughter until his hands were around her throat. He forced her out of Natalie’s line of sight, who screamed and covered her mouth with her hand. A numbing fear shot through her body. Or maybe it was adrenaline. Natalie grabbed her cell phone from the passenger seat and fumbled her fingers across the screen to emergency dial 911. The call was answered by a woman.

         “Hello, what’s your emergency?”

         Natalie’s voice came out broken. “This man and his daughter are fighting and-and I think he’s hurting her-I’m outside their house-“

         Chilling shrieks rang out from inside the house. Natalie dropped the phone. She knew they would be able to trace the address but she could only hope they would get there soon enough. The next thing she knew she was flying at the house and pounding on the front door, but no one was coming to open it. She went to the first floor window. She frantically looked around and spied a stone flower pot. She struggled picking it up but managed to get a firm enough grip on it to throw it at the window. The glass shattered and Natalie ducked inside, stepping over shards as she ran for the steps. She followed the screams to a room at the end of the second floor hallway and stormed inside so quickly the door dented the wall. It was the daughter’s bedroom. The father was on top of her on the bed with his fist poised over her face. Natalie tackled him from behind and distracted him long enough to release his daughter, who rolled off the bed and rushed to Natalie’s side. Natalie hadn’t realized how young she actually was. She was just about fourteen. “Go outside and stay there no matter what!” Natalie ordered. The daughter nodded and ran downstairs. The man stood slowly from the floor clutching his back. He was big but he was also old. He turned his head to face Natalie with those black eyes again. But this time Natalie recognized them.    

        “Oliver?” she whispered.

        “How do you know me?” Oliver growled. When Natalie didn’t answer, Oliver ran at her. She dodged him and stumbled downstairs. The front door was open and the daughter was standing outside. She saw Natalie and waved her hand like she was ushering her to freedom. Natalie’s mind was spiraling and she just didn’t pay attention to her feet. She tripped over the last step and crashed to the floor. She saw stars and felt a searing pain in her head and her ankle. Her vision was blurry but she couldn’t see Oliver anymore. Natalie pushed herself up and tried to get to her knees. Her ankle strained under her. She whimpered in pain, shifting her weight to her stable foot.

         “Don’t. Move,” said a voice behind her. Natalie’s breath caught. She hesitantly twisted around. Oliver had a gun aimed at her head. His finger was steady on the trigger like he was completely calm about shooting if it came to that. “You’re too late,” Natalie warned. “The cops are coming. They’ll arrest you.”

         “Doesn’t mean I can’t take you down with me,” Oliver smirked. Natalie bit her lip. Maybe if she could keep him talking long enough, he wouldn’t shoot by the time the cops arrived.

        “How do you know my name, little girl? Strangers don’t usually come to my house unless they know me and I have a close circle of friends.” Oliver sneered.

        Natalie thought his question over carefully. She didn’t have enough time to come up with a lie and her predicament was starting to look a little bleak, and as awful as it was to imagine, there might not even be a way out. “I found the pictures. I did a little research and I figured out they were yours. I thought it was over. And then I found your house. With a little help.”

         “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” demanded Oliver, his gun wavering, causing Natalie to move slightly backwards. “Don’t move!” he shouted. He was out of control. Natalie had caught him off guard and he knew it. At that moment, Natalie knew he had it in him to really pull that trigger almost thirty years after the kidnappings. That rage had never left him alone and now Natalie was facing it head on.

         “It doesn’t matter what that means. I’m here now and you’re screwed.”

         Oliver’s face contorted. “You got a lot of nerve, bitch. You’re the reason I died-to get away from all of you and all the questions.”

         Yeah, Natalie did have nerve. Enough to ask her own questions. “How did you do it?”

         “Easy trick with a body. I just slipped a watch on her wrist and pushed my car in a lake and my fate was sealed.” Oliver described it like he was reliving his glory days, like he was proud. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have to. But people were catching on. They all noticed I had been with the missing girls at some point so I needed to cover my tracks fast. But damn, I was sad it was all over.”

         “You’re sick,” Natalie spat. A warm drop of something slid down her temple. She tentatively raised a hand to it. She looked at the substance on her fingers. Blood. She was hurt worse than she thought. She kept talking anyway. “So, what? You just got a new identity and pretended like nothing ever happened?”

         “Exactly. And I would have been fine, too, living my life, but then that bullshit evidence about the camera came out and people came looking.”

         “What people?”

         “This girl. Some crazy teenager who thought she knew everything showed up on my doorstep about a year ago. She confronted me and thought she could stop me. I had to give it to her, she was a smart one. She figured me out with a little research and identity trail. She tracked me down, kind of like you. And do you know what I did to her?” He smiled.

         Natalie’s heart stopped. Could it even be possible?         

         “I killed her. Yep. I rolled her up and I tossed her body far away.”

         “What was her name?” Natalie asked, her blood beginning to boil. He didn’t answer at first. “What was her name?!” she asked again, shouting at Oliver even as his trigger finger tensed.

         “It took a little while but I got it out of her eventually.” He grinned.  “I think it was…Jasmine.”

         All Natalie could see was red. Tears rose in her eyes, overflowing and spilling out onto her cheeks. After all of the months of searching and hoping with everything inside her, after the heartbreak of not knowing, after questioning everything she knew about life, Natalie was never going to see her sister again. When Jasmine had left that night, she had never come back, but Natalie had never known why. And now she was gone, really gone. Dead.

         And it was his fault.

         Natalie stepped closer to Oliver, not really caring what he might have been holding in his hands. Oliver flicked the gun in the air. “Oh, no, sweetheart. You stay right there.” He grinned disgustingly. “You knew that little bitch, didn’t you?”

         “She was my sister, you dick!” Natalie shouted. “My sister!”

         “Then you can be together in death.” He cocked the gun. Licking his lips, he pressed on the trigger.

         The gun flew out of his hand and across the hall. “What the hell?” Oliver stared down at his hands stunned. A chill lay over the room. Natalie knew exactly what that meant. And if those spirits all along hadn’t been Oliver, they were leading Natalie to him because they had wanted her to stop the suffering. They had wanted Oliver to pay for what he had done to them-his victims. They had wanted Natalie to end it.

         End him. End the abuse. End it all.

         Natalie eyed the gun. But so did Oliver. At the same time, they both scrambled for it. Oliver got to it first but Natalie grabbed it in his hands, trying to pull it free. But she had the wrong end. Oliver used his strength to maneuver the gun until it pointed right at Natalie’s chest. Natalie realized just before he pulled the trigger and forced the gunpoint to her shoulder. A bang went off and Natalie fell to the ground, clutching her arm. The pain was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was as if someone had stuck a burning rod underneath her skin and twisted it around. The pain blinded her.  She couldn’t move or speak. She could just stare straight above her as images moved in and out of focus. Police sirens wailed outside along the streets but Natalie didn’t process it. She saw Oliver run past her and out of sight. She wanted to chase after him with everything she had but she just couldn’t. Her gaze floated out the front door to the lawn, scanning the area for Oliver’s daughter, but she couldn’t see her. She had either moved out of Natalie’s line of view or Natalie was too pained to see anything that far away. Then other shapes glided in. Blobs at first. But then they got closer. Her friends’ faces swarmed around her, tear stained and worried. Her mother was there, too. And someone else. There was a shape of a body standing over her. It was a girl with long light brown hair and a radiant smile. She looked like she was the happiest she’d ever been.

         Jasmine?

         She glowed in a whitish light. Five other girls glowing in the same light joined Jasmine. They all watched Natalie with sparkling eyes. Natalie’s last thought was that it was all over. She could finally achieve closure for her sister and all of the innocent girls. They could all find peace. Natalie could stop living in guilt and depression over her sister’s disappearance. Jasmine had known what her sister had known all along. She was the first to find the room, probably at the same stupid homecoming game. She had tried to turn him in and stop him, and even if she couldn’t in the end, it was okay. She hadn’t left her family and the sister that loved her for nothing.

         Natalie smiled and the light gave way to darkness.

          Natalie didn’t know where she was when she woke up. Her eyes strained against a strong bright light. Her head felt foggy. Her body was impossibly relaxed. She felt so peaceful. She was lying on something soft like a cloudy embrace. A dull beeping echoed in the distance. It slowly grew louder and louder. It was right in Natalie’s ear. She cringed and that’s when she felt the sudden pain like a slap in the face. She could feel a stinging stab in her left shoulder. The bright light faded out into a white tile ceiling. The cloud beneath her became a hospital bed, and the beeping became a heart monitor. Her heart monitor.

         Natalie peered around her bed. Hospital rooms were usually a pretty good size, but hers looked a whole lot smaller with all of the people sitting inside. On her left were her parents, sitting in the two hospital room armchairs. Her father was snoring, his chin on his chest. Her mother was also asleep but lying on Natalie’s stomach. Natalie could feel her mother’s heartbeat in rhythm with her own. It was comforting. On her right, Cassie, Thalia, and Maya piled on top of each other on the window sill. On Natalie’s nightstand were numerous cards and bouquets of flowers.  Floating up to the ceiling were a few “Get well!” balloons.

        “Mom, mom,” Natalie whispered, shaking a little to wake her mother up. Her mother stirred and raised her bleary eyes.

        “Natalie?” she asked. Her eyes widened. “Natalie!” she sighed, happily.

        “Hi, Mom,” greeted Natalie weakly.

        “How are you feeling?” Her mother looked her up and down pointedly

        “I’m fine.” Natalie rolled her eyes. She sucked in a breath as her shoulder and head flared up at the same time. “What happened?”

         “Oh, honey,” sighed her mother. “There’s something I have to tell you…”

         “Jasmine’s dead.” Her mother was taken aback. “I know. Oliver told me.”

         Her mother teared up, her lips pressing together like she was holding in a scream. “I’m your mother. I should be able to protect my children. But I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save either of you,” she whispered. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

         “Mom, you can’t think like that.” Natalie’s voice caught. “There was no way you could have stopped this. Jasmine chose to do this on her own, knowing what the consequences might be. And we know now that she didn’t leave us. She loved us, Mom. She loved you.”

         Her mother buried her regret and her tears subsided. “Well, I knew in my heart that she didn’t leave. All that time. I knew something must have happened to take her from us because she would never leave you. You were everything to her.”

         Natalie sighed. “What happened to...him?” She couldn’t imagine that he had gotten away. After everything, it wasn’t fair. It couldn’t all be for nothing. “Please tell me they got him.”

         Her mother half smiled. “They got him.” Natalie let out a long breath. “They found him in a ravine. I guess he fell as he was trying to get away. He apparently went into some kind of fit when they found him, apologizing for everything and confessing to every question the cops asked. He was acting like he’d seen a…” she couldn’t find the right word.

         “A ghost,” Natalie finished. She imagined Oliver’s victims terrifying him shitless and smirked.

         Her mother laughed. “I was going to say something more like the Grim Reaper, but yeah. Exactly.”

         Another thought surfaced in Natalie’s foggy brain. “And what happened to his daughter?”

         “What do you mean?” Natalie’s mother asked. “How do you know about that?” Her brows furrowed.       

         “His daughter-he was hurting her. I saved her. She went outside and I couldn’t find her.”

         Natalie’s mother took her daughter’s hand. “Honey, there was no one else in the house except Oliver.”

         Natalie’s grip on her mother’s hand tightened.

         “At least no one else alive,” her mother continued. “The police searched the house after Oliver took off and they found a girl’s body in the basement. They think it was his fourteen-year old daughter. They’re going to question him about it but the police think he kept her locked up there.”

         Natalie shook her head. “No, no, no. I saw her. She was right there,” her voice shook and she felt herself crying, becoming hysterical. “She was screaming, and scared, and I told her to ru-run…” she stammered before dissolving into tears.

         “Oliver said that you burst into his house and surprised him in his bedroom. That’s when he grabbed the gun.” Her mother stroked Natalie’s hair. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s okay, baby,” her mother coaxed.

         Natalie sucked in steady breaths and pieced together the events of the night in her head, trying to make sense of what her mother had told her. She knew that what she had seen had been real, at least to her. And if Oliver’s daughter was a ghost, it was her and her sister and all of his other victims who had tried to get Natalie out of the house and saved her before she could get shot and stopped Oliver in his tracks...all to end it. It was all finally over. Everything she had been through, including the gunshot for which she suffered in her hospital bed, was necessary to achieve something bigger than herself.

         Natalie glanced over at her friends slobbering over each other in their sleep and suddenly tried not to laugh.

        Her mother followed her eyes. “They’ve been here all night. They refused to leave your side for anything.”

        And then Natalie was suddenly trying not to cry again. “Thalia!” she called out. Thalia woke with a start and, like a domino effect, Cassie and Maya also jumped awake. They noticed Natalie was conscious and went right to her side. Cassie tackled her in a hug. Natalie returned it with one arm, trying not to make a face as Cassie accidentally brushed up against her bullet wound. Maya and Thalia hugged her, too, and Natalie was completely physically drained by the time her friends stepped back. Her drugs were some serious business.

         Cassie whistled when she saw Natalie’s head wound up close and bandaged. “Damn, girl, you’re gonna have one hell of a battle scar.” The girls laughed. Natalie’s father came to. He saw his daughter awake and sent a silent prayer to the heavens. He reached over and squeezed Natalie’s hand. She squeezed back. Natalie’s mother encouraged her husband to stand and leave the room with her to give the girls privacy. And then Natalie was alone with her friends.

         Maya’s eyes darted down and then up again. “Why didn’t you ask us to go with you, Nat?”

         Natalie shook her head. “I’m sorry, guys. I just...I didn’t want to put you in any danger.”

         Thalia scoffed. “Nat, that doesn’t matter. We would’ve come, anyway. It’s what we always do for each other in the end.” She breathed out. “You really scared us when we found you bleeding in that hallway.”

         “Yeah, about that, how did you guys find me, anyway?”

         “It turns out Life360 can be pretty useful after all,” Cassie joked. “Your mom called my house to offer us to sleepover at your place, but I told her you weren’t there. That’s when we tracked you down.”

         “Darn, I should have turned that shit off,” Natalie scolded herself sarcastically.

         “Yeah, you’re a huge idiot,” Cassie teased back.

         “Huge,” Maya emphasized, but her face was deadly serious.

         “I’m so sorry, Maya. Really. I’ll never do something like this again.”

         Maya’s eyes glistened but she didn’t say anything else. The emotions in the room ran high and Natalie did wonder how that night would affect everything in the long run. She had confidence, though, like a lingering hope that everything would change for the better.

         ”God, everything’s just been so awful lately,” said Thalia.

         “Yeah, but it’s okay,” Natalie assured them with a sense of clarity. “Because if it’s taught me anything, I know now that we’re not alone. That I’m not alone. I never have been and I don’t think I ever will be.” The words tumbled from her mouth and a weight lifted from her shoulders. “I was just so, I don’t know, broken and I couldn’t see it sooner. But now I know I don’t have to go through life on my own.” It was true. Natalie could finally understand that everything she had ever needed was right in front of her, with or without her sister’s presence, no matter how missed it would be.

         Cassie took her hand and grinned. “Duh.”