Page 27 of Some Kind of Haunted

“I’ve already got it,” Jack says in his gruff manner, a plastic first-aid box tucked under his arm and a washcloth in one hand.

Logan gives me a nudge and I lower myself onto the chair. Then both Logan and Harrison reach for the washcloth at the same time, and it almost looks like Jack is about to kneel down before me.

It might be the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me—which is why I’m still leaning toward psychotic-break dream. Because three men all look like they’re volunteering to be the one to wash up my feet, like they want to wash my feet—one who can’t kneel, one who doesn’t want to, and my brother.

Maybe it’s the my brother part of this equation that has me holding my hand out to Jack. After a strange pause, he hands me the washcloth. I don’t want to look at any of them, so I lift my leg up and rest my ankle on my knee, using the washcloth to clean myself up. One foot, then the next.

The soles of my feet are tender but once the blood is washed off, it’s not as bad as it looked. Jack sets some disinfectant and a small carton of bandages next to my chair, and in the suddenly tense silence, I take care of it all. I stick the bandages across the scrapes at the bottoms of my feet. They aren’t very deep, so that’s . . . good, I guess.

When I’m done and force myself to look back at the tableau of men before me, Harrison’s gaze is sharp and focused—on me. Logan is glaring at Jack, but Jack is glaring at the ceiling. And I am sitting in this chair with bandaged feet, in my yellow novelty pajamas illustrated with various hunks of cheese, wondering why this feels like an endless slog of a dream I’ll never wake up from.

“What exactly did Amelia tell you two about Midas?” Harrison asks us after the silence has stretched out so long I’m tempted to scream, just to see what might happen.

“I don’t know why you’re under the impression we ever spoke to Amelia,” Logan says flatly.

“We didn’t even know we had a grandmother before we found out about her will,” I add.

Both Jack and Harrison frown a little at this.

Harrison clears his throat. “But your father . . . ?”

“Never even told us he was from Iowa,” Logan finishes. “We don’t know anything about Amelia except that we inherited her shop. We thought our dad had gone no contact with any family members years ago, though it looks like he actually sent a lot of photographs here over the years. But the only thing we know about is that will.”

The old man laughs a bit, looking fondly off into the distance. “She was always so independent. Most women of her time would have been ashamed to be a single mother, but never Amelia. She never told a soul who your father’s father was and laughed when she was asked.”

“She was fantastic,” Jack says flatly, as if brooking no argument. Though no one is arguing.

But this is all new information. And Jack’s intense defense of the grandmother I never knew is oddly touching, but it’s like Logan and I are frozen. Because I’m not sure either one of us was prepared for the idea of a grandmother we had to be . . . a whole person. With a whole life, even before she left that will.

“I’m sure Amelia told me that your father somehow remembered in spite of it all,” Harrison is saying, his bushy eyebrows furrowing together.

“Remembered what?” Logan and I ask in unison, because we know our dad is a whole, real person, and he has never mentioned this place.

Then again, there are the photographs only he could have sent her, so what do we really know about our dad when it comes to Creeptown?

“Midas doesn’t let anyone leave without a price,” Harrison tells us quietly, as if those words make sense. “Sometimes Midas doesn’t let a person leave at all.”

I feel like those statements should not go unremarked, but I don’t know what to say. The fact that Jack hasn’t jumped in to correct his grandfather feels telling—but then I remind myself that none of this is happening. If this sweet old man wants to think the town is sentient, let him.

Maybe in this dream, it is.

Harrison looks particularly intent. His gaze moves from Logan to me and back again. “What does the word harbinger mean to you?”

“Very old poems I was forced to read in school,” I say.

“As in harbinger of doom?” Logan asks, ignoring me. “Feels apt, but no special meaning.”

Harrison makes a kind of humming noise. Jack scowls deeper. These reactions make me hunch lower in my chair. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to hear about doom.

Because despite my snide aside regarding my literary adventures through Paradise Lost in high school English class, something inside me reacts to the word harbinger.

Like it’s an awakening. An unfurling of something, hot and bright.

I don’t like it. I don’t want it.

“Midas isn’t like other towns,” Harrison tells us, carefully. “The Darlings aren’t like other families. I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it to you in a way you’ll believe if Amelia never warned you. I suppose she was trying to protect you. Or someone was.”

“Protect us from what?” Logan demands.