Page 57 of When Darkness Calls

I clear my throat, rolling my shoulders. “Come on. I’ll get the guys.”

He nods, leaning down to pick it up, and following me out of my room. Grayson pauses at the wooden bench, sitting the box lightly on the surface.

The door creaks as I poke my head outside, waving the others inside. “We’ve got the village.”

Nothing more needs to be said. Cade, Alex, Nick, and Keegan all stop in their tracks, faces falling into quiet somber expressions. One by one we file into the entry hall.

It feels much more crowded than it did before. But I suppose that’s the cost of time, the price of getting older, growing into the people we all are today.

No words are passed as we move through the motions that feel as though they have been ingrained into our beings, honed from repeated practice each Halloween and Christmas season. The innate art of placing Marlene Carver’s cherished holiday villages on their respected pedestal.

Cade and I take our places at the end, closest to the box. With shaking hands, he unfolds the top flaps, a small flurry of dust floats through the air, but it’s not that I notice. It’s the ever so faint rush of a bright floral scent flowing between us throughout the entry hall that has my vision going blurry. Cade looks to me, his own eyes glassy in the low light of the hall.

It’s been so, so long since I had smelled her perfume so clearly.

Alex and Nick work silently to take everything off the bench, stowed away in the hall closet. Cade passes the black, lacy runner to me and I lay it out, careful to ensure the spider-webbed edges hang just over the ledge.

Then Cade begins the slow task of unwrapping the set. As each is revealed from beneath the layers and layers of folded newspapers, he passes them along to each of the guys and me, all of us having designated pieces that have long since been assigned to us. And one by one we flip the tiny light switches on the bottoms and place them where they belong.

Cade places the largest piece right in the center of the bench—the dilapidated Town Hall. Then, Nick with the ghostly schoolhouse and ice cream parlor. Keegan with the haunted hospital and bookstore. Alex and the diner and firehouse. Grayson leans forward from behind me with the single haunted house, pumpkins on the stoop and boarded up windows and all.

Then it’s only me. Holding tight to the small figurines.

Right in front of the house, I lined them up, as if they themselves were one happy family.

A vampire.

A ghost.

A zombie.

A werewolf.

A monster.

A witch.

Slowly, I inch back, Cade’s arm tugging me close against him. There are soft sniffles within the hall, now illuminated in the multicolored glow of the village.

No one says anything. We don’t need to. She might not be here, but in a way she is. And that thought alone brings me a level of peace.

And as I feel the cool hand from behind me gently grasping my own, and Cade squeezing my shoulder, I know I’m not the only one that feels it too.

seventeen

Dani

Liz paces the small corner of my bedroom by my balcony. Her mouth is going a hundred million miles a minute, ranting about the pros and cons of Issac and if she’s an idiot, and whether we should order tacos or subs, and how she is thinking of dying her hair red.

The usual.

I’m half listening. I know. I’m a terrible friend. It’s not that I mean to. Honest. But my eyes keep finding their way outside, staring beyond the shadow of the tree house, hoping to see a semblance of movement.

I’ve seen glances of him. The man in the white mask. Why does he keep coming back?

He has captivated my attention fully. Am I worried? I mean, yeah. A little bit. He’s a random guy that has apparently been following me at least since the Founder’s Fest. Maybe even longer. He doesn’t approach though. Really, he doesn’t even come close to me or the house aside from the one night I ran outside looking for him.

The glimpses of him I have seen were between the trees lining the edge of the yard, the faint glow of streetlights illuminating the mask. Or across the street hidden by complete darkness.