Anima's Ghost: The Summer Before (Song Line Echoes, book 2)

Chapter 12: Hidden Things

For the next week or so, we check graves and nameplates on tombs, dig through old newspapers, the internet and microfiche. Gatsby and Rune talk to grave diggers and funeral directors, and Borden produces missing persons reports both formal and informal that go back to the founding of Fall River. And when none of that produced something that the boys didn't already know, we cast the net wider. We tracked down every Jane Doe and found every spot they died, even if we couldn't find out their names. But a few times we did, much to the gratitude of the police and many of the Jane Does' families.

At some point during that week, I stopped thinking about cutting. Stopped being so conscious of my knife digging into my hip when I sit down or pressing into the bottom of my foot inside my shoe. At some point, the chaos of the boys becomes as normal as the TV being on constantly at my dad's house was. And running my thumb down my arm, all the cuts have closed up, even the scabs healed over. Except for the claw marks from the ghost, too deep to heal so quickly.

"Evanore," Rune says, pulling me out of my own thoughts. I look up, but it's Gatsby that speaks.

"Lenore?"

"Quoth the raven," Borden says, even though he looks asleep sprawled out on the couch.

"Wrong poem," Spyro comments automatically, with the tone in his voice that tells me he's not actually paying attention to what's going on. I'm tempted to say something ridiculous to see if it'll register to his distracted mind, but before I can think of anything, Rune speaks again.

"No, not Lenore, not a raven, and not an alcoholic poet. A woman. A ghost, technically. Evanore Calliwell," Rune says.

"Wrong," Borden says. He still looks asleep.

"What?" Rune looks at him, confused.

"There is no Evanore Calliwell."

"How do you know?" I ask. A week ago, I wouldn't have had the nerve. Spyro glances at me. He turns away again before I can tell for sure, but I think he was smiling.

"Genealogy."

"That's Borden-speak for that's his area of study and his specialty. He's obsessed," Gatsby explains. Borden apparently doesn't appreciate some part of that explanation, because he moves for the first time in the hour since Spyro and I have been at the warehouse – to flip Gatsby off.

"You study family trees," Rune shakes his head. "Just because she's not on it doesn't mean she didn't exist."

"Evanore Calliwell was the daughter of Rupert and Lilian Calliwell, the original family who moved here. She disappeared when she was fifteen. Vanished without a trace. No one heard or saw anything, all of her belongings were left behind, and no one was ever suspected or convicted of the crime of abducting or killing her."

"Did anyone else go missing at that time?" Gatsby asks.

"No."

No one says anything for a minute. Gatsby paces back and forth across the warehouse. Finally, Rune says, "Gatsby, we're ghost hunters, not murder investigators."

"We are not ghost hunters, we are paranormal investigators," Gatsby argues. "And paranormal investigators are, occasionally, also murder investigators. And could you imagine? Anima spots the mystery ghost, gets her on film, we find out who she is and what happened to her! Huntington would fume for months, at least!"

"Your obsession with outdoing Huntington may be slightly unhealthy," Spyro says thoughtfully, coming over to hand me a book. I sit on top of a table as I take it, looking at the front cover. It's longer than it is tall, the cover real leather. There's a simple border pressed around the edges of the front cover, but that's all. No words or any other kind of decoration. Spyro leans back against the table as I flip open the front cover. The first page is a cover page, with "The Bridgewater Triangle" hand written in ink.