Page 1 of An Inheritance of Monsters

Chapter1

Juno

My first thought upon sight of Duskwood Island’s dock was that we’d made a mistake in coming here.

The second was that it felt, a little ominously, like coming home.

“Are you getting this, Crispy?” I pulled my raincoat tighter around myself, but the ocean spray coming off the ferry’s bow was as cold as ice and ate right through the thin plastic and the fleece hoodie underneath, sinking into my bones.

Crispiano Hernandez,Spirit Squad’s lone camera crewman, already had his handheld recorder out and was leaning over the side of the ferry. “You bet your ass. This is perfect intro material.”

“It’s so creepy.” Sierra Maloney frowned at the dock of Duskwood Island, shivering in her handwoven wool caftan, blonde curls piled on her head and fingers covered with thin gold rings.

I’d tried to give her one of my coats, but she liked to look like the crunchy, bohemian medium she was—at least while on camera forSpirit Squad.

Even at the cost of freezing her ass off.

The thing waiting for us at the dock was creepy, for sure. Beyond the near-rotten planks that were overgrown with slick green algae and hundreds of barnacles, a twelve-foot-tall stone statue waited for us, glaring out into the bay.

Actually,statuemight not have been the right word. Carved of the native granite of the northeastern coastal town of Innsmouth, it looked more like… an idol.

An idol of swirling lines that made me dizzy to look at, with the suggestion of claws and octopus tentacles, but there was no mistaking the main event: a face screaming towards the bay, mouth gaping wide.

“Super welcoming of them.” I pulled out my phone and stood far enough back to snap several pictures without getting my phone soaked. Usually I’d have my thick black-covered notebook out, pencil in hand, sketching the material for later use—but that wasn’t happening on this ferry.

Crispy had already collected a ton of footage of me sitting in a coffee shop in Innsmouth, notebook out while I interviewed several locals, so it wasn’t a complete loss. I’d just bust out the Black Book, as our viewers liked to call it, when we got up to the mansion proper.

I tucked my phone away, squinting through another faceful of sea spray at the idol. “We’ll have to run the intro from here. That statue is too good to pass up.”

For some reason, I didn’t want to use the wordidolout loud.

It wasn’t like Crispy or Sierra would laugh at me, but as the host ofSpirit Squad, I had to maintain a certain level of detachedness behind the scenes.

No matter how deeply a place drew me in.

No matter if I saw pale spirits teeming around us while we were filming.

Because nobody else would see them, and the last thing I needed was either one of my crewmates deciding I was a liability. Not while Carson West, the host ofDeadspace, was sniffing around for the same Sci-Fi Network paranormal investigation show slot.

Duskwood Island, and the mysterious manor named for it, was going to net us that slot, taking us from our homegrown YouVid channel to an actual cable network.

I frowned at the idol. It had been mentioned by several Innsmouth residents last week, while I did our preliminary interviews that Crispy would cut into the final footage.

For six months I’d been balls-deep in research on Duskwood Island, but nothing compared to talking to the people who actually lived here and looked out over the bay every day, seeing the sliver of the island on the horizon.

They said it was an omen. One woman, who had refused to release her name or face for interviews but had agreed to chat over coffee, had told me that the fishermen of Innsmouth never looked northeast of the bay in the morning.

If the morning was clear enough, and they saw the statue looming on the island, they’d drown that very day.

I’d chewed my pencil, knowing Crispy would get on me about it later for ruining his footage, and asked if that wasn’t just an old folk tale.

The woman’s eyes had been cool, calm, and dead serious when she told me no. If it was a superstition, then it was one that was ingrained into the very fabric of Innsmouth society.

Even Sierra, who never missed an opportunity to interject about auras or apparitions, had been silent and focused on the interviewee.

I wasn’t one to laugh at superstitions. Hell, I’d seen proof of the afterworld my entire life.

But we were going to be on this island for an entire month, cut off from the world. That had been the owner’s stipulation; the ferry would only arrive in the event of an emergency.

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