Page 2 of The Nightmare's Kiss

“I thought so, too. So I suggested to his mother that you two should have coffee sometime, talk about your options around here. Maybe Ash Valley isn’t the dead end you think it is.”

She beams at me, clearly pleased with herself for the idea, and I force a half-smile. I can’t say no to her when she’s looking at me like that, so I mumble a vague assent, even though I have no plans to see Ethan, if I can help it.

Thankfully, we reach the car and conversation dwindles as my dad and I heave my luggage into the trunk of his beat-up old Civic. I slide into the backseat while they take the front. It’s hot enough to make me wince—and I remember just in time not to touch the searing metal of my seatbelt after it’s been sitting in the sun.A nice Arizonan welcome, I think, as I carefully finagle it without burning myself.

After a few minutes of driving, I lean my forehead against the window and tune out the sound of my parents’ cheerful bickering about what to make for dinner. I watch familiar roads and buildings rush past, sprawling expanses of desert full of prickly cacti and not much else, and am struck by a mingled feeling of nostalgia and despair. Everything about Ash Valley looks exactly as I remember it, like a snapshot of my memories. But I have changed too much to feel like I belong in this picture, if I ever did at all.

My childhood home, like the rest of the town, looks exactly the same as it’s always been. My dad boasts about the repairs to the fence and the fresh coat of white on the door, and I make some agreeable noises, but honestly the whole thing looks the same way I remember it. But once I step inside, a strange feeling washes over me. Everything looks familiar, cozy in a southwestern cottage kind of way. My mom has a taste for color and desert hues, all dusty rose and ochre with pops of turquoise, along with some frankly dizzying geometric patterns.

Yet the house seems smaller than I remember. Like the ceiling is too low, the doorways too small, the walls slowly closing in on me. It gives me a weird sense of vertigo, like I’m dreaming and just realized everything is a little bit wrong, but I shake it off as I remove my shoes and head inward. The floorboards all creak in the same places, a pattern I memorized as a teenager with a tendency to sneak out.

My dad makes us a delicious dinner of chicken and dumplings, and I’m delighted to discover that he now wears an apron my mother bought him last Christmas readingKing of the Kitchenwhile cooking. He lets me take a picture of him wearing it, spatula in hand and lips pressed into an unamused line, but only after I swear up and down that it will not end up on any of my social media pages. Dinner is nice, and comforting after the stress of the last few months. Still, I’m already craving the privacy and space I became used to while I was away. I’m grateful when my parents start yawning almost immediately after eating and bid me goodnight.

I step out onto the back porch to take a few guilty but soothing hits off my vape. As I blow out mouthfuls of pineapple-flavored vapor, I look out over the sleepy town. Ash Valley couldn’t be more different than LA. It’s not even ten p.m., but already most of the lights are out. People and businesses shut their doors, calling an early night in anticipation of an early morning.

Except for one building on the outskirts of town. A boxy silhouette glowing in the darkness.

There have always been rumors about the Facility. People agree it popped up on the outskirts of Ash Valley sometime in the fifties, and most assumed it was a government outfit relevant to the Cold War effort. That’s about all people can manage to agree on, though. Everyone has a different idea about what’s really going on behind those electrified fences and windowless concrete walls. Some think it’s a secret military prison or a testing site for new weapons. Others say MK-Ultra, or a psy-op training facility, or another government program.

Each potential explanation is more ludicrous than the last. If you ask me, the place is probably far less interesting than rumors would suggest. It’s certainly something classified, given the fact that it’s still standing decades after the Cold War’s end and security has only grown tighter, but I’d bet it’s nothing more interesting than physical copies of old government documents, or nuclear waste, or something like that.

Either way, the Facility is a constant presence. Ash Valley is a small town, and it’s the biggest building around, a conspicuous gray block amid the dusty plains and cattle farms. But growing up here, it became easy to forget about the Facility eventually. It was just a fact of life, an ever-present background image, like the mountain peaks that mark the horizon. Some nights there would be rumors of strange noises from the building, or helicopters circling overhead, or lines of armored trucks rolling through the gate, and the rumors would kick up again. But the excitement always died down, life went on, and people forgot.

But now, it’s like a beacon in the otherwise dark town. I can’t take my eyes off it. I take a few more comforting puffs of vapor and then dig my phone out of my pocket.

“Mara!” My friend Amy answers on the third ring, as expected.

I grin at the sound of her voice, though there’s also a bittersweet tug in my chest. “Hi, hi. How’s it going?”

“Good, busy. How about you? How’s the small-town life?”

“Ugh, you know.” I grimace, not too eager to get into the details. She makes some sympathetic noises and doesn’t pry, which I love her for. “Evenbetterwith the news I got upon landing… Apparently, my ex is back in town too.”

“Theex?” she asks, well aware of my history with Ethan after some late-night, drunken heart-to-hearts. There have been other boyfriends and girlfriends over the years, but none of them cut me as deeply as Ethan did.

I take another nervous puff of my vape. “Yup. My mom is pushing for me to meet up with him.”

“I’m guessing she doesn’t know the details.”

I sigh, sinking into a rocking chair. It’s surprisingly comfortable. “It’s not easy to talk about.”

“No, yeah, I totally get it.”

I chew my lip, staring out at the city. At the Facility, specifically. I can’t stop thinking about my mom’s mention of him working there. I wonder what he’s doing behind those walls. “Is it crazy that I’m thinking about it? Meeting up with him?”

“For what? Closure?”

I hesitate.Isthere a part of me that wants that, or needs it? Not really. I feel like I got more closure from therapy than I’d ever get from meeting with him. I’m much more interested in learning about the Facility, but I can’t really explain that to her. A mysterious high-security building in the middle of the desert, and not even people who grew up here know exactly what goes on there—it’ll sound nuts to anyone who hasn’t lived in Ash Valley. It’s easier to tell a little white lie. “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t. But it’s up to you and what you think you can handle, babes.”

“Yeah…” I sigh out the word and sink further into the chair. “But, anyway, enough about my shitty life. Tell me about LA!”

As I had hoped, it doesn’t take more than that to get Amy chattering. She provides a welcome distraction from the ache of being so far away from her. I relax as I listen to her, making encouraging noises when appropriate and dragging out some lurid details of a recent sushi dinner.God, am I gonna miss good sushi.

Yet even as I try my best to follow my imagination to the bright lights and great food of Los Angeles, my eyes keep drifting, again and again, to the silhouette of the Facility.

And after I hang up, against my better judgment, I click on a phone contact I haven’t thought about texting in a very long time and shoot off a message:

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