Page 32 of The Nightmare's Kiss

“Mm. I guess we don’t get too many new faces around here.” I wish I could argue that Ash Valley is a welcoming place, but I’m not so sure it’s the truth. Even now, I notice eyes lingering on Ezra and Belle. The latter especially seems hyperaware of it, nervously twirling a strand of hair around one finger and barely speaking a word since she’s arrived. “Especially because most of them work at the Facility, and people are a bit…superstitious about it.”

Both of them nod their understanding. Belle in a nervous sort of way, Ezra more of aneh, what can you do?

Truthfully, knowing what I do about the Facility, I can’t blame the locals for their trepidation. The place is even weirder than most of them likely suspect. If they knew about the monsters housed on the outskirts of their town… I suppress a little shudder at the thought. Ash Valley isn’t anentirelybackwards place, but I can’t say with complete confidence that they wouldn’t be willing to pick up some pitchforks and run the director and his ilk out of town, either. Nor that I could blame them for it.

“But you’re here with me, a born-and-bred Ash Valleyan,” I say encouragingly, meeting Belle’s eyes and offering a smile. “And, who knows, with me and Ethan working there, maybe we’ll finally start to build some bridges between the Facility and the local populace. Dr. Wright told me that was one of her goals.”

Belle seems heartened by that. Still, when the waitress comes by to take our orders—waffles for me, a veggie burger for Belle, and nearly bloody steak for Ezra, along with a margarita for each of us—it’s impossible to ignore that the employee only speaks directly to me throughout the interaction, even with Ezra being teeth-achingly polite.

I sigh when she’s gone, propping an elbow up on the table and resting my chin on my hand. “Oh, well. They’ll thaw out eventually. They’re not unfriendly, really, just a little skittish.”

“Can’t imagine the facility has the greatest track record of dealing with locals either,” Ezra says. “Especially with folks like Dr. Wright and the director acting as the face of the place.”

“God, can you imagine Dr. Wright eating at a place like this?” I ask, grinning at the image. Ezra lets out a hearty laugh, and Belle cracks a tiny smile.

The mood lightens from there, especially once the margaritas arrive. The glasses are almost the size of my head, and the bartender is known for a heavy pour. Belle is pink in the face after several sips.

“You have no idea how good it feels to hang out with people I haven’t known since grade school,” I say, heaving a sigh and taking another hearty swig of my drink. “That’s my least favorite thing about this place. Everyone already knows who I am. It feels like I grew up so much when I got out of here, but now that I’m back, it’d be so easy to fall back into old habits.”

“I get that,” Ezra says. “Though this place is hard to navigate as an outsider too. Especially since the nature of our work is so…isolating.”

I nod, sympathetic. It’s hard, holding that kind of a secret inside of you. Even now, there are blank spots in the conversation that we have to talk circles around, none of us quite sure how much we’re allowed to say about our work.

But after some time passes and our glasses empty, we slip into easy conversation. I learn that Belle is an aspiring marine biologist from Florida and that she was approached personally by Dr. Wright shortly after she graduated from college. Her thesis was on the possible existence of real mermaids, or a creature that inspired their folklore, which garnered Wright’s attention. It makes me oh-so-curious about what kind of subject Belle is working with—aremermaids real, after all?—but I bite my tongue, since I know that’s something she won’t be able to answer.

Ezra, on the other hand, hails from the Bay Area and was a cognitive science major. Rather than his schooling gathering the attention of the Facility, he attributes their job offer to his side hustle: a popular podcast about ghosts and hauntings. He, too, was approached directly. I have the sense that he’s caught glimpses of a wider range of the Facility’s creatures than Belle or I have, and it takes all my willpower not to beg for hints about what he’s seen there.

The whole thing makes me so curious about how they run things at the Facility. It seems that Dr. Wright and company track down well-educated folks with an interest in the paranormal or folklore and recruit them. It makes sense for their type of work; they need science backgrounds to study the natures of these creatures, but they also need open minds who are willing to expand their ideas of what reality entails.

It does make me wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes. That facility is huge, and it’s been around forever. Who knows what else they house there? Belle’s background hints at the existence of something like mermaids, and the Nightmare is even stranger, so how much folklore could be real? Vampires, shapeshifters, werewolves, ghosts… God only knows what’s real and what’s not at this point.

19

Chapter Nineteen

When I walk into work the next day, I stop short as I see a familiar, unwelcome face waiting in the lobby. Director Ramsey looks as stern as he did during my uncomfortable interrogation a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t seen him since then, so his presence now does not bode well. Am I in trouble? Did they discover my burner phone, or notice me using it on the security camera? I swallow hard and try to walk normally past him, but he looks up and catches my eye, and I lurch to a stop.

“Ms. Vance,” he says, his serious tone sending a flare of panic through me. “I’m going to observe your work today.”

“I… What? Observe? Today?” Oh God. I’m parroting him like an idiot. I snap my mouth shut before I can say anything stupid and bob my head up and down.

He follows me to room 13. I walk slowly, to stall and attempt to calm my racing heart before we’re trapped in a room together. He can’t have noticed what I’m doing, right? Surely, he would have called me out immediately or had security escort me right out. Have I been slacking on my day-to-day tasks? I don’t think so. He said they were pleased with my work last time I saw him, didn’t he? Well, he didn’t, but Dr. Wright did. Is he really going to sit and watch me all day while I run through boring instructions and take notes? It must be a waste of his time, observing the observers…

I try not to panic as I use my security card to open the room. I hold the door open for him and then stop awkwardly, realizing there’s only one chair in here.

“Oh, um, do you…?” I look at him, unsure what I’m even trying to say.

He stands with his back to the wall and folds his arms over his chest. “I’m fine right here,” he says.

I sit, feeling more awkward than ever. This is like having a teacher breathing down my neck while I was taking a test. I’m breaking into a cold sweat. God, why am I panicking? If he notices, he’llknowI have something to be guilty about. At least he showed up before I retrieved the burner phone from the bathroom; there’s no condemning evidence in the room with us. I just have to play it cool. It takes all of my effort to not let my eyes linger on Somnus through the observation panel, trying to silently warn him about what’s happening.

Come on, brain,cut it out, I argue with myself as I pick up today’s packet of instructions with trembling hands.

When I scan the first few items on the list, I relax. It doesn’t look any different than my normal day-to-day instructions. Maybe this isn’t the trap that it feels like, just a normal observation of my everyday work. It’s possible that the director does this for every new hire at some point. It doesn’t have to be a malicious visit, even though it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise to have him standing against the wall and watching me.

His eyes burn holes in the back of my head as I take a deep breath and start going through the daily tasks. I dutifully press buttons and record my notes on the Nightmare’s responses while the director stares at me. My hands are shaky, and I’m slower than usual in my effort not to make any stupid mistakes, but otherwise, things seem to be going fine.

Somnus—theNightmare, the subject, I remind myself, because it feels dangerous even to think his name here—performs his duty just like I am. His responses are boring, predictable, just like we’ve discussed while planning. I assume he must be puzzled why I’m not taking down the privacy screen and speaking to him like I normally do, but he goes along with me. Trusting me.

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