Page 41 of Middle of the Night

“Billy didn’t scream,” I say.

Detective Palmer nods, pleased at my deduction skills. “Nor did he yell for help or put up a fight. You didn’t hear anything. Your parents claimed not to have heard anything. No one on this cul-de-sac heard anything. Now why do you think that is?”

This time, no pause is needed for me to put it all together.

“Because Billy knew who it was.”

“And he willingly left the tent and followed them into the woods,” Detective Palmer says. “That’swhy I’m convinced it was someone who lived here and not some stranger who just happened to enter your yard and see a tent with two ten-year-old boys inside.”

I’m not as convinced. It’s not unreasonable to think that someone outside of Hemlock Circle was responsible. As for the lack of a scream or calling for help, maybe Billy was in shock when he was pulled from the tent. Or maybe he never woke up until he had been carried into the woods and it was too late.

“But this is a good neighborhood,” I say. “Filled with good people.”

“They might seem that way on the surface,” Detective Palmer says.“But when you’re in my line of work, you tend to see people for who they really are. Most of them are good, I’ll grant you that. Upstanding citizens who only want to do the right thing. I deal with the small percentage of people out there who don’t do the right thing. They hurt. They kill. Sometimes for reasons beyond comprehension. These kinds of folks? They’re definitely not good people.”

“What would you call them?”

For the first time since she appeared in my yard, Detective Cassandra Palmer looks deadly serious. “They’re monsters.”

Friday, July 15, 1994

10:32 a.m.

Billy doesn’t believe in monsters, but he does believe in ghosts.

Well, he wants to believe.

Hemostlybelieves.

He knows almost everything there is to know about them, the bulk of it gleaned from his favorite book, the gloriously namedThe Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks. Yet a single, persistent seed of doubt continues to exist. Because although the book is filled with illustrations and, yes, even actual photographs of ghosts, the only thing in Billy’s mind that would prove their existence beyond a doubt is to see one himself.

Billy assumes most boys his age—and even those a lot older—would be scared by the idea of seeing a ghost. Not him. Billy’s the opposite. He fearsnotseeing one, because then it means he’ll always slightly doubt their existence.

And he wants so desperately for them to be real.

Because if they are, he thinks he’ll feel less alone.

Other than Ethan, Billy doesn’t have many other friends. He guesses Russ Chen counts, even though he’s usually annoying. As doeshis brother, Andy. Also annoying. But that’s about it. In the past, Billy had tried to expand his circle of friends, mostly by trying to fit in. He pretended to be into baseball and video games and even begged his mom to buy him the same kind of clothes cool kids at school wore. Billabong board shorts and GAP tees and G-Shock watches. The only thing she agreed to was a pair of Air Jordans just like Ethan’s. But when Billy wore them to school, nothing changed. He was still seen as weird.

If he was noticed at all.

But then he foundThe Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks.He stumbled upon it one day in the school library while searching for a book about sharks because he needed to write a paper about them for science class. The size of a phone book, it was indeed giant. On the cover was an illustration of a blue-white entity hovering over a cemetery.

Staring at it, Billy felt a shiver of…something. It wasn’t fear, exactly. But it was close. Tremulous curiosity. Enough for him to want to put the book back on the shelf. Instead, he opened it, and in that moment his entire world opened as well. Flipping through the book, reading page after page of spirits with names like djinn and stafie, he realized he wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel seen. That the world was filled with entities who were here but invisible, present but ignored. In fact, there were enough of them to fill an entire book. A giant one.

Thus began his fascination with ghosts of all stripes. Eventually, he grew to love them. Even the scary ones that scream in the night or are rumored to steal souls. Billy understands that all they really want is to be seen, acknowledged, noticed.

Just like him.

He checked the book out of the library and took it home, careful to hide it from his mother, who wouldn’t approve. When he had toreturn it, he checked it out again. Then again. Then multiple times after that until, on the last day of school, Mrs. Charbrier, the school librarian, told him he could keep it.

“You’ve earned it,” she said, smiling as she pried the library sticker from the spine and slid the book across the checkout desk. “When someone shows a book this much love, they deserve a copy just for them.”

That was more than a year ago, and Billy’s parents still don’t know about his copy ofThe Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks. He’d like to keep it that way. His father doesn’t mind his obsession with ghosts. He even encourages it, going so far as to help him dress up as one for Halloween last year. But his mother would absolutely freak out if she found the book, which is why Billy takes great care to hide it. He moves it around every few days, shuffling it from the back of his underwear drawer to his desk to under the bed.

He knows she’s just concerned about him, but her concern can also be overbearing. She wouldn’t understand that he sees ghosts as, no pun intended, kindred spirits. That when he opensThe Giant Bookand sees illustrations of all these scary, fantastical, misunderstood spirits, it feels like they could be the friends he lacks.

At least, some of them could be. Billy completely understands that not every ghost, spirit, and spook mentioned in the book exists in real life. About half of them are from myth, movies, or other books by authors he’s still too young to read. Lovecraft and Poe and King.

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