“WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING WEIRD?” JANELLE SAID AS SHE STOOD IN Stevie’s doorway. Stevie was still in bed, her phone alarm chirping, telling her that even though it was early Saturday morning, it was time to get up and shoot a video with Hayes. She wiped her eyes and looked at Janelle, who looked as perturbed as anyone can look while wearing baby-blue fleece pajamas covered in cat heads.
“This is what’s weird,” she said. She lifted up her arm, and hanging from her fist was an Ellingham lanyard with an ID dangling at the end. “Guess where it was?”
Stevie had no guess.
“Literally outside. On the path. Someone took my pass and then brought it back, but not even all the way to the building. They could have shoved it in the door or something. Instead they dropped it halfway up the path. Who does that?”
“Someone playing a prank?” Stevie said, rubbing at her short hair. “An asshole?”
“Definitely the last one,” Janelle said. “At least I have it back. Crisis averted.”
With that mystery resolved if not solved, Stevie got herself showered and dressed. The air was crisp, so Stevie put on her sweats and her Ellingham fleece. As she went into the common room, she was shocked to see David awake, in pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt from a surfing brand, sitting cross-legged on the purple sofa, hunkered over his computer.
“Are you working?” she said.
He looked up. His eyes were red, like he had not slept, and there was shade around his jawline. His curly hair stood on end. He looked tumbled and . . . attractive.
“I go here,” he said. “Remember?”
“Do you?” Stevie said coolly, walking to the kitchen. Had she just thought David was attractive? Could he tell? It was acceptable to have the thought, but not for him to know, and somehow, he would know.
She filled her aluminum Ellingham bottle with coffee and left the house quickly, even before Nate came down.
It was an aggressively pretty morning, as if the season wanted to show off before everything went to pieces and the trees got naked and everything died. The sky was big and blue. Stevie had a real sense of purpose and lift as she made her way over to the sunken garden. This felt like going to school, she thought, as she looked around Ellingham. Up early on a fresh Saturday morning, coffee in hand, to make a project. The energy of the tunnel was still with her.
The door to the sunken garden was open, and Stevie stepped inside. There was no one there yet, so she took a moment to sit with her coffee and look.
Stevie was well aware that this man-made lake was large, but when you saw it in person, saw this massive crater in the earth, it brought home just what Albert Ellingham was willing to do to make his family happy. His wife loved to swim, so the ground was leveled, the rock blown away. When he got a tip suggesting that his wife and daughter or some evidence rested at the bottom, the lake was drained and dried and the earth scarred. And now, just the monuments remained—the statues that looked over the void, the observatory ridiculous on its little bump.
“Thanks for waiting,” said Nate, coming in from behind her.
“Sorry,” she said.
He was wearing cargo shorts, despite the fact that there was a little chill in the air, and a T-shirt that said MY OTHER CAR IS A DRAGON.
“You really love this stuff, don’t you?” he said, sitting down next to her on the damp grass. “It’s like you’re at murder Disney World.”
“Murder Disney World would be amazing.”
“That’s true,” he said. “I’d go to that too.”
“It’s just . . .” Stevie looked for the words. “I’ve seen so many pictures of this place. I’ve read all this stuff. It was like everything I had in my head is . . .”
She waved her hands helplessly in front of her. Luckily, Nate seemed to understand.
“Yeah,” Nate said. “I guess it would be like that if I could go somewhere in a book. I always wanted stories to be real, so I started writing my own. That seemed to make it more real. I’m kind of jealous you get to see your thing. Gandalf isn’t coming for me.”
“Never say never,” Stevie said.
There was the modest sound of a golf cart coming, and Mark from maintenance drove in with their supplies, with Dash along for the ride. Hayes and Maris arrived last, and though they weren’t holding hands, they walked close enough together and looked at each other in a way that made it clear that they had not parted ways right away last night.
There was a lot of moving things that day, lots of running and fetching. Janelle’s beloved poles were set into stands on which lights were attached. The ramp was placed into the sunken garden to create a place from which Hayes could row his imaginary boat. There was a generator to power the lights and the fog machines, which required lots of positioning and testing. Then the tripods were set, lights focused. It took hours, and it was boring. Nate and Stevie had little to do but obey commands to hold things and move things and get things. As Stevie and Nate went from the garden to the costume closet and back again, Stevie noted that Hayes didn’t seem to be doing a lot of running or holding or moving. He sat on a stone bench most of the time, looking at his computer. Stevie thought he was running his lines. The lines were all his—this was a monologue. The rest of the dialogue would be recorded separately and put on top as narration, so there was a lot to know. When she did a quick pass behind him, she saw he was looking at pictures and replying to messages.
While the ramp was being positioned for the fifth time, Stevie noticed that they had been joined by someone new. Germaine Batt had slipped in through the gate and was floating around and heading in Hayes’s direction. Stevie wondered how this would play out, considering that Germaine had taken footage of Hayes the other night without his knowledge and posted it. But he seemed to welcome Germaine and even posed for some pictures. Stevie also noted that he made himself look very busy in those pictures.
There was a short lunch break, during which Hayes disappeared for a bit back to Minerva to put on his makeup. When everything was finally in place, hours later, he was nowhere to be found.
“Where the hell did he go?” Dash asked, looking around. “Stevie, can you find him?”
Stevie had been sitting on her bag, trying to get enough of a signal on her phone to download the latest episode of her new favorite true crime podcast, Speaking of Murder.
“Oh,” she said, getting up, “yeah. Sure.”
She wandered around the empty lake, around the edges of the garden. She heard voices coming from the folly by the back wall. She approached and heard a female voice, an angry one at that.
“You’re so full of shit, Hayes,” it said. “You owe me.”
“And I’ll give it to you,” Hayes replied.
“That’s what you said before.”
“Because I will.”
Stevie remained very still for a moment and listened.
“You think people don’t know?” the unknown person said, her voice dripping with contempt.
“Know what, Gretchen?” Hayes said.
Gretchen. The girl with the hair. The queenly one.
“Oh, please. You’re going to pretend with me?”
“Why do you even care?” he said.
“Well, first, I’m never getting paid back. Let’s not pretend about that. You do this to everyone. To me. Probably to Beth. At least she knows now, thanks to that girl who did the video. What about these dumb SOBs who are out here doing your work right now?”
Dumb SOBs? Stevie was one of those dumb SOBs.
“Gretchen . . .” It came out as a long sigh.
“What if I tell that girl with the show all about it?”
“I guess you do what you need to do, Gretchen,” he said. “Or you could take a Xanax and give me a week or two.”
Before Stevie could move, Hayes came from around the back of the folly. It was clearly Hayes, but he was older. His hair was grayed and his face was full of lines and furrows. Maris had done a good job with the stage makeup.
“Hey, Stevie,” he said, a little louder than necessary.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s time.”
Hayes smiled a bit, and Stevie realized he thought she was providing him cover to get out of the conversation. Now that she had been labeled as a dumb SOB who was doing Hayes’s work for him, Stevie regarded his expression with a lot more suspicion.
“Thanks,” he said, his voice thickening and sweeting. Tupelo honey now.
Gretchen emerged as well. She saw Stevie, but, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, she did not observe. Stevie was a part of the landscape. She strode past without a word.
“Thanks,” Hayes said, dropping a slow arm over Stevie’s shoulders. “My ex. I mean, she broke up with me and she still seems mad about it. It’s strange. But you know how these things are.”
Stevie did not know how these things were, but she nodded.
“It’s tough,” she said.
Hayes nodded and slipped into a deeper, more comfortable smile. Hayes had a smile like a hammock—just get in, go to sleep, forget your troubles and cares.
A few things Stevie quickly learned that afternoon:
One, shooting the video involved a lot of not shooting the video, and standing around, and talking about doing things again, and then sometimes doing them again, and then running to the bathroom to find that things were just about where they were before.
Two, Hayes really could act. There was no denying him that.
Three, theatrical fog stank.
And four, it was possible for Stevie to tire of standing in the sunken garden and listen to the Ellingham kidnapping story being hashed over and over.
As the hours rolled on, she started to resent the fact that she had allowed Hayes to take Truly Devious as a subject. Sure, she had agreed, but there was something wrong about this, about making this weird little video. And though Hayes was doing a good enough job, and no matter how well the makeup was applied, he was still a seventeen-year-old guy playing a man in his late forties. This was Stevie’s thing, and something about the whole filming process felt sideways and wrong in a way she could not quite place.
By six, Maris said they’d probably gotten what they needed and Dash called a dinner break.
“We’ll eat and then we’ll come back and clean up,” he said.
“Tonight?” Nate replied. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”
Maris was helping Hayes wipe his face with a makeup remover cloth. When they were done, the group made their way out of the garden and to the dining hall. Stevie heard Nate’s stomach grumbling out loud.
As they reached the green, Hayes took a step back.
“You guys go ahead,” he said. “There’s something I forgot.”
“I’ll come,” Maris said.
“No, it’s cool,” he said, walking backward. “Go ahead and save me a place.”
Stevie and Nate didn’t have to be told twice.
It was strangely disconcerting to sit with a different group for dinner. Stevie worked her way through a plate of fried chicken and corn, watching across the room as some of her housemates reconfigured into groups. There was Janelle, taking a seat with some people from Vi’s building. Ellie sat with people Stevie had barely seen before. David never showed up at all. Nor did Hayes.
“I wonder what’s taking him so long?” Maris said, fidgeting in her seat. “He’s not answering his texts.”
“He’s probably on the phone,” Dash said, quickly eating some mashed potatoes.
Maris sat on her hands and glanced around the room, her gaze landing on Gretchen as she entered the dining hall. She ran her tongue over her teeth.
“I should go check,” she said.
“Maris, he’s coming,” Dash said. “He’s just doing something.”
“We should go back and move the ramp anyway.”
“Oh my God,” Dash said. “Fine. Just let me finish eating for a second?”
Gretchen turned ever so casually toward them, her gaze passing like a cloud overhead.
What had she and Hayes been talking about earlier? What did Hayes owe Gretchen? And did being associated with Hayes cause this kind of turmoil? Maris was nervous, all of them were working on something that really benefited Hayes, Gretchen was literally seeking some kind of retribution.
How did some people lead these kinds of lives?
Dinner was finished quickly, much to Nate’s chagrin, and the four of them—Maris, Dash, Stevie, and Nate—made their way back to the sunken garden.
It was now just coming on nightfall, the sky turning an electric blue with the trees standing out in stark relief. As they walked, Stevie heard someone approaching briskly, then turned to see Germaine Batt next to her.
“Where are you guys going?” she asked.
“To the sunken garden,” Nate said. “To move a ramp. Or something. I don’t know. I thought I just had to write.”
“Can I come?”
“You want to move a ramp?” Stevie said.
“It’s everyone’s dream,” Nate said, tugging his backpack higher on his shoulders. “Come to Ellingham Academy, move a ramp out of a hole in the dark.”
“I just want to see what you’re doing,” Germaine said.
“More Hayes news?” Stevie said.
“I got fifty thousand views on that last one.”
“That would be good on a tombstone,” Stevie said. “I got fifty thousand views on that last one.”
“Say what you want,” Germaine said, a frosty edge in her voice. “I honestly don’t care.”
When people say they honestly don’t care, they care. Germaine hadn’t done anything to Stevie. There was no reason to be spiky with her. Sure, it was a little unsavory what she was doing, but it didn’t seem to be hurting Hayes any. If anything, he literally had a new girlfriend running after him right now, in front of them, in the gathering dark.
“Sorry,” Stevie said. “Just kidding.”
“It’s fine,” Germaine replied crisply. It did not seem fine.
The last lightning bugs of the season were dancing over the lawn as they entered through the gate. The hole in the ground looked a bit more ominous in the dark, and the dirty glass of the observatory caught the rising moon. There were piles of poles, and folded tarps, and the ramp.
“Hayes?” Maris called.
No reply. An unseen bird rustled in the treetops overhead.
“Where is he?” Maris said.
“Who knows?” Dash said. “He’s probably on the phone somewhere and left us with this to clean up. Come on.”
“He’s got to be here somewhere,” Maris said. “Hayes!”
Her bright, operatic voice rang from end to end of the garden.
“You’ll figure this out fast,” Dash said, picking up some poles. “Hayes is never around to do the dishes.”
Maris shifted around, and for the first time, Stevie saw a first year like herself, someone who’d fallen for someone fast and was rapidly realizing things were not equal on both sides.
On their return home that evening, Nate went right to his room. Stevie decided to sit in the hammock chair in the common room and wait for Hayes to return. She could not fully explain why she did this. Maybe it was irritation. Maybe it had something to do with the tunnel. Had Hayes gone back there? Why had he turned like that and gone off on his own so deliberately?
Whatever the case, the hammock chair was a good place to sit and watch some episodes of Stormy Weather. She had earned them. The hours passed. Nine became ten, which was when Janelle returned, her face flushed.
“Hey,” she said, dropping to the floor by Stevie’s feet with a wide grin. “I was just doing some work with Vi. I saw you brought my poles back.”
“I’ll always have your pole,” Stevie said. “And working with Vi?”
“Studying,” said Janelle. “In the yurt.”
“Yurt studying?”
Janelle smacked Stevie’s shins playfully with the cord of her headphones.
“I’ll get my stuff,” Janelle said. “I’ll sit with you.”
Ten became ten thirty. Curfew was eleven, and there was no Hayes yet. Stevie began to think more about the tunnel. Hayes had clearly been in it before. Was it stable? It had been packed with dirt for many decades. It had been through all kinds of weather. It was locked. There were cracks. What if he’d gone down alone? What if it had gone down on his head?
No. Hayes was just being Hayes.
He wasn’t with Maris, though. Maybe he was with Gretchen?
It didn’t matter where he was. So why was she so anxious?
Because she had anxiety.
Pix also moved into the common room wearing a flowing pair of cotton pants and a black tank top showing off her muscular arms as she knitted away and watched a documentary on her computer. Ellie and David floated in at just before eleven, both grinning. They dropped onto the sofa together.
“So,” David said to Stevie, “exciting Saturday night?”
“What’s the matter?” Ellie said. “You look kind of freaked out.”
Before Stevie could reply, Pix pulled off her headphones and looked at the group.
“Anyone know where Hayes is?” she asked. “He’s about to be late.”
Everyone else replied in the negative. Stevie decided to look blank and ignore the question.
Pix pulled out her phone and started texting.
Stevie felt the electric zing of anxiety shoot down her arms. He would come in at any second. He was just being stupid. Don’t mention the tunnel. It would get everyone into trouble, probably, for no reason.
Eleven became eleven thirty.
“I hate calling Larry because people are late,” she said. “He’s not answering my texts. He didn’t tell anyone where he was?”
Stevie felt a vein beating in her forehead.
“Look,” Stevie said, “I don’t know where Hayes went—I don’t—but a couple nights ago? We went in the tunnel.”
David and Ellie jerked their heads up at this. Janelle had headphones on and did not hear.
“You need to be more specific,” Pix said. “There are a lot of tunnels.”
“The one under the sunken garden.”
“That one is filled in,” Pix said.
“Not anymore,” Stevie said. “It was fine, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe he went back there?”
“Are you kidding me?” Pix said. “Oh God.”
Ten minutes later, Larry was at the door of Minerva.
“Mark is already on his way to the tunnel,” he said to Pix. “Stevie, coat on. Come with me.”
A few minutes later, Stevie was out in the cold alongside Larry, their breath puffing out in front of them, their flashlights making long, dancing dots on the ground.
“I knew someone would try to get in there,” Larry said, gesturing for Stevie to get into the waiting golf cart. “I knew we should have welded it shut.”
Stevie wrapped her arms tight around herself as the cart rumbled down the path.
“At least you had the sense to tell us,” Larry said. “Jesus.”
“It was fine,” Stevie said, though her voice sounded small. “It seemed okay.”
“That thing isn’t sound,” Larry said. “It probably wasn’t sound when it was built and eighty years of burial couldn’t have helped. I told them to seal it. If he’s not in there, we’re going to go around to everywhere else you’ve been working, because I am going to find him and talk to him. Jesus, that tunnel . . .”
Stevie’s heart began to thud as they drove along. They met another other cart containing Mark and the nurse, Ms. Hix, as they drove alongside the garden wall, then around into the woods. They parked on the dirt maintenance road.
“Stay here,” Larry said to Stevie.
Mark hopped out of his cart with a hard hat on. Ms. Hix was wearing a large puffer coat and had a fluorescent-orange emergency bag over her shoulder. The three moved into the woods. Stevie huddled inside of her coat.
“Hatch is unlocked,” Larry said. It groaned as he pulled the door open. He started down the steps, shining his tactical flashlight into the space.
“Hayes?” he shouted. “Hayes, speak up if you’re in there!”
No reply.
“I’m going in,” he said to Mark. “Stand by.”
The dark crowded around Stevie. Her fingers started to go numb from the tips down. Alone, in this cart under the thick dome of trees, Stevie felt a creeping dread, the kind that comes from cold, untamed spaces and uninterrupted dark and trouble that had no name. There would be trouble tonight. How did they punish people at Ellingham? Why was the night so wide? What the hell lived in the trees and undergrowth that made that much rustling? Did bats attack the heads of people in golf carts?
A shout pierced her devolving thoughts. It was Larry.
“Mary! Mark, call 911! Tell them we need the chopper!”
The words hit her like a bolt. Ms. Hix hurried into the tunnel. Mark stepped into a clearing to make the call. Stevie got out of the cart, taking every step deliberately, slowly, as though the ground itself might give way, and moved toward the opening in the ground. She heard muffled voices now. They were deep inside the tunnel, and something was very wrong.
She didn’t have her big flashlight, but her phone was in her pocket, so she used that as a light. Carefully, with an ever-increasing pulse, she climbed down the steps. She could hear feverish conversation deep within—they were all the way down in the liquor room. Stevie stepped forward like she was walking into a dream, her tiny light guiding the way. She ignored everything Larry had said about the instability of the tunnel. Something was happening, and some force was pulling her in to face some grim unknown.
As she approached the door, she heard the nurse use the words unresponsive, cold, cyanotic. Larry turned and flashed his light on her as she approached.
“What happened?” Stevie heard herself ask.
Larry walked toward her. He did not run. You ran when you needed help. You walked when you had to start carefully containing the scene.
Larry’s powerful flashlight was pointed down, focused on something on the ground. A mass, unmoving. It took a moment for Stevie to register that the thing was Hayes, his feet toward the door. He was in a semi-fetal position, one leg outstretched. His skin was a purple blue.
“Stevie,” Larry said, blocking the door with his body.
But she had seen all she needed to. You know death when you see it.