Even after Liam returned from his house in fresh clothes, he remained mum on what he'd found in the town archives. Penelope asked about it as they climbed back into the SUV he only replied with, "You'll see." With a roll of her eyes, Penelope gave up and resigned herself to watching the trees go by out the passenger window as they drove out of the campground.
Liam drove them back to Ridgestone and then through, coming out the other side of town, heading towards the logging camp. As they passed the usual turn-off, Penelope saw that it was now marked with a strip of neon pink tape. Seeing it sent a shiver up her spine, even though she logically knew that it was just to lead officials to the right spot.
With Liam keeping a tight lip, Penelope let herself imagine what could possibly be so interesting about the land across the river. The day before, Liam had said there were houses out that way, that people lived in the area. But if there were people around, Penelope thought, that would make it less likely that the Raven was lurking in the woods, wouldn't it?
But that had been the direction the ravens had been leading her...
The SUV bumped, jolting Penelope out of her thoughts. They had reached what appeared to be a small village that both straddled the highway and ran alongside the river. Liam turned onto one of its side streets. It was a short street, only going another block further before cutting off and splitting into another road that ran right beside the river. Liam turned onto it, driving until the road jutted right and crossed the river with a simple wooden truss bridge. The SUV rumbled beneath them as Liam drove them over it. As Penelope looked out the window, she saw that the river below was wide and turgid. Its rocky banks stretched even wider, a remnant of the spring melts and heavy rains that made the water swell and overflow.
Once they were over the river, Penelope felt the atmosphere shift. They were getting closer. She sat up a little straighter and turned to look at Liam, expecting that he'd finally tell her what he learned... But before she could even open her mouth to ask, he shook his head. Nope. He still wasn't going to share his information. Penelope frowned at him and turned back to the window. She focussed on the woods outside her window a little more, like there might be a clue in their boughs, though they didn't really look any different from the forest around the rest of the area.
Beyond the bridge, Liam pulled off onto yet another road. It was paved but rough, pocked with potholes after the years of seasonal ground shifting. Liam slowed, careful to avoid the biggest holes in the pavement. This new road also ran somewhat parallel to the river, until they climbed a hill and the river beside them dropped out of sight.
The forest thinned a little, pushing back to make way for the well-spaced, open lawns of family homes. Penelope pressed her face closer to the glass. As Liam had said, the area looked well populated. But despite all the houses, there was something odd about it all that Penelope couldn't quite put her finger on. Once again she turned back to Liam. She didn't bother to attempt a question, she just raised her eyebrows.
Liam looked smug, smirking away in the driver's seat.
"Oh, just spit it out already!" she snapped.
He just shook his head with a chuckle. "Just a liiiittle longer," he said, really drawing out the word. He was enjoying this.
With a huff, Penelope crossed her arms and leaned back. He really wasn't going to tell her anything until he was good and ready.
Then something caught her eye. A stack of signs was affixed to a metal post and planted in the corner of one of the driveways.
PRIVATE PROPERTY
NO TRESPASSING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
Penelope frowned. Those serious signs seemed unnecessary in a place this quiet. She figured that maybe it was just one weird neighbour, but then she spotted the same signs again, at the foot of the next driveway. And the next...
There was something odd about this place.
Liam slowed to a stop, then pulled into one of the driveways, right next to the stack of angry signs. He put the SUV into park and then reclined into the driver's seat, his hands behind his head. It seemed Liam was finally ready to share what he learned.
"So?" Penelope pressed when Liam took too long to savour his moment. "Who lives out here?" She leaned forward to look at the house that sat at the end of the driveway. It was a simple rancher, sided in blue and white. It didn't look especially sinister, or even notable.
"That's the thing," Liam said, still smirking away. "No one lives out here."
Penelope whipped around to look at him. "What?" She turned back to the house. She realized now what was so weird about this place, these houses. It was too quiet. There were no people, no cars, no sign of life...
"How?"
"The houses and the land were all bought up," Liam explained, "years ago, by the local government. Apparently the plan was for some logging company to build some kind of lumber processing plant out here, so they bought the people out and everyone moved away."
Penelope's eyes widened. She turned back to the house. Looking at it with new eyes, she could now see the signs of decades of wear. The missing shingles. The peeled paint. The cracks in the windows.
"But then the plan fell through when the mill closed, but the government kept the land," Liam continued, "so no one ever moved back. They keep promising something would be built here but it never is, so now the houses sit like this."
"That seems like a waste," Penelope said, inspecting the house. Despite the wear, the flaws were small and the house looked shockingly well preserved.
"I guess," Liam said. "Too late now. They've been sitting here for too long. Plus, they're probably full of asbestos, so the cost of fixing them up is more than they're worth. Want to go exploring?"
After hearing the word asbestos, exploring didn't sound too appealing, but Liam was already hopping out of the truck. Penelope slipped off her seatbelt and went after him.
"If the house is full of asbestos," Penelope shouted after him as he marched up the front door, "doesn't that mean we should stay out?"
"Oh, I don't want to go inside," Liam said. He was leaning up close to the window in the door, cupping his hands around his eyes to get a better look into its shadowed interior. "Just look around. And didn't you say something about wanting to shoot some b-roll?"
Penelope tugged at a strand of her hair, twisting it around her finger. "Yeah, but..." B-roll was a sort of secondary footage she'd cut between the shots of her ghost hunts, to add atmosphere and context. This place did look like the perfect location to pick up some creepy footage, but there was something... unsettling about this place. She didn't want to stay long.
"Oh, c'mon," Liam said, giving her a look as if he could read her thoughts like they were written all over her face. Knowing her, they probably were. "Don't get spooked on me now. Are you a ghost hunter or not?"
"I'm not spooked," she shot back, unravelling her finger from her hair and standing up straighter. "I've been to places a thousand times creepier than some old subdivision."
"Then act like it," Liam said with a smirk. "We also need to be scoping these houses out for when we come back for the live stream." And with that, he hopped off the front step and began to head around the corner of the house.
Penelope scampered after him. She could abide being here, for a little longer, but she wasn't going to do it alone. She didn't want to get separated from Liam again.
As they walked along the side of the house, she peeked through the windows. Liam was right again; the house's interior looked much sadder than the exterior. Only a few pieces of furniture remained—a saggy couch and a broken chair—left in the previous owner's hurry to vacate. The ceilings were water-stained and speckled with what looked like black mold. Penelope understood now why no one had come back to claim these houses.
"Hold on!" she called to Liam, pulling her phone from her pocket. She rose up on her tip-toes and pointed her phone's camera through the window, trying her best to blindly point it through the window to get a few minutes of footage of the decaying insides.
Liam stopped in his tracks, then doubled back to stand alongside her. He gave a muffled laugh, then took her phone out of her hands. "Let me," he said. With his height, he didn't have to stretch to see through the window. "Munchkin," he muttered under his breath with a laugh.
"Not all of us can be huge freaks of nature," she replied with a huff, which only made him laugh again, but she didn't try and take her phone back. His height meant that the camera would stay steady, rather than wobbling all over the place as she teetered around on her tip-toes. Instead, she moved behind him, taking hold of his shoulders to pull herself up so she could peek over his shoulder and get a view of her phone screen. The scene looked pretty good, but...
"A little to the left," Penelope directed.
Liam did as she asked, shifting the camera so that the broken chair was in the left third of the frame.
"Perfect," Penelope said. "Now start the recording and hold that shot for a minute or two."
"Uh, s-sure," Liam said as he hit the 'record' button. His voice had suddenly lost his teasing bravado.
Penelope wondered why as she held tight to his shoulders. She couldn't see Liam's face, but his ears seemed a little red... Was she making him uncomfortable? But she didn't want to let go just yet, so as not to bump him and mess up the shot.
Two minutes passed quickly. "Got it," Liam said and hit the 'stop' button. Penelope finally let go of his shoulders as he lowered the camera from the window. When he turned around, his mischievous smile was back, like his little falter had never happened. He handed her phone back and said, "Let's keep looking around, okay?"
With a nod, Penelope tucked her phone back into her hoodie pocket and followed after Liam as he walked along the side of the house.
Instead of circling around to the back and looking in the windows there, Liam continued on, heading out into the tall grass of the house's backyard. The grass here reached Penelope's waist and she struggled to wade through it, even following after Liam's wake. Somehow it was even harder to fight through the long, wispy grass than it was to make her way through the forest undergrowth. It kept getting tangled around her ankles.
"W-Wait!" Penelope called after Liam as he got further and further away. "I can't go as fast as you!"
Liam paused and looked back at her. "What's that?"
"I don't have your freakishly long legs, so it's harder for me to walk through this," Penelope said, panting slightly as she caught up. "A-And I don't want to get separated again." Her face went hot as she admitted to her fears. The Raven seemed to target her when she was separated from other people, even if it wasn't by much, and she had promised her dad she would be safe.
Liam seemed to understand. "Here," he said, offering her his hand. His face went a little pink again. "It can't separate us if we're holding onto each other."
Penelope studied his hand for a quick moment before taking it. She hoped he was right.
Liam didn't say anything else as he turned back around, pulling Penelope along behind him. His pace slowed, too, so she didn't have to rush to keep up. His hand, like the rest of him, was large, easily engulfing hers. It was warm, too, and surprisingly soft, though she could still feel the remnants of calluses.
They walked in silence, the only sound the lush swish of grass along their legs and distant bird song. Penelope realized that, for the first time in a while, there was no telltale squawking of ravens. She wondered where they were...
They wandered over to the tree line before Liam took a left, leading Penelope through a gap in a sagging fence, into the backyard of another house.
This house was in much worse condition. It looked like the back half of the roof had collapsed and now there was moss and greenery growing through the hole.
"Let me know if you see something you want to film," Liam said as he paused.
"O-Oh right!," Penelope said, suddenly reminded of why she was here. She quickly dropped Liam's hand and dug her camera out of her hoodie pocket again, almost dropping it in her fluster. Holding it tight, she raised it up, pointing it at the ominous hole in the roof, and hit record.
As if to make up for losing her hand, Liam stepped closer so that her shoulder touched his arm, careful to keep their connection no matter what. Penelope couldn't help but smile, though she hoped the shake in her hand wouldn't ruin the shot. She decided to take a few photos too, just in case.
"Where's the river from here?" Penelope asked as she put her phone away again.
"Across the road," Liam said. "Though the cliff edge is a little further back on the properties as the road pulled back."
"Can we go see?" Penelope asked. "I want to see if I can spot that neon ribbon on this side." The thought of it made her heart stutter. She must have flinched because Liam looked down at her—he had felt it.
His jaw tensed like he was unsure, but after a moment he answered, "Sure."
He offered Penelope his hand again and she took it without hesitation. He led her back through the holey house's yard, towards the driveway. This yard was not quite as overgrown as the other, instead, it was pitted with patches of dirt, the grass suffocated by the long shadows cast by the trees of the encroaching forest. As they passed the house, Penelope looked back at the front of the house. To her surprise, from the front, it looked perfectly normal.
They made it to the end of the driveway and paused. Out of habit, Penelope looked left and right before stepping into the road, though there was no sign of other cars. Their own vehicle was still parked one house down. Penelope did a quick glance around, making note of their surroundings so that they could find their way back to it if they got lost. There were no street signs other than the metal trespass warnings, but there were half-rotted markers signifying the house's old owners. They had just left the HOLLAND house, and the one across the road was...
CHRISTENSEN.
Penelope gasped. "Gunnar used to live out here?" she said as they reached the sign. "I thought he was a Ridgestone boy, through and through."
"Huh?" Liam asked before he spotted the sign for himself. "Oh, yeah, no. I don't know. Lots of people live in the villages and subdivisions around here but go to school and work in Ridgestone."
"Oh," Penelope said. That made sense. The little village they had passed through didn't look big enough to have its own high school.
"Or it could've been one of his cousins or uncles or something," Liam continued with a shrug, jostling Penelope's hand in his as he did. "He has a big family. Who knows. I didn't look at who used to own the houses."
"Right," Penelope said, shaking her head. She felt a little silly about making a big deal out of it. "I guess it wasn't him, or his dad, then. I bet you have to live in Ridgestone to be mayor."
"Yeah," Liam said, giving her a weird look.
Penelope's face felt hot again. She had said too much. "I just heard that it was tradition for someone from Gunnar's family to be mayor of Ridgestone," she babbled as a coverup as if it had just been a random factoid she'd picked up around town.
Liam scoffed. "Yeah, tradition. It's a stupid tradition if you ask me. Decades of those dickheads in office all because his great-great-whoever-the-hell was the town's first mayor, so now everyone votes for him because it's tradition..." His words devolved into senseless grumbles.
"Yeah," Penelope agreed. "Stupid." She was just relieved that the subject of his hatred for Gunnar was a good distraction.
As they reached the house, Liam had finished his mumbling rant. Penelope was surprised to find a house this size out here. The other homes had been simple, built-from-a-box ranchers from the sixties. This one was at least twice the size and more than a little ostentatious. It was three stories with a large porch that wrapped around the perimeter and little dormers set into the roof. In its heyday, it would've been a beautiful house, a true standout from the others, but now its roof sagged in the middle and the porch leaned inwards at a dangerous angle. In the end they were all equal, rotting and forgotten.
"The river is this way," Liam said, pulling Penelope away from the house. He was headed to the forest that loomed behind the house. Penelope was surprised to find that the house didn't have much of a backyard, which seemed odd for a house so grand. She guessed that was because the cliff and the river were closer than she thought. The forest didn't seem that thick. She could see slivers of sunset through the trees...
Liam pulled her down an old path that cut through the trees. The path was overgrown with grass, but the trees hadn't yet filled it in, so it was clear enough. They followed it expecting that it'd lead them out to the river, but instead, it ended in a small clearing. They looked around, seeing if they could find another path that led off, but it was hard to see anything through the long grass.
But then, in the shadow of the trees, something caught Penelope's eye.
"What is that?" she asked, raising her free hand to point.
Liam turned in the direction her arm was raised. "Uh... I don't know. Some kind of shed?"
If Liam was right, it would've been a big shed. It was a long building, built out of split logs with a sharply angled roof and two blocky additions tacked on to the front and back. The windows along the walls were all boarded up, but there were small slit-sized windows along the roof. There was only a single door affixed to the front and trash and tires and twisted bits of scrap metal were piled up along the side.
"That doesn't look like a shed," Penelope said. "It looks... old."
It did. The logs were weathered, much more worn than the house out front despite its shelter in the trees. And the windows gave it the appearance of a cabin, but its length was far too long for some old holiday getaway.
"Do... Do you want to take some video of it?" Liam asked.
Penelope jolted. She had been so focussed on the building that she hadn't realized that she had zoned out. "Yeah, I do."
"Okay, then, hurry up," Liam said, shifting uncomfortably. "I want to head back to the car after. I don't think we can make it to the river today."
As he said it, Penelope realized they were losing light—and fast. The sky had turned a lovely shade of pink, but it wouldn't last. Liam was right; there wouldn't be enough time to get to the river before it got dark and dangerous to navigate the woods.
But she wasn't quite ready to leave just yet. There was something compelling about this strange outbuilding, something that drew her in...
"I want to get closer," Penelope said, now the one pulling Liam through the grass. She stopped when they were only a few feet away. Releasing Liam's hand, she grabbed her phone and pointed it up at an extreme angle, so the perspective of the roof and trees overhead distorted like they were pulling together at a point. She hit 'record' and panned the camera slowly—
"Wait," Liam hissed, pulling close to Penelope and grabbing her arm. "Did you hear that?"
Chills went up Penelope's arm despite the warmth of Liam's hand. "Hear what?" she whispered back.
Liam crouched down so his eyes were level with hers. "Voices."
Penelope blinked but pressed her lips together to keep as quiet as possible and listened. At first, all she heard was the rustling of the wind in leaves and grass, but then...
Yes. She heard it.
There were voices coming from inside.