“That didn’t take very long,” Noah remarked when he saw them coming down the stairs. The three spiderlings were spread out in the salt circle in front of him. “Did you find anything?”

  “Sort of.” Jesse quickly rehashed everything they found as he made his way over to the front door. When he tried the handle, he was unsurprised but still disappointed to find it locked. “I should’ve known.”

  “What the heck is wrong with this dude?” Alicia said, apparently forgetting her own warning about Waylor overhearing them. “Make up your mind if you want us to leave or not!”

  “Are we going to be stuck here forever?” Charlotte asked. “Because I don’t think mommy would like that.”

  “We’re not going to be stuck here. Jesse will think of some super clever and awesome way out of this for us, right Jess?” Noah flashed him a goofy grin which Jesse met with a glare. He was still sitting cross legged on the floor, so it was one of the rare times he could look down on the taller boy. He had no idea how he became the de facto leader of their little group, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with the rest of them doing their best to annoy him.

  “For now, let’s just regroup. Did you guys see anything suspicious while we were gone?”

  “No, it was boring,” Jeremy said. “Noah just spent the entire time explaining his and Alicia’s human costumes to us.”

  He raised an eyebrow at Noah, who just shrugged. Looks like he had taken the opportunity to run damage control for them. He’d have to thank him later, and also ask what exactly he had told them and if he should be worried.

  “We still haven’t found the trunk, so I think we should keep looking for that,” Siobhan said.

  “It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Alicia said. “Why else would Waylor tell us about it?”

  “Maybe he was lying?” Jeremy suggested.

  “That’s... actually possible.”

  “Do you think he’s trying to lure us somewhere so he could-” Noah slid his finger across his throat with hurk noise.

  “But then why tell us to get out?” Jesse crossed his arms. “We don’t have enough information yet. None of this is adding up.”

  “Look at you, going all Scooby-doo.” Siobhan grinned as she playfully nudged him with her elbow. “And here I thought you didn’t want to go investigating in the first place.”

  “Mommy says Scooby-doo is a bad show because none of the monsters are real,” Charlotte said. “They’re just humans pretending to be monsters to do bad things.”

  “She would say that,” Noah muttered.

  “And what would your mom say about a group of people pretending to be monsters to do good things?” Alicia asked her.

  All eight of her eyes furrowed in thought. “Uh, I dunno? That’s never happened before.”

  “Never? In the history of Gravewood?”

  “Nope,” Jeremy said. “No humans are allowed in Gravewood. Period.”

  “What about Dr. Rotbart?” Noah asked. “Isn’t he a human?”

  “Mom says he doesn’t count. He and his assistants are honor-ary monsters.” Charlotte sounded out the word, like she didn’t quite understand its meaning.

  “Yeah, he- wait what do you mean, assistants?”

  That part had piqued Jesse’s interest too, but before the spiderlings could answer, he heard soft music drifting from one of the other rooms on the first floor.

  “Do you hear that?” he whispered more to himself than anything. He went to investigate, crossing the salt barrier.

  He found the music coming from what looked to have once been a sitting room. A happy violin melody accompanied by crackling vocals sounded from the corner, and he pinpointed the source as an antique gramophone sitting on top of a slender end table, the only piece of furniture in the room not covered with a white sheet.

  “Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.

  Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.

  Bang, bang, bang-”

  BANG!

  A loud noise from behind made him whirl around. While he had been focused on the music, the door had slammed shut, leaving him completely alone in the room.

  Alone? Why didn’t the others follow me? Didn’t they hear the music? He tried to remember back a few seconds ago, but it was hard to think; his mind felt fuzzy, and the harder he thought, the further the memories slipped away from him.

  He grabbed the handle of the door only to find that it was locked.

  “And just where do you think you’re going, fledgling?”

  The familiar voice made him stiffen, his blood running cold. Slowly, he turned around to face Damien, who was lounging on one of the covered couches, acting as if he’d been there the whole time. His black leather jacket was a stark contrast against the white sheet, and he looked so out of place that it took Jesse a second to process what he was seeing.

  “Damien, how- w-what are you doing here?”

  He laughed, but it rang hollow. “You should have learned by now, I’m everywhere. I’m always around, just out of sight.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Damien got up and slowly, purposefully, stalked towards him, almost like a predator taking its time with its cornered prey. With a start, Jesse remembered that he was a predator, a vampire that feasted on human blood. And that would make him...

  “It means I’ve been watching you, ‘fledgling.’ But I really shouldn’t call you that anymore, since you’re not a fledgling now are you? You’re not even a vampire.”

  Jesse wanted to deny the accusation, to defend himself, but his voice caught in his throat. The vampire was close now, much too close. He pressed himself as far back against the door as he could, trying to feel with his hand where the knob was to test it again, only he couldn’t find it, and he didn’t dare take his eyes off of Damien to search for it. None of what was happening made any sense. What was he doing here? How did even get here? It shouldn’t have been possible, because... they were... he was...

  Where was he again?

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” he continued, oblivious to his mental struggle. “How you always avoid feeding, how weak you are? Give me a break. I had you pegged as a regular human from the moment we first met.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Jesse tried to look away, to avoid the blue eyes that seemed to pierce into his soul, but Damien’s hand shot out, wrapping around his jaw and forcing him to face him. His heart was pounding so hard against his chest he was certain Damien could hear it.

  It was a scenario ripped straight from his nightmares, something he dreaded every time he met with the vampire, and his next words only served to fuel Jesse’s fear.

  “Drop the act, Jesse. The only reason I played along with your little charade is because I thought it was funny. But if you’re so determined to be a vampire, how about I help you along?”

  He lunged forward, and Jesse just had time to squeeze his eyes shut as he felt a pair of fangs clamp down around his neck.

  On instinct, he kicked out in front of him, foot connecting with something solid. But it didn’t feel like a body. Confused, he opened his eyes to find himself standing on the front porch of a house, and in his daze, it took him several moments to recognize the familiar foyer he stepped into. It was his house, and he had just kicked open the front door.

  But where’s Damien? And how did I...

  These thoughts had only just begun to cross his mind when he heard his mom’s voice call from upstairs.

  “Jesse, is that you?”

  Even in his confused state, he couldn’t help but feel relieved at the sound of her voice. Finally, something that wasn’t trying to kill him.

  Footsteps echoed through the hallway as she came down the stairs, still dressed in scrubs from a late shift at the clinic. A bright smile graced her face, but when her eyes finally landed on Jesse standing in the foyer, it quickly fell. She froze in place, halting on the final step of the staircase.

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  “W-Who are you?” she stammered out. “Where is my son?”

  “Mom-” he tried, but she cut him off.

  “What are you?” she demanded. “What did you do with Jesse?”

  He took a step forward, wanting to comfort his mother, but she took a step back up the stairs, holding a hand up.

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  What was going on? What could possibly make her react like this, and to him no less? It was almost as if she thought he was a monster. A monster like...

  Oh, no.

  With a sinking feeling in his chest, he reached a shaking hand up to his neck where his fingers grazed across two puncture marks, just like the ones Damien had.

  “What are you?” his mom repeated.

  “Mom, I’m not- this isn’t-” His voice cracked as he struggled to explain himself, but even he didn’t know what was happening. He took another step forward, knees shaking so much they threatened to give out underneath him.

  She backed away again, but her foot slipped on the step behind her and she tripped, back landing on the stair with a hard thud, but she never once broke eye contact with him.

  Movement out of the corner of his eye grabbed his attention, he looked to his right to see his own reflection in one of the decorative mirrors that lined the hallway, confirming his worst fears.

  He almost didn’t even recognize himself as the monster in the mirror, what he saw couldn’t possibly be him. But there he was, his mouth covered in bright red blood that dripped from his razor-sharp fangs and onto his clothes in stark stains. There was a wild look in his eyes, like an animal cornered, about to make an attack. It was the same way he often imagined Damien looking after a fresh kill, only this time it was himself staring back at him.

  But wait a second, something’s not right. That thought tugged at the back of his mind as he struggled to remember what was going on, what he had been doing before he ended up here. He stared at his monstrous reflection before it hit him.

  “This isn’t real,” he said aloud.

  Vampires don’t have reflections. If he had really turned into one after Damien had attacked him, if Damien had even attacked him, he wouldn’t be able to see himself in the mirror. And now that he was thinking about it, he hadn’t felt anything at all when the vampire had bitten him; no pain or even discomfort. Almost as if he hadn’t really been there.

  With that realization, he felt his mind start to clear as the pieces fell into place. Damien had just been an illusion, and judging from the fact that he couldn’t remember how he got back home, everything here was an illusion as well.

  “Stay away from me!” the woman yelled from the stairs again.

  Including her. That should have been his first clue; if she really was Carmen Grahame, she would have been brandishing her tennis racket with a look of determination instead of cowering like this.

  “This isn’t real,” he repeated to himself, more firmly.

  With as much confidence as he could muster, he turned and marched out the front door. Immediately, he found himself on the second-floor hallway of the last house on River Street. He had no earthly idea how he got up here, but at the moment he was too relieved to care.

  He willed his heart rate to go back down to a normal level as he tried to get his bearings. The nightmare he just went through had to be the work of Joseph Waylor; creating horrific illusions to try to freak them out. The Abernathy’s hadn’t mentioned anything about ghosts having the power to make illusions, but it was the only explanation that made sense. What else could it be?

  But the thing that disturbed him the most was the scenarios themselves. It was as if Waylor had reached into his mind and plucked out some of his worst fears to bring to life, and it left him feeling vulnerable, like Waylor had opened him up and read him like a book.

  The sooner they got out of this house, the better.

  “Jesse.”

  He spun around, ready to kick out at another illusion, only to find Siobhan, stepping back with her hands raised in surrender.

  “It’s just me!”

  His shoulders slumped as the tension flooded out of him. “Please don’t scare me like that. Not while we’re being hunted down by a vengeful ghost.”

  “Sorry. I just saw you and felt so relieved. One minute we were all just talking and the next, I couldn’t find anyone, and when I went out searching for you, I-” she bit her lip.

  “You saw those messed up visions, too?” he guessed.

  She nodded, looking more shaken than he’d ever seen her. If his own experience was anything to go by, she must have also had her worst fears dragged out before her eyes.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me what you saw. Let’s just find the others and get out of here while we still can.”

  “But what about the trunk?”

  “Forget about it. It must have been some sort of trap to keep us here.”

  “Okay.” She hesitated. “Um, Jesse? Can I... hold your hand? You know, just as a precaution. I don’t want you to get lost again.”

  It was rare moment of vulnerability, to see Siobhan asking for reassurance from him. Normally, unlike him, she tried to hide any indication of fear. Whatever she saw, it must have spooked her more than she was letting on.

  “Alright.” He held out his hand and she clung to him, wrapping her fingers tightly around his. “Did you happen to see the others?”

  “No, you were the first person I ran into.”

  “Then they must still be around here, trapped in those illusions. We’d better find them, quickly.”

  As they started making their way through the hall, he felt a vibration in his pocket. Of course, how could he forget about his phone? Cursing himself for being so stupid, he pulled up the text messages and read them.

  Alicia: Are you guys okay? Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real, there’s some kind of magic or something going on making us see things.

  Noah: Already figured that one out. Where are you guys?

  Siobhan: im in the kitchen. thanks for the heads up alicia, u just saved my butt!

  He froze as he read the last message over again.

  “Jesse? Is something wrong?” Siobhan’s grip around his hand tightened even further, but it felt more like she was trying to crush his fingers than reassure herself. Her palm became colder, as if all of her body heat was being sapped away, and her skin turned hard and smooth. Like porcelain.

  Without looking back at her, he wrenched his hand free and made to shove her away from him, but she was too quick. His hands only met empty air as she easily skipped out of the way, laughing.

  Whirling around, he saw that where Siobhan had once been was now the missing doll from earlier, blinking up at him like any other living creature. Standing upright, she was only as tall as his waist, but the height difference meant nothing to her if her calm demeanor was anything to go by. Something told him he wasn’t looking at another illusion.

  He balled his fists to keep his hands from shaking. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Jesse.” Her voice matched her calm disposition but had a cheery edge to it that made his skin crawl, and when she smiled, her mouth pulled wider than the material of her face should have allowed. “I would worry less about what I want and more about what he wants.”

  She raised a delicate hand to point at something behind him, and he followed her gaze to where a familiar scarecrow stood at the end of the hallway, a gleaming scythe in hand.

  His breath caught as all at once, flashbacks to Halloween night flooded his mind, when an identical scarecrow had chased him through the corn maze. Only this time, he wasn’t in an open field with plenty of space to run. He was trapped.

  “No way...” He instinctively took a step back. Somewhere in his rational brain, he figured there was a chance that it was just another illusion. But it wasn’t one he was willing to take.

  The movement triggered the scarecrow, which lunged toward him with frightening speed, spurring him into action. He threw himself into the nearest room, slamming the door shut just as the scarecrow reached him. The crack of splintering wood echoed in his ears as the scythe buried itself into the other side of the door.

  Thwack, thwack... just a few more hits and the scarecrow would be upon him.

  “It’s not real,” he chanted to himself, sliding to the ground and hugging his knees tightly against his chest. “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.”

  “Jesse?” a small voice timidly spoke up, snapping him out of his trance. He looked down in surprise to see three spiders staring up at him.

  “Jeremy? Mason, Charlotte?”

  She nodded. “It’s us, mister Jesse. Are you okay?”

  “We were talking about Scooby-doo and then you all just got up suddenly and left,” Jeremy explained.

  “We didn’t know what to do. I wanted to stay in the circle like miss Alicia told us to-”

  “But I knew that you all were in trouble, so we came to help.”

  “We just... got up and left,” he repeated, more to himself than anything. He guessed he did do that, when he followed the music. He was having trouble keeping up, but he realized that must have been when the illusions started. Siobhan, Noah, and Alicia must have heard or seen something similar, causing them to split up.

  He also realized that he couldn’t hear anything out in the hallway. Standing up just enough to reach the door handle, he cracked it open a few centimeters to find that there was no sign of the scarecrow, or the doll. There wasn’t any sign of damage on the door either, confirming it had been just an illusion. Gently shutting it closed again, he turned back to the spiders.

  “And you three are really here?”

  Jeremy looked at him quizzically. “Of course we’re here, why wouldn’t we be?”

  He was inclined to believe them, but he had been fooled once already. Carefully, he reached down and patted Mason’s head with a single finger, brushing the soft spidery hair. He felt real, but so had Damien when he had wrapped a hand around his throat. Or, not Damien. Illusion Damien. He’d need to sort through his mixed thoughts about the vampire later, right now he’d just have to operate under the assumption the spiders were real.

  “Listen to me very closely,” he told the three of them. “The ghost haunting this house is lot more dangerous than we realized. He’s creating these illusions that mess with our heads.”

  “Ohhhh, so that’s what’s happening. We couldn’t see anything strange, so we didn’t understand where you were going.”

  Jesse blinked. “You didn’t see anything? No crazy visions at all?”

  “Nope!”

  “Mommy is a Jo-ro-gu-mo,” Charlotte explained, sounding out the word she’s clearly spent time practicing. “She’s immune to illusions, so that means we’re immune to illusions, too.”

  He’d never heard of a Jorogumo before, but it must have been whatever type of monster Cynthia was. He’d always figured she was just a giant spider-lady, but maybe there was more to her than he first realized.

  “Wait, so you three can’t be tricked by illusions?”

  “Nope!” Jeremy repeated cheerfully. “Isn’t that cool?”

  “Very,” he agreed. “And you were right, we do need your help.” A plan started forming in his mind.

  “Jeremy and Charlotte, I need you two to go find Siobhan and the others. Stick together, don’t let anyone out of your sight. When you find everyone, wait for me on the third-floor landing.”

  “What about Mason?”

  “He’s coming with me.” Jesse scooped up the youngest spider and placed him gently on his shoulder. “You’re going to protect me while I do something important. Can I trust you to do that?”

  He had taken a page out of Alicia’s book, and it wasn’t exactly a lie that the little spider would help keep him safe from any more illusions. Clearly, it worked, as Mason saluted at him, taking his new responsibility seriously.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We’re going to find that trunk.”

  Whatever was in that trunk, Joseph Waylor wanted it bad. Bad enough that he brought it up while disguised as Siobhan. Well, if he wanted it, he would have to stop playing games and get it from Jesse himself.