I should mention that Plainwood was relatively lax in their policies compared to those of the States. Home- and landowning policies relied solely on whether someone had a fulltime job or not. Due to severe lack of people-have, squatters' rights gave legal ownership of a house after one year. When asked about immigration policies, the common response would be a series of audible question marks. The mail system, though impossible to import or export outside of the state, was incredibly efficient internally, as it was just as easy and legal to mail something as it was simply to toss something onto someone’s porch without any stamp, return address, or means of tracking the sender.

*****

It was still pitch-black outside, but Matt Kennett was wide awake for a different reason. Across the street, straight out of Natalie’s window into his own, a red-purple glow beamed down into his closed eyes like a sunset on Venus.

Matt placed one toe of his slippers down from the porch. Down one end of the street: nothing. Down the other end: too dark to see. At least for now, nothing happened to anything, besides a small portion of his rock garden being trampled and misarranged. Bending down to put it back together, a strange presence loomed behind him. Whyever they were there, it was much more than to tickle the back of his neck.

Unfortunately, the blurry silhouette had been long gone before Matt entered a defensive stance, as it leapt off to hit more front porches like a Santa ninja. On the ground, the silhouette left him a small book. Matt picked the cover of and flipped to the back, then back to the front, and repeated that process several more times. On the cover was a strip of yellow tape with permanent marker reading Nathaniel Aberdeen’s Incomplete Biography of Revenants Anthology. Beneath was a photograph of a statue—the same shape as the one on Eileen’s house and the strange rock that wandered into his life. Something gave him another chill.

Without hesitation, he grabbed his phone. “Eileen!—oh grow up, it is morning—did you see a glow too? …Okay… be careful today. Somebody’s on the brink of an encounter.”

*****

Knooock knockknockknockknock knockknock knockknockknock. Knockknock knockknockknock. Knooockknock knooockknooockkooock knooock. Knockknooock. Knockknockknock knock knooockknockknooockknock knockknooockknock knock knooock. Knooockknooock knock knockknockknock knockknockknock knockknooock knooockknooockknock knock.

“Are you going to… just keep knocking on my opened door? I do have someplace to be.”

“Oh!” the scrappy Kyle Ling finally noticed someone standing at the door after several knocks or minutes. He gave her a quick greeting nod and continued to talk without punctuation. “Hey hey hey hey hey. Newbie, right? Right! Nice! I’m Kyle Ling. I’m super sorry about the other day, with the comically flailing my arms and jumping into a bush and all that, I saw a beetle on the sidewalk.” He continued to give a big toothy grin that subtly started to look down and grimace at her ungloved hand. “I couldn’t help but spy on Matt Kennett talking to you yesterday. Was he badgering you? Going on about the ‘spirits’ and whatnot?”

“Well, I mean—”

“Figures, it’s just like him to shove his opinions down the throat of a new immigrant. Ignore everything he says. Dude doesn’t know the difference between a spirit and a cheap ale. I’m Kyle Ling, by the way.” He smiled. Natalie confusedly smiled back. “I came here to informally invite you to the welcome party—date and venue TBD—sponsored by town hall, catered by the Snowstone Lodg. I—not to brag—am head caterer there. Me and my crew have been hard at work meticulously putting together trays of hors-d’oeuvres and coups d’état for everyone.”

“Isn’t it ‘crudités’?”

“…What? …No, raw veggies are gross. In any case, I just wanted to come over and apologize for the bad first impression I must have made that day. First impressions are often wrong, you know. Might I add you’re looking wonderful today. My daughter has the exact same hairstyle and—not to brag—she was asked out to Homecoming by Jaye Levine, who I’m told is the prettiest boy in Barbara Franco’s ninth-grade English class.”

Natalie decided that was a compliment and thus lightly blushed. “Th—”

“In any case, I just wanted to come over and—you mind if I come inside?—I just wanted to come over, say hey hey, and get to know you a bit more, as neighbors are wont to do.”

“You live on Riverside too?”

“God no! I can’t stand living in Plainwood as is.” He swiftly transitioned without acknowledging anything he had previously said. “So, tell me about yourself: How’s Plainwood? Make any friends? Got any hobbies? Can I interest you in a complimentary peppermint?”

“I mean, I like to… draw… could you stare at something other than my glove, please?”

“Oh, were my eyes wandering? I tend not to pay attention to myself—you know how it is. I do really recommend buying yourself a fresh one though. That one looks like it’s been through so much, like a bear attack.”

Natalie swallowed any annoyance that would have been brewing up externally. “I’d prefer not to get rid of them, they were a gift from a friend.”

“What a good friend, giving you clothes as a gift,” he said while squatting and snooping around her welcome mat. He picked up a shard of glass from the window, thoroughly examined it, and stuck it in his pocket. To the right, he picked up and showed a mysterious book laying face-up—a book that hadn’t been there until this morning.

“What did you say you like to do? Draw? Is this your sketchbook?”

Natalie didn’t know what he was talking about, but before Kyle got an answer from her, he flipped through it, and took a glance at the front cover. He arched an eyebrow and read the title out loud, as if forgetting he wasn’t the only person there.

“Nathaniel Aberdeen’s Incomplete Biography of Revenants Anthology,” he gasped for air after the title and continued rambling. “Interesting. A big reader, I see? Nice, I’ve always loved the idea of books. What’s it about?”

She clutched her fists but kept up a polite, calm demeanor, “I have no idea, I didn’t even know it was there.”

Right at that moment, Eileen was walking down her own porch to head to work, almost slipping on another brown leather-bound book laying on her porch. As she looked to the side and saw Nat on the porch with Kyle, her heart skipped. Eileen let out an inhuman involuntary squeaky noise made of equal parts fear and jealousy. Without hesitation, she sprung next door and grabbed Natalie by the wrist, wearing her Eileen smile while facing Kyle.

“Eileen?”

“Hi, Nat.” Her priorities in check, she quickly turned to face the man. “Kyle Ling! Funny seeing you here. Natalie and I were just about to take a stroll down to work, which if I remember correctly, is in the opposite direction from the place you work at.”

Kyle Ling stood there, shocked. All he could muster was, “You’re already friends with Eileen Pritchett?” Then he threw his arms up and walked off. “Screw it, you’re a lost cause!”

Natalie stepped back as they watched Kyle ramblin’ and amblin’ down the road. She tugged her arm to politely release Eileen’s grip on her. “What was that about?”

“What did he tell you?” Eileen turned the gravest she had been, on the brink of grabbing her by the collar of her shirt.

“I don’t know, he was just making small talk.”

“Figures.” She leaned in uncomfortably close. “Don’t ever talk to Kyle until you know him inside and out.”

“Ew.”

“I am being serious. Be your own person and not one of his… well, he calls them his UnderLings. You make one wrong move around him, he will never let you forget it. That’s what happened with Practical Patrick.” She looked back and thought. “You already got off on the wrong foot with Kyle, didn’t you?” She shook her head and dropped her whole lecture. “Well, you got one more foot, anyway. Last thing I want to do is scare you.” Eileen did a complete one-eighty and regained her sincere (enough) cheerful attitude. “Anyway, you wanna come walk with me to school?”

Natalie looked around with the same innocence as a kid in a classroom desperately trying not to get called out, inwardly hoping the teacher was talking to someone else. She meagerly pointed to herself in slight confusion and then realized, “Oh yeah, sure! Let me go back inside for a second, I have to use the bathroom.”

Eileen raised an eyebrow as soon as Nat closed the door. She took out her notebook from her bag, hid it behind her arm, and scribbled, Knows: Viv, Dawn, Morg, Pat?, Matt?, Kyle. on one page, and then in a big circle, Why them? She was about to pinch the book closed, but a small shard of glass dropped from the second story right in front of her feet. She looked up, reopened her book, and included on another page, spirit? demon? ghost? powers?

At the sound of the front door unclicking, Eileen threw her notepad back her bag and folded her hands behind her back, throwing on her unidentifiable smile. Nat picked up the Aberdeen book and placed it in her lunchbox before casually saying, “Ready?”

“Sure.”

The walk down the street to Monnellians Regional from the center of Riverside Road is not a long one, but it felt like a hike across the Appalachians. They had arrived at a social stalemate, a Mexican standoff with conversation starters instead of bullets. Neither ever liked being the first person to talk or break the silence; there was too much to take away and pick apart by the way a person started a conversation. Even I am guilty of starting a conversation by asking someone what their opinion was on the “grey with an E or an A” debate, and he still hasn’t talked to me since. The more Natalie thought about saying anything, her throat grew tighter, but the brown wooden sign for Cooks Drive grew bigger and bigger in the horizon, and Natalie finally grew the strength to break the ice, despite the heat pressing down in her head.

“So how have you been? I feel like so much of the attention has been on me lately, I haven’t even gotten a chance to get to know all of you.”

Eileen froze at the question. There had only been three other people in her life who would ask her how she was with an actual intention of knowing: one being Matt Kennett, the next being Dawn Fay, the third being her own reflection in the mirror followed by immense sobbing. Whether genuine or not, her answer would most always be the same gist.

“I am fine. Can’t complain. How about you?”

“I don’t know, I’m adjusting much better. I did have a bit of a nightmare last night, but I’m all good now.”

“Oh no, what was it about?”

Natalie blushed, wishing she could swallow her words back inside her mouth. “It’s nothing, it’s just… So it was the last day of the world, right? There was this huge meteor, and only a certain few could get blast off on a rocket to avoid it. It was me and all my New Jersey friends. We were all ready to go, except for me. I kept wanting to stay down and bide my time and get closure and everything. We were all having fries for dinner. I asked Moira if the meteor was gone, she said no. …Next thing I knew, we were all in space, and I was wondering when would be the best time to take my helmet off.”

Holy crap. “Feeling a bit homesick?” she asked in a caringly neutral tone.

Natalie shook her head, a confident smirk on her face. “Not at all.”

For a split second, Eileen’s smile became a genuine one, but she quickly segued. “Well, not to one-up you or anything, but I spent last night finishing my word scramble book, so…” she snickered.

“And how was that?”

“Exhilarating! There was even a boss fight: ‘hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia’!”

“Sounds fun.”

“Definitely one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had,” Eileen said in all earnesty.

Natalie mindlessly balanced herself on the curb of the sidewalk. “Hey, speaking of fun nights, one thing I do know about Plainwood is you guys take Halloween really seriously. Are you or any of your friends planning anything?”

Eileen cringed at Natalie’s pronunciation of Halloween. Plainwooders had always pronounced the final syllable as wain; something about saying ween sounded unsavory to her. “Not much. We all just stay at home in our costumes.”

“Aw that’s too bad. Not even the Everoak is doing anything?”

“I mean, Dawn’s still there for any of the residents, but otherwise, everything’s pretty much closed.”

“Seriously? Damn, I was looking forward to an authentic Plainwood Halloween. Everything we did in Jersey was… pretty sucky, I guess I’ll say.”

“Really?” Eileen laughed in surprise. “The home of the Jersey Devil and your Hallowe’ens are sucky? How do you protect yourselves, asking it politely not to attack you?”

“No no, I had other problems,” Natalie’s voice drastically lowered. “I haven’t had a lot of good Halloweens.”

Eileen compassionately neglected to ask a follow up. “Well, I guarantee whatever you’ve seen, Plainwood has had it worse.”

Natalie sank her head, hoping to have heard something a little more reassuring. Despite Eileen’s apathy, she had a keen sense of reading other people.

“Don’t know what to tell you. I mean, if you’re still bored that night, you can always hang by my house if you want.”

Natalie stopped in her tracks, and her whole body lit up. “Yes, I’d love to! Ever since I came here, I’ve been wanting to see what the hand house is all about.”

“You’ll be pleasantly disappointed,” she joked. “Just be sure to use the front door this time,” Eileen winked with a glas wen.