Trespass Against Us, page 1
Dedication
For everyone chasing ghosts that won’t rest
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One
Before
Two
Before
Three
Before
Four
Before
Five
Before
Six
Before
Seven
Before
Eight
Before
Nine
Before
Ten
Before
Eleven
Before
Twelve
Before
Thirteen
Before
Fourteen
Before
Fifteen
Before
Sixteen
Before
Seventeen
Before
Eighteen
Before
Nineteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ad
Books by Leon Kemp
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
Riley is being watched.
He’s felt it for at least half an hour now, the insidious crawling of unwelcome eyes along his spine, prickling every inch of his skin. It takes everything he has to ignore it, monotonously stabbing orders into his register and doling out coffee without blinking.
Riley is accustomed to staring. He has to be, looking the way he does. There’s a difference, however, between being stared at and being watched. He’s hoping if he ignores it for long enough, the latter might regress to merely being the former.
Unfortunately, his co-worker doesn’t take the hint.
“Hey,” Chantelle says as Riley hands her an empty cup, “I think you’ve got a fan over there.”
At two in the afternoon on a Wednesday, the store is dead. There are maybe two other customers lingering about, and the street outside is barren of pedestrians. With nobody and nothing to act as a distraction, it’s hard to play at ignorance, but Riley is nothing if not stubborn.
He doesn’t look up. The register buttons clack beneath his fingertips. “That’ll be three fifty,” he says to the businessman he’s serving. The man gives him a sweaty ten-dollar bill. Riley gives him the rustiest coins in the till in exchange. “Thank you for your patience.”
Chantelle waits for the man to walk away before continuing. “So, you wanna tell her that stalking the staff is against policy, or should I?”
Finally, Riley glances up. Chantelle’s staring unabashedly over his shoulder, not in the least concerned by the paper cup awaiting filling at her elbow. “Leave it be,” he says. “If she wants something, she knows where to find me.”
Chantelle makes a thoughtful noise. “I don’t know, doesn’t she seem familiar to you? I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
Against his better judgment, Riley looks.
It’s a woman. Dark skin, tightly coiled hair reddened like blood to match her lipstick. The dim cafe lights glint off her impractical sunglasses, a real movie-star-in-disguise vibe. Her black halter top shows off her toned arms, and when she catches Riley looking at her, she dips her sunglasses down her nose and smiles.
She does look familiar. Riley can’t place her for the life of him. Going by the way she’s looking at him, she doesn’t have the same problem.
Realization seems to hit Chantelle and she latches on to Riley’s sleeve, pulling frantically. “Oh my god,” she wheezes. “Riley, why didn’t you tell me you knew Jordan Jones?”
Riley can count the number of people he knows on one hand. The name rings a bell, though. “Who?”
Chantelle slaps at his arm hard enough to bruise. “Jordan Jones? As in Jordan Jones of Spirit Seekers?”
Riley’s heart plummets to his feet.
Used to be he could name every major ghost-hunting show on every network in America. These days, he does his best to stay out of paranormal chasing entirely. Too many associated triggers, as his government-mandated therapist would have said.
Jordan Jones, though? Spirit Seekers? You’d have to live under a rock to not have at least heard of them. They’d been up-and-comers when he was still obsessed with the scene; three years devoted to streaming their show independently on their own website. Right before he’d stopped following industry news, he’d heard a rumor that they’d been signed by Netflix. Looking at Jordan’s expensive glasses and Hollywood-glamour attitude, he can only assume that it had more than panned out for them.
“We’ve never met,” he says. “I don’t know the first thing about her.”
“Are you sure?” Chantelle hisses, fingernails biting into his skin. “Because it looks like she’s coming over here, and I don’t think it’s for me.”
Jordan slides smoothly out of her booth, approaching them before Riley can decide whether it’s worth it to retreat to the back room. She leans on the counter and says, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Nope,” Chantelle breathes, starstruck. “I mean, can we help you, Ms. Jones?”
She smiles again, the shiny whites of her teeth ghostly in the fluorescent lights. “I was just hoping for an espresso, if I could.”
The businessman Riley had served earlier—who’s been waiting for his drink for five minutes now—pointedly checks his watch.
Chantelle ignores him, fixated on Jordan. “Of course! For here or to go?”
“Well, that depends.” Jordan’s gaze slips to Riley. “I’d rather hoped I could borrow your colleague for a small chat, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“He would love to,” Chantelle says at the exact moment Riley blurts, “No thanks.”
Chantelle shoots him a look, but Jordan doesn’t seem fazed. “It wouldn’t take longer than a few minutes, I promise. I’ll have you back behind the counter before your boss even knows you’re gone.”
“I’m my boss today, actually,” Riley says. “That’ll be five fifty.”
One of Jordan’s perfectly plucked brows climbs. “For a single shot of espresso?”
“Sure.”
“Your board says it’s an even four bucks.”
“The board is wrong,” Riley says. “Six fifty please.”
Chantelle hisses his name, but Jordan merely laughs. She slips her wallet from her back pocket and drops a twenty on the counter. “Keep the change,” she says. “Consider it a gesture of goodwill.”
Riley doesn’t touch the bill. “I don’t need your money.”
“Are you sure?” Jordan asks. “What about twenty-five thousand dollars?”
Riley doesn’t blink. “That sounds like a very expensive coffee, even for us. If we’re charging prices like that, maybe you should be buying elsewhere.”
Jordan doesn’t take the bait. “Just hear me out, Mr. Fox. I can promise you won’t regret it.”
Riley doesn’t need to hear her out. From the second he realized who she was, he knew exactly what she’d come here for, and it wasn’t a fucking espresso.
He doesn’t say anything. Beside him, Chantelle maintains a death grip on his arm. If she’s hoping to bully him into agreement, she’ll have to try harder than that.
Jordan flashes him one more of her endless smiles and slips back to her booth.
“What,” Chantelle says, “the fuck was that about?”
Riley sighs. Chantelle is just that little bit younger than him—young enough that the gossip of the town from two years ago has probably blown right over her head. He liked that. It allowed him the pretense of anonymity, something he wasn’t always afforded these days.
People don’t often approach him in public. Not anymore. But Riley is well accustomed to being a public spectacle of pity—well-meaning glances from the corner of grim eyes, curious stares when they catch sight of his scars, his name tag, his apathy.
He’s out of practice with confrontation, but he supposes there’s no better time to relearn what was once second nature.
He takes Jordan’s twenty and drops the change in the tip jar. Then he slams the register closed, unties his apron, and says, “I’m taking my fifteen minutes, okay?”
“You can’t just— Oh, would you stop clicking your tongue? I’m getting to you!”
Riley passes by the businessman, ignoring the dirty look he shoots him as Chantelle finally starts on his latte.
Jordan’s booth is tucked into the corner, where nobody can rubberneck over the seat backs. The choice of it is so intentional it rankles Riley something fierce. He drops onto the edge of the seat across from Jordan, arms folded tightly over his chest. “All right. You have three minutes. Go.”
She slides a manila folder across the sticky tabletop toward him. When Riley doesn’t open it, she says, “I’m sure you know who I am, so let’s cut to the chase, Mr. Fox. My team and I have been given permission—finally—to investigate one of the most interesting paranormal cases in modern memory.”
Riley’s stomach turns at her words, at the impersonal ring of them, as if everything that happened to him and his friends is nothing more than prime-time entertainment. He stares at her. “Cases.”
To her credit, she seems to immediately realize her misstep. “We can call it whatever would make you the most comfortable, but the fact remains that an opportunity like this doesn’t come around every day, not even for people like me.”
“That’s nice,” Riley says.
“You can understand, I’m sure, why I had to approach you.”
“I wouldn’t call it approaching so much as staking out my workplace. Didn’t anybody ever tell you it was rude to stare?”
Brutally, Jordan says, “I have to believe that you’re quite used to staring at this point.”
Riley is. He doesn’t look in mirrors much anymore, but he feels his scars every time he speaks, the unkind pull of them over his cheek, across his mouth. The burn of them on cold nights.
“Is this how you want to win me over?” Riley says. “By reminding me of the worst thing that ever happened to me?”
Jordan reaches out. Her nails tap on the folder, a stuttering rhythm like footsteps in the dark. “Open the file, Mr. Fox.”
Riley doesn’t blink. “No.”
“I think you would agree that twenty-five thousand dollars for one night of your life is a generous offer.”
“And I think you’re well aware that most of us have made our stance quite clear by now,” Riley says. “We just want to be left alone.”
“Interesting you say that,” Jordan says, “because Miss Cho disagrees.”
Riley is caught off guard. “What?”
Sensing an opening, she continues, “I talked to Miss Cho before reaching out to you. She was quite amenable to our terms. Providing, of course, that you agreed to the proposition too.”
Riley opens his mouth. He can’t think of what to say. He closes it again.
Jordan pushes the folder nearer to him. Kinder this time, she repeats, “Open the file, Riley.”
Trepidation eating at his heart, Riley does. What he finds inside does not surprise him, but it still steals his breath like a gut punch.
It’s been two years since he last saw Dominic House, but the photo in front of him burns the passage of time away in a moment. The main building sits atop its hill, a sentry over the woods that surround it. Stretched twice as long as it towers tall, it boasts shattered windows and cracked roof tiles. It’s a recent picture; Riley can tell by the police tape wilting across the rusted iron of the front gate, browned with age.
Behind the first building, a second one peeks out, riding the crest of the hill it calls home. The chapel’s cross pierces the sky, blackened at the edges but still standing, resilient and immovable.
Dominic House looms like a monolith; it looms like a god.
Riley’s fingers tremble against the paper. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, but not quick enough. The smug look that flickers across Jordan’s face tells him she saw it. “How did you even get permission for this?” Riley asks. “Last I heard they still considered it an active crime scene.”
“Actually, they officially designated it a cold case a month ago,” Jordan says. “And if you have the right connections, you can get anywhere.”
Riley barely hears the second part of her sentence, he’s so busy tripping over the first. “They— What?”
Jordan pauses in her spiel. “Oh. You didn’t know?”
“I— No.” Riley’s throat feels thick. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know.”
Jordan looks at him silently. Then she gets to her feet, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I can see that you need time to think about things,” she says. “My phone number is in the folder, as are all the details you need. I’ll be waiting to hear from you—sooner is better than later.”
Riley doesn’t look up. His gaze sticks on the photo of Dominic House. He stays quiet.
Jordan sighs. “It was good meeting you, Mr. Fox. I’ll speak with you soon.”
It’s a presumptuous thing to say, but Riley doesn’t correct her. She sweeps out of the booth and away. A moment later, there’s the tinkling of the bell at the door, and she’s gone.
She’d been right. The whole conversation had been three minutes, maybe less. In her absence, Riley feels unmoored. He’s a shipwreck, sinking fast, and solid land feels an entire ocean away.
Footsteps approach, and then Chantelle says, “So, what did she want?”
It takes effort, but Riley rips his gaze from the photo. The afterimage of it lingers behind his eyelids. “Nothing. It’s fine.”
He’s not quick enough to cover up the contents of the folder. Chantelle glances down at the picture in front of him and immediately pulls a face. “Oh, gross. That looks like something out of my nightmares.”
A laugh bubbles in Riley’s chest. He spreads his fingers over the photo, but even half-hidden, it stares back at him, a blemish beneath his skin.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, mine too.”
Before
“When you said we should take a road trip during summer break, this isn’t what I pictured.” Colton sounded as unimpressed as he looked, feet kicked up on Vee’s coffee table.
“What did you picture?” Ethan asked curiously. He had an arm tossed around Riley, the pair of them squeezed into an armchair meant for one. His free hand kept the laptop balanced precariously on Riley’s knee steady. Twice now, it’d nearly fallen, and both times, Ethan had been the one to save it. Two years of football had given him reflexes like a snake. Two years of no football and little exercise at all had given Riley no reflexes, period. “I mean,” Ethan continued, “you don’t even like long trips. You get carsick.”
Colton scowled, flushing. “I don’t know. The beach, maybe? You know I’ve lived in Maine my whole life, and I’ve never been to the coast. Surely they have ghost stories by the sea.”
“You’re barely going to manage an hour in the car without moaning about it, and you wanna take a trip across the state just to see the sea?” Riley asked skeptically.
“Not stories like this one,” Vee said, ignoring Riley. She patted the top of the TV beside her. The slideshow Riley had painstakingly prepared glimmered across the flat screen, incongruent with the fine china and chintz of her living room. “This is our chance at really getting something good. Aren’t you sick of posting the same generic bullshit over and over again? How many times can we really make a video sneaking through a cemetery or rambling about the Amityville house before it starts going stale?”
Riley might have put the largely unnecessary slideshow together, but Vee had been the spearhead behind all the carefully cited research, as if their friends were going to shoot them down if they slapped a Wiki link at the bottom of the page and called it a day.
To be fair, Colton looked like he might do it anyway, his sour face pinched. “I know this YouTube channel is your baby and all—”
“Don’t call it that,” Riley protested. “It’s more than just a ‘YouTube channel.’”
Colton continued as if he’d never been interrupted at all. “—but do we really have to waste our summer break on it?”
They’d wasted a lot more than summer break on it at this point. Ghost Hawks had been up and running for nearly six months, and they hadn’t even broken the coveted hundred-subscriber milestone Vee had optimistically set for them on launch day.
By now they’d filmed every haunted location around town from every possible angle and shared every urban legend or ghost story they could find from extensive trawling through Google.
Ghost Hawks had gone from being a fun pet project with Riley’s best friends born of a mutual curiosity for the paranormal to something that kept him awake at night, wondering how long it’d take before they found something real. Something more than a few cheap scares in basements and cemeteries or the morbid retelling of another person’s tragedy a whole country away.
So maybe his slideshow was unnecessary, and maybe Vee’s perfectly cited research was overkill, but if they ever wanted Ghost Hawks to be more than just a “YouTube channel,” as Colton had said, they needed to start venturing a little farther out than their own backyards.
“It’s an hour out of town,” Vee wheedled. “It’ll take two days out of your busy schedule, max.”
“You know that’s not true,” Colton said. “You’ll have us filming B-roll until all I dream about is the fucking scenery. Besides, who’s driving?”
Vee smiled sunnily, hands clasped together. “I’m glad you asked.”
Colton had been the first of them to turn sixteen and the only one to obtain his own wheels since. Something he was fond of reminding them at every available opportunity. The way Riley figured, if he was going to be unbearable about it, he might as well be unbearable in their favor.
