Page 64 of Grave Beginnings

“You’re still finding your feet. I’m not worried,” Angel said. Three more files popped up on my computer with notes from Angel. “Look over those when you have time, too. It’s almost time to quit for the day. The bulk of our office fills with NHVs after five. Our space is still ours.” He waved at our little room. “But they aren’t a quiet bunch.”

“Good to know,” I said, rubbing my eyes again. “This video stuff is exhausting.” Rewatching the same thing a dozen times to study different angles made my head hurt. I opened the one from the daycare.

The first video loaded: grainy security footage from outside the daycare. Parents tugged their kids along in a harried rush, the usual chaos of morning drop-offs. I watched it on five-times speed to get an overview.

A dozen notes, full of observation, were attached to the file. I read them after watching the footage twice. No red flags, but twice, my gut clenched, instinct screaming at me to see something. What?

One kid caught my attention. Pulled along by their parent, they walked stiffly, unlike the others who wriggled and skipped. One even yanked at their parent to hurry. Something about that stiff kid’s rigid posture made me rewatch. I zoomed in, slowing down the replay, leaning closer to the screen as if proximity would help me catch whatever my instincts cried out I was missing. But the camera’s angle was wrong, capturing only their backs as they disappeared inside.

Frustration simmered. I highlighted the segment and added a note, more for myself than anyone else. Maybe something in the later footage would explain this uneasy feeling. If I’d learned anything from the past week, it was to watch for shadows and how they moved when they shouldn’t. But if anything was off in the early morning hours of the daycare, I couldn’t find it.

The next video was from the interior reception area. The same routine: kids running off to play while parents dropped off lunches and signed forms. I scanned for the stiff child and their parent. There—still only their backs. The kid wandered off on their own, moving with that same unsettling slowness, almost robotic. Maybe they had a disability? That sort of thing rarely drew my attention. Was it something else?

I marked it again and moved on to the playroom feed. Kids trickled in, joining groups with chatter and giggles. The stiff child sat alone at a table, methodically coloring. The angles weren’t clear enough to make out details, and their androgynous appearance left me guessing, a boy or a girl? No one really seemed to engage with them, but having been the odd kid out most of my life, I thought they might just be unpopular and felt bad for them.

The first part of the day passed uneventfully, and painfully slow. Structured play, snack time, and story time. The snack break wasn’t captured on video; the dining area had no cameras. I flagged that as a gap.

“No cameras in there,” Angel said, breaking my focus. My notes must have appeared on his screen, too.

I glanced up. “The dining room?”

“Mhmm. I actually think it’s against code or something, so if they hadn’t been shut down by this event, they’d have been hit with a heavy fine.” He got up, heading for the door. “You want something other than coffee?”

“Am I not allowed to have more coffee?” I asked, mock-offended.

“No. It’s quarter to five. Jude, as a species, cannot live on coffee alone.”

“Cool, I have a whole species to myself now. Water’s fine.”

“Be back in ten,” Angel said. He pointed at Wade, then to me, and back. Wade nodded at him, but stayed engrossed in his conversation with Bobby about the latest tech readings. Something about the handprints they’d found with my help at the bookstore excited them.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” I said as Angel walked out. Wade waved at me. I let it go and returned to the footage.

The feed from the daycare lobby cut out just before the Veil tear. The timestamps marked the exact moment, and my mind churned. Could this be connected to the bookstore murder? I watched as the playroom feed took over. The kids froze mid-play, all staring toward the lobby door.

Had they heard something? Seen something?

I cranked the volume up, expecting chaos, but only buzzing filled the air. A static hum. When had the playful chatter shifted to this eerie white noise? My pulse quickened as I paused the replay and zoomed in on each child, their faces blurred by shadows and bad angles.

Finally, I reached the stiff child, the one I’d avoided scrutinizing. They sat alone in the corner, still coloring, ignoring the beginning of chaos. My gut twisted, a sense of wrongness blooming like a dark cloud.

The kid turned their head and looked upward, staring right at the camera.

I blinked, thinking I’d hit the play button since they moved, but it was still paused. The kid’s face twisted, shifting from human features to something dark and monstrous. Shadows consumed their eyes, and their mouth stretched into a grin too wide, too sharp.

A cold shiver clawed up my spine.

The kid didn’t just lookatme.

Theysawme.

21

“Holy fuck!”I shouted, and leapt backward as though it could lunge through the computer. My chair toppled over, my foot tangling in a cord and ripping out the plug as I fell like a log to the floor. The screen went blank.

Wade appeared in the doorway. “Everything okay?”

I sucked in air, laying half on the floor in my toppled chair; my heart racing, and sucking in air. What the fuck had that been? “Uh… Why wasn’t there a note about the creepy kid looking at the camera?”