Page 98 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

“It’s time to tell Josie.”

He grunts and makes no move to get up.

“Are you… helping with that?”

“You need help? I figured that’s what you were already doing.”

“I could use some backup.”

He exhales and fingers the cigarette package. Then he jerks his chin, which I interpret as a motion for me to move closer.

“If you need help, I will,” he says. “But it’ll be better coming from you.”

“Why? You and Josie get along.”

“Yeah, but.…” He exhales again. “It’s a small-town thing. She’salways going to be a little kid to me, and I’m always going to be an older kid to her. She’s careful around me, like she doesn’t want to embarrass herself. A weird dynamic, but we’re used to it. With this, if I’m there, she’s going to censure her reaction and try to gauge mine. She’s more relaxed around you.”

I nod, leave him to his lake-gazing and his not-smoking, and head inside.

I start by telling Josie how I’d hear hoofbeats as a kid and my grandfather played along, and that I’ve been hearing them now and seeing prints in the sand. Then I tell her about seeing the horseman.

“Did you tell my father about this?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Why not? A headless horseman isn’t something someone can stage.”

“Isn’t it? It’s an obvious setup. My grandfather always said the horseman was from here, and I used to think I heard it. My cousin would know about both.”

“Okay but…” She shifts in her seat. “Couldit be staged? Elaborately? Not to dismiss what you two saw…”

“But a staged monster half hidden in shadows makes a lot more sense than an actual monster?”

Her cheeks flush. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. That’s why we’re telling you. We want someone to say we’re exhausted and not thinking straight. So that’s the whole story. Then there’s this…”

I pull over the book and explain where Ben found it and what it seems to be. Then I read Josie those few pages about the horseman and the nekker. She sits back, clearly processing. Then she says, “I have questions.”

“Good,” I say. “Are you okay with me calling Ben in? Or would you rather talk to me alone?”

“Bring him in.”

Ben might have said he didn’t want to interfere with Josie processing the book, but I think that was at least fifty percent bullshit. He’sthe one who’s uncomfortable. He wanted to sit outside so he didn’t see the local deputy—who has always defended him against the sheriff—peering at him for signs of duplicity or drug use, wondering whether her dad had been right all along.

Now when I call him in, he drags his feet and slumps into a chair.

“How do we know this book is real?” Josie asks.

Ben’s shoulders tense. “That I didn’t write it, since I’m the one who found it?”

“I never said that, Ben. If someone wrote it recently, it’s a ridiculous amount of work to go through.” She hefts the book in one hand. “Anyone who’s been in a library knows this is really old. It’s not a school project where you scuff up a leather binding and smoke the pages to look yellowed.”

“But what if someone faked it a hundred years ago,” I say. “Like making a time capsule, except what you put in it is a prank. A false journal about Dutch folk magic, imagining someone in the future reading it and thinking it’s real.”

Josie leans forward. “Exactly. Is the folklore real? Have you looked it up?”

“Nekkers are a regional variation of something also known as a nix. It’s common Western folklore. The horseman is a variation on the kelpie, and there’s an Icelandic form directly connected to the nix lore. What they describe doesn’t match anything I’ve found elsewhere but…” I shrug. “It’s folklore. There are as many variations as there are storytellers who use it.”