By Monday afternoon, Dory had returned, carrying a cardboard banker's box filled with back issues of the County Historical Quarterly and microfiche printouts she had retrieved from the university archives.
"I didn't believe you," Dory admitted as they spread the yellowed clippings across Jenna's bedroom floor. "I thought you were having a psychotic break because of your parents. But look at this."
She pointed to an article from September 2004:
FOUNDATION ACQUIRES HISTORIC VANCE ESTATE FOR NEUROLOGICAL FIELD STATION
The article detailed the purchase of the Blackwood Ridge property by the Vanguard Neuro-Cognitive Institute, funded through a Department of Defense grant to study 'circadian entrainment and synthetic memory consolidation'.
Dory tapped a follow-up clipping from November 2005:
INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED AFTER ACCIDENTAL DEATH AT PRIVATE FACILITY
"It wasn't just a disappearance," Dory said, her voice dropping. "Elias Vale wasn't the only one who didn't walk out. There was an equipment explosion in the upstairs lab. A fire."
Jenna picked up a smaller clipping from the police blotter:
LOCAL STUDENT DECLARED MISSING AFTER ENTERING PRIVATE FACILITY
Beneath the headline, written in shaky, purple ballpoint ink, was a handwritten note:
He wasn't alone.
Dory stared at the ink. "Did you write that?"
"No," Jenna said, her skin prickling. "I haven't used a purple pen since middle school."
A sharp floorboard groaned outside in the corridor.
"Footsteps," Jenna whispered.
"Your mom's downstairs in the kitchen," Dory said, reaching for the poker. "I heard her running the blender."
"That wasn't downstairs."
Jenna stood up, pulled the door open, and stepped out onto the hallway runner.
The corridor was long, narrow, and bathed in the pale gray light of a November afternoon. At the far end, standing directly in front of the gray door of the locked room, was a boy.
He wore a dark canvas work jacket over a faded flannel shirt. His dark hair fell across his brow in jagged tufts, and a clean, white scar cut through his left eyebrow. His skin was pale, translucent in the daylight.
"Elias?" Jenna breathed, taking a step forward.
Dory stepped out of the bedroom behind her, grabbing Jenna's bicep with bruising force.
"Who are you talking to?" Dory hissed.
Jenna pointed down the corridor. "He's right there! Standing by the gray door!"
Dory looked down the hall. Her eyes swept the empty runner rug, the peeling damask wallpaper, the closed gray door with its hanging padlock.
There was no one there.
"Jenna," Dory said, her voice cracking with terror. "There's nobody there. It's an empty hallway."
Jenna looked back toward the door.
The boy was gone. Only the dust motes drifted in the shaft of gray light falling from the dormer window.
Her breathing turned into rapid, jagged sobs. She reached out and touched the wall to steady herself, her knees threatening to buckle.
Dory took the spiral-bound notebook from Jenna's back pocket, flipped to the page with the two columns, and under the heading WHAT I KNOW, wrote in heavy, slashing capitals:
I DID NOT SEE HIM.
Jenna stared at the words, the ink wet and black on the paper.
"He was standing there, Dory," she pleaded, tears cutting through the dust on her face. "He was wearing the jacket from the newspaper."
"I looked, Jenna! I looked right at the door! There was nothing there!"
For the first time since the night on the roof, a terrible, icy realization settled over Jenna's mind:
Either a ghost was walking the halls of Blackwood Ridge, or her own mind had begun to manufacture an entire world out of thin air.