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We entered the house on a Friday evening. The sun was still shining; the leaves of the forest glistened with dew. Branches swayed, their bony knuckles beckoning forward, along the trail and through a wooded clearing. They were welcoming us to our new home—our home for one night, at least.
The house itself, a decaying stone monstrosity in the middle of nowhere which was usually an eyesore, looked sweet and serene in the early evening glow. It was surrounded by the hushed sounds of the forest—there was electricity in the air.
Wet tendrils of ivy sparkled like emeralds; crooked shutters and doors looked charming and quaint. The house, only a whisper of what it once was. Locked doors and secrets. A closed-off tower, like something a princess once lived in. And the blood … blood, long dried and faded over the years.
The house appeared harmless, really, like something from a child’s fairytale. The steepled roof reaching, reaching … as though it could touch the sky, bringing us closer to heaven itself.
But “the Castle”, as the locals called it, was a well-established version of hell. Decades of bad juju were running through its ceilings and walls, leaking down through the planks, permeating the cracked foundation, infecting the ground roots and spreading through the surrounding forest … eventually poisoning the whole loathsome town of Rock Hill.
We entered the castle, not knowing what lay ahead or what the fates would deal us.
A couple of us were excited.
A few of us were scared.
Most of us were desperate.
But only one was determined … determined to punish us all.
The letter came on a Tuesday, but it wasn’t addressed to me.
I balled up the envelope, folded the letter into a tiny black square, then stuffed both of them in my jean pocket. For later.
As I steadied my shaking hands, I watched my best friend, Jan, crossing the street and coming toward where I waited on the front porch for her. Jan was all goose-fleshed and gorgeous—like someone from a different century, she was wearing lacy black gloves and a vintage dress. Her bouncy blonde ponytail swished side to side as she looked left then right, then jogged toward me.
It was a windy, October day—unseasonably warm for this time of year, even by Southern Indiana standards. But there was a blanket of fog over Rock Hill that never seemed to go away, despite the weather.
Jan never arrived by car for our weekly meetings. My best friend wouldn’t be caught dead driving, much less riding her roommate’s motorcycle, even though we lived in a farming community that was considered “the country” by most anyone’s standards. She walked to my house, and she carpooled to work, always harping about the environment and saving money. Jan, the saint. Her goodness was why I’d always loved her, and it’s also why she was frequently disappointed by me.
Jan’s apartment wasn’t far from here. Here: a three-bedroom shotgun that didn’t belong to me. I’d been living rent-free for the greater part of the past two years, or “squatting”, according to my older—and reasonably responsible—brother, Andrew, and his cunt-ish wife, Phoebe. Between Jan’s tiny apartment that she shared with a roommate and my roomy borrowed bedroom crammed with books and dirty clothing, my “space” had the best lighting to make our weekly videos on YouTube.
Truthfully, I hadn’t been sure if Jan would show up today. Yet, here she was—floating across the front yard, toting her sparkly black makeup bag, and a few new props for filming.
So, we’re going to make new content today, after all. Lately, I wasn’t sure where I stood with Jan … and I’d been counting down the days until she ended our “professional” relationship and perhaps our personal, lifelong friendship, too.
“Hey, bestie.” Jan took a big step up onto the wooden porch and waited for me to invite her in. Nothing was the same between us—awkward silence and forced niceties, or bickering back and forth about petty stuff that didn’t even scratch the surface of the real issue.
The issue: the backlash I’d received from our channel, not Jan. She’d made it very clear that I was the one who fucked up, so that made
me the problem, not her…
“Hey to you too, bestie,” I deadpanned, taking the bag from her and motioning her to come inside.
The letter in my pocket was temporarily forgotten.
Smells of breakfast lingered; Andrew and Phoebe had left behind a sink full of dishes for me to take care of as they hustled out the door for their day jobs. Andrew worked in construction and Phoebe in finance. Watching them bid their goodbyes in the morning—Andrew in coveralls and her in a slick pantsuit—was always a sight to see. As much as I resented Phoebe for being so unwelcoming toward me, I loved the way she loved my brother. Their life together—the quickly thrown together meals, the messy kitchen, the early bedtimes and sometimes muffled love-making sessions—was something to be admired.
Perhaps I was simply envious of them, and lonely with myself. As a twenty-five-year-old, unemployed college dropout I left a lot to be desired. But it wasn’t all my fault and Andrew knew that; that’s why he tolerated my living with him and his wife. After years of struggling with depression and anxiety, I’d gotten situated on a good medicine regimen in my late teens. But that all fell apart when our parents died, and I stopped taking the meds correctly. What transpired after their death felt like a blur: the rollercoaster of mania I never wanted to get off of, followed by the lowest, depressing dip of my life and a slew of messes created by my manic-side to clean up…
The money I stole from my job, the failed college courses—it was too much to face afterwards, but also … too glaring to avoid.
I promised Andrew that my stay with them would be temporary. He brought me home from the hospital with a new list of meds and we came up with a plan.
I was taking the pills, but I hadn’t followed through on the rest of it, much to my brother’s disappointment.
Instead of looking for a job or trying to meet with advisors to re-enroll at community college, I’d become fixated on mine and Jan’s channel, researching unsolved murders or missing persons cases from around the country and shining a light on them for viewers who might have forgotten
about the victims involved. Although it technically wasn’t a “job”, it involved a ton of hours of editing, researching, scripting, and online engagement. Nothing about running our channel was easy.
But that’s where Jan came in. Like me, she always had a fixation on the macabre—perhaps it was more me than her, but still … she took an interest in true crime, too. Jan’s primary interest, however, was makeup. Studying to be a beautician, she had bigger dreams than working at our local salon in Rock Hill. Jan wanted to do makeup for the stars, or to become a viral internet sensation, providing tutorials for the masses.
The idea to join our two interests was born from a drunken night, filled with watching too many TikTok and YouTube videos.
“They’re all the same. The makeup and the cold cases…what if we combined the two? You talk about the unsolved murders while I do my makeup, probing you with questions and giving a ‘face’ to the channel itself?” Jan said.
It seemed kind of silly, but it didn’t take long for me to discover that it wasn’t a totally novel idea. There were other channels, some semi-successful, that joined makeup art with story time. But Jan and I could do it better, or we at least were determined to try.
Now, a little over a year after starting, we were a quarter of a way to a million subscribers.
“Free makeup samples and pepper spray gadgets aren’t going to pay the bills, Staci,” Phoebe said. Her words cut like a knife over dinner, as I’d tried to share the news of our channel’s growth with my brother.
I’d looked to Andrew for reassurance then, the way I had when we were younger, and I needed him for back-up…but my brother had simply winced when Phoebe said that and went back to stirring food around on his plate.
His silence hurt me fiercely. And I hadn’t mentioned the channel since that encounter … although I knew that both Andrew and Phoebe were aware of it; after all, they had both subscribed.
“Are Andrew and Phoebe here?” Jan asked, pausing in the kitchen to look around.
Despite this morning’s mess, the kitchen was the nicest room in the house. My brother had always loved cooking and his passion was evident in the glass-fronted cabinets, stainless-steel appliances, and top-of-the-line cooking gadgets arranged on its granite countertops. Sometime today, before my brother and sister-in-law were due to arrive home, I’d scrub every dish and spit shine the counters until they were gleaming.
Jan knew they weren’t home; they were never here when we did our filming in the daytime, but I supposed she was trying to fill the space with small-talk, ease some of the tension that had been building between us for the last few weeks.
“No, they’re both at work. Come on.” I led her down a narrow, dark hallway filled with paneled walls and store-bought photos, and opened the door to my bedroom. I’d made an effort this morning, making my bed. Tucking in the corners all neat. And I’d scooted my pile of laundry into the closet and closed the door. It wasn’t that I minded doing laundry; it was just difficult to work around Andrew and Phoebe’s wash times without irritating them, and Andrew had a lifelong habit of leaving clothes in the dryer for weeks. I would have offered to fold his clothes, but I got the impression that my sister-in-law wouldn’t like me invading her privacy and touching all her nice things.
My bedroom was decent-sized, with old-fashioned green and yellow flowered wallpaper, a couple of floor-to-ceiling windows, and lots of natural lighting. When we first started the channel, I’d pushed the small twin bed in the corner, and centered the large vanity table and props we used in the middle of the room. This gave us plenty of space in the center for filming, our chairs on either side of the vanity, which also functioned as my desk, and kept my bed and personal items out of view from the cameras.
I placed Jan’s makeup bag on the long counter of the vanity for her, next to the antique hand mirrors and combs we’d picked out from a thrift store together when we first got started with the channel. Things were exciting then, every new subscriber and minor sponsor a huge deal for us. Every small milestone felt like one worth celebrating…
But despite our continued channel growth, we didn’t have much to celebrate lately. And that was all my fault.
“What case are we doing today? I’ve forgotten,” Jan murmured, lining up three different makeup brushes side by side and digging through her bag for eyeshadow palettes. She usually tried to theme her makeup in a way that fit the case: sometimes dark and macabre, but sometimes softer blues or greens, or rich browns, to match the landscape or towns in which the crimes we were discussing took place.
I felt a twinge of annoyance. Jan not knowing what story we were doing was so typical … and a perfect example of why she didn’t deserve to know about the letter. Sure, her makeup tutorials were entertaining to some, but it was my hard work behind the scenes, hours’ worth of researching, digging for new information, and practicing my lines, which made up the crux of our channel. I’d tried to get her more involved in the research side of things, but she only seemed interested in decorating her face and chatting with commenters online these days.
“The Ronnie Nichols case,” I said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed and giving her some space to set up. I watched her line up the tubes of concealer and open a long container of false eyelashes, her perfectly manicured nails moving with practice and precision. Jan was good at what she did, and I respected that, but the cases were supposed to be central to our story. Most importantly, the victims we discussed were supposed to take center stage. And I could have used her help, and more interest, when it came to working through the details involved during the pre-filming stage.
I cleared my throat. I should have been setting up the video equipment while she worked on makeup, but I wanted her to remember the importance of Ronnie’s case. “Let me refresh your memory. Ronnie is the girl who went missing in Franklin, Missouri after wandering off a local
bike trail with her crummy boyfriend and his creepy friends. I told you about it a few weeks ago.”
Cases like Ronnie’s were a dime a dozen; girls and women went missing every day, and so many were never seen or heard from again.
Jan was still prepping her utensils, but I could see the thoughtful expression on her face as she considered my words. She was holding something back.
“If you have something to say, just say it,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
Jan sighed and turned around, leaning casually against the vanity desk. “Look, Staci. I love you. But what happened with the Stevens case can’t happen with this one, too. You just called the boyfriend and his friends creepy, but they were never charged with her abduction or murder. It’s okay to state your opinion. Our viewers love that. But you can’t go spewing stuff and pretending it’s straight facts again. Or worse, ...
