She stared into the woods. The wind had picked up and the tops of the fir trees were swaying; a few dry leaves that had fallen off the oak trees spun around in frenzied eddies. It was afternoon still, but already the light looked different; in another couple of hours the world would begin to descend into gloom until it finally slipped into total darkness.

That was the moment Lucia feared the most, for it was then that the ghosts appeared at the edge of the woods. Lucia had tried to tell her mother, but her mother refused to believe her. “Telling lies is naughty,” she’d rebuked her, before locking her in her room.

But the ghosts weren’t made up. Lucia had seen one. It had a face as pale as the snow that had frozen the village in the past few days, as white as the dog skull she had fished out of the river last summer with Mathias and Diego while Oliver stood apart and watched them.

Yes, that’s what the ghost looked like when it stared at her from the forest: a white and gleaming skull.

Lucia was certain that Mathias had seen one, too, the day before. He was the head of their group, the bravest of them all, and yet he’d looked scared at their last meeting; he’d been watching the trees just as she was doing now, as if they were alive and could return his gaze.

Lucia had left a bowl of milk beneath her window. It was full now, but she knew she’d find it empty in the morning—just as she had for the past few days, even though the cat hadn’t been home in a while.

Something else was slithering out of the forest, all the way up to her house. Something with a skull for a face.

Lucia had told her mother, but her mother hadn’t believed her.

-11-

-11-

AUSTRIA, 1978

“Observe, record, forget.”

Those were the rules of the School, unwritten commandments perpetuated by its employees, and passed down from veterans to newcomers. Nurse Braun had explained them to Magdalena, her voice barely louder than a whisper as if in deference to some holy vow of secrecy. And there were so many secrets in that place.

Magdalena had been tailing her more experienced colleague through the School’s maze of corridors. Nurse Braun had taught her about every nook and cranny of the neglected building and every task that would be assigned to her now that she’d begun working there. Her training had been rather strange; holed up in the same room all day, typing up notes she couldn’t really comprehend, Magdalena had seen nothing of the inner workings of the place outside of the refectory and the dormitory she retired to in the evenings.