The official police report said that she was found under a highway overpass. The first people to see her and call the police were on their way to work, doing normal things. They probably had a cup of coffee in hand, happy to start their day early. Until they looked down as they crossed Forty-Seventh Street.

Mark was the one who told me. I had slept through the calls and texts from my parents. It was he who had to wake me up, he who had to close the door and have his parents come get the kids while I screamed.

The days following her death were a blur of funeral arrangements, of responding to people who said, “There are no words,” of picking out what people should eat at the luncheon, of getting the toxicology report that told us what we already knew: a large quantity of powerful drugs had been coursing through her body.

But it had haunted me ever since.

I tried to close my eyes again and fall asleep, tried to will my body to forget what it had experienced. I’d started to drift off when a low rumble pricked at my ears.

At first, I thought it was the distant sound of the commuter train going through downtown Winchester. We were a couple of miles away but could still hear the click-clack of the train tracks when the wind blew the right way. But then it got louder in waves before quieting again, like the wail of a tornado siren. And it wasn’t the soothing sound of a train. It was more of a screeching, moaning sound. It sounded like an animal in pain. Or a person.

I was too afraid to look out of my bedroom window, too scared to see what was outside. It seemed to be coming from the side of my house, in the direction of Liz’s backyard.

Keening, like we had read in the demonology book. A siren’s call to other demons to join her in our realm.

I put a pillow over my head to block out the noise and pressed it to my skull.

—

I woke up to the sound of laughter. I shot up in bed, the pillow falling to the floor. My head felt heavy, like I had a hangover, and my eyes were crusted with sleep. I looked next to me. Mark was already up and likely gone, and I didn’t hear the kids downstairs yet.

I must have dreamed it, although there had been nothing to laugh about in my dreams. They were filled with bones and broken skin. With skulls and missing fingernails. With June at the bottom of the She Shed pit, arms stretched upward as I tried to grab her and couldn’t.