Last time, I told you about a dream I had while napping on the couch—the one with the bootleggers, the cave, and the strange hiss in the dark. When I woke, the Harrowfell sketch still beside me, I thought that was the end of it.
I figured I’d been jolted awake by the dream’s unsettling end.
But then I heard music, tinny and staticked, drifting from the next room…
I pushed the afghan aside, listening hard. The music wasn’t in my head. It was real, a faint trumpet, a jaunty beat, like something you’d play at a speakeasy party. Not exactly my usual playlist—and never mind that I hadn’t left anything on.
The sound wafted down the stairs, and I padded soundlessly, skipping over the squeaky fifth tread. Our back room is a guest bedroom that rarely sees guests, a hideaway for extra chairs and a cozy reading nook.
Apparently, I’d left my ipad on the armchair playing what was beginning to feel like the world’s creepiest song.
There, curling beneath the armchair’s ruffled skirt, was a piece of paper, yellowed and brittle looking. I tugged it free, the sheet soft with age, and across the top—The Dunsmere Gazette, a name I recognized immediately. I rocked back on my heels, my throat drier than dirt.
This was the newspaper from The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays. A newspaper I’d completely made up, for a town that shouldn’t exist.
Dunsmere Gazette
October 11, 1926
Boozy Bloodbath at Harrowfell Hall
Sheriff Calloway was called to the Harrowfell estate late Tuesday night after a local farmer, in pursuit of a wayward cow, came across a truck abandoned near the long drive. The vehicle was heavily laden with crates and stood unattended, its engine cold, the driver nowhere in sight.
What the sheriff found at the old property has the whole town talking. Blood was discovered near the mouth of a cave situated behind Harrowfell Hall, along with drag marks in the dirt. No body has yet been recovered. “The scene suggests someone came to harm,” Calloway told the Gazette, “but until we have more, we can’t say who—or what—we’re dealing with.”
Further investigation revealed dozens of crates hidden in the cave, packed with bottles of liquor. Authorities now believe Harrowfell Hall—long abandoned and rumored haunted—has been serving as a distribution point for a bootlegging operation right under our noses.
The news has sparked indignation among the citizens of Dunsmere. “It’s a disgrace,” declared Mrs. Agnes Whitlow, president of the Ladies’ Temperance Circle. “That such wickedness could be carried on at one of our town’s oldest landmarks—why, it stains the very soul of Dunsmere.” Others called upon Harrowfell’s trustees to “put an end to this shameful business once and for all.”
Next time, we’ll follow the story threads deeper into Harrowfell’s secrets.
At least…I think it’s a story I made up.
