The Whimwick Harvest

The Store That Wasn’t There

GIDEON VEY

Chapter One

The Empty Store

Three days after Ione Vallowen died, she called her sister.

Neris was driving through the rain when Ione’s name appeared on the dashboard.

For one impossible second, she forgot about the funeral clothes hanging behind her seat. She forgot about the detective who had called her that morning and the polished mahogany casket waiting in Lornbridge, Ohio.

She saw only her sister’s name.

IONE CALLING

Neris nearly drove off the road.

She jerked the wheel, corrected too sharply, and felt the rear tires slide across the wet pavement. A truck horn erupted behind her. White headlights filled the mirrors before the truck swept into the opposite lane and disappeared inside a wall of rain.

The call ended.

Neris stared at the dashboard.

MISSED CALL — IONE VALLOWEN

Her hands locked around the steering wheel.

Ione’s phone was in police custody.

Detective Toren Brask had told her that himself. The police had removed it from the bedroom where Ione died, along with her laptop, medications, and the clothes she had been wearing. They were searching for evidence that might explain why a healthy twenty-four-year-old woman had fallen down seventeen stairs without screaming or attempting to protect herself.

Neris tapped the call button.

The car dialed.

One ring.

Two.

On the third, someone answered.

Neris stopped breathing.

At first she heard only static. Then came a faint mechanical melody, bright and childish, playing through what sounded like an overhead speaker.

Five rising notes.

A pause.

The same five notes again.

“Ione?”

The static deepened.

Something scraped across the other end of the line.

“Ione, can you hear me?”

A woman whispered her name.

Not Neris.

Something close to it. Something spoken with too many syllables.

Then the call disconnected.

The dashboard went black.

Her headlights died with it.

Neris’s car hurtled through total darkness.

She slammed the brake. The tires slipped across the rain-slick road, pulling the car sideways. Branches scraped the passenger door. The front wheels dropped onto gravel before the vehicle stopped with enough force to snap her seat belt tight across her chest.

For several seconds, Neris heard nothing but rain.

Then the dashboard came back on.

The headlights illuminated a rusted fence less than six feet in front of the hood.

Neris sat motionless.

Her pulse throbbed in her palms.

A voicemail notification appeared on the screen.

NEW MESSAGE — IONE VALLOWEN

She pressed play.

Ione’s voice filled the car.

“Neris, if Mom tells you I fell, don’t believe her.”

Neris closed her eyes.

It was Ione.

Not an imitation. Not a stranger speaking from her phone. Ione’s voice always carried a slight breathlessness, as though she were hurrying to finish before someone interrupted her.

“I know how this sounds,” the message continued. “I know what you think about me. But I’m not confused. I’m not sick. I found something, and she knows I found it.”

A noise sounded behind Ione. A hinge, perhaps. Or a door opening.

Her voice dropped.

“The store isn’t empty anymore.”

The message ended.

Neris stared at the rain running down the windshield.

She played it again.

“Neris, if Mom tells you I fell, don’t believe her.”

The recording lasted nineteen seconds.

She saved it, then used her phone to record the playback from the dashboard. Years of investigative work had taught her never to trust a single copy of anything. Files became corrupted. Accounts were closed. Evidence disappeared when it threatened the right person.

She sent the second recording to her private email and uploaded another copy to encrypted storage.

Only then did she return Ione’s call.

A recorded voice told her the number was no longer in service.

Neris sat beside the road until another vehicle appeared behind her. She restarted the engine, backed away from the fence, and continued toward Lornbridge.

The clock on the dashboard read 2:09 a.m.

It had displayed 2:09 before Ione called.

Neris watched the minutes until the time changed.

It never did.

At 2:09, she passed the remains of Mercy Bell Commons.

The shopping center had once been the largest commercial property in the county. Neris remembered weekend traffic backed up along both entrances and families circling the parking lot in search of spaces. The anchor store sold everything from groceries to patio furniture. Twenty smaller businesses occupied the adjoining strip.

Then a portion of the roof collapsed during an October storm.

Nobody died. Nobody was injured. The damage should have been repairable, but the anchor store never reopened. Within two years, every neighboring business had closed. The property changed hands repeatedly before becoming trapped in litigation nobody in town could explain.

Mercy Bell Commons had been empty for sixteen years.

It was empty now.

Neris slowed as she passed.

Her headlights traveled across weeds growing through fractured pavement. A traffic cone lay on its side near the entrance. Sheets of plywood covered the old anchor-store doors. The remaining windows had been painted black from within.

There were no vehicles.

No construction lights.

No store.

Neris thought about Ione’s message.

The store isn’t empty anymore.

Either Ione had been talking about another location, or fear had distorted whatever she believed she saw.

Ione had spent much of her life afraid.

As a child, she feared thunderstorms, dogs, crowded rooms, elevators, basements, and any door she could not open from both sides. As an adult, her fears became less visible and more difficult to name. She abandoned college after eleven weeks. She stopped driving. She quit three jobs because she believed the customers were watching her.

Their mother called them episodes.

Neris called them reasons to get Ione out of that house.

She had tried twice.

Both times, Ione returned to Audra before the end of the week.

The last time, Ione refused to explain why.

The rain became heavier as Neris entered Lornbridge. The town emerged in familiar pieces: the weathered grain tower, the municipal building, the bronze statue of a coal miner the council had erected decades after the last mine closed. Paper ghosts hung from the streetlights, their white bodies collapsing against the poles in the rain.

Halloween had always arrived early in Lornbridge.

Ione hated it.

That was another reason her final message made no sense.

Neris turned onto Delrow Lane.

The Vallowen house stood at the end of the street, larger than the neighboring homes and set farther back from the road. Its white columns rose through the rain. Dark ivy covered one side of the brick exterior.

Every window was unlit except Ione’s.

Neris stopped at the curb.

A yellow glow filled the second-floor room.

It disappeared while she watched.

The house was supposed to be empty.

Audra had taken a room at the Brindle Hotel after telling reporters she could not bear to remain where her youngest daughter died. No relatives had been given keys. Police had instructed everyone to stay away while they completed their investigation.

Neris called Detective Brask.

He answered after four rings.

“Vallowen?”

His voice was thick with sleep.

“Are any officers at the house?”

A pause. “What house?”

“My mother’s.”

“What time is it?”

“Someone is inside.”

That brought him fully awake. “Are you there?”

“I’m parked outside.”

“Stay in your vehicle.”

“The light in Ione’s room was on.”

“Stay in the car. I’ll send someone.”

Neris ended the call.

Then she got out.

She could already hear what Brask would say when he arrived: a defective timer, a delayed bulb, an electrical fault. She had spent nine years investigating fraud for newspapers and documentary programs. She knew the difference between observing evidence and waiting for someone else to explain it away.

Rain soaked her hair before she reached the porch.

A cardboard box sat beside the front door.

It had not been there in the police photographs Brask sent her.

The box was purple, with curling gold designs printed along its sides. A smiling black cat wearing a pointed orange hat occupied one corner.

Across the top were the words:

WHIMWICK HALLOWEEN

WHERE HALLOWEEN COMES TO LIFE

The shipping label displayed Ione’s name.

Neris crouched beside it.

There was no carrier information, tracking number, postage, or return address. The label contained only Ione’s name and the address of the house.

Below them, in smaller letters, someone had printed:

DELIVERY COMPLETE

The cardboard was dry.

Rain hammered the porch roof and blew against the front door. Water covered the boards surrounding the package, but not a single drop marked its surface.

Neris photographed all four sides before touching it.

The box was warm.

Something moved inside.

Not a large movement. A soft adjustment followed by three faint taps against the cardboard.

Neris withdrew her hand.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

She stood.

The dead bolt turned on the other side of the door.

Neris stepped backward.

The door opened.

Audra Vallowen stood inside.

She wore a cream-colored coat over a black dress. Rain shone across her shoulders, although Neris had not seen her arrive. Her dark hair had been twisted into a precise knot.

“What are you doing here?” Audra asked.

Neris looked past her into the darkened house.

“How did you get inside?”

“I used the garage.”

“There isn’t a car in the driveway.”

“I came with someone.”

“Who?”

Audra’s attention dropped to the package.

Her expression changed.

Not much. Audra had spent a lifetime mastering small expressions. But Neris saw the fear arrive around her eyes.

“Did you open that?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Audra stepped onto the porch and seized the box.

The movement was so abrupt that Neris almost let her take it. Then the thing inside struck the cardboard hard enough to make both women flinch.

Audra tightened her grip.

“What is it?” Neris asked.

“Something I ordered.”

“It has Ione’s name on it.”

“The company made a mistake.”

“What company?”

Audra turned the box so the logo faced her coat.

“Mom.”

“Not tonight.”

“Ione called me.”

Audra stopped.

Neris watched the back of her neck.

“Three minutes ago,” Neris continued. “From her phone.”

“That’s impossible.”

“She left a message.”

Audra turned slowly. “Let me hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because your sister is dead.”

“That’s why I’m asking questions.”

“Give me your phone.”

“No.”

Audra set the box inside the doorway.

“Play the message.”

Neris studied her mother’s face.

Audra Vallowen was sixty-three. The woman standing before her could have passed for forty-five.

The change was not subtle.

The fine lines around Audra’s eyes had vanished. Her cheeks appeared fuller, her complexion smooth and almost luminous beneath the porch light. The silver that had spread through her hair during the previous year was gone.

Even the scar above her right eyebrow had faded.

Audra said she received it in a car accident when she was seventeen. The passenger died, the driver suffered a shattered pelvis, and the car folded around a tree. Audra walked away with seven stitches.

According to her, she had never broken a bone.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Audra asked.

“When did you dye your hair?”

“After what happened, that is your concern?”

“You look different.”

“My daughter died.”

“Yes.”

“You think grief has rules?”

“I think aging does.”

Audra’s face hardened.

Neris removed her phone but did not unlock it. “Ione said if you told me she fell, I shouldn’t believe you.”

For the first time, Audra lost control of her expression.

Her lips parted.

“What else?”

“She said she found something.”

“What else did she say?”

“That you knew.”

Audra took one step closer. “What else?”

Neris understood then that her mother was not shocked to learn Ione had called after her death.

She was afraid of what Ione might have revealed.

“The store,” Neris said.

Audra’s eyes moved toward the box.

“What store?” she asked.

“Whimwick Halloween.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“The name is written on the package behind you.”

“I didn’t look at the name.”

“You tried to hide it.”

“I tried to bring a delivery out of the rain.”

“It isn’t wet.”

Audra glanced down.

The rain had begun striking the box now that it rested inside the doorway. Droplets darkened the purple cardboard one by one.

Neris stepped toward it.

Audra blocked her.

“Move.”

“You need sleep.”

“I need to know why Ione received a delivery after she died.”

“It was probably sent before.”

“There’s no postage.”

“Then someone dropped it off.”

“I was parked outside. Nobody came.”

“You weren’t here all evening.”

“What did Ione find?”

Audra said nothing.

“Why did you wait seventeen minutes to call an ambulance?”

The muscles along Audra’s jaw tightened.

“Detective Brask had no right to tell you that.”

“He asked whether you called me during those seventeen minutes.”

“I was trying to revive her.”

“You were an emergency-room nurse for twenty-six years. You knew she needed an ambulance.”

“I was in shock.”

“You cleaned the landing.”

“There was blood.”

“You replaced part of the carpet before the evidence team arrived.”

Audra looked past Neris toward the street.

“You have always loved doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Turning people into suspects.”

“I follow facts.”

“No. You collect the ugliest pieces of people and arrange them into whatever picture makes you feel correct.”

“Ione is dead.”

“I know.”

“You don’t look like you’ve lost anything.”

Audra slapped her.

The blow turned Neris’s head.

For a moment, the only sound was rain striking the porch roof.

Neris touched her cheek.

Audra did not apologize.

The woman who raised her had slapped her only once before. Neris was fifteen and had found Audra burning documents in the fireplace. They contained lists of girls’ names, adoption dates, and institutions Neris had never heard of. Audra struck her when she tried to pull one from the flames.

She spent the rest of that night apologizing.

This time she appeared relieved.

As if striking Neris had released something she had been struggling to hold inside.

“I lost one daughter this week,” Audra said quietly. “Do not force me to lose another.”

The words chilled Neris more than the rain.

From inside the box came a child’s laugh.

Both women looked down.

The sound was soft but unmistakable.

A little girl giggled behind the smiling cat printed on the cardboard.

Then Ione’s voice said, “Neris?”

Neris lunged for the package.

Audra grabbed her wrist.

Her mother’s fingers were painfully cold.

“Let go.”

“It isn’t her.”

The certainty in Audra’s voice stopped her.

The box shifted.

“Neris,” Ione called again.

This time her voice came from deeper inside the house.

Audra released Neris and shoved the box through the doorway. She slammed the front door, turned the dead bolt, and pressed both palms against the wood.

“What is in there?” Neris demanded.

Audra whispered something.

The words were too quiet to understand. They did not sound like English.

The scratching behind the door stopped.

Audra’s shoulders relaxed.

“You know exactly what that is,” Neris said.

Her mother faced her.

“I know that grief can make sane people hear whatever they most want to hear.”

“That wasn’t grief.”

“You drove all night after learning your sister died. You are exhausted and angry, and you are determined to blame someone.”

“You heard her too.”

“I heard something inside a novelty package.”

“You said it wasn’t her.”

“Because Ione is dead.”

A patrol car turned onto Delrow Lane.

Blue light moved across the wet houses.

Audra stepped close enough for Neris to smell roses beneath the rain.

“If you play that message for the police,” she whispered, “they will think you are becoming like her.”

“Like Ione?”

“Unwell.”

“Is that what you told everyone about her?”

“I tried to protect your sister.”

“From what?”

Audra glanced at the approaching patrol car.

“From finding out what she was.”

She walked down the porch steps.

Neris caught her arm. “What was she?”

Audra looked at Neris’s hand until she released her.

“Ask yourself why neither of you has a single photograph from before I adopted you.”

The patrol car stopped at the curb.

Audra opened its rear door before the officer could exit.

“I’m staying at the Brindle,” she said. “The funeral begins at eleven. Try not to turn it into one of your investigations.”

She climbed inside.

The young patrol officer looked from Audra to Neris, visibly uncertain which woman had summoned him.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“No,” Neris said.

Audra answered at the same time.

“Yes.”

The officer looked toward the house. “We received a possible-intruder report.”

“My daughter saw a light,” Audra said. “I left one on.”

Neris stared at her.

The officer turned to Neris. “You want me to check inside?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Audra said.

“It’s still an active scene,” the officer reminded her. “If someone entered—”

“Nobody entered. I was collecting clothes for my daughter’s funeral.”

The officer hesitated.

Audra touched his arm.

The gesture was gentle, almost maternal.

His posture changed.

Tension left his shoulders. The concern disappeared from his face so quickly that Neris wondered whether she had imagined it.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Audra gave him a tired smile.

The officer walked around the patrol car and opened the front passenger door for her.

Neris moved closer. “You came alone?”

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You said we received the report.”

“The department.”

“No partner?”

“Not tonight.”

“Then why is she getting into the back?”

The officer stared at Audra as though noticing her position for the first time.

“I suppose I thought—”

He stopped.

Audra stepped out of the car.

“I’ll sit in front.”

The officer continued staring at the empty rear seat.

His face had gone pale.

Neris followed his gaze.

A wet handprint marked the inside of the rear window.

It was too small to belong to Audra.

Four narrow fingers and a child-sized palm rested against the glass.

The officer blinked.

The print was gone.

Audra entered the front seat and closed the door.

“Get some sleep, Neris,” she said through the open window.

The patrol car drove away.

Neris remained in the rain until its taillights disappeared.

Then she unlocked the house.

The purple box was gone.

She searched the foyer, living room, kitchen, garage, and every downstairs closet. There was no water on the floor and no trail from where Audra had left the package.

Upstairs, Ione’s door stood open.

The ceiling light was on.

Neris entered slowly.

Police had stripped the room of electronics and medication, but everything else had been arranged with Audra’s usual precision. The bed was made. Shoes had been paired beneath the dresser. Stuffed animals sat shoulder to shoulder along the shelf above the headboard.

A black plastic jack-o’-lantern waited in the center of the bed.

It had round silver eyes and a wide golden smile.

A tag hung from its handle.

WHIMWICK HALLOWEEN

A GIFT FOR OUR HARVEST QUEEN

Neris photographed it.

She checked the closet before touching anything. Dresses, coats, and storage bins remained inside. She found no person and no opening large enough for someone to have entered through.

The jack-o’-lantern was warm when she lifted it.

A folded receipt waited inside.

Across the top, purple letters announced:

WHIMWICK HALLOWEEN

Where Halloween Comes to Life

The address beneath it was not a warehouse or online retailer.

It was Mercy Bell Commons.

The abandoned shopping center Neris had passed less than an hour earlier.

The receipt listed one item:

CHILD’S HARVEST QUEEN COSTUME

The price was $0.00.

No tax. No payment method. No employee number.

Beneath the total were two lines:

CUSTOMER: IONE VALLOWEN

STATUS: RECEIVED

At the bottom, where a return policy should have appeared, someone had printed a different slogan:

YOU WERE ALWAYS COMING BACK

Neris turned over the receipt.

Three words had been written on the reverse.

DON’T BURY ME

The handwriting belonged to Ione.

Neris did not sleep.

She photographed the receipt, sealed it inside a plastic evidence sleeve from the emergency case in her trunk, and hid it beneath the spare tire. She carried a kitchen chair upstairs and wedged it under the knob of her old bedroom.

At four twenty, someone tried the door.

There was no knock.

The knob turned slowly until the chair legs dug into the carpet. Pressure remained against it for nearly a minute.

Neris stood on the other side holding an iron fireplace poker.

“Who’s there?”

The pressure stopped.

She waited.

A child whispered from the hallway.

“Where Halloween comes to life.”

Small footsteps moved toward Ione’s room.

Her door closed.

Neris remained awake until sunrise.

When she finally removed the chair, she found a purple envelope on the floor outside her room.

Her name had been written across it in gold ink.

Inside was an application for employment at Whimwick Halloween.

Every field had already been completed.

NAME: NERIS VALLOWEN

DATE OF BIRTH: UNKNOWN

PARENTS: NONE

POSITION: LOSS PREVENTION

START DATE: TODAY

Beneath the application was a temporary employee badge containing a photograph of Neris at approximately nine years old.

She had never seen the picture before.

A purple uniform filled the background. Someone’s pale hands rested on her shoulders.

Neris turned the badge over.

PROPERTY OF WHIMWICK HALLOWEEN

She sealed the envelope with the receipt.

By ten forty-five, she was seated in the front pew of Saint Orison’s Church, waiting for strangers to bury her sister.

The funeral drew more people than Ione had known while alive.

Former teachers, neighbors, distant relatives, and Audra’s friends occupied every pew. Young people Neris did not recognize stood along the walls. Several wore orange ribbons pinned to their clothing.

Orange had been Ione’s favorite color when she was nine.

She stopped wearing it after Audra told her orange attracted things that lived between seasons.

Neris had forgotten that until now.

Ione’s casket remained closed.

Audra sat beside it, accepting condolences with practiced stillness. She wore the same black dress and a different cream-colored coat. Her hair had been arranged over her right temple, concealing the place where her scar should have been.

No one remarked on how young she looked.

Neris sat beside her.

“You searched the house,” Audra whispered.

Neris faced the altar. “How would you know?”

“You never understood privacy.”

“You never understood evidence.”

The organist began playing before Audra could respond.

During the service, Neris studied the photograph beside the casket. Ione smiled beneath a flowering tree, dark curls falling across one eye. Neris had taken the picture during Ione’s brief semester at Lakehurst College.

The photograph was four years old.

It had changed.

Neris remembered the original clearly. Ione had worn a green sweater, and students crossed the lawn behind her.

In the displayed picture, Ione wore purple.

The background showed a wall of Halloween masks.

Neris leaned forward.

A small gold logo had been embroidered over Ione’s heart.

W.H.

She removed her phone and photographed the display.

“What are you doing?” Audra whispered.

“That isn’t the picture I took.”

“Put the phone away.”

“Where did you get this?”

“It was Ione’s favorite.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

People turned toward them.

Audra placed a hand over Neris’s phone. “Do not do this here.”

Neris enlarged the photograph she had just taken.

On her screen, Ione wore the green sweater.

The masks were gone.

Students crossed the lawn behind her.

There was no logo.

Neris looked at the framed photograph.

Purple uniform. Masks. Golden initials.

She took another picture.

Green sweater. College lawn.

Her hands began to shake.

“You see it,” Audra said.

Neris looked at her.

Audra was no longer watching the minister.

She was watching the photograph.

“What is Whimwick?” Neris whispered.

Her mother’s fingers tightened over her hand.

“Something you should leave alone.”

At the rear of the church, a woman laughed.

The sound did not belong at a funeral.

Neris turned.

A tall woman stood beneath the choir balcony. Her hair was white—not silver with age, but white from root to tip—and cut in a severe line beneath her jaw. Her black dress reached the floor. Purple gloves covered her hands.

Neris had seen her beneath the awning at Mercy Bell Commons.

The woman smiled.

Audra followed Neris’s gaze.

Fear transformed her face.

Not grief. Not surprise.

Recognition.

The white-haired woman raised one gloved finger to her lips.

Then every light in the church went out.

People gasped.

The organ stopped in the middle of a note.

Darkness held the church for three seconds.

When the lights returned, the woman was gone.

Something purple rested on top of Ione’s casket.

A Whimwick Halloween balloon.

Its gold ribbon had been tied around one of the casket handles.

Letters appeared across its surface as it slowly rotated.

GRAND OPENING TODAY

No one screamed.

No one asked how it got there.

The minister resumed speaking.

Neris stood.

Every face turned toward her with the same mild confusion, as though she—not the balloon—were the disruption.

“Does nobody see that?”

Audra pulled her back down. “Sit.”

“It wasn’t there.”

Several mourners glanced toward the balloon, then away.

The minister continued reading scripture.

Neris seized the ribbon and pulled.

The balloon came loose. Its surface was warm and faintly elastic beneath her fingers—not like rubber, but skin.

She released it.

It floated toward the ceiling.

A child sitting across the aisle watched it rise.

He could not have been older than seven. His black suit was too large for him, the cuffs hiding most of his hands. An orange sticker had been placed over his heart.

The sticker showed the same smiling cat printed on the delivery box.

“Where did you get that?” Neris asked.

The boy’s mother pulled him closer.

He pointed toward the church doors.

“At Whimwick.”

The minister stopped again.

The boy’s mother looked embarrassed. “We went yesterday.”

“No, you didn’t,” Neris said.

Her voice carried through the church.

The woman frowned. “Excuse me?”

“That store didn’t exist yesterday.”

A murmur moved through the pews.

The boy smiled at Neris.

“Your sister is downstairs,” he said.

The lights went out again.

This time, something knocked from inside Ione’s casket.

Three slow blows.

Every person in the church heard them.

Neris knew because every person became still.

The lights returned.

The Whimwick balloon was gone.

The boy’s orange sticker was gone.

The minister looked down at Ione’s closed casket, his face drained of color.

Then Audra stood.

“My daughter suffered from a muscular condition,” she announced. “The funeral director warned us that settling could cause movement.”

It was an absurd explanation.

The kind no rational person would accept.

Yet relief passed through the congregation. Heads nodded. Shoulders relaxed. People looked away from the casket.

The minister cleared his throat and resumed the service.

Neris stared at Audra.

Her mother sat.

“What did you just do?”

“I prevented panic.”

“No. You made them believe you.”

“They wanted to believe me.”

Another knock came from inside the casket.

This one was too soft for anyone else to hear.

Neris leaned toward it.

A voice whispered through the polished wood.

“Don’t let them take me back.”

Detective Toren Brask found Neris near the cemetery gate after the burial.

He was younger than she expected, perhaps thirty-eight, with a narrow face, deep-set brown eyes, and a pale line cutting through his left eyebrow. He wore a charcoal suit that failed to disguise the stance of a police officer. Even while offering condolences, his gaze moved constantly, registering faces, vehicles, and exits.

“I’m sorry about Ione,” he said.

“Did you send the officer to the house?”

“I did.”

“Did he report the handprint?”

“What handprint?”

“Inside the patrol car.”

Brask studied her. “He said your mother collected some…

“…