We Hide Our Faces

In a small Virginia town, a library grows a new wing.

Eddie has encountered impossible buildings before. He knows it’s a mysterious lure to an ancient evil.

But when Dad disappears inside the infinite maze of library shelves, Eddie has no choice. He enters the library to solve its mysteries and confront its terror.

Deep in the Pacific Ocean, water drains through a rip in reality.

Riley barely survived the imposter cruise ship Aria. She never wants to see the ocean again.

But then a federal agent forces Riley onto a Navy battleship. Its mission: stop the ocean from draining.

Once again, Riley finds herself on a ship beset by mysterious terrors.

Eddie’s and Riley’s fights for survival barrel towards a horrific collision… with each other, and with an ancient horror they’ve encountered before…

Chapter 1

Eddie breathed in the grassy spring air. He sat on his bike at the top of the hill. At the bottom of Grandma and Grandpa’s steep gravel driveway, a truck rumbled by.
Brown and gray trees whose branches had been naked since November now sprouted green leaves and buds.
Spring was arriving, and with it, freedom.
Grandma didn’t like Eddie riding his bike when it was cold out, which meant he was stuck relying on Dad or Grandpa to drive him around.
But now that winter was over, Eddie could ride down the hill, past the 7-Eleven, and into town. He could ride all the way to Frankie’s house, past the library. If Frankie wasn’t being a dick that day.
Now that Frankie and Juan had made friends with high schoolers, they didn’t want to play with Eddie as much. There was also Ian who was a grade behind Eddie, but the pretend adventures that Ian liked weren’t fun to Eddie.
Eddie didn’t like pretending to fight monsters.
He wanted to have Nerf wars with his friends, but they’d moved on to Airsoft. Juan even had a paintball gun.
Dad said Airsoft pellets hurt too much and would make Grandma worry. Paintball was out of the question.
But today, Eddie was free again. Grandma said it was warm enough to bike to town.
He had his Elite Destroyer in his backpack, a prized thrift shop find. It shot Nerf darts with a motor, which was what all his friends had. He’d stuffed an old towel around it, in case he whiffed it on his bike. Dad always told him to be careful with the gun, because he couldn’t afford to replace it.
Eddie hoped that with him finally having the freedom to bike around town, Frankie and Juan would set aside their Airsoft guns to play Nerf.
Before he could pick up his feet and coast down the sloped gravel driveway, Grandpa came outside.
Grandpa had shrunk just in the last two years since Eddie and Dad had moved here, after Sherri left and they’d gone inside that skyscraper.
Grandpa looked skinnier than even last summer. Maybe the winter did it to him.
“Grandma wants to know how long you’ll be gone.” He walked out to stand next to Eddie and his bike. He squeezed the tires. “It’s ready for a good ride, I’d say.”
“I’ll be back before dinner. Thanks for putting air in the tires.”
“I’m not good for much else these days. Make sure you save some energy for getting up the hill to come home.” He handed Eddie something from his pocket, hidden in his fingers.
Eddie took it. It was a ten-dollar bill.
“Grandma said to take that for lunch or the dollar store.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t tell your dad.”
“I know.” Eddie waited to hear if Grandpa had anything else to say.
Grandpa shuffled on his feet and shrugged slowly. He didn’t like to say things that were real personal. Dad said it was because he grew up in black-and-white.
Finally, Grandpa got the words out. “He told me about your nightmares.”
Eddie’s stomach flipped. He knew that Grandpa wouldn’t get mad at him—he and Grandma left punishments to Dad. And he knew that having bad dreams wouldn’t get him in trouble anyways.
But the nightmares were about the skyscraper back in Richmond. Dad said not to talk about what had happened inside. Not even to Grandma and Grandpa.
Grandpa knew something weird had happened. But Eddie wasn’t supposed to talk about the monsters he’d seen on the top floor.
He felt guilty hearing that Grandpa knew about his nightmares. No one was supposed to know except for Dad.
For the past six months, ever since Dad went on that cruise that sank, Eddie had frequently woken up in the pitch dark, sweating and terrified.
In his dream, he was back in the building, on the top floor. He was racing through the orange haze, hopping over piles of desks and slipping through forests of metal pipes stood on end.
His heart beat so fast that it thumped in the sides of his head.
In the way sometimes in dreams you just know something, Eddie knew that something was chasing him.
He knew that it wasn’t the hopping monsters with the wiggly thumbs that came out of their faces—the ones Dad once called Lurchers.
He knew it wasn’t the woman the size of a truck—the one who was all mixed up with wires and marble tile and other stuff that it takes to make a building. Dad said her name had been Micah. Dad said she was dead.
But that’s not why Eddie knew the thing chasing him in his dreams wasn’t Micah. He knew because that’s what the dream was. In the dream, something else chased him, it wanted him for a reason he didn’t understand. He could almost say that reason out loud, like it was on the tip of his tongue. Something to do with that day he went inside the skyscraper.
As the thing chased Eddie, everything it passed became more of itself.
Eddie didn’t know what that meant—more of itself—but he knew it was true.
He didn’t know what would happen when the thing caught him. But it terrified him.
At least twice a week, this dream had woken him up in the middle of the night.
Each time, the monster chasing him got closer and closer.
Last night, when he sat up in bed to switch on his lamp, he could still feel fingers brushing the back of his neck. Too many fingers. Layers of them.