Chapter 10 — A Name Crossed Out in Every Book

Eleanor Birch. Eleanor Birch. Eleanor—who?

Ellis's shadow fought the Mayor while Ellis himself was barely there.

The shadow tore into Whitmore with teeth made of eraser-rubber—actual erasers, I saw, the pink rectangular kind from the school supply cupboard—and the Mayor's facade cracked and chipped, revealing newspaper pulp underneath. His voice when he screamed was pencils scratching paper, hundreds of them, a sound that made your fillings ache.

I ducked under Miss Wicker's reaching arms and grabbed a document from the floor.

ELEANOR BIRCH—STATUS: REDACTED

My mother's library card. Her signature dissolving from the bottom. Our mortgage papers, her name being consumed by fresh black ink that moved as I held the paper. My own baby footprints, smudged into nothing.

Every record. Every trace.

The Press bellowed and printed a new headline in screaming red letters:

LOCAL GIRL GOES MISSING—FAMILY SAYS SHE NEVER EXISTED.

Ellis's shadow pinned the Mayor against the typesetting table. Up close I could see it wasn't quite a boy anymore—it was something older, something with inkwell eyes and fingers that unspooled into handwritten script when it moved.

"You crossed out her name in every record you could find," it said. "But you missed one."

From somewhere inside itself, the shadow produced a page so old it was more amber than white—the Pigeon Hollow founding document, the original, before anyone had taken anything from it.

At the bottom, beneath layer upon layer of attempted deletions, something persisted:

…and to Eleanor Birch we entrust the keeping of the First Draft…

The ground shook.

The Press stuttered, mid-print, for the first time.

Because beneath us, in the dark below the dark, something had heard its name.