Emrys caught sight of a figure in the gloom, shrouded beneath a heavy raincoat. They were holding something—a wooden sign, it looked like—though Emrys couldn’t make out the words.

“Who else would be out here with the storm approaching?” Emrys’s dad asked. “Think they need help?”

But as the minivan drew closer, the words on the sign came into relief. They’d been spray-painted in blocky red letters.

The figure wore a plague mask beneath the hood of their raincoat, with two goggled eyes and a long, eerie beak that resembled a raven’s head.

“Maybe, uh … maybe not,” Emrys’s dad mumbled. He locked the car doors.

Despite the lack of verifiable cryptids, in his short time in New Rotterdam, Emrys had seen all sorts of strange people. The town just seemed to draw them in. He turned back to Hazel, his eyes wide. “Something for the wiki?” he asked.

His friend shrugged eloquently. Living there her whole life, Hazel had probably seen hundreds of oddballs like this—macabre tourists come to bask in New Rotterdam’s eerie glow.

“It’s not really enough for a full entry,” she said, “but I’ll add it to the Uncanny Sightings talk page. ‘The end is hungry’? What does that even mean?”

“Maybe the four horsemen have low blood sugar,” Emrys’s dad cracked.

Then he pressed down on the gas, quickly leaving the stranger with the sign behind.

The Faceless Founder

From the New Rotterdam Wiki Project

Nobody knows who defaced—as in, literally removed the face from—the statue at the center of Centennial Park.

Originally, the statue depicted New Rotterdam’s founding father, Gideon de Ruiter, who is best remembered for leading the town through the deadly winter of 1636. In recent years, de Ruiter has become somewhat controversial, ever since a new biography revealed the role he played in the infamous New Rotterdam Witch Trials.

He was still a hugely popular figure, however, when the statue was erected in 1876. Which made it especially strange that his statue was defaced in 1877, again in 1879, and twice in 1885. Each time, the city council footed the bill for repairs, until, at last, they’d had enough. In 1886, the plaque bearing de Ruiter’s name was removed, and city leaders declared that the statue would thereafter represent all of New Rotterdam’s many founders, not any one man in particular.

In essence, they said, “We meant for it to look like that.”

Time passed, and most people forgot that “The Faceless Founder” ever had a face. The statue was just another oddity in a town that seemed full of them. Its strange story might have been forgotten altogether, but on a dark autumn night in 1991, a man named Albert Rhodes was attacked while jogging through the park. He claimed his assailant had no face. The cuts on Rhodes’s cheek and forehead made it clear his assailant did have a knife.

Rhodes had barely escaped with his life … and he was utterly certain that his attacker had meant to cut his face off.

Some called him a liar. Some claimed he was the victim of a nasty prank.

But there are others who think otherwise—those who believe the spirit of Gideon de Ruiter stalks Centennial Park at night, hoping to find the face that he lost.

And if he can’t find it—he’ll settle for taking yours.

2

The rain began in earnest a few blocks from home. It announced itself in a steady barrage, knocking relentlessly against the car’s roof like a hundred hands seeking entry. Even with the wipers going full bore, Emrys found it difficult to see through the deluge. The road ahead was an obstacle course of indistinct shapes, every one of them a potential danger obscured by rain. He kept his eyes forward, ready to call out if he spotted anything in their path that his father didn’t.

Finally, he saw their apartment building rise up through the storm, teetering and distorted, as if viewed from underwater.

Forty-nine Eldridge Heights was an old building. Like many on the block, it was constructed from local sandstone sometime in the early 1900s, by a retired sailor-turned-architect named … Something Eldridge. Emrys could never remember. He didn’t have Hazel’s perfect recall.

Emrys’s dad stopped in front of the building so Emrys and Hazel could rush inside. “My kingdom for a driveway,” he said. There was no such thing in New Rotterdam—the buildings were all packed in too tightly. Emrys’s dad would have to continue driving up and down the crowded streets until he found an empty spot at the side of the road.

“Sorry,” Emrys said as he prepared to open his door.

“Hey, don’t cry for me,” said his dad. “It’s too wet out here as it is!”

The sky flashed and thunder roared overhead as Emrys and Hazel ran from the minivan to the building’s awning. The water seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, and for a moment, Emrys imagined drowning right there, like the stories of people getting lost and dying in snowbanks mere feet from their homes. He wrestled with the front door, twisting and turning his key to find the lock’s elusive sweet spot. Just as he was about to admit defeat and ask Hazel to take over, he felt a click, and the satisfying tilt of stubborn machinery finally conceding.

“Ugh!” Hazel said, her voice echoing in the tiny vestibule as she tugged her sodden T-shirt away from her body. “Fifty-two inches of rain every year, and I think we just got half of it in the last five minutes.”

Out of habit, Emrys scanned the handful of packages the mail carrier had left in the vestibule. One in particular caught his eye: a box wrapped in brown paper and adorned with a scattering of colorful stamps. It was addressed to Alyx Van Stavern in apartment #701.

“He got another package,” Emrys said.

Hazel knew immediately who he meant. She crouched low for a better look. “It’s from Inverness,” she said. “That’s in Scotland.” She picked it up and shook it.

“Careful!” said Emrys. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Hazel said, but she put the package back where she’d found it and started up the staircase. “Sounded like pickled eyeballs to me.”

Emrys laughed, falling into step behind her. “What do pickled eyeballs even sound like?”

“Same as normal eyeballs,” Hazel answered, and she rapped her knuckles against door #304. “But pickling keeps them from spoiling on a transatlantic flight.”

“If you say so,” Emrys said. “But you’d think he could pickle eyeballs in the comfort of his own home and save a lot of money on shipping.”

Their friend and neighbor Serena opened the door to her apartment while Emrys was midsentence. She arched an eyebrow pretty much immediately. “Do I want to know what you’re talking about?”

“The Sorcerer of #701 got a package,” Hazel said breezily. She stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, while Emrys stood dripping on the welcome mat. Hazel and Serena had lived at 49 Eldridge Heights for years—since they were babies. They had the easy familiarity of lifelong pals. And while Emrys and Hazel had been fast friends, he was still getting to know Serena. They hadn’t clicked in quite the same way.

Of course, she could afford to be choosy. From what Emrys had gathered, Serena had a lot of friends. He occasionally heard them giggling on their way up or down the stairwell, and Serena’s bedroom wall was a veritable collage of group photos—high-spirited birthday parties, campground gatherings, and crowded selfies.

Emrys, by contrast, had never had more than a handful of friends at one time. He liked to think of it as a matter of quality over quantity, but the truth was simply that some people—most people—thought he was a weirdo. He knew how lucky he was to have found Hazel, and if Hazel and Serena were inseparable, then he would be as friendly as possible to Serena and hope for the best. Even if Serena could be … prickly.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Serena said, raising a hand to stop Hazel’s advance. “My dads will not be happy if you drip all over their floor like a couple of wet dogs. They just had it refinished.”

“Then it should be protected against water damage, right?” said Hazel.

“Let me get you a towel, smart girl,” Serena said, already stooping to open a strange cupboard with a large, grooved piece of metal—like a giant screw—set into its wooden frame. It put Emrys in mind of a medieval torture device.

“That’s new,” said Hazel.

“On the contrary,” said Serena. “It is ridiculously old. But somehow Mr. Pierce convinced my parents that what this apartment really needed was a three-hundred-year-old linen press.” She handed them each a towel. “The amount of money they spend in his shop, I think he must have them hypnotized. Maybe he’s a wizard. Should we snoop through his mail, do you think?”