Small Spaces

That morning in homeroom, Ollie persists in reading Small Spaces during Mr. Easton’s class. She has reached the part where Caleb returns to the farm. Beth says he looks cold and blue, like someone who has drowned. Caleb has no memory of the previous night. Beth writes, “Only the look in his eyes had changed, and he would not say where he had been. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said” (50). After Caleb’s return, Beth and Jonathan get married, go on their honeymoon, and have a daughter. Their lives are happy for decades until one night in the autumn when Jonathan declares that the smiling man has come back.

Ollie’s reading is interrupted as Mr. Easton tells everyone about the farm they are about to visit. Misty Valley Farm has belonged to the same family for generations. It’s a small-scale, eco-tourism operation that now caters to visitors and is doing very well as a result. Coco urges Mr. Easton to talk about the ghost stories associated with the place. This catches Ollie’s interest because the family that owns the farm bears an eerie similarity to the characters in Ollie’s book.

Easton says that two brothers disappeared, and their bodies were never found, but neighbors say that the property is haunted: “The woman herself didn’t live long after her husband vanished.