Possum Springs never changed very much.

Oh, sure, there were some things that changed. Businesses closed down. Occasionally, new ones would spring up to replace them. People moved away, or died, or both. And every so often, a sinkhole, flood, or blizzard would wreck half the town.

But the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In no place was that more true than in Possum Springs.

Mae took a little bit of solace in the town's sameness. For one thing, it meant that those nutso cultists from last year had been wrong. In the months since the incident in the mine, the town hadn't been destroyed by a blizzard, or eaten by a giant goat, or whatever those guys had been worried about. The town wasn't getting any more business, but it also wasn't getting any less. Things had more or less stabilized.

The only major change that had happened since that cold November in the mines hadn't even been that bad. A car had swerved of the road and crashed into the front steps of Old Man Varney's porch. No one had been hurt, but Varney certainly wasn't happy about it. But he'd gotten to work fixing his porch, and soon nobody would be able to tell there'd even been an accident.

Same old, same old.

Things had stayed very much the same for Mae and her group of friends, too. Mae was still unemployed. Bea was still working up at the Pickaxe. Gregg and Angus were still saving up for Bright Harbor. Germ was still hanging out in the old parking lots for some reason.

And, of course, Casey was still dead.

Despite this, life went on. The holidays had passed, the New Year had come and gone, and winter was slowly but surely fading away. Pain faded away, or at least became more manageable. The time for mourning had passed, and now it was time to take care of what had been left behind.

Gregg was the one who brought the idea to Mae. More accurately, he vaguely explained it and then dragged her along for a trip to Casey's house. According to Gregg, there was something very important that needed to be done for Casey.

"It's, like, a duty," Gregg had explained as they made their way to Casey's old neighborhood. "It's like being a godfather or something. We need to do this for him. It's one of the most important things we can do, Mae."

The important duty Gregg was describing was, of course, going into Casey's room and getting rid of all of his porn for him.

"Who even owns physical copies of porn anymore?" Mae asked skeptically. "Don't people just use the internet? I don't think I've ever actually seen real-life porn outside of the adult section at the Video Outpost."

Gregg thought about this, and then shrugged. "I dunno. Casey and me just agreed to do this back during graduation. I just figured it's about time I finally got around to it."

Casey's house was a single-story, shabby little home on the outskirts of Possum Springs. The paint on the house was a bit worn, and the lawn always looked like it needed a bit of mowing. Casey's parents had always been too preoccupied with other matters to really worry about their home's appearance. It looked as if that hadn't changed.

Gregg reached up and pressed the button for the doorbell. Then he pressed it a few more times, just for laughs. Soon, the door was opened by a thin, middle-aged man who looked as if he hadn't shaved in weeks. The man seemed surprised to see Mae and Gregg, and a friendly smile soon appeared on his face.

"Well, hello, Mae! Hello, Gregg! How are you two doing?"

Mae lifted her hand up and waved at the man who'd opened the door. "Hi, Mr. Hartley."

Mr. Hartley wasn't really named Mr. Hartley, of course. Mr. Hartley was—or, had been—Casey's stepdad. Mae just called him Mr. Hartley because she could never remember his real name. It was probably Doug or something, but it felt weird to call a friend's parent Doug. Doug was a weird name for a parent to have, anyway.

"What are you two doing here?" Mr. Hartley asked. His eyes drifted in Mae's direction. Before he even spoke, Mae knew what question he was going to ask. "Mae, aren't you supposed to be in college? Or is Longest Night break just longer than it used to be?"

Mae did her best to try and not look guilty. She was more or less over college, but she still felt bad whenever someone asked her why she wasn't in school. Mae had been asked that very question by pretty much every adult she knew since she returned to Possum Springs. Mae guessed she was going to have to get used to the oblivious guilt slinging for a while.

It wasn't like Mae had any control over why she'd dropped out, though. She had no reason to feel guilty. That's what her parents and Bea said, at least. But it was a little hard not to feel ashamed when a surprised adult obliviously asked why she wasn't at school.

"College didn't really work out too great," Mae said, looking off to the side. "I've been back since October. I'm only just getting around to visiting here, I guess."

After a moment, Mae added, "Sorry about Casey."

Mae hadn't intended to bring Casey up right away. Judging by the look on Gregg's face, she'd definitely brought it up way too soon. And now the mood was turning all weird. Mr. Hartley's smile faltered a bit, and he looked as if he'd just deflated a little bit. Mae knew that look; it was how you looked when you were sad, but tired of showing it.

"Thank you, Mae." Mr. Hartley sighed, looking down at his feet. "That's… nice to hear. But we're holding out hope. I'm sure he'll come home someday."

Mae said nothing. Neither did Gregg. Both of them were afraid that anything they might say would give away the secret they were keeping. Neither of them wanted to lie to Mr. Hartley, either. But they certainly couldn't tell him the truth. Not just because the truth would break his Hartley heart, but because the truth was unbelievable.

Casey Hartley was dead. He was dead and lying at the bottom of a hole in a collapsed section of a mine. All because some old men thought that killing off people they didn't like would somehow bring back something that they had never had in the first place. The same thing happened all over the world, although not usually so literally.

"What brings you two by?" Mr. Hartley asked. Mae and Gregg both thanked God for the change in subject.

"I left some stuff here the last time I came over," Gregg said. "Was wondering if I could go into Casey's room and look for it?"

Mr. Hartley looked faintly surprised by Gregg's request. "The last time you were here? Gregg, that was nearly a year ago. Why did you wait until now to come pick it up?"

Gregg glanced off to the side nervously. He hadn't expected his super-believable lie to get called out so quickly.

"Well, things have just been… crazy lately. Me and Angus are getting set to move to Bright Harbor, so I forgot all about it. But then Mae said she wanted to stop by, and I remembered. So that's why we're here. It's a good and normal reason."

Mr. Hartley looked as if he didn't entirely buy it. On the other hand, he also had no reason to suspect that Gregg and Mae were up to no good. Mr. Hartley knew that Casey and his friends were troublemakers, but they were still good people. And so, with a welcoming smile, Mr. Hartley stepped to the side and invited Mae and Gregg in.

The Hartley household hadn't changed much since the last time Mae had visited. The greying walls, shaggy carpeting, and smell of dust in the air hit Mae with a rush of nostalgia. She was suddenly overcome with memories of coming over to play video games with Casey, or to meet up with him for band practice in his garage.

It wasn't a good feeling. But it wasn't exactly a bad feeling, either.

Without waiting for another word, Gregg hurried on down the hall that led to Casey's old bedroom. Mae was left alone in the living room with Mr. Hartley, both of them standing around awkwardly. Mae glanced around the room, hoping she could avoid conversation. Wherever she looked, though, all she saw were photos of Casey.

He was smiling in all of them. That wasn't too surprising; you were supposed to smile in photos, after all. But the small, closed-lip smile Casey had in each of the photos hurt Mae in a way she couldn't really describe. It was a smile that seemed to say that Casey and the camera had a friendly secret between the two of them.

Mae looked away from the photos. When she looked back at Mr. Hartley, however, she saw that Casey's stepfather was staring at her.

"… What's up?" Mae asked curiously.

Mr. Hartley cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. "I was just wondering if Casey had gotten in touch with you before he disappeared. But I guess you already would have said so if he had. Sorry."

Mr. Hartley offered a smile as way of apology, but it just made Mae feel even worse. Here she was, alone with someone who needed to know something Mae couldn't tell him. The knowledge of Casey's death had been eating Mae up inside lately, and being around Mr. Hartley sped up the process.

Mae found herself wishing she hadn't come here. When Gregg had said he needed to get something from Casey's house, Mae hadn't thought about what that would involve. The fact she'd have to interact with Casey's parents had completely slipped her mind somehow. Then again, Mae had never been the best at forethought.

"So are you still a plumber?" Mae hoped that her attempt to change the subject wouldn't come across as too obvious.

"Yes," Mr. Hartley said. "I'm still a plumber."

Mae hadn't expected him to answer that quickly. Now the conversation was dead and things were awkward again. Mae wished she knew more about plumbing so she could keep the conversation going. The silence was killing her.

"Hey, Mae!" Gregg's voice came in loud and clear from the other side of the house. He was yelling a bit louder than he probably needed to. "Could you come in here for a second? I need your help with something!"

"Coming!" Mae called out. She glanced at the confused Mr. Hartley quickly as she made her way past him. "Sorry. Be right back, probably."

Mae hurried out of the den, away from the intense discomfort that had been weighing down on her. It was a straightforward run down the hallway to get to Casey's room. Mae had made the drip dozens of times in the past. This time, though, there was no Casey to hang out with. There was just a Casey-shaped hole in the world.

Mae only felt worse when she actually opened the door to Casey's old bedroom.

Casey's room looked more-or-less exactly how it had looked the last time Mae had been there. There were game consoles and racks of games set up near an old TV on top of the dresser. Posters for various bands and skaters were hung up on the walls. A thin layer of dust had set over everything. Nobody had used the things in this room for months.

Mae's chest hurt just looking at it all. For some reason, the thought of all of Casey's possessions being neglected and forgotten was making Mae feel like crying. Nobody would ever sleep in this room again. Nobody would play Casey's old video games, or surf the net on his laptop.

Well, maybe somebody would. Maybe one day the Hartleys would give up on their missing son and give away his things. Then some stranger would buy his games or his skateboard at a yard sale and take them home, completely oblivious to the memories attached to those objects. To that person, they would just be things. To Mae, though, everything in Casey's room was like a piece of his ghost.

Mae closed the door behind her and walked in on the hardwood floor. Casey's closet door was open, and Gregg was on his hands and knees searching around. His search was somewhat hampered by the pile of dirty laundry littering the floor of the closet, but Gregg wasn't deterred.

"Geez," Mae muttered at the sight of the dirty boxers and shirts. "Casey was really bad about laundry, huh? Even I'm not this messy."

"Yeah, this is a real mess." Gregg reluctantly stuck his hands into the pile of clothes and began sifting through it. "I used to leave piles of laundry around like this back when I lived with my folks."

"How'd you stop?" Mae asked.

"I started doing my own laundry when I moved in with Angus," Gregg explained. "I didn't want him to think I was messy."

"You are messy, though," Mae pointed out.

Gregg either didn't hear her, or was distracted by a realization. "Hang on, do you even do laundry? I've only seen you wear that one shirt since you got back."

"It's a good shirt!" Mae said defensively. She'd made it herself in home ec. She'd even gotten an A!

Gregg continued feeling around under the dirty clothes in the closet. It didn't take Mae very long to get bored of all this.

"Didn't you say you needed my help?" Mae asked impatiently.

Gregg didn't look up, his focus entirely on the search. "There's, like, a loose floorboard somewhere in here. Casey kept all of his secret shit under it, remember?"

Mae frowned, puzzled, and raised a brow. "No? I don't think so. I never saw any weird floorboards or whatever. Whenever I came over, we just played video games or threw stuff at each other's faces."

The fact that Casey had a loose floorboard he hid stuff under was incredibly cool, though. Mae was a little disappointed that Casey had never shown it to her. Why had he shown Gregg and not her? Was it full of manly things, like condoms or pictures of trucks? That was the only reason Mae could think of for her to not know about these floor secrets.

Just when Mae was beginning to wonder how much longer they'd be standing around, Gregg let out a cry of triumph. The pile of laundry ruffled as Gregg moved something underneath it. Slowly, Gregg pulled a small plank of wood out from under the clothes and tossed it aside.

Mae watched as Gregg's hands returned to the closet, to where the floorboard he'd just removed had been. After a while, Gregg pulled a large box out and set it down at Mae's feet. The dirty laundry fell into the hole that the box had been removed from.

Mae looked down at the box. It was some sort of army box—it was green, and metal, and had 'US ARMY' stenciled on the front in yellow paint. Someone had crossed out those words, however, and replaced them with 'CASEY'S STASH'.

Gregg popped open the lid of the box. Mae looked into Casey's stash and found herself staring at a stack of magazines. A few plastic bags were crammed into the side of the box, but Mae couldn't make out their contents.

Besides, the magazines were more interesting. The cover of the magazine on top of the pile had a girl on it. The girl was only wearing a pair of overalls, and was leaning over the seat of a tractor in a manner that was probably supposed to be seductive. Mae didn't think that any picture with a tractor in it could really be considered sexy, though.

According to the title at the top of the cover, this periodical was known as 'TRACTOR GIRLS?'

"Why is there a question mark?" Mae wondered aloud. Gregg had no answer for her.

"Help me sort through all of these," Gregg said as he lifted the magazine out of the box. He set it aside and pulled out another, slowly forming a stack of porn outside the box.

"We're only taking the porn," Gregg clarified. "The non-porn can stay behind."

"That's a weird thing to say," Mae said as she joined in on the work.

The two spent a few minutes going through the stack of magazines, sorting them all out. There were such enlightening titles as 'DIRTY PUNK GIRLS', 'XXX BOXING ILLUSTRATED', and, inexplicably, 'THE SAD NASTY ONES'. There were several more copies of 'TRACTOR GIRLS?' and a few copies of 'RUST BELT FULL-AUTO MONTHLY', as well.

"Where did he even get some of these?" Mae asked as she pulled out a magazine with a cover she wished she could instantly forget. "And why does he have so many? Like, who even needs this much porn?"

"I think some of these belonged to his bio-dad," Gregg said. He both looked and sounded like he was already tired of looking at these magazines. He probably wasn't fond of all of this rampant, in-your-face heterosexuality. Mae couldn't blame him. Even she was getting a little tired of magazines with titles like 'FILTHY SECRETS' and 'BISEXUAL BI-MONTHLY SEXCAPADES'.

"So, his dad died and Casey got his boat and his porn?" Mae asked. "But his dad didn't bother leaving them any money or anything?"

"Is that surprising?" Gregg asked.

Mae shrugged. "Not really."

Mae had met Casey's dad back when he was alive. The guy had been a living, breathing example of a deadbeat dad. Even when Mae was young, she understood that Casey's bio-dad was kind of a shit. Nevertheless, after he'd had his heart attack, everyone had had to go to his funeral and act like he'd been such a great guy. Death was weird like that.

There were only a few magazines left at the bottom of Casey's secret army locker. These ones looked fairly old, their covers worn around the edges. Mae reached in and pulled the final magazines out so they could join the others in the pile. As she did so, however, something stuck to the back of the bottom magazine fell down into the box.

Mae looked down into the army locker to see what she had dropped. A small, white envelope was sitting at the bottom of the locker, surrounded by baggies of weird, white crystals.

"What is that?" Gregg asked in surprise.

Mae reached into the locker and picked the envelope up. She turned the white rectangle over, revealing the four words inscribed on the front:

GREGG – OPEN IF DEAD

Before either Mae or Gregg could inspect the envelope any further, a noise from the outside hallway grabbed their attention.

"Hey, are you two okay?" Mr. Hartley asked as he slowly opened the door. "You two have been taking a while to—"

Mr. Hartley stared into the room, his eyes naturally drawn to Mae, Gregg, and the stack of pornography they had pulled out of Casey's locker. Mr. Hartley's gaze lingered on the magazine at the top of the stack, which was the September, 2009 copy of 'BUTTS & ASSES MONTHLY'. The picture on the cover was one that could not be shown in public.

Mr. Hartley said nothing. He glanced off awkwardly as he stepped back into the hallway.

"I'll, uh… I'll let you two get back to getting rid of my son's porn." He said as he closed the door on them.

Mae and Gregg took that as their cue to leave.

Everybody was too embarrassed to look at each other when they left.

The most natural place to take a pile of pornography was, naturally, Gregg and Angus's apartment.

Mae and Gregg had had some trouble carrying all of the magazines all the way back to Towne Centre. Gregg had seriously underestimated the amount of porn that Casey had been in possession of. Without any reliable transport, the two had had to wander through the streets of Possum Springs with stacks of pornography clung to their chests.

Angus had been home when Mae and Gregg arrived. He said nothing when they dumped the dirty magazines in the middle of the living room. He just got up and went into the kitchen for a while. When he got back, Mae and Gregg showed him the envelope.

"Are we supposed to open this if Gregg is dead, or did Casey want Gregg to open it if Casey was dead?" Angus asked.

"It's really unclear," Gregg said. He had taken his leather jacket off and thrown it on the pile of magazines in an attempt to make things less horribly awkward. It kind of worked.

"I think we should open it. If it's meant for Casey, then it's the right time. If it's meant for Gregg, I don't wanna wait for him to die of, like, heart attacks or whatever." Mae reached out to take the envelope from Angus and began opening it.

"You really think I'm going to die from natural causes?" Gregg sounded touched at the idea. It was nice to think he'd die naturally, and not from doing something stupid like riding on the roof of a moving car.

Mae ignored Gregg's question and focused on the envelope. She tore the paper open and fished its contents out. It never occurred to Mae to be careful in order to avoid ripping the note inside the envelope. It never occurred to Mae to be careful in general.

The sloppy, chicken-scratch handwriting on the unfolded note confirmed it had been written by Casey. While most people wouldn't have been able to read the note, Mae had been friends with Casey for years. She was pretty much fluent when it came to the scribbles that passed for Hartley's handwriting.

For the sake of Angus, though, Mae read the note out loud.

To Gregg,

If you're reading this, it means I died before you and you're getting rid of my porn for me. Thanks. Sorry you gotta go through my smut. You can keep the gun catalogs I've got in there if you want.

I just got news that my cousin died. Maybe I'll tell you about it, maybe I won't. I'm feeling pretty shook right now. When my ma told me about it, I went to my room, sat down, smoked a joint, and got all sad. Then I smoked another joint to cheer myself up and decided to write down a will.

So, if this shit doesn't make since, it's 'cause I'm high as eff.

I don't got a lot to give away. I got my boat. I got my games. I dunno if you guys want that, though. So, if I'm dead, feel free to just, like, take my stuff and split it up amongst yourselves. But I've got something I know you'll be able to use: cash. A ton of cash.

My cousin and me had a lockbox fulla cash. He's dead, so he's not gonna need it. I don't wanna keep it around, neither. I'm gonna bury it somewhere for if anything happens to me, or for if I ever need to dig up some money.

Look for that place with the weird tree. It'll be buried there.

Okay, bye.

A sad, yet confused silence settled into the apartment. Reading a message from a dead friend had made Mae, Gregg and Angus all a little teary eyed. Realizing he'd written the message while high had made them all a little perplexed. But it was the last part of the message that was the most confusing.

"Where'd Casey get a lockbox full of cash?" Mae asked. "Hell, where'd he get a lockbox?"

"And why would he bury it?" Gregg held the letter up close to the face, as if proximity would somehow reveal some big secret.

"Well, from the sounds of it, he was pretty high," Angus pointed out. "I think it's a safe bet that Casey wasn't thinking logically about all of this."

Mae sat there, puzzled. There was a lot about the note that was confusing. For one thing, Mae had no idea that Casey had done drugs. She knew he smoked cigarettes, but smoking joints was something else entirely. Where would he even get weed in a town like Possum Springs?

The thing that was bothering Mae, however, was the mention of Casey's cousin. Mae had never met him. Hell, Mae hadn't even known Casey had had a cousin until last November.

A lot about that night was fuzzy. Mae could only recall bits and pieces of the events in the old mines from last year. But one of the things Mae remembered clearly was what the men in the dark had said. In particular, Mae could remember learning of Casey's death with perfect clarity.

Thinking about it made Mae sick. Those bastards hadn't even known Casey. They acted like he was a criminal and a deadbeat just because of some things in his past. But Mae knew that Casey wasn't what those people thought he was. He wasn't a criminal, or the type of person to ditch people if times got tough.

Casey was good.

"Mae?"

Gregg's concerned voice caught Mae by surprise. She realized with some embarrassment that her eyes had been tearing up. With a sniffle, Mae tried to nonchalantly dry her eyes.

"Sorry," Mae grumbled. "Just remembering stuff."

"It's cool," Angus said reassuringly. "You can cry if you need to."

"Nah, I'm good," Mae said with a sigh. Her throat was a little sore, but she felt like she wasn't at risk of shedding more tears. "It's not a full cry. Just, like… a baby cry. For a baby sadness."

Gregg set the note down on the carpet and folded his arms. "Okay," he said. "What do we do about this? Should we go looking for the money? Where would we even start?"

"Should we tell Bea about this?" Mae asked. She felt a little weird about not having her other best friend around during this. Apparently, though, things were pretty busy at the Pickaxe.

"I think we have to," Angus said. "I mean, I don't know where else we're going to get a shovel."

Mae frowned a bit. She could definitely remember that her family had a shovel somewhere around the house. But Mae hadn't seen the shovel since she stayed up all night digging a hole in the backyard in a sugar-fueled manic episode. After her parents had found her asleep at the bottom of a hole, they'd both decided it would be smart to keep Mae away from both Eternity Sauce and any sorts of digging implements.

"Okay, so… are we actually doing this?" Gregg asked. He sounded unusually worried. Mae had thought that Gregg would have been super excited about the idea of a treasure hunt. Maybe he just wasn't a big fan of digging.

"I think that we kind of have to." Mae picked Casey's note up off of the floor and stared hard at the scribbly handwriting. "This is something that Casey left behind for us. Ignoring it would just be… I dunno, bad."

Mae shrugged. She didn't really have any better words for it.

Gregg still looked uncertain, but eventually a sigh escaped him. "Okay," he said. "I've got a bad feeling about all this, but okay. I'm in if Angus is in."

Mae looked expectantly at Angus, whose ears perked up at the mention of his name. "What?" He said. "I mean, I guess I'm in. It all depends on where Casey buried this thing. If we can get to it without breaking any laws, then it's fine."

Mae opened her mouth to let out a groan of disappointment, but she stopped herself. Gregg and Angus were both sharing a worried look. Mae had nearly forgotten about how hard Gregg was trying to keep himself out of trouble. It was no wonder that both Gregg and Angus were reluctant about finding Casey's money.

"It should be fine!" Mae said confidently. "We're basically just digging up a time capsule or whatever. I mean, who ever got into trouble for digging something up?"

"Grave-robbers," Angus responded.

"Pirates," Gregg added.

"Okay, we're neither of those things. We should be fine," Mae said, conveniently forgetting all of the movies she'd torrented and the one skeleton that she had exhumed.

Gregg and Angus shared another look. This time, though, they were smiling. That, in turn, made Mae smile. The sense that something big was starting was slowly setting in, and the three friends were looking forward to it. All that was left to do was let Bea know about this.

She'd probably think it was great.