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“Okay,” I say. “We’ll do it.”
Later, I wake again, this time to a creaking noise. Not a creaking floorboard or door, but what sounds like a pulley in need of greasing.
The sound of a dumbwaiter, creaking up on its rope.
I groan and bury my head in my pillow. Isn’t that exactly what Jin joked about? The ghostly dumbwaiter creaking upward in the night?
I pull the pillow away. Silence. There. See? I roll my eyes at myself and flip onto my back.
Creak. Creak.
With another groan, I lift my head. What is it with nights in this house, my imagination going into overdrive?
Because I’m not well. Mentally not well.
I grit my teeth. No, I’m emotionally and psychologically not well. I lost my husband, not my mind.
Creak. Creak.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter, and roll out of bed.
I know I’m imagining this because there is no dumbwaiter in that damn shaft, but apparently, I’m going to need to prove that to myself before I can sleep.
“Feels a lot like déjà vu,” I mutter as I cinch my wrapper and stomp into the hall.
Where does that dumbwaiter come out up here? I heard the sound somewhere behind my headboard and…
And that’s where I see the panel inset in the wall.
Which proves nothing because I’ve passed it dozens of times and subconsciously registered that it was there, putting the shaft right behind my headboard.
I march over and peer at the panel. The one on the main levelopens easily, but with this one it takes me a moment to find the latch. Finally, I do, and I swing the hatch open… to see a pitch-black shaft.
Damn it, I’m going to need my phone’s light.
Stomp back into my room, heading for the nightstand where I plugged it…
My phone isn’t there. For a split second, paranoia washes through me. Someone took—
No, I don’t remember plugging it in last night. So where did I leave it?
Forget that. There’s a penlight in the drawer for power outages. I snatch it out, check that it works, and stride back into the hall.
At the dumbwaiter, I need to duck my head in to get a look upward. I expect the shaft to stop right above this spot, but it continues up to the attic, and I can see the pulley is there, but there’s very clearly nothing attached to it—not a dumbwaiter and not even a rope for the pulley.
With a growl at my treacherous imagination, I start back out. As I do, the weak penlight shines down and…
There’s something down there. Way down there, past the main floor. Something pale.
Thoughts of Brodie Kilmer flash, and my heart jams into my throat. We’d said the shaft was too small for him to climb, but what if he tried? What if he got wedged in there?
I shine the light straight down, and what I see isn’t a person.
It’s a piece of paper. No, it’s a newspaper, an old one, seeming to float in the shaft. The front page of a newspaper with two photos on it. Photos of girls. One blond and one brunette.
Jin’s ghost story bubbles up in my brain. The photograph of the two victims. I stretch my arm down for a better look and—
My breath catches, and my heart seems to stop.
