AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s not the newspaper article from Jin’s story. It’s the one from mine. School photos of Patrice and Heather smile up at me, under aheadline half lost in the shadows, the remaining words seeming to leap from the page.
Teen Girls
Satanic Ritual
Horrific Murder
I yank back, heart racing. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m imagining this. I must be.
Plink. Plink.
The sound of drips hitting distant paper. I brace myself and lean into the shaft again. Spots of red bleed into the newspaper below. Crimson red.
Blood splashed through a forest clearing.
I start to back out, but a drop from above hits me and I drop the penlight and stumble backward into the opposite wall. My hand flies to my face and finds a damp spot, but when I pull back my fingers, nothing’s there.
I run my hands over my face, as if I’ve missed the spot, and then I stare down at them.
Nothing.
I run into my room and into the bathroom, flicking on the light. Then I stare at my face in the mirror. There’s a damp spot on my cheek, but it’s clear, like water, with no trace of red. All I see is my own wild-eyed face, drooping and drawn with exhaustion, giving me a preview of what I’ll look like in five years.
The haggardness reminds me of Keith… and I remember where I left my phone. Downstairs after texting him.
I turn around and—
My foot flies out, the bathroom rug yanked from under it, and I crack down to one knee, my hand braced on porcelain.
I grit my teeth, pain blocking everything for a second. Then I lookto see my hand on the freestanding tub and realize if I hadn’t caught the edge, I’d have smashed my head on it.
Bathroom falls. One of the leading causes of accidental death at home. The other one being falls down the stairs… which I’d almost done last night.
I shake my head. I need to be more careful. Obviously, in my haste, I’d slipped on…
I see the bathroom mat, wrinkled and lying against the wall. Then I remember what I felt. One foot touching down, the other rising, the mat yanked sideways. And that’s where it lies—to the side, not behind me, where it would have gone if I slipped. To the side, as if yanked from under me.
I stay on one knee, catching my breath as paranoia seizes my brain in icy claws. I thought someone grabbed my shirt on the stairs last night. I just felt the rug yanked from under my feet.
And the dumbwaiter. That old newspaper article in the dumbwaiter shaft.
I need a photo of it. I have to prove it’s there.
Who am I going to show it to? Jin, Shania, Cirillo… three people who know nothing of my past?
I’m going to show it to myself. Just prove I saw it… and then figure out who the hell put it there. Because no one in this house is supposed to know my past, but someone obviously does.
SIXTEEN
I left my phone in the kitchen. I’d been texting with Keith right before the séance and set it down when the others called me in. I retrieve it and stride to the dumbwaiter shaft. It opens easily, and I lean in, shining the light down.…
Nothing.
The shaft drops into the darkness of the basement. Clearly there isn’t any newspaper hanging there or lying on the floor below.
I twist to look up, shining my cell phone light, until I can see clear up to the pulley. Nothing’s there.
I back up, and I’m standing in the hall, biting my lip as I think, when I catch a voice, barely above a whisper.
