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The hairs on my neck rise. A male voice drifts from somewhere in the house.
Anton?
It’s male, but too soft for me to tell anything more.
The voice continues in that whispering undercurrent, just distinct enough that I can follow it. When I reach the basement door, I stop, pivot slowly, and then twist the handle.
Locked.
The voice comes again. It’s farther down, near the back of the house.
I keep following it until I’m approaching the breakfast nook.
There’s a light on in there. A wavering light.
The voice has stopped, but it soon starts again, something between a whisper and a rumble. Undoubtedly male. Undoubtedly not Anton.
Brodie Kilmer?
What if he’s been in our basement this whole time, with a key to sneak up at night.
No, if any of us thought there was an actual chance Brodie Kilmer was still in the house, we’d have taken the door off its hinges to check.
Maybe we should have done that anyway.
I take one careful step toward the breakfast nook and then stop as I see the figure seated at the table. It’s Cirillo, still dressed in his golf shirt, but with his hair messy enough that he looks as if he rolled out of bed. He has glasses on, suggesting he usually wears contacts.
He’s at the table, with all of his equipment. With the photos and mementos.
With my husband’s ashes.
For a moment, even though he’s facing my way, he doesn’t see me. He’s too engrossed in what he’s doing.
Somebody staged that newspaper in the dumbwaiter and lured me in with the creaking of the pulley. Somebody who’d dug deep enough into my background to uncover my past.
Who would be looking into me like that?
The guy I’d hired to contact my dead husband. The researcher who had to be sure I wasn’t some crank out to embarrass him.
So… after setting up that newspaper, he’d now be openly sitting in the breakfast nook talking aloud, where I can find him and wonder why he’s awake?
I can understand Cirillo researching me, but what would be the point of staging that newspaper?
What would be the point ofanyonestaging it?
I think back to what I experienced.
A newspaper article… just like in Jin’s story about his grandmother.
Dripping blood… just like in that story about Roddy and Sam.
I heard a rope in the pulley… but there isn’t a rope on it.
I saw blood dropping and felt it hit my cheek… but my cheek is clean.
I’m losing it.
I roll my shoulders. No, I’m not. I’m on edge after the séance, and I imagined the article on Patrice and Heather and the dripping blood, because I just dreamed ofthatséance.
