BY MONDAY MORNING, the heat was even worse and the Prozac still hadn’t kicked in. Kris forced herself to keep to a regimen. Two pills a day. One in the morning. One at night.
Sadie was spending most of her time upstairs, although her games had become strangely muted. The house was no longer filled with the thumping of her footsteps and the squeals of her laughter. Every now and then, Kris would hear the creak of the floorboards above or the snap of the tiny door’s latch clicking into place as Sadie withdrew to her secret room behind the wall.
By Tuesday, Kris felt as though her mind were filled with crossed wires. She knew the Prozac took time to become effective, but at this point, they may as well have been breath mints. It was as if all of the pain and anxiety Kris had managed to keep at bay with the Xanax was now crashing down on her in a single pummeling wave.
She tried to distract herself by sanding more of the dock, but every time she finished one plank, it seemed another had been added to the end.
At night, she tried to lull herself to sleep by recalling happier times in the bedroom, the few moments of bittersweet joy at her mother’s bedside. She tried to imagine her mother’s weak voice as she shared childhood stories in hopes that they would never be forgotten, as she recounted dates with Kris’s father, as she relived beloved memories of raising their one and only child.
But none of those moments existed in Kris’s memory.
On Wednesday afternoon, she officially gave up on sanding the dock. The wildfire that had ignited in her brain was raging.
This is not normal, she thought. It can’t be.
It felt as though an invisible hand were reaching beneath her skull and gripping the spongy gray surface of her brain. It didn’t make sense. She had never taken anything for depression or anxiety before Jonah died. How could a few weeks of usage result in such extreme withdrawal?
Picking up her phone from the coffee table, she checked the time.
3:17 p.m.
No one would blame her for having a drink.
She had just made it into the kitchen when she was engulfed by a maelstrom of sound. It was like walking into an impossibly thick cloud of gnats. The buzzing surrounded her, whipping by so quickly she swore she could physically feel it skimming the surface of her face.
And yet as the sound grew, so did the pressure inside her head, as if the swirling madness were looking for a way out.
Out.
Because it’s not around you.
It’s in your head.
It’s all in your head.
You know it. Sadie knows it. Dr. Baker knows it. Even Ben knows it.
They know that you’re the problem.
She threw open the refrigerator door. Frosty air wafted out. She dropped to her knees, losing herself in its coolness.
On the second shelf, a bottle of pinot grigio lay on its side. Its clear glass was misted with condensation.
Kris pulled the bottle from the shelf, took one more moment to soak in the cool air, and then she shut the fridge. She held the bottle’s round, cold body to the side of her face as she moved around the kitchen in search of the corkscrew and a glass. Only when it was time to pry the cork from its neck did she lift the bottle away from her hot flesh.
She poured the wine as if she were filling the glass with water, stopping only when she realized just how closely it was coming to the top. She took a desperate gulp, savoring the mouthful of cold liquid as it slipped around her tongue. She swallowed, and the storm inside her mind seemed to calm ever so slightly.
Taking another smaller sip, Kris moved across the great room toward the French doors. She had already grasped the knob when she thought to stop and call back in the direction of the second floor: “Sadie?”
There was no response. Only this new, odd quiet that had settled over her playtime.
Finally, a muffled little voice called back, “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
Another pause, almost as if Sadie were conversing with someone before responding.
Then: “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“I’m just going out on the deck,” Kris told her. “Wanna come out with me?”
This time, there was no answer.
With a frustrated sigh, Kris opened the door and stepped outside.
The heat hit her like a slap in the face.
Shielding her eyes from the intense blast of sunshine, she stepped up to the deck railing and stared out at the landscape of wood and rock and water before her. The entire world seemed to be suffering, every weed brown and withered, every tree branch drooping as if desperate to reach shadow, every patch of dirt baking like clay in a kiln. Captured in the perfectly still water of Lost Lake was the blazing sun. This twin star sent a shimmer of heat rippling above the lake’s surface.
Near the back steps, Kris spotted the freckled nose of a collared lizard peeking out from under a rock. The rest of its body was backed desperately away into cool shadow.
“Got any room under there for me?” Kris asked dryly.
The lizard flicked its tongue once and then crawled farther backward into the darkness.
Kris took another drink of wine. It seemed to be helping. She could already feel that familiar, wonderful numbness as the alcohol entered her bloodstream. The sound in her mind was also letting up, loosening like unraveling threads as it began to swirl away.
This was bad. She knew she could not continue like this. Popping one medication to treat another. Day drinking to drown her pain.
At some point, you’ll have to face it, Timid Kris sang.
For once, the voice did not irritate the living hell out of Kris. She knew it was right. She couldn’t busy herself with home improvement projects all summer. One of these days, she would have to face it all.
“Not yet,” Kris whispered under her breath. Her lips found the glass again, her mouth sucking in more wine.
She swallowed.
She closed her eyes.
Not yet.
The fingers were back, creeping up the back of her skull, under the bone, across the fragile, wet surface of her brain.
Without warning, she was yanked away from where she stood on the back deck. The maelstrom raged around her as she was dragged by an invisible thread, thin as a spider’s silk but as strong as steel, back across miles and weeks she thought she had left behind.
She was back in the frigid, sterile morgue of Howard Fox, coroner and medical examiner for Black Ridge, Colorado. She was leaning over the dead body of her husband, his face smashed into a barely recognizable mask of bone and blood and teeth where teeth should not be. Pebbles of safety glass glimmered in his hair.
“I’ll never forgive you for this. Never,” she hissed into an ear that hung from the side of his head like a loose button.
And then she was turning away, swiping angrily at the tears. She gave a sharp nod to Howard Fox and managed to choke out, “It’s him.”
Howard gave a sad, rehearsed sigh and reached out to touch her arm. “I’m sorry you had to do this.” His hand was warm and clammy even in the freezing cold of the morgue.
Kris backed up a step so that his hand fell away. She crossed her arms over her chest, hoping Howard wouldn’t notice as she casually rubbed away the lingering sensation of his moist flesh.
In the corner of the room, a light flickered behind a rolling partition. She had not noticed it when she entered, the white of the cloth stretching between two metal poles blending perfectly with the white wall. The light flashed again, illuminating the cloth with a soft yellow glow, like a burst of lightning behind the cover of thick, pale clouds.
There was something else behind that partition. Something that seemed to float in the air, flat on the bottom and gently sloping up on top, reaching its highest point at the opposite end.
Another gurney, she realized.
“Is that …” Kris started to say.
Another voice interrupted her, a stern male voice from the opposite side of the room.
A police officer was standing in the doorway.
“Howard,” he called, announcing his presence. The man was dressed in the tan slacks, blue shirt, and black flat-brimmed hat of the Colorado Highway Patrol. His thumbs were hooked behind his black leather belt, the pinky of his right hand habitually lingering on the gun strapped to his side. He nodded to Kris, but he did not look at her. He kept his gaze on Howard, clearly uncomfortable with making eye contact with the grieving widow.
“Just one moment,” Howard told Kris.
She watched as he crossed to the patrolman, who lowered his head as he spoke, his words terse yet his voice soft.
He doesn’t want me to hear.
Kris turned an ear toward the men, pretending to stare off in thought as she strained to hear their conversation.
“… might wanna get her out the door,” the patrolman was saying.
“… don’t want to rush her,” Howard replied.
“… other family on their way from the Springs,” the patrolman informed him. “Don’t want a scene …”
A jolt of electricity shot through Kris’s body, every muscle painfully constricting as her suspicion was confirmed.
She glanced back at the cloth partition.
The light was on now, burning steadily. And below it was the shadow of the second body.
Her body.
It’s her.
Kris had to see her. More than she had needed to see the body of her own husband. She wanted to stare into the destroyed face that, until hours ago, had been the other woman. The reason for Jonah’s unnecessarily late nights. For the instantly deleted texts. For the work calls that Jonah could only take outside. The secret they both knew but of which neither of them ever spoke.
Howard and the police officer had turned away from her, the backs of their heads close together as they discussed their awkward situation.
With slow, light steps, careful not to let the bottoms of her boots squeak across the slick floor tiles, Kris crept over to the partition. She rested her fingers on the cold metal pole as she peered around it.
The body was covered from head to toe in a black plastic sheet, identical to the one draped over Jonah. A metal cart stood beside the body, its wheels locked in place, a collection of instruments meticulously arranged on its top shelf. Next to these was a simple industrial lamp with a bulb shining brightly in a steel dome attached to a long adjustable neck. Every now and then, the bulb flickered, threatening to go out for good. Shadows were born and destroyed with each flicker, creating the illusion that the shape under the sheet was moving.
Three fingers peeked out from the side of the sheet and dangled limply over the edge of the metal gurney. The middle and ring fingers were flawless, the skin smooth and delicate, the nails retaining the perfection of a recent manicure. A tiny painted flower curled elegantly across the glistening surface of the ring fingernail. But the pinkie destroyed the illusion that the woman beneath the sheet had suffered no trauma. It curled away from the other fingers at an impossible angle, the bone snapped free from its joint. The nail was identically painted, yet it dangled from the wet, exposed flesh, torn away from the cuticles that had once held it in place.
Kris had to see her face.
She lurched quickly forward, and the toe of her shoe caught the surface of the floor, giving a sharp squeak.
Kris winced.
“Ma’am?” she heard Howard call from across the room. There was sudden concern in his voice.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the officer added.
Fuck what you think, Kris thought.
She took another step.
“Ma’am!”
Howard was stomping toward her. The clack of the officer’s hard soles followed.
Kris thrust a hand out, ready to grasp the plastic sheet, to pull it free from the mangled body she knew lay hidden beneath.
Her hand froze in midair.
Beneath her outstretched palm, the plastic sheet sloped upward slightly in a small hill. Right where the woman’s stomach would be.
Kris’s mind tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Her first thought was that something had been left on top of the body, a rag or an overturned bowl, something that caused the slight but unmistakable bump under the sheet.
And then the truth forced its way through the cloud of confusion.
“Oh … God …” Kris choked out, her throat tightening in horror.
A hand clamped down on her shoulder.
“Ma’am!”
As if willing herself awake from a nightmare, Kris forced her mind away from the moment. Suddenly she was leaving the mountains behind again, skimming over the flat fields of the Great Plains, over the rippling green earth of the Flint Hills, back to the small, forgotten town of Pacington, Kansas, and the lake that had once been a river before the earth had opened, before subterranean waters had exploded up from the depths to swallow everything in their path.
Kris opened her eyes.
The woman was watching her.
She was a speck of black, framed by the still-green tentacles of weeping willow as she stood on the deck behind her cabin. She was too far away to see in any detail, but Kris knew the woman was staring straight at her. She could feel the woman’s dark eyes penetrating her.
Staring.
Judging.
Kris felt a wetness on her hot, dry cheeks and realized she had been crying.
“Mommy?”
Kris turned, her vision blurred by tears she did not remember shedding.
Two little girls stood in the doorway. They were identical in shape and size, but the one on the right was strangely out of focus. Her legs seemed to disappear into nothingness as if she were not fully there, like an image emerging from the blackness of a Polaroid picture.
Kris swiped at her eyes, quickly rubbing the tears away.
When she looked back at the doorway to the great room, there was only Sadie.
“What …” The word fell from Kris’s open mouth, the confusion that gripped her mind refusing to allow her to finish the thought.
Sadie did not notice her mother’s tear-streaked face or her wide-eyed expression. The little girl was glanced nervously to the empty space beside her.
“She wants …” The rest was lost in a mumble, as if Sadie did not truly want to say it. Something beside her seemed to get her attention. She took a breath and straightened, speaking with forced conviction. “She really wants you to play with us.”
Kris’s mind felt like a pinball machine, her focus ricocheting helplessly from idea to idea as she tried to bring them all into one coherent thought.
“Who?” she managed to ask.
Again, Sadie hesitated. Her hands here clasped obediently in front of her, her fingers intertwined so tightly that her fingertips pressed away what little color there was in her pale flesh.
Growing impatient, Kris glanced over her shoulder at the cabin across the cove.
The back porch was empty.
The woman was gone.
Sadie continued, “There’s a game she wants you to play.”
The paralysis lessened, her muscles tingling as she regained control.
“Sadie, I—”
“She said you love it. She will make you remember. It’s called Ghost in the Graveyard.”
Despite the heat, a chill ran down Kris’s spine.
“What did you say?”
Without warning, Kris was assaulted by an image behind her eyes. She was a little girl. A couple years older than Sadie. She was in the forest, beside the great oak tree, the Wishing Tree, its trunk gaping like a hungry mouth. There was another girl standing in the shadows within the tree, dark eyes shining like light attempting to escape the pull of a black hole, ruby lips lifted into a playful grin.
She wasn’t alone that summer. She had a friend. And her friend wore a light purple dress, the color of the flowers growing in Mommy’s garden, the ones Daddy clipped and put in Mommy’s room to cover the smell of death.
There was a sharp sound, like the snapping of fingers. All other thoughts were instantly gone. The other voices in Kris’s mind—her timid self, her shadow self—abandoned her. They were hiding, refusing to take part in what was transpiring.
Sadie took a step backward. Her wide green eyes were locked on her mother. Her voice quavered as she forced herself to say, “She wants you to—”
“How do you know about that game?” Kris asked again, cutting her off. “Do your friends back home play it? Did Charlotte teach it to you?”
Sadie’s body began to tremble. She was no longer listening to her mother. She stared at the space beside her, eyes brimming with tears.
“Why does she have to play with us?” she yelled at the empty air.
Kris took a step forward. “Sadie—”
“Why can’t you just play with me?!” Sadie shrieked.
“Sadie, stop!”
Footsteps thundered and then Sadie was gone, racing down the hallway to her bedroom.
Kris heard the bedroom door slam shut.
Something brushed lightly against Kris’s hair, and she flinched.
It was just a breeze.
Kris knew she should go after her daughter. She should comfort her. Talk to her. Make sense of everything.
But there was that voice that refused to stay silent, not her timid self or her shadow self. This voice was her own, and it repeated the two words Kris now realized it had been saying since she was a child:
Not yet.
Kris looked to the space to her right, just inside the open French doors.
Nothing is there, she told herself.
Nothing is there.
Yet she took a step back anyway, mechanically raising the glass of wine to her mouth for another drink.
Sadie finally came out of her room at dinnertime. The lake house was filled with the scent of melted cheese and browning bread. Kris slid a grilled cheese sandwich onto a plate and set it down on the breakfast nook table. She remained at the island, picking at her own sandwich while Sadie took a few uninterested bites.
“If you’re not hungry, you can get ready for bed,” Kris said finally.
Sadie rose from the table and marched out of the kitchen, her head low, chin against her chest.
Kris picked up the plate from the butcher block and turned to set it down in the sink. She paused, realizing other dirty dishes were already piled there. Food was crusted on plates. Glasses were smudged with finger- and lip prints.
She should wash them. She needed to keep this place clean.
“Why?” she asked the empty room. “What’s the point?”
Let it rot, the voice in her mind said.
Carefully, she balanced her plate on the stack of dirty dishes and turned away. As she passed the fridge, she paused just long enough to open it and take out the bottle of white wine.
Her glass was where she had left it when she came inside, on the hearth, just to the right of the boombox. She picked it up and poured in the last of the wine, setting the empty bottle down where the glass had been.
The voice was still there, singing the words:
Don’t you remember? Playing in the room behind the wall … in the pink bedroom … in the woods … by the lake where the mermaid lived … in the hollow tree … down in the narrow canyon between the sandstone cliffs … on the rocks that rose like teeth …
But the voice no longer sounded like her own. It was higher-pitched. Somehow fragile and strong all at once. It spoke as if it were Kris’s voice, but it felt like an outsider. An invader. Something that had forced its way into her mind like a virus.
The rocks, the voice sang. Where sweet little Megan Adamson died …
Kris took a sip of wine.
Evening had brought a respite from the heat. The breeze rippled the surface of Lost Lake. It slithered through the cattails sprouting up from the shallow water. Even the turtles had decided to leave their hiding places in the cool shadows to drift like floating stones out to the center of the cove.
The French doors were still open, and the wind blew gently into the room, curling around her as she stood by the fireplace before disappearing like a fleeing spirit down the darkening hallway.
Without warning, the ghost was back. Her father was carrying in a handful of freshly cut flowers on his way to the master bedroom. She could smell their pungent sweetness hanging in the air.
Kris tipped the glass back and felt the last sip of wine slip past her lips.
She held the glass up and stared at it, confused.
It was empty.
The room was darker, too. Outside, the last glimpse of the sun could be seen over the silhouette of the hills.
How long had she been standing here? Twenty? Thirty minutes?
In the entryway to the hall, a floorboard creaked.
Sadie stood there, just at the edge of the light cast by the end table lamp. She was dressed in peach pajamas covered in the repeated image of a small grinning monkey.
“Good night,” she said, her voice a cold monotone.
Still thrown by the missing time, Kris began to ask, “Are you all ready for—”
Before she could finish, Sadie turned and walked into the shadows. A moment later, her bedroom door clicked shut.
Without warning, another memory broke the surface of dark, rippling waters.
She was ten years old. She was standing at the mouth of the hallway, just as Sadie had moments before. But she was facing the opposite direction. She was staring down the hall, and at the end, the door to the master bedroom was open just a crack, enough to let some light play across the wood paneling of the far wall. In the great room, the boombox was blasting “Blackbird” at a volume that its meager speakers could barely handle. Yet Kris could still hear the low murmur of her father’s voice coming from the master bedroom. It was soothing like the babble of a shallow creek flowing over water-smoothed stones. Every now and then, this peaceful sound was broken by the raspy shriek of her mother. Frightened. Confused. Wondering where she was—who she was—why she was in this place. This was not her home.
Their home was in Blantonville, forty miles down the Verdigris River.
And then her father was saying, “Shhh. Shhh.” And her mother’s terrified voice softened and grew quieter until it faded away completely. The tape in the boombox continued to play, but all ten-year-old Krissy could hear was the hushing of her father, all she could see was the light dancing across the wall at the far end of the hall, all she could smell were wildflowers filling the house with their sickly sweet scent.
Violets. They were violets from Mommy’s garden.
Remember, the voice that was not her own said in her mind. Remember that day … when you met her.
Kris tightened her grip on the glass of wine just as it was about to slip from her fingers.
She looked around, back in the present, the memory already fading like a gunshot ringing in the distance.
Setting the glass on the coffee table, Kris hurried across the great room and into the hallway. She shot a quick glance at Sadie’s door, making sure it was closed, and then she ducked quietly into the bathroom.
She turned on the switch.
The light over the sink flickered to life.
Kris dug into her pocket and pulled out the bottle of Prozac. Before she had time to comprehend her actions, Kris twisted off the lid and pressed its mouth to her lips. She heard the capsules slide like candy down the inside of the cylinder. One of them bumped against the front of her bottom lip. She tipped the bottle higher, and the pill slid into her mouth.
Stop.
She shook the bottle, loosening the clump of pills wedged against her lip, until another one found its way into her mouth.
Stop.
She jostled the bottle harder.
There were three now. Three capsules sticking to the wet surface of her tongue.
Stop!
Kris lowered the plastic bottle, letting the other pills slide back down to the bottom. She swallowed all three pills in a single gulp of warm saliva.
Her head was already foggy from the wine. She imagined the capsules landing in her stomach, a mixture of wine and acid melting their gelatinous bodies, their red-and-blue ends combining to create a new color.
Purple.
Violet.
She stretched out her arms, pressing her hands against the walls as she stumbled toward the master bedroom.
That alien voice tried desperately to push through the fog.
He was going to have a baby with her, it sang.
She reached the master bedroom and shoved the door open. Somewhere, a million miles away, she heard the doorknob bang harshly into the wall.
He didn’t want a family with you. But he wanted a family with her. He was happy with her.
She started to pull her shirt over her head, then gave up, letting it fall back into place. She turned, and her legs gave out, her body plummeting backward onto her bed.
Not your bed. Your mother’s bed.
Her eyelids were so, so heavy.
Not true, she managed to think. New … New mattress …
It will always be your mother’s bed, the alien voice said. Her deathbed. Can’t you smell the flowers?
Then the fog swept over them both, and all voices were gone.
Her mind was silent, just like the house around her.
Time passed. A minute. An hour.
It was dark now. The sun was down. Evening had abandoned her. Night engulfed the world.
A voice called her from the depths of sleep.
“Hello.”
The sound was not in her head. It was in the room with her.
It seemed to take all of her strength for Kris to force her eyes open.
At first, she saw only darkness. And then things began to emerge in the pale glow of moonlight.
Her body, still clothed, resting atop the undisturbed covers.
The dresser where her empty pill bottle still lay on its side like a fallen soldier.
A girl, standing just inside the darkened doorway.
Kris blinked several times to clear her vision.
The outline of the doorframe came into focus, but the image of the girl remained blurry.
“What?” Kris asked. Her voice echoed as if she were far away from her own body.
“Hello,” the girl said again.
The weight of Kris’s eyelids was too much. She closed them and sank into the mattress, allowing herself to be pulled down by the strange gravity of some distant world.
A thought drifted through her mind like a kite whose string had snapped. This is what dying felt like, not the sensation of a soul fleeing the body but of being pulled down … down … down into darkness.
Kris had the faint awareness that somewhere out there, across the void, someone had stepped up next to the bed.
Small fingers slipped into her hair. Fingertips grazed her scalp.
Soft lips pressed close to her ear.
“I found you.”
The sound of the girl’s voice pulled her back from the depths of slumber.
Groggy, her limbs feeling like fifty-pound weights, Kris sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she mumbled. “Are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?”
The girl stood silently before her.
With her eyes still closed, Kris felt around the open air until she found the girl’s hand. She took it, flinching at the shocking coldness of the girl’s flesh.
“Baby, you’re freezing.”
Kris pushed herself up from the bed and stumbled blindly toward the door. Each step was a Herculean effort. Those invisible weights tried to pull her to the ground, but she pushed forward, pausing only once she reached the doorway. She let go of the girl’s hand to steady herself against the jamb. Then she took a breath and began the long journey down the hall.
She could hear the soft padding of the girl’s footsteps beside her. She thought she could sense the girl looking up at her and smiling, but Kris could not open her eyes long enough to see more than a few necessary glimpses of the path ahead.
After an eternity, she reached the door to Sadie’s bedroom.
“There you go.” Her tongue was a thick, fat worm in her mouth. “Go back to sleep.”
She bent over to kiss the top of the girl’s head. Her scalp was cold beneath surprisingly straight hair.
“I’m sorry, I’m just so tired. Go back to bed, okay? I love you …”
The words trailed away.
Kris fumbled blindly for the doorknob and pushed the door open.
The little girl slipped into the dark room.
Kris pulled the door shut until she heard the latch click softly into place. Then she let herself tip against the wall, her shoulder dragging along the wood paneling as she struggled to make her way back to the master bedroom.
There was the bed. That wonderful bed—
Where she died
—where Kris could sleep forever.
She crawled onto the mattress, still not bothering to pull down the covers. Her head hit the pillow, and the world clicked off like a light.
Only Kris’s steady breathing—along with the faint song of the crickets and the occasional bellow of a bullfrog in the lake—broke the silence.
All was quiet. All was well.
Sadie was screaming.
Kris pushed desperately up from the void, breaking out of the darkness like a free diver reaching the ocean’s surface. She leapt out of bed, but her numb legs could not hold the weight and immediately buckled. Her knees slammed down into the hardwood. Pain shot like a lightning bolt through her upper body. The jolt momentarily swept the fog from her mind.
Her sweet girl was shrieking in terror.
“Sadie!”
Kris scrambled across the bedroom floor on her hands and knees, using the doorframe to pull herself to her feet. She leaned into the shadows of the hallway. Sadie’s cries were unbearably loud, ricocheting off the walls like jagged shards of shattered glass. She was pleading with someone in the room with her: “Stop! Stop, please! You’re hurting me!” And in the next breath, she was shouting, begging: “Mommy! Mommy! Help me!”
Lunging down the hall on unsteady legs, Kris reached the door to Sadie’s bedroom and flung it open.
On the other side, someone slammed the door shut.
Kris twisted the knob, but the person on the other side was putting their full weight against the door.
“Sadie, let me in!”
Sadie was screaming, over and over, “Mommy! Mommy!” Her voice sounded strangely distant, as if she were on the opposite side of the room. Yet every time Kris tried to open the door, someone shoved back.
“Open the door, Sadie!”
“Mommy!”
“Open The Door!”
“Mommy! Help Me!”
Adrenaline surged through Kris’s veins, countering the effects of the meds and the alcohol to bring the moment into terrible clarity. With a furious roar, she lowered her shoulder and rammed the bedroom door.
It flew open with a force that nearly ripped it from its hinges.
Kris flicked on the light.
Sadie was on her bed, her face drenched in tears. Her hair was a rat’s nest, her elegant curls tangled into a wild, frizzy mess. She clutched a hand to one side of her head. Her body heaved as she sobbed.
Rushing to the bed, Kris took her daughter in her arms.
Sadie pressed her face into her mother’s chest and wept harder.
A few seconds passed. And then Kris asked, “Why wouldn’t you let me in?”
“It wasn’t me!” Sadie shouted.
“Honey, I’m just trying to understand—”
“It Wasn’t Me!”
“Then who was it?” She heard the anger that laced her words, and she took a breath, trying again, more calmly this time, “Who was it, Sadie?”
A bubble of mucus formed between Sadie’s lips and popped as she pushed the name out with a wail: “Violet!”
A trembling breath worked its way up Kris’s throat and out of her gaping mouth. She could not move. She was frozen in time, like this house, like this town. Her mind convulsed like a toad boiling in a pot.
“She was here! She pulled my hair! She’s mad at me! Because you wouldn’t play!”
“Stop it.”
“She’s real!” Sadie cried. “Look! Look what she did!” She removed her hand from the side of her head and thrust it, palm up, toward Kris’s wide eyes.
Her skin was smeared with blood.
“Oh my God!” Kris gasped. “Baby …” She took Sadie’s head in her hands and began to part her tangled hair. The red curls made it difficult to find any traces of blood.
Kris’s fingers brushed something wet. Carefully, she sank her fingers into Sadie’s hair and parted it.
A bare patch stared back from among the curls, a glistening red wound where a small piece of the girl’s scalp had ripped free.
Kris’s stomach dropped.
“How did this happen?” she asked.
“She did it! She pulled my hair!”
She’s lying to you. It was her shadow voice, back to twist the knife. She wants to punish you for bringing her here.
“Come on.” Kris took Sadie’s hand, pulling her from the bed. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
As she neared the doorway, Kris’s foot came down on something stringy and damp. She immediately hopped back, frowning as she peered down at the object on the floor.
It looked like the detached tail of a small animal. A rodent, perhaps.
Kneeling down, Kris pinched the soft end of the object between her fingers and lifted it into the light.
It was a clump of curly red hair. At its end dangled a tiny square of scalp, still wet with blood.