Addison’s mind refused to settle, her eyes continually drawn to the time displayed on the clock on her nightstand. It ticked by. Slowly. Effortlessly. She’d struggled for hours to find a comfortable position. She’d even taken something to help her sleep. Nothing worked. Nothing quieted her mind. And she’d come to the conclusion that nothing would. Not tonight.
The bones weren’t a woman’s. They were a man’s. Her grandfather’s. She didn’t need confirmation. She knew they were his. All of the stories she’d been told since arriving at Grayson Manor swirled around in her head like a blizzard on a cold winter’s day, and she couldn’t help but come to the decision that every last one had been laced with lies.
She went downstairs, opened the front door and stepped outside, taking in a lungful of precious country air. She wrapped a blanket around her and sat down, allowing her feet to dangle over the front porch steps. Sharing a house with Roxanne had made her weary. She wanted to help her, give her the resolve she needed to move on, but it was hard to know where to go or who to turn to anymore.
She leaned her body against the porch railing and rested her eyes. But not for long. Two hands, heavy and thick thrust down, crushing her ribcage, the force so powerful it flattened her body to the ground. She fought for breath, swallowing big, empty gulps of air. She looked up and saw no one, yet she was stuck, as if the blanket wrapped over her had been nailed into place. Roxanne? No, it couldn’t be. She’d always been surrounded by a ray of light and not cloaked in blackness. A figure outlined in black took shape before her. His stone-like eyes were cold and menacing, his lips tight. He removed his hands from her chest and encircled them around her neck, his thumbs pressing into the well in the center, cutting off the airflow throughout her body. I’m going to die here! As much as she missed the presence of her mother, she wasn’t ready to go—not yet, not like this.
Suddenly, hands were on the back of her shirt, dragging her inside the house—through the front door—to safety. As her body retracted into the entry way, the blackness surged toward the door, then smacked into it and started to fade. Within seconds, it was gone. The door closed, Addison turned. No one was there. She was all alone, yet someone had rescued her. She checked on her father. He was asleep. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked back to her room. Grateful she’d been rescued, she whispered, “Roxanne, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, thank you.”