Page 75 of Sweet Nightmare

“Stop!” I tell them both with a laugh. “None of us is getting tetanus from the place! Or rabies or distemper or tuberculosis. So chill out or this pack of M&M’s and I are going back to the dorm. Alone.”

They both grumble a little under their breath, but the bickering finally stops—at least for now. It is their favorite bonding activity, after all.

We walk the rest of the way talking about tomorrow’s evacuation. But when we get to the cellar, there’s a giant padlock on the door that definitely wasn’t there earlier.

“How’d you get in last time?” Eva asks.

“It wasn’t here then.” I stare at the lock. Did someone really just lock it up because I went in there? And if they did, who was it? Jean-Luc? Or Jude?

Her eyes light up. “The plot thickens.” Then she starts searching the ground around the cellar.

“What are you looking for?” Luis starts scanning the ground. “Maybe we can help.”

“Hopefully, a key.” She keeps searching while I just stare at her incredulously.

“You don’t actually think whoever did this went through all the trouble of padlocking the place just to then hide the key in plain sight, do you?” I demand.

“People have a lot less imagination than you might think,” she shoots back.

“Especially the Jean-Jerks,” Luis concurs.

Less than two minutes of concerted searching later, she lets out a crow of triumph as she bends down and picks up an actual hollowed-out rock. “I told you! No imagination.”

“So definitely Jean-Luc and not Jude,” Luis comments as she pushes the top of the rock open and pulls out a key.

“Apparently.” Eva slides the key into the padlock and lets out another happy exclamation as it pops right open. “Ready?”

I eat the last of the M&M’s and shove the wrapper in my front pocket. “As I’ll ever be.”

The way this day is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if a banshee came flying out at us. Or a leviathan. Or, even worse, my mother.

But the cellar is dark and quiet as we carefully make our way down the rickety steps, flashlights on.

“Geez, how deep is this place?” Eva asks when she’s halfway to the bottom. “This is a serious amount of really scary steps.”

“Deep,” I answer, because she’s not wrong. “Probably to hide the vegetables from the Texas heat.”

“Or kill any intruders who aren’t expecting such a big drop,” Luis suggests as he starts exploring the cellar. “So where do you think they disappeared to in here? There aren’t a lot of places to hide.”

“There’s nowhere to hide,” I answer him. “Which is what I was telling you.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t believe you,” Eva joins in. “I figured you missed something, but you really didn’t.”

“I really didn’t,” I agree.

But as he and Eva keep searching for someplace, anyplace, they could have disappeared to, I fixate on the tapestry. Because gone is the happy beach scene from earlier today. In its place is a lone man standing on a stormy beach as a huge wave threatens to crash right over him.

“Ooooh, cool rug,” Eva says as she follows my gaze. “Depressing, but very cool.”

“It didn’t look like this earlier,” I tell her as I step closer, trying to get a better look at the individual threads. Is this some kind of joke? But why would someone—even one of the Jean-Jerks—go through the trouble of padlocking the place while playing a childish game of bait-and-switch?

When I say as much to Eva and Luis, she just shrugs. “Maybe it’s a different tapestry. Someone could have changed it out.”

“Maybe,” I answer doubtfully. “But somehow I don’t think so.”

“So what, then?” Now Luis sounds downright intrigued. “You think the tapestry actually changed on its own?”

If it had, it wouldn’t even be the second strangest thing that happened to me today.

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