Page 38 of Confessions of the Dead

Imagined the scratching, she told herself.Duh.

Because things don’t live in the pipes.

Alligators in the sewers, snakes in the toilet. Those things only happened in the movies or on the internet, not in real life.

But what if something was in there? Maybe crawled in last night and couldn’t get out. Worse yet, what if it could?

She picked up her phone to text her mom, then dropped it back on the counter.

No.

She was acting stupid.

Acting like a baby.

There was nothing in the sink, and it’s not like the power went out, only the internet. What could her mom do, anyway?

Riley knew exactly what her mom would do. She’d stop letting Riley stay home alone when she was working at the diner. That’s what she’d do. She’d have her abuela drive in from Barton and stay with her like last year, or worse—pay Patty Norhouse to babysit again. Patty was fourteen, only four years older than Riley. It’s not like she watched her. She didn’t even play with her. Whenever Patty came over, she spent the whole time on the couch texting her boyfriend. She only—

Scritch, scritch, scratch.

Riley’s heart thumped.

Okay, that time she heard it for sure, and it came from the drain.

Came from the drainfor sure.

Riley leaned forward and looked in the sink, saw nothing but her cereal bowl from this morning filled with milky water, the handle of her spoon sticking out, and the dark maw of the drain beside it. The black rubber, still glistening from the water she’drun and slightly gummy with mac and cheese from last night’s dinner. Her mom dumped everything down the disposal.

Maybe whatever’s scratching is still hungry.

The secondthatthought popped into her head, Riley wanted it to go away.

Her mom was always telling her she had a good imagination—her teachers, too. Sometimes that was good, other times it was bad, and right now, it was decidedly bad. Whatever this was, there was a reason for it, something silly, and if she let it scare her, it would be her own fault.

Riley reached for her phone, ignored the fact that she was shaking, and switched on the flashlight.

Held it over the drain.

Played the light around the hole.

She couldn’t see much.

Couldn’t really see anything.

Because there’s nothing to see, she told herself.

Scratch, scritch.

She fumbled the phone, nearly dropped it.

Okay, that was real, and it was loud. It was right near the top.

Whether she could see it or not, it was right there.

Without taking her eyes off the drain, Riley reached over and hit the garbage disposal switch.

Nothing happened.

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