Page 102 of I'll Be Waiting

I maneuver until I can crouch with my back safely to the wall. Then I bend down. There’s no water under the heater or around it.

Could the dripping be condensation inside the hot-water tank? Is that a thing?

I’m rising when a rustling comes from outside the room. I freeze and listen. The sound comes again. A faint rustle.

I grip my handy spade and head into the hall. The rustle is coming through the open door into the storage area. I slide closer, reach through, and flip on the light. Something scuttles across the floor, and I stumble back before the sight resolves into a tiny brown mouse running for its life. The critter dives behind a pile of chairs with more rustling, as it frantically looks for an escape.

“Sorry, mousey,” I whisper. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen a ghost down here, would you? Or a part-time gardener?”

It doesn’t answer.

I return to the furnace room. Back to the water heater to figure out where the dripping—

The spade twists in my hands. Before I can process that, the metal edge drives into my shins. I stifle a howl as I tumble, still gripping the spade. It twists again, and I quickly throw it aside. As it clatters to the concrete floor, my gut screams that I’ve made a mistake. I should have kept hold of it. Now whatever grabbed the spade can wield it against me.

Except it doesn’t. The spade lies on the concrete, unmoving.

I take deep breaths as my mind replays what just happened. Something grabbed the spade—

No, that’s not what it felt like.

It felt as if something took hold ofme.Like I’d been the one ramming the edge into my shins.

That doesn’t make sense.

“Doesn’t it?”

The whisper seems to come from inside me and all around me at the same time.

I scuttle back against the wall, ignoring the throbbing in my shins.

“You did that. You did it to yourself.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m hallucinating.

“Why are you still here? You should be dead by now.”

My head whips up.

“Anton is waiting. Isn’t that what he said? What areyouwaiting for?”

I blink hard, my terror hardening to anger. When my story came out, I read comments of people praying Anton’s words wouldn’t lead me to do something “drastic”… while their tone said they were kinda hoping for thatRomeo and Julietending. People speculated on how long it’d be before I joined him, whether in his final moments he’d seen how little time I had left.

That old anger propels me to my feet. At the last second, I remember the spade, but it hasn’t moved. I still jog out of that room and shut the door.

As I do, another door slams somewhere above me.

Someone must have heard my yowl of pain. Or the clatter of me throwing the spade.

I look up the stairs and…

The basement door is shut.

That isn’t possible. I wedged it open.

I stride up, too angry to be freaked out.

It’s completely shut, and the cloth is nowhere to be seen, which is impossible because I’d wedged it from this side of the door.

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