Page 31 of The Roommate Lie

Now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t unsee that carriage. Or the cobwebs draped over its black canopy. The spookiest baby doll ever created lies waiting inside, and when Charlie reaches me, I’m still staring down at it, transfixed and horrified.

I’m pretty sure that’s Stephen King’s baby doll. That he brought it up here himself. Just for me.

The doll’s cloudy glass eyes stare straight at me, and I think a soul might be trapped inside—probably Old Man Harris. Charlie flips the baby over, but that doesn’t help. With my luck, he made it angry.

Muriel dodges around a tower of wooden milk crates, slicing her tennis racket through the air as she hunts for the ghost squirrel. I glance at her and prepare to ask the dumbest possible question—is there a soul trapped in this baby doll?—but I hear a noise in the distance first. Something alive.

Scritch.

Scratch.

Scritch.

Scratch.

That noise echoes around us, and it’s the new soundtrack for every bad dream I’m ever going to have. It sounds like fingernails digging into wood, as if the ghost squirrel is sharpening his claws, and I adjust my catcher’s mask. Though what I really want to do is run.

The noise shifts. It’s a few feet away, echoing behind a stack of old paintings. Then it’s gone. When we hear that sound again, it’s clear on the other side of the attic. Right by Muriel.

“Houdini,” Charlie mutters, and I gulp.

There are no other noises around us. Nowhere else that animal could’ve gone. The ghost squirrel has Muriel cornered, and that sound inches closer.

Scritch scratch.

Scritch scratch.

I don’t know what comes over me. How I go full Brave Kilpatrick so fast when I’m usually just plain Alice, our family’s anxious mess. But the second I realize Muriel is alone—that she’s under attack—some dormant part of my DNA wakes up. Something courageous and dumb.

Very, very dumb.

Charlie tries to stop me, but I’m moving too fast. He reaches for my arm, and I slip between his fingers, baseball mitt and all. As I weave through the attic maze around us, he can’t even keep up. Alice Kilpatrick is in the zone.

I’m still holding the pillowcase Muriel gave me earlier, and as I race toward her, two thoughts occur to me at once.

Why did she give me the pillowcase? Me, of all people?

But also?—

It’s time to capture our foe.

I ready my squirrel-catching bag, holding tight to the opening hems of my pillowcase as Muriel closes in on that scratching sound. She swishes her tennis racket as she moves, cutting the air like a knife, but there’s something else in her other hand. A white plastic squeeze bottle I hadn’t noticed until now.Is that baby powder?

There’s no telling where it came from. I’d swear on a stack of Jane Austen novels she didn’t have that in her hand when she climbed up here. But she has it now. And she’s ready to use it.

“Alice,” Charlie warns, but he’s too late, too far away.

Muriel leaps around a wall of boxes, and everything happens so fast. All of it horrible. The ghost squirrel lets out a terrified screech, and Muriel yells for us to run, to retreat.

So we do.

Her attic is a tornado of sound. Footsteps thudding. People shouting. But the loudest sound is the frantic scramble of that ghost rodent as Muriel chases after it.

I think I hear Charlie’s voice in the distance too, yelling out a warning of his own. It sounds a lot likeclose your eyes.

I don’t.

There isn’t time.

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