Page 51 of The Vipers and Their Venom

What the fuck? The place is empty.

There’s no furniture. No bed. No dresser.

Nothing at all. Except for a desk. A solitary, empty desk, against the window. Something about that desk gives me the chills.

What is this? Where is she?

Maybe she moved, but the records I stole definitely said this was her room. Why the hell isn’t there any sign of life?

There’s a strange atmosphere to the space. A sense of loneliness and melancholy. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself.

Stepping farther into the room, I glance around. There are marks where maybe there were posters on the walls. I headtoward the desk, drawn to it somehow. It’s one of those old school ones that has a lid you lift to reveal storage space inside. The wooden surface of the desk isn’t smooth but marked with scratches. Most of them make no sense, but there is a drawing of an eye. Just a solitary eye scratched into the wood.

Farther to the left is a word, carved out meticulously.

Snakes.

Snakes…? It takes me a moment to make the link, but then it drops home. As in Vipers? Oh God, did my sister know the Vipers?

My nausea deepens. Did they have a thing with her? That would be so weird.

As I stare at the word, a siren rings out in my mind. This strikes me as a warning. I have no real reason to think that. It’s simply etched into the wood, but it seems stark to me. Why scratch it out this way into the desk? I trace it with my fingertips, trying to feel a connection with my sister.

I need to find her even more now, and the Vipers might be way more of my ticket to my sister than I originally believed.

This means I have to put up with their crap for sure. I need to keep them close and play their twisted games because I need them to talk, but I can’t make it obvious, and I can’t rush this. If I ask about her immediately, they’re going to be suspicious.

Maybe, I can get them drunk, stoned, and high on sex and then get them talking. How can I bring her up though without openly asking them about her?

I could ask after ex-girlfriends of theirs and see if they mention her, but that’s a longshot.

Letting my fingers trace the eye, I realize it seems familiar. I take my cell phone from my pocket and snap a picture. Then I do a reverse image search.

The second picture that matches is an etching, called the evil eye talisman.

Holy crap. Of course, it’s an evil eye.

My sister has scratched the word snakes on her desk, and then drawn an evil eye.

The charm or talisman that supposedly wards off evil.

The Vipers could be evil. I can sense it in them, a kind of darkness that sometimes comes horribly close to the forefront.

Shit, just how intertwined are they with my sister?

More to the point, how the hell can I find out?

Do they know she drew this?

I might not have found Reagan, but I’ve found something. I feel closer to her now more than ever, even if I’ve created more questions than answers.

I slip back out of the room and carefully shut the door behind me. I blow out a breath and give my head a slight shake. Is the reason she’s moved due to the Vipers, too? If they’ve been hassling her, she might have asked to move houses.

Movement catches my attention, and I glance up to find a young guy walking toward me. His head is down, and he has an AirPod in one ear. Maybe he lives on this floor? He might know where Reagan has moved to.

“Excuse me,” I call to him, “do you know where the girl has gone who used to stay in this room?”

The guy gives me a look I can’t quite decipher. His nose scrunches and his upper lip curls. He shakes his head at me, and doesn’t answer, but just keeps walking.

---