Page 92 of An Inheritance of Monsters

I scanned the spines, my frown growing deeper.

“Your notebook isn’t here, Juno.” Porter tossed one of the dead woman’s folders on the pile.

I picked up the crumpled paper from beside the back door, smoothing it out. “That makes no sense. How would she have gotten ahold of this otherwise?”

“There was nothing else in her room. We looked everywhere.” Jack shrugged. “Maybe she hid it somewhere else.”

I finally folded the paper and tucked it into my pocket. Knowing Eloise had possessed a portion of the Black Book was a start. “Maybe.”

Mrs. Marsh poured my tea as the emergency radio crackled on the counter behind her, informing us that Innsmouth should prepare for heavy flooding.

Everyone glanced at it occasionally, then at each other, as though wondering: several people had already vanished.

At least two were alive, but… if someone else was hurt, would they die here?

Suddenly the idea of being stuck on the island for a month didn’t seem like such a cakewalk.

One by one, we disbanded, and I finally found my way up to my room. I retrieved Ruby’s diary from beneath the wardrobe and tucked the page of the Black Book inside it.

Then I returned to the nest Rask had built for me, intending to wait for a monster to appear under the darkness of the storm…

But instead I closed my eyes.

I knew it was a dream,but I was powerless to turn it elsewhere.

I was six years old again.

Trapped in my childhood room, everything in shades of peach and coral, a macramé mobile hanging over my frilly bed…

And perched on the end was my dead brother Lincoln.

His form was misty, his limbs jittering and jerking, a dark line embedded in his stretched-out throat.

I cowered in my closet, sobbing silently, too terrified to chance a scream as the ghost of my brother spasmed on the end of my bed, eternally strangling from the noose he’d hung himself with.

The sound he made was terrible, a reedy dying groan that twisted my stomach into knots and threatened to make its contents spill over.

Fear locked my limbs in place. I had to scream, I had to tell them—

Juno.

A deep voice echoed through the room, making the mobile spin. I hiccupped on a sob, too scared to move or respond.

Juno, come to me. There is nothing here.

I buried my head in my knees, praying the ghost would vanish. In these dreams, he never did.

He stayed there, rocking and convulsing, making me relive his last moments with him.

But this time, I raised my head when the voice faded.

The room was empty. Quiet. The mobile spun slowly.

My brother’s ghost was gone.

Shivering, I uncurled myself from my hiding place in the closet, knowing somewhere in the back of my dreaming mind that this had never happened before. In this dream, I was always stuck in my hiding place, terrified until I woke up in a cold sweat.

Come out, Juno.

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