Page 18 of His to Haunt

“Okay, so…where are you taking them?”

“The tower attic.”

My stomach drops. Shit.

I’m pretty damn worried about what Mom’s reaction will be when she doesn’t find Rachel up there.

“Mom, um…didn’t you say to Stacy that it wasn’t true that… Rachel was up there?”

“The man told me that’s where she likes to go. I want to see her.”

“Whatman? Zand Byron? Did he come in while I was gone?”

“The man never left.”

“What? Mom, please, let’s not go up there right now. Okay?”

“You don’t have to come with.”

In fact, yes, I do. What if she freaks? I must be there to help her cope. She could hurt herself. She might also hurt me, but I’m willing to take the chance in this case.

I follow her, trying to think of a way to stop her. Oh, fuckety-fuck, this sucks. Maybe bringing Mom here was the worst idea in the world.

When we get inside, I follow her up the endlessly winding stairs, which narrow as we reach the fourth story, with a smidgen of moss-filtered light from the skylight above. There is a small landing at the top where Mom throws open the door, and a gush of fresh balmy air floods into the hallway.

The front-facing side of the room has a tiny pyramidal window, and the back-facing side has a door that is wide open with no visible railing around it.

“Mom, be careful!” I say, rushing forward to shut it. Stopping near the edge, I cautiously peek out.

Just as it seems, there is no balcony, let alone a railing.

Who the heck came up with the idea to have a doorway four floors up leading to nowhere but death below? Utterly ridic.

I shut the window, locking it. I’m definitely planning to keep this room locked in the future and keep the keys hidden. Speaking of.

In my room, I have a literal reference sheet for the gazillion keys to this place, with pictures and room names. Two sets of keys combined into a mass. The ancient-looking, long, brown interior keys and the shiny new exterior set, all the locks having been replaced by Stacy at the time of Leena’s disappearance.

Altogether, it forms a clashing mass of eras set to a discordant jingle, which I am going to need to take around, locking dangerous places. The elevator. The attic. The basement. For starters.

Mom drops to the floor, the flowers slipping from her hand, crying. It dawned on her again that Rachel was nowhere to be found.

I put my hand on her back. “It’s going to be okay.”

I wipe tears from my eyes and look around the room.

A dusty, purple-tinted vase sits atop a small round table, just waiting to be filled with flowers. I pick up the flowers from the floor and carefully put them into the vase. Mom looks up at me.

“Thanks, dear,” she smiles, sounding like her old reasonable self again.

She stands up, dusting off her jeans. The floor is covered in a few layers of grey dust.

“Can we go down now?” I say gently.

“Yeah,” she mutters, but not before taking a visual turn about the room. An irregularly shaped dark spot is just near the flower vase on the chipped white wooden table. Dried like red paint. Or blood.

Mom sighs, and I’m hoping she isn’t thinking what I’m thinking, that this is where Rachel drew her last breath, not by hanging, but by something that left a trail of her essence.

He’s leaning against the wall like he owns the place, then tosses a stack of mail into my hands, which I nearly drop.

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