“I answered the ad because it was the only choice I had.”
“Was it? Or did you convince yourself it was?” he asks, turning his back to me. “We all see things, Miss Vale. We all hear what goes on inside this house. You just see and hear it more clearly.”
I lower my gaze to my bare, muddy feet and wrap my arms around my knees as his footsteps fade away.
He stops.
“They found two bodies,” he says. “I came back to tell you. They haven’t been identified yet.”
My head lifts. Cold sweat prickles across my forehead. Something tightens deep in my stomach.
“Do you want me to take you to San Francisco?” He asks.
“No,” I say. “I’ll wait here.”
I blink twice towards him. Giving him no extra explanation. He just pulls his lips together, puts his hand in his pocket, and walks away.
Leaving me here with nothing but the noise in my head and the creeping sense that something is wrong with me. The only answer I can hold on to is that I’m losing it.
In some twisted way, all these people wandering through the house feel like pieces of something I used to know. Memories, maybe. Out of reach. They circle me, telling me names thatshould mean something, names that might have once mattered. Now they are just empty words.
I push myself to my feet, fingers curling tight into fists until my nails press into my palms.
“None of it is real,” I say, again and again. “Nothing is real.”
My voice drops lower. “This is not real.”
I take a step forward.
The church swallows my footsteps as I move toward the door. I keep walking and walking back through the garden then back toward the house, leaving a trail of mud behind me like proof that I’m still alive.
I try to piece it all together as I walk.
Who is he? My stalker.
Is he someone I know? Someone I should remember?
Or someone from before the accident?
I sit on the bed, the mattress dipping beneath me, and I catch something moving in the corner of my eye.
There is a little blonde girl sitting in a chair with a carousel music box in her hands. I know the melody. It’s Lavender’s Blue Lullaby.
“Lily,” I whisper, turning toward her. “Do we know him?”
She nods.
My throat tightens.
“Can you help me remember?”
A tear slips down my cheek as she rises and walks toward me. She comes closer and lifts her hand, holding it in the air for a second, then presses her index finger softly against my forehead.
We close our eyes together.
Something pulls me under, somewhere between a dream and a memory, blurred at the edges with black smoke.
I see him.
