Another slam. Is that Echo? It had been the door to either her dad’s room or the guest bedroom Echo was using—nothing but an air mattress and a bunch of unpacked boxes, most of them full of her dad’s old books. Vivi had shut her own door despite her dad’s request. She needed silence, had to give this her undivided attention. With Jeff gone, she was determined to make contact, and it seemed to her that Echo agreed tonight was the night. Tonight, she’d finally meet him. It was time to start her new life.
Dearest Vivi . . .
Perhaps the slamming of doors was the very sign she’d been waiting for.
See you soon.
If it wasn’t Echo rattling them in their frames, it was the people who had gone quiet, the ones that were waiting for her to break down that last remaining barrier between the living and the dead. They may have been patient this past week, but they certainly didn’t sound that way now.
Vivi’s fingers curled into the comforter that was pooled around her legs before she swung them over the side of her mattress. But she faltered before getting up. Maybe those loud noises were trying to get her out of her room, trying to tell her to go downstairs. Maybe Jeff was down there, waiting for her. Or perhaps the house had shifted the way it had before and their furniture was replaced by old stuff that must have been in the house when Jeff had lived here so long ago.
Exhaling an impatient breath at her own hesitation—it was too late to be scared now—she shoved the covers aside and slunk barefoot across the room.
It sounded quiet out there, no voices, no noise. She carefully pulled her door open and stuck an eye between it and the jamb. The hallway light was still on.
She pulled the door open wider and stepped out of her room, quietly padded down the stairs, and silently cracked open her dad’s study door. It was dark in there save for the glow of his laptop screen. Her throat went tight at not seeing him in his usual spot. He was always in there, especially at night. He worked best when everyone was sleeping—at least that’s what he said.
Turning to face the living room, she knew that her Ouija session hadn’t caused a shift. The flat screen was still there. The couch wasn’t the brown-and-orange plaid she had expected.
There was a clang that sounded like someone placing a pot on a kitchen countertop. “Dad?”
She stepped across the darkened room and ducked her head into the kitchen. The light above the sink burned weak and yellow. A woman stood in its anemic glow, her back turned to the rest of the room. Echo? It had to be her, but her once long, glossy hair was now short, chopped clean off, as though Echo had taken the kitchen shears and cut it while Vivi remained closed up in her room.
But it had to be her. Cherries littered the kitchen island. She and Echo never did get around to making that cider. Jeffrey’s favorite, Echo had claimed, though Vivi wasn’t sure how Echo could have known that. Echo had only been a child when Jeff had been arrested. Those scattered cherries surrounded an old-looking mortar with a pestle jutting out of its stone bowl. Cherry pits littered the bottom of the bowl. She hadn’t seen the tool before, and maybe that’s why Echo hadn’t peeked her head in to check on her during the night. Perhaps she’d left the house altogether, returned to her own home, and fetched the things she needed to make the cider she’d promised Vivi a few weeks before. Maybe Echo had chopped her hair off as a way to usher in her own new beginning. If meeting Jeff was the start of Vivi’s new life, why shouldn’t it have been the same for Echo, too?
But something wasn’t right . . . something Vivi couldn’t immediately place.
She shot a look down at her feet, her toes curling into the carpeting that didn’t belong. Her heart bounced in the hollow of her chest like a paddleball on an elastic string, up and down from her feet to her throat, threatening to bound right out of her mouth and onto the rug.
How can the carpet be wrong if the room is right?
She twisted where she stood, her gaze tumbling over the living room furniture for a second time. And just like that, she was in the house that wasn’t, the same room stuck in a different time.
She blinked back at the kitchen. Echo was humming something beneath her breath.
How can the kitchen be the same if the living room is different?
Except that there was a blender on the counter that Vivi didn’t recognize. A brushed-silver toaster she’d never seen before sat next to it.
“Echo?” The name squeaked out of her throat as little more than a whisper. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure about the woman facing the sink. A skin-crawly feeling crept across her arms when the woman’s humming stopped.
Echo went silent.
Motionless.
Like the dead standing upright.
Vivi’s brain told her to run, but she refused to give in to her fear. She forced her thoughts back to the pictures she’d studied so intently online, the names of Jeff’s family members—the people that could relate to her own plight. Shelly. Roxanna. To the neglect. Laura. Chloe. The want for something better than what she had.
“Georgia?” Vivi asked.
As if recognizing the name, the woman at the sink began to turn. Slow as a second hand on a dying clock. Tick by tick.
Vivi swallowed the wad of spit that had collected at the back of her throat, her eyes fixed on the woman who wasn’t Echo. Except it wasn’t Georgia, either.
The woman lowered her chin. She looked down her nose at the twelve-year-old before her. Her pale skin seemed almost translucent. A silver cross glinted from around her neck in the dim kitchen light. As if noticing Vivi’s attention shifting to her necklace, her mouth pulled up at the corners. The dark-haired woman gave Vivi a smile as Echo’s words spiraled through her head.
He’s looking forward to meeting you.
Something in her brain clicked.
This isn’t right.
This isn’t supposed to happen.
They’re going to pull you under.
You’re going to die, just like them.
Despite her intention to stay put, no amount of willpower could keep her from nearly tripping over the brick steps as she bolted toward the closest safe place. Mindlessly, she ran for her dad’s study, slammed the door shut, and pressed her back against it as she tried to catch her breath.
She stared at her dad’s desk through the darkness as her mind reeled, wondering if anything on it could be used as a weapon. He had to have a letter opener in one of his desk drawers. Or maybe a pair of scissors. Something, anything.
How are you going to use that against people who don’t exist?
Except maybe the lady out there did exist. She didn’t recognize her from any of the photos she’d seen online. That woman wasn’t one of the people who had died here that day.
With her survival instinct on full blast, she was determined to protect herself. As soon as she located a weapon, she’d go find her dad.
Shoving herself away from the door, Vivi imagined that strange, short-haired woman kicking it open and following her inside. She pictured her being followed by Derrick, Kenneth, Nolan, all the people who were supposed to be deceased yet somehow still existed within this house.