Sarah wanted to kiss her, to wrap her arms around Brook and inhale her scent - an alluring mixture of coconut oil and rosemary.
Brook turned her head to the side.
“What’s going on behind those chocolate eyes?”
Sarah sighed.
“Too much. I want you to tell me what happened at Kerry Manor. Will you do that?”
Brook frowned and then nodded.
“Yeah, but let’s crack open that six-pack first. My memory improves after a beer.”
Brook started to climb off, but Sarah held her in place for another moment. Brook leaned in and kissed her, her lips deliciously soft. Sarah pulled away, knowing if she kissed her much longer, they’d find their way to the bedroom.
Archie plodded from his dog bed and settled beneath her chair.
“It was around midnight when we got to the house,” Brook started. “Our neighbor sat in his car and listened to the radio while we snuck in. The house was boarded up, but Kim hoisted me up on her shoulders, and I crawled through a broken window. The house smelled wet and smoky, which seemed strange since the fire happened like a hundred years ago. I had to reach out and pull Kim in through the window too. The second we got inside, we were both scared shitless, but neither of us wanted to bitch out. We set the Ouija down in the big room, probably had a fancy name back in the day. There was some old furniture, spray paint on the walls, a mattress in the corner, which grossed us out pretty good. Your typical abandoned house. We lit a few candles and sat down by the Ouija board, but before we could try it out, we heard someone moving upstairs. It sounded like a little kid skipping. We practically tripped over our own feet running to the window. Kim dove out headfirst and fractured her wrist. I went a little slower, but I swear I heard a little girl coming down the stairs, singing.”
Brook held up her arm, awash in gooseflesh.
“Your friend fractured her arm? Because of a noise?”
Brook rolled her eyes.
“Fear is a powerful emotion, maybe more powerful than love. Whatever we heard, it wasn’t human, Sarah, and it was real. As real as anything else in this fucked-up world.”
“What was she singing?” Sarah asked.
“I couldn’t make it out. A kids’ rhyme, I think.”
“Did the neighbor take you to the hospital?”
Brook shook her head.
“We snuck out. We would have been in deep shit. He took us back to Kim’s house, and we were practically bouncing into the roof of his car with the adrenaline rush. When we got home, we saw Kim’s arm, and by morning it was the size of a baseball. She told her mom she tripped over a pile of laundry.”
“Did you ever go back?”
“Hell no. I had to sleep with the light on for a year. I still get the creeps when I hear nursery rhymes. It sounds dramatic, I know, but it left an impression. So, tell me why you’re curious about Kerry Manor. Is it because of your brother, or…?”
“Obviously it’s because of my brother,” Sarah snapped, immediately regretting her tone. “Sorry. I feel like I’m in an endless loop of acting like an ass and apologizing for it lately.”
Brook smiled and clinked her can against Sarah’s.
“I’ve been doing that my whole life. Though I prefer the term bitch.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said. “I mean it. Thanks for coming here and for not making me feel crazy.”
“Crazy is subjective,” Brook said. “Now answer me this, Sarah Flynn. Do you think something supernatural killed your brother?”
CHAPTER 14
Then
Corrie
“I had the strangest dream,” I told Sammy, stopping behind him at the stove and wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Not another merman dream, I hope? I can’t compete with a Fabio-esque man of the sea.”
I laughed and leaned my head between his shoulder blades. Several years before, I had dreamed of falling in love with a merman who lived in the great lakes. He took me beneath the water to live in his pearl-walled cave. I told Sammy of the dream, and ever since he claimed to live in terror I would one day abandon him for my dreamland merman.
“No merman,” I said, sniffing the air. Sammy was making his famous peanut butter pancakes. “I was a little girl living here in Kerry Manor.”
I moved to the refrigerator and pulled out butter and syrup, setting them on the kitchen counter.
“It’s grainy, but I was angry in the dream because my older sister had a doll I wanted.”
Sammy turned from the stove and cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe a deeply buried subconscious resentment of Amy? Should we call the psychoanalyst?”
I wadded up a paper towel and flicked at him.
“Do we have one of those on speed dial now?”
He batted it away and nodded.
“Yes, we do. Gotta make sure my family is well adjusted. For Christmas this year, we’re starting family therapy.”
“Ha.” I grabbed plates and knives. “I’ll give you some family therapy,” I laughed, holding a butter knife in the air.
“You wouldn’t,” he groaned, grabbing his chest. “You know if I die first, you’ll be stuck with my ghost.”
“Well, that’s reason enough to keep you alive. Anyway,” I continued. “In this dream, I wanted my sister’s doll and couldn’t have it, so I killed her cat and made a doll from its skin.”
Sammy turned, grimacing.
“Okay, now we’re definitely signing up for family therapy.”
“Stop it,” I scolded him jokingly. Though a tiny part of me truly wanted him to stop. The dream had unnerved me.
“Isis still asleep?” I asked him.
“In the great room. She woke up crying this morning, and you know what’s weird? She wasn’t in her room, but in the bathroom. In the tub!”
“What?” I asked, frowning. “I’ve never seen her climb out of the crib. How?”
Sammy shrugged.
“Apparently you’re both adventurous at night.”
“I wasn’t last night, was I?” I asked. Several times Sammy had found me sleepwalking through the house at night. It concerned me, but not nearly as much as the thought of Isis making her way to the bathroom in the dead of night. “I don’t remember getting up.”
“I don’t think so,” Sammy said. “But I slept hard last night. I didn’t even pee.”
I smiled.
“That is miraculous.”
Isis was curled on a blanket in the great room. Sammy had not yet built a fire, and a chill lingered.
“Hi, Honey Bear.” I lifted her from the floor and carried her to the couch. She turned her sleepy face at me and then dozed back off. I cuddled her, pulling a throw from the floor to smooth over us.
A dull aching lingered just behind my eyes, and my mouth tasted of pennies.
“Babe, can you grab me a glass of water?” I called to Sammy, brushing a lock of hair from Isis’s forehead and kissing the perfect patch of skin beneath.
The dream from the night before was already slipping away. Still, the satiny texture of the cat’s soft skin after the fur had been shaved off lingered at the tips of my fingers.
“What a terrible dream,” I whispered, kissing Isis a second time.
CHAPTER 15
Now
Sarah
“Ted Morgan?” Sarah asked the man who stepped from the white pickup truck with a decal plastered to the side that read Morgan’s Building and Construction.