I sat up so quickly, my laptop plummeted to the floor.
“Damn.”
I got down on my knees. A small plastic chip had splintered from the side, but otherwise the computer remained intact.
“Is someone there?” I called, stepping into the foyer.
Sun slanted through the stained-glass window at the top of the stairs, but hardly enough to illuminate the darkness in every corner. I roamed from room to room, listening, waiting.
I wandered into the kitchen, the bathroom, and lastly back to the stairs. I did not hear the child again.
“Because there is no child,” I said out loud. The instant the words left my mouth, I paused, as if I’d offered a challenge and now the child would have to reveal herself.
Silence greeted me.
I searched every room, peeked beneath beds, which gave me a shiver or two, and decided Isis must have a horrible new toy I would dispose of when I came across it.
I had only just settled back into my space on the couch when Sammy and Isis returned in a tornado of sound and movement.
Isis tugged at the blanket wrapped around my feet and demanded cookies.
“Lunch first,” Sammy announced, giving me a smack on the lips.
I followed them into the kitchen.
Sammy continued singing whatever rock song he’d been listening to in the car. He pulled the high chair from its cupboard and slopped sandwich fixings onto the counter.
I stretched, grateful my little stream of chaos had returned to distract me from the blank screen.
“Get some writing done?” Sammy asked, lifting a squealing Isis into her high chair. He gave her jarred peaches and half a turkey sandwich, and settled an array of toy figures on her tray.
“Yeah,” I shrugged and gestured to the now-closed laptop I had set on the kitchen counter.
“Good because there’s a zombie movie marathon happening in,” he looked at his watch, ”twenty-five minutes.”
“Oh my, I didn’t realize it was a movie day.”
He grinned.
“This is the winter of our discontent. How better to while away the hours than watching zombie movies?”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“We could rake some of those leaves in the yard. In a week they’ll be waist-high.”
“Leaves, schmeaves,” he grumbled. “Anyway, I bought some monster bags for the Halloween Party and we need leaves to fill them out. Best to put that off until the week before the party.”
“How are your peaches, Honey Bear?” I asked Isis, kissing the top of her head.
“Mmm-good,” she mumbled, chewing a mouthful of fruit and stomping a pink princess toward a group of unsuspecting penguins who were about to be knocked to the floor.
I caught them as they fell and returned them to her tray.
“Why hasn’t anyone invented a sling shot that catches falling toddler toys and returns them to their original spots? They’d make a fortune,” Sammy exclaimed.
“Maybe I should do that instead of writing a book.”
“No way,” he grinned, taking a bite of Isis’s sandwich. “You’ll see, Corrie. Next year at this time, we’re going to be sitting back and reading about Corrie Flynn, the New York Times Bestselling Author.”
“I’d be happy if next year at this time, I had a rough draft,” I admitted, putting the bread and turkey back in the refrigerator.
“You will,” he assured me.
“I found a little room upstairs I might turn into a writer’s room. It has an old desk and a window that looks out on the courtyard,” I told him.
“Ooh, tucked away clacking at the keys like Hemingway, huh?”
“I’m pretty sure Hemingway managed more words in a day than I produce in a week.”
“You’ll find your groove, babe.”
Isis finished eating, and Sammy helped her down. She raced into the great room with her toys clutched in her hand. Sammy and I followed her.
“Oh,” I said, remembering the child’s song. “Does Isis have a new toy that sings nursery rhymes?”
Sammy plopped on the couch, wrinkling his brow.
“My mom got her that little cat piano that sings.”
I frowned.
“I don’t think so,” I murmured.
“Come snuggle with me,” Sammy said, patting the place beside him. “Zombies aren‘t the same if you’re not clutching me in terror whenever they feed on a new victim.”
I SAT at the little wooden desk tucked into the alcove, the gray sky washed in gloomy darkness. The room lacked an overhead light, making up for it with antique lamps and sterling candlesticks. I lit candles, imagining the person, likely a man, who sat at a desk like this one-hundred years ago. I knew nothing of the Kerry family except a tragic fire stole most of their lives. Did he sit in this room and pen letters to his family? Tell them of the trials of life in northern Michigan and close his envelopes with a wax seal?
“No,” I murmured, surveying the space. The man of the house would have done those things in the study. This room likely belonged to the mother. Perhaps a sewing table sat near the window, so she could watch her children play outside.
The tiny black cursor blinked at me from the solid white screen of my laptop. Write, it seemed to say. Write… write… write.
I stood and stretched, missing our cats for the first time since coming to Kerry Manor. Helen had taken them in. They would be fat when we retrieved them after months of eating tuna from the can. Each time we visited, I found them lazing in her sunroom, their bellies turned up and their eyes rolled back.
When I first started my novel, both cats flocked to me as if they understood the absolute necessity of a cat to a writer. They would curl on my lap, on a stack of books perched near my desk, or on the windowsill in my writing room, which doubled as a guest bedroom. That, however, existed in our actual home - a little bungalow in Traverse City. Kerry Manor was off-limits to pets.
“Maybe that’s why I’m blocked,” I mumbled. “I don’t have my furry muses.”
I walked around the room, sliding my hand over furniture, looking closer at the neat grooves in the old wood. This room was far from where the fire had occurred and likely contained all of its original wood. A small closet, only waist-high and pointed at the top, adorned one wall. I pulled on the little iron handle, but it didn’t budge. Perhaps a veneer had been put on the wood, causing the door to stick. I tried a second time. The door began to open and then was wrenched back - as if someone who sat on the other side had pulled it closed.
I took my hand away and stared at the door.
Only a child could sit comfortably in such a closet, and Isis was not in the house. I was alone.
“Don’t be silly,” I whispered, echoing a sentiment my older sister told me when I crept into her bed late at night during our younger years. I had often woken from nightmares, and I would have liked to crawl into bed with my mother. Unfortunately, most nights she drank until she passed out on the couch. If I did go to her, her skin would be slick and pungent. She’d swat me away as if I were a giant mosquito attacking in her sleep.
My sister was a much safer option.
I gripped the handle and pulled, but it didn’t budge. I folded my hand into a fist and knocked.
Silence.
Shaking my head at my misgivings, I stood and returned to the desk.
As I started to sit in my chair, a knock sounded behind me, small and hollow. Just one.
The silence that followed had substance. It crowded the space, pressing in until even air seemed hard to come by.
I had not moved. My hand stood poised over the back of my chair, my head slightly rotated toward that little door, my ears straining to hear.