But I did. I stepped beside him and took a deep breath. “They don’t want you to go upstairs.”
He shook his head like it sounded silly to him and started for the second step. Ralphie lunged again and Stella continued to whine. “Go to your beds then!” Ryan roared at them. Neither made any motion to leave; instead, they watched their master take the next two steps. Ralphie’s bark grew increasingly louder and more determined while Stella dropped onto her stomach in submission. I took the first step but paused, feeling like neither of us should venture upstairs. I couldn’t explain why, but there was a feeling deep in my gut—something warning me to stay where I was. I’m sure it also had something to do with Ryan’s enormous dogs cowering in fear, their tails between their legs.
Ryan took the next two steps before I stopped him. “I don’t…I don’t think we should go up there,” I said in a trembling voice. “The dogs must have sensed something, Ryan.”
He glanced back at me and his expression was determined. “I need to find out what that shatterin’ sound was.”
I swallowed and watched him take the next few steps. That voice in the back of my head warned me not to follow him, but there was no way I could let him investigate by himself. What if something happened to him? I glanced back at the dogs, who both stared at me from their droopy eyes, imploring me not to allow their master to continue. But I had no choice; he was already halfway down the hallway while I was still stuck on the stairs. I took a deep breath, turned around again, and shot up the remaining steps, easily catching up to him. He turned around to face me and shook his head.
“Peyton, I can check things out myself. I know you’re scared—”
“I’m not scared,” I interrupted, trying to convince myself. “I just think your dogs are acting weird and it has me concerned.”
He looked down at the dogs, who hadn’t budged from the bottom of the stairs, and shrugged. “They’ve never acted like this before.” Before I could respond, he was already moving down the hallway, his footsteps heavy on the buffed wood floors. He stopped in front of the first door and pushed it open, revealing a bathroom. He turned the light on as I came up behind him.
“Shit!” he yelled as we both faced the mirror above the sink. It had a crack in it that must have been an inch wide, running down the center from top to bottom.
“How could that have—?” I started.
“I don’t know,” Ryan interrupted, shaking his head. “Maybe the dogs somehow jumped up and broke it?” But as soon as he finished his sentence, I could tell he didn’t believe it, not for a second. And neither did I.
He stepped out of the bathroom and started down the hallway again, this time ducking into the next room, which was a bedroom. The room was comprised of a queen-size bed with a black headboard and footboard, a matching chest of drawers, and a square wall mirror, which had to be five feet tall. It, too, was broken. But instead of a long fracture in the glass, it looked like someone had taken a blunt object to it. The mirror had a circular smashed area in the middle of it, with weblike fractures radiating outward.
Ryan didn’t say anything but ducked back out of the room with me on his heels as he started down the hallway again. He paused to open the double doors that led into a wood-paneled home theater. The flat-screen television, which hung on the opposite wall from where we stood, looked like it had been blown from the inside out. The screen was completely missing and scattered in sharp fragments all over the hardwood floors. Some of the pieces littered the plush, black leather movie theatre–style seats.
“Oh my gosh,” I said in complete shock as I brought my hand to my open mouth. But Ryan still didn’t say anything and, instead, turned around and closed the doors behind us. His silence was beginning to make me very uncomfortable because I didn’t understand it. If my house had been vandalized in such a bizarre way, silence would not have been my reaction.
With every step we took, the feelings of dread, which had first accosted me on the staircase, increased tenfold, and my instinct to turn around and escape became increasingly difficult to ignore. But Ryan didn’t seem to share the same sense of self-preservation. Instead, he ambled forward, throwing open the door to another bathroom where the mirror on top of the sink was also cracked, this time in an “X” formation.
He didn’t hesitate, but continued down the hallway until it ran into a set of double doors, those of the master bedroom. Glancing back at me only momentarily, his face was completely emotionless. It was like he went on autopilot or something. He opened both of the doors and walked into the room, while I took up the rear. Once we were in his room, he stood stock-still. Following his gaze, I noticed an ornately carved mirror that was so large, it took up half the wall beside the attached bathroom. The mirror appeared to be an antique, judging by how cloudy and gray the glass was.
Ryan breathed out a sigh of relief, probably because, strangely enough, this mirror was completely intact. He started for the bathroom and I followed him, both of us taking in the two wood-framed mirrors that hung above each of the sinks. They, too, were broken, each with cavernous cracks running from top to bottom.
“Why do you think the mirror in your room isn’t broken?” I asked in a small voice.
Ryan shook his head as he started for the bedroom again, and I followed him. We both stood in front of the mirror and studied it. Ryan crossed his arms against his chest, looking completely troubled and puzzled. “I don’t know,” he answered, continuing to shake his head. “None of this makes any fuckin’ sense at all,” he admitted finally.
I nodded and didn’t know what more I could say because he was right. Whatever had happened completely defied logic. As we stood there, staring at the mirror, my attention started to wander around the room as I took in the furnishings that all reminded me of Ryan. Next to the bed was a nightstand and on it, a picture. I took a few steps closer and picked up the frame, realizing it was Ryan standing next to a woman I didn’t recognize.
They were both laughing and both beautiful. Ryan’s hair reflected the sunlight, his crisp white shirt almost glowing in the sunlight. His arms were wrapped around the woman’s waist and she was facing him, her left cheek buttressed against his chest and her arms clasped around his middle. Her long, dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, and with her olive complexion, her happy brown eyes, and her long, slim body, she was stunning.
I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness, envy, and guilt as I stared at the picture, which represented a much happier time in Ryan’s life. I sighed as I turned to face him and found him staring at me, his expression unreadable. I offered him a slight smile and propped the picture back on his nightstand. “She was really beautiful,” I said.
He nodded. “That was taken on our first anniversary.”
I wanted to say something but didn’t really know what to say so I just stood there instead, looking up at Ryan while he stared back down at me.
“Sometimes when you laugh, you remind me of her,” he continued.
“I do?”
He nodded. “When you’re embarrassed about something and you laugh, you cover your mouth with your hand. She used to do the same thing.”
I wasn’t really sure what to make of the comment but figured it was simply an observation that didn’t really require a response. Instead, I just smiled at him and hoped he understood that this was difficult for me too. After another protracted silence, I took a few steps toward the double doors, figuring it was best to go back downstairs so we could try to piece the puzzle together, although I felt like we were missing most of the pieces.