Fast feet take me to the stove, but no flame arises as I struggle with the clicker. Turning to the shadows, I give up and run, tossing the useless sprig their way.
I race around the breakfast table and straight out the door, stumbling over a small stack of study books in the reading room from where Mom had been tutoring me earlier. I land on the floor with a thud, cutting my hand on the blade.
A small wince leaves me, but there’s no time to dwell on the injury.
Shoving the blade out in the direction of the shadows, I hope with everything in me that they’ll retreat to the useless threat.
Fingers drag me back. I expect burned hands to be on my shoulders, but my eyes meet with dirty gloves, and I scream.
It comes out silently, all sound trapped inside with the air in my lungs.
The shadows approach at great speed. They’ll step on me any second. Before that happens, they break into dust, and it rains down around me. Each speckle becomes a spider that crawls over my body. I kick and thrash, the blade still in my hand and nicking at other parts of my body.
The harsh touch on my shoulders fades away, and I spin to see no clown, no ghost children, nothing out of the ordinary in this upcycled room. I blink, eyes back on my body, and the big brown spiders fade away to nothing.
Finally, a weak breath slips out of my mouth.
“Ambrose!” I call out, but he doesn’t hear me from upstairs.
I force myself up onto my feet, checking every corner on my way to the stairs.
A pain in my hand alerts me to the gash that’s bleeding out—other minor cuts twinge with pain along my arms. None of my injuries are bad enough for stitches, and the one on my hand—the worst one—isn’t deep, but it stings whenever my fingers move.
Slow and steady, I move up the stairs. Trembling legs working so hard not to give way and send me tumbling back down.
I open my mouth to call my parents, but quickly seal my lips. There’s only one person I want to see right now, and my parents won’t allow it.
Ambrose.
I follow the new carpet along the hall, Mom’s hysterical crying distracting me as it seeps under her bedroom door. Her behavior doesn’t make sense. She’s been so happy all night.
Pressing my head to the door, I take in the fractured sentences she tosses at Dad. “I am. I am glad he’s home, but I can’t shake the feeling he knows. He knows what we did.”
A shushing sound follows—Dad.
“Don’t do that. Don’t tell me to shut up.”
“I have to, Gen. We take this to the grave. Dollancie can’t find out, and Ambrose, even if he’s heard something, he heard it from a psychopath. There’s no proof.”
There is so much hate in Dad’s tone that I can’t pull my ear away from things he doesn’t want me to find out.
“A psychopath whom we handed over our children to.”
My mouth drops open.
There’s no way. No damn way they did that to us.
My heart stops, and I step back, stumbling over the thick new carpet and into the handrail.
The ground floor looks so far away, the threat of falling looming as my body bends over the rail. The clown that stands at the bottom, smiling and waving at me, looks so small. He shouldn’t be scary. But my heart races uncomfortably in my chest.
“Did you hear something?” Mom asks, her voice louder than before. A sniffle follows. “Kids?”
Clasping my hands over trembling lips, I stay quiet as she calls out.
I stay still, eyes still on the small clown, drifting comically slow to the stairs.
“It’s probably nothing, Gen. Maybe the wind.”
