Chapter 18 - The Shadow on the Second Floor
Night fell over the valley with an oppressive, suffocating density. Daniel insisted that Rachel and Lily stay at the new house instead of returning to Rachel’s apartment in the city. He checked the perimeter locks three times, adjusted the external spotlights, and sat on the low couch in the upstairs hallway with an aluminum baseball bat resting against his knees.
Every creak of the timber framing made his jaw clench. Every branch scratching against the gutters sounded like an intruder testing a window latch.
Around 2:15 AM, the hallway temperature seemed to drop five degrees.
Daniel blinked against the heavy weight of exhaustion. He had been staring at the closed bedroom doors: Lily in the first room on the left, Rachel resting fitfully in the guest room across from her.
Then, from inside Lily’s room, came a soft, rhythmic sound.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
It wasn't random. It was deliberate. A slow cadence that Daniel remembered with sickening clarity—the sound Rachel had made with her knuckles against the reinforced wall of the storage unit when her vocal cords had given out from dehydration.
Daniel stood up, his socks silent against the hardwood runner. He gripped the bat, turned the brass knob of Lily’s door, and eased it open.
The room was bathed in the pale lavender glow of a nightlight shaped like a starfish. Lily wasn't in her bed. The sheets were thrown back, the floral comforter pooling on the carpet.
Daniel’s heart slammed into his throat. "Lily?" he whispered.
A tiny silhouette was standing on the window seat, her forehead pressed flat against the double-paned glass that looked out over the black canopy of the backyard woods.
"Lily, baby, what are you doing?" Daniel crossed the room in two strides, dropping the bat onto the rug and reaching out to pull her away from the glass.
Lily didn't flinch. She didn't turn around. She slowly pointed a small, pale finger toward the glass.
"She doesn't have a flashlight, Daddy," Lily said, her voice eerily flat, untouched by the fear that was currently paralyzing her father.
"Who doesn't?"
"The lady from the other floor. The one who sleeps under the grass."
Daniel looked through the glass, down into the rain-slicked darkness of the yard. The high-powered halogen floodlights illuminated the perimeter fence, the manicured lawn, and the edge of the tree line.
There was no one there. Only the wet, swaying branches of the birch trees.
"There's nobody there, sweetheart. You had a bad dream. It's just the wind hitting the siding."
Lily slowly turned around. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, reflecting the pale lavender light of the room. In her right hand, she was clutching the old teddy bear—the one with the stitched-up ear that had once hidden the first brass key.
"She wasn't tapping on the glass, Daddy," Lily whispered, her lower lip trembling for the first time. "She was tapping under the floorboards. She said you only found Mommy. You didn't find the sister."
Daniel froze. His lungs completely locked up. "What did you just say?"
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"Vanessa told me before she went to the bad house," Lily whimpered, hugging the bear against her chest until the fabric groaned. "She said if I told you about Mommy, the other girl in the dark would stay hungry forever. Did the other girl starve, Daddy? Because I talked?"
***
