CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jess crept back into her room just before one o’clock. She’d expected Mrs. Hirsch to be standing outside Gage’s room, or at the very least, to catch her on her way back to her own, but she must have been elsewhere. It was odd not to have run into her, but Jess wasn’t complaining.
Allison was still awake, still reading her book.
“If we go to sleep now, we can still get a couple hours,” Jess said as she exchanged her shirt and shorts for a sleep shirt.
Allison looked at the clock and yawned. “Yeah, I suppose. Did you run into Mrs. Hirsch?”
“Never saw her. Found Bryan in the kitchen, though.” She didn’t mention the part about Gage.
Allison frowned. “That’s weird she didn’t run into you guys. She’s been by here a few times. I can hear the floorboards creak in the hallway. For a while, she was up and down it so much I thought she was looking for you in one of the rooms again. I almost checked.”
Jess crawled into bed and fluffed her pillow. “Nope. She never found me.” Before Allison could ask why Mrs. Hirsch hadn’t found her, Jess turned out the light and rolled over. “Sleep quickly,” she said.
“Maybe it wasn’t her, then.”
“What?”
“Maybe it was one of them.”
Jess turned back over. “Them? You mean the girls?”
“No, it was only one set of footsteps and too heavy for a couple of girls.” Allison adjusted her own pillow. “Anyway, they’re gone now. See you in a couple of hours.”
Great. Even when Allison wasn’t really trying to creep her out, she was creeping her out. Jess looked at the dresser where a large bath towel covered the mirror.
Don’t think about it. Gage’s mirror was covered, too.
Jess lay on her side, listening to the sound of crickets and bullfrogs, which were in full chorus, and trying not to think about any of the other sounds that might be one of the resident ghosts. Or Riley. What if he found a way out of the mirrors like Allison said?
What if he hadn’t needed them all along?
Stop thinking about it. You’ll never get any sleep.
But exhaustion and thoughts of Gage won out and Jess drifted into perfect, dreamless sleep.
Until she felt a cold hand on her arm. She jerked, wondering if it was three o’clock already and Allison was shaking her awake. Sensing someone standing beside the bed, she bolted upright. The twins. They’d startled her so badly she couldn’t even scream. God she hated when ghosts snuck up on her. They were like cats, mostly quiet and stealthy.
“Shhh!” Gracie whispered. “We don’t have long.”
Jess tried to collect her thoughts. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest. She looked at the nightstand clock. Two thirty. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
“We want to show you something.” Emma stuck out her hand as though she expected Jess to take it.
Jess glanced over at Allison, who was still asleep.
“I don’t think—”
“It’s important!” Gracie whispered. Her face wrinkled in concern “Please, Jess. Please!”
Reluctantly, Jess got out of bed and threw on her shorts under her sleep tee. She reached out to take Emma’s hand in hers, knowing very well that it’d slip through her grasp.
But it didn’t. Not entirely. While she couldn’t say that she was holding Emma’s hand, Emma’s hand was definitely holding onto Jess’s. There wasn’t the feeling of Emma’s skin on hers, just a cold something in her palm. Allison’s warning that the house and its occupants were getting stronger was an understatement.
Emma smiled up at her, and Jess tried not to show her nervousness. She’d never been able to touch a ghost before, and one had never touched her—not even Grams. Jess had thought about it, and often wondered what it’d be like. It was like touching death itself.
Emma tugged at her, sending biting cold into her hand. What would Allison think when she found Jess already gone? She allowed Emma to lead her out of the room as they followed Gracie down the hall. The girls walked ahead, going down the stairs and vanishing through the front door. Jess held her breath, then unlocked the door and opened it slowly, hoping it wouldn’t creak.
Stepping out into the night, she closed the door carefully behind her. The girls stood waiting, the moonlight shining through them. Their expressions were pinched, as though worried. Despite the warm air, Jess shivered.
Gracie turned and walked down the steps and her sister followed. Jess followed, too. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“You have to see,” Gracie replied without stopping.
Jess quickened her step. She wondered if Bryan and Gage were already out here and something had happened. “Wait! See what?”
“What he did,” Emma replied, her tone sullen.
“What who did?”
“Don’t worry, it’s none of your friends,” Gracie called back to her. Her words might have reassured her if Jess didn’t hear such sadness in them. Why would they want to show her something that clearly upset them so much?
Jess followed them across the moonlit lawn to the rear of the house, toward the little fenced-off cemetery where Gracie and Emma were buried. Jess expected them to stop there, but the girls walked past it, straight to the edge of the woods. There, they stopped and turned to face Jess.
“Why are we out here?” Jess asked.
The girls exchanged expressionless glances. “We told you,” they said in unison. “To see.”
Jess looked around. There wasn’t anyone else out here. Everything looked just as it had in the daylight—quiet and undisturbed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You will,” Emma said.
“In there,” Gracie added. She pointed to the dense line of trees bordering the back lawn.
“In there?” Surely the girls didn’t wake her in the middle of the night to go wandering off into the woods.
The girls nodded.
Jess eyed them cautiously. She didn’t like the idea at all. “Girls? What happened in there?” It was almost a rhetorical question because Jess felt certain she knew exactly what had happened. Riley had killed them.
“We died in there,” Emma said, confirming Jess’s suspicions.
Jess glanced at the woods. It seemed even darker now, like it could swallow her whole if she stepped inside. “Well, then, it doesn’t sound like a good idea for me to go there.”
“You have to see what happened,” Emma said. “We’ll be with you, Jess. Please?”
“Don’t worry.” Gracie placed her hand in Jess’s, sending another shiver up her arm.
“You said you’d help us. We just need to show you what happened,” Emma pleaded.
“When you see, you’ll understand,” Gracie pressed. “We can’t be at peace until you see what needs to be done. We’ve been separate all these years. He separated us.”
Separated?
Jess looked into Emma’s pleading eyes. Trust them? Or turn and run? The others would be out here soon and wonder where she was. On the other hand, if the girls could revisit the place they’d died, revisit what horror had fallen on them, then Jess could try to find her strength and go with them. Maybe the act of finally showing someone what had happened would bring them peace. Maybe it’d be a step in helping to send them on, freeing them of Riley and Siler House.
She had no idea if this was true or not, but maybe all the girls needed was for someone to understand the horror of what had been done to them—why their lives had been taken at such a young age. She’d never crossed over a ghost before. But, she’d read and heard of stories where ghosts just needed a form of closure before they let go of the past. Siler House had sat empty for so long that the girls had no one to tell.
Until now.
They continued to wait patiently. Emma’s lips were pursed together, her forehead wrinkled with worry in anticipation of Jess’s answer. “Please, Jess. Please. We can’t truly be together until you see.”
Standing on the edge of the woods was like standing on the edge of another world. Trees stood like some spectral army against a backdrop of black. Stepping inside meant wearing the darkness like a cloak. It would envelope her, making her invisible to Gage and the others who expected to find her on the back lawn.
Turn back.
Emma took Jess’s hand into both of hers and tugged.
“How far?” Jess asked.
“Not far. You’ll be back before Allison and the others come looking for you,” Gracie said.
“Okay,” Jess said, not feeling that it was okay at all.
The girls smiled and led Jess into the woods.