“Shaun likes the Care Bears,” Evan said, almost to himself.
The stairs held them as they climbed to the second floor. A hallway with over a dozen rooms branching from it consumed the level, and Evan barely paused before continuing up. A rickety wooden railing leaned toward them as they neared the third floor, and he had to push it out of the way for them to pass. At the top of the stairs, a single door stood closed, with only a dark bathroom taking up the space to the right, the single leg of a claw-foot tub poking into view.
“This is their room,” Evan said. “This is where they found her.”
He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. Reaching out to the doorknob, he found that his fingers trembled when he touched the cold metal. Without waiting any longer, he turned the handle and pushed, the door swinging open with a squawk.
The room was enormous, taking up most of the third floor. Stained hardwood floors that would’ve been luxuriant ninety years ago were dark with water and time. The walls, once covered with some sort of decorative paper, lay bare, studs showing through the plaster like bones peeking from torn flesh. A ring of windows lined the far wall in the round shape of the turret, which made up that part of the room, and only one was shattered. A single painting, its image obscured by the damp conditions, hung on the left wall. Evan walked toward it, checking the floor as he did.
Selena let out a small gasp behind him. He turned, sure that one of her feet had fallen through or some type of animal startled her. Instead she faced the right wall, with one hand close to her mouth. Evan started to ask her what was wrong, but he followed her gaze and stopped dead in his tracks.
The shadow of the grandfather clock was on the wall.
Fear bred of impossibility rushed through him, starting in his chest and flowing outward like cold water running through his arteries.
“What is that?” Selena asked, her hand still close to her lips.
Evan walked forward, forcing away the shock. As he neared, he saw that the shape on the wall matched the clock’s outline perfectly. The height and width were both right. The edges of the shadow weren’t crisp lines but faded, elongated, and jagged. Reaching out, he stretched toward the dark silhouette.
“Evan, don’t,” Selena whispered.
He looked over his shoulder and saw Selena’s sculpted eyebrows bunched together. She shook her head.
“Don’t.”
“It’s okay,” he said, and placed his hand on the rough wall.
Nothing happened. He almost expected something to, but his fingers merely skimmed the dusty surface, making a rasping sound. He studied the shadow for over a minute before stepping back to take in its full form again. This was where the clock had stood years and years ago.
“It looks like it’s scorched,” he said, the resonance of his voice hollow and weak in the large room.
“Scorched? Like there was a fire?”
He frowned and leaned forward, rubbing the edge of the stain with his fingers. They came back with only dust on them.
“There’s no soot coming off it, though I don’t know if there’d be any left after ninety-some years.”
“That’s really creepy,” she said, sideling up next to him.
Her shoulder brushed his, and a tremor of heat raced down his arm. Ignoring the sensation, Evan stepped forward again and traced the outline.
“Have you ever seen pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs were dropped?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“The heat and radiation were so intense that the shadows of objects were burned into walls behind them.”
Evan stepped back, still looking at the dark striations along the edges of the shadow, their lines like brushstrokes of midnight. He stared at the center of the shape until Selena touched his arm.
“What does this mean?”
“I don’t know. This isn’t what I expected to find.”
“What did you expect?”
“I’m not sure. Something, but not this.”
He walked away from the spot, pausing to examine the floor in one corner before moving to the windows. The view of the forest and field surrounding the house was breathtaking, but something looked off. It took him a few seconds to realize what it was. The grass and trees closest to the house were dead. In an almost perfect circle around the building, the foliage looked brown and dismal. When they’d entered the house on the ground level, the effect hadn’t been noticeable, but from a higher vantage point, it became obvious.
Tearing his eyes away from the spectacle below, Evan moved along the wall, trying to process the clock’s shadow and the lack of growth outside. His shoulder caught something hard as he walked, and when he turned to look, he saw that the corner of the painting had snagged his shirt. He unhooked the cloth, expecting the painting to shift, but it didn’t. He reached out and tried to move the picture, but it stayed firmly in place.
“Glued or something.”
He looked closer at the painting, with its running lines that once might have been a graceful depiction of something in nature. A hole sat in the middle like a black eye forever watching the room. Evan put his finger against the hole’s edges. It looked as though someone had shot the painting with a gun.
“What?” Selena asked. She stood by the doorway gazing longingly back down the stairs.
“I said this picture is glued or—”
His tongue stilled as his eyes hovered on the lower right side of the painting. He reached up and, with care, rubbed the spot with his thumb.
“Evan, I don’t mean to sound like a wuss, but I’m starting to get a little freaked out. Can we go?”
He nodded, his eyes still locked on the words etched in the painting. “Yeah, let’s go. I think I got all I need here.”
Even in the wan light, the name stood out in ink that hadn’t suffered the span of years. He read it one more time to be sure he wasn’t seeing things, then turned toward the doorway, giving the clock’s shadow one last look.
14