Just like someone had passed on the cross, first to Schwartz, then to Lucas.
“Holy shit,” Lucas whispered. “The visitor . . .”
“Mr. Graham?”
“The visitor,” he repeated. “Check the visitor. The woman. It was her. It had to be.”
Lumpy Annie went silent on the other end of the line.
What have I gotten into?
Laughter sounded from beyond Lucas’s study door.
He blinked, his heart tripping over itself.
It was a pair of girls. They were laughing on the other side of the wall. Laughing at him.
Lucas dropped his phone onto his desk blotter, launched himself up and out of his chair, and rushed across the length of his study to yank open the door.
But rather than hearing more laughter, his mouth fell open at what he saw instead. Despite the darkness, he could make out the outlines of the living room furniture in the moonlight. An armchair was stacked on top of the couch. The coffee table was somehow balanced on top of the chair. Couch cushions were piled high on top of the table. It was an impossible Jenga puzzle defying gravity.
Something in his chest loosened. An involuntary gasp escaped his throat. Suddenly, he was remembering the upside-down family photograph in the living room, recalling Chloe Sears’s dead-eyed stare and doped-up smile flipped onto its head. There had been the girl in the orchard. Somehow, despite the security system, they had found their way inside and moved things around. The washed-up writer and his little girl were, in someone’s messed-up opinion, getting exactly what they deserved. Because who the hell moved into a house like this? Who chose to live in a place tainted with blood and death? Someone was fucking with him.
“Jeanie?!” His daughter’s name slid past his lips, and while he was trying to subdue his panic, his voice sounded startled, strained. He was unsure why he was calling for her. He didn’t want her to see what was going on in the living room, certain that if she set eyes on that physics-defying stack of furniture, she’d freak out.
He forced himself out of the study. Darted across the living room. Diverted his eyes from the furniture tower, as though looking at it for too long would reveal some sort of voodoo curse. Why did I speak to Mark that way? Scanning every dark corner as he bolted to the far wall of the room, he slapped his hand over the light switch.
The overhead lights refused to come on.
That was when Lucas began to genuinely panic.
Oh God, they’re still inside.
Somewhere close, they were watching his temperature rise. Holding their hands over their mouths. Grinning behind their palms. Statuesque in their stillness.
He took the stairs three at a time, nearly launching himself into Jeanie’s room. The door flew open. He struggled to catch it by the knob before it slammed against the opposite wall. He missed. Jeanie jumped with a start. In the cold laptop glow of her room, she shoved a piece of paper underneath her bed and leaped up.
44
* * *
VIVI HAD GOTTEN used to spending time by herself and she was starting to enjoy the solitude. If she wasn’t in front of her computer or on her phone, she was sitting in the shadows of her closet, staring at the printed-out photographs of her newfound idol. The small photo Echo had given her of Jeffrey Halcomb remained constantly at hand. Even his handwriting was compelling—sharp and dangerous, alluring. She imagined rock stars writing the way he did. The difference was that Jeff was better than any rock star. Those guys were nothing but an illusion. Jeff Halcomb, though . . . he knew Vivi existed. The proof was right there, scribbled onto the back of a snapshot. Somehow he knew, and for some reason, he cared.
If anyone was going to be able to communicate with Jeff’s fallen family still present in this house, it would be her. It was almost as though, rather than her father bringing her to Pier Pointe, it had been Vivi who had drawn him across the country instead. It was a crazy theory, an impossible thought, but she felt connected, in touch with her potential to reach into the netherworld more than she had ever been before. The shadows that lurked in that house were making her intuition stronger. They were silently, invisibly encouraging her to continue her search for answers. To not give up. To help them even if she didn’t know how.
We’ll show you how.
If she just kept pushing forward, they would lead her in the right direction. Pushing forward meant more research. The more she learned, the clearer her direction would become, and over the past week, Vivi had learned a lot.
Breaking out her new black stationery from its plastic wrap as soon as she and her dad had come home from the mall, she had written “BLOODY MARY” across the top of the page in silver ink, then powered up her laptop and began to surf.
There were a bunch of stories about Bloody Mary, but none of them could pinpoint exactly where the urban legend had come from. There was Mary Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII—a woman who grew up watching beheadings, burned people at the stake, and was pregnant with a ghost baby that was never born. There were rumors that she bathed in blood to stay young, and that if you wanted to summon her, you had to whisper I stole your baby while staring into a dark mirror.
There were tales of Bloody Mary being an evil witch who drowned children for fun. Some said she was a sad mother who had lost her only child in a flood. Sometimes you had to lock the bathroom door for anything to happen. Other times, you needed a lit candle so you could see your own reflection. Or you were advised to spin around in a circle three times. But a few elements always remained constant: the bathroom, the darkness, the mirror, and the chanting of her name.