“Maybe.” I rest my mug on the table and stand. “I’m going to get her a treat.” I walk to the bar cart for a peanut butter treat as Stokes walks down the hallway to the kitchen.
The scratching comes again, and I swivel around toward the foyer.
Was that the front door?
“She’s not at the door,” he calls. “Guess it wasn’t her.”
My legs shake beneath me as I stare at the front door and Stokes stops in the alcove, his eyes opening wider as we make eye contact.
“I think it came from the front door,” I whisper.
He frowns and scratches his chin. “Let me check.” He walks toward the door and I rush to the front window.
“Hold on.” I push the blinds aside and peer out at the dark front porch; the entrance by the front door just out of view, but there’s something out there by the steps, sitting in front of the door.
I try to tell him not to open the front door, but it opens with a slight creak and I peer out from around the corner behind him.
“Stokes?” I hiss as he stares out, his whole body still.
I squint past his legs at the porch. The bloody stuffed lamb sits there by the door, looking posed—like it’s watching us. How did it get there?
“The car is back,” he says, swinging the door shut and locking it. My chest heaves with shallow breaths, and my hands tremble. They’re back. They’re coming for me. Stokes takes his cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling the police.”
I turn down the hall, instinctively, to get Stevie from outside.
“Hey, don’t open the door,” he shouts, and I stop just short of the kitchen as I hear his footsteps following me. “I’ll get her. You call the police.” He passes me, hands me his phone, and rounds the table to the back door. He opens it and calls, “Stevie.”
Her tags jingle lightly. As soon as I hear them, I tap on his screen, and a creaking comes from the hallway behind me. Chills course through me as I turn around and the closet door in the middle of the hallway is open, blocking the view of the front door. A cold sweat falls over me as it creaks to a close, revealing an older man in black behind it.
Byron? How am I seeing this?
I walk backward, toward the kitchen, eager to put distance between us. I open my mouth to say something—to scream for help—but I can’t speak.
It’s the same feeling I had six years ago when he stood in the kitchen, holding my mother. He stands, watching me with those cold, dead eyes, much older looking than before. I can’t look away, I can’t speak, I can’t do anything.
He takes a step forward and I turn to the phone, hit contacts, and tap the number for the police as he barrels toward me, pounding down the hallway into the kitchen after me. It’s too late for the police. I grab my mallet from behind me, and he reaches out, grabs my wrist, and twists it. I shriek as pain pulses through me and the mallet bangs against the floor. He swats Stokes’s phone out of my other hand, and it clunks against the hardwood as he pulls me in toward him, my back against his front, his arm around my neck in a chokehold.
He presses his scruffy cheek against mine and I scream as Stokes runs back in through the door and stops with wide eyes, his hands up in front of him, staring at us. “Whoa.”
“Where’s your mother?” Byron’s hot breath hisses in my ear.
“Help!” I scream.
Has he come back from the dead? Will his torture never end?
Stokes rushes toward us at full speed, and pushes into us, grabbing me around my waist as I fall, catching me as Byron thunks against the hardwood.
Stokes pulls me forward, whipping me toward the back door ahead of him, as Byron scrambles to his feet. I watch in horror as he stands with my mallet in his hand and lunges toward us.
We run, and as I reach the door an “oopfh” comes from behind me.
I turn over my shoulder as Stokes collapses against the tile before me. My chest tightens as my stomach swirls, sick with fear.
Stokes.
Byron holds up the bloody silver mallet, stumbling over Stokes to get to me.
I turn ahead and lunge out the door as a hand swipes at my back, just sweeping against my raincoat. I turn left, to the side of the house, and sprint toward the front as rain pitters down against my face.
“Help!” I scream, my heart thudding in my ears, reaching the gate.
I tug on the latch and it unlocks. I push against the wooden gate, but something’s wrong. Something’s jamming it.
The rock I put there.
I turn over my shoulder and Byron stalks toward me down the side of the house in the shadows as the rain pours down.
“Help me!” I scream to the empty street, to the lights on at the house across it, ramming my shoulder against the gate, and it gives, and gives. Almost there.
Something pounds the back of my head. A sharp pain numbs. The cold, wet world turns black.
Chapter 28
Stared in the dead man’s eyes once again.
Sick is the line that bonded them.
A cell phone ringing rouses me from sleep. I open my eyes and my head throbs as I take in a blurry view of the bright kitchen. I reach for the point at the back of my head emitting the sharp pain, but my hands are tied. So are my feet. The hard chair beneath me centers my balance as I open my eyes again. The room spins as a figure from behind the counter leans over it, watching me, as a cell phone rings.
Byron.
No. He’s dead.
“Who are you?” I mumble, the words slowly and I barely recognize my voice as I struggle to free my
