What Lies Below
Author: Mark Lukens
Date: 2015-08-17 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Horror; Thriller
Description: WHAT LIES BELOW Genre: mystery/thriller, short novel Pam has been having recurring nightmares lately, and there's something buried in those nightmares ... a terrible secret trying to surface. Pam was eight years old when her mother left her without a note or a goodbye, leaving her alone to live with her domineering father, a world-famous psychiatrist. Now, twenty-four years later, Pam's father is dying. She gets a strange phone call from him ... he swears Pam's mother has come back. Pam knows her father is delusional from his illness, and she knows that she needs to see him before he passes aw

Table of Contents
FRONT MATTER
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
A FAVOR TO ASK:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WHAT LIES BELOW

A dark mystery novella by

MARK LUKENS

What Lies Below—Copyright © 2014 by Mark Lukens

All Rights Reserved

No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission by the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead (or in any other form), is entirely coincidental.

PLEASE CHECK OUT THESE OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR:

Ancient Enemy – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

The Summoning – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

Descendants of Magic – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

Night Terrors – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

Sightings – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

The Exorcist’s Apprentice – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

Ghost Town: a novella – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

Devil’s Island – Coming Soon

ONE

“I had the dream again,” Pam told her psychiatrist.

Dr. Stanton leaned back a little in his chair. He had one leg crossed over the other with his leather-bound notebook balanced on his lap. He held a silver pen lightly in one hand, the pen poised over the paper inside the notebook. His gray eyes were impassive behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He managed to somehow look focused and thoughtful at the same time, like he was both listening intently to Pam while daydreaming about something else.

Pam lay on a leather couch, the back of her head resting against one puffy arm with Dr. Stanton in the background behind her. Yes, it was an honest-to-goodness psychiatrist’s couch. If Dr. Stanton thought it might be a cliché having one of these in his office, he didn’t say so.

Dr. Stanton was a very lean man in his late forties or early fifties. Pam wasn’t really sure of his age, or much else about him. If, at any time over the last four and half years, she tried to inquire about his life, or if she tried to steal snippets away about him, he would artfully maneuver the conversation back to her.

These were her sessions after all, he would remind her. She was paying for them, he would joke. But then he would tell her—with all jokes aside—that she was here to talk about herself, her problems, and her dreams.

Yet she still wondered about him. She tried to play detective in her mind, attempting to figure out what he was really like behind his psychiatric mask. Was he married? She didn’t see a ring on his left hand, or even a pale line where a ring might go. She knew that a lot of psychiatrists didn’t wear wedding rings, or anything else that might give away anything about their personal lives.

And she had known a lot of psychiatrists over the years. Her father had been a psychiatrist. A great one. A famous one.

“Tell me about your dream,” Dr. Stanton told Pam. He always called them dreams—never nightmares.

Pam closed her eyes and her body seemed to settle even deeper into the comfortable couch.

Really, she wondered, where did they get these couches? Was there like some kind of psychiatrist mail-order catalogue they purchased from?

“It’s the same dream I keep having,” Pam said with her eyes still closed. “My mother is about to leave me. I’m eight years old again, and I know she is going to leave and I’m never going to see her again. She has already packed her bags. I can see clothes all over my mom and dad’s bedroom, all over the floor, like she tore them out of the closet and flung them all around the room. There are empty hangers in the closet where her clothes used to be. Somewhere my mother is yelling at my father in the house, but now I can’t find her. I’m scared that they are going to hit each other. Hurt each other. I run downstairs. I guess I think my mother and father might be in the basement for some reason …”

Pam hesitated, and then she sighed. “And then I can’t remember any more. I know in the dream that my mom hasn’t left yet. It feels like there’s still some time for me to try and stop her from leaving me, to beg her to stay.”

She paused for a minute, her eyes still closed, her body very still on Dr. Stanton’s couch. “I know I dream more after that, but I can’t ever remember any of it. I can never remember anything past that point.”

Pam opened her eyes and sat up quickly on the couch. She felt frustrated, like she had come up to a wall of mist in her mind that she couldn’t see through.

“I’m dreaming about the moment my mother left me and never came back,” she said. “And now my husband has left me and I worry about my daughter. She’s the same age I was when my mother left me. I just … just feel so bad for her. I don’t want her to go through what I went through; always waiting for him to return, hoping and praying that he will change his mind and come back. Blaming herself, thinking that she did something wrong.”

“I’d like to try something,” Dr. Stanton said as he shifted in his chair slightly. “I’d like you to lie back down on the couch again and close your eyes.”

Pam glanced at Dr. Stanton.

He gave her a reassuring smile. “Please. Just lie back down on the couch and close your eyes.”

Pam exhaled slowly and did as the doctor asked. She lay very still with her eyes closed.

“Just relax, Pam.”

She nodded.

“I want to try some very light hypnosis.”

“Okay,” Pam said without moving or opening her eyes.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dr. Stanton told her. “I want you to keep your eyes closed and let your body relax. Let every muscle in your body slowly relax. I want you to focus only on your breathing and the sound of my voice. Nothing else matters right now … just let everything else slip away.”

Pam inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, and then let it flow out of her lungs. Her breathing stayed deep and even, just how Dr. Stanton had taught her to breathe.

“You’ve done this with me before,” Dr. Stanton said in his low and soothing voice. “There is nothing to worry about. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Pam could feel her body relaxing.

“Very good, Pam,” Dr. Stanton whispered as he set his notebook and pen on the table beside his chair without a sound.

“Now I want you to count backwards from ten,” Dr. Stanton said as he stood up quietly.

“Ten,” Pam whispered. “Nine … eight …”

Dr. Stanton bent down and reached behind his chair. He pulled out a small ax, its blade scalpel-sharp, the lethal edge winking in the sunlight that filtered through the closed venetian blinds over the window behind his desk.

“Good, Pam. You’re doing very well,” he said as he stood beside his chair with the ax in his hand.

Pam didn’t move; she lay on the couch with her eyes closed, her body relaxed. “Seven … six …” she whispered.

Dr. Stanton crept towards the couch with the ax gripped in his hand and stood right behind Pam. Her blond hair was spilled over the puffy arm of the couch, her face smooth, her eyes closed. He lifted the ax up, ready to chop it down right into the middle of her face.

“Five … four …” Pam whispered.

Dr. Stanton swung the ax down …

TWO

… and Pam sat bolt-upright in her bed, stifling a scream that was caught in her throat.

She looked around in panic.

My bedroom, she thought. I’m in my bedroom.

It was just a nightmare. The same nightmare she’d been having for a while now. In the recurring dream, she was always in Dr. Stanton’s office. He put her in a hypnotic trance. He had her count down backwards from ten. But then she was suddenly outside of her body at the same time and she watched Dr. Stanton get the small ax out from behind his chair. She watched helplessly in her dream as he walked over to her. She watched him stand behind her head that rested against the puffy arm of the couch. His face was so unemotional, he seemed so detached, like he was in a trance himself.

And then he swung the ax down …

Pam closed her eyes again as a shudder ran through her body. Her skin felt tingly, like a thousand spiders were crawling across her flesh.

She opened her eyes again. Her breathing was slower now, her heartbeat calming down a little.

She pulled the sheet off of her body and sat at the edge of the bed. She moved her bare feet around on the carpet until she found her slippers and then she slid her feet into them.

It was raining outside, and the sound of the water tinkling against the window should be soothing, but the nightmare (dream—Dr. Stanton never called them nightmares, they were only dreams to be interpreted) still had her in its clutches.

Pam glanced at the alarm clock next to her bed. Eight thirty a.m. Sarah must still be sleeping or she would’ve already snuck into the room and crawled in bed with her by now. Sarah was on summer break, and she had been out of school for a few days now, and every morning so far she had come into the bedroom to snuggle into the bed with her. Sometimes Pam would wake up to see Sarah lying next to her on her side, just staring at her until she woke up.

And then Pam would tickle her until she squirmed out of bed.

Eight thirty a.m.

She wondered if it was too early to call Dr. Stanton and tell him that she’d had the nightmare (I mean dream) again. She had been having the dream on and off again for the last three months, ever since Doug had packed a bag and left her and Sarah without even so much as a note or a reason. Of course, Pam really knew the reason. She’d seen the phone number on his cell phone, she’d read the text messages. And when she’d confronted him about his cheating, he’d flown into a rage. And then a few weeks later, he was gone.

Pam closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t want to think about that.

She had already told Dr. Stanton about the dream many times now. And every time she apologized to him about dreaming him as an ax-wielding killer.

Of course, Dr. Stanton wasn’t offended. But he believed that there was something more to her recurring dreams—a dream within a dream. He believed there was something about the dream of her mother leaving.

“But why now?” Pam had asked him. “Why am I dreaming so much about my mother leaving me?”

“The answer is kind of obvious,” he’d told her. “Your husband leaving you has triggered some deep-seated memories of your mother leaving you. It has opened the wound back up, so to speak.”

And maybe he was right. Both abandonments were somewhat similar. Her mother had left her when she was eight years old without a note, without a kiss goodbye, without a screw you … nothing. And Pam had never heard from her again.

And now her husband leaves just like her mother did. He packed a suitcase, took the bare necessities with him, and then he left. He left the money in the bank. He even left his car behind. It was like a car had stopped by the house (probably driven by his new girlfriend) and picked him up, and then they drove off to start their new life.

The sound of the bedroom door opening startled Pam.

Sarah slipped inside the door and smiled at her.

“You can stop creeping,” Pam told her. “I’m already awake.”

Sarah darted across the room and jumped into Pam’s arms.

Pam grunted with the effort of catching her daughter, and then she squeezed her with a hug, rocking her back and forth. Then she nuzzled her neck and hair with her face, kissing her.

“Stop,” Sarah squealed. “That tickles!”

Pam let Sarah pull away. She stared at her daughter’s angel face. How could Doug ever leave an angel like Sarah?

His loss, she thought. And good riddance.

What if he came back? Would she let him back into their lives after being gone for three months with some woman? Could she? She wasn’t sure; and she didn’t want to dwell on it. She had a feeling he would be back some time in the near future with his hat in his hand, begging to come back. Probably after the tryst with whatever woman he was with was over.

It wasn’t like she shouldn’t have seen this coming. They’d had their share of arguments and fights in the months before he left. He had become more and more angry with her, snapping at her about everything she did … even snapping at Sarah for no reason. And after she’d confronted him about his infidelity, he started to pick on her. Everything about her seemed to make him angry or drive him crazy. He was tired of what he called her “mental problems,” he was sick of her nightmares, and he didn’t like her seeing a psychiatrist.

“Mom?” Sarah said, breaking her thoughts.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“I’m hungry.”

“You are?” Pam asked with feigned shock.

Sarah nodded her head as she smiled. She had blond hair like Pam’s, but Sarah’s was still that child-like platinum blond.

“Well, we should do something about that.”

“How ‘bout pancakes?”

“Sounds delicious,” Pam said and plopped back down on the bed. “Wake me up when you get done making them.”

“Mo--oom,” Sarah sang out, grabbing at Pam’s hand and trying to pull her up from the bed.

Pam still pretended like she was asleep, fake snoring.

Sarah crawled into bed and Pam attacked her, tickling her again until she squealed with laughter.

Finally, Pam stopped tickling Sarah and popped back up out of bed.

She looked down at her daughter who was still on the bed, smiling and staring up at her with her big blue eyes.

“Well, are you going to lay in bed all day or come help me with the pancakes?”

THREE

After breakfast, Pam called Dr. Stanton. His receptionist told Pam that he was busy with a patient so she left him a message. She already had a session scheduled for tomorrow, but she just wanted to talk to him for a few minutes. The dream still clung to her a little, and it still gave her a chill when she thought about it. But just being on the phone with Dr. Stanton’s secretary was already beginning to make her feel somewhat better.

Sarah was watching Pam from the archway to the kitchen.

Pam gestured at Sarah to hold on a minute, and then she walked deeper into the living room.

“He said that maybe he would have some time around six o’clock this evening if this is an emergency,” the secretary told her on the phone with what Pam felt was a little bit of an edge to her voice.

“No,” Pam heard herself saying. “It’s okay. It’s not really an emergency. I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon anyway.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thanks. Sorry to bother him.”

“It’s no bother, ma’am,” the secretary said with that edge to her voice that said it was a bother to her.

Pam walked back into the kitchen and hung up the phone. She felt a little silly for even calling the doctor.

Sarah was still watching her.

“So,” Pam said to her daughter. “What are we going to do all summer?”

Sarah shrugged. “Go to the beach?”

They only lived an hour and a half away from the beach, depending on the horrendous traffic of course.

“Not today, sweetie,” Pam told her. “It’s raining.”

“Then maybe tomorrow.”

“I need to see the doctor tomorrow, and you’re going to stay at Amber’s house for a few hours.”

“Then the day after that.”

“Okay,” Pam said. She couldn’t help smiling. “We’ll make a day of it.”

FOUR

That night, after Sarah was tucked into bed, Pam went into her bedroom and sat down on the bed with her back against the headboard. She had the TV on at the other end of the room, but she had the sound turned all the way down.

She slid her legs underneath the covers and turned on the lamp next to the bed. She opened a book, a historical romance that she was struggling to get through.

But as she read, her mind drifted back to the nightmare from this morning. She knew that she would talk about the dream with Dr. Stanton tomorrow, and it would make her feel better, but right now the dream still chilled her to the bone and she wasn’t exactly sure why. It was one of those dreams that seemed so frightening in your mind when you were in the dream, but then it sounded a little silly when you spoke about it out loud. It was a kind of irrational fear, a nameless and shapeless fear behind the dream itself, like a darker and deeper evil hiding in the darkness.

She wished she had power over her dreams. She had heard of people who knew they were dreaming and they could dream about whatever they wanted to. Maybe it was called lucid dreaming, but she wasn’t sure. If she had that kind of ability, she would definitely dream about something different, maybe even dream about the hunky Roderick in the book she was reading.

But it didn’t matter. She was at the mercy of her dreams—she always had been.

After reading a few more pages, she was beginning to drift off to sleep with the book open in her lap.

And then the phone next to her bed rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin and she dropped the book down from her lap; it fell onto the floor with a thud.

She grabbed the ringing phone and looked at the number on the little screen. It was a number she recognized, she was sure of that, but she couldn’t seem to connect the number with who was calling for some reason—her mind was too sluggish at the moment.

The thought of Doug came to her mind. Was he calling? Was he finally calling to come back home? To talk about what had happened?

“Hello?” Pam said into the phone after pressing the TALK button.

Nobody spoke on the line, but Pam could hear a wheezy breath, like someone was struggling to breathe.

“Hello? Who is this?”

Pam was about to hang the phone up, and then unplug it, when she heard the person on the phone speak her name.

“Pam … Pam …”

She knew that voice. It was her father. But he had Alzheimer’s disease and he was in the late stages of cancer … he was not a very coherent person anymore these days.

“Dad?” she said into the phone.

Maybe her father was having one of his rare moments of clarity.

The wheezing continued and then her father spoke again. “Your mother … she’s come back.”

Pam’s heart stopped for a moment.

Mom? Back? After all these years?

No. That wasn’t possible. Her dad was just mixed up.

The phone went silent.

“Hello?” Pam said into the phone. “Hello?”

But the phone was dead.

Pam hung the phone up on the cradle and sat there for a moment. She dialed her father’s house number right back and listened to it as it rang in her ear.

Finally, a woman answered the phone. “Westbrook residence.”

“Hi,” Pam said. “Who is this?”

There was a silence on the phone and Pam realized how she must’ve sounded to the woman at the other end at this time of night. “I … I mean, my name is Pam Kaminski. I’m Carl Westbrook’s daughter.”

“Oh,” the woman said.

“To whom am I speaking with?”

“Maria,” the woman said. She sounded young, but her voice had a slight edge to it. “I’m the new home health care worker here.”

Pam nodded with the phone in her hand. “Of course.”

“Is everything okay?” Maria asked, and she still sounded confused about why Pam was calling.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just that … well, my father just called me a few minutes ago.”

“I don’t think so,” Maria said.

Pam felt a flash of anger rise up inside of her, but she held it in check. “Uh … I just talked to him.”

“I’m sorry,” Maria said quickly. “But that can’t be possible. I was in the room with him for the last hour and he’s been asleep the whole time.”

Pam felt her heart skip a beat and it felt like her skin went cold. “I … I swear … I just heard him on the phone.” Her mind was reeling, and she felt light-headed and flushed at the same time. The bedroom seemed so warm suddenly.

“I don’t know what to say … Mrs.—”

“Kaminski. Just Pam, please.”

“Yes, Miss Pam.”

“Maybe it was a wrong number,” Pam said, and she suddenly felt afraid and foolish at the same time.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Sorry to call so late. Good night.”

“Yes. Good-night, ma’am.”

Pam hung up the phone and then felt instantly upset with herself. She hadn’t even asked how her father was doing.

But what would this new CNA have said if she would’ve asked how her father was doing? He’s barely clinging to life? He’s mumbling and rambling? He’s in and out of consciousness? He’s getting his nutrients through a feeding tube?

The woman on the phone said there was no way her father could’ve called. But her father had just called her, she was sure of it.

The possibilities raced through her mind. Maybe it had been the wrong number, and someone who sounded like her father had called. The person on the phone had been whispering and out-of-breath. Wheezing into the phone. Maybe it was just some other old person with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

But the person on the phone had called her by her name. And he’d said that her mother had come back.

Maybe it was a prank call.

But who would be nasty enough to do something like that?

She thought of Doug.

But she didn’t think even he would be that cruel.

Maybe she had fallen asleep and dreamt the phone call. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe. She had been having some very realistic dreams lately … and some very scary nightmares.

The worst possibility of all was that she had imagined the phone call.

She tried pushing some buttons to see if she could search for the last incoming call on the little screen, but she didn’t know how to do it—technical stuff had always been Doug’s department. She gave up and hung the phone back up.

Maybe she could call the phone company in the morning and check to see if someone had called from her father’s house at eleven thirty at night. Maybe it would set her mind at ease.

FIVE

Pam sat in Dr. Stanton’s office.

“So, you didn’t call the phone company and have them look up the phone call?” he asked.

Pam shook her head no. “No. I thought about doing it this morning. But then I started to feel a little silly. I started thinking more and more that I had fallen asleep and the whole phone call was a dream.”

“It’s not so improbable to believe, is it?” he asked her.

Pam nodded. “Yeah, I guess not. But it seemed so real.”

“And your recurring dreams that you’ve been having, they have seemed so real, too, haven’t they?”

Pam shrugged. She knew he was right.

Dr. Stanton sat in his chair with his leather-bound notebook on his lap, his silver pen poised over the papers inside the notebook. He stared at her through his wire-rimmed glasses.

Just like in her dream.

Except this time Pam wasn’t lying down on the couch with the back of her head on the puffy arm; she sat up ram-rod straight on the edge of the couch.

“I think this realistic dream of talking with your father means something,” Dr. Stanton told her.

Pam already knew what he was going to say.

“I think your subconscious is trying to tell you something.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“I think, deep down inside, you may want to go and see your father.”

“Not really.”

“You may not think you do, but you may really want to see him before he passes away. You may really need to see him.”

Pam got up from the couch and paced across the room, walking towards Dr. Stanton’s desk.

Dr. Stanton’s eyes followed her. “Pam, your anxieties and your depression, it all started at that house when your mother left you. You felt your father never did enough to find your mother or try to bring her back. I think, for your own closure, you need to talk to your father while you still can.”

“He’s in and out of it now. More out of it than in, these days.”

“That’s why you don’t have much time left to do this.”

Pam stood at the corner of Dr. Stanton’s desk, staring at the venetian blinds that covered the window.

Dr. Stanton sat up a little straighter in his chair, and then he hunched forward slightly as he stared at her. “When was the last time you saw your father?”

“Probably six months ago or so.”

Dr. Stanton sighed like he couldn’t believe it.

Pam walked back to the couch and plopped down on the edge of it. She didn’t lie down—no way was she going to lie down on the couch right now after the dream she’d had the night before.

“I know you and your father have never been on the best of terms,” Dr. Stanton said.

Pam snorted out sarcastic laughter.

“And I know that you’ve always blamed your father for your mother’s abandonment. You’ve always suspected that he knew where your mother was, but he would never tell you.”

It was true … Pam had always harbored those suspicions; she’d told Dr. Stanton about them many times.

“Well, now is the time to face your father. Now is the time to talk to him. You’ll never get another chance.”

It was Pam’s turn to sigh with exasperation.

“I know your father was an imposing man,” Dr. Stanton said. “Believe me, the few times I met him at conferences, I was very intimidated. It was like meeting a rock star or a celebrity for me.”

Dr. Stanton set his notebook and pen down on the table next to his chair.

(Just like in the nightmare)

He got up and walked over to his bookcases which took up nearly one whole wall of his office.

Pam watched him. She knew where he was going with this. He stood in front of a row of books written by her father years ago—books about various treatments and his theories, books that had never gone out of print, books that had opened up the lecture circuit for him, books that had made him (along with his private practice) a multi-millionaire.

“Your father was a great psychiatrist. And he was a great influence on me and many others.”

Dr. Stanton turned and looked at Pam. “Do yourself a favor and go see him for a few days. Or even a week. Talk to him about all of the things you’ve always wanted to talk to him about. But most importantly, be with him. If you don’t see him before he dies, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

SIX

Pam picked Sarah up at Nancy’s house. She always brought Sarah over to Nancy’s house when she went to an appointment with Dr. Stanton. Sarah didn’t mind, she loved playing with Nancy’s daughter Amber.

Pam had a cup of coffee with Nancy, but she didn’t feel like sticking around too long today. She told Nancy that she had some errands to run.

After a stop at the supermarket to grab some dinner and a few other items, Pam drove back to their house. Their home was a nice three bedroom, two bath house at the end of a quiet street. It sat on an acre of land with a fenced-in backyard. Even though it was an upper middle-class home, it was modest compared to the mansion she’d grown up in. Her father’s mansion—she had never really considered it her house.

As Sarah snacked on some fruit rollups and watched a cartoon on TV, Pam went into her office. The office, as she called it, was really a room with a mishmash of uses: there was a bookcase built into one wall and a desk with her old desktop computer on it in the corner, but that was about as office-y as this room got. The rest of the room was taken up with her Stairmaster and a metal rack of light dumbbells and a foam mat on the floor. There was a small TV and VCR player that she used for her workout tapes. The closet was stuffed with the storage that didn’t fit in the basement or the garage.

She walked over to the wall of books. She had always been an avid reader and she tended to hold onto books. But what she was interested in right now were the books her father had written. She ran her fingertips over the spines of hardcover books, and her fingers stopped on a blue book with the title: Case Studies by Carl Westbrook. She pulled the book out and opened it. She thumbed through the pages and breathed in the slight musty smell of the book. She flipped to the back flap of the dust jacket and stared at her father’s author photo. It was a black and white photo from at least thirty years ago. Her father looked so strong in the photograph, so wise, so confident.

But he didn’t look like that now. The last time she had seen her father, he was just a wasted skeleton of a man. His hair and mustache were pure gray now that he didn’t color them anymore. His cheeks were sunken in. But his eyes were the worst. They were wide and lost. And there was something else in his eyes that she had never seen before—fear. He was afraid of something. Dying? Losing his memories? Being a burden?

Dr. Stanton’s words came back to her as she held her father’s book.

She needed to see her father. It was summer now and Sarah was out of school. What better time was there than now? She was between jobs, even though she really didn’t need to work—the trust fund that her father had set up for her years ago provided more than enough money for her to live on.

Pam took her father’s book with her to her bedroom. She set the book on the table next to her bed right on top of the historical romance novel. She stared at the book for another moment, and then she left her bedroom to find Sarah and tell her that they were going to visit Grandpa for a few weeks.

SEVEN

The next morning Pam drove out of the city and towards upstate New York. It took six hours to get to her father’s house, but the scenery along the way was beautiful—everything was green and fresh-looking. The sun was shining from a perfect blue sky.

Sarah was happy about going to Grandpa’s house. She remembered their previous visits vividly, and she said that she couldn’t wait to spend time with Grandpa. Even though Pam and her father’s relationship had been strained through the years, her father had always doted on Sarah. He was the father to Sarah that she always wished he would’ve been to her. And sometimes she wondered if Sarah was always the daughter he had wanted, but she pushed that thought out of her mind. It was probably just that as her father had aged, he had changed; he had become less preoccupied with his work and a little more focused on his family. Maybe his relationship with Sarah was his way of starting over and trying to be a parent again.

Her father loved playing games with Sarah: board games, card games, puzzles. And even though she hadn’t seen him too much over the last two or three years, Grandpa always called Sarah at least twice a week, and sometimes they talked on the phone for an hour, which was another thing her father had never done with her.

But then her father had gotten really sick these last eight or nine months and he’d stopped calling Sarah. He had deteriorated so quickly. And now with the complications of his cancer along with the Alzheimer’s disease, the doctors didn’t expect him to live another three months.

Pam felt sure that she was doing the right thing. She needed to see her father. Maybe they needed to talk. Even if he couldn’t respond, or even understand what she was saying, she at least needed to get some things off her chest. And she needed to forgive him. Perhaps he shared some of the blame for her mother leaving, but in reality it was her mother who deserved most of the blame—she was the one who had left.

And she wanted Sarah to see her grandfather one last time, even if he was bedridden and frail. Sarah loved him as much as he loved her, and she couldn’t take that away from her daughter.

“You know Grandpa has gotten even sicker since the last time we saw him,” Pam told Sarah as she drove her Toyota 4Runner down the country road.

“Yeah,” Sarah answered as she stared out the passenger window at the palatial estates and farmland they were passing.

Pam knew that Sarah understood that her grandfather was very ill, but maybe she didn’t completely grasp how ill he really was. And she wasn’t sure if she was ready to have the conversation about death with Sarah right now.

“I just want you to know that Grandpa may not always recognize us or know who we are.”

“I know,” Sarah said, still staring out the passenger window, watching the scenery whip by at forty-five miles an hour. “You told me before.”

Pam just nodded and clenched her hands tighter on the steering wheel. “I know we’ve had this conversation before, but Grandpa is even more ill now than he was before.”

Sarah turned and looked at Pam. “Why’s he so sick?”

“Grandpa’s brain is injured.”

“But how? Did he fall and hit his head?”

“No. It just happened. It’s like a disease. Like the flu.”

Pam realized that the flu was a bad exampled as soon as she said it.

“Can it happen to me?” Sarah asked. “Or you?”

“It only happens to people who are much older than us. Grandpa’s age.”

Which wasn’t entirely true. Her father had gotten a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease that showed up in younger people and was much more aggressive. And cancer could happen to a person at any age. But again, this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with Sarah at this time.

“But what about when we get to be Grandpa’s age?” Sarah asked.

“Well, maybe there will be a cure for the disease by then.”

“I wish there was a cure now,” Sarah pouted and looked back out the passenger window. “I miss talking to Grandpa.”

“You mean the secrets you keep with him?” Pam asked and smiled at her daughter.

“They aren’t secrets,” Sarah said, but she couldn’t hide her sly smile.

“You won’t tell me about them.”

“Grandpa says it’s kind of like a game.”

“A game you won’t tell me about.”

“I will,” Sarah said, and then she hesitated like she wasn’t sure if she was giving something away that she wasn’t supposed to. “It’s just not time yet.”

Pam didn’t push. Whatever “secrets” Sarah and Grandpa had shared, she was sure they were innocent enough—just one of the games that her father liked to play.

EIGHT

Memories overwhelmed Pam as soon as she drove past the gates that opened up to the acres and acres of property that her father’s house sat on. She drove down the long, winding driveway through the small forest of trees which eventually gave way to the clearing where the house sat in the distance beyond the gigantic circular driveway.

Her father bought this property when Pam was born; he bought it for a song before everything else around this area was divided up and sold off into large lots for mansions.

“What about the horses?” Sarah asked. She had rolled down her window and her hands were cupped over the top of the door as she stared at the rolling green hills in the distance. “Does Grandpa still have the horses?”

“I think they might have been sold after Grandpa got worse. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

Sarah shrugged. “We can still take the boat out on the pond, right?”

“I’m sure the rowboat’s still there,” Pam answered and smiled. She loved seeing her daughter excited like this.

Pam pulled her 4Runner up to the main house and parked in front of the massive entryway. She turned the truck off and got out.

The front doors of the house opened and Rita the housekeeper hurried out to meet them with a smile. Rita was a little older and a little heavier now, but she still looked the same to Pam. And her smile could still melt Pam’s heart.

“Miss Pam!” Rita called out as she ran over to greet her. “Welcome back!”

Pam and Rita hugged.

Then Rita pulled away so she could look at Sarah. She beamed at her. “And look at you!” She bent down and gave Sarah a big hug.

Rita had been her father’s housekeeper for twenty-four years now. She was one of the few people in his life who he absolutely trusted.

“How was your trip?” Rita asked Pam.

“Good. Not too much traffic once we got outside of the city. And no rain along the way.”

“Good. Are you hungry?”

“No,” Pam said.

“Yes,” Sarah answered at the same time and smiled.

“Well, I think I might have baked something sweet for you,” Rita said as she gently pinched Sarah’s cheek.

Sarah pulled away, but she couldn’t help laughing.

Pam stifled a yawn.

“Oh, you’re tired from the drive,” Rita said to Pam. “Come on, let me show you to your rooms.”

They grabbed their bags from the back of the 4Runner and followed Rita into the house. They walked through the foyer and past one of the large living rooms until they came to the stairway on this side of the home.

“We have a few guest rooms down this hall,” Rita said to Pam and Sarah when they were upstairs and walking down the hall. Framed art, some original and some reproductions, adorned the walls.

They entered the first spacious bedroom.

“Do you want to sleep in here with Mommy?” Rita asked Sarah.

“I want my own room,” Sarah said.

“You do?” Rita asked, but she gave Pam a quick glance to make sure that it was okay with her.

Pam nodded.

Rita looked back at Sarah. “You’re not afraid of the dark?”

“No,” Sarah said and giggled.

I am, Pam thought.

“Well, then,” Rita said and glanced at Pam again for approval.

Pam nodded again.

“I guess you can have your very own room. It’s just right down the hall from Mommy’s room.”

• • •

After they got settled in and got their bags unpacked, Pam wanted to see her father.

Rita ushered Pam and Sarah down another hallway, a shorter hall that led right up to a set of huge double doors which opened up to a vast master suite.

They entered the bedroom and Pam saw the king-sized bed halfway down the room. The bed had a grand headboard carved from a single piece of wood. A row of plate-glass windows stood at the far end of the room with the drapes pulled back. The pool area and the pond beyond it could be seen from these windows. Beyond the pond was the line of trees that began the small forest on this end of the property.

Pam walked towards the bed where Carl slept. There were machines next to his bed, an IV stand, a plastic cart with wheels that held an array of medicines and medical supplies.

But Pam’s eyes were focused on Carl—her father. He looked so much thinner and older than even a few months ago. He looked so frail, so deathly ill. He was sleeping now with his mouth wide open.

She walked towards his bed and then stopped suddenly, her hand over her mouth and tears brimming in her eyes. She wondered now if this was such a good idea letting Sarah see her grandfather like this. She didn’t realize that he looked this bad; she’d had no idea …

“Are you okay, Miss Pam?” Rita whispered to her.

Pam nodded, afraid to talk, afraid she would break out into a sob.

This was some kind of cruel joke, Pam thought, seeing her strong father wasting away like this, watching his brilliant mind vanishing day by day into a sea of foam that it would never return from.

She also felt guilty for not coming to see him in the last six months. She had always made excuses, and then after Doug left she used that as an excuse, wallowing in her own despair and depression, and ignoring her father.

“Can we talk to him?” Pam asked Rita. She still hadn’t taken another step closer to the bed.

Pam sensed that Rita had moved closer to her, right beside her now, and she loved her strength. She was like a rock that Pam could lean on at this moment, and she felt so blessed to have her here right now.

“Of course,” Rita answered. “But sometimes he acts a little silly. And sometimes he can be a little cranky. When he gets like that, you just have to try again later.”

Pam forced her legs to move, and a moment later she stood beside her father’s bed.

“Dad,” she said, and her voice was thick with emotion.

Carl didn’t stir.

“Dad,” she said a little louder. “Are you awake?”

He still didn’t move. He just kept breathing deeply, snoring lightly.

“He might be too tired right now,” Rita said. “We can try again later if you want to. I baked some cookies before you got here if you want some.” And then she turned to Sarah and smiled. “But I don’t think Sarah wants any.”

“Yes, I do,” Sarah said and grinned.

“You’re sure?”

Sarah nodded.

Pam turned away from her father and looked at Rita and Sarah. She loved seeing them smiling and joking around with each other.

“Okay, let’s go get some cookies,” Rita said and gently guided Pam away from her father’s bedside.

NINE

After trying one of the cookies, Pam left Sarah in Rita’s care. She wanted to go upstairs and visit with her father for a few more minutes by herself.

Rita promised to look after Sarah. She also told Pam about Maria who lived at the house full-time now. And Pam remembered talking to Maria on the phone a few nights ago when she’d thought her father had called her. Maria was staying on as a nurse until Carl passed away. While Carl was still in his right state of mind, he’d had his lawyers draw up ironclad papers that forbid him to be taken to a hospital or a hospice. He wanted to die at his home no matter what, and he didn’t care how much round-the-clock care and house calls from doctors cost him.

“Maria is very good with him,” Rita promised.

Pam went upstairs to her father’s room. She had expected to meet Maria, his nurse, but she didn’t see her in the room.

Pam walked towards her father’s bed and sat down in a chair next to the bed. She just sat there for a long moment, watching her father sleep. She was sure he was in some pain, but he seemed peaceful at the moment.

His eyes moved back and forth underneath his eyelids like he was dreaming.

And maybe he was.

And then his eyes popped open. He turned his head and looked at her with wide eyes. He seemed confused, staring at her like he was trying to figure out who she was.

“Dad,” Pam said in a low voice. “It’s me. Pam. I’m here with Sarah. We’re going to stay here for a few days.”

Carl rocked his head back and forth and looked away. He mumbled something she couldn’t understand.

Pam sighed. She bent down to give her father a kiss on his forehead. Then she stood back up and turned to walk away.

Her father grabbed her wrist, holding on to it with surprising strength.

She looked back down at her father’s wide eyes and his trembling mouth.

“Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“Dad … she’s … she’s not here. She’s gone. She’s been gone for a long time now.”

“No,” Carl spat out, gripping her wrist even tighter. It was actually beginning to hurt her a little. “She’s come back. She’s here in the house. I’ve seen her.”

For a moment Pam allowed herself to believe that what her father was saying might be true. Could it be true? Could her mother have finally come back after all these years? Maybe now that her father was weak and dying, she felt the courage to come back. Pam fantasized about Rita keeping the secret from her and that there would be a huge and happy reunion very soon.

But then she pushed these thoughts away. It couldn’t be true. Her mother hadn’t come back now. She’d had plenty of other chances to come back into Pam’s life: her high school and college graduations, her marriage to Doug, the birth of Sarah.

Her mother wasn’t back—she needed to push that little fantasy out of her mind right away. Her father was just babbling, that was all; distant and random memories were popping up in his diseased mind.

Pam yanked her wrist out of her father’s grasp, and then she wondered if she might have hurt him.

But he didn’t seem hurt. He lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes. He mumbled a few times, and then he seemed to be drifting back to sleep.

His words had rocked her and the memory of the late night telephone call came back to her. In that “imagined” phone call, her father had said the same thing: Your mother … she’s come back.

But that phone call hadn’t happened—his home nurse had told her that.

Pam felt suddenly light-headed and shaky.

A scuffling noise from behind Pam startled her and she spun around beside the bed. She saw a young, pretty woman dressed in colorful nurse’s scrubs. She looked Hispanic, but her skin was very light; she was about Pam’s age, but with the woman’s beauty it was difficult for Pam to pin down her age—somewhere from early to late twenties. Despite the woman’s beauty, there was a slight coldness in her dark eyes.

“You must be Maria,” Pam said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman smiled, and an odd sensation washed over Pam. For some reason she was certain that she had met this woman before, but she wasn’t sure where that could’ve possibly been.

“I’m Pam Kaminski. Mr. Westbrook’s daughter.”

Maria nodded like she already knew that.

Of course she did. She had to have known that she and Sarah were coming today.

“Maria Lopez,” Maria said and offered Pam a hand.

Pam shook the woman’s hand and felt a strong, dry grip.

“I’m new here,” Maria said when they let each other’s hand go. “I’ve only been here for a few months now. I’m from the agency.”

“Of course,” Pam said.

Maria walked past Pam to Carl’s bedside. She watched him for a second, and then she looked at Pam. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Pam breathed out. “He just … he woke up and grabbed my arm, and then he was saying … you know … stuff that didn’t make any sense.”

Maria nodded like she totally understood.

“I’m going down to find my daughter,” Pam said, and she suddenly felt a little nervous, like she needed to explain to Maria where she was going and why she was leaving so suddenly.

Maria only nodded in response, and Pam left the room.

TEN

Half an hour later Pam and Rita sat on the back patio watching Sarah run around in the backyard. Rita made some coffee for them and Pam sipped it. Her hands trembled a little as she held the cup, but she felt a lot better now. Her father’s words had shocked her, but she had to keep reminding herself that he was just rambling—he wasn’t in his right mind anymore.

“You okay?” Rita asked.

Pam glanced at Rita for a moment and nodded, and then she looked out at her daughter running around in the thick summertime grass.

“My father said something strange when I was up there.”

Rita didn’t say anything, and Pam swore she could sense Rita tensing up a little.

“He said he saw my mother. That she was back in the house.”

Pam looked at Rita and watched her face scrunch in concern like she was sure something like this was going to happen.

“I’m sorry, Miss Pam. He has been saying that a lot lately. He seems to be stuck in a different time of his life.”

Pam just nodded slightly and didn’t say anything.

“I know it must be painful for you to see him like this,” Rita continued. “To hear him talk about your mother.”

“Yeah. He never talked about her before. After she left us, if I tried to bring up the subject, he just closed it off immediately. That was one of the unspoken rules of the house—we didn’t talk about her. He wouldn’t even say her name anymore.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Rita was still tense, Pam could tell. She was gripping her coffee cup a little too tightly. It seemed to Pam like Rita wanted to say something.

“Is everything okay?” Pam asked.

“I just …” Rita smiled and let out an nervous laugh. “Excuse me, Miss Pam. It’s not really my place to say this.”

“No, please. Just say it.”

Rita took a deep breath and then spit it out. “I always wondered if you ever tried to find your mother when you got older.”

Pam smiled at Rita, hopefully reassuring her. Even though Rita had worked here for a long time now, she always seemed like she was walking on eggshells, afraid of being fired at a moment’s notice. Of course, being around Pam’s father could do that to someone.

“It’s okay,” Pam said, and she saw the relief in Rita’s eyes. “I tried for a while, but I never found a trace of her. It was like she just disappeared. Or maybe even changed identities.”

“Mom, look!” Sarah called out.

Pam watched Sarah as she did a cartwheel. “Great, honey!”

She looked back at Rita. “But after a few years, I stopped trying. I asked myself why I was trying when she just walked out of my life without a goodbye. I mean, she obviously didn’t want to find me or see me, so why was I trying so hard to find her?”

Rita just nodded politely.

Pam glanced at Rita and still couldn’t help feeling that something was making the housekeeper tense. Maybe it was seeing her employer on his deathbed after working for him for so long. She had to be wondering where she was going to go after this, what she was going to do for a living.

Pam had a question she wanted to ask Rita; it wasn’t really directed at Rita, but it was just something she wanted to get out in the air. It was one of the reasons she had come here to her father’s house, and she was going to finally ask her dad, confront him about it if he had a lucid moment again.

“I’ve always wondered if my dad had some kind of contact with my mother through the years and never told me about it.”

She watched Rita’s reaction to her question.

Rita seemed a little startled. “Why would you say that?”

Pam shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve always felt in my heart. I always had this feeling that Dad has been keeping this big secret from me all these years either to help me or to hurt me. I always wondered if my mother tried to get back into contact with me, but my father wouldn’t allow it after she walked out on us.”

“Your father would never hurt you, Miss Pam. He loves you.”

Pam nodded. “I know,” she replied. It was the thing you were supposed to say. But it had never felt that way with her father. He was a cold, hard man who never showed much affection. But it wasn’t just that. Pam couldn’t help feeling that her father blamed her for something. Maybe he blamed her for her mother walking out on them. Maybe her mother had never wanted kids, never wanted her.

She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She wanted to change the subject. She thought of Maria.

“Are there other nurses that come here besides Maria?” Pam asked Rita.

Rita shook her head. “A doctor comes once a week, and a nurse twice a week, but Maria is here the rest of the time. She stays here around the clock, like I do.”

“There’s only one nurse with him around the clock?”

“For now,” Rita said. “I watch him during the day for a while so Maria can sleep, and she watches him throughout the night.”

“But why aren’t there other nurses? That seems like a lot of work for only one person.”

Rita just nodded. Again, she seemed like she was biting back something she wanted to say.

“Maybe I should call the agency,” Pam said. “See if they can get some nurses out here soon. Give Maria a break.”

“There were some other nurses,” Rita said quickly. “But they all quit.”

“All of them quit?”

Rita shrugged. “It can be a tough job. Not all of them are ready for it when they come here.”

It still seemed to Pam like Rita wanted to say something else. She’d known Rita for over twenty years now, and she could tell that Rita was nearly fighting to keep something inside.

“What is it?” Pam asked. “Is there something else about the nurses?”

Rita shrugged and looked out at Sarah running around in the backyard. Then she looked back at Pam. “I talked to a few of the nurses as they were quitting. One of them, she was really scared. She was convinced that the house was haunted. She swore she’d seen a ghost.”

That shocked Pam. “A ghost?”

Rita chuckled. “I don’t know. That’s what she said.”

“But you’ve never seen anything like that in the house before, have you?”

Rita hesitated for a second before answering, and Pam swore she saw a quick flash of fear in the woman’s eyes. But then Rita smiled her big, usual smile and shook her head. “Of course not. I think a few of the girls just got spooked in this big old house. That’s all.”

Pam was about to say something else, but then Sarah’s words interrupted her.

“Come on out here with me, Mom!” Sarah called out to Pam.

Pam smiled at Rita and got up. Rita seemed a little relieved that they had abandoned their conversation.

Pam went out to the grass with her daughter and ran around with her. It felt good to run around in the backyard for a while. And for those moments, she felt young again.

After a few rounds of chasing her daughter, Pam had to stop. She was breathing hard and she couldn’t believe she was this out-of-shape. She promised herself that when they got back home, she was going to dust off the Stair Master in her office and start to use it again.

“Mom, can we take the boat out on the water?” Sarah asked.

Pam was about to tell Sarah that it was too late in the afternoon to take the boat out today, but something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and stopped her words. She looked up at the back of the house, up at the plate-glass windows of her father’s bedroom, and for a split second she could’ve sworn she’d seen her father standing there at the windows, staring down at them.

And now he wasn’t there.

But there was no denying the emaciated silhouette she’d seen in the window. There was no denying the feel of his eyes on her, the weight of his stare.

“Mom?”

“Yes?” Pam forced her eyes away from the house.

“Please. Can we take the boat out on the pond?”

“Not right now, baby,” Pam told her. “It’s too late today.”

“Can we at least just walk down to the pond and look at it?”

“Just for a few minutes.”

Sarah seemed okay with that, but Pam knew she wasn’t going to give up that easily.

They walked down to the water’s edge of the tranquil pond. The pond was large, about the size of a supermarket parking lot. Trees crowded the far side of the water where the woods began.

“Why can’t we take the boat out?” Sarah persisted. “It’s not dark yet.”

Pam glanced back at the house for a moment, at her father’s bedroom windows. They only reflected the setting sun now, and if he were standing there right now she wouldn’t be able to tell.

“Mom?”

“It’s too late today,” Pam told Sarah as she turned back towards her. “But we’ll take the boat out tomorrow. I promise.”

Sarah let out a huff of a sigh.

Pam looked back at the house. She was still a little freaked out from seeing her father standing by the windows. But he couldn’t have been there, she told herself. She must have imagined it. With all of the machines and tubes he was hooked up to, he wouldn’t be able to get all the way to the windows.

Unless somebody helped him, her mind whispered.

Would Maria help her father to the window if he asked her to? Was she allowed to do something like that? Pam wasn’t sure. Maybe she would ask Maria about that.

Pam looked back at her daughter. “Let’s get back to the house. Rita’s going to start cooking dinner soon. But tomorrow we will go out on the pond. I promise. Okay?”

Sarah seemed bummed out for a moment, but she didn’t throw a tantrum about it. She was a good kid, and Pam loved her so much. She was blessed to have a daughter like Sarah. And even though her piece-of-shit father had run out on them, she couldn’t help loving him just a little bit for the gift he had given her in Sarah.

Sarah didn’t argue. She took Pam’s hand and they walked back to the house.

Had she imagined her father standing by the windows in his bedroom? Like she had imagined the phone call from her father in the middle of the night?

What was happening to her?

She wondered if she should call Dr. Stanton.

ELEVEN

After dinner, Pam and Sarah visited with Carl a little more. But he was still unresponsive, just lying there and rocking his head back and forth slightly in the bed, mumbling incoherent sentences. Pam thought she heard her father say that he wanted to go home a few times, but she wasn’t sure.

They didn’t stay long beside his bedside. Pam didn’t want Sarah to be around Carl too long when he was like this.

But it didn’t really seem to be bothering Sarah as much as Pam thought it would. She was taking this well for an eight year old.

They went downstairs and watched a movie in the family room. In the middle of the second movie, Sarah got tired. Pam escorted Sarah upstairs and tucked her into her bed. She shut off the light as Sarah rolled over and fell asleep almost instantly. Pam left the room and closed the door almost all the way.

The house was deathly quiet. Rita had gone to bed for the night and Pam assumed Maria was in her father’s room, watching over him for the night.

Pam’s mind slipped back to her earlier conversation with Rita. She thought about all of the other nurses who had quit. It seemed strange to her and she planned on talking more with Rita about it. It didn’t seem right to only have one nurse taking care of her father around the clock. She was sure that he was paying enough for the service.

The idea of several nurses quitting suddenly over the last few weeks bothered Pam. She thought about what Rita had said, that some of them were scared when they were quitting. One claimed that she’d seen a ghost in the house.

A ghost.

And then Rita shot down that idea right away. But there was something in her expression for just a moment. Pam swore she’d seen it for just an instant. Rita seemed to be hiding something.

Pam had been about to ask Rita more about it, but then Sarah had called her out to the grass to play with her.

And that’s when she’d seen her father at the windows staring down at her and Sarah.

Or she’d thought she’d seen him.

She thought about the nurses again, and she couldn’t help wondering if Maria had something to do with the other nurses quitting. She wasn’t sure why that thought had entered her mind, but it just didn’t seem to make any sense that all of the other nurses had quit.

Maybe Maria was trying to rack up more hours for herself.

Or was it something more sinister than that?

Get a hold of yourself, Nancy Drew, Pam told herself as she stood by her daughter’s nearly-closed bedroom door, watching her sleep for a moment in the shaft of light from the hallway that shined through the gap in the door.

She glanced down the hallway towards the other shorter hall that shot off from this main one—the short hallway that led to her father’s bedroom.

Maybe she should check in on her father one more time before going to bed.

But she decided not to.

Instead, she walked down the hall to her bedroom. She locked the door once she was inside, and she left the lamp on next to her bed. She turned the TV on, but kept the sound muted out, just like she did at home. She had a stack of books on the table next to her bed: the historical romance novel she was still reading and two thrillers. And she had brought her dad’s blue book of case studies with her from home. She even planned on actually reading his book, even though she was sure it would be dry and boring … but still, it was something her own father had written.

She wasn’t sure why she had brought the blue book with her, she was certain that her dad had plenty of copies of this same book in his study downstairs—multiple copies of all of the books he had written, she was sure.

But there was something about this book, and she couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the book. She flipped to the back and stared at her father’s author photo again. Then she flipped back to the front, to the Table of Contents. She read the titles of each section.

What was it about this book? It felt like a memory was struggling to surface in her mind, but she couldn’t see it clearly.

The titles of each section of the book didn’t seem to be ringing a bell for her. She flipped through the book and looked at a few of the diagrams and photos.

Maybe she would start reading the book. She had read through a few of her father’s books and papers a long time ago, and maybe now was a good time to read them again.

She flipped back to the beginning of the book and searched through the titles of each case study again. Her eyes stopped at one case study in particular: Girl M.

Maybe that’s where she should start, with Girl M.

It was the only thing in the book that even seemed to be trying to tug at her memory. But she still couldn’t see it. It was frustrating, like something floating underneath the darkness of her memory, like something pale floating just underneath the surface of a dark pond, like she could make out something in the water, but she couldn’t see the details.

A noise sounded out in the hallway and Pam stiffened. She froze for a moment, her ears tuned to the slightest sound. The noise she’d heard had sounded like a creak in the floorboards, and then a scuffling sound, like from a shoe, like someone had just been walking softly just outside her bedroom door.

Pam closed the book carefully, trying not to make a sound. She set it down on the table on top of the other books and then got up and crept to the door.

It could be Sarah walking around out there. She had been brave earlier in the day when she had said that she wasn’t afraid of the dark. And she usually wasn’t. But this wasn’t their house and she was in a new environment. Maybe the darkness and solitude had gotten to her. Maybe she wanted to crawl into bed with Mommy like she’d done every morning for the last few days.

Pam stood by the door for a moment, hesitating.

What was she doing? If it was Sarah out there, then she needed to open the door.

But what if it wasn’t Sarah?

She wasn’t sure where that thought had come from.

This was silly. She was in her father’s house with a gated driveway and state-of-the-art security system. She had nothing to be afraid of.

She unlocked the door and opened it.

No one out in the hall.

Pam stepped out into the hall and walked silently down to her daughter’s room. She pushed the door open just a bit, and the soft light from the hallway splashed across her daughter’s face.

She was still asleep.

Then who had been walking out here in the hallway?

Maria? Rita?

Her father?

She got a picture in her mind of her father shuffling down the hallway, dragging his IV tube and stand behind him on the floor, his eyes bulging and glazed over, a vacant stare, his mouth hanging wide open.

She pushed the thought away and closed the door to Sarah’s room again, nearly all the way wat shut. She decided that she was going to check on her father after all. She continued down the hall to where it branched off to the shorter hall that led down to her father’s room. She took a few steps down the short, wide hall and then she stopped.

The double doors at the end of the hall were open just a bit.

Pam crept down the hall to the doors. She stood outside them for a moment, listening.

She could hear something from inside the room—someone whispering.

Pam eased the door open, expecting to see Maria in the chair beside her father’s bed. But her father was alone. She made a mental note to ask Maria why her father was unattended in the middle of the night.

She walked to the bed with her eyes fixed on her father the whole time. He may have been whispering earlier when she was outside the doors, but now he was very still, eyes closed, asleep.

Pam sat down in the chair next to his bed. She looked at his wasted body covered with the blanket. His stick-thin arms were outside the blanket, resting next to his body. His hands looked so large because his arms were so skinny. His knuckles looked bony and bigger than she ever remembered.

She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, exhaustion beginning to hit her now.

“She’s come back …” her father whispered.

Pam opened her eyes and saw that her father had turned his head towards her and was now staring at her with wide, blue eyes. “Diane has come back … she came back for me …”

Pam was about to tell her father that Mom wasn’t back. She hadn’t come back for him, and she hadn’t come back for her, either.

But she didn’t tell him that. She just closed her eyes again and let him whisper his nonsense. She was so tired now, and the thought of getting up and out of the chair and walking back to her bedroom didn’t even seem possible now. Her body felt so heavy, so drained of energy.

She knew she needed to get back to her bedroom, but she decided that she would wait for Maria to return first.

“I’ve seen her,” Carl said, his voice much louder now. He sounded so much closer.

Pam opened her eyes.

Her father was sitting up in bed and staring at her with wide, bulging eyes. But there was no fear in those eyes now—only rage.

He opened his mouth impossibly wide—his teeth were long and sharp and jagged. He grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away from him but he was too strong … supernaturally strong.

Pam screamed.

Her father lunged at her throat and clamped down on her neck with his teeth—his rows and rows of jagged little teeth. She felt the teeth sink into her flesh and there was a blast of shocking pain. She struggled … she screamed …

TWELVE

Pam jumped awake in her bed and saw Maria hovering over her.

“What … where …”

“You were screaming,” Maria said. Her voice was compassionate, but her eyes were dark and cold.

Pam looked around and it took her a few seconds to realize where she was.

She was back in her bedroom.

It had been a nightmare. She had dreamed about walking to her father’s bedroom and then dreamed that he had attacked her. She remembered his wide-open mouth and sharp little teeth. She remembered him biting her neck, his teeth sinking into her flesh …

Her hand flew to her throat, but everything was normal. The only thing she felt on her neck was a film of cold perspiration and her pulse thumping under the skin.

Maria took a step back.

“I’m sorry,” Pam finally breathed out. “I get nightmares sometimes.”

Dreams. That’s what Dr. Stanton called them. Dreams are only what we interpret them to be.

“If you’re okay, I’m going back to Mr. Westbrook’s room.”

Pam nodded and she finally felt like she had her breath back. “Is my daughter … did Sarah wake up from my …”

Maria shook her head and gave Pam a small smile. “No,” she answered simply.

Pam nodded. That was good. She didn’t want to scare Sarah their first night here. She had nightmares a few times a week, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken up screaming.

Maria left Pam’s bedside and walked towards the door to leave.

The door.

I locked the door before I went to bed, Pam thought.

“Maria.”

She stopped at the door.

“How did you get in my bedroom? I locked the door before I went to sleep.”

Maria turned and stared at Pam, and then she gave a slight shrug. “It wasn’t locked. I heard you screaming and I came right in. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. Really, I do. But the door … I’m sure I locked it before going to bed.”

Maria gave Pam that cold little smile again. “Maybe you just forgot. Maybe you just thought you locked the door.”

“Yeah. That’s it. That has to be it.”

Maria left without another word and shut the door.

Pam pushed herself up in the bed and leaned her back against the headboard. She let out a long exhale, and she felt like she’d been holding her breath for some time.

She didn’t even remember falling asleep. The last thing she remembered was looking through her father’s blue book …

Pam looked at the table beside her bed. The blue book was on the table, sitting on top of the other books she’d brought to read.

She got up out of bed and hurried to the bedroom door. She twisted the lock on the door handle and then tested the door handle to make sure the door was locked. But the door wouldn’t budge—the lock worked.

Maria said the door had been unlocked, but Pam was certain she had locked the door.

Maybe she had dreamt that she’d locked the door.

She hurried to the closet and pulled out the duffel bag that she’d brought her clothes and books in. She found her leather-bound journal inside. It wasn’t as nice as the one Dr. Stanton used, but he had advised her to jot down any dreams that disturbed her, along with any thoughts or feelings that came to her.

She brought the notebook back to the bed and sat down cross-legged in the middle of the rumpled sheets and blanket. She opened the journal to the next blank page, the page after her last nightmare about Dr. Stanton trying to split her face in half with a small ax.

A shudder ran through her and she pushed the image of the nightmare away. She had a new nightmare to write about right now.

She wrote about the dream she’d just had tonight. She also included the imagined phone call from her father that had spurred her into coming here to this house. And she wrote about seeing her father in the bedroom window, staring down at her and Sarah while they played in the backyard.

And at the end, she wrote about locking the bedroom door.

After she was done, she read over everything. These notes seemed like pieces of a puzzle to her, clues to a mystery. She glanced at the blue book of case studies on the nightstand.

Then she turned back to her journal and made her final entry: The case of Girl M. What does it mean?

Maybe if she kept writing these things down, the answer would begin to reveal itself. Maybe the pale thing underneath the surface of the dark water in her mind would emerge and she would finally be able to see it in the light of day.

She closed the notebook and lay down in the bed. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep so she pulled out the historical romance that was tucked away underneath the blue book of case studies. She opened the book to where the bookmark was and began reading.

Thirty minutes later she drifted off to sleep with the lamp on beside the bed and the open book on her stomach.

THIRTEEN

The next morning, after a breakfast of pancakes prepared by Rita, Pam took Sarah out on the rowboat as promised.

They rowed out to the middle of the pond, and then they just let the boat float along the water.

“How was breakfast?” Pam asked Sarah.

“Good. The pancakes were awesome. Rita made some chocolate chip pancakes for me.”

Pam feigned shock. “The pancakes were better than the ones I make?”

Sarah giggled and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” Pam said and saw the relief on her daughter’s face. “I know Rita’s pancakes are better than mine.”

Pam leaned back and enjoyed the sun on her skin. It was such a nice day. There weren’t a lot of clouds in the sky, and it was even a little too warm underneath the sun’s rays, but not uncomfortable yet. Her eyes drifted over to the woods at the far edge of the pond. She stared at the trees in the distance for a moment and then she jumped up into a sitting position, rocking the boat.

“Mom,” Sarah shouted as she grabbed on to the side of the boat. “What’s wrong?”

Pam didn’t answer. She stared at the trees. She could’ve sworn that she’d just seen a man standing in the woods near the pond, staring at them.

But he wasn’t there now.

“Mom.”

She’d only seen him for a split second, but he had looked like an older man with a slight build. He wore tan pants and a dark shirt, and he had a floppy fisherman’s hat shoved down on his head, keeping much of his face in shadows.

“Mom, what are you looking at?” Sarah asked and twisted around in the boat to look at the trees.

“Nothing, honey,” Pam finally said and forced a smile on her face as she looked at her daughter.

“Did you see something?”

Pam shook her head no, trying to think of a lie. “I … I thought I saw a deer.”

Sarah was suddenly interested. She turned around in the boat again and studied the trees standing along the far side of the pond.

“Where?” Sarah asked.

“Uh … I don’t know. In the trees somewhere. I think it’s gone now.”

Pam searched the trees.

But there was no man there now.

Had he even been there at all? Or had she imagined him?

“I don’t see a deer,” Sarah said as she turned back around in the boat. “I wish I would’ve seen it.”

“I’m not even sure I saw the deer,” Pam said as a chill wormed its way through her body underneath the hot sun. “I might’ve been dozing off for a moment.”

Sarah studied Pam for a moment like she was trying to decipher if her mother was teasing her, and then she smiled.

They didn’t stay out in the boat too much longer. Even though Sarah had been excited about taking the boat out on the water, she grew bored quickly.

After they rowed the boat back and pulled it up onto the shore with some effort, they went back inside the house. Rita asked Sarah if she wanted to help make some lunch and Sarah accepted without hesitation.

Pam left the two of them alone. She thought about going upstairs and sitting with her father for a while—that’s why she had come here. But after last night’s unnerving nightmare, she felt hesitant. She knew it was just a bad dream and she shouldn’t let it keep her from spending time with her dad, but it had affected her on some deep level that she couldn’t understand.

She had spent fifteen minutes beside his bedside this morning before breakfast, so Pam decided to wander around the house instead of visiting him again.

Moments later, she found herself in front of the door that led down to the basement.

She hadn’t been down in the basement in such a long time.

Pam opened the door and stared at the wooden stairway that descended down into the darkness. She couldn’t help shivering a little bit, and she wasn’t sure why.

She flipped on the light switch just inside the doorway. A light at the bottom of the stairs came to life. To turn on any other lights down in the basement, she would have to go all the way down to the bottom of the steps and flip up the bank of light switches bolted to the concrete wall.

After taking a peek behind her to make sure no one else was around, Pam went down the basement steps. She reached the bottom and flipped on all the lights quickly. The rows of fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling flickered for just a moment before bathing the basement in light.

The basement was as big as she remembered—nearly as big as the floorplan of the ground floor of the house. A wide open space in front of her branched off into small rooms and areas that still seemed to be hidden in shadows even though the lights were on. There was a lot of storage down here that had been collected over the decades. There was furniture stacked against the block walls, some of the pieces covered with white sheets. There were rows and rows of metal filing cabinets that Pam guessed held old case records from when Dad was a private psychiatrist and had his own practice. Metal shelves held old and outdated computer, recording, and printing equipment. There was a collection of old bicycles. Some of them were her bicycles from when she was a child.

There were other toys of hers, but what drew her deeper into the basement was the doll house.

She had forgotten all about this doll house, which was strange because she was sure that she had ventured down here to the basement at some time or other over the last fourteen years on her visits to Dad’s house. But now, as she stood in front of the doll house, it felt like she hadn’t laid eyes on it since she’d been a child.

A lot of the miniature furniture that went to the doll house was still tucked away inside, and a lot of the rooms were still decorated. The doll house was huge, nearly chest-high to her right now. The house had three levels, and it had a garage big enough to fit a Barbie Corvette inside. The rooms were also big enough to accommodate her Barbie dolls. This wasn’t a store-bought doll house, and she remembered now that her father had hired a craftsman to build this doll house specifically for her. It was one-of-a-kind. When had that been? She guessed she would’ve been seven or maybe even eight years old when she got it as a birthday present. She got it right before her mother left. The happier times.

Pam inspected the doll house more closely. She saw that there were no dolls anywhere inside the rooms of the doll house.

It felt weird, but just seeing this doll house again seemed to be triggering some kind of memory inside of her, a memory that was struggling to surface.

Like that pale thing just underneath the dark water.

But she couldn’t force the memory to the surface.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t like being down here in the basement, but she wasn’t sure why. But there seemed to be a … a reason to be afraid. There was something about this basement … about this doll house … about her dad’s blue book …

Pam opened her eyes. No matter how much she tried, she just couldn’t remember. She decided she would forget about it for now, let her mind relax, and definitely write about it in her journal—just one more clue in the “clues” that she had gathered so far.

Just then a rustling noise from deeper in the basement startled her. She stood very still beside the doll house, listening for the noise again.

But she didn’t hear anything else.

She ventured farther into the basement, walking past the stacked-up furniture. She rounded a corner and came to the back wall of the basement where a heavy armoire stood against the block wall among other boxes and crates.

It seemed like the noise had come from back here.

But there were no more noises now.

Maybe it had been a rat.

No, the noise had sounded too loud to be a rat, she thought. It had sounded … heavy.

Maybe a ghost, her mind whispered.

A sudden chill raised goose pimples on her skin, and Pam felt an overwhelming urge to get out of the basement.

She hurried back through the basement and stood at the foot of the stairs. She shut off the light switches and looked back at the darkness of the basement. Then she ran up the stairs to the basement door and walked to the kitchen. She found Rita alone.

“Where’s Sarah?”

“She said she was bored and she wanted to go play.”

Pam nodded, but she felt a pang of fear in her chest.

Why should she be afraid if Sarah wandered off to explore the house? She used to do it all the time when she was Sarah’s age. Still, she was afraid of the pond. Sarah knew how to swim—Pam had taught her a few years ago in their backyard pool—but Sarah still wasn’t the strongest swimmer.

A picture formed in Pam’s mind of Sarah trying to push the rowboat out into the pond by herself. If she somehow managed to get the boat into the water, what would happen if she floated out towards the middle of the pond? What would happen if she fell over? She wouldn’t be able to swim all the way back to the shore.

There’s a pale thing floating in the water …

Pam bolted out through the kitchen door, out onto the backyard patio. She looked around, her eyes darting quickly. The shadows were growing long across the back lawn and towards the pond. The sun was setting low on the western horizon.

How long had she been down in the basement?

“Sarah!”

No answer.

Pam ran across the backyard and checked the pool. Sarah wasn’t in the water. She ran down to the pond.

She couldn’t help thinking about the old man she’d seen in the woods. Yeah, he had been old, but it didn’t mean that he couldn’t be dangerous.

The rowboat was still on the shore where they had left it, nestled among the reeds and weeds that grew along the edge of the pond. Pam looked at the trees crowded together on the other sides of the pond—the beginning of the woods that stretched all the way to other vast properties. But it was already too dark in the woods to see anything there.

Pam ran back to the house and Rita met her at the door that led to the kitchen. She had a big smile on her face.

“Maria said Sarah is up in your father’s room,” Rita told Pam.

“Sarah’s with my dad?”

Rita nodded and wiped her hands on her apron. And then her smile faltered a little as she stared at Pam.

“What’s she doing up there?” Pam asked, and then realized that the question not only sounded a little silly, but possibly accusatory.

“Visiting, I guess,” Rita answered, but then she looked a little unsure, like she may have said the wrong thing.

“Thanks,” Pam mumbled and brushed past Rita.

Pam hurried upstairs and found Sarah in Carl’s room just as Maria had said. Maria wasn’t in the room—maybe she was giving them time alone together.

Carl sat at the edge of his bed with his back to Pam; he was facing the line of plate-glass windows that looked out onto a world which was darkening quickly with the coming night. His IV tubes were stretched across the bed behind him, his IV pole pulled tight to the bed on the other side.

Sarah was sitting right beside Carl in the bed; they were so close to each other that they were almost touching.

Pam began walking towards the bed, but then she stopped for a moment. Neither one of them had turned around when she entered the room. It looked like they were both staring at the rows of windows in silence.

A thought occurred to Pam. She had just been down by the pond moments ago calling for Sarah. They had to have seen her frantically searching the pool and around the pond. Why hadn’t Sarah come to one of the windows and pounded on it to let her know she was okay?

Carl leaned over to his right, leaning towards Sarah a little. He had his hands in his lap in front of him and Pam could see the knots of his spine through his thin nightshirt. Even though she couldn’t see her father’s hands, they seemed to be moving, like he was gesturing as he whispered to Sarah.

He was saying something to her.

And Sarah was listening intently.

Pam exploded into action. She ran towards the bed, racing around the foot of it to face the two of them.

They both looked up at Pam in surprise when she stood in front of them.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pam yelled, surprised that her voice was so loud and so accusatory.

Carl’s stare turned blank, his shoulders slumped and his hands became lifeless in his lap. But for a split second, Pam had seen life in those eyes, awareness, comprehension. But now they were the dull blue that she had come to know so far since she’d been here at this house.

Sarah smiled sweetly at her mother. “We’re just playing a game that Grandpa taught me.”

“What kind of game?” Pam snapped, and again she hated the accusation in her voice.

“It’s a secret.”

Pam’s mind went white with rage for a second, and she grabbed Sarah and pulled her up from the bed a little too hard.

Sarah cried out in pain.

“Get away from him,” Pam heard herself growling at her daughter.

“Mom. What are you doing?”

Pam glanced at her frozen father as he sat on the edge of his bed staring at the windows like he was catatonic now. And then she looked down at her daughter’s face which was shiny with tears, her mouth crumbling as she cried.

“You hurt me, Mom.”

“Sarah … I …”

But Sarah didn’t stick around for an explanation. She bolted out of the room.

Pam looked back at Carl who was still sitting on the edge of the bed in the exact same position; he hadn’t moved a muscle or looked away from the windows. She knew she should get him back into bed, but she chose to run after her daughter.

When Pam got to the bedroom door, she practically collided with Maria as she was entering the room.

“Is everything all right?” Maria asked.

“No, everything is not all right,” Pam snapped at her. “My father is sitting on the side of his bed and he was in here with my daughter. Don’t you ever leave my daughter alone in here with him.”

Maria looked shocked, but she nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t know.”

Pam brushed past Maria and ran down the hallway. She found Sarah in her bedroom, curled up on the bed. Maybe she was still crying, but it didn’t sound like it. Pam sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I didn’t mean to grab you like that. I didn’t mean … didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Pam could feel her own tears coming now, and she didn’t trust her voice not to crack with emotion. She had no idea why she had reacted like that just now, but she was more sorry than she could express. The last thing she wanted to do in this world was hurt her daughter. She never flew off the handle like that towards Sarah.

She touched Sarah’s back, and then smoothed her hair. “Baby, you believe me, don’t you?”

Sarah turned around and stared at Pam. Her face was red and puffy from crying, but she nodded and jumped up and gave Pam a hug.

“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Pam whispered. “I’ll never do that again.”

Sarah didn’t say anything, and Pam didn’t think that her daughter had completely forgiven her yet.

“Come on, let’s go downstairs and get some dinner.”

“And dessert,” Sarah said. “Rita made a cake and I helped her.”

“Then I can’t wait to have a piece of cake.”

FOURTEEN

It took Pam a while to fall asleep that night. She asked Sarah if she wanted to sleep with her in Mommy’s bed, but Sarah declined. It hurt Pam’s feelings a little, but she figured that Sarah was still upset with her for pulling her up from the bed in Grandpa’s room. But maybe she was more upset with the way Pam had yelled at her like she’d done something wrong.

Pam finally drifted off to sleep and the dreams started.

She woke up with a start after what seemed like only minutes of sleep, but she knew it was already morning because she saw the light shining in through the blinds of the bedroom windows.

Her dreams through the night came back to her in a rush as she lay there looking at the ever-brightening ceiling. It wasn’t really like a coherent dream like her nightmares had been recently, this dream seemed more like random pictures and scenes that had lasted all night, running together and melting into different images. The images she saw were scenes and possessions from her past, she guessed. She wasn’t sure because she didn’t recognize everything in the dream.

She recognized the Barbie dolls in her dream; they were the dolls that belonged to the dollhouse in the basement. But then she saw other things in her dream that didn’t make sense. In one segment of the dream, she saw a bunch of flowers that died rapidly, like they were on a time-elapsed film.

In another segment of the dream, she was in a dark room that a yellowish, greenish light glowing from somewhere. She looked above her and saw what looked like hundreds of gold keys tied to strings hanging down from a ceiling that was shrouded in darkness. She reached up for the keys, but she wasn’t sure which one was the right key. She knew she needed to select the right key, it was important—like things are important in dreams—yet she didn’t know why.

In another part of the seemingly long and continuous dream, she saw a flowing white sheet that fluttered in the darkness almost like someone was underneath it. She heard the sound of something scratching in the dark, like long fingernails clawing at a wall or a door. She saw and heard these things over and over again, but everything else in the dream was hidden in shadows, and any voices were only mumbling whispers.

Pam tried to mentally shake off the dream. She pulled the covers back and she felt something underneath the sheets touching her bare leg, something clinking lightly against each other.

With an explosion of panic, she jumped out of bed onto the floor, tearing the covers back down to the end of the bed. She stared down at the bedsheets with her breath caught in her throat.

There were two naked Barbie dolls on the bed with her. They were both dirty and stained with mud, like they had been buried and then dug up again. All around the dolls, mud stained the sheets. Both dolls had blond hair, but the hair was caked with dirt and mud now.

But there was no mistaking these dolls—they were the same two dolls she had seen in her dreams, the same two dolls that she had played with as a child, the same two dolls that belonged to that doll house down in the basement.

Why were they so muddy? Had they been buried? Who had dug them up? And who had put them in the bed with her?

There were only three other people in the house who could’ve done it: Rita, Maria, or Sarah.

She would start with Sarah. Maybe Sarah was still upset at Pam for yelling at her and grabbing her arm yesterday, and maybe she wanted to play a trick on her by leaving some old dolls in bed with her.

Pam got dressed and headed for the bedroom door. She left the dolls on the bed just where she’d found them. She wanted to bring each person back to her bedroom so they could see the dolls, and then Pam wanted to gauge their reaction.

She hurried to Sarah’s room and woke her daughter up. She told her to get dressed and meet her in the kitchen for breakfast.

After that, she went to her dad’s room and asked Maria if she could step away from Carl for a moment so they could all meet down in the kitchen. Maria said that she would be down in a few moments—she needed to give Carl his medication first.

Ten minutes later, Pam met with Sarah, Maria, and Rita in the kitchen. Rita had just begun preparations for breakfast, but Pam asked her to wait for a few moments because she had something really important to discuss.

Both women stiffened like they were preparing to be scolded.

Good, Pam thought. She was certain one of these two women had snuck into her bedroom and put those dolls into the bed with her; she really didn’t think her daughter had done it, but she couldn’t rule her out yet.

Pam took a deep breath and told them what happened. “Someone snuck into my room sometime last night or early this morning and put two Barbie dolls in my bed with me.”

Both women looked confused.

“Both dolls were muddy and dirty,” Pam continued. “It was like maybe they’d been buried and then dug back up.”

Rita and Maria looked even more confused, but they didn’t say anything.

“Maybe it would be easier if I showed you.”

Pam led all of them up to her bedroom. She walked to her bed and then stopped in her tracks as she stared at her bed. The dolls were gone. She darted to her bed and pulled the covers all the way off the bed, shaking them to make sure the dolls weren’t hidden somewhere inside the folds. She dropped down to her hands and knees and looked underneath the bed.

They weren’t there.

She got up and looked at Rita, Maria, and Sarah.

They all looked more confused now than ever, and wary of her at the same time.

“They were here,” Pam told them. “Two Barbie dolls. My Barbie dolls I had when I was a child. I’d forgotten all about them until yesterday when I went down to the basement and saw my old dollhouse. I used to play with the dolls and the house when I was …”

Pam stopped and let her words trail off. She realized that she sounded like she was babbling.

“Someone put those dolls in my bed while I was sleeping … and then … someone must have taken them away again while I was … while I was …”

Rita took a step forward, her face scrunching in concern. “Miss Pam, maybe you need some more rest. I’ll get some clean sheets for you.”

“No,” Pam barked. “I want the evidence on those sheets.”

Rita froze.

Then Pam looked at Sarah and saw the fear on her face. Sarah’s expression said: My mom is losing it.

Pam sighed and nodded at Rita. “I’m sorry, Rita. Please, take the sheets.”

“Yes, Miss Pam.”

Rita went to work gathering the sheets up into her arms. She seemed relieved to have something to do.

“I need to go check on your father,” Maria said.

Pam looked at Maria and nodded at her, dismissing her. For a second, they locked eyes and Pam suspected Maria of putting the dolls there and then somehow taking them away. She would’ve had the chance—she was the last one down to the kitchen. But why would she do something like that?

After Maria left the room, Pam walked over to Sarah and gave her a hug.

“Are you okay, Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetie. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Rita rushed out of the room with the balled-up sheets in her arms. “Breakfast will be ready in about a half hour or so,” she called over her shoulder and then hurried out of the room.

But before Rita left, Pam saw the expression of fear on her face. It was the same expression she had seen on Maria’s face for a moment before she’d left the room. She imagined it was the same expression they wore when they were at her father’s bedside as he babbled about something, demanding that something was true, and they patiently tried to explain what was really going on.

And what was really going on?

Had she imagined the dolls in the bed with her?

She hadn’t imagined the dirt and mud all over the sheets. All of them had seen that.

So what did that mean? Did that mean that she had gotten up in the middle of the night and dug around in the dirt outside? Had she been looking for her dolls? Had she buried them somewhere outside when she was a child, and now she was looking for them in her sleep?

Pam looked at Sarah in the eyes. “Baby, I need to ask you something.”

Sarah nodded.

“Did you maybe play a trick on Mommy and put two dolls in my bed? You won’t be in any trouble, I swear. I just want to know the truth.”

“No, Mommy.” Sarah’s eyes began to well up with tears.

Pam hugged her daughter again. “You’re not in any trouble, Sarah. None at all.”

“I swear I didn’t put any dolls in your bed,” Sarah said into Pam’s shoulder as she held on to her mother.

“It’s okay, honey,” Pam said and then let her go.

Pam stood up again. She was sure Sarah was telling her the truth about the dolls. That left only Rita and Maria. Rita had been working here for over twenty years as the housekeeper, and Pam found it hard to believe she would do something like this.

That only left a few possibilities. Maria had done it, but Pam didn’t know why she would. Another possibility that came to her was the old man she’d seen in the woods. Maybe he had come inside their house and left the dolls for her. But no, there was no way the man could’ve gotten inside the house without the alarm system going off.

If that old man had really been there, Pam reminded herself.

Another possibility that was frightening was that she had imagined the dolls being there. Maybe she had walked in her sleep and went outside last night, digging in the dirt and flowers, looking for her dolls. Or maybe she had been looking for a golden key. Maybe her dreams had triggered a sleepwalking episode.

But then another thought occurred to her.

“You want to go help Rita with breakfast?” she asked Sarah. “Maybe she’ll let you crack the eggs.”

Sarah brightened and wiped away her tears. She nodded.

“Go ahead and help her,” Pam told her. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Her daughter bolted out of the room, and it pained Pam to see the same expression of relief on her daughter’s face that Rita and Maria had had.

She rushed over to her now-bare bed and sat down. She lifted up her bare feet and inspected the bottoms of them. No dirt or mud anywhere. She checked her slippers and shoes, no mud on them either. She inspected her hands, her fingernails—no dirt or mud caked underneath the nails. If she had been sleepwalking and digging around in the dirt, then there would be dirt on her hands and feet. And on the carpet.

But maybe she cleaned the dirt off in her sleep. Was it so impossible to believe? If she’d been sleepwalking and digging in the dirt, she could’ve been sleepwalking when she cleaned up.

She really needed to talk to Dr. Stanton right now. But she didn’t want to do it here in the house—she didn’t want to take the chance of being overheard on the phone. She would call and make a quick appointment to talk to him on the phone this afternoon. She would drive into town so she could be alone to talk to him.

Dr. Stanton would know what to do.

Right now she needed to write everything down in her journal while all the details were fresh in her mind. And she wanted to write down the images she’d seen in her dreams over and over again: the dolls, the flowers, the gold key, the white sheet, the scratching noises and the whispers. They had to mean something.

She grabbed her leather-bound notebook and opened it. She jotted everything down so quickly that her handwriting was scrawled, like her mind was moving faster than she could write. As she wrote, she felt the memories trying to surface in her mind.

Burying the dolls.

Had she buried her dolls when she was a child?

Why would she do that?

There was something important trapped in her memories, she was sure of it. Maybe Dr. Stanton would tell her what to do.

FIFTEEN

After breakfast, Pam called Dr. Stanton’s personal cell number. He had given his number to her before she left for her father’s house in case of an emergency.

And this was an emergency.

He called back thirty minutes later. She explained to him on the phone that she really needed to talk to him. He told her that he had another patient coming in soon, but he could spare some time about four o’clock this afternoon. She breathed out a sigh of relief. That would be perfect.

After the phone call, Pam spent a few hours playing with Sarah in the backyard. As they played, Pam kept an eye out, checking the shrubs and other areas, looking to see if the dirt had been disturbed anywhere. She still hadn’t ruled out a sleepwalking episode, even though it seemed far-fetched.

It was after lunch when Pam went up to see her father. Maria left the bedroom so Pam could be alone with him.

Carl lay in his gigantic bed as usual. Only once had she seen him sitting up, and that had been when he’d sat on the edge of the bed and whispered to Sarah, whispering about the secret that they shared.

Well, that was the only time she’d seen him out of bed unless she counted the time he’d been standing at the window.

If that had been real.

Pam still felt a little ashamed that she had blown up at Sarah and her father yesterday when they’d been sitting beside each other on the bed. She was sure that it was just an innocent game that her father had been playing with Sarah for years, and now Sarah wanted to continue with it. Perhaps Sarah didn’t completely understand that Grandpa wasn’t always in his right mind anymore. Sarah was so smart for her age that sometimes Pam had to remind herself that she was only eight years old, still a child in so many ways.

Pam sat down in the chair next to her father’s bed.

It seemed like Carl was awake even though his eyes were closed. His eyeballs shifted back and forth rapidly underneath his eyelids. He was mumbling something to himself, but she couldn’t make out too many of the words. Both of his arms were above the covers, an IV tube in one of them, and he was moving his hands a little, wiggling his fingers as he mumbled.

“Hi, Dad,” Pam said.

Carl didn’t answer or even acknowledge that she was there—he just mumbled some more.

Pam wasn’t really sure if she should talk to her father like he was still in his right mind. She had seen Rita talking to him like he was still the same old Mr. Westbrook that she had worked for all these years. Well, not really. Rita was a little less formal with him these days.

Maybe I should try to have a normal conversation with him, she thought.

“It’s a nice day outside. I was just out there with Sarah. We were playing. Running around in the backyard. We took the rowboat out to the pond yesterday and Sarah had a good time.”

More mumbling from Carl. He didn’t open his eyes or stop wiggling his fingers.

Pam sighed. Her words didn’t seem to be getting through to her father today. She watched him for a moment, and his eyes opened just a little, and now she understood his words perfectly as he stared at her with milky blue eyes.

“… Girl M …”

She leaned forward.

Girl M. That was one of the chapter titles in the blue book—one of the case studies. It meant something, she was sure of it.

“Who was Girl M?” Pam asked.

Carl just mumbled some more and turned his head the other way.

Pam had already read the case study of Girl M. It was a case where Carl had put a young girl into a deep hypnosis to help her deal with a traumatic experience she’d had in her past—that was it. But she couldn’t help feeling like there was more to this case than just what was in the book.

She asked her father again, but he wasn’t responding now. He mumbled something about a man named Dr. Wainwright, and then something about a lunch meeting and a round of golf.

Pam sighed and sat back in her chair. She had lost her father again. She was about to get up and head into town so she could call Dr. Stanton at four o’clock, but her dad’s next words froze her.

“Did you find the dolls?”

She stared down at her father on the bed who had turned back to look at her. His eyes were wide open now and staring right at her. He seemed fully coherent now. Those ice-blue eyes of his brought her right back to her childhood. Those piercing eyes could pin her to her seat, those eyes could scare the hell out of her, those eyes could make her cry.

But she wasn’t a child anymore. She was an adult now. She was in control. She wouldn’t be bullied by her father.

“What did you just say?” she whispered.

He smiled, but it was a mean smile, a vicious and thin slash of a smile. And he sat up a little in his bed, resting his thin frame up on his bony elbows. “The dolls … she left them for you, didn’t she?”

Pam felt like she couldn’t breathe for a moment, but she forced herself to ask him the next question. “Who left the dolls for me?”

“You know who. It was your mother. I told you she was back. I told you she’s here in this house.”

“No … that’s not true, Dad. You’re just … just mixed up, that’s all.”

Carl lay back down in the bed and turned his head towards the windows and began mumbling again. “You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see.” And then his words turned to gibberish.

“Dad?”

But he wasn’t responding now.

Pam left her father’s bedroom in a hurry.

SIXTEEN

Pam found Rita and Sarah in the kitchen.

“Rita’s going to let me help make dinner,” Sarah said with a huge grin on her face.

“That’s great, honey,” Pam said and she forced a smile on her face even though she was still in a mild state of shock from the conversation she’d had with her father. She hoped she was fooling her daughter, but she could tell she wasn’t fooling Rita.

“Everything okay?” Rita asked Pam.

“Uh, yeah. Could I talk to you for a second outside?”

“Of course, Miss Pam.”

“We’ll be just a minute,” Pam told Sarah who continued snapping the ends off of green beans.

Pam and Rita stepped out onto the back patio and closed the French doors.

“Are you okay?” Rita asked.

“I don’t know,” Pam answered. “I was just up there with my dad. He was saying some … some crazy things.”

Rita just nodded, her face solemn now.

“He told me that my mother was back. He told me that she was here in the house. He seems so … so convinced of it.”

Rita just stared at Pam, and there was a trace of alarm in her eyes.

“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Pam said, and she could tell Rita was bracing herself. Rita had already seen Pam acting crazy this morning, and she was preparing herself for the second round. “Is there any possibility that my mom came back here, maybe in the last few years to visit my dad, and maybe he never told me about it? Or maybe he didn’t want me to know.”

Rita shook her head no almost violently. “No, Miss Pam. Not that I know of.”

“You’re absolutely sure? If he didn’t want you to tell me, I want you to know that’s okay to tell me now.”

“Yes, Miss Pam. Of course I would tell you. But I’ve lived here at this house for almost twenty-five years and I’ve never seen your mother since—”

Pam nodded as Rita stopped her sentence short.

Since she left me when I was eight years old, Pam finished Rita’s sentence in her mind.

“Your father, he gets mixed up now,” Rita said. “Sometimes he thinks it’s still twenty or thirty years ago.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Rita smiled again, but it was a nervous smile. She seemed antsy to get back inside.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you this morning and accused you of putting those dolls in my bed.”

Rita just nodded again and smiled politely.

“I would never think that you would do something like that, I just wanted you there. I really suspected Maria at first, but now I’m wondering if I had just imagined them there. I’ve been having bad nightmares for the last few months. I might have walked in my sleep. If you ever see me walking in my sleep, please wake me up.”

Rita nodded, but she looked a little nervous at that prospect.

“Maria wouldn’t play a prank like that on me, would she?” Pam asked. She had asked the question quickly to catch Rita off guard and gauge her reaction, an old psychiatry trick of her dad’s.

“I don’t think so, Miss Pam. I barely know her. She’s only been here for two months now.”

“And these other home health care nurses who have quit …” Pam asked her.

Rita sighed, her expression telling Pam that they had already been over this.

But Pam wasn’t ready to let it go.

“You don’t think Maria might have run these other nurses off, do you?” Pam asked her.

Rita shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

But Pam didn’t really believe her.

“You said some of the other nurses seemed frightened, like they were scared of something. You said one of them claimed this house was haunted and she’d seen a ghost.”

Rita shrugged. “A big house like this, some people’s imagination runs away with them.”

Pam nodded, but she had seen something in Rita’s expression for a moment: doubt and nervousness.

“Have you seen anything strange in this house?” Pam asked.

“No.”

Pam was quiet for a moment, and then she asked the next question quickly, hoping to catch Rita off guard. “Is there anything I should know about Maria?”

“No. She takes very good care of your dad.”

But it seemed like Rita wanted to say something else, but she was holding back.

“If there’s ever anything you need to tell me, I hope you wouldn’t hesitate to let me know.”

“Of course, Miss Pam.”

Pam waited a moment longer in case Rita wanted to share something, but Rita wasn’t volunteering anything.

“Well, I need to get going,” Pam told her. “You sure you don’t mind keeping an eye on Sarah while I’m gone?”

“No, not at all.” Rita was smiling again, seemingly relieved that the conversation had changed.

Pam was sure that Rita knew something about Maria—she could feel it in her gut. Whatever it was, something was making Rita nervous. At first Pam had believed that she had been sleepwalking and went outside to dig up something in the dirt, her dolls perhaps. Maybe she had remembered in her sleep where she had buried them as a child. But maybe she hadn’t found them while sleepwalking, and she had woken up and imagined them there in her bed for a moment.

But after her father mentioned the dolls, she began to wonder about Maria again. It had been Maria who had come into her bedroom to wake her up from a nightmare, the one about her father attacking her. And Pam had been so certain she had locked her bedroom door that night.

She had so much to talk to Dr. Stanton about, she thought as she left the house and walked to her 4-Runner that was still parked in front of the house in the circular driveway. She had her purse with her and the small, leather-bound journal was tucked down inside.

She got in her Toyota and started it. She drove down the long driveway to the metal gate that began to swing open for her after she passed the motion sensor.

SEVENTEEN

Dr. Stanton answered his phone right away at four o’clock on the dot. He apologized for not being able to talk to her sooner, but he had a full caseload today.

“No, that’s okay. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I’m sorry … I just … just needed someone to talk to for a few minutes.”

“What’s wrong, Pam?” His voice had changed from a neutral politeness to his “doctor’s” voice.

“It’s just that some strange things have been happening here at my dad’s house the last few days.”

“What things?”

Pam opened up her notebook and told Dr. Stanton about seeing her dad standing at his bedroom window when she and Sarah had been playing in the backyard. She told him about waking up with the muddy Barbie dolls in her bed. She told him about what her dad had told her, asking if she had liked the dolls her mom had left for her. She told him about her suspicions about Maria. She told him about the old man she’d seen in the woods. She told him about her vivid and strange nightmares. Once she opened the gates, all of the words came spilling out so fast.

After she was done, there was silence on the phone.

“Dr. Stanton, you still there?”

“Yes, Pam. I know it’s difficult being back there, and I can imagine it’s very difficult seeing your father on his deathbed. I can imagine the stress you’re under. You may have had some lapses in reality, possibly seeing hallucinations. And maybe these hallucinations and the dreams you’ve been having mean that you’re beginning to break through to some of your repressed memories, the ones you say that have always been eluding you, the ones that swim just under the surface.”

“Yeah,” Pam answered him. She sat in her 4-Runner, parked in front of one of the parks in the town square. This small town looked like a town that Norman Rockwell had captured in one of his paintings. It was a town that could’ve been featured in a Twilight Zone episode as the “perfect little town.” The day was warm, but a strong wind was whipping up and there was a nasty-looking thunderstorm brewing on the horizon, and the storm was moving in fast.

“But I’ve never sleepwalked before,” Pam said into the phone. “Not that I can remember anyway. And some of these things that I’ve possibly hallucinated—the dolls in my bed, locking the bedroom door, maybe misinterpreting my father’s words … I wonder if they might be real.”

“I know these things may seem real, Pam, but if something traumatic happened to you in the past, your mind may be fighting those buried memories the only way it knows how.”

“It’s this place that’s messing with me, my father’s house … I shouldn’t have come back here.”

“Maybe you needed to go back there.”

“I’ve been back here plenty of times, and nothing like this ever happened before.”

“Maybe now you’re at the point where you’re ready to deal with the buried memories. Maybe you shouldn’t fight them. Maybe you should just let them come to the surface.”

Pam thought of the pale thing just underneath the dark water in her mind, the thing just floating there, just far enough underneath the water so she couldn’t make out the details.

“I know it’s difficult for you, Pam. And I know it’s scary. But if you ever want to move on, then you need to stick it out and try to remember what happened. Just let the memories come to you, and then the answers will follow. I’m sure of it.”

Pam felt a shudder ripple through her. What could’ve happened to her in the past that was this traumatic? She had asked Dr. Stanton that question before, and he had told her that people dealt with traumas in different ways. What might be traumatic to one person might not be so traumatic to another. We are all put together differently, he had told her, that’s why there are no blanket treatments for psychiatry like there are in other medicines. An infection of the body might need a certain antibiotic. A broken bone might need to be set and put in a cast. But in psychiatry, each patient is different, each mind is different, and how people perceive the world and deal with it is different.

She thanked Dr. Stanton for taking time out of his day to talk to her for a few minutes. She already felt a little better even though she didn’t feel any closer to the answers.

Just let the memories come, and then the answers will follow.

She hung up the phone and sat there for a moment in her vehicle, staring out the windshield at the park underneath the rolling gray clouds. She could see a downpour on the other side of the field, and she saw that it was heading her way.

A knocking noise at her driver’s window startled her and she barely bit back a scream. She turned to the window.

A man stood right beside her 4-Runner, peering into her window. It was the same man she’d seen in the woods by the pond, the same man who had been watching her and Sarah when they were in the rowboat.

EIGHTEEN

“Pam,” the old man said from the other side of the driver’s window.

Pam was about to start her SUV and tell the man to screw off. She was even reaching for her keys dangling out of the ignition. But his voice stopped her.

She knew that voice.

And then she looked at the man again. She knew those eyes, and that face. But it had been such a long time since she had seen him. He looked so much older now.

“Leonard?” she finally said, the name suddenly surfacing in her mind.

He nodded and his wrinkled face broke into a smile.

Pam turned the key in the ignition so she could roll down the driver’s window.

Leonard backed away a step from her car, but he was still smiling as the window rolled all the way down.

“Pam,” he said. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. Last time you were only this big.” He held his hand out beside him near his waist.

“Yeah,” she answered and nodded, and she couldn’t help smiling. “You were one of my mom’s friends.” It was all coming back to her now. She and her mom would come into town and go to the coffee shop and order chocolate milkshakes. How could she have forgotten about that?

“I sure was,” Leonard said.

“We used to come to your diner and order shakes or a piece of pie.”

Pam glanced out the window across the street. She remembered where the diner was now—right across the street nestled in with the other buildings that lined the main street of the town.

“Not my diner anymore,” Leonard told her as he shoved his hands down into the pockets of his baggy, khaki pants. His smile was gone now. “I had to sell it when Wendy got sick. We just had too many medical bills …”

Wendy, Pam thought. That’s right. She had been Leonard’s wife. Only he always wanted me to call him Leo.

“Leo,” she said.

He broke out into a smile. “You do remember.”

Pam nodded. “What happened with Wendy? Is she …” Pam let her words trail off, not sure how to phrase the question.

Leo’s smile faded away and he nodded grimly. “She died two years ago. Cancer got her.”

“I’m so sorry. My dad has cancer, too. And he got Alzheimer’s a few years back, some rare and aggressive kind. A double whammy, I guess.”

“Yeah, I heard. The whole town knows. I’m sorry.”

But he didn’t sound very sorry or sympathetic.

Pam supposed that the whole town would know about her father. Everyone here had known him.

A thought suddenly occurred to Pam. She didn’t know how to phrase the question. She wanted to ask politely, but she didn’t know how. So she just blurted it out. “Were you on our property yesterday? In the woods?”

Leo didn’t answer right away, but he looked a little ashamed. His expression could change on a dime.

“Yes,” he finally answered. “I saw you drive through town, and Rita kinda let it slip to one of her friends that you and Sarah were coming to stay at your father’s house for a few weeks. And you know how word spreads around here.”

“Like wildfire?”

“No, faster.” And he broke out into a sharp laughter. And then he smiled. “I’m sorry if I startled you yesterday when I was in the woods. I just wanted to come over to your house and talk to you about something. Something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for years. But then I … I don’t know, I guess I chickened out.”

“What is it you wanted to talk about?”

It was beginning to drizzle now, and the storm clouds that had been building on the horizon were right over top of them now.

Leo glanced up at the sky and then smiled at Pam. “Come on with me and I’ll buy you a chocolate milkshake. It won’t be as good as the ones I used to make, but it will still be good.”

Pam hesitated.

“Please, Pam. When I saw you here today in your truck, I knew I needed to knock on your window and talk to you. I told myself that I had to at least try.”

Pam still sat in her 4-Runner, not moving yet.

“There’s something I need to tell you about your mom.”

The words hit Pam like an avalanche and before she even knew what she was doing, she had the window rolled up and the keys in her hand. She got out and hurried across the street to the diner with Leo.

NINETEEN

“It’s starting to rain,” Rita called out to Sarah.

Sarah had been playing in the backyard for a while after they got the prep work done for dinner. Now they had an hour to relax before they started cooking. Sarah asked to play outside and Rita sat on the back patio watching over her.

But it was raining now and Sarah ran up underneath the porch ceiling, squealing from the rain. She sat down next to Rita on the porch swing.

“You’re not too wet,” Rita noticed.

“I’m faster than the raindrops,” Sarah said and giggled.

Sarah was such a sweet child, and she reminded Rita of Pam when she was a kid. She looked so much like Pam, it was like looking into the past.

But their looks were where the similarities ended. Pam had always been a very quiet child. She would play with her dolls or color in her books for hours without making a sound. Rita remembered Pam going outside to play, but she couldn’t remember Pam being as energetic as Sarah was, or as outgoing and cheerful.

Of course living under Mr. Westbrook’s roof came with strict rules, and one of those rules was silence. And another rule was that Mr. Westbrook was to be left alone.

Rita thought back to her earlier conversation with Pam and she felt bad. She had wanted to tell Pam what she really thought about Maria. She didn’t know if Maria really put those muddy dolls in Pam’s bed, and she couldn’t figure out why she would even do something like that. But there was something strange about Maria.

And as for Mr. Westbrook telling Pam that her mother was back in the house, that was just Mr. Westbrook getting his memories mixed up again. He had gotten so much worse in the last few months, and with the cancer and all the medications he was taking, Rita was surprised if he even knew where he was anymore.

Her thoughts went back to Maria, and to something Maria had said quite a few times over the last few months. Like some of the other nurses who had quit, Maria had told Rita that there was a ghost haunting the house, and it seemed like she actually believed it. Maybe she had told the other nurses about the ghosts she’d seen and scared them into leaving.

She knew that Maria’s ghost stories probably weren’t too big of a deal to tell Miss Pam about, but she didn’t want to get Maria in any trouble. Miss Pam already seemed to be in a fragile state of mind. Who knew what next little thing could set her off?

Rita pushed those thoughts away and looked at Sarah on the porch swing next to her.

“Your father didn’t want to come here with you and your mother?” she asked Sarah.

The rain was coming down harder now, the raindrops drumming on the roof over the porch, a waterfall streaming down all around them from the edge of the porch’s roof.

Sarah shook her head no and looked down at her feet which she swung back and forth.

Rita remembered Sarah’s father, Doug. He had been with them on a visit a few years back.

“He left,” Sarah blurted out.

That shocked Rita and she felt like she had just gleaned information out of Sarah that she didn’t really want to know. She was sorry she had even brought it up. But then she wondered if Doug leaving Pam had possibly put her in this fragile state—it could be the reason why she’d been acting so crazy lately, maybe having some kind of a meltdown.

Rita felt like she needed to say something to Sarah. “Oh, I’m so sorry, baby.”

Sarah shrugged like it was no big deal to her. That was another difference between Sarah and Pam. Sarah was so much less emotional that Pam was as a child—or even as an adult.

“He was mean to us sometimes,” Sarah said.

Oh Lord—more information that Rita didn’t want to know. Why were people always opening up to her? Maria with her ghost stories, and Pam with her sleepwalking, and now Sarah with this.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rita said, already trying to think of a way to change the subject.

“I’m not sorry,” Sarah said. “Like I said, he was mean to me and my mom sometimes.” She paused for a moment, and then shrugged like it didn’t matter. “And then he just left.”

Just like Miss Pam’s mother left her, Rita thought.

“I think it’s time to start cooking,” Rita said and stood up. “Do you still want to help me?”

“Yes,” Sarah said and jumped to her feet, her melancholy mood suddenly gone.

TWENTY

Pam sat at the table directly across from Leo. It was a corner table, tucked away in the back of the diner. It seemed to be “his” table because the waitress led them past other diners right to this table in the back.

Pam decided to skip the chocolate shake he had offered earlier, and she settled instead on a steaming cup of coffee. The rain outside made her crave something warm. Leo ordered two coffees for them.

“You want something to eat?” Leo asked. “They have good apple pie here. They get the apples right from Wilson’s Orchard up the road, just like I used to.”

“No thanks,” Pam told him. “She wasn’t hungry at all. She just wanted to hear what Leo had to say about her mother.

And it seemed like Leo could read her impatience, so he got right to it.

“Like I told you,” Leo said, “your mother and I were friends.”

Pam nodded. They had established that already. She didn’t know why she was so eager to hear what Leo had to say, it could be something inconsequential, something he felt was important but really it wasn’t. But she couldn’t help feeling like he had something critical to reveal, like there was going to be a break in her memories, a clue that might piece things together for her.

One thing that relieved Pam was that she hadn’t imagined seeing a man in the woods at the edge of the pond yesterday—it had been Leo standing there. That was a good thing that she hadn’t been hallucinating, and maybe it meant that she hadn’t been hallucinating some of the other things she’d seen. And that might mean that she hadn’t been sleepwalking. It might mean that someone had planted the muddy Barbie dolls in her bed.

And the only person who could’ve planted them would’ve been Maria. She must have a key to her room, that’s why she was able to wake her up from her nightmare the other night. And she must’ve brought the dolls to her bed in the middle of the night or early this morning. And then she took them away.

But why?

Rita seemed like she’d wanted to say something about Maria earlier, but then she held back. Maybe what Rita was going to say was another clue that Pam needed in this mystery, something that could help bring her memories to the surface.

But she would talk to Rita later about that. Right now she needed to concentrate on what Leo wanted to tell her.

She waited for him to continue.

“I don’t know how to say this,” Leo finally said, his face scrunching up in concern. He looked like a human Basset Hound to Pam, his face all droopy with concern. “I don’t want to make you angry.”

“I won’t be,” Pam promised, but she knew she couldn’t keep that promise.

“I don’t think your mother left you.”

Leo looked relieved now that he had spit out the words. The words were out in the open now and couldn’t be taken back. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest like a chess player waiting for his opponent’s move.

“What do you mean?” Pam asked him.

“I think something might have happened to her,” he said in such a low voice it was almost a whisper.

Pam shook her head slightly, but she didn’t say anything. She tried to process what Leo had just said.

Leo hunched forward and seemed excited now that he had opened the floodgates. “I don’t think Diane would’ve just left you without a fight. I don’t think she would’ve left all of her share of your father’s money behind. The house. The cars. I think she may have had some sort of … accident, and your father may have either covered it up … or … or maybe he may have been behind it.”

“What?” Pam breathed out. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“I’ve never said anything to anyone before,” Leo continued quickly in a low voice like other diners might overhear. He stared at her and his eyebrows lowered, making his eyes look much darker. He no longer resembled a Basset Hound to Pam—now he looked like a vulture.

“Everyone suspected that something happened to your mother,” Leo said. “But no one ever said anything aloud. Everyone in this town was always afraid of your father, afraid of his money, afraid of his influence. Hell, afraid of him personally.”

This is going too fast, Pam thought. She needed to think about this. She needed things to slow down.

But Leo didn’t give her a chance. Now that he had begun talking, it was like he couldn’t stop. “There have always been rumors of strange experiments your father performed over the years. People have talked about them.”

That was enough!

Pam stood up and plucked her wallet out of her purse with a trembling hand.

“Pam, I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“You practically call my father a murderer and a mad scientist. And you don’t want me to be upset?”

Pam’s voice was rising, and Leo glanced around at the diner. He looked back at her. “I just wanted to tell you this in person.” Leo’s Basset Hound face was back. “I always wanted to tell you this stuff before but—”

“But you waited until my father was weak and on his deathbed. You waited until he couldn’t defend himself.”

Leo held out his hands in a placating gesture. “I told you what I’ve always thought, what I’ve always suspected. And now I’ve made my peace.”

Pam threw a crumpled twenty dollar bill down on the table.

“No, please,” Leo said. “I’ve got the coffee.”

“I don’t want your money, Leonard,” Pam growled at him. “I don’t want anything from you.”

Pam left the diner, walking past the other patrons who were just blurs as she passed them by. She hurried across the street through the cold rain and got inside her 4-Runner. As soon as she shut the door, she realized that she was crying. Sobbing.

God, what was happening to her?

TWENTY-ONE

Pam got back to the house in time for dinner. She went upstairs and changed out of her soggy clothes into fresh, dry ones. She came back down to the dining room, but she didn’t really feel like eating. She sat down at the table with Sarah and Rita.

As they ate, Sarah explained how she had helped Rita with different parts of the dinner.

“That’s wonderful, sweetie,” Pam said, trying her best to keep her “Happy Mom Mask” on her face. But behind her mask, her mind was still whirling; Leonard’s words still ran through her mind like a loop.

After dinner was over and Sarah was in the family room watching an hour of TV, Pam helped Rita with the dishes.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Pam asked Rita.

Rita set some plates in an upper cabinet, and then she looked at Pam with wide eyes. She nodded.

“Let’s step out onto the back patio,” Pam offered.

They went outside and shut the French doors. It was almost dark out here, and the security lights were already coming on automatically around the pool and in the distant grounds.

“You were going to say something about Maria earlier,” Pam told her, trying her best not to sound accusatory. “Right before I went into town this afternoon, you were going to say something about her, weren’t you?”

“Miss Pam, there’s nothing …”

“Please, Rita. You’ve known me nearly my whole life. I’m asking you for a favor.”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

“She won’t be. I promise. I just want to know what you were going to say about her.” She paused for a moment and then asked: “Is it something bad?”

“No,” Rita answered, shaking her head and smiling. “Not real bad, I guess.”

Pam took a step towards Rita in the darkness. Even though the security lights were turning on automatically around the property, Pam and Rita hadn’t turned on the back patio light which kept them shrouded in the shadows. “Please, Rita.”

“She … she just thinks that there might be a ghost in the house.”

Pam just stood there for a moment. She hadn’t expected anything like that. “That’s it?” she blurted out.

Rita nodded, but she had something else to add. “She thinks it might be the ghost of your mother.”

“But my mother’s not dead. She left and never came back. Why would Maria think she’s seen the ghost of my mother?”

“I don’t know, Miss Pam. But she says she’s seen this ghost and she looks exactly like the photos of your mother. And she says that Mr. Westbrook has seen the ghost of your mother, too.”

Pam stood there for a moment in the darkness.

And then a thought struck Pam. What if her mother really was dead? Leonard had sure seemed to think so. And maybe the whole town believed it. But she couldn’t believe her father had had anything to do with her mother’s death.

Other scenarios raced through Pam’s mind. What if her mother had died shortly after she left them? What if she had been in an auto accident, or she had overdosed on drugs, or had gotten cancer? Maybe her father had found out, but he didn’t want to tell her, so he had kept it a secret all this time.

But why would he have kept it a secret all these years, even after she was an adult and could handle news like that?

“Miss Pam?” Rita said, and even in the night shadows Pam could see the concern on the woman’s face.

“I’m sorry. My mind … it was just wandering … Thank you, Rita, for telling me about Maria.”

“She’s not in trouble, is she?”

“No.”

“Please don’t tell her I said anything to you about it.”

Pam saw a look of fear in Rita’s eyes. “Are you afraid of Maria?”

“No,” Rita said and smiled like she was trying to prove that she wasn’t scared of her. “I just don’t want to cause trouble for anyone.”

“You’re not causing any trouble.”

Rita smiled and nodded like their conversation was over. “I need to finish cleaning the kitchen up.”

“Yes, of course,” Pam said and watched Rita slip back inside the house through the French doors.

Rita might have said she wasn’t afraid of Maria, but Pam couldn’t help feeling that she was. There was something about Maria, Pam was sure of it—something strange.

She would write all of this down tonight in her journal—everything Leonard had said, and everything Rita had said. Then she would look at all of her entries, read them all together and see if she could piece all of this together.

TWENTY-TWO

After her conversation with Rita, Pam looked for Sarah in the family room. The TV was on and a cartoon character was just a blur of primary colors on the screen, but Sarah wasn’t in the room.

Pam bolted out of the family room and began searching the downstairs rooms. She found Sarah in her father’s study.

She watched Sarah from the doorway. Sarah walked past the wall of bookshelves around the room and ran her fingers over the spines of the books.

“How could anyone read all of these books?” Sarah asked without turning around to look at Pam as she entered the study and closed the door softly.

“I don’t know.”

“You think Grandpa read every one of these books?”

“I don’t think he read every one of them, but I know he read a lot of books in his life.”

“And he wrote some of them, too,” Sarah said. She had stopped at the bookcase near the massive desk at the far end of the room which sat in front of the line of floor-to-ceiling windows covered with sheer white curtains. She rested her fingers on a shelf of books.

“Yes,” Pam said as she walked over to her daughter.

Her father’s study was exactly as Pam had remembered it from her childhood—the only difference was that there weren’t papers and books scattered all over the desk and tables; the place had been cleaned up and kept neat and clean.

“I see his name on these books,” Sarah said.

Pam stood beside Sarah and stared at the shelves devoted to her father’s writings. Many of the books were multiple copies of the same title.

Except for the blue book—the book about the experimental psychiatric cases—the same blue book she had beside the bed in her room upstairs. There was only one copy of that book on the shelf and it stuck out among the other volumes with their dark spines.

Leonard’s words from earlier at the diner floated back into her mind like a ghost: There have always been rumors of strange experiments your father performed over the years. People have talked.

Pam looked at Sarah as she pushed Leonard’s voice from her mind. “Yes, Grandpa wrote all of these books on these two shelves.”

Sarah seemed to suddenly lose interest in the books. She walked over to the massive desk that sat in front of the windows. On each side of the tall windows were rows of oak filing cabinets with antique statues situated on top of them. Other statues and ancient artifacts decorated some of the bookshelves and heavy wood tables around the room.

Pam’s eyes roamed the walls that weren’t taken up with either windows or bookshelves. Arranged neatly on these walls were framed awards, letters, and photographs documenting her father’s illustrious career as a psychiatrist. There were framed photos of her father shaking hands with politicians and celebrities. In a corner of the room was a small entertainment area with a TV and VCR/DVD combo stacked on a metal stand. Next to that was a heavy wooden stand with a stereo and record player on top. Underneath the stereo system, tucked away in a cubbyhole, was a stack of albums—all classical music. She had a sudden childhood memory of the sound of the classical music drifting out of her father’s study when he was in here working. She fought an urge to pluck one of the albums out and play it.

Sarah sat down in her father’s chair and it emitted a slight squeak, breaking Pam’s hypnosis.

“I feel strange being in here,” Pam said and smiled at her daughter.

“Why?” Sarah asked as she swiveled around in the chair a little.

“Because I wasn’t allowed in here when I was a child.”

“Grandpa wouldn’t let you come in here?”

The idea seemed to be a foreign one to her daughter, almost unfathomable. But Sarah didn’t understand that her grandfather had been a different man when he was younger. More stern, more aloof, more involved with his work. He grew much softer as he got older, and when Sarah came along.

People change, Pam thought.

“Grandpa was always hard at work when he was in here,” Pam said, finally answering her daughter’s question.

Pam walked around the desk, breathing in the scents of the old woods and leathers. She took Sarah’s hands. “Come on, let’s get you up to bed.”

After Pam tucked Sarah into her bed, she went into her room and locked the door. She double checked to make sure the door was locked. She spent an hour writing in her journal, and then she lay down on the bed with the lamp on and grabbed the blue book from the end table. But then she put the book back, not wanting to look at it right now. She just wanted to let her mind relax, let it wander. Sometimes that’s when the breakthroughs came. She picked up the copy of the romance novel instead.

She had only read a few pages before she drifted off to sleep.

TWENTY-THREE

Pam woke up and found herself deep in the basement. It was dark, and she knew it was still the middle of the night.

She had been sleepwalking again.

The only light came from the bottom of the stairs at the far end of the cavernous room and it seemed so far away from where she stood in the darkness. A sudden feeling of fear washed over her and she knew that she had to get back underneath that light. It felt like someone was going to materialize out of the shadows and grab her. Someone was going to drag her deeper into the darkness, deeper into the …

Pam bolted for the only source of light as the panic overwhelmed her.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and stood in the cone of light that shined down from the lone light bulb in the ceiling above her. She was breathing hard, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked back at the darkness, expecting to see someone standing in the shadows.

But there was no one there—she was the only one down here.

How had she gotten down the basement steps while asleep? She could’ve tripped on the basement steps and broken her neck. She saw a flash in her mind of her body crumpled up down at the bottom of the stairs, right in the same spot she was standing, and she shuddered.

She was about to march back up the steps when she heard a shuffling noise in the darkness. And then a whisper.

“Pam …”

She peered into the darkness of the basement. She saw someone moving in the darkness, a figure in the gloom, a person shuffling towards her, dragging her feet across the rough concrete.

“Pam … it’s me …”

It was her mother.

“I’ve come back to you …”

Pam watched in horror as her mother materialized out of the murky shadows, her pale, thin arms rising up from her body—there was something in her hands, something she wanted to show her.

This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be her mother … this woman was dead.

The frail woman was dressed in a flowing sheer white robe that was crusted with dirt and mud. A string of rotting flowers lay around her neck. And she held something in one of her hands … her father’s blue book.”

“The answers are in here …” her mother whispered. “This is the key …” Her mother’s face was gray and dried, like a mummy’s face. Her skin crackled underneath her brittle dark hair as she talked. Her eyes looked so large in her face, which was just a skull covered in skin now. Her mouth was drawn back in a smile that looked like a grimace which exposed a set of bright white teeth that nearly glowed in the darkness.

“No,” Pam croaked. She shook her head. Suddenly, she didn’t want to know the answers anymore. She didn’t want to know what might be in that book. She didn’t want to find the key.

And a realization hit her: her mother was really dead, and this was her ghost that she was seeing—the same ghost that Maria had seen, the same ghost her father had seen.

Pam turned to run towards the basement steps and then she …

TWENTY-FOUR

… snapped awake in her bed. The lamp was still on, but the bluish pre-dawn light was shining in through the windows.

Pam threw the covers back and jumped out of bed. She half expected to see more muddy Barbie dolls in bed with her. Or flowers. Or maybe even a gold key.

But there was nothing there.

It had just been a nightmare.

No, not a nightmare; there were no such things as nightmares, Dr. Stanton had told her. They were just dreams that needed to be interpreted.

Pam stood there beside the bed and forced herself to calm down. She sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment as her heartbeat slowed back down to a normal rate and her breathing was under control again. She didn’t feel like going back to sleep now. She didn’t want to dream again.

The memories of the dream sent shivers through her body and that now-familiar feeling of a slight electrical static buzzing on her skin.

She had seen her mother in the dream, and her mother had seemed so real. But in the dream her mother had already been dead, wrapped up in a dirty white robe with a string of rotting flowers around her neck, with more flowers stuck in her stringy, dark hair. Her skin had been so dry—she was just a husk now.

And she’d had the blue book in her bony hand.

The answers are in there, her mother had told her. The book was the key.

Was the key …

Pam grabbed the book from the end table and leafed through it like she had done countless times now.

What was she missing?

She read the back cover again, and then the inside flaps of the dust jacket. She read her father’s bio underneath the black and white photo of him. In the photo, his blue eyes looked dark, but no matter what the color of the eyes were, it was still the same penetrating stare she had always remembered as a child; the stare of a doctor, of a scientist, of a hypnotist.

Hypnotist.

She flipped back to the Table of Contents and scanned the different case studies. Girl M had been a case involving hypnotism. She checked the introductions to several of the sections and found that they were all about radical hypnosis techniques.

The book is the answer, her mother had told her in the dream. The book is the key.

But what key? What did it unlock?

Pam closed the book in frustration and lay back down on the bed with her feet hanging down over the edge of it. It was still murky in the bedroom, but the room was lightening up little by little as the world woke up outside.

She needed to close her eyes for a moment and relax. Maybe if she didn’t try to think about things for a while, an answer would come to her. Maybe if she went back to sleep and dreamed some more …

She wondered why she saw her mother as dead in the dream.

Was her mother really dead? Was this something her father had known about and kept from her all these years?

Leonard had seemed to believe her mother had been dead for a long time now, ever since Pam was eight years old. And he seemed to believe that her father had something to do with her mother’s death.

But maybe that was just the townspeople gossiping about the rich people that lived at the edge of town on the estate. Leonard had admitted that he (and maybe many others) had been jealous of her father, and also afraid of him. And maybe they hated him, too.

Pam let out a long sigh. She wanted to force herself out of her comfort zone for a moment—something Dr. Stanton had taught her to do. She made herself think about things and consider things that she didn’t want to face. She wondered for a moment if it could be true. Could her father have murdered her mother? That would explain why her mother had just walked out without a good-bye or a note. It would explain why her mother had left so many of her possessions behind except for her purse, I.D., and some cash taken out from the bank the next day.

Dad had always believed that his wife had found another wealthy man to run away with, maybe someone more fun and exciting than he was. He always said they were probably jet-setting around Europe.

But it had always hurt Pam to believe that her mother had just run off with another man. She could see a wife running out on her husband—especially a controlling and possibly abusive husband like her father—but not her child. She couldn’t see a mother leaving her child without a look back. She could’ve imagined herself leaving her own husband in the middle of the night—he had been controlling and definitely mentally and emotionally abusive—but she wouldn’t have left her daughter behind in a million years.

Yet she wasn’t so naïve to believe that it couldn’t happen, that her mother may have indeed left her behind without a look back. She realized that mothers and fathers abandoned their children all the time. Just look at her own husband, Doug; he had left three months ago without even as much as a phone call or a birthday card to Sarah.

Not that Sarah hadn’t dealt with Doug’s abandonment well. In fact, things had been so much better since Doug was gone, so much less stressful and tense.

People were just built differently, Dr. Stanton had told her many times.

Her mind was drifting away from her original thoughts—that her father could have possibly killed her mother. But she would not even entertain that idea until there was more proof.

But in the dream her mother had been trying to show her the proof, the clue … the blue book.

The key.

It was so frustrating. If the answer was in the blue book, then why couldn’t she find it? If the key was supposed to be …

Pam sat up quickly, staring at the far wall across the room.

That’s it! she thought. Maybe her mother hadn’t been talking about Pam’s copy of the blue book, or any other copy. No, it was one specific copy—the one in her father’s study.

TWENTY-FIVE

Pam crept downstairs through the silent house and then headed for her father’s study. She felt like she was doing something wrong by sneaking into his study; she felt like a child again.

After she was inside, she closed the door softly and then locked it. It was still so early in the morning that no one else was up yet, not even Rita.

The study was dark, but there was enough light coming in through the sheer curtains over the large windows behind her father’s desk to see by.

Pam hurried over to the desk and pushed the curtains aside to let more light into the room—she didn’t want to turn any of the lights on right now.

After that, she darted straight for the bookshelf of her father’s books. The blue book was right in the middle of the books on the fourth shelf up from the floor. She tugged at the top of the book by the spine to pull it out from the row of books—it slid out easily. She took the book with her back to the desk and sat down in her father’s high-back leather chair. It squeaked a little when she sat down, just as it had done when her daughter had sat in it.

She opened the book and immediately a small gold key fell out from somewhere in the middle of the pages. The key dropped down to the ink blotter on the desk and then bounced away, almost falling down onto the floor. But it didn’t, it rested there right on the edge of the desk.

The key.

In her dream, her dead mother had told her that the key was in the book. Pam had figured the key was figurative—some kind of message to be found inside the book somewhere. But it was a literal key, a key that unlocked something.

But what?

She plucked the key up from the edge of the desk and held it in her fingers. She stared at it a moment, studying it. The key was gold-colored and it looked kind of old-fashioned. It was small enough to fit easily into her hand so it seemed too small to be a key to a door. No, she was sure that this key unlocked something smaller.

Maybe it unlocked a safe or a lockbox of some kind.

Now she would just have to figure out where the safe was. It had to be in this room somewhere; it wouldn’t make sense for her father to have the key here and the safe somewhere else in the house.

Pam started with the desk, exploring every drawer, removing papers if she needed to. But there were no lockboxes in the larger drawers at the bottom of the desk.

Next she checked the oak filing cabinets, but no luck there.

She looked around the room—most of the walls were taken up by the built-in bookshelves. Maybe the safe was hidden in the wall behind some of those books. But which ones? She didn’t want to take every book off of those shelves.

Pam stared at the shelf of books with the hole in it now where the blue book used to be. Could it be that simple? Could the safe be behind those books he had written?

Maybe. Why would her father go to a lot of trouble to hide a safe in here? No one else ever came into his study, except for Rita to do some general cleaning once a week.

She walked to the bookshelf and wasted no time unloading the row of books from the fourth shelf. But after she had removed the entire shelf of books, there was only a wall behind them; a wood wall the same color as the book shelves with three decorative panels. That was it. No safe.

Then she looked more closely at one of the panels. She wasn’t sure why there would be panels in a wall behind rows of books. Who would ever see them? Of course, sometimes people put other things on bookshelves besides books, like knickknacks, awards, and statues.

But the panels were her only shot. Maybe they were fake. She pried at the edges of the molding around the panels, but they didn’t budge. She was about to give up when she heard a click from the center panel as she felt around the edges of it. And then the panel swung open like a small door. And behind the panel was a safe door with a recessed handle and a slot for a key.

She dug the key out of her pants pocket where she had stuffed it down while she unloaded the books. She stuck it into the lock and it slid in smoothly. She twisted the key gently and the metal door opened easily.

The wall safe was small, but she could tell there were objects inside of it. She reached in and pulled out a stack of folded papers and a few envelopes. She set these on the shelf next to the open door. The next thing she pulled out was a small jewelry box made of wood with a gold clasp on it, and then another smaller box made of a lighter-colored wood. She set these next to the papers and envelopes. The last thing she pulled out of the safe was a single VHS tape.

She brought all of the items to the desk and laid them out. She inspected the papers and envelopes first. They were just copies of the deed to the house, a copy of her father’s will (which she realized most everything was going to be left to her after his death), his publishing and agent contracts, and a few other important papers. Nothing earth-shatteringly secret.

Now it was time to inspect the jewelry box. She opened it and found an assortment of women’s jewelry inside. Some of the jewelry looked like heirlooms handed down through the generations from either her father’s side or her mother’s. But some of the jewelry looked newer, and she thought she recognized some of them—she thought they might have belonged to her mother.

Just seeing the gold ring brought back a flash of a memory of her holding her mother’s hand as they walked to the diner that Leonard used to own.

Her heart sank as she thought about the implications of this. She was finding it more and more difficult to believe that her mother had left them. Her mother had left all of her precious jewelry behind, her car, her money, and even her daughter. This wasn’t definite proof that her mother had died (or been murdered), but it was pretty convincing.

Leonard’s words echoed in her mind again: She wouldn’t have left her share of the money behind. The house. And she wouldn’t have left you like that.

She opened the smaller box and her heart and breath stopped for a moment. She reached inside and pulled out a stack of cards: ID cards. Her mother’s driver’s license was among the cards, her social security card, and numerous credit cards.

That sinking feeling she’d felt earlier was worse now, the heaviness of certainty bearing down on her. Her mother wouldn’t have left without her driver’s license and credit cards, and her jewelry that she always wore. Her father had always told her that her mother had taken a large amount of cash out of the bank when she left, but he could’ve done that himself.

Another possibility formed in Pam’s mind. Maybe her mother had run away from an abusive husband and left everything behind so she could become an entirely new person. Maybe she had gone underground, went into a kind of witness relocation program, or had some kind of help from a spousal abuse center.

There was a possibility that her father was still innocent of murdering her mother, wasn’t there?

The last item left was the VHS cassette. It was labeled with a plain white sticker and there were words written on the label with a black marker in neat handwriting: Girl P. Case # 2068

Girl P. That was similar to Girl M in the blue book. Was it another hypnosis experiment?

Pam took the VHS tape to the other side of the study where her father had his media area. Next to the old stereo/record player combination with its assortment of classical albums, there was a TV on a metal stand with a DVD/VCR combo machine underneath of it.

She turned the power on to the player and to the TV. She slid the tape in and pressed REWIND. She listened to the whir of the tape rewinding as she stared at the blue screen on the TV with a digital number two in the upper right hand corner; obviously it was already set up to display the video. That was probably the only thing this TV was ever used for.

The tape clicked to a stop and Pam jumped.

She hit PLAY and began watching.

And then it felt like her heart stopped for a moment. Unnoticed tears fell from her eyes and ran down her face. She sat tense in the chair she had pulled up in front of the TV.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

TWENTY-SIX

The film on the video tape was in color, but it was a little muted, like it was shot from a cheap video camera. The film was also a little jumpy because whoever was filming it wasn’t keeping the camera very steady—but it was steady enough to see everything very clearly.

A date and timestamp was at the bottom of the screen, along with the seconds ticking by.

Her father stood in front of the camera on the TV screen. He seemed to be posing for the camera, waiting to begin a speech. He looked younger, and she knew his age, judging by the date on the screen at the bottom. His hair was still dark and neatly trimmed, and his blue eyes pierced the screen. He was lean, his face chiseled. He wore a white lab coat over his white, button-down shirt and black pants. He stood in the middle of some kind of lab that she had never seen before—or at least she didn’t remember seeing it before.

But she had been in that lab before because she saw her younger self sitting in a large leather chair in the background. She was eight years old in this tape. She was leaned back in the chair, her eyes closed, relaxed.

She was Girl P.

Her father, Carl (she began to think of him as Carl now and not her dad), began to narrate to the camera, explaining the experiment that he was about to perform.

“Girl P is in a hypnotic state awaiting my instructions.”

Carl went on to explain in the tape that some people, a small percentage of society, was highly susceptible to hypnosis and any commands while under hypnosis. It had been a commonly held belief that people under hypnosis would not do anything while in that state that they wouldn’t do normally—nothing that would go against their normal code of ethics and morality.

But Carl promised to disprove that theory with Girl P.

He also explained that he had already given Girl P many hypnotic sessions over the last several months, sessions that she wouldn’t remember in her conscious mind. He had already laid down the matrix of rules and the trigger words and phrases to get her to do anything he wanted her to.

And to prove his point, he was going to convince Girl P to commit one of the most heinous of acts—murdering her own mother.

Pam’s heart felt like it had stopped for a moment, and she let out a half-sob, half-wheeze. She stood up and was about to push the button to stop the tape, but then she froze. She didn’t want to continue watching, but she had to know.

Had she killed her own mother? Was she going to watch herself do it?

She wiped at her eyes and continued watching.

The camera followed Carl as he walked over to the eight year old Pam in the video resting on the chair. He sat down beside her in a folding chair. His movements were slow and silent.

“Hello, Girl P.”

“Hello, doctor,” her eight year old self whispered back to him.

“I’m going to put you in a deeper trance now.”

She nodded slightly.

“You’re going to feel fine, and nothing bad will happen to you. Everything we do will be good—nothing we do will be bad. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes, doctor,” her eight year old self answered in a sluggish voice.

“Good. You’re doing so well.”

Pam watched as her eight year old self just laid there in the chair, her body totally relaxed. Her hair was so blond, her skin so pale. She wore a pair of jeans with some kind of iron-on stickers on the knees—maybe Barbie. She wore a colorful shirt, one that she could remember now that she was seeing it again. She had loved that shirt—she wore it all the time. She also had on a pair of white sneakers.

“I’m going to begin counting down backwards from ten, and you will fall into a deeper state of relaxation. And when I get to one, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Is that okay?”

The little girl on the film nodded. “Yes, doctor.”

“Good,” he purred in his soft voice; it was so low and even, so calm and reassuring.

“Ten … nine … eight …”

Even all these years later, Pam could feel the pull of that voice, of those numbers counting down. She could feel the memories in her mind wanting to loosen—like there was a metal safe in her own mind and those numbers were like the gold key slipping in to unlock the door. And when he got to one, the secrets inside that dark safe would come out into the light.

Pam grabbed the remote control and hit PAUSE. She was trembling. Carl had said he was going to command Girl P to kill her own mother.

Was that true? Had she killed her own mother while somebody filmed the act?

Could she even watch this?

Even from what she’d seen, she still had no memory of this ever happening at all. She remembered going with Mom to Dad’s lab and visiting. She remembered going to get some ice cream afterwards, but not much about the lab itself.

But she needed to see. If she did anything at all, it was obviously under the influence of her father.

Pam took a deep breath and hit PLAY. But she turned the sound down for a moment while Carl counted down to one. She didn’t want to hear those numbers counting down; she didn’t want to hear his metronomic voice.

Then she turned the sound back up just as Carl said:

“ … one.”

There was a pause as Carl watched Girl P.

“You are now in a totally relaxed and safe place where nothing is wrong … and everything is okay.”

Girl P nodded.

Carl leaned over and picked up something from the floor beside his chair that was hidden from the view of the camera.

But Pam already knew what the object was going to be even before she saw it … because she’d seen it in her dreams so many times: a handheld ax.

And there it was. The ax looked just like the one she’d seen in her nightmares about Dr. Stanton, the same handheld ax he pulled up from beside his chair, the same ax he raised above her head as she lay on his psychiatrist’s couch, the same ax he chopped down into her face.

“Take the ax,” Carl said to Girl P in his low, soothing voice.

Girl P (she had to keep reminding herself that Girl P was her on the screen) took the ax. It looked like it was a little heavy for her, but she held it by the handle. She sat up straight in the chair, her eyes open. She looked perfectly normal, but maybe a little too calm for an eight year old girl with an ax in her hands.

“Your mother is lying down in a room down the hall. The first room on your right. She’s asleep.”

Girl P. nodded.

“I want you to walk down the hall, go into her room, and then chop this ax down into her head. I want you to do it over and over again until you’re sure that she’s dead. You can do that, can’t you?”

Again, Girl P nodded.

Pam stifled a cry as she watched her eight year old self get up from the chair and walk towards the doorway with the ax in one hand. The camera followed her, closing in a little as she opened the door to a wide, brightly-lit hallway.

Girl P walked down the hallway with the camera only ten feet behind her. She came to the first door on the right. She pushed the door open and entered the room. The room was much darker than the hallway, and it took a second or two for the camera to adjust to the difference in light. Even though it was murky in the room, there was a small light coming from a lamp on a desk at the other side of the room. In the middle of the room was what looked like a gurney on wheels, and a woman with dark hair laid on top of it. She looked like she was on her side, but Pam couldn’t be sure. A white sheet covered her body and her dark hair hid her face. She wasn’t moving. Passed out maybe. Or drugged.

Girl P. didn’t waste any time. She didn’t hesitate or pause, she walked right up to the woman’s head which was pointed towards the door with her feet pointed towards the far wall—the exact opposite of the way a person would usually sleep, but positioned this way for the experiment so Girl P. could take ten steps inside the room and raise the ax and then bring it down as hard as she could into the woman’s head.

Pam stifled another sob, and she had to look away. But she looked back at the TV screen, even though her vision was blurry with tears.

Girl P. had done it; she had chopped the ax down into her own mother’s head. And she chopped again and again. The little girl on the screen didn’t yell in rage or even say anything; she only grunted with the effort of each swing of the ax.

And then the girl was done.

The camera zoomed in a little as the girl pulled the ax out of her mother’s head and walked out of the room. The camera followed the girl down the hall and back into the lab. She handed the ax to Carl and sat back down in the large leather chair. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

“Good,” Carl purred. “You did very well.”

Girl P. did not respond.

Carl stood up with the handheld ax in his hand and walked towards the camera. He had a sly smile on his face. It was at this point that Pam realized there was something wrong with the ax.

There was no blood on it.

The camera followed Carl as he walked down the hall to the same room with her mother lying on the gurney. He flipped on the overhead lights and Pam saw that the room looked like a medical exam room. The woman on the gurney was in the middle of the room.

Carl walked right towards the woman and pulled the white sheet back. But it wasn’t a woman on the bed—it was a mannequin with a head created from some kind of hard gelatin to mimic human flesh.

The camera zoomed in on the mannequin’s head and Pam saw the deep slashes in the side of the head from the impact of the ax blade.

The camera focused back on Dr. Carl Westbrook … her father. He smiled at the camera.

“And it is proven. Under the right hypnotic state, and with certain triggers put in place, a person can be made to do anything. True mind control.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Pam felt a rage boiling inside of her as the VHS tape ended. There were no other videos on this tape.

Why had her father done that to her? How many times had he hypnotized her?

And what really happened to her mother? Were these hypnotic sessions just a trial run?

Pam jumped to her feet. She was going to get some answers from her father somehow.

She ejected the VHS tape with trembling fingers. She wanted to destroy the tape; smash it into small fragments with a

(handheld ax)

hammer so no one could ever see the atrocity she had been forced to commit.

But that was irrational, and she had to think logically right now. She ejected the tape and then turned off the VCR/DVD combo and the TV. She collected the VHS tape and the other objects and stuffed them back into the wall safe. She shut the door and locked it back up. She slipped the gold key back inside the blue book of case studies and re-stacked the books on the shelf, not really sure if she had them in the right order, and not really caring. But at least she had the blue book of experimental psychiatric case studies roughly in the middle of the books the way it was before, and that was all that mattered.

Experimental hypnotic sessions—what had been published in that blue book of her father’s had been tame compared to what she had just witnessed on the VHS tape. How many other experiments had he performed on her? How many gruesome experiments had her father subjected other patients to?

Leonard’s words came back to her: There have always been rumors of strange experiments that your father performed over the years. People have talked.

People around here suspected. They knew.

Pam left the study and marched upstairs, trying to control her anger along the way.

She checked in on Sarah who was just getting up out of bed. It was already nine thirty in the morning. She entered the room and gave her daughter a big hug as she fought to keep more tears from falling.

“Is everything okay, Mom?”

“I can’t just give my daughter a hug?” Pam said into her daughter’s shoulder.

Pam pulled away and looked at her daughter. “Go on downstairs and get some breakfast.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to spend a little time with Grandpa.”

“Okay.”

Sarah still seemed a little groggy, but she headed downstairs.

Pam met Maria as she was leaving her father’s room. Maria had some empty dishes cradled in her arms, and she looked a little surprised to see Pam.

“Maria, how’s my father doing today? Is he alert?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s awake.”

“I’d like to spend a little time alone with him right now.”

“Of course,” Maria said and nodded.

Pam wanted to ask Maria if she had seen any ghosts lately, but she didn’t want to get her mad at Rita.

Maria walked down the hall and Pam entered her father’s massive bedroom. She closed the doors and thought about locking them, but she didn’t.

Her father lay in bed, and he looked like a skeleton under a bedsheet. But today he was sitting up a little, his back nestled against an assortment of pillows that Pam was sure Maria had arranged for him. There were tubes sticking out of his pale, thin arms, and his face looked sunken and gray.

Pam noticed an alertness in her father’s eyes. He saw her—he really saw her right now.

“Dad,” she said as she walked towards the bed.

“Pam. When … when did you get here?”

“I’ve been here for a few days now.”

Carl looked a little embarrassed. He was weak and helpless, two conditions that he feared the most. She could almost feel sorry for him, but she couldn’t allow herself to succumb to his manipulation.

“Where’s Maria?” her father asked, looking around the cavernous room like he might suddenly spot her. “I don’t think she’s given me my pain medication yet.”

“Dad, I need to talk to you about something.”

“I’m hurting. The pain’s starting to come back again. Get Maria.”

“I will. I promise. But first we’re going to talk.”

“Is Sarah with you?” her father asked, like he was trying to change the subject.

“Yes. You and Sarah were talking together the other day. You were whispering to her while you two sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the windows. Do you remember that?”

Carl didn’t say anything.

“She won’t tell me what you said to her.”

He grinned at her, but it was only a slight upturn of one side of his mouth. “It’s just a harmless game I play with her.”

Pam didn’t think the game was so harmless, and she was going to make sure Sarah wasn’t alone with her father ever again.

“I want to talk about Mom,” Pam said.

Carl looked a little stunned, but Pam couldn’t help thinking that his expression was another fake expression that he had mastered over the years, one of the many that he could conjure at will.

“You’ve seen your mother, then,” Carl finally said.

“I want to talk about what happened to her. I want to talk about what really happened to her.”

“By God,” Carl whispered and his smile had turned malevolent. “You really have seen her.”

“What are you talking about? She’s not here.”

“She’s here, alright. She’s come back to haunt me.”

“Haunt you for what?” Pam spat out the words. She could feel the anger boiling up inside of her and she couldn’t control it. “What did you do to her?”

Carl sat there in bed, sitting up against the pillows stacked against the massive wood headboard. He was a wasted version of the father she’d always known and feared. But she saw that same look in his piercing blue eyes, that same mischievous smile on his lips, that same air of superiority that drifted off of him like pheromones.

“What did you do to her?!” Pam asked again, her words clipped. She felt her heart thudding in her chest, her breath caught in her throat. She never would’ve had the courage to talk to her father like this before. Not until now.

“What did I do to her?” he asked, and it sounded like he was mocking her.

“I saw the tape,” she told him. “I found the gold key in the blue book, the key to your wall safe. I watched the tape. I saw what you did to me.”

If her father was shocked by this, he didn’t show it.

“It’s not what I did to your mother,” he said in his low, soothing voice—the same voice she had heard on the VHS tape. “It’s what we did to her.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

A sudden memory flashed through Pam’s mind.

She was in the basement and she was young again … eight years old—just like in the VHS tape …

And then she was back in her father’s bedroom again. She was trying to fight the memories, but it was like holding back a mental dam that was about to burst at any moment.

“Your memories are coming back,” her father said in his low voice. “Yes, Pam … just let them come.”

Pam could feel the dam cracking in her mind.

“You are going to relax now,” her father purred. “You are going to let these memories open up to you now. You are allowed to see them now, allowed to relive them, you are allowed to be there in the basement again.”

Pam just stood there as a theater curtain opened up in her mind’s eye.

“You are traveling back to those moments in the basement … I will begin counting backwards from ten. When I reach one and snap my fingers, you will be there again. You will see everything that happened, hear everything, smell everything. And you will not forget this time. These memories will now be a part of your conscious mind.”

Pam’s vision was going dark around the edges, and she saw herself in the basement again.

“Ten … nine … eight …”

Pam was eight years old again.

“… seven … six … five …”

But she wasn’t alone in the basement—her father was with her.

“… four … three … two …”

And her mother was in the basement with them. But she was dead.

“… one!”

Carl snapped his fingers and Pam was transported back in time.

TWENTY-NINE

Eight year old Pam was crying as she stared down at her dead mother.

Her mother had tripped on the basement steps and then tumbled down the stairs. She crashed down to the concrete floor and lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes were closed. Her neck and limbs were positioned at odd angles. Her neck had snapped when she had landed at the bottom of the steps, and now she was dead.

And it had been Pam’s fault.

She had left her Barbie dolls and some other toys on the steps, about six or eight steps down. Eight dolls and toys tucked against the wall of the steps, and her mother had never seen them. She wasn’t sure why she had been playing with her toys on the steps; she wasn’t sure why she had just left them there.

But she had, and her mom had tripped on them. Her mother had been about to come down the steps into the basement. She was calling for Pam, but for some reason Pam wouldn’t answer her. Her mother flipped the switch for the light at the bottom of the basement steps, but it was burned out. She hurried down the steps and tripped on the dolls and toys. And now her mom was dead.

Pam saw her father rushing down the steps from upstairs. He got to the bottom of the steps and she watched him check her mother’s pulse.

“Is she … is she …” Pam couldn’t say the word as she sobbed and watched through her blurry, tear-streaked vision as her father walked towards her in the darkness.

“Yes. I’m sorry, Pam.”

“It was my fault. All my fault.”

“No, honey,” her father said as he hugged her. She breathed in the scent of his cologne. “It was just an accident. A terrible, terrible accident.”

Pam nodded and her father let her go.

“And now we must do the right thing,” her father told her as he held onto her shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. “We need to bury her right away so she can go to Heaven.”

Pam sniffled and wiped her eyes.

“You want your mother to go to Heaven, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“We can bury her down here in the house. That way she will always be close to us.”

Carl led Pam deeper into the basement after turning on an overhead fluorescent light. He walked to a far block wall that had a huge antique armoire against it. He pushed the heavy piece of furniture out of the way and revealed a hole in the wall where the blocks had been removed. The hole was big enough for a person to barely fit through.

“We can put her in here and then she’ll go to Heaven.”

Pam nodded as her father grabbed a white sheet. He brought the sheet with him to the bottom of the basement steps and wrapped her mother in it.

“Get some flowers for her, sweetie.”

Pam didn’t remember leaving the basement to get the flowers. Suddenly, the flowers were in her hands.

And then time seemed to jump ahead again and her father had already stuffed her mother inside the hole in the wall. Pam could see a little bit of the white sheet inside the darkness.

“Put the flowers in there with her,” Carl told her.

She did as he told her to. She was crying again. She stepped back and watched her father go to work, spreading a layer of mortar on the bottom of the hole and laying down the first row of cinder blocks—the same ones that had been chiseled out of the wall.

She wondered when her father had mixed up the mortar in the bucket. She hadn’t remembered him doing that. Just like she hadn’t remembered getting the flowers from the garden or the yard; it was like they were already in the basement.

She watched her father stack the blocks back into the hole in the wall and smear more mortar on those blocks. And then it only seemed like a moment later that he was setting the last blocks in place.

And then Pam heard a moaning sound coming from inside the wall.

Her mother … she was still alive.

“Dad …” Pam said. “Mom …” She pointed at the wall.

Carl got up and pushed the heavy armoire back in place in front of the wall, the legs of the furniture screeching against the concrete floor as he moved it.

Pam started sobbing again as Carl rushed over to her and placed his big hands on her little shoulders.

“I’m going to help you forget this terrible accident, Pam. You will not remember any of this until I command you to remember.”

The moans from inside the wall were louder now. Were they screams? And was that a scratching sound? Fingernails scratching on rough block?

“Ten … nine … eight … you will forget everything that happened here today … seven … six … five … your mother ran away. She left us alone. Abandoned us. Four … three … two … she is gone, but I love you and I will take care of you from now on. One!”

A snap of his fingers.

THIRTY

And Pam was back in her father’s bedroom, staring at the emaciated monster who had buried her mother inside the wall.

“She was still alive,” Pam whispered.

Her father said nothing.

Pam felt the tears slipping from her eyes and running down her face. She couldn’t stop the tears now.

“You had it planned all along,” Pam told him. “The hole in the basement wall … it was already there with the blocks removed. You had the mortar ready, the sheet to wrap her in, the flowers …”

“You’re just as guilty as I am,” Carl said.

“No … you made me put those dolls and toys on the steps. You took the light bulb out so she wouldn’t see them there. You hypnotized me …”

“You can believe what you want to,” Carl said and winced. “I’m in pain. So much pain. Get Maria.”

“You … you sick bastard. I’m going to call the police. I’m going to expose you to the world.”

“Go ahead and do it!” her father roared. The anger was etched in his sunken face. Pam backed up from the bed a few steps without realizing it.

“I’ll be dead in a matter of weeks,” her father continued, “and you will make me a legend. I always wanted the world to know about my research, about what I could do with the human mind. And thanks to you, everyone will know.”

“I … I can’t stay here anymore,” Pam said. She felt like she was going to throw up.

“Go, then! Run away! You’re weak, Pam! You’ve always been so weak!”

Pam ran for the double doors. She didn’t look back at her father as she fled into the hallway. All she could think about was getting Sarah and getting out of this house.

Dr. Stanton had urged her to come back here and face her past, confront the demons hiding in the dark. And now she had. She remembered everything, and now she wished that she couldn’t remember again.

She wanted to leave, but she needed to go down to the basement first. She needed to see.

Pam stood at the basement door moments later. She opened the door and stared down into the darkness. She flipped up the light switch and almost expected the light not to come on. But the light bulb in the ceiling at the bottom of the stairs turned on right away.

For a moment she saw her Barbie dolls and the small toys on the steps, and other toys that didn’t seem to go together—their only purpose to trip someone up.

Then she saw her mother crumpled up at the bottom of the steps.

Her father had felt for a pulse, and he knew that she’d still been alive. He knew he had to hurry and get her inside the wall before she woke up.

Then her mother’s body was gone in the blink of an eye—the basement steps were normal again, no body, no toys on the steps.

Pam hurried down the steps and entered the cavernous basement, flipping on the overhead fluorescent lights as she went.

She came to the armoire. She pushed the other pieces of furniture and stacks of boxes out of the way. It took her fifteen minutes to get everything out of the way, and she was beginning to sweat a little.

After a deep breath, she pushed the armoire out of the way. It was heavy, but once she got it moving, she didn’t stop. She pushed at it like a football player pushing a tackling sled. She kept pushing until the piece of furniture was completely out of the way of the block wall.

And then she saw it—the evidence she needed to see. A large section of the block wall was newer than the rest of the wall. It might look like a normal basement wall repair to anyone else, but Pam knew what lay behind the blocks.

Pam sank down to her knees and held on to the wall. She sobbed so deep and hard, she thought she might have pulled a muscle.

“I’m so sorry, Mom …” she whispered through her sobs, fighting to catch her breath.

After five more minutes of crying, Pam stood up and wiped her tears away.

“I’ll make this right,” Pam vowed. “Legend my ass. He’ll be remembered for the monster he really is.”

But what about you? her mind whispered. You’ll be a monster, too. People will know that you were hypnotized and that you helped him. They won’t believe you. The media might spin it any way they want to: Rich girl helps father kill her own mother.

The VHS tape. She would get it and destroy it. There would be no record of his experiments, of her being hypnotized. With no proof, it would just be her father’s word against hers. She would just play dumb and say that he confessed on his deathbed that he had killed his wife and buried her body in the basement.

Why would she need to tell any more than that? Just keep it simple. He killed her. Who knew why? Who cared? He did it—that’s all that mattered.

And once the news was out, his reputation would be ruined. He wouldn’t be remembered as a groundbreaking psychiatrist—he would be remembered as a killer, as a monster.

She hoped his last few weeks would be filled with torment. His legacy was always his greatest pride. And now his legacy would be shit.

Pam left the block wall exposed and rushed back up to the first floor. She needed to get the VHS tape, and then get her daughter. Then she would call the police.

She didn’t see anyone else along the way to the study. She entered the room and then closed and locked the door. She was about to rush across the room to the bookshelves, but then she froze.

The books on the fourth shelf had been thrown down to the floor in a pile. The wall safe door was wide open.

Pam sprinted to the safe. She reached inside. The documents were still there, the wooden boxes.

But the VHS tape was gone.

THIRTY-ONE

Could she have possibly forgotten to close the safe and lock it back up? Could she have forgotten to stack the books back on the shelf?

She had reason to doubt her memories these days.

No, that wasn’t possible. She remembered putting the tape back inside the wall safe. She remembered locking it. She remembered putting the books back and putting the small gold key back inside the blue book.

Who had the tape?

Suddenly, Pam didn’t care. She had an overwhelming urge to grab her daughter and get out of this madhouse right now.

She felt a lump of fear in her stomach, like she had missed some very important detail or clue along the way, and now she and her daughter were in grave danger.

But what was it?

Pam left the study just the way she’d found it. She ran from the room and searched the rest of the house for her daughter.

“Sarah! Where are you, honey?!”

No answer.

Pam entered the kitchen and found it a mess. There were breakfast preparations on the countertops and dirty dishes in the sink. An overturned bowl sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Rita would never leave the kitchen like this.

Pam’s heart skipped a beat. Rita was nowhere in the kitchen. And neither was Sarah.

She unlocked the kitchen French doors that led out to the back patio and pool area. She ran outside, trying to look everywhere at once, trying to find Sarah.

“Sarah!”

No answer. No Sarah.

She ran to the pool. No one there. No one down by the pond or near the woods.

Something was very wrong. She couldn’t help feeling that something had happened to Rita. And to Sarah.

She ran back inside and slammed the French doors shut so hard they nearly shattered. She locked the lock on the door handles.

Then she searched the kitchen again, checking the pantry this time. She found Rita in the pantry crumpled up on the floor. There was a small pool of blood by her head, and her hair was damp with it.

Oh God, Rita!

Pam dropped down to her hands and knees and grabbed Rita’s arm, searching for a pulse in her wrist. And she felt one. It was weak, but it was there.

She jumped up and ran for the phone in the kitchen. She needed to dial 911, get the paramedics and the police here.

No dial tone—the phone was dead.

She would have to use her cell phone, but right now she was more concerned about her daughter.

Sarah … she was in trouble, Pam was sure of it.

Pam ran through the house calling Sarah’s name, but she got no answer in return. She prayed to God along the way that nothing had happened to Sarah, that she hadn’t done something to her when her father put her under hypnosis earlier to bring her memories to the surface of her mind.

What else did he tell you to do while you were hypnotized? You’ve been having problems remembering lately; you’ve been having a tough time telling reality from fantasy.

Pam tried not to listen to the voice. She bounded up the steps to the second floor and ran straight for Sarah’s room.

Sarah wasn’t in her room.

She could feel panic setting in as she ran down to the shorter hall, racing to the end of it to the double doors that led into her father’s bedroom. She exploded in through the doors.

Her father was gone.

THIRTY-TWO

Pam walked towards her father’s bed on unsteady legs. It felt like this was a dream, it felt like this couldn’t be real.

Her father was out of his bed.

She ran to the other side of his bed to make sure he hadn’t fallen off of his bed and onto the floor. She even looked underneath the bed.

But he wasn’t there. He was gone. The tubes that had been in his arms were laying on the bedsheets and pillows like they had been ripped out of his arms. There were a few little splatters of blood on the bedsheets.

Could he have done this to himself?

Could her father have been faking his sickness the whole time? Could he have been concocting this scheme for years just to hurt her?

Or Sarah.

What secret game had her father and Sarah been playing these last few years? A big setup to hurt her? To manipulate everything? To make it look like she had helped kill her own mother when she was eight years old?

Pam stood very still in her father’s bedroom and looked at the door. She had to think. Where were they? Where was everybody?

She had already checked the whole house.

And then she froze when she heard a thumping sound coming from the floor below her. Somebody was pounding on something down there.

And that’s when Pam realized that she had checked everywhere in the house for Sarah except the basement.

Pam bolted out of the bedroom and ran downstairs. She ran to the door that opened up to the basement steps, a door that she had been standing in front of less than an hour ago.

It all led back here.

It always had.

She pushed the door open and the light was already on at the bottom of the steps.

Had she left it on?

She couldn’t remember. She was pretty sure she had turned it off and closed the door to the basement when she went to the study earlier to look for the VHS tape.

“Sarah,” Pam called down the steps.

“Mom?” Sarah called back from somewhere deep in the basement.

For a second, relief nearly dropped Pam to her knees. Her daughter was alive. Maybe she was down there with Carl, but at least she was still alive.

Pam rushed down the steps, nearly stumbling, but she caught herself. She got to the bottom and she heard a noise like banging on concrete blocks.

She hurried through the dark basement, not bothering to turn on the lights along the way. A light shined in the far-off distance of the basement—where the armoire was. She navigated the twists and turns through the stacks of furniture, boxes, crates, bags, and filing cabinets that had accumulated over the decades down here.

And then she saw her father’s frail body on the floor in front of the now re-opened block wall. He lay among the dust and bits of smashed blocks.

And then she saw Sarah.

And then she saw Maria holding a gun to Sarah’s head.

Maria smiled at Pam, but it was a smile like her father’s smile—twisted, mean, and superior.

THIRTY-THREE

“Mom,” Sarah whimpered.

“It’s okay,” Pam told her daughter, and then she realized how stupid the words sounded. It was an automatic response from a mother. But this wasn’t Sarah taking a spill from her bicycle … someone had a gun pointed at her head.

Pam shifted her eyes to Maria, and she put her hands out in a placating gesture, already trying to calm Maria down.

“Maria, what are you doing?”

Maria stared at Pam with that smug smile still plastered on her face. She pulled the VHS tape out of the waistband of her pants and held it in her hand like a preacher holding up a bible. “Everyone is going to know Carl Westbrook’s secrets. Everyone is going to know what you and he did to your mother. Everyone is going to know about his hypnosis and mind control experiments. And everyone is going to know that he’s my father.”

Pam shook her head in disbelief. “Your father?”

“My mother was Rosa.” Maria spat the words out like she was upset that Pam wasn’t catching the connection quickly enough.

Rosa, Pam thought. The housekeeper who had been here before Rita. The one her dad fired after her mom

(was murdered)

left.

“He got my mother pregnant,” Maria said. “And then he threw her out on her ass.”

Everything suddenly came together for Pam. That was it! Mom found Dad cheating on her with Rosa, and then he killed her before she could leave him.

“I never knew this piece of shit was my father,” Maria said and glanced down at the skeletal body of Carl, and for a split second she seemed like she wanted to kick him in the ribs. Then she looked back at Pam. “I never knew until two years ago when my mother told me everything on her deathbed. I spent the last two years studying everything about my father’s life. I became a nurse so I could get this job, so I could be close to him. So I could put the pieces in place to ruin him. And you.”

“Please, Maria. Just calm down. We can talk. Just put the gun down.”

Maria didn’t put the gun down—she held the gun in her right hand pointed at the back of Sarah’s head, and the VHS tape in her other hand, now down by her side.

“Just … just please point the gun away from my daughter’s head.”

Maria didn’t move the gun away; she kept the gun pointed right at the back of Sarah’s head.

Sarah stood very still, her big blue eyes focused on Pam the whole time. She looked like she was struggling not to cry.

My brave girl, Pam thought, and she had to hold back tears of her own.

“You got to grow up in this big house,” Maria told Pam. “On this big property. You never had to worry about money. You never had to move out of an apartment in the middle of the night because you couldn’t pay the rent. You never had to watch your mom die because she couldn’t afford health insurance.”

No, I just had to watch my father bury my mother inside a block wall while she was still alive.

“I understand why you’re upset—” Pam began in a calm voice that sounded eerily like her father’s voice when he began counting backwards from ten.

“You don’t know anything!” Maria barked, cutting off Pam’s words. She jabbed the gun at Sarah’s head as she yelled. “You had my life! I should’ve had this life, and it was stolen from me. Stolen from me and I never even had the chance to fight for it!”

Pam just nodded. She didn’t know what to say.

“Well, now I’m going to fight for it. I’m going to have everything I should’ve had all those years ago.”

Maria smiled at Pam, and now Pam could see her father’s smile on her face. How could she have not noticed it before?

“Now I make your father pay. I make you pay. And I make your daughter pay.”

Pam took a step forward as panic squeezed her. She still had her hands up in a surrendering gesture. “No, please! I’ll give you anything you want. You want this house? It’s yours. I don’t want it. Money? I don’t need any. I’ll give you anything you want, just please don’t hurt my daughter.”

“Mommy,” Sarah whispered, and now she began to cry.

“Please,” Pam begged. “I’ll do anything you want.”

Maria’s eyes were locked on to Pam, and she didn’t see Carl moving on the floor. He had curled up onto his side, but he sprang at Maria like a rattlesnake, striking her and grabbing onto her, pulling her down onto the floor with him. She was so shocked by his attack, the gun and the VHS tape slipped from her hands and fell down onto the floor, both of them sliding away into the shadows.

“Run!!” Carl screamed at Sarah.

Sarah didn’t hesitate, she ran to Pam who waited with open arms.

Pam hugged Sarah and then looked over her daughter’s head at the horror before her.

Carl cackled with insane laughter as he dragged Maria with him into the hole in the wall. She struggled and screamed and fought, but he was too strong for her, it was like he had been saving up every last ounce of his strength for this moment.

“You wanna spend some time with your daddy?” Carl growled at Maria as he pulled her into the hole with him. He had her in a choke-hold, and Maria’s eyes were as big as dinner plates as she was swallowed up by the darkness inside the hole.

Pam let Sarah go and she darted over to the gun and picked it up. Then she grabbed the VHS tape from the floor.

She hurried back to Sarah and handed her the tape. “Run upstairs to my bedroom and put this tape in my purse. Get my cell phone out of there and call 911. Get the police and an ambulance here. Okay?”

“But what about you?” Sarah cried.

“I’ll be okay. Just go!”

Sarah didn’t argue anymore, she was off and running with the tape in her hand.

Pam turned back to the block wall and aimed the gun at the hole. She caught glimpses of her father and Maria struggling with each other like two wrestlers inside the hole. Somehow they had wound up tangled with the dirty white sheet that Carl had buried her mother in. She heard the crunch of brittle bones snapping underneath their bodies as they writhed together in the darkness. Then she heard Carl laughing like a lunatic, and she heard him whispering things to Maria as he held her in a chokehold—things that Pam couldn’t hear, things that Pam didn’t want to hear. Who knew what her father was telling Maria right now; who knew what seeds he was planting in her mind—seeds from which horrible things would grow, horrible visions, horrible lifelong nightmares.

Pam could still hear Carl whispering, but she couldn’t hear Maria anymore—it was like she had gone catatonic as a defense. But maybe she was waiting for Carl to loosen his grip, or to stop struggling with her. Maybe she was going to bolt out of the hole as soon as she had her chance.

But Pam wasn’t going to wait around down here to find out. She wasn’t quite sure if she could shoot Maria if she came crawling out of that hole, a woman who might be totally insane now.

After bolting up the stairs, Pam slammed the door to the basement steps shut.

Sarah came running up to her with the cell phone up to her ear. “I don’t know the address here, Mommy.”

Pam took the phone from her daughter and gave the 911 operator the information that she needed.

THIRTY-FOUR

Pam led Sarah to the front door of the house. They walked outside and closed the front door. They stood huddled together in the front entranceway.

“I want you to stay out here and wait for the police,” Pam told her daughter.

Sarah still had the cell phone in her hands, gripping it like a talisman of safety. Her eyes drifted down to the gun still gripped in Pam’s hand, and then her eyes were back up to her mother’s eyes. “What about you?”

“I need to go check on Rita.”

“But … but that lady …”

“She’s hurt,” Pam answered quickly. “Grandpa hurt her. He saved us from her.” She hated giving her father any kind of glory, but she needed to do anything to keep her daughter out here and safe. “Please, Sarah, just wait out here. Over there by the bushes. Stay out of sight until the police get here.”

“Mom …”

“I mean it, Sarah,” Pam snapped.

Sarah nodded, and she ran over to the line of shrubs that began at the edge of the walkway and crouched down behind them.

Pam went back inside the house and shut the door. She locked it and then turned around and studied the foyer. She listened for any sounds, but she didn’t hear anything—the house was eerily quiet.

She crept through the house with the gun gripped in her hand. The gun was heavier than she expected it to be, and it felt unnatural in her hand. Her palm and fingers were getting slick with sweat now.

Before going to the kitchen, Pam glanced at the basement door. It was still closed and she didn’t hear any sounds coming from down there.

Had she locked the door? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think so.

She hurried over to the door and tested the door handle gently. It wasn’t locked.

How could she have forgotten to lock the basement door? Her memory seemed like a blur right now, but she remembered Sarah running up to her with the cell phone in her hand, distracting her for a moment.

She could lock the door now, but Maria could’ve already gotten out of the basement while she was outside with her daughter.

She twisted the little knob on the door handle that locked the door, and then continued on to the kitchen. She entered the kitchen and it was exactly how it was before, the bowl was still upside down on the floor. The food preparations were still on the counters.

As she got closer to the pantry, Pam thought she heard a noise in there, a slight shuffling sound. She almost called out for Rita, but then she thought of Maria. What if Maria was in there finishing the job on Rita that she had started?

Pam crept around the corner and just ducked out of the way as something whizzed past her head. She heard something heavy crash into the wall right behind her—a can of soup.

“Pam?” Rita said from inside the pantry.

Pam ducked her head back inside the doorway and saw Rita standing there with another can of food in her hands, cocked back like a pitcher ready to throw a fast ball. Then she lowered the can and smiled. “I thought you might’ve been Maria. She attacked me.”

Pam breathed out a sigh of relief. Rita was bleeding and wobbly, but she seemed to be okay.

“I know. The police and an ambulance are on their way.”

“And Maria?”

Pam shook her head. “She’s not going to hurt us anymore.”

THIRTY-FIVE

The police arrived before the paramedics. Pam and Rita waited by the front door with Sarah. Pam left the gun right in front of the door on the mat and she made sure she told the police about it as soon as they got there. They automatically tensed at the sight of the gun.

The officers told Pam that an ambulance was on the way, and Pam could already hear the sound of more sirens in the distance.

“Who else is in the house?” an older officer asked Pam. He seemed to be the one in charge of the four police officers.

“My father and his nurse Maria are in the basement. That’s Maria’s gun. She had it pointed at my … at my daughter.”

“Okay,” the older cop said. “Does she have any other weapons on her that you know of?”

“No, sir. My father, he’s very ill. He has … he’s dying of cancer. Maria, she wanted to … she was going to kill us all.”

“Where’s the door to the basement?” the older cop asked.

Pam gave him the directions.

The older cop nodded at the younger three officers and they headed inside the house with their weapons drawn.

Moments later, which seemed like hours to Pam, the older officer’s shoulder mike crackled. “Sargent Davis. You might want to come down here and take a look at this.”

The older cop’s eyes shifted to Pam. “Just wait here.”

The ambulance’s siren died down as it sped down the long driveway towards the house, its flashing lights joining in with the lights on the police cars.

• • •

Pam found out later that the police found Maria inside the hole in the wall in the basement. She was still in a catatonic state, and she was still in the death grip of Carl who had died—but he still wouldn’t let her go.

“He won’t let me go,” Maria kept whispering to no one in particular as they tried to pry Carl’s arms off of her.

When the cops pulled Maria out, they had to drag Carl halfway out of the hole in the process before they could finally break his grip on her.

Over the next few days Pam told her story, as improbable as the whole thing sounded, over and over again to detectives. But Rita and Sarah corroborated Pam’s story one hundred percent in every detail. And Pam’s lawyer was right beside her the entire time.

Maria was eventually charged with attempted murder, but she was sent to a psychiatric ward and no one was even sure if she was going to be able to stand trial. She hadn’t really ever recovered from her short time in the dark hole while trapped in Carl’s dead embrace.

Pam still couldn’t help wondering what her father had whispered into Maria’s ear while they were in that dark hole together, the seeds he had planted, the things she saw in her mind, the things she now experienced alone in her padded cell.

Over the next few weeks Pam met with more lawyers to discuss the estate of her father. Everything had been left to her, so it was pretty easy for the lawyers. She told the lawyers that she didn’t want the house or the property—she wanted to sell it for whatever she could get for it. They recommended a real estate agency for her. As for any possessions inside the house, Pam spent a few days collecting the things she wanted: her old dollhouse, her father’s blue book of experimental psychiatry with the gold key inside, her mother’s jewelry. But everything else was auctioned off.

It took months, but eventually the house and its contents were sold, and the money was squirreled away by Pam’s financial advisors into investments and retirement accounts, and a large trust fund for Sarah.

Pam’s father’s death, and the bizarre circumstances surrounding it, had made the national news and Pam thought that the story might draw Doug out of the woodwork. She could see her husband crawling back to her now that she was a multi-millionaire. But he didn’t come back. He didn’t even call.

Good riddance, she thought.

THIRTY-SIX

Pam saw Dr. Stanton for their weekly appointment.

Over the last few weeks she had told Dr. Stanton everything that had happened at her father’s house. She had finally faced her fears and unlocked her memories. Was she better off for it? She wasn’t really sure, but Dr. Stanton seemed to think she was. He seemed to think that there was some unfinished business in her memories to deal with, and now she could start over fresh now.

“The nightmares,” Pam said. “I mean the dreams, they’re gone now.”

“For now,” Dr. Stanton said. “But they can always come back. And if they do, you need to listen to what they’re telling you.”

Pam nodded. It was going to take a while to totally get over all of this.

“I still haven’t heard anything from Doug,” Pam said, changing the subject.

Dr. Stanton didn’t say anything; he just grunted slightly which she knew was his signal for her to continue.

“It’s been almost six months now, and no word from him at all. I thought for sure he would contact me after I inherited my father’s estate.”

“You think he wants your money?”

“Well, we are still technically married. I thought he would’ve been on my doorstep demanding his share.”

Dr. Stanton was quiet for a moment and Pam didn’t say anything. She wasted precious minutes that she could more than afford now.

“I still think there are other memories buried somewhere in your psyche,” Dr. Stanton finally said.

“I hope not,” Pam said. “I’m not so sure I can deal with any more.” The joke didn’t seem to amuse Dr. Stanton. She noticed that he seemed more serious now, and for some reason his demeanor set off a tickle of fear in her stomach.

“What?” she finally asked him. “Is something wrong?”

Dr. Stanton sighed. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but he was hesitating, like he wasn’t quite sure if it was his place to say anything.

Pam stared at him. “What is it?”

“I just can’t help thinking how similar the two things are … your mother leaving you when you were eight years old, and your husband leaving you the same way.”

Pam didn’t answer. She let his words sink in. And she suddenly saw the connection he was trying to get at.

“Time’s up for today,” Dr. Stanton said with a fake smile and he snapped his leather-bound notebook closed.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Dr. Stanton watched as Pam left his office. He closed the door behind her, and then he walked back to his chair and sat down. He sat there for a long moment, staring at the door.

Then he got up and walked over to his office door. He twisted the lock on the door handle. He strolled over to his desk and called his secretary. He told her that he was finished with his patients for the day and that she could leave. He assured her that he would lock everything up.

While he waited for his secretary to go home, Dr. Stanton opened a side table on the far side of his office and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a thick glass. He poured the amber liquid into the glass and stared at it for a moment. Then he swallowed the fiery liquid down his throat in a few gulps. He poured a few more ounces into his glass and drank this one more slowly.

As his mind clouded a little with a sudden buzz from the alcohol, he walked to his filing cabinet and crouched down in front of it. He opened the lowest drawer and pulled all the files out and stacked them up on the floor beside him. At the back of the drawer was a false front. He reached deep into the filing cabinet and unclasped the false door and it fell down onto the drawer bottom. He reached into the secret compartment and pulled out a video tape with a white label on it. Scrawled on the label in neat print were the words: Girl P. Case # 2068

He had been there that day when Dr. Westbrook had conducted his mind control experiment on Girl P. He had filmed the whole thing for him.

He remembered holding the camera that day, filming as the little girl walked to the next room and calmly chopped the ax down into what she thought was her mother laying on the gurney.

Dr. Stanton set the VHS tape back inside the filing cabinet and closed the false door in front of it. One by one, he put the files back into the drawer, and then closed it.

Pam had told him that she had destroyed the only copy of that tape. But she didn’t know that he had this one. Maybe one day the world would know of Dr. Carl Westbrook’s groundbreaking experiments … but not right now.

Dr. Stanton still had more work to do.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Pam picked Sarah up from Nancy’s house after her appointment with Dr. Stanton.

When they got in the car, Sarah said she’d had a good time playing with Amber. She went on about the games they had been playing.

As Sarah talked, Pam tuned her out—something she hardly ever did. But she couldn’t get Dr. Stanton’s words out of her mind. The similarities between her mom leaving and her husband leaving loomed in her mind.

But her mother hadn’t left her, she had been murdered.

A knot of fear was trapped in her stomach as she drove. She felt a sense of dread cocooning her. It felt like she knew the answer to what Dr. Stanton was saying, but she didn’t want to face it.

“Sarah, honey,” Pam said, interrupting her daughter’s words as they turned onto the street they lived on. “What game were you and Grandpa playing over the last few years?”

Sarah went quiet and looked out the window.

“Grandpa is gone now,” Pam said. “You can tell me.”

“It’s supposed to be a secret,” Sarah whispered.

“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Pam asked. “It’s really hurting my feelings that you won’t tell me about this.”

Sarah shrugged.

Pam pulled up into their driveway and turned the car off. Sarah got out of the car without another word and closed the door.

Pam decided to let it go for now. But there was something still nagging at her, something she needed to check, just to set her mind at ease.

They entered the house and Pam closed and locked the front door.

“Can I have a snack?” Sarah asked.

“Just a few cookies,” Pam said as she followed her daughter into the kitchen.

“A few as in two, or a few as in three?”

“Three’s okay.”

Pam watched Sarah as she got three cookies out of the pack in the pantry. Pam poured a glass of milk for her.

“Sarah,” she asked as she set the glass of milk down in front of her. “Don’t you ever wonder about Daddy? You ever wonder why he left?”

Sarah chewed on a cookie and just shrugged.

“Sarah?”

“Daddy wasn’t a nice person,” Sarah said. “I don’t care if he comes back.”

“I know your Dad could get angry sometimes,” Pam said. “But …”

“He used to hurt you,” Sarah said and finally looked at Pam. Her big blue eyes looked like they were on the verge of tears. “Don’t you remember?”

A memory floated to Pam’s surface: a shout, a cry, Doug yelling.

“I saw him,” Sarah said and she started to cry. “I saw him hit you. I saw it a bunch of times.”

Now the memories were beginning to come back to Pam. How could she have forgotten? The terror, the pain, the shame—all of it was coming back to her in a rush, and it felt like she couldn’t breathe.

She needed to check the basement right now. No matter how horrifying it might be, she needed to know.

Pam rushed out of the kitchen and practically ran to the basement door. She opened the door, flipped on the light, and then shuffled down the steps. The basement was cluttered with furniture, some of Doug’s motorcycle parts, Sarah’s old toys and tricycles that she didn’t use anymore.

But the one piece of furniture against the back wall stopped her cold. It was a large, heavy dresser that came up to her shoulders.

Pam stood in front of the dresser for a moment without really remembering walking towards it. She prayed this wasn’t true, that it wasn’t real. And then she pushed the piece of furniture aside. The legs scraped across the concrete floor and she grunted with the effort.

After she had moved the dresser out of the way, she stared at the block wall. There was an area in the wall that had newer-looking blocks and mortar joints.

She felt her stomach twist with nausea.

Then she heard Sarah’s footsteps behind her in the basement.

“Grandpa showed me how,” Sarah whispered. “He showed me how to count backwards from ten.”

“Oh God,” Pam cried without turning around to look at her daughter. “What did I do? What did you make me do?”

“He was bad. He was hurting you. He hurt me, too.”

Pam just stared at the block wall as her tears blurred her vision.

“I can make you forget again,” Sarah whispered.

Pam just sobbed more, still not turning around, not wanting to look at her daughter. But she could feel that her daughter was right behind her now.

“Ten … nine … eight …” Sarah whispered. “You won’t remember any of this. Seven … six … five … Daddy was a bad man and he just went away. He won’t come back. He won’t hurt us anymore. Four … three … two … We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Pam closed her eyes, the tears streaming down her face. She felt a little better now, like she could breathe again, like everything was going to be okay now.

Everything was going to be just fine.

“One,” Sarah said in a sharp voice, and then she snapped her fingers.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

I really appreciate you purchasing my book and reading it. I know there are so many books to choose from these days, and I honestly thank you for taking the time to read mine. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions at MarkLukensBooks@yahoo.com. I can also be found on Facebook (MarkLukensBooks), and on Twitter @marklukensbooks. My website is: MarkLukensBooks.com.

A FAVOR TO ASK:

Please feel free to leave a review on Amazon. Reviews not only help me as an author immensely, but they also help other readers who are searching for new books to read. I read all reviews and e-mails, and I would love to hear from you!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’ve been writing since the second grade when my teacher called my parents in for a conference because the ghost story I’d written had her a little concerned. By the time I was fourteen years old I was reading every Stephen King book I could find in the public library. I was hooked—I knew I had to be a writer. Since then I’ve went on to many professions. I was a drywall hanger, a concrete laborer, a line cook, a kitchen manager, a lawn technician, and a welder. I started several businesses including a drywall business. But through the years I was always reading and always writing.

In recent years I’ve had several stories published and I’ve had four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood; one script is in development to be made into a film. I’ve written eight novels, two novellas, and a collection of short stories, most of which are available on Amazon/Kindle. I’m a proud member of The Horror Writers Association.

I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, I settled down in Tampa, Florida with my wonderful wife and son, and a stray cat we adopted. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions at MarkLukensBooks@yahoo.com. I can also be found on Facebook at MarkLukensBooks and on Twitter @marklukensbooks. And my website is MarkLukensBooks.com.

ANCIENT ENEMY … it’s awake and it wants things. You have to give it what it wants.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

If you like short stories, check out my collection of horror tales.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

If psychological suspense is more your thing, check out NIGHT TERRORS, a paranormal thriller.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

And please check out my sci-fi horror tale – SIGHTINGS.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

A supernatural horror … THE SUMMONING.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

And please check out my latest novel – THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

And coming soon … DEVIL’S ISLAND.