“I’m serious. No one. There’s no one.”
“How many Steel Nolans can there be in Northern Virginia with a Dutch accent?” I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s the only real evidence I can offer.
He holds up his hands. “What can I tell you? There’s no one else.”
“Why would she make that up?”
“I don’t know.”
I exhale and pass a hand over my eyes.
“The only other women I ever see are the ones whose houses we work on.”
My head reels with confusion. Could Whitney have made it up? Why would she do that? And what about the way her life matches mine so perfectly? The newly married husband. The paranormal activity. The bruises. How does she know so much about me? Is she stalking me? Trying to take over my life?
I collapse back in the chair and cover my face. “I don’t know what to believe.”
I feel his hand on my leg. He slides off of his chair and kneels on the ground in front of me. “You’re the only woman I’ve been with in a while. You’re the only one I want to be with.”
I’m almost inclined to think he’s telling the truth.
“Believe me.”
I want to believe him. Maybe there’s more to this situation. Maybe Whitney is the problem, not Steel. “I don’t know, Steel. This isn’t the best time for me to jump into a relationship.” I sigh. “I don’t know what’s happening, but something is going on in my house. And with Annalen. She’s been acting so strange, and she’s never been anything but a happy kid before now.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know if it’s her age, hormones, or what. But when I wake up during the night, and my daughter is standing over me urinating on the floor...” I drop my hands into my lap, and he covers them with his. “I actually had a psychic come out the other day.” I laugh a little. “But she said she didn’t sense anything in the house.”
“A psychic? Anything, like what?”
“You know, like, paranormal or something.”
The fire crackles and sends a spark into the grass. Steel gets to his feet and quickly stamps it out.
“You probably don’t believe in that kind of stuff,” I say, remembering his comment about the dagger.
“No, I do. I definitely do.”
I push out of the lawn chair. “I should get home.”
He turns, the side of his face illuminated by the flickering flames. “Your girls at their dad’s?”
“They are. They’ll be back on Sunday.”
Steel moves toward me, wraps his fingers around my shoulders, and pulls me against him. Something inside me crumbles.
I’ll tell Whitney I can’t counsel her anymore, refer her to someone else. I want to believe him so badly.
I give in, all too easily, my face fitting perfectly into the space between his shoulder and neck. The smell of smoke lingers on his sweater.
Steel’s hands sweep up and down my back as he whispers, “I want to be here for you.”
I finally draw my hands away from his ribcage, let them hang at my side, and step back.
He looks at me, his breath creating clouds around his face.
“I don’t know what to think,” I say. “But maybe that’s your game.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m not playing a game, Claire. I care about you. Probably too much.” He advances, reaching for me, his hands framing my face.
“I really didn’t want to end up having feelings for you.” I choke over the words.
His eyes glimmer. “Are you saying you do?”
Ignoring his question, I again back out of his hold and look up at the spotted sky overhead.
His hand slides over mine, and he gives it a tug. “Let’s go inside.”
31
I jolt awake, and it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am. As my eyes adjust, I realize I’ve awakened with my head at the foot of Steel’s bed. A steamer trunk sits at the end, inches away.
The trunk looks old—like a relic pulled from the bottom of the ocean. The leather is unpolished, worn, and the surface is dull and distressed. I blink, wondering why the trunk is familiar. Seconds later, the realization strikes me. It’s the trunk from the video. Well, not this exact one, I’m sure, but it looks very much like it.
Steel runs his hand over my hair, alerting me that he’s awake.
“I can practically hear your thoughts whirring,” he says.
I lift my head and smile at him. “Do I still have thoughts? Didn’t you tell me you were going to shag me senseless?”
He smiles, kisses me.
He might have succeeded in his quest, but now that it’s over, doubts and fears creep in again. I shift positions, rest against his chest, and his breath is warm against the top of my head.
The clock on the bedside table squawks. “Ugh,” he groans. “Time to get up.” He tips himself out of bed and shuffles into the bathroom.
It’s still dark out, but a small lamp atop Steel’s dresser projects a swath of light across the room and floor as I swing my legs off the side of the bed and hunt for my clothes, pulling on each article as I find it. My eyes graze the trunk, the latches on the front of it.
Steel re-enters the bedroom, already dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. “I’ve got an early job this morning.” He sits on a chair in the corner and pulls on brown work boots.
The tag from my sweater tickles my throat, and I realize I have it on backward. I quickly release my arms, turn it, and pull it back into place. “Where’d you get that old steamer chest?”
Steel finishes lacing his boots and stands. “Uh, some antique shop here—just down the road.”
“It looks old.”
He hangs his hand behind his neck. “Yeah, it is.”
I reach down, touch one of the latches, run my fingers over the rough patina. Instinctively, I press the button to open the lock. It clicks.
“No, don’t do that.”
The latch pops open.
Steel reaches down, shuts it again. “I just keep a lot of crap in there. Stuff I haven’t had a chance to sort through and put on the shelves in the basement.” He steps back from the trunk. “The chest was in a storage facility before I brought it here. It’s a wreck. Probably crawling with spiders and other beasties.”
“Ew, then why put it in your bedroom?” I stretch my arm out to touch the top of the trunk.
Steel grabs my fingers and forcibly pushes my hand away. “No. Don’t touch it.”
I straighten slowly, taken aback by his abrupt command. “Okay.”
He closes his fingers around the back of my arm. “Come on. I’ll walk you out.”
On the way through the foyer, I mentally replay his tone of voice, his unwillingness to let me open the trunk. Just because of a bunch of spiders? I find that hard to believe.
He’s still gripping my arm as we arrive at the door, and I speed my steps, breaking away from his stride. I reach for the handle.
“Don’t forget your figurine.” Steel snatches the tissue paper with the fairy off the table by the door and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say tersely.
He leans down to kiss me.
I don’t meet his eyes.
32
All day I think about what happened with Steel. The severe reaction when I touched the trunk, the rough way he grabbed and practically dragged me to the front door. I inspect my arm, just above my elbow, searching for any bruises to match the others on my body. None. Funny that bruises appear for seemingly no reason, but the pressure that should have left a mark doesn’t.
As I drive home that afternoon, a road closure due to a downed power line near the shopping center requires me to detour by a backroad. As I follow a string of cars in front of me, I spot the construction site entrance. On a whim, I turn into the lot and slow my speed to a crawl as my tires crunch over gravel and through mud puddles the size of moon craters.
The lot appears void of life. I pull up alongsid
e dormant bulldozers and sleeping work trucks. Five or more port-a-johns sit in a horseshoe shape on one side of the lot like a stone circle. I turn off the engine and step out, careful to avoid a catastrophic fall on the mud-laden earth. I take a few steps until I’m teetering on the edge of the property, staring out at the expanse of land and the barebones frame of future houses. Pale wood planks form an outline of walls, floor.
Instantly, my memory kicks into play. I know this place. I tromp through the glue-like mud until I meet a high wall of weeds. From here, I see the house—the one from the video, my dream—the eyesore. Its once-green siding is now a dull gray, and the porch sags as though sinking into the ground. But the swing set is gone, and a patch of weeds grows where it used to be.
When I was a little girl, we lived within walking distance of my present neighborhood. At the time, this was considered “out there.” Not yet a suburb, the stretch of Route 50 going west was mostly undeveloped with only a smattering of housing here and there. We lived in a house off a gravel road with no neighbors within half a mile. I often played alone and found trails through the woods that led to other people’s property.
When Gunnar and I bought the house in Amber Mills, I knew it was close to where I grew up, but until now, I never realized that the lot behind us was one I used to visit as a little girl. Once, I got in trouble for staying out too long. My mother was angry because she didn’t know where I was. I was having so much fun on the swings that I lost track of time.
How long has it been since I thought about this place? Maybe not since then. At least not since I saw the video and started dreaming about it. The brain has a way of discarding what it doesn’t want to remember or doesn’t feel it needs to keep.
Steel’s gray cat prowls among the weeds at the edge of the property. It stops and looks up at me with yellow eyes. For a few seconds, I don’t move, and neither does the cat—we stare at each other, daring the other to look away first.
I turn my eyes from the cat, back to the overgrown field and crumbling abandoned house. The wind skirls around me, whipping my hair, as a crackle of thunder sounds in the distance along with the whine of a siren.
It will rain again.
I WISH MY GIRLS WERE with me tonight. I’m restless and uneasy. I drink a glass of wine and travel from the kitchen to the deck. I stand at the edge of the steps and stare out at the skeleton of my shed. Like the houses on the construction lot, it’s still just a frame. I sniff the air for the smell of cigarettes, but the wind is crisp, cold, and damp. Steel is not on his patio tonight.
Wandering back inside, I linger at the sink, pour myself another glass of wine, stare across at Steel’s dark window. He’s still not home. At any rate, he was a dick this morning. If he never contacts me again, I should be glad. I do not want to become one of those women that tolerates grabby, moody men. Gunnar was moody enough. And I’ve counseled too many women who overlook offenses from men who get just a little too physical. A grab here, a slap there. Then there are the women who pretend they don’t see the infidelities—they look away, make excuses, become dependent.
I check out front for Steel’s truck. His driveway is empty.
Actually, he should apologize. Then I might be tempted to forgive him. No, I should end this now before things get out of hand.
Around eleven-thirty, I turn off the television and check the driveway. His truck is still gone.
Sleep-deprived and emotionally exhausted, I recline on the living room couch and watch reruns of Gilmore Girls.
Even as I feel myself dropping off to sleep, I’m aware of the onset of a vivid dream in which I’m walking across the construction site’s muddy ground. I step over a puddle and continue to trudge forward, my feet sinking as the wet earth seeps around my shoes. A wreath of flowers sits against the fence—the kind I sometimes see at the side of the road when someone has died in that particular spot. At the base of it, a hand shovel sticks out of the mud. I squat down, take the shovel. I’m supposed to dig.
I push the shovel further into the dirt, scoop out a mound, throw it to the side. A second thrust produces a thud. I’ve hit something. Scoop, dump, and repeat. I clear the earth until I can insert my fingers on either side of the object. I tug one end and then the other, inching the heavy chest out of the earth. With cold fingers, I thumb open the rusty latches. Black silk lays over the top. I plunge my hand under the fabric and pull out a clear plastic bag with a zippered top. Inside, tissue paper is folded around the contents.
As I unwrap it, the objects separate—a teabag tucked into an unmarked paper sachet, a pale blue ribbon.
“Claire!” The frantic voice calls from inside the chest.
“Where are you?” I pull back one black sheet, and then another, and then another. When I reach the last one, several worms wriggle over the shiny cloth. Sickened, I grasp the edge of the fabric and rip it away.
Underneath, Whitney’s pale face glows with a death sheen, her eyes closed. Then, like a jack-in-the-box, her eyes pop open.
“Boo,” she whispers. “You found me.”
A beeping sound wakes me, and I push up on my elbows, my skin crawling from the disturbing image. The steamer trunk. Why do I keep seeing that chest? Like the one at the foot of Steel’s bed.
What is inside that trunk?
I fumble for my phone and press the button. 3:16.
The beeping intensifies, blaring in stereo as I tip myself off the couch. An alarm? Probably one of the girls’ clocks. I plod up the stairs, but when I reach the top, I can’t determine where the sound is coming from. I enter the room shared by Gretchen and Annalen, the closest one, and locate the alarm clock with its wide face announcing the time in blue digital numbers. I snatch it off the nightstand and click the button. It stops beeping, but somewhere, another alarm is still squawking.
Making my way into Bridget and Paris’s room, I search for the source of the noise. Why did the girls set the alarm for three in the morning? They’ve never done anything like this before. As soon as I switch off their alarm, the one in the older girls’ room goes off again. Exasperated, I stomp into their bedroom and repeat the process, but this time I make sure the clock is off and unplugged.
As I set the clock back on the table, I hear the sparkly tone of my cellphone’s alarm singing a floor below. My skin prickles and I jump when the unplugged clock beside me goes off again in tandem with the alarm in the next room. “What is going on?”
But inside, I know. This cannot be a mechanical glitch.
“Stop it!” I bend at the waist and throw my hands over my ears. “Shut up!”
Darting from the room, I start down the stairs toward my cellphone. As soon as I reach the bottom of the steps, all the sounds stop. The house settles into painful silence.
On shaking legs, I continue into the living room, collapse on the couch, and rest my head in my hands.
The knees of my sweatpants are wet, caked with black and green earth. Instinctively, I brush wildly at the mud and moss, all the while my memory ticks back to the night Annalen’s pajamas were in the same condition.
I raise my hands. My fingers are no better than my sweatpants, streaked with dirt, the fingernails encrusted with soil. I’ve been sleepwalking. Where have I been?
As my mind attempts to catch up, my eyes anchor to something black sitting on the fireplace mantel. Paris’s stuffed cat perches there, glaring down at me, its plastic eyes glinting, its front paws anchoring its position.
The horror of the moment paralyzes me, and I sit, frozen, staring.
The cat stares back, unblinking.
How is this possible? I threw the cat in the garbage. Paris even asked about it.
The cat slides to the left as though a string pulls it.
Shock blows through me, and I let out a yell, jumping up from the couch and stumbling backward until my hands slap the foyer wall. With one last glance at the cat’s profile, I bolt for the door, rip it open, and rush down the front steps, the cold air chilling my skin through the lig
htweight material of my sweats. Then I stand in front of my house, clutching my arms around myself.
“No spirits in this house, my ass. You were wrong, Sylvia!” I shout. “There is something here!”
Seconds tick by, and I crank my head left, then right. I can’t stay out here all night. It’s cold. It’s not even four o’clock in the morning, and I have to go back inside to get ready for work in a few hours.
Steel’s truck is in the driveway again, and I glance between my open front door and his bedroom window. Light beams out, blinking like a beacon.
On the other end of the street, something is moving. I squint into the dark. Agnes Frankenson strides up the middle of the road. She passes by and doesn’t seem to see me.
“Agnes?” I call to her back. “Is everything okay?”
She turns, looks at me, and smiles before continuing. “Just out for an evening stroll.” Then she drifts up the sidewalk and back into her own house.
Slowly, I force my gaze to my wide-open front door. Clasping my hands together, I move up the brick steps and re-enter the house, immediately zeroing in on the fireplace mantel. The stuffed cat is gone.
The front door slams shut behind me, sending a blast of wind and shockwaves through my limbs. I jerk into action, nearly taking flight in an effort to reach the back door. It’s already open.
A shrieking sound pierces the silence—the house’s security system alarm. I jog the length of the foyer and throw all of my weight against the door, forcing it shut and switching the lock. Then I rush to the keypad and type in the code to stop the alarm’s squall. The sound ends, quickly followed by my phone ringing.
My mind feels like it’s cracking wide open as I answer. “Hello?”
“Jackson Security Systems. Do you have an emergency?”
“No—yes,” I stutter. “I’m not sure.” I make a complete physical revolution. “I think everything’s fine.”
Everything is far from fine. I could ask the police to come, but now I know they won’t find anything. There’s nothing any security system or police can do to help. I can’t keep denying it. Something paranormal is happening in this house.
The Neighbor: A terrifying tale of supernatural suspense Page 15