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***
When my digital clock on my nightstand turned 10:30 PM, I opened my door. The silence that greeted me felt like sandpaper against my skin.
Fern was light on her feet behind me.
“We’ll stay together,” I whispered. “I don’t think splitting up when you don’t know the house is a good idea.”
Fern nodded. We started down the hallway, walking into each guest room and looking under beds and in closets.
When I pushed open Jenny’s door, my heart slammed into my chest. I’d loved Jenny growing up. She’d worked for us for so long. Seeing her bed and room empty of all of her belongings made me sad.
The only thing left in the room was a book perched on the side of her nightstand. It was some sort of herbal book about protection spells. I skimmed through it and put it in my back pocket.
Jenny had never been into those types of things, but after the last time we spoke, I wasn’t sure I knew her as much as I thought.
When we finished the second floor we tiptoed to the first one. There were only a couple of rooms there other than my parents’.
Fern placed her palm on my forearm. “What if it’s in your mother’s room?”
I glanced at their shut door. “We’ll search it when they go to their weekly lunch at Renaldo’s tomorrow,” I whispered.
Both of the guest rooms were empty. Not even a golden thread.
Sliding my tongue over my teeth, I took my cell phone from my back pocket and turned on the flashlight. “We need to check the basement.”
Fern looked confused.
“A room down there,” I said, pointing toward the kitchen broom closet.
Fern frowned. “What’s down there?”
“Storage,” I whispered. Tiptoeing over, I opened the door inside the closet.
The staircase was pitch dark. A string for the light switch swung at the end. It was a scary movie coming to life.
Fern grabbed my upper arm, keeping close as we crept down the stairs and toward the string.
With shaky hands, I pulled the string, and a dim light brightened the room. It was full of my parents' old washer and dryer, storage for holiday decorations, and boxes of my mother’s crafts.
Fern looked at the concrete floor and ceiling high windows.
“This is spooky,” she whispered.
I nodded. “I’ve been down here twice because of my mother. Once, she found me curled into a corner, crying because there was a spider between me and the stairs, and the other time I tripped over an extension cord. She stopped asking me to come down years ago.”
Fern looked around. “I don’t see anything.”
I walked underneath the stairs and found nothing but an ancient mousetrap and spider webs. Scratching my head, I looked around the room. I wasn’t an expert, but I didn’t think that a spindle could fit into any of my mother’s storage containers.
“There's only one more place in the house that we can look.”
She pointed upward.
I nodded. “The attic. I can’t imagine anyone going up and down it freely. Someone would know they were doing it.”
“Could two people know about it?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I would hope not, but yes, they could. If it’s two, I suspect my parents. But why would they need a spindle? How would they know to steal it?”
