Page 144 of Bound By Fury

The second-floor landing is lit yellow with a stained-glass pendant that swings when I walk, my shadow dancing against the wall like a poltergeist. I’m halfway to the bathroom when I realize the sound hadn’t come from the first floor after all.

The door to Gigi’s room is wide open.

I tiptoe to the threshold and stick my head in. It still smells like her. Vanilla and lavender and mint. Everything is exactly as I left it. Once I got back home from the hospital, near midnight on my birthday, I made the bed with clean sheets. I dusted her side table and tucked a new pair of house shoes into the corner, ready for when she came home.

Except she never did.

Padding across the thick, beige rug, I flip on the bedside light. My whole body trembles as I pull back the covers and crawl between the sheets.

I lie there in silence until sleep overwhelms me, the horrors of my mind devouring me bit by bit.

I don’t drift awake, I am yanked from sleep and thrust into an acute awareness.

There’s a knocking from below.

A steady thump-thump-thump that shakes the foundation of the house. I trudge, bleary eyed, down the stairs, one foot still in the nightmare, sweat beading my forehead despite the frigid wind outside. I know I’ve already checked every entry point, and I’ve fallen victim to paranoia once before, but that doesn’t stop my pulse from racing in the base of my throat.

The pounding only increases the closer I get to the sound. When I pass the mirror above the record player in the hallway, I startle and turn, peering into the depths of the dark living room. I swear I saw something moving back there. I call my magic to my fingers.

When I look through the French doors to the back porch, there’s nothing there, and the sound pulls me toward the kitchen. I do a double take at my reflection in the side door. There it is again, that blur behind me. I step closer, wiping my eyes, trying to make the image clearer.

And… yep, there she is… the woman from the woods.

Psychic-medium, Maureen had written beside my star sign.

Well, so far I haven’t been able to predict a single thing, and it seems like the only ghost that wants to communicate with me from the other side hates my guts.

This time her bones are covered in flesh and blood. But her face is twisted into a scowl. Seeing her like this, so close to human, I feel something needling at the back of my mind. Where do I know her from?

“What the hell do you want?” I grumble, though when I turn around, she’s gone.

On the other side of the island, the patterned runner jumps in time with the thumping sound. I push aside the barstool and kick up the corner of the rug.

A crack in the floorboards outlining a door just big enough for me to fit through. I hook my finger into the nickel-sized hole and hold my breath as I pull.

The void in the bottom of the house is pitch black and damp like the greenhouse in late April. It exudes the same cloying scent of rot and decay as the school. Shining my phone light into its depths, I realize it’s the old, unfinished basement. I saw Gigi climb down there so infrequently that I nearly forgot it existed at all. A cool breeze wafts from the opening, and I eye the vertical rungs like a ladder against one side.

“No fucking way,” I whisper. “Absolutely not.”

I move to close the door, but the hinges don’t budge. “What the—” Confused, I glance up. The ghost is there again, her foot lifted, putting counterpressure against the wooden square. Her eyebrows are lowered stubbornly. She has gray-streaked, densely coiled hair and a dimple in her chin. The rest of the details are lost to the fact that I can see right through her.

“Okay…” Clearly she wants me to go down there. But am I really going to trust a ghost after what happened in the maze?

“This is the last time I’m listening to one of you,” I mutter, rolling my eyes when she points down the hole.

I drop in, legs first, and descend the ladder, my teeth chattering almost immediately. Once I hit the bottom, I step out and marvel at the expanse of the room.

Sweeping my light across the dark, I find laid-stone walls and shelves and shelves of canned goods and old boxes full of junk.

Next to a stack of wooden planks leaning against the wall is a light switch. I flip it, but nothing happens.

Cautiously I inch my way farther into the room, marveling at some of the vintage toys piled in half-rotted cardboard boxes. I’m thumbing through a stack of old magazines when another thump rings out behind me.

“Holy shit!” I yelp, turning around and fully expecting the woman to be standing there.

She isn’t, of course.

“You have got to stop scaring me like that!” I say to the air before my eyes catch on the box that has fallen from its shelf. A beam of light reflects off something spilling out of it.