Page 72 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

I’m losing my mind.

The stress of my mother’s condition and my financial situation and my grandfather’s will and even the recent death of my cat, and then coming here, reawakening all the feelings I’ve suppressed about this place. Could that be the impetus for a mental breakdown?

If I can prove that there was a man in here—despite the door seeming latched—then that will also prove I’m not having a breakdown. Of course, that’s bullshit logic, but I cling to it. Just prove this one impossible thing that I saw actually is possible and—

My light hits something in the corner. The same corner where Gail found the hatchet and bloodied gloves. Those are gone—and I haven’t seen them since—but now there’s something else in their place. A pile of clothing.

I grab a rake and poke at the pile. It’s soaking wet. There are denim shorts and a tank top and—

This is my clothing.

It’s what I wore the day before yesterday.

I lift the shorts on the end of the rake. They’re whole, no signs of damage, but they’re drenched, as if they’d been dropped into a bucket of water and balled up here with my shirt.

Why are my shorts and tank out here? And why are they wet?

I lift the shorts higher. Something is caught on them. I shine my light to see a lake weed tangled in the belt loops, and my breath catches.

I wore this clothing the day before last. I was wearing it the night Gail died.

The night she left marks on the sand, as if dragged into the water.

I drop the rake, and it thumps to the dirt floor as I back away.

I hear Gail again, in this shed, showing me the hatchet and bloodied gloves, telling me she believed I’d cut up the fox. Everything inme had been horrified by the thought. How could she think I had done that?

But now here, in the same place, is my wet clothing, after Gail has disappeared, after it seems she was dragged into the lake.

No, afterIthought she was dragged in. That’s how I interpreted the marks in the sand. No one else saw them and thought that same thing. That was me. All me.

My mind goes back to that night. To hiding in my room, pretending to sleep, not wanting to go out and face my aunt after our fight.

When had I taken off my clothing?

I don’t remember.

Oh God, I don’t remember.

Twenty-One

The morning I discovered my aunt missing, hearing the slap of the cottage front door, I’d gone running out in my nightshirt. I don’t remember putting it on. I don’t remember taking off my shorts and tank top.

Was Gail right?

Did I cut up that rabbit? That fox? Did I stage those horrible tableaus?

Did I kill my aunt?

I race from the shed, my chest ready to explode. I can’t draw breath, but I keep running, branches scraping my face, feet moving of their own accord. When I finally see where I am, I stop short.

My old tree fort. A simple platform of wood nestled in three forks of an old oak, with steps nailed into the trunk.

Time shivers, and I’m twelve, staring up at that platform, at the dismembered squirrel pieces hanging from it. My gorge rises, and I turn away, whimpering as I clutch my stomach.

Then I see him.

Austin Vandergriff. Standing there, smirking at me.