Page 13

The door had been left unlocked after we fled, but it didn't look like anyone had gone inside; this neighbourhood seemed like the kind where everyone just minded their own business. Or maybe it was some inkling in the forgotten primitive parts of the neighbours' minds that warned them to stay away, warned them that evil had touched down here.

The inside was exactly as we left it: the splinters of the dining room chairs scattered across the entrance hall, the table itself laying split in two, angled and still balancing precariously on the remains of the seats.

The only evidence of a human presence was the unsettling trail of blood—our blood—that traced a path out of the house; larger pools had collected in the spot where we had lingered as we faced off against the Beast.

We stood side by side in the wake of evil and admired the chaos that had been left behind.

It was like a museum, this foreign and unfamiliar room, frozen in time.

My stomach clenched as it really hit me that I had actually been here when it had all gone down, or even that only a couple of weeks had passed.

It seemed like a far off distant memory, a past life, or a dream.

Looking over my shoulder, I glanced at Polly, who hobbled in behind me.

Her expression was cautious, but there was no trace of fear.

She was good under pressure, and I could guess why.

After dealing with her sister's degenerating mental health—or what she thought was her sister's degenerating mental health—she must've gotten good at just dealing with anything that was thrown at her.

I wished I had that skill. I had gotten much braver, but I still quaked in the face of all this.

"Where was her room?" I asked, finally speaking, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

"Which one?" Polly asked quietly. Her voice sounded hollow and distant as she took the scene in.

I furrowed my brow in confusion.

"She had two," she clarified. "You were staying in one of them."

Two rooms? I thought back to the room I had spent two nights in, and it suddenly made sense. The room that had been equipped like a hospital, with the bars on the window and the furniture bolted to the floor. It was where she had kept her hysterical sister.

I shivered when a thought snuck into my mind; had she died in that room?

"Well, whichever room has her personal effects," I said, pushing the grim image from my mind.

Polly nodded towards the stairs, knowing that was the obvious choice. She staggered towards them, her cast making rhythmic thuds as she walked. I ran forward and took her arm to help; being here seemed to weaken her fiery resolve.

Off the upper floor's landing was a wide and sweeping hall. Several doors were placed evenly along the walls with pictures and paintings hanging in between. Though my gaze was once again drawn to the paintings of Polly and her sister, there was no time to stare. Polly had already focused on a particular door and was heading towards it—the one on the very end of the left-wing.

Its door creaked as Polly threw it open.

I stiffened, expecting something out of a horror movie, but the room itself was just as unassuming as the house's exterior. It showed no signs that it had been scarred by a dark presence. The bed was made and everything remained in a natural place. It almost seemed like it was waiting for her, like we could expect Polly's sister to return home at any moment.

There was something eerie about the perfect way that Polly had kept her sister's room; it had become a shrine.

My heart twinged, guilt creeping in; she wouldn't have had to pick apart her sister's room if it hadn't been for me. Now all the care she had taken to preserve the room was about to be destroyed. Polly's jaw tensed, and I could see the conflict raging in her eyes.

.

.

but she walked to the bedside table nearest to us and dug right in.

I watched in silence as she shifted through the contents of the drawer, using her hand to stir the knick-knacks around.

She paused and looked up at me lingering in the door.

"Are you just going to stand there?" Her full mouth was drawn into a smile, but there was no playful glint in her eyes.

The strain of this, being in here, was plain.

Old wounds had reopened.

.

.

especially now after she had learned the truth of her sister's passing.

I wanted to tell her that I truly appreciated her sacrifice, but all I managed was a simple, "No."

"Then get to it," Polly said and went back to the drawer.

I made my way over to the other side of the bed and sat on the edge of it, dropping my bag onto the floor. I pulled out the drawer on my side and began to sift through the contents. A cloud of grime rose in the air as I disturbed the thick layer of dust that had settled on everything.

"Polly, when did your sister..." I stopped, struggling to find the kindest word.

"Die?" Polly replied, her tone cold.

"Yeah..."

"Just over three years ago."

Three years.

Three years, and still, it deeply affected Polly.

I paused to consider it.

I had never really experienced death.

I could barely understand what it would be like to lose someone like that.

The closest I had come to experiencing loss was my breakup with Rick, and even then that was tainted with anger and betrayal.

It wasn't the complete and overwhelming sadness of a sister dying. I couldn't imagine the cavernous gap that would leave in your heart, but I came close when I thought of Polly dying, risking her life for mine.

My hand ran over a picture frame that had been placed face down in the drawer, on top of everything else. My fingers drew lines in the dust as I pulled it out.

It was a simple frame, a flat border of black metal containing a photo of Luc and Polly's sister. It took me a moment to recognize them, as the photo looked just like the kind of generic stock image that was placed in empty frames in stores; a beautiful, almost impossibly happy couple smiling radiantly at the camera. Luc, even in a flat, faded picture, was gorgeous. But I realized how much he had aged in the years since. Back then, he had been pure perfection, cheery and youthful, but now... I thought of his sharp green eyes and remembered the tiredness, the sadness. What had worn him away so fast? Was that the effect of evil, scarring everything it touched?

But back then, Polly's sister had suited him. The similarities between Polly and her sister were evident, but there was a pure refinement in Lillian's face that Polly didn't have. Not to say that Polly wasn't pretty—she was perfectly attractive—but her sister was stunning in a way that made me jealous even now.

Her wavy strawberry-blonde hair, the same as it was in the childhood portrait that hung over the stairs, was long and lush, and she had big blue eyes shadowed beneath full lashes.

I undid the fastening on the back and pulled out the picture, hoping to find a caption or note on the back.

There was one, scrawled quickly in red ink, simply: Luc and Lillian, 2012.

I realized then that I knew nothing of her except the most basic information.

Something stung inside me when I began to truly understand that she had been a real person, who lived and loved and enjoyed things just as I did, someone who had her entire life taken away from her in a matter of months.

They looked so happy in that picture, so in love.

What could've changed that? Could he really have taken her life?

"I took that picture," Polly said from over my shoulder, making me jump. She took it from my hand and examined it. "This was just a few months before he broke up with her."

I gulped, my last thought lingering in my mind. What could have changed that in such a short time?

"Find anything?" I asked, intentionally changing the subject.

Polly shook her head. She came and sat next to me, helping me sift through the rest of the items in the drawer. Other than the picture, we found no other trace of Luc.

The same went for everything else.

We spent hours foraging for other remnants of Luc in Lillian's room, meticulously searching through her possessions. At first, it seemed she got rid of everything aside from the picture, which was what we had feared; that Lillian had thrown out anything that could remind her of Luc after their breakup. I had done the exact same thing, so I couldn't exactly criticize, but right then I couldn't help but curse her for it. And the further we got into her room—drawers pulled out and their contents scattered—the more panicked I became. A spell was worthless if we couldn't get the ingredients to actually do it.

When it seemed we had gone through every single compartment in Lillian's room, we stopped for a break. Surrounded by a mess of scattered items, we raked our eyes over it as we stood in the chaos. We hadn't found anything.

I moaned and crumpled to the floor, defeated, but Polly's face was still twisted in concentration.

"Something's not right..." she whispered to herself.

"What's not right?" I retorted.

Polly ignored me and sprang into action.

She dropped to her knees and crawled back to the drawers.

She began tapping and patting the sides, mumbling to herself.

Her shoulders slumped when that failed to produce anything.

.

.

But she perked up again when she gave up on the dresser and began running her hands over the walls and feeling inside the closet.

"What are you doing? I've already searched that," I snapped.

"You didn't know her..." Polly said, her voice calm and focused. "You didn't know what to look for."

"And what's that?" I sighed, exasperated.

"Her private stuff."

"I was looking for that."

"Yes, but you didn't know what exactly to look for. She was my sister. I know her habits; you don't. She had a diary—she always had a diary, since we were young. But it's not here. We didn't find it, did we?" Polly said, stopping for a moment to look at me.

"I couldn't find a single thing of my sister's private things. If she was intent on keeping them hidden, they wouldn't be in an obvious place."

That made sense. If I kept a journal, I wouldn't exactly leave it out for all to read, but I still didn't understand what that had to do with feeling up the walls. "What are you trying to do?"

"Looking for a secret compartment or something."

"Would your sister really go that far to hide her journal?"

"She was a very private person. She was always one to keep a few secrets, to cover things up. She loved to make up wild stories to hide the truth, ever since she was a kid. That's one of the reasons I didn't believe her about the..." Polly's voice trailed off for a moment before she shook her head and continued. "Anyway, I wouldn't put it past her to do something over the top like keep a secret compartment."

Polly pulled herself out of the closet and headed towards the bed. As she approached the edge, she suddenly threw herself down to the floor, searching under the bed skirt.

"I've already looked under there," I mentioned again, remembering the emptiness. Where could there possibly be a secret compartment?

"But you weren't looking for what I'm looking for..." Polly reminded me. "Aha!"

"What is it?" I asked, stunned.

There was a heavy clunk followed by some wooden thuds. I circled around the bed to see what Polly was doing and found her halfway under, her legs twitching as she wrestled with whatever she had found. There was a sudden crack, a final thunk, and Polly cried out, victorious.

"I found something..." Polly said as she wriggled out from under the bed, dragging a box behind her.

"That's obvious," I joked and offered her my hand to help her up. My mood bounced back as my hope rose again. Polly smiled in return, her face brightening.

It wasn't a big box, larger than a shoebox and slightly smaller than a file box. Like everything else in this room, it was covered in a film of dust, a layer noticeably thicker than the rest; it hadn't been disturbed in a while.

As soon as we pulled off the lid, it was obvious we hit the jackpot. Pictures of the once-couple carpeted the bottom of the box, topped with an array of different items: what looked like two red diaries, a velvet pouch, pressed flowers, and various other curios.

My entire body tingled, buzzed with the electricity of hope that this was what we were looking for. This box was the only chance to find some physical remnant of Lillian's relationship with Luc, some part of him that we could use in this spell.

Polly stood, dumping the contents onto the bed without care.

My mouth fell open—these were her sister's secrets. Polly sudden callousness was unsettling. The items tumbled and bounced, and she ran her hands over them, spreading them out further, frantically digging through the heap. Plucking an item from the pile, she examined it closely... then scoffed, tossed it onto the floor, and started the process all over again. As I watched her, I realized that beneath Polly's cool exterior, she was just as panicked as I was.

I sidled up next to her and began searching through the items as well.

Realizing I wouldn't be able to tell any significance in the smaller items, I picked up the diaries. I flipped through the pages—catching flashes of phrases, words, and Luc's name—trying to find any items that might be tucked in between.

I even took the books by their binding and gave them a good shake, hoping something might fall loose, but nothing had been slipped inside.

As I was about to put the books down, I paused.

Though the books contained no physical relic of their relationship, it might provide some insight.

I debated for a single moment—was this an invasion of privacy?

—before I dropped the books into my bag that was lying at my feet.

Polly, still absorbed in her search, didn't notice.

Returning to the task, I looked for my next target.

My eyes found the velvet pouch, and I wrapped its pull strings around my fingers and picked it up off the bed.

The strange little item jerked my hand slightly as I lifted it; it was heavier than I expected, its contents crinkling and clacking as it moved.

I fumbled with the knot and pulled at the opening, then tipped the items into my open palm.

The contents only made the package stranger.

Leaves, stones, a vial of something dark, a tiny scroll of paper and—my breath caught in my throat when I recognized the last item.

It was a lock of hair.

.

.

familiar black wavy hair.

??