“Get away from my daughter,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. It was lower, colder, and deadlier than anything I had ever uttered in my entire life.
Evan sighed softly, sliding off
the edge of the twin mattress and standing up to his full height. He loomed over the room, casting a long, skeletal shadow across the pink polka-dot wallpaper.
“You don’t understand what’s happening here, Carrie,” he murmured, taking a slow step toward the door where I stood blocking his exit. “She knows things. She’s connected to the house. Every time she sleepwalks, she walks right to the exact spot where Sarah used to play. She’s trying to tell us something. I’m just helping her remember.”
“You are terrorizing a seven-year-old child,” I hissed, my hand sliding into the pocket of my robe, gripping my heavy smartphone like a brick. “You lied to me about who you are. You lied about why you’re here. You’re done, Evan. You’re packing your bags right now, or I swear to God, I will call the police and tell them everything the camera
captured tonight.”
Evan stopped walking. He stood about three feet away from me in the dark hallway, the smell of rain and cold sweat hanging in the air between us.
For a terrifying second, I thought he was going to lunge. His shoulders tensed, his jaw clenching so hard the muscles jumped beneath his skin. The soft, sympathetic shadow in his hazel eyes completely vanished, replaced by the cold, hollow gaze of a fanatic who had nothing left to lose.
Then, slowly, a thin, chilling smile spread across his lips.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily, Carrie,” he whispered, stepping past me into the dark hallway without touching me, his shoulder brushing against mine with the weight of a ghost. “Because once you see what’s buried under the floorboards of this house… you’re going to want the answers just as badly as I
do.”He walked down the stairs, his footsteps heavy and deliberate, leaving me standing alone in the dark corridor outside my daughter’s room.
Act VII: Epilogue — The House on Maple Street
Evan left that night. He packed his duffel bag in thirty seconds, grabbed his truck keys from the kitchen counter, and drove out into the Portland rain without looking back. I watched his rusted Ford pickup tail-light fade around the corner through the living room window, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.I didn’t call the police immediately. Not yet.
Instead, I went back upstairs, picked up Emma from her bed—she was sleeping peacefully now, her breathing slow and deep, completely free of the tremors that had plagued her for months—and carried her into my own room, tucking her safely beside me under the heavy down duvet.
Then, I sat back
up, opened the app on my phone, and downloaded every single video file the hidden camera had captured over the past week.
I plugged my laptop into the kitchen counter at dawn. I watched the footage of Evan pacing, whispering, and holding the antique key against my daughter’s hand over and over again, until every detail was burned into the back of my eyelids.
When the sun finally broke through the grey Portland clouds at 7:00 AM, I didn’t call my ex-husband, and I didn’t call a moving company.
I picked up the heavy iron skeleton key that Evan had left on Emma’s dresser. I walked down the basement stairs, past the breaker box and the old wooden shelves, straight to the far corner where the foundation met the damp earth.
I knelt down on the concrete floor, took a rusted iron crowbar from my
toolbox, and wedged it firmly beneath the rotting floorboards.My hands weren’t shaking anymore.If Evan thought he was the only one who was going to find out what happened in this house, he was sorely mistaken. Whatever secrets were buried beneath our feet, whatever ghosts were rattling the walls of my daughter’s mind—I was going to dig them up myself.And God help anyone who stood in my way.