Chapter 2 - THE WALL BEHIND THE SNEAKERS
The silence in the attic was heavier than the suffocating dust swirling in the beam of Grayson’s dropped flashlight. I stared at those tiny pink sneakers, the ones with the glittery laces Sophie had proudly tied herself the morning she vanished. They sat perfectly parallel, toes pointing toward the back wall of the attic, nestled against the fading floral wallpaper that had been peeling since our grandfather died.
"She was here," I said, my voice barely a rasp. My throat felt like it was lined with shattered glass. For three weeks, I had screamed myself hoarse into the woods. I had begged the local police to search the house again. I had clawed at my own face in frustration when the town’s sympathetic glances turned into whispers about my mental health. Harper is losing it. Harper has always been emotionally unstable. Harper needs medication.
But I wasn't crazy. I had heard the muffled, high-pitched weeping echoing through the heating vents at two in the morning. I had known, with the marrow-deep instinct only a big sister possesses, that Sophie had not run away into the dark, terrifying woods of Blackwater Lake.
Grayson fell to his knees, the wood groaning beneath his weight. He was a nineteen-year-old college athlete, broad-shouldered and usually brimming with an arrogant, easy confidence. Right now, he looked like a terrified child. He reached out a trembling hand toward the sneakers but stopped an inch away, as if touching them would make the nightmare real.
"Eleanor," Grayson said, his voice dropping an octave, thick with a sudden, dangerous realization. He didn't turn around. He just stared at the shoes. "Why are her shoes up here?"
At the top of the narrow, creaking staircase, our stepmother stood paralyzed. Eleanor had always been a woman of immaculate composure. She wore cashmere sweaters in the middle of summer and spoke in a low, controlled hum that made everyone else in the room feel inadequate. But right now, the polished mask was slipping. The harsh, erratic flashes of lightning from the storm outside illuminated her face, casting long, skeletal shadows across her high cheekbones. Her knuckles were stark white where she gripped the wooden banister.
"Grayson, Harper, step away from there," Eleanor commanded. Her voice wavered. It was a microscopic tremor, but in the fifteen years I had known her, I had never heard her voice shake. "The police already searched the attic. Sophie probably left those up here months ago while playing hide and seek. You’re contaminating a potential crime scene."
"Don't lie to me!" I screamed, the raw sound tearing through the dusty air. I spun around to face her, my chest heaving, the pent-up rage of twenty-one days of gaslighting exploding out of me. "The police didn't search this side of the attic because you told them the floorboards were rotted! You told Sheriff Miller it was a safety hazard! You stood right there and swore no one had been up here in years!"
Eleanor took a step back, her eyes darting toward the open attic door, calculating. "Harper, your emotions are getting the better of you again. We need to go downstairs and call Dr. Evans. You're having an episode—"
"Shut up, Eleanor." Grayson’s voice was lethal. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the room like a physical blade. He slowly picked up the flashlight, the beam sweeping across the floral wallpaper directly behind Sophie’s sneakers.
"Grayson, don't," Eleanor warned, taking a frantic step forward. "This house is old. The structure is unsafe."
Grayson ignored her. He leaned close to the wall, brushing away a thick layer of cobwebs. "Harper, look at this."
I rushed to his side, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Where the wallpaper met the baseboard, there was a distinct, straight seam. It wasn't a solid wall. It was a panel. And smeared along the bottom edge of the panel, barely visible beneath the dust, were tiny, dark smudges.
Fingerprints.
Small fingerprints pulling at the edge of the wood.
"Help me," Grayson muttered, digging his fingers into the seam. I wedged my hands beside his. The wood was old, warped by the lake's humidity, but it gave way with a sickening crack. We pulled together, the sound of tearing wallpaper echoing like a gunshot over the thunder outside.
The panel popped loose, falling backward into a pitch-black void.
A rush of cold, stale air hit my face, carrying a scent that made my stomach violently churn. It smelled of damp earth, old copper, and the unmistakable, sweet scent of the strawberry lip balm Sophie applied obsessively.
Grayson aimed the flashlight into the darkness. It wasn't just a hollow wall. It was a narrow, claustrophobic crawlspace, lined with exposed insulation and grandfather’s old electrical wiring.
"Sophie!" Grayson shouted into the hole, his voice cracking with desperation. "Sophie, are you in there?!"
Only the howling wind answered us. But as the flashlight beam settled on the floor of the crawlspace, my knees finally gave out. I collapsed onto the dusty floorboards, a guttural sob ripping from my throat.
Sitting in the center of the cramped space was Marshmallow. The stuffed white rabbit was filthy, one of its button eyes hanging by a thread, covered in dust and something dark and dried. Surrounding the rabbit were a dozen empty water bottles and a stack of Sophie's coloring pages.
She hadn't just been up here. She had been living up here. Hiding.
And then, my eyes caught something else in the beam of light. Scratched into the wooden stud of the wall, carved frantically with what looked like a colored pencil, was a single word repeated over and over again in Sophie's messy eight-year-old handwriting.
MONSTER. MONSTER. MONSTER.
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I turned my head, looking back at the staircase. Eleanor was no longer standing there. The attic door was slamming shut, the heavy, metallic slide of the exterior deadbolt echoing with a terrifying finality.
We were locked in.
