Chapter 35
And Then There Were Two
Brooke
“Brooke! Did you hear that?”
She’d heard it, all right. She’d been pretending to sleep, fake-snoring in the hopes of getting Maryanne to chill and go back to sleep. But she’d heard a definite thump/crash, from directly above them in the attic. Could still hear it echoing in her mind.
Maryanne was already standing in the center of the room. “Come on! Let’s go.”
Brooke threw off the covers and sat up. “Before the rest of the household gets there, you mean?”
“Oh, crap! Yes! If anyone’s still awake, they probably heard it too. Let’s go.”
“Give me some light, will ya?”
Maryanne obliged by hitting the switch on her lamp. Brooke located a pair of sweats and pulled them on to cover her bare legs. Then both of the girls raced from the room.
If anyone else had heard the commotion, they hadn’t come to investigate. At least not yet. The hall was empty. They found the door to the attic unlocked. No surprise there. Alex would have done that on her way up. They pulled the door shut behind them and started creeping up the stairs.
“Alex?” Maryanne called softly. “Alex, are you okay up there?”
“She probably just had a hard landing,” Brooke said.
“Probably,” Maryanne allowed. “But why is it dark up there?”
Good question. Brooke shrugged before she realized the gesture was lost in the darkness. “How should I know? Maybe her candle burned out.”
“Wait—” Maryanne’s arm shot out and grabbed Brooke. “Was that a noise?”
Brooke froze. She’d heard something too, but she wasn’t entirely sure it came from the attic. “Yeah, I heard it,” she said, “but it almost sounded more like it was on our level, maybe lower.”
“Man, I hope no one comes. We don’t need to be caught up here.”
Maryanne was the first to top the stairs and enter the attic. She went straight to the window, presumably to see if Alex’s body lay there.
Pulling a Bic lighter from the pocket of her sweats, Brooke flicked it on and went straight to the table to light the candles. Except there were no candles on the tabletop. Could they have fallen off? Was that the thump/crash they’d heard from their bedroom?
“Nothing over here,” Maryanne said in a loud stage whisper from the window. “If she went out, she’s come back again.”
“And I can’t find the candles over here,” Brooke said. She lowered her arm to scan the floor for them. She yelped and swore.
Maryanne raced over. “What? What is it?”
Brooke lowered her lighter and pointed, unable to speak with the way her heart was pounding. Shit! She was hyperventilating!
Maryanne rounded the table to see Alex’s still body lying half beneath it.
“Alex!” she cried, dropping to her knees. “Alex, are you all right? Can you hear me?” When Alex made no reply, Maryanne seized her wrist and felt for a pulse.
Brooke’s wet lips gone suddenly dry as the Sahara. “Is she... is she alive?”
“She has a pulse, but I don’t know... it seems kind of... slow. Crap, I think it’s too slow. We’d better get help.”
Brooke’s heart rate had started to level out a little, and her thinking process cleared. “Wait. First let’s make sure she didn’t just faint. She must have cast back in and hit the table. Pain can make you faint. And maybe when you faint, your pulse slows down.”
“We’ll need better light, then,” Maryanne said. “There’s a penlight in my headboard bookcase.”
Brooke glanced around, spying one of the three candles which had rolled several feet away. “How about a candle instead?”
“That’ll do.”
Brooke dove for the candle. It took two tries with her shaking hands to light it. Maryanne took it from her with equally shaky hands and bent over Alex. Brooke’s heart sank at Maryanne’s sob.
“Her head! Brooke, I think she cracked her skull on that table leg!”
Brooke knelt close to Alex’s head. “Oh, man, that’s a lot of blood,” she said. “We definitely need to wake Betts and get some help up here. Although I don’t know how we’re going to explain how she hit her head on the leg of a frigging pedestal table. That’s pretty hard to do unless you’re sliding on the floor with some speed.”
Brooke started to get up, but Maryanne barked an order. “Wait!”
Brooke froze. “What?”
“Her shoulder... it looks like she might be hurt there too, from the blood on her nightshirt.”
Brooke bent close again, tugging the material away. Yes, there was a wound there. How in hell had she managed that? The table leg couldn’t have done it, nor would a falling candle. It looked more like a—
“Shit!” Brooke leapt up. “It’s a bite mark. It’s a human bite mark!”
“No way!” Maryanne took the candle from Brooke and bent down to examine Alex’s now exposed shoulder. “Oh, God, it is a bite mark. Which means her head injuries aren’t accidental.”
Brooke barely heard Maryanne’s words. She was too busy scanning the attic’s shadows. “He could still be up here,” Brooke croaked, her heart hammering painfully again. “Oh, God, the noise we heard! We have to get out of here!”
“What about Alex? We can’t leave her.”
“We can’t move her, either. She has a frickin’ head injury. Maybe a bad one.”
“You go fetch Betts,” Maryanne said firmly, but the elevated pitch of her voice gave away her fear. “I’ll stay here with Alex.”
Brooke’s eyes searched the shadows again. He could be hiding here still. He could be in that damned wardrobe! “No way am I leaving you here.”
“C’mon, Brooke, one of us has to go. Alex needs help!”
“Oh, I’ll get help,” Brooke said. “I’m just not leaving you here.”
Brooke went to stand at the top of the stairs, where she started stomping on the floor and screaming for Mrs. Betts.