Footsteps on the Stairs

A bottle of chestnut dye to hide a wheat-colored truth. Elena stared at the pale strand of hair snagged in the lavender wool, her flashlight beam trembling. The evidence was a physical scream in the silence of the attic. Diana was a blonde. Always had been. The woman sitting downstairs, laughing at a screen, was a curated lie.

She shoved the scarf and the burner phones back into the "Tax Returns" box, her movements jagged and frantic. She had to get down. She had to be in the nursing chair before the credits rolled on their movie.

*Creak.*

Elena froze. The sound didn't come from the wind or the settling eaves. It was the rhythmic, weighted groan of the pull-down ladder in the hallway below.

Someone was coming up.

She scanned the dark cavern, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. There was nowhere to hide that wasn't a visible pile of plastic or wood. She lunged for the shadow behind a stack of Leo’s outgrown baby gear, clicking off the flashlight just as a rectangle of yellow light cut through the floorboards.

A head appeared. Marcus.

He didn't climb all the way in. He stood on the top rungs of the ladder, his upper body framed by the opening, peering into the darkness. He held a flashlight of his own, the powerful beam sweeping across the rafters, illuminating the dust motes and the edges of the trunks.

"Elena?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her back against a plastic bin. The smell of cedar and old dust was suffocating. She could hear his breathing—steady, patient, the sound of a man who knew exactly what he was looking for.

The beam of light cut across the "Tax Returns" box. It lingered there for a heartbeat too long. Elena bit her tongue to keep from gasping as the light shifted, sweeping toward her corner. It stopped three inches from her foot.

"El, I know you're up here," Marcus said, his voice dropping to that terrifyingly soft register he used when he was most dangerous. "I saw the ladder wasn't seated right. You shouldn't be climbing in your condition. You're exhausted."

The light stayed fixed on the bin. He was waiting for her to break. Waiting for the mouse to scurry.

"The movie is over, Elena," he said, and she heard the metallic *snick* of his flashlight turning off. The attic plunged into absolute, predatory blackness. "Val is making tea. We're waiting for you."

He didn't leave. She could feel his presence at the edge of the hole, a void in the dark.

"Elena? The movie is over. We're waiting for you."