Page 23 of Willowbrooke
It wasn’t even until meeting Mina in college that I’d realized how abnormal my treatment had been, and I had slowly started trying to wake from the haze I had been drifting through my entire adolescence.
Sloan and I had never been close. She was always so quiet, obedient, and bookish. We had nothing in common. If I called her that exact moment, I wouldn’t have even known what to talk to her about.
But Margot wasn’t wrong.
I’d grown up with Sloan, but I didn’t know a single thing about her as an adult, other than her profession and place of work. Granted, she hadn’t tried to connect with me either, but maybe she’d gone through a similarly traumatizing experience growing up, which had kept her so compliant. I resolved to reach out and give her the benefit of the doubt. The worst-case scenario was that things stayed as icy as they currently were, and I was fine with that arrangement as well.
Had Leo seen a fellow tortured soul in me the day of the interview? Had he asked me to take the project sight unseen because he’d seen himself in me? Both our parents had pushed us away and shaped us into perfect little humans filled with self-hatred and crippling doubt.
Could we overcome our fate?
Or were we doomed to succumb to self-fulfilling prophecies?
I had been staying at Willowbrooke for just under a week when more odd occurrences began to happen.
At first it was just little things, like my door being left open when I was sure that I had closed it, or the curtainsbeing drawn when I knew for certain I had pulled them open that morning. But then it escalated when I continued to be awakened in the middle of the night by a singular thump, at exactly 2:13 a.m., coming from the crawl space above the pink room.
I was hesitant to mention any of it to Leo because he had been somewhat dismissive of my earlier claims of a potential haunting. Even I had to admit to myself that I sounded a bit neurotic about the whole ordeal, but part of me wished he had given my concerns more validation.
While I didn’tnotbelieve in the supernatural, I was definitely skeptical in most circumstances. But in this case, where I was the one experiencing numerous things and was starting to feel a bit unraveled, it was easier to consider a paranormal source, when the alternative was me losing my mind.
It was the fourth night in a row that I had been awoken by the thump, at the exact same time as the previous three nights, that I sat up in bed, fearful and unable to get back to sleep. I could feel anxiety rising in me; my stomach was in knots.
Seeing a sliver of moonlight streaming through a crack in the curtains, I drowsily made my way over to the window to peek outside at the lawn below. The sight that met me sent me stumbling backward, tripping into the bed.
Walking across the lawn was a woman in a white nightgown, long dark hair flowing down her back. Her feetwere bare. She had to have been freezing, as the temperature was well into the 30s at that time of night—or rather, early morning.
The woman’s steps were slow and methodical as she crossed diagonally through the lawn toward the cliff. And when I thought of the cliff, it dawned on me that although I couldn’t see her face, she looked familiar.
Shortly after arriving back at Willowbrooke, Margot had stolen me one afternoon to show me a family album in the library. We had spent over an hour together as she’d prattled on over adorable baby photos of Leo with his parents. The woman below reminded me of someone I had seen in those faded photographs taken decades ago. She had an identical figure and hair to Leo’s mother, Christine.
I went back over to the window, and the figure was gone. But she’d already been so close to the cliff when I’d seen her. She could have jumped. If I really was seeing a specter repeat her last moments, or if it was a real person, maybe a neighbor sleepwalking, she could have found cover in the tree line, which offered little visibility past the first stand of willow trees, even in the late fall, with their lack of leaves—the branches were too thick and too many, with the trees clustered so close together.
I was debating on what to do, feeling my heart pounding in my chest, when a clatter from downstairs sent me absolutely over the edge. Had the woman made it inside the house? I had no idea how heavy or light of a sleeper Leo was; wouldhe have heard the noise? He’d never mentioned the thumps, but they were coming from two floors above him, so even if he was a light sleeper, the chances of him hearing them were slim.
The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach had spread to every part of me, making my fingers and toes feel numb, save for the thrumming of my rapid heartbeat.
Something was very wrong—I was scared. But I felt a sudden and overwhelming need to find Leo. I couldn’t stand to be alone in the dark any longer.
So, very slowly and as quietly as I could muster, I made my way down the main staircase to the ground floor, hoping that whatever, or whoever, had made the noise was already gone, or wouldn’t hear me approach.
I realized halfway down the stairs, when I saw a dim light from the kitchen, that I hadn’t thought through a plan at all. Was I going to confront the intruder or try to sneak past to find Leo in his room?
After another few steps, I froze when I saw a figure illuminated by the kitchen light, behind the translucent plastic sheeting that Danny had put up to make sure dust and dirt particles from the construction wouldn’t contaminate the rest of the house. Again, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, so loudly that I wondered if the intruder could hear it as well.
Another clatter caused me to stumble backwards on the stairs, shocked by the noise. Followed by the figure cursing atthe noise he had caused. And upon hearing the voice behind the plastic curtain, I realized it wasn’t an intruder; it was Leo.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm whatever was left of my nerves, and made my way over to the sheeting, pulling it back to approach Leo. The crinkling of the plastic must have shocked him because he dropped his bowl again, scattering pretzels across the newly installed tile flooring.
Leo spun around, a gasp hanging from his lips and his hand over his heart. “Jesus, Pen, you scared the shit out of me.” He gulped.
I paused, taking Leo in for a brief moment. He was wearing charcoal gray sweatpants, a white crew neck shirt, and slippers. I realized I’d never seen him out of his regular uniform of well-tailored slacks and crisp button-up shirts, always complete with a pair of shiny lace-up shoes. He was handsome and put together no matter what he wore, it would seem.
“Well, you scared me first,” I accused him. “What are you doing up in the middle of the night?” I realized I had no right asking him what he did in his own house, but the sentiment arrived too late for me to retract the question.
“I—” He paused, weighing if he should tell me the truth or only part of it. “I have insomnia,” he admitted.
“Oh.” I winced. “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say, but it felt right in the moment.
