Page 24 of Willowbrooke
Leo waved a hand to dismiss the thought, telling me not to worry about him without saying it aloud. “I’m sorry aboutthe noise—a bowl fell out of the cabinet, and then I slipped on the tile—and then you—scared the shit out of me.” He sighed as he began to pick up the broken pretzel fragments from the ground, placing them back into the bowl.
“I was awake before I heard you…” I admitted.
Leo looked up from where he was crouched in the middle of the kitchen. “Are you alright?” He seemed to sense that something was amiss.
“I saw someone outside—a woman, walking across the lawn…to the cliff.” I had debated whether I should say the last bit, but if I had seen a real person, they might be injured or in danger.
Leaving half the pretzels on the ground, Leo set the bowl on the counter and said, “Show me,” as he motioned for me to lead the way.
I crossed the living room and pulled back the drawn curtain covering the glass door that led to the back patio and lawn. There was no one within sight. “I swear I didn’t imagine it.”
Leo didn’t reply, but gently nudged past me to unlock and open the door, letting in a gust of freezing air in the process.
Instinctively, my arms wrapped around my chest to brace myself from the cold. I stayed inside, but watched Leo tread across the stone patio to the edge of the grass, where he abruptly stopped.
“Come back inside; it’s too cold out,” I called to him ina half whisper.
“C’mere.” He beckoned me outside.
I grimaced as I stepped over the threshold; my socks immediately felt soggy as I crossed the damp patio toward Leo. When I made it next to him, he pointed a few yards away, where I could see marks in the dewy grass.
“What is that?” I squinted in the barely-there moonlight.
“Footsteps,” Leo said.
I blanched.
I knew I had seen the woman from my bedroom window, but I think there was a part of me that assumed I had been seeing things.
“Go get your coat and some shoes,” Leo instructed.
Making haste, I did as I was told and met Leo back downstairs, where he had also swapped his slippers for a pair of worn sneakers and a large black wool peacoat. He handed me a heavy-duty flashlight, matching the one he held in his own hands. The cold metal of the flashlight bit into my fingers.
Following alongside the set of footprints, we slowly made our way across the lawn. The depressions in the grass ended right at the cliffside, which perturbed both of us.
“Stay here,” Leo said before walking right up to the edge, gently crouching down, and lying flat on his stomach in the dirt to peek over the edge of the cliff. Surely his light wouldn’t penetrate all the way down to the coast, but there might have been just enough moonlight to see if there was someone atthe bottom.
Leo shook his head before delicately extricating himself from the ground, brushing off the dirt from his coat. “Nothing,” he said.
Placing a gentle hand on the small of my back, Leo escorted me into the house, where he took one last wary glance across the lawn before locking the door and drawing the curtains closed once more.
“I told you Willowbrooke is haunted,” I stated half-joking, half-serious.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Leo shook his head.
“Then what do you think it was?” I asked, mildly upset that he still didn’t believe me. Either way, there was evidence that something was going on, supernatural or not.
“Maybe it was from Carl…” Leo speculated, needing a logical explanation. “He was here today. Maybe the grass where he walked made the dew appear differently…” We both knew he was grasping at straws.
I wanted to say, “But why did the footprints go to the edge and disappear?” or “What about the woman?” Instead, I quietly muttered, “Maybe…” to appease him. Joking about the house being haunted was one thing, but the reality of it felt too distressing to dwell on.
An uncomfortable silence fell between us.
Leo broke first. “The woman you saw…” he said quietly, “what did she look like?”
“She was barefoot, wearing a sleeveless white nightgownthat went to her ankles. She was short—not much taller than me, slight frame, with long dark hair—the moonlight reflected off her, and her hair moved in the wind…” I remembered as I spoke, tugging at my mind for other small details, but none materialized. “I swear she was real.”
Leo pursed his lips, maybe he had been hoping I’d be more descriptive, or that hearing what I’d seen would make him suddenly realize what was actually going on.
