Page 42 of She Haunts Me Still

Mallory fidgets with her sleeves. “Do you work here? At this school?”

The man in black smiles. “I built this school.”

She frowns, not sure what he means. “Shore is almost a hundred years old—”

“Do you know what I like most about this building?” the man interjects, adjusting his cane. “It’s full of secrets.”

She falters. “W-what?”

His shoes make a clacking sound as he draws closer. “Years of confessions, of whispered prayer. Things people only spoke within these walls.” He stops just in front of her. “I like to think that the walls remember. That every time we pray, we breathe in someone else’s sins.”

Mallory’s palms are suddenly clammy, her body frozen.

A foul, decaying smell pervades her nostrils as he leans down to murmur in her ear. “Do you have terrible secrets, too?”

She shakes her head, fast. The walls seem to groan as the man touches her messy hair with a gloved hand, rolling the uneven ends between his fingers.

“What’s your worst one?” he whispers.

She shakes her head again. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Ah,” the man clucks. “That’s because your worst secret is yet to come.”

Mallory’s breath catches as he moves even closer.

“Such a pretty thing you are,” he says, and this time, his voice is different. Low, rattling. Right in her ear. “A pretty,youngthing. I bet you’d taste sweet before you burn.”

That sound. Thatgrowl. It’s the same pitch she heard in psychology class, the same hissing voice that whisperedslutin the greenroom. She should run. She should—

The man’s gloved fingers ghost over her throat, her collarbone, and Mallory squeezes her eyes shut, paralyzed with fear. She doesn’t have to look to know his face has changed somehow, that his pale eyes have faded to an opaque sable,that no whites remain at all. That his mouth is diseased with sharpened yellow teeth, threatening to bite.

“Please,” she whispers, “stop.”

Those fingers smooth lower, trailing to the space between her breasts. “Your time is almost up.”

Mallory’s lips tremble. “No.”

“It’s time,” he purrs, hand tightening, “to take out your heart.”

“Stop!”

Her eyes pop open.

The man in black is standing several feet away. Hands resting gently on his cane. No monstrous features, no hungry mouth.

She blinks, breaths coming in rapid gulps.

“Sorry.” She pushes a trembling hand through her hair. “I don’t—”

“That’s quite alright, miss.” He tips his hat with a confused smile. “I’ll leave you to your prayer.”

“Wait.” Mallory pauses, scrambling to sort out what’s real. “Did you really build it? This school?”

The man fixes her with a strange stare. “It is second on a list of great accomplishments.”

“What do you—”

“Good day, miss.”