Long Lost, стр. 46
But who would also never tell.
Fiona flipped to the next page.
But this time, there wasn’t one. She had reached the back cover. This was the end of the story.
Fiona sagged back against the door.
Evelyn Chisholm had drowned.
Her little sister, Margaret, was the only one who knew the truth—and, because she blamed herself, she had kept it hidden all this time.
Something strong and ugly writhed through Fiona’s heart.
She didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want Margaret to be at fault. Evelyn had brought the trouble on herself, hadn’t she? Playing tricks, using the Searcher to terrify her younger sister. She had chosen to take that dangerous shortcut. Fiona pictured her crossing that slippery log, the river rushing beneath, one foot starting to slide . . . and suddenly the girl in her mind didn’t look like Evelyn Chisholm at all. She had a sleek black ponytail and graceful posture, and when she plunged into the water, Fiona sucked in a breath so hard it made her own ribs ache.
Maybe . . .
Maybe what was haunting this place wasn’t the Searcher, or an unfinished story. Maybe it was guilt.
Memories of an untied skate lace and a hidden medal and a trashed bedroom flickered through the back of Fiona’s mind.
Maybe Margaret could still repair things somehow. Maybe if she faced the truth, that could be enough. Maybe she just needed someone—someone who truly understood—to help her move forward.
Shoving The Lost One into her backpack, Fiona wobbled to her feet. She peered through the creaking door into the darkness.
The second-floor walkway was empty. Fiona brushed the flashlight beam back and forth, making sure. No one else was in sight. The house’s soft hums and groans were the only sounds. But patches of thick darkness were everywhere, around every corner, lurking in every doorway. Anything could be hiding in it, watching and waiting for her.
No, Fiona reminded herself. There was no Searcher. Whatever she had seen in the doorway was some mixture of Margaret’s guilt and imagination and memory. Maybe a bit of Fiona’s own guilt was tangled up in it too.
She just needed to find Margaret. And she couldn’t let an old story, true or not, get in her way.
Fiona crept into the corridor.
Where would Margaret have gone? Fiona was hesitating, still trying to guess, when from somewhere below there came the whine of a dog.
Fiona hurried to the grand staircase. The portrait of Margaret Chisholm, with its frozen smile and strange eyes, watched her scurry down the steps.
She crept across the reading room. Every tiny sound and shifting shadow made her heart stutter. Another, louder whine cut through the dark, and Fiona almost squeaked with surprise—until she realized it had come from a floorboard under her own foot.
She slunk toward the circulation desk. There were no more sounds to follow now, but as she turned to the left, Fiona sensed something else—a faint, cool, swirling breeze. The kind of breeze that comes through an open door.
She followed it into the STAFF ONLY hallway.
Her flashlight gleamed over the wood-paneled walls. The office at the end of the hall was shut. But the door to the former kitchen stood wide open.
Fiona aimed her flashlight through the doorway. Its beam struck packed storage shelves, old counters, scuffed wooden floors. Another cold whirl of air swept past. And carried on it, from somewhere not too far away, was the sound of a sob.
Fiona scurried across the kitchen, winding through the shelves until she came face-to-face with a gaping black hole.
An open door.
A door to the basement.
Fiona could think of at least ten thousand things she would rather have done than wander around in the basement of this particular house.
But as she stood there, poking weakly at the darkness with her little flashlight, there came another sob. Clearer now. Closer.
Before any fears could stop her, Fiona flew down the creaking staircase.
The basement had the clammy coldness of wet laundry, or of mossy river stones. By the beam of her flashlight, Fiona could make out a cavernous, twisting chamber that bent around corners and through passageways. She spotted mounds of broken old furniture, piles of empty crates, crusty cans of paint. The rafters hung with cobwebs as thick as wool.
A stifled sob floated toward her.
“Margaret?” Fiona called. “Where are you?”
There was a moment of quiet.
Then, very softly, a voice answered.
“Here.”
As soft as it was, the voice had an echo, as though the cold stone walls all around were answering too.
Fiona inched closer. Her flashlight cut a wavering path through the dark. And there, looming in the darkest corner, was a huge stone box.
A SARCOPHAGUS! shouted a voice in Fiona’s mind.
But that was ridiculous. There wouldn’t be an ancient burial vault in the basement of an old New England house. Besides, this box was even larger than a sarcophagus, with walls that were nearly eight feet high.
“Margaret?” Fiona whispered. “Are you in there?”
“I’m here,” said the small, sad voice. “In the empty cistern.”
Cistern. A big tank for storing water, Fiona remembered. That made more sense. “Why are you in there?”
“It seemed like the safest place,” the voice whispered. “Evelyn always said that if we hid inside, no one would ever look for us in here. But I was always afraid to do it.” There was a sniffle. “Now that doesn’t matter.”
“Margaret.” Fiona stepped to the cistern’s side. Its stone was rough and damp, unpleasant against her palm. “I read the rest of your story. About how you and Evelyn fought. How she took the shortcut across the river and fell in. All of it.”
There was another moment of quiet.
“Then you know it was all my fault,” said Margaret’s voice at last.
“But it wasn’t,” Fiona argued. “It was Evelyn’s choice to cross where she knew it wasn’t safe. What happened was just an accident.”
“That wasn’t all,” Margaret’s voice came back. There was a cold brittleness to it now, an icy layer covering its words.