The Sinner. Amanda Stevens

orchard were impenetrable. I scanned the tree line once, twice, at least three times before I noticed a slight movement. When the outline of a crouching form took shape, my heart leaped to my throat and I reached for the hook on the screen door to make certain that I’d latched it.

      Even in the dark, I recognized her at once, and for a moment, I could have sworn she was the ten-year-old Annalee from Lucien Kendrick’s story.

      I started to call out to her and then thought better of it. She stared up at the house, but I didn’t think she’d seen me. I wasn’t even sure she was cognizant of her whereabouts. Whatever caused her to hunker in the shadows was something from her past. Something that only she could see.

      She watched the house for a moment longer and then rose tentatively as she glanced over her shoulder. Still half crouching, she backed deeper into the shadows and disappeared into the trees.

      I wondered if I should follow her, make sure she was all right, but the memory of that sly smile stopped me. I went back inside the stifling house, calling softly for Angus to come. With the doors and windows closed, the musty odor seemed stronger tonight and I detected a cloying under note that turned my stomach.

      Walking slowly through the darkened rooms, I opened closet doors and peered into murky corners. I didn’t know what I expected to find. I doubted that Annalee had actually been inside the house. Somehow, I must have picked up on her nearness in my sleep and manifested her face in a waking dream. Still, the very fact that she had come creeping around the property so late at night bothered me.

      The moldy odor was stronger in the front bedroom. The windows were closed here, too, and the closet was empty. There was nothing under the bed or behind the headboard. Nothing lurked in the corners. No one had been in that room since I’d moved out all my things earlier, but I sensed a presence as strongly as I’d felt Devlin’s in my sleep.

      “Show yourself,” I whispered.

      I heard something then that reminded me of a mewling kitten. The sound was so soft and distant I couldn’t be sure I’d heard anything at all. I held myself perfectly still, listening to the silence of that bedroom. The house didn’t creak and moan as would be expected in such an old structure. To the contrary, the quiet seemed uncanny.

      I’d had some experience with an entity that could scurry and scrabble through walls, but I didn’t think the sound had come from inside the house. Rather, the tinny, echoing quality made me think of a well or a tomb. Something deep underground. Something buried alive.

      My heart pounded as I turned to the doorway where Angus hovered. He wouldn’t come inside the room and his reluctance, even more than the sound, sent a warning thrill down my spine. I might have succumbed to my earlier curiosity and thrown back the rug to search for bloodstains, but my cell phone rang just then and I left the room in relief to hurry down the hallway to answer.

      A phone call in the middle of the night was never a good omen, but since I didn’t recognize the number, I expected it was just a misdial.

      “Hello?”

      Silence.

      “Hello?” I said, a trifle impatiently.

      Nothing. Not even so much as a hitched breath. But someone was there. Someone who knew that I was in the house alone.