Chapter 11 - The Attic Journal
David slammed the vintage suitcase shut, his hands shaking as he carried it back inside the house and kicked the front door closed with his heel. He dropped the luggage onto the living room rug, breathing heavily as Sarah helped Lily out of her damp jacket.
"An invitation to what?" David demanded, his voice echoing in the quiet room. "To what, Sarah? What does a dead child want with our daughter?"
"She isn't trying to hurt us," Lily piped up from the sofa, her voice eerily calm as she stroked the ears of her stuffed bunny. "She told me she's just waiting for her family to come home. She said the water got too deep and she couldn't find the door."
Sarah knelt down in front of Lily, taking her small hands in her own. "Lily, honey, did you talk to her? Did she say anything else to you?"
"She said my room used to be her room," Lily answered simply, tilting her head. "Before they built this house over the old foundation. She said she left her diary in the wall behind the chimney in the attic."
David exchanged a terrified glance with his wife. Without a word, he turned and jogged back toward the stairs, climbing up to the dark attic for the second time that night.
He didn't bother with the flashlight this time; he used his phone's screen light, even though the battery indicator flickered a desperate one percent. He marched straight to the brick chimney in the far corner where the old rocking chair had moved earlier.
Reaching behind the loose wooden paneling near the base of the brickwork, his fingers scraped against something rectangular and heavy. He pulled it out—a black leather-bound diary with the initials C.M. embossed in gold leaf on the cover.
The phone screen flickered violently and died, plunging the attic into absolute darkness.
David froze, holding the diary tightly against his chest in the pitch black. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the attic windows, casting a brilliant, eerie white light across the space.
Standing right in front of him, blocking the stairs, was the pale figure of the young girl from across the water. She wore the damp teal sweater, held a white stuffed bunny, and stared at him with hollow, pleading eyes.
"Please," a whisper echoed through the empty attic air, soft as falling rain. "Take me home."
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David scrambled backward, dropping the diary as he tripped over a storage box, tumbling down the attic stairs in a chaotic blur of limbs and crashing wood.
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