Chapter 6 - The Confession in the Attic
"We cannot stay in this house another night," Clara insisted, her voice shaking uncontrollably as she paced the length of the kitchen island, her arms tightly crossed over her dark burgundy cardigan. "Mark, look at what was left on the porch. That toy is identical down to the missing button on the left ear. This is not a coincidence."
"I know it's not a coincidence," Mark said, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter with his face buried in his hands. "My father left a second journal at the bottom of the trunk. I didn't want to read it in the basement, but I brought it up with me."
"What does it say?" Clara demanded, stopping her pacing to stare at the worn leather-bound book resting on the table between them. "Does it explain why someone is out there playing these sick games with our daughter?"
"It explains everything," Mark murmured, slowly opening the cover to reveal his father's cramped, erratic handwriting. "He didn't just abandon the girl in the fire, Clara. He trapped her there because she saw what he did to her parents. The fire wasn't an accident. It was arson to cover up a financial embezzlement that ruined half the families on this lake."
"My God," Clara breathed, her hand flying to cover her mouth as tears finally spilled over her lower lashes. "And he built our home on top of their graves? Every single day we have lived here, we have been walking over a mass grave?"
"Worse than that," Mark said, his eyes locking onto hers with a look of pure, paralyzing horror. "The journal says the girl never made it out of the nursery. Her body was never recovered because my father poured concrete over the floorboards before the investigators arrived."
"Then who is standing in that window across the water?" Clara whispered, her voice dropping to an agonized wail as a sudden, frantic scratching sound began to echo from the ceiling directly above the kitchen.
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Both of them froze, their eyes slowly lifting toward the small, wooden pull-down ladder that led directly into the dark, uncharted space of the attic.
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