Chapter 3 - The Ghost Of The Past
Dust billowed into the sunlit living room, smelling of damp earth, rusted iron, and forgotten decades. Mark coughed, waving his hand in front of his face as he scrambled to his feet. Sarah shielded Lily with her own body, pressing the trembling child against the hallway wall.
"Get out of our house!" Mark yelled, grabbing the heavy wooden coffee table and sliding it over the expanding breach in the floor.
"You can't bury the truth under a coffee table, Mark," the voice rasped, sounding stronger now, closer to the surface.
A face slowly rose from the splintered gap. It was gaunt, framed by matted gray hair and dirt-streaked skin. Deep-set eyes, startlingly blue like Lily's, locked onto Mark with a chilling intensity. The stranger wore a tattered flannel shirt that looked remarkably like one Mark had donated to charity years ago.
"Who are you?" Mark demanded, his voice cracking. "What do you want from us?"
"I want what was stolen," the man whispered. "I want the life you're living in my house."
Sarah felt the blood drain entirely from her face. She looked at the stranger, really looked at him, despite the grime and the sunken cheeks. The bone structure, the shape of the jaw, the curve of the nose—it was an older, broken mirror image of the man standing across the room.
"Mark," Sarah whispered, her voice barely audible over Lily's sobs. "Who is that man?"
"I don't know," Mark lied, his voice dropping an octave as he refused to meet his wife's eyes.
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"You do know," the stranger smiled, revealing broken yellow teeth. "Tell her about the summer of ninety-eight, little brother."
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