Possessed Soul

Chapter 39

Chapter 39

The last time I had seen Sage's house was at night. Now, in the light of day, I could fully appreciate the storybook feel of it. It was easy to imagine Sage living here: it just seemed like the kind of place someone like her would live. The house was small and cosy, the perfect size for Sage and her mother.

I wondered if she knew who her father was. She'd never mentioned him, which led me to believe that he was just a ghost: not significant enough for her to worry about, but not translucent enough for him to disappear completely. I wondered if he had red hair like Sage. Where else could she have inherited it from?

"Are you coming?" Holden asked, walking up to the door and twisting the circular doorknob. Unsurprisingly, the door swung open to reveal the inside of the house. We stepped into what looked like the remnants of a World War 2 bombing. The windows were all shattered and piles of glass littered the wooden floor. The furniture was overturned, and the stuffing was pulled out of the couches. There was a broken vase on the floor, with shrivelled up roses resting around it; their final resting spot.

"Look." Holden pointed to a spot of red on the floor.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed, when I realised it was blood. The blood was dry, but it still retained its rich crimson colour and its coppery odour. There were a few more drops of blood that led to the door, and then they suddenly stopped; but the horror still continued. There were claw marks on the wall, like someone had been pulled out of here against their will and had grabbed onto the wall with their last dying hope.

"Do you think the FBI were the ones that did this?" I asked Holden. This made the most sense, since they had tried to find Sage. "And do you think they killed Sage's mother?"

He shook his head, but didn't relax his tense face muscles. "I think they dragged her out of here alive," he said, touching the marks on the beige wall.

"Maybe we should look upstairs," Holden suggested.

"Sage is not going to be huddled up in her bedroom, waiting for her mother to come back."

"Well, we might as well check." Holden said with an annoyed expression.

"You go," I told him. "She's more likely to come out of hiding if she sees you instead of me." I tried to tag on a little humour at the end of that sentence, but the humour died before the words left my mouth.

Holden shrugged and began walking up the stairs. The stairs made an irritating creaking sound every time he put his foot down. I let out a relieved breath when he reached the top of the stairs; and waited for the creaking to start again, signalling he was on his way down. I waited a couple of seconds, but nothing happened. Either Holden's footsteps had become quieter, or he had found something upstairs that required his attention.

"Holden," I called up the stairs. No reply. I sighed and gripped the banister, as I trudged up the stairs.

I stopped at Sage's bedroom, the door was open. Maybe open wasn't the right word: the door was barely hanging onto the frame, the hinges were loose and squeaked uneasily when it swung to and fro. Her clothes were spread over her bed in a haphazard manner, implying that someone had raided her closet. I entered the room and looked around, trying to find something of hers that the FBI hadn't touched, but I was unsuccessful. Even her pillows had been pulled out of their pillowcases.

I bent down and picked a book up from the floor. It had been turned upside down to form a mountain shape and the cover was horribly bent. I tried to smooth it as best I could. The pages of the novel were turning yellow with age and the spine was covered in creases. I smiled, knowing this was a book she picked up often. "Little Women," I read, before thumbing through the heavily annotated book. Sage's tiny scripture lined the margin of each page. "I'm keeping this," I said to myself. "It's nice to have a piece of her to hold on to." I clutched the book to my chest, feeling like a school child who was too afraid to show his parents his report card.

"Look what I found." Holden startled me, as his voice drifted into the silent space. He handed me a picture of a woman who looked exactly like Sage. The picture was crumpled and there was a footprint on it, but the eye and hair colour were the same as Sage's. She was a bit older than Sage, but it still looked like they could be sisters.

"Is this her mother?" Holden enquired, with a slight tilt of his head.

"No, it isn't," I replied, sliding the photo into the middle of the novel and tucking it under my arm. On my way out I grabbed one of her hoodies off her bed, for no other reason than it smelt like her.