Willowcreek; Within The Roots

Part Twenty ─ A Foreshadowing

Leaving the bookstore, Evie couldn't shake the feeling of being exiled once again, only this time felt worse. Lochlain had been so welcoming, so nice, on that first day when he'd invited her and her brother in. But now, he knew who they were and of course, after the trauma he must have endured on that property, he didn't want anything to do with it...or them.

Evie stayed quiet on the ride back to the house, her phone in her hand as she looked at text messages exchanged between herself and Seph. A new text popped up in the notification bar from a number she didn't recognize.

It read, 'Seph gave me your number, call me if you want to know more'.

She didn't have to guess who this text was from. Theo.

The signal cut out before she had a chance to reply but she saved the number under a fake name. From then on, Theo would be saved in her phone as 'Willowfreak'.

That night, Evie had a nightmare unlike anything she'd had before. The setting was the manor, not her bedroom but somewhere else. If Evie had to make a guess, it was the floor she wasn't allowed to go to. She didn't recognize any of the decor, she didn't recognize the faces in the portraits on the walls, and she didn't recognize the voice weaving through the hallways.

Tentatively touching the wall, the deep green damask wallpaper peeling beneath her fingers, Evie felt a warmth coming from within the walls, and something...thrumming from behind them. Like a faint heartbeat. Willowcreek had felt alive those first few nights she'd slept there, but it was worse in her nightmare. It wasn't just a feeling, it was a fact.

The house was alive.

The voice began to sing a song that forced Evie to stop moving. The song was the same one that she'd heard being whistled in the maze, the song that her grandpa had sang to her as a little girl. But it was a woman singing, not a man and not a voice she knew.

Briefly, Evie had thought perhaps she'd stumbled upon Mrs. Garroway, and really, she was on the ground floor just outside of the kitchen. But that thought was dashed when the singing stopped.

"Don't loiter in the hallways, Evelyn," a thick Irish accented voice echoed through the hall, beckoning her toward the room. She stepped closer, unsure of who she'd see in the room. But they knew her name. They knew she was there. This person, this woman, wanted her to know that she knew that.

The room that the voice came from had its door wide open, gas lamps dull but lighting the space with an eerie glow, making the room appear to be cast in a sepia filter. The woman the voice accompanied had her back to the door while she stared out of the window at the vast blackness of the estate at night.

She was dressed in a nightgown that was long enough to touch the ground. It was old, however, and had moth bitten holes in various places on the material. It resembled satin, something that she could imagine would be worn on someone's wedding night, in a lush cream color that made the black of her hair so much darker. She was dressed expensively. She must have been someone who was worth a lot of money.

However, she was standing in a room that had no furniture except for a wooden bed frame that was missing the slats and its headboard. The walls had peeling wallpaper and a large hole on one of the walls that looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. In the middle of the floor, as Evie briefly glanced down, she saw a large ornate floral rug that was sunken in, a hole eaten away by the same moths that had eaten holes in that woman's nightgown. There was very obviously a gaping hole beneath it where the floorboards had given way underneath someone's weight. She wouldn't be surprised if she looked down and saw the room beneath them.

"This room used to be beautiful," the woman mused, still as stone, not even a single curl of her ebony hair moving. She had thick cascading curls, unlike Alice, and immediately, Evie knew that this wasn't the poor girl she'd met before. So who was she? "It was my parents room. My mother liked extravagant things, my father liked to give her what she wanted. Are all parents like that? What about yours?" asked the woman, her head moving barely a touch. But that touch showed a glimpse of her face, a hollowed out cheek, a nose that came to a point, and an eye that was rimmed with long lashes, thick and as black as her hair.

She was so pale, like Alice had been, but while Alice had multiple bruises and cuts on her skin, this woman had none. She also didn't have that same blue tinge to her complexion that had been a key signifier that Alice was dead.

Evie knew this woman was dead, however, because there was something protruding from her left shoulder blade that bore the strongest resemblance to the pointed tip of a knife. Blood had stained the cream satin of her nightgown, like a sadistic rose blooming against the untouched fabric. It had dripped down her side, stopping above her waist, but it was clear she'd bled out from the wound.

"Yes," she answered the woman's question, but her voice sounded so foreign to her ears. She sounded like someone playing a recording of her voice.

The woman let out a soft, eerie laugh that sounded more alive than it should have. But it was like music to her ears, it sounded like her mother's laugh, and it made her miss her so badly, her chest hurt.

"I thought as much," sighed the woman, turning once again to the window. Evie hadn't stepped in the room, she was too afraid of what would happen if she did. The woman seemed harmless enough but she wasn't going to risk it. After all, so had Junebug. Even as a child, she'd been able to really hurt Evie. She looked older, almost the same age as her, perhaps older than Evie. There was no doubt in her mind that if she wanted to, she could do worse than anything little Junebug had done.

"Who are you?" Evie asked, holding the door frame as she leaned closer into the room, but refusing to step in. Suddenly, she was afraid someone was going to come up the hallway and push her in. Anxiety began to swell in her chest as she peered over her shoulder, but the hallway was too dark to see the end. She wouldn't see the person coming until they were right in front of her.

"I am you."

Evie's head snapped around as the woman answered, gasping when she was met face to face with her icy blue eyes that bore right through to her soul.

"He is going to kill you. You will not be able to stop him," the woman hissed, but her words lacked any maliciousness. It was a warning, it was a foreshadowing of what was to come. "He doesn't want anyone to know what he did."

Evie's heart hammered in her chest, fear choking her, the woman's words reverberating in her ears and bringing her to a sickening conclusion. She sounded nothing like Evie, but looked just like her. So much like her that the girl could have been staring into a mirror. But she looked just like Alice. Just as Evie had looked just like her.

"Who?" Evie asked, but she didn't get an answer. The woman's hands sprung up to her chest, snatching the handle of the knife that had been plunged into her flesh, before turning it on Evie. She screamed as she tried to back away, as she tried to spare herself. But she had nowhere to go as the woman pushed her back to the wall in the hallway and drove the knife straight through her.

A scream ripped through the entire manor as Evie gripped at her chest. Her hands didn't come down on a knife, nothing was there. She pulled her hands away and stared at them, sure that her palms would be coated in crimson blood. But nothing.

The stirring voices that came rushing to Evie's side were muted, barely there as she cried and mumbled the woman's words of warning. "He's going to kill me, just like he killed them. He's going to kill me."