Chapter 6: Eleven Years

I didn't want to lie to her.

Four-year-olds can always tell.

"I can't stay forever, baby," I said. "I have to go home on day one hundred."

Mouse's eye disappeared behind her hair.

"But I'll be here every single one of those days," I said. "That's a promise."

She didn't answer.

On the wall, one rose at a time, the petals folded shut.

By the door, Ambrose got up without a sound and left.

The next evening I found him in the ballroom.

It was night three, and I'd learned the house by ear.

The kitchen clanged. The stairs creaked on the seventh step. The ballroom played piano.

Nobody else ever went near it. The music scared them.

It was a long, dark room with mirrors along one wall and a fire at the far end.

He was sitting at a black grand piano, head propped on the music stand, playing something slow.

He stopped when I came in.

"Don't stop," I said.

"You should be in the nursery."

"It's ten. I've got two hours." I sat down on the end of the bench. "Play the thing again."

He played the thing again.

His hands were long and very sure. His head watched them from the music stand.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. I've been working on it for eleven years."

"You wrote it?"

"There's very little else to do."

The fire popped. I pulled my knees up onto the bench.

"Tell me how you got here," I said. "Rule three of my terms. The truth."

He played four more bars. Then he took his hands off the keys.

"October 2015," he said. "I found a black card in my mailbox in Pittsburgh. I thought it was an ad for a haunted hayride."

"Same."

"There were twelve of us. The house took one a night for the first week. By night forty there were six left."

He didn't look at me. He looked at the fire.

"There was a little girl who followed me around. Nobody else could see her. She liked when I played."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Accidentally Pregnant with the Horror Boss from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.