67

Sierra’s POV

The lake house was a skeleton. Big and dark with empty windows like eye sockets. The wind made a moaning sound as it blew through broken glass. I grabbed Louis’s hand. His fingers were cold.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I whispered.

“We have to be,” he whispered back. But he didn’t let go of my hand.

We walked up the creaky steps to the big front door. It was hanging open, like someone left in a hurry a long time ago. Louis pulled a flashlight from his pocket. The beam cut through the dark, showing a big room full of shadows and dust.

Everything was broken. Chairs tipped over. A rug ripped up. It smelled like wet wood and memories.

“This is where we played,” Louis said quietly. His voice echoed. “Over there was the big table for puzzles. The fireplace… we roasted marshmallows.”

I tried to picture it. Little Louis, running around with other rich kids. A quiet boy named Lyle watching from the corner.

We walked through the room. Our feet kicked up dust. It made me want to sneeze.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Anything. Something that says he was here.”

We went into the kitchen. Old cans were on the floor. A rusted sink. Louis’s light moved over the walls. Then it stopped.

On the wall, near the back door, was writing. Not old writing. New. Spray paint. Red, like the paint on our picture.

It said: **MY ROOM WASN’T INSIDE. IT WAS UNDER.**

“Under?” I said. “Under the house?”

Louis didn’t answer. He turned and walked fast back through the house, out the broken door, and down the steps. I followed him.

Around the back of the big house was a smaller, rougher building. Like a shed. Its door was small and low to the ground.

“The old storm cellar,” Louis said. “For hiding during bad weather. Or… for storing stuff.”

The door was padlocked. But the lock was new. Shiny, not rusty like everything else.

Louis looked around and found a big rock. He hit the lock once, twice, three times. It broke with a loud *crack* that made me jump.

He pulled the door open. It was dark inside. And it smelled weird. Like old leaves and something else. Something sweet and bad.

Louis pointed the flashlight down. There were steep, wooden steps going into the ground. “Stay here,” he said.

“No way,” I said. I wasn’t staying alone up here.

We went down the steps. They creaked under our weight. The air got colder.

The cellar was one small room. Dirt floor. Stone walls. And in the middle of the room, under Louis’s shaking flashlight beam, was a bed. A real bed with a dirty mattress and a rumpled blanket.

And the walls… the walls were covered.

Not with spray paint. With pictures. Hundreds of them. Printed out, cut from magazines, taped up everywhere.

Pictures of Louis. From newspapers, from business magazines. Old pictures, young pictures.

Pictures of me. From charity events, from shopping, from just walking down the street. Some were so close up they must have been taken with a big zoom lens.

And pictures of Katie. School pictures, park pictures, eating ice cream pictures.

It was a shrine. A creepy, awful shrine to our family.

In the middle of all the pictures, right over the bed, was one picture bigger than the rest. It was a photo of this house. The lake house. But from a long time ago. In the photo, a bunch of kids were playing on the lawn. I could see a young Louis, laughing. And off to the side, barely in the picture, was a blurry figure of a skinny boy sitting alone under a tree.

“Lyle,” Louis breathed.

I felt like I was going to throw up. This was where he lived. Where he *dreamed*. About us.

Louis’s light moved to a small wooden box sitting on the bed. He picked it up and opened it.

Inside wasn’t a weapon. It was… treasures. A cheap plastic bracelet I lost last year. One of Katie’s hair ribbons. A golf tee of Louis’s. A napkin from a restaurant we ate at. Little pieces of our life, stolen and kept.

At the very bottom of the box was a folded piece of paper. Louis opened it carefully.

It was a letter. Handwritten.

*Dear Louis,*

*You don’t remember me. But I remember you. You had everything. The house, the friends, the future. You gave me a comic book once. You said “Here, kid.” That was the best day of my life.*

*Then you left. You all left. My mom lost her job because your mom thought she stole a spoon. We lost everything.*

*I watched you. All these years. I saw you build your empire. I saw you marry her. She’s so pretty. Like a princess. You have a princess and a castle and a perfect little girl.*

*It should have been mine. Not the castle. The feeling. The feeling of being you. Of having a family that wants you.*

*I tried to take the feeling. But you fight so hard. You love them so much. It makes me hate you. And love you. And hate you more.*

*The game is almost over. I’m tired of watching. Now I want to play inside the house. With my family.*

There was no signature. Just a small drawing at the bottom. A stick figure standing outside a big house. Looking in.

Louis’s hand was shaking so bad the paper rattled. “He’s not trying to hurt us,” he said, his voice hollow. “He’s trying to… to *join* us. To *be* me.”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“It’s crazier than wanting revenge,” Louis said. He looked at the walls of pictures. At our faces, watching him in the dark. “He doesn’t want to destroy my life. He wants to *wear* it.”

A noise came from above us. A soft *creak*.

We both froze. Our eyes met. We hadn’t made that noise.

Someone was upstairs.

Louis shoved the letter in his pocket. He turned off the flashlight. Pure darkness swallowed us. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.

I heard Louis move. Then I felt his arm around me, pulling me close. His lips were right by my ear. “Don’t move,” he breathed, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear.

We stood there in the pitch-black cellar, holding each other. I could feel his heart hammering against my back. I could hear my own blood rushing in my ears.

Another creak from above. Closer. Right at the top of the cellar stairs.

Then a voice. Soft, humming. *Rock-a-bye baby.*

My legs almost gave out. Louis’s arm tightened around me.

A flashlight beam cut through the darkness from the top of the stairs. It swept across the dirt floor, just missing our feet.

The humming stopped.

“Louis?” the voice called. It was a normal voice. A man’s voice. It sounded almost friendly. “Are you down here? I saw your car.”

We didn’t breathe.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come,” the voice said. It was moving. Coming down the steps. One creak at a time. “I left the door unlocked for you. I wanted you to see.”

The beam of light swung wildly as he came down. It hit the wall of pictures, lighting up my own face, smiling in the sun.

He reached the bottom step. In the back-glow of his flashlight, I could see his shape. Average height. Wearing a dark coat.

He stood there, looking at his wall. He sighed, a happy sigh, like he was looking at a beautiful painting.

“Do you like it?” he asked the empty room. “I made it for us. So we could remember.”

He took another step into the room. He was now between us and the stairs. The only way out.

Louis’s body was a tense wire against mine. I could feel him getting ready to spring.

The man’s light slid over the bed, over the empty box. He stopped. He went very still.

“You touched my things,” he said. His voice changed. It got flat and cold. “You shouldn’t have touched my things.”

He turned slowly, raising his flashlight, ready to shine it right on us hiding in the dark corner.

Louis moved. He shoved me behind him and lunged forward, a low growl tearing from his throat.

The two men crashed together in the dark. The flashlight flew, spinning crazy lights and shadows. I saw a fist. I heard a grunt. They were just shapes, rolling on the dirt floor.

I scrambled on my hands and knees, trying to find the flashlight. My hand closed around it. I pointed it at the fight.

The light fell on the ghost’s face.

He wasn’t a monster. He was a man. Maybe in his thirties. He had plain brown hair and wide, crazy eyes. He was on top of Louis, his hands around Louis’s throat.

“You ruin everything!” the ghost—Lyle—screamed. Spit flew from his mouth. “You had it all and you didn’t even care! It should have been MINE!”

Louis grabbed Lyle’s wrists, trying to pull his hands away. His face was turning red.

I didn’t think. I just ran. I swung the heavy metal flashlight as hard as I could and hit Lyle in the side of the head.

*Thwack!*

He cried out and fell off Louis. Louis rolled over, gasping for air.

Lyle scrambled away from me, holding his head. He looked at me, and for a second, his crazy eyes looked hurt. Like I’d betrayed him.

“You… you hit me,” he said.

“Stay away from my family!” I yelled. My voice was shaky but loud.

He looked from me to Louis, who was getting to his feet. The hurt on his face melted into something ugly and angry.

“It’s not *your* family,” he snarled. “It’s *his*. And he doesn’t deserve it.”

Then he turned and ran, stumbling up the cellar stairs and into the night.

Louis started to run after him, but I grabbed his arm. “No! Don’t! He could have a weapon! He’s crazy!”

Louis stopped, chest heaving. We listened to the sound of footsteps crashing through the woods outside. Then nothing.

We were alone in the cellar again, surrounded by our own faces.

Louis looked at me. There was dirt on his face. Red marks were already forming on his neck. He pulled me into a hug, so tight it hurt.

“You saved me,” he whispered.

“We saved each other,” I whispered back.

We climbed out of the cellar, into the cold night air. We didn’t talk. We just got in the car and locked the doors. Louis drove us away from the lake house, away from the ghost’s secret room.

We had seen him. We had touched him. He wasn’t a ghost anymore.

He was a man named Lyle. And he thought our life belonged to him.

And we had just started a whole new game.