Now they were inside going all through the house. The sound of running water and clinking pans and silverware made it clear their mom was still in the kitchen. Obviously, Samantha was trying to search upstairs before their mom finished fixing dinner.
She started with their mom’s studio.
“I would never have hidden Gretchen in here,” Susie told Samantha when she opened the studio door. Samantha paid no attention to Susie. This wasn’t a surprise; Samantha was being stubborn.
Why couldn’t Susie remember where she put the doll?
She knew where she put it the first time she hid it. It had been in her room, under her bed, which she knew was a very unoriginal hiding place. A couple hours later, she’d moved it. But to where?
Susie stood in the doorway of her mom’s studio while Samantha scurried around, digging in piles of fabric stacked on pale-yellow shelves, in mounds of yarn heaped in huge wicker baskets under a row of windows, and in canvas bins of wool sitting next to their mother’s loom. Susie thought all of this was very brave because one of the standing house rules was that the studio was off-limits. Samantha even opened the door to the storage room on the far end of the studio. When she went in to search, Susie didn’t follow.
Susie loved to play and be silly, but she wasn’t crazy brave. The storage room held their mom’s finished work, the stuff she sold to make money. They were never allowed to touch it. Once, when Susie was five, their mom had left one of her “tapestries” on the dining room table because someone was coming to pick it up. Curious, Susie went in the dining room, climbed up onto the chair, and looked at the tapestry. It was covered with fluffy tufts of soft round fabric that delighted her. She had to touch them. Forgetting she’d just eaten chocolate chip cookies, Susie put her sticky fingers all over the light-peach-colored tufts. When she saw the chocolatey smudges, she tried to wipe them off, which spread them around even more. This made her cry, and it scared her enough to try and run from the room. In her hurry, she ended up knocking over a chair and falling. Trying to catch herself, she grabbed the tapestry, and she still hit her head on the table, which made her shriek. When her mother ran into the room, Susie was on the floor with the chocolate-smeared tapestry in one hand, bleeding onto another part of the tapestry from a gash on her forehead.
Her mom had been so angry. It had scared Susie. It scared her so much she never went anywhere near her mother’s work again.
Gretchen was not in her mother’s studio. But Susie could only wait for Samantha to figure that out on her own.
Once she did, Samantha moved on to their mom’s bedroom. First, she paused in the hallway to listen. More sounds from the kitchen encouraged Samantha to enter.
“Gretchen’s not in here,” Susie said as Samantha got down to peek under her mom’s bed. The dark-blue bed skirt draped over Samantha’s head like a scarf.
Samantha popped up off the floor, tilted her head to listen for a second, and then went into her mother’s closet. Samantha began sweeping aside hanging clothes, opening and closing shoe boxes.
“Don’t you think she would have found it by now if it was in here?” Susie said.
Samantha didn’t answer.
Samantha looked up at the shelves above the hanging clothes. “You would just crawl up the racks,” Samantha muttered.
Susie smiled. “Yes, I would.”
Samantha turned in a circle, frowning. Spotting the bench that sat at the end of their mom’s bed, Samantha dragged it into the closet.
Susie felt bad just standing there watching. But Samantha was wasting her time.
Samantha stood on the bench. Even on tiptoes, she had to strain to see the top shelves of her mom’s closet.
Finishing with the closet, she moved to their mom’s dresser. Susie chewed on her thumb. She was sure Samantha was going to get yelled at for what she was doing. Samantha had to know that, too, but she wasn’t letting that stop her. Samantha searched through all of her mom’s underwear, stockings, socks, and scarves.
“Samantha!”
“What?!” Samantha squealed, slamming shut the last dresser drawer.
“Dinner in five.”
“Okay!”
Samantha ran to her mom’s nightstand and searched it, then did the same with her dad’s. His was empty. Her mom’s was stuffed full of books, fabric samples, and pills. Gretchen was not hiding among them.
“I told you so,” Susie said as she followed Samantha from her mom’s room. She knew she was being a snarky baby, but she couldn’t help it. She could almost hear a ticking countdown in her head.
“Samantha has been snooping through my things,” Patricia told Jeanie over the phone.
Discovering her materials had been rifled through, Patricia had decided to call her friend instead of yelling at her daughter.
“What things?”
“From what I can tell, all my things,” Patricia said. She pressed three fingers to her temple. “Samantha knows better than that.”
“Exactly. So she must have had a good reason,” Jeanie said.
“What reason could she possibly have?”
“I don’t know, but I know she had to have one. Nothing’s missing or damaged?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“Then let it go.”
“But …”
“Seriously, Patricia. It’s time to let it all go.”
Chica came at midnight. As usual, Susie felt pulled from Samantha’s bed. As usual, she felt compelled to wander around the house and watch Chica’s dark shape circle outside. As usual, she opened the back door, then closed it and went to the front.
As usual, she wondered why she had to do what she had to do. Why did she have to leave her family?
Susie opened the front door, and the night breeze blew a couple of Oliver’s leaves past Chica’s feet and into the house. The night was brighter than the previous couple nights because the moon was fuller. The clouds were gone, too. Stars were so thick in the sky they reminded Susie of the powdered sugar her mom used to put on the chocolate crinkle cookies she made at Christmastime. In some places, the stars blurred into an expanse of brilliant white light.
Susie expected Chica to take her hand, as usual. Instead, Chica lifted a hand and pushed Susie aside. Then Chica walked into the house.
A nightmare woke up Samantha. Her eyes flew open, and she clutched her blankets, listening to her heart pound.
It was just a dream, she told herself. She felt her heart start to slow down.
Then it sped up again, and Samantha sat up.
It wasn’t just a dream!
“Chica,” she whispered.
Her dream had just told her more about the chick in Susie’s drawing. The chick was Chica. Chica had been chasing Samantha in the dream. Samantha had been trying to move a shelf in her dad’s office, and Chica had been stalking her.
Samantha gasped. Her dad’s office! That’s where …
Samantha froze when she heard sounds.
Thud … tap … thud … tap.
Samantha started to shake.
Those were the sounds. They were the same sounds Samantha had heard so many times over the last few months, the sounds she’d tried to convince herself she’d imagined.
She hadn’t imagined them.
Those were the sounds.
Except they weren’t exactly the same.
They were closer.
Much closer.
Samantha had always thought the sounds she’d heard came from outside the house. Now she knew they were inside, and coming closer.
When Chica started up the stairs, Susie tried to follow. But she couldn’t. It was like she was glued to the doorway, trapped there by invisible chains.
“Chica, stop!” she yelled.
Chica didn’t stop. She climbed slowly but steadily up the stairs.
She was going for Samantha; Susie was sure of it. Susie struggled to free herself from whatever held her in place. She tried and tried to move. Then she started to cry, and she did the only
thing she could do to help her sister.
“Samantha!” she shouted. “Run!”
Samantha vaulted out of her bed and ran to her bedroom door. Could she get to her mom’s room before whatever was coming up the stairs got to the top?
Opening her door a crack, she looked toward the stairs. No. It was too late. A bright yellow man-sized chick with horrible sharp teeth was one step from the top, just a few feet from Samantha’s door.
She slammed her door and looked around her room. As the footsteps came closer, she dove under her bed.
When the door started opening, Samantha went rigid and held her breath as orange metal feet crossed the wood floor.
This couldn’t be real.
But it was.
Trembling, Samantha watched the feet circle her bed. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer, so she carefully let in a little air.
The feet stopped.
They turned.
They began coming back around the bed. Then they paused.
Samantha heard a terrifying whirring sound, and suddenly, the bedspread hanging over the side of the bed shifted. A yellow face with purplish eyes and deadly teeth peered at Samantha.
Samantha writhed away from the face, squirming toward the opposite side of the bed. Once out from under the bed, she looked over her shoulder, wondering if she could get past to flee her room before the chick straightened …
No. It was already standing, staring.
Samantha ran to the window. She tried not to listen to the thud … tap … thud … tap as she fumbled with the window lock.
Tremors, like butterfly wings, fluttered between her shoulder blades. She ignored them.
The steps muffled as they crossed her rug. She only had seconds.
Crawling through the window, Samantha gripped the interlocking diamonds of the trellis, and swung her legs out. The sound of ripping fabric made her look back through the window.
The chick was right there! It held a piece of her pale-blue nightgown in its hand.
Samantha whimpered and scrambled down the trellis. Keeping her gaze on the vine that clung to the trellis, she went as fast as she could. She was in her stocking feet, so the wood felt sharp against her soles, but she didn’t care.
She also didn’t look up. She didn’t want to know if she was being chased.
When her feet encountered a rough, solid surface, she knew she’d reached the porch roof. Then she did look up.
Nothing was coming down the trellis after her. Good.
But not that good. If she wasn’t fast enough, Chica could go back through the house and get her when she reached the porch.
Chica.
Samantha’s mind had finally forced her to see what she hadn’t wanted to see. The chick in the house was Chica.
In her drawing, Susie had been trying to say that Chica didn’t want Susie to have Gretchen.
Why?
Samantha didn’t know. But she knew she was right.
Chica was coming after her because she was looking for Gretchen.
Samantha gritted her teeth as she leaned over the edge of the porch roof to grab one of the porch posts. Could she grip it well enough to drop her legs down to the railing?
She had to. For Susie.
Samantha was going to get down and get back inside the house. Then she was going to find Gretchen … because thanks to her dream, she knew where to look.
But could she get there before Chica?
Susie didn’t know how much time she was caught in the doorway listening to the sounds of Chica’s footsteps upstairs. She heard several other thumps, too, but she never heard Samantha scream. She hoped that was a good sign, but she wasn’t sure.
She thought she’d be in the doorway forever. Time went on and on and on.
Then she saw Chica at the top of the stairs. She was coming back down. And she didn’t have Samantha.
If she could have moved, Susie would have fallen to the ground in relief. Instead, all she could do was watch Chica come down the steps.
Then, suddenly, Samantha appeared from outside!
Her face white and her eyes wide, her hair in a tangle, Samantha rushed past Susie.
Samantha’s head was down, and her gaze was on her feet. She didn’t look at Susie. She didn’t even look up the stairs at Chica.
Susie watched Samantha dart into the dining room and disappear toward the kitchen. Where was Samantha going?
Samantha didn’t know why she didn’t think of it before. Maybe it was because, even though she kept thinking about him, she really wanted to forget her dad. It was bad enough that Susie got taken from them. At least Susie didn’t leave on purpose. She didn’t want to leave. She was taken, and she was murdered. That, Samantha thought, is a pretty good excuse for leaving the family.
Her dad, though, didn’t have to leave. He left because it was “too hard.” That was what he’d said. “It’s too hard.”
“But that’s why we need you, Daddy,” she’d said to him.
He’d just pressed his lips together—something she’d gotten from him—and said he had to go.
That’s why Samantha was on her own now. Her dad was gone. Her mother was drugged asleep. Her sister was dead. If Samantha was going to survive, she’d have to save herself.
Even though Samantha didn’t look up the stairs, she knew Chica was there. That’s why she ran toward the kitchen.
She didn’t know how smart Chica was, but she figured it was worth trying to fool her. She wanted Chica to follow her into the kitchen and look for her there. If she’d judged right, it would give her enough time.
When she reached the kitchen, Samantha turned on the light. Then she tore through the back entrance of the kitchen and raced down the connecting hall to her dad’s office.
In his office, she left the light off. She knew where she was going.
She ran to the shelf with the carpet piece. She grabbed the edge of the shelf at chest height, and she tugged on it. It didn’t move. She bent over and tugged on the one below. No movement. The one above. Stuck. Stretching, she reached for the one above that. Still nothing.
It has to be! In her frustration, she kicked the shelf right next to the little carpet piece.
And the shelving unit popped free of the wall, opening out into the room. Susie had been right. A hidden room had been here all along.
Samantha didn’t wait for the shelf-door to open all the way. She shouldered through the opening and groped for a light switch. She found one just inside the opening. Flipping the switch, she held still and listened.
She could hear Chica’s footsteps in the kitchen. Good. It worked.
She looked around. The room was filled with all sorts of bizarre things—dried leaves, rocks, broken glass, old toys, stacks of papers and books. Samantha didn’t know if she was looking at Susie’s stash of treasures or her dad’s. It didn’t matter. It only mattered that Gretchen, her curly hair thick with dust but her polka-dot dress as bright as it was the day she disappeared, was sitting on top of one of the leaning book towers.
Samantha grabbed the doll and darted back through her dad’s office. When she reached the doorway, she looked to her right. Chica was coming down the hall; she was only a few feet away.
Samantha fled through the living room and out through the front door. Panting, she looked out at the yard.
It was empty, of course. She knew where Susie was, and she knew where Chica was. Only Oliver stood in the yard—Oliver and his last pale-yellow leaf. Samantha ran to him, and hid behind his huge, solid trunk.
Susie watched Samantha hide behind Oliver, then she turned and waited for Chica to reach the entryway. What would Chica do? How could Susie keep Chica away from Samantha?
It turned out she didn’t have to. When Chica reached Susie, Chica paused.
Chica held out a hand. Susie’s hand raised and reached for Chica’s even though that was the last thing she wanted it to do. She felt the animatronic metal touch her fingertips.
“But I’m not
ready!” Susie told Chica.
Chica looked down, and her teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Susie shied back. Chica’s fingers gripped Susie’s tightly, and Susie couldn’t pull them away. When Chica turned, Susie felt herself being dragged from her home. She knew she had to stop resisting. She had to go along.
So she stopped struggling, and she began calmly walking next to Chica.
Samantha watched Chica take her sister’s hand, and she watched her sister and Chica cross the porch, come down the steps, and walk toward Oliver. Samantha tensed. What should she do? What could she do?
Before she could decide, Chica and Susie disappeared.
Not thinking, Samantha screamed, “Wait!”
Susie heard her sister’s scream. Chica didn’t pause, but Susie did. However much Chica was willing her to keep walking, something equally strong was willing her to go back. Caught in the middle, Susie, once again, couldn’t move.
“Susie!” Samantha wailed her sister’s name.
“I have to go back,” Susie said. “I have to.”
She waited, holding her breath. Then she felt something shift in the air around her.
Chica let go of her hand.
Samantha stepped out from behind Oliver and stood next to him, Gretchen dangling from her right hand. Tears filled her eyes.
She was too late.
No. What was that?
The leaves near Oliver’s trunk swirled up from the ground and then out away from Oliver. The night was breezy, but the wind wasn’t going in circles. It also was blowing toward Oliver, not away from him.
Samantha looked up at his sole surviving leaf again.
And that’s when Susie suddenly appeared in front of Oliver.
She looked the same way she’d looked the day she was abducted. She even wore the same clothes—her magenta-and-pink striped sweater and the jeans Jeanie had studded with rhinestones.
Samantha stared at her sister. Then she held out Gretchen.
Step Closer Page 15
