She led Austin to the roof and pushed him off just as he made eye contact with Mrs. Litback, who had been a completely unplanned addition to the evening. Mrs. Litback had arrived back to the house, soaking wet, to see Austin standing in the attic window with a strange girl beside him. She had run so quickly, but not quickly enough, because Austin was dead on the ground before Mrs. Litback even made it halfway to the attic steps. Watching Austin splatter to the ground like Jacob and Johnny once had, made her giddy. Then she helped Mrs. Litback take a tumble through the already shattered attic window. It looked like a tragic accident.
Olivia had no remorse for what had happened. She had known from the very first moment that Mariah stepped foot into Oakley house, that it was time to play. She had a deep connection to it. Oakley was hers after all. She didn’t happen upon anything in the house, she knew exactly where things were. The mask, the dolls, the attic. She enjoyed playing with the people like dolls. The only thing that made her angry was when the silly children tried to scare Mariah and everyone else away. Even Sophia joined in, trying in subtle ways to get Mariah to leave. This angered Olivia even more. How dare they interfere with her fun?
Mrs. Litback had been right to warn Mariah away from Oakley. Olivia had spent decades working on appearing alive.
Oakley house remembers everything, because a family that dies in a house, stays in the house. Olivia gave it what it needed to replay those memories she dearly held onto. The games she played when the house was opened up twenty years ago were short lived. That family left and no one else ever came back, leaving Olivia content, but bored.
She wanted real playthings. Real dolls.
This time, she found her own family, beginning all the way back to when she slipped the house’s information page into a small folder left on the table of a coffee shop, while the woman was ordering tea.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S.A. Robinson is a mother of two, extreme book enthusiast, and self-proclaimed crafting addict. She spends her time writing and taking care of what she refers to as her zoo, which includes a panther chameleon, named Skittles, a bearded dragon named Spike, a red-eared slider named Raphael, a stubborn Labrador named Louis, and two Siamese cats, Brigit and Savannah.
With her husband in the Army, she has spent the last nine years moving from place to place, raising their children and enjoying every new adventure. From her travels, she draws inspiration for her stories and is always on the lookout for new places to explore. From the beaches of Florida to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, S.A. Robinson has learned to find something she loves in every place she has lived. During the 2020 pandemic, her passion for creating stories grew resulting in her debut novel, The Secrets of Oakley House, being published and released in 2021.
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