Chapter 5 - The First BrideI couldn't speak.
My husband stared at the photograph.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was inside the room.”
His father stepped forward.
“Give it to me.”
I pulled it away.
“No.”
For the first time, anger flashed across his face.
“That photograph does not belong to you.”
“It has me in it!”
“No.”
His voice became strangely calm.
“The girl in that photograph was your sister.”
I felt the floor disappear beneath me.
“I don't have a sister.”
“You did.”
My mother-in-law started crying.
My husband looked at his father.
“Dad, enough.”
His father ignored him.
“Your parents had two daughters.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“One survived.”
I couldn't breathe.
“What happened to the other?”
Nobody answered.
Then my husband whispered:
“She died.”
“When?”
“The same summer you came here.”
Fragments returned.
A little girl laughing.
A red ribbon.
A woman screaming.
A locked door.
My mother crying.
Then darkness.
I suddenly remembered being carried through a hallway.
I remembered looking over someone's shoulder.
I remembered a little hand reaching for mine.
And I remembered saying:
“Don't leave me.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“What was her name?”
My father-in-law looked at me.
“Lena.”
The name struck me like a blow.
I had never remembered it.
But my body did.
A child's voice whispered inside my head.
You promised you'd come back.
I staggered.
My husband caught me.
Then something touched my ankle.
I looked down.
Three tiny bloody fingerprints appeared on my skin.
My father-in-law whispered:
“She knows you've returned.”
I looked toward the dark room.
“Lena?”
A soft child's giggle answered.
Then the bedroom door upstairs slammed shut.
And someone screamed my name.
May you like
Not from the hallway.
From inside the locked room.
