LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      The scratching began again. Skreek. A heartbeat of silence. Skreek. Skreek.

      She could sleep through the blare of traffic in Atlanta, but this teeny noise in her mom’s old house in rural Virginia had roused her from deep sleep in a mere nanosecond.

      It was the sound of her nightmares. The ominous scratching that had preceded the worst moment of her life and hounded Harper to this day. It was inexorably tied to the image of her sister Presley’s body lying on the kitchen floor as smoke swirled and fire licked the darkness. Harper sat up in bed and waited for the scratching to resume. But this time, the only noise was a faint swish of something soft brushing against a wall.

      Probably just a mouse scampering behind the old Sheetrock, or so she hoped. Disgusting as that was, she’d welcome the prospect of mice infiltration over creepier alternatives. As a child, she’d wondered if the house was haunted by a ghost—or an even scarier type of supernatural horror.

      Harper pictured the wraithlike, filthy creature she’d glimpsed the night Presley died. The thing—she wasn’t sure if it was a person or some remnant from a dream—had loomed over her sister’s lifeless body. She’d screamed, and the pale figure had vanished into the shadows. Never to be seen again.

      Nobody had believed her. There’d been no signs of forced entry, and a search of the old Victorian had revealed nothing unusual. Presley’s death had been ruled accidental.

      But even now, the skin at the nape of her neck prickled at the memory.

      This wouldn’t do. After all, she’d returned to Baysville in order to settle her mom’s estate and make peace with her own disturbing past. Time to discover what was real and what was imaginary. Over the years, she’d pushed that night’s events to the back of her mind.

      Of course, she wasn’t always successful. At unexpected moments, a vivid image of pale skin draped on a frail, gaunt figure would crystallize from the hazy memories of the night Presley died.

      Sleep was no longer possible, so Harper climbed out of bed and turned on the bedside lamp. The light reassuringly spotlighted the familiar and mercifully vacant room. All was in order. The peach-colored walls cast a comforting warm glow. Her white French provincial bed and dresser were old but classic and had served her since childhood. She could have taken the larger master bedroom across the hall, but it still felt like Mom’s room. Probably always would, no matter how many years passed after her death.

      Harper donned her comfy, though tattered, pink robe and opened the bedroom door, flipping on the hall lights. The recently polished oak floors gleamed golden and reflected the bright sheen of her red hair. She gripped the iron railing of the staircase, surveyed the stairs, and then her eyes darted involuntarily to the kitchen. After all these years, she still checked to make sure no flames or smoke billowed from the room. Grimly, Harper made her way down the steps. Would she ever descend them without remembering that night?

      At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped abruptly. Heat spread from her bare feet and then up her spine, tingling like an electrical shock. Someone was here. Watching. Swiftly, she turned and surveyed the empty staircase behind her. Nothing was there except for the same old portraits that lined the stairwell wall. Generations of grim Catletts stared back at her, as if in silent rebuke of her foolishness.

       Skreek.

      The scratching started up again. And had she heard an echo of a footfall? Harper’s ears strained, but she detected nothing else. The old house had gone eerily quiet.

       Stop creeping yourself out. Nothing’s here but you and the rodents.

      Harper strode to the den, flipping on every light switch along the way. She turned on the TV, and the reassuring voice of a morning news show filled the house’s quiet void. Then she marched to the kitchen and started coffee. Familiar sounds and smells eased the niggling worry in her gut.

      See? You did it. Spent another entire night by yourself here. A couple more weeks, and you won’t think anything of it. Easy peasy. Onward and upward until she’d satisfied every speck of uncertainty about what had happened that night.

      In the meantime… “Exterminators,” she said aloud, with a determined nod. Coffee mug in hand, Harper sat at the kitchen table and fired up her laptop. This wouldn’t be just any old routine extermination. No, she was booking the full Monty—the entire house wrapped in a toxic bubble by men dressed in hazmat suits. She pulled up a list of local companies and dutifully scribbled down a couple of numbers to call when their businesses opened this morning.

      Taking that action, however small, made her feel more in control. One step at a time, as her mom would say. And if anyone had reason to believe in that mantra, it was Ruth Catlett. She’d buried a husband and a child, yet every day she’d risen before dawn to work at a local diner one block down the road. And if her spirits had never quite recovered from Presley’s death, she managed to put on her game face in public.

      And now there was one. Harper was the last of her family. Oh, sure, there were a couple of aunts and uncles and cousins scattered about Baysville, but it wasn’t the same.

      Harper sighed and sipped her coffee as she stepped onto the front porch. Streaks of purple and orange illuminated the sky and were reflected in the Pagan River’s rippling water. Many of the quaint shops lining the riverfront had already turned on their lights. Baysville was awakening to a new day. She’d forgotten how beautiful her hometown was. The Tidewater region of Virginia was steeped in history and picturesque in a way that a big city like Atlanta could never match. She sat in the glider for several minutes, enjoying the slower pace. No clients to meet, no ringing phones or assistants to send on errands. She’d been much too busy this past year with her interior decorating business. In some ways, it’d been therapeutic after her breakup with Doug, but she was over that disappointment. Any man that fickle and gun-shy over commitment wasn’t worth the heartbreak.

      The streets gradually began to fill. Slow pace or not, it was time to go in and get dressed before someone she knew spotted her in the grungy but comfy robe that was the epitome of ugly.

      Inside, Harper strolled to the kitchen table and picked up the exterminators’ phone numbers. There were four new emails in her inbox. She supposed she’d better check them in case of pressing business in Atlanta. Sitting down, Harper opened her email, and her eyes were immediately drawn to one subject line that blared at her in all caps:

      GET OUT OF THE HOUSE

      With trembling fingers, she opened the email. No message in the body of the email, only the ominous warning from a sender: loser@life.