What Lies Beneath

Chapter Sixty-One: Day Dreamer Part Two

Karen drew in a deep breath causing her body to convulse into a coughing fit. She was back in the dining room filled with shadows, but Charlie no longer stood above her, his foot pressed firmly on her chest. Her sternum felt bruise and didn't seem to want to rise like it used to, but she forced it to open and draw in another breath. Karen could still hear her father's words lingering on her skin. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes with every thought of his warm skin wrapped around her. Was it just a dream? The thought left her feeling hollow, the opposite of how he made her feel.

It couldn't have been a dream. He was there with her, he comforted and held her when she needed it the most. No, she would not write him off like she did everything else she didn't quite understand. Her father was real, and he came to her. He provided answers to questions she would have never considered before.

Karen's strength was waning, but she needed to get up. They were in the middle of a war and who knows how long she was passed out on the floor for? Karen placed her hands on the floor and used what ever strength she could muster in her wobbling arms to push herself up from the floor.

The air was full of dense smoke as the shadows moved around. Karen scanned the room in search of her friends, but she couldn't find them anywhere. In the back of her mind she also searched for Charlie's whereabouts, but he was nowhere to be seen either. Worry washed over her as she rescanned the room and came up empty once again. Where could they have gone?

"Don't go that way!" Karen whipped around in a quick circle as the sound of an unfamiliar voice, but there was no source. Eyes wide, Karen realized that the truth. She wasn't awake yet, she was still under Charlie's foot, suffocating.

"We need to get rid of the body!" It was a new voice, it kind of sounded a bit like Agatha, but Karen couldn't be too sure. Agatha hardly ever spoke to her and when she did it was quick and monotone.

"What will we tell anyone who asks?"

"What about Ethan? Doesn't he want to keep the baby?" It was Gwyneth's voice again. It was soft, but stern.

"Cassie, wait!" Shadows raced past Karen, one chasing after another. The smoke was cold as it whipped across her skin. The voice was the same as the young boy from before.

The sound of a baby crying screamed at max volume forcing Karen to cover her ears again. What was happening? The memory of the girl who looked like Sophie flashed before her eyes. Her abdomen slashed open and blood sprayed and dripping on the floor. Was she the baby's mother?

Standing amongst the shadows, Karen's eyes were drawn to a single polaroid as it drifted to the floor from up above. Karen dropped her hands from her ears and bent down to retrieve the worn image. Staring back at her from the crumpled plastic image. It was the same one she pulled from the floorboards when she first arrived. It was the image of a girl named Cassandra, the girl whose diary she read in the room and went back for. The girl who looked like Sophie.

So many questions rushed to Karen's mind as she stared at the image. How could Cassandra and Sophie look so similar? Why did they look so similar? The crying in the background increased causing Karen to cover her ears again. It was in that moment that the answer hit her. How had she missed something so obvious? Cassie gave birth to a baby girl and named her Sabrina. It was clear that the child wasn't Sophie, but that didn't mean that Sabrina didn't grow up to have a baby girl as well.

It was in the same instant that the answer rushed through her mind, that the baby's crying stopped. The confirmation was in the sudden absence of screaming. Karen had received the answer to the question of the polaroid and diary, but that still didn't explain why the house wanted them. Why it was so intent on killing them. Then again, the answers she'd already received centered around Sophie, so maybe the rest of them did as well.