When Mark came home fifteen minutes later, cheerful and talkative as always, dropping his briefcase with a thud and asking about everyone’s day, Kayla thought about mentioning the pantry to him. Yet something held her back—perhaps the memory of Sabrina’s practiced smile, or an uncertainty that bordered on a fear of disrupting the household’s careful, polished calm. So she stayed quiet, and the unease settled deeper, finding a permanent home in the pit of her stomach.
That same unease now vibrated through her as the silence on the phone stretched. It was not an empty quiet, but a thick, loaded thing that filled Kayla’s ear with a hum like accusation. Sabrina’s words hung in the air, their implication settling over Kayla with a cold clarity: the transgression was her presence, not the unknown presence upstairs.
“I… I know,” Kayla stammered, her grip tightening on her phone. “I’m leaving right now. But Sabrina, I heard it. I’m not imagining things.” She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling, as if the footsteps might materialize through the plaster.
“I’m sure it was the old pipes,” Sabrina replied, her tone now smooth and dismissive, like a teacher gently correcting a mistaken child. “Or the furnace kicking on. It shakes the whole second floor sometimes. Really, it’s nothing. Just go home, Kayla. We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
The line went dead before Kayla could form another protest. She stood rooted in the foyer, the cheerful goodbye ringing hollow in her ears. *Just go home.* The instruction was simple, but her body refused to obey. Her gaze remained locked on the staircase landing, shrouded in shadow. The rational part of her brain replayed Sabrina’s explanation—pipes, furnace, an old house’s symphony of groans. But her nerves, still jangling from the visceral thunder of those steps, screamed otherwise. Pipes didn’t run. Furnaces didn’t have a gait.
Then a fresh, more paralyzing thought cut through the fear: what if it *was* nothing, and she was, as Sabrina subtly suggested, just a silly girl spooked by shadows? The embarrassment from missing the text message flooded back, now mixed with a sting of humiliation. Had she overreacted? Made a scene? The need to prove—to herself more than anyone—that she wasn’t hysterical warred with the primal urge to flee.