(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 26; sunshine

The screen lit up and Jaylin grinned at the sticky-note that'd been stuck to the screen.

Had Alex download some games for you. You'll have to ask him for the WiFi password.

Jaylin fumbled to his feet with his laptop in hand, but by now, his black appendage had gone numb. The flesh panged like he'd taken a punch square between the muscles of his arm. He hadn't even noticed the plastic of the laptop slip through his fingers.

He cursed as the machine clattered to the ground, the battery popping from the bottom compartment. He knelt to seat it back in, rotating the computer in his hands to make sure there wasn't any visible damage. Then something in the screen caught his eye. The word Anna, reflecting in the glass.

He flattened himself to the ground and took a look beneath the bed, where a wooden crate sat in the far corner, Anna's name marked on the front panel. They must've not checked beneath the bed when they took her things from the room. He wriggled his way beneath his mattress to retrieve the box, full of black VHS tapes. Maybe they were home movies, or a collection of work-out videos, like the ones his mom refused to part with. Whatever they were, they were Anna's. Which meant they were too important to be put in the wrong place.

He carried the crate into the hall, where Lillabeth was polishing the glass of the Sigvard's countless family portraits.

"Where does this go?" Jaylin asked. It always felt strange to approach Lillabeth first, especially when she seemed the type of person who hated to talk much at all.

Lilabeth glanced at him briefly from the corner of her eye, then her dark stare rolled back to the glass beneath her rag. "You can put it in the attic... the door is in the supply room."

The crate felt heavier than it should in Jaylins hands, and he was forced to support it with his hip as he wandered down the hall, to the room he'd watched Lillabeth fetch a mop from once before.

It was cleaner inside than he felt a storage room should be. Each tool put away with care, each wash bucket empty and stacked into one another. But the most peculiar of all things were the rows of bleach bottles on the metal racks, each the same brand, stockpiled for three shelves up. Bleach to clean the blood, Jaylin thought. Bit by bit, this place and all the strange little things about it were beginning to make sense.

He had to fetch a stool from the corner of the room to reach the chain of the attic door, and he was assaulted by a cloud of angry dust the moment he climbed the steps.

The attic might have been the only part of the Sigvard's home that wasn't created for absolute luxury. It looked only like an attic—begrimed with dust and cluttered with old belongings. It smelled of mothballs and the single window in the room cast down only enough moonlight to see the floor in front of him.

Then, suddenly a second light flashed on and the darkness was consumed with it. Jaylin jolted at the loud sound that followed, his skin prickling as he watched static storms roll over the screen of an old box television. It sat atop a TV cart, little LED lights flashing beneath, where the VHS player spat out a tape entitled Alexander's First Birthday.

He gave a look around, but there wasn't a soul. Certainly, no one holding a TV remote; it was only Jaylin in this old and eerie place. So a television had turned on by itself. It wasn't the strangest thing to happen here. But the coincidence—for it to have happened as he was carrying up a box of VHS tapes, that was what made the hair on his nape stand on end.

Jaylin set the crate down and took a look at the black, sleeveless tapes inside. Many of them were Hollywood productions, with the movie title still stuck on. Grease, Ten Things I Hate About You, Pretty in Pink. Anna must have had a thing for classic romances... he could relate to that.