I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease from my earlier realization. Unable to hold back, I went to the kitchen, pretending to want some snacks.
“Mike, can I trust you?” I asked quietly, closing the door behind me.
Mike stopped washing the dishes, his expression turning serious.
He cranked up the water so no one could hear us and motioned for me to step closer. “You can trust me. What did you find?”
After a brief hesitation, I explained the discrepancy with Zoe’s clothing.
Mike nodded slowly. “I’m not a medical examiner, but a person who drowns usually shows signs of hemorrhaging in the nasal and oral cavities. Your friend didn’t have any of those signs.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Zoe hadn’t drowned at all!
Mike leaned in, locking eyes with me. “Zoe was your friend, right?”
I nodded.
“Then how can you just stand by and let her death go unanswered?”
Of course, I didn’t want to!
Mike’s gaze was intense as he continued, “Tara, for your friend’s sake, I need you to do me a favor.”
When we returned to the living room, the rain was coming down harder than ever, and the thunderclaps were almost constant, making everyone on edge.
By now, Mike had kept us confined in the villa for most of the day.
While Chaz and the others seemed to handle it okay, Sam was becoming restless. He got up, pacing back and forth, venting his frustration.
“What’s going on here? Are we prisoners now? If Zoe knew how you were treating her friends, she’d come back from the dead just to haunt you!”
As if on cue, all the lights in the house suddenly went out, plunging the room into darkness.
Almost immediately, another crack of thunder shook the windows.
The timing was so sudden that Sam screamed and threw himself into Chaz’s arms.
“Don’t scream, Sam,” I tried to calm him down.
“Tara...” Casey clung to me, her voice trembling. “Did you hear that? That sound…”
“What sound?” I asked, straining to listen.
In the pauses between the thunder, I could just make out a faint, rhythmic thudding.
It sounded like footsteps – someone was slowly descending wooden stairs, one step at a time.
But we were all in the living room. The only person upstairs was… Zoe.
Could it be Zoe?
She was dead, though!
The footsteps grew louder, closer, moving from the third floor to the second.
A chill ran down my spine, and I felt the sweat break out on my back.
Could a dead person walk?
“Who-who’s there?” Sam shrieked, his voice breaking from fear.