The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

A loud, thundering crash echoed from a floor down below before the sound of the oil heater hummed and rattled then settled into white noise. I sighed, willing my fingers to still as I eased the key into the lock and turned the knob, easing my door open quietly. As soon as the crack allowed it, the wafting odor of wretched rot filled my nostrils and I gagged.

I slammed the door closed, tears burning my eyes as I swung back into the hallway in frustration.

“What is going on here?” I pleaded to no one at all, wondering if I was making up the entire aromatic phenomena in my mind. I hadn’t smelled anything like it until I opened that closet door earlier, and now it was all I could smell.

A soft snick of a door closing down the hallway caught my attention. I turned, searching the long, carpeted hall for the unmistakable sound of footsteps. They sounded small and light, like a child. Goosebumps rippled up my arms when a chilled blast of air passed me. The soft yellow lamp at the far end of the hallway flickered and the sense of being watched fell over me again.

More footsteps as my heartbeat clambered behind my rib cage. A quick scratching noise, like a cat’s nails against a chair, sounded before the outline of a little girl edged at the shadows of my vision.

I squinted, wiping at my eyes a moment before taking a few steps closer, drawn to the apparition that I wasn’t even sure was there. I could make out the dark sheath dress that ended at the knees, white stockings that led to black patent shoes, stark white Peter Pan collar at the throat. I squinted, unbelieving, at the shape I was seeing. Two shadowy eye sockets bled into nothingness, two long braids with pink ribbons tied at the ends bookmarked the edges of a cherubic face.

“My mind is playing tricks,” I breathed aloud, even though I didn't quite believe it. That was the dress that hung in various sizes in my closet, was this little girl the owner? “Are you…” I gulped, not wanting to admit the thought myself, “Zara?”

I waited, eyes blurring with fear and tears and exhaustion before my thinking mind got the better of me and I turned, pushing back into my room and reminding myself that all of this was an illusion.

There was no foul odor, no creepy ghost girl, no murderous library stacks—I was just tired.

Desperately tired.

I willed my mind to believe the lies I fed it as I fell onto the bed, pillow thrown over my head.

PAST

Zara - Spring 1964

“Yara Thornberry. 1961.” I pursed my lips, fingertip tracing the edges of the sepia-toned photo as I read its caption out loud. “One letter off and a world apart.”

I stood over an antique writing desk; a layer of dust settled like new-fallen gray snow. A spray of old family photos lay before me, more in my hand as a cardboard file box sat haphazardly on the surface. This was only my first stop, the office situated just below my bedroom.

One box in and a mountain of memories.

Mother had always gone out of her way to send photos of her life in the city to her family here at Usher House. I remembered the way she’d forced us into patent leather dress shoes as we posed with Patience and Fortitude, the lion statues presiding over the steps of the library on Fifth Avenue.

It was funny looking back at it now, the things my mother was trying to portray through the same snapshot spoke volumes to me as the girl behind the curtain. You could see the dejected awareness on my face even then. Always the bastard stepchild of the library caretaker.

My father, William Thornberry, stood with an arm draped around his twins, while I stood shunned by their warmth on the opposite side of the photo, my mother’s stern gaze eating up the space between it and the photographer’s lens. She sent a shiver down my spine still. Had Yara and Yarrow seen that side of her yet? Maybe not now, and definitely not then. If they had, the traces of defiance would have been etched in their features as they were mine, I was sure of it.

They, the victims of a motherless upbringing, while I—the victim of my family name. Destined to remain an Usher from the day of my birth, even though Thornberry ran through my veins as clearly as it did theirs.

My mother and William never married, but from the implications of this photo, they seemed every part the married couple with the perfect family.

Only I felt the difference in their cool gazes.

My mother was no more a governess to his children than he was a father—his assistance merely a paycheck she could rely on. Their arrangement was clear to me even at fourteen, the years spent with my mother fighting under our own drab apartment roof made it obvious to me that no love existed between them. Only mutual practicality.

And now here we were, returned to the horrible house of Usher, blemish on the village of Shelter Island and my family tree.

I swiped more photos from the file box, moving back in time as more photos of people, mostly children I didn’t know, began to surface. Kids in wheelchairs sunning themselves near the fountain in the garden.

I’d known Usher House had been a boarding school but from this photo it seemed there was a medical wing too. A group of three nurses in crisp white skirts and button-downs stood behind a row of children, some in wheelchairs, others sitting in chairs with crutches propped beside them.

USHER HOUSE and GARDENS, HOME for FORGOTTEN YOUTH - 1943 was scrawled along the bottom margin.

“Forgotten youth?” I shuddered. “Everyone was so creepy back then,” I said to myself as I flipped through more photos, kids gathered around a Christmas tree