The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

the puzzle I paused, working my lips back and forth as I searched for just the right piece. I’d never been a puzzle person before, my anxiety usually too ramped up to keep me in one place for long, but never had I worked on a wooden puzzle. And certainly not one like this. I began to hear only the clicking, my vision tunneled to the edges of the pieces as I rubbed each of them extra long before locking them into place in search of more clues or etchings.

I found nothing.

But still I worked until a headache pressed at my skull and my vision was blurry. The stench filtered back into my consciousness at some point, but I ignored it, too hellbent on finishing this puzzle tonight so I had some sort of answer as to why Yara had left this for me.

Had Thax gotten the same gift?

A crash jerked me from my haze as I worked on the fountain that stood in the center background of the puzzle.

I turned, shooting out of my chair so fast it clattered across the room. Squinting, I searched the dark corner where a stack of books had been sitting on a shelf. Now they were scattered like someone had launched them across the room. Crossing the room, I bent to gather them when the smell of rot grew so strong I had to cover my mouth to avoid being sick.

Another chill burned through my veins like white-hot venom, and without thinking, my eyes cast across the corner I’d just come from; only now, in the shadows, stood something not of the earth.

I gasped, tears pooling as a small figure in a dark dress and braids with ribbons tied in bows stared out the window. A crown of blood-red roses and white lilies decorated her head. One index finger pointed out into the darkness of the window. Shivers raced through me as I scrunched my eyes closed, unable to believe what they were telling me.

I don’t believe in ghosts, this is a figment of my mind.

I snapped my eyes open, determined to take control. I pushed off of my feet, eyes on the corner, only now it was empty.

“No,” I breathed, still sensing an uneasy chill as I went to the corner.

I paused, searching for any evidence that she’d been real. I searched the desk and the windowsill, slipping the curtains to the side and casting my eyes to the street below. Only vast nothingness. My vision blurred, the headache pounding back to life as the bed finally called.

“Are you Zara?” I said, barely above a whisper.

Silence hung heavy, the smell dissipating as quickly as it appeared. Just as I was turning to strip out of my clothes and crawl into bed, a light in the darkness caught my eye. I pressed closer to the window, fingertips against the cold pane as I watched with fearful intent.

I knew then this was what she’d wanted me to see.

A lone yellow light in the apartment across the street.

A woman tied to a chair, a blindfold around her eyes as she thrashed and fought an unseen captor. Fear crawled into my throat when a man entered the frame, something in his hand before he stabbed her in the shoulder and her body fell limp.

He caught her easily, then hauled her over his shoulder and out of sight.

Terror calcified in my bones.

I wasn’t sure of much, but I knew what I saw: I’d just witnessed a murder.

PAST

Zara - Fall 1964

The Indian summer sun warmed my bare skin as I sank the garden spade into the soft black dirt. Sweat tickled above my eyebrows as I worked at tilling the new garden area behind the greenhouse.

Two weeks ago, Nate had disappeared. Two weeks since I’d thrown all of my spare time forgetting him into making this garden perfect enough to grow a new life, when so much around it rotted with death.

I’d come to resent the note Nate had left between the cracks of the fountain. Why had he even bothered to say anything at all? I was convinced he’d known the night before, his plan crystal clear to leave Usher House, and me, in the dust. The worst part? I couldn’t blame him.

In fact, he’d planted the seed in my head to take action myself. Maybe not now, but soon.

My favorite pair of black birds tweeted in the apple trees above my head as I dug, tilling the warm ground before cold weather set in. Now that I’d been working in the garden, I’d grown more excited at the prospect of fresh food to feed the kids, considering broth was definitely not the elixir of life like Mother claimed.

I just had to shake off the guilt that I was breathing fresh air in the garden while nine little children rarely saw the light of day, their fingertips calloused and raw from pulling and packing lily bulbs eight hours a day.

I sank the spade deeper into my trench then, only to have it land on something unusual. I stabbed the dirt again, pushing the poles of earth away to find thick fabric, dark and dirty, less than ten inches down in the dirt. I swept the dirt off with the tip of the spade, finally bending and discarding the spade altogether to use my hands to wipe it off.

A bright green emblem peeked through the layers of dirt.

“Nate.” I curled my fingers round the fabric and yanked, Nate’s jacket easily coming free of its earthen grave.

I turned it in my hands, wondering why it was here and not with him if he’d run away.

I held the jacket to my chest, the collar at my nose smelled only of fresh dirt and not of the boy I’d grown fond of that had suddenly vanished into thin air.

“Nate, where are you?”

My eyes scanned the upturned dirt in search of more clues. A rush of crows flew above the fountain then, drawing my eyes to two chubby cheeks propped