The Follower Kate Doughty (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

just in case any squatters who used to call the place home had wandered in for a drink. Having the house “armed” each night before they fall asleep does make Rudy feel a little safer.

After Amber and Cecily have some time to recover, the triplets document the security system installation on Instagram and spend the morning taking photos. Cecily doesn’t feel like taking portraits today. Instead they post a loving farewell for Speckles—The best bunny a girl could ask for—on their account and then move on to the rest of the house. They capture the view from the turret, the study bedroom in the light. Amber takes some photos of Rudy with his workout gear. He smiles through them, but everything feels . . . stale. This is the role he has to play. The charismatic host, the hot weight lifter. He’s all too eager to relocate to the third floor.

Rudy gives the attic string another yank before remembering that it’s still locked. When he turns to face the rest of the hall, Amber is looking into the dumbwaiter.

“This is crazy,” she says. “I can’t believe it goes all the way down!”

Cecily shudders. “Be careful. You’re going to fall in.”

“Am not,” Amber says. “Though I wonder what it’s like to go down.”

Rudy slides over and glances down into the dumbwaiter shaft. It’s long and dark, with all kinds of spooky cobwebs. He gets an idea—one that’s way better than playing Ken. “What if we could?”

Amber is skeptical. “I mean, I guess someone could fit in there, but . . .”

“No, I mean our phones—let’s throw one in there and videotape it all the way down. For fun.”

“Oooh,” Amber says. “Like a long shot of our faces receding into the darkness? That would be really cool. And spooky.”

“Maybe . . . ,” Cecily concedes, but she seems interested. Rudy will take any chance to distract her from Speckles, so he hauls up the dumbwaiter until its top is just below the third-floor entry. Amber positions her phone, hitting Record. All three triplets look down at it, and Cecily gives a wave as Rudy lets it lower, recording their faces retreating up the shaft.

He yanks it back up. “Let’s see how it looks!”

Amber plays it back. “It looks so cool—maybe we can even make it an intro for our livestream.” And it does; their faces shrink amid a spooky tunnel of gray-blackness. A great intro to any kind of haunted house video.

“What’s that?” Cecily asks. Amber pauses the video. “On the wall, there.”

Amber zooms in. She’s right, there is something on the wall. A strange, white scratch . . . a word. Writing.

“R?” Rudy asks. “Is that what it says?”

Amber squints. “I think so. I can’t tell.”

They send the phone down again, pointing at the wall this time. When the video comes back, the letter is clear. “Yeah,” Rudy says. “R. What do you think it means?”

Cecily shrugs. “Maybe it’s, like, construction or something.”

“I don’t know . . .” Rudy leans toward the lettering. Somehow, he doesn’t believe it. It looks almost . . . handwritten. No. It looks like it has been scratched into the inside of the tunnel. “Maybe it’s the same person as the doll, right? Wasn’t that an R name?”

“Reena,” Cecily says, shuddering. “Can we please not talk about that creepy doll?”

Amber shrugs. “Well, the video is pretty good—we can definitely use it if we decide to keep going for the spooky angle.”

Rudy feels himself itching to get out his phone and ask his followers about the dumbwaiter writing, but he can’t; even after his splatter-paint livestream’s success, his mom had revoked his administrative privileges. He feels his mood sour. If he can’t post or interact with people, what’s the point of being online at all?

They try to capture a few portrait photos around the third floor before heading downstairs for lunch. There’s one of Cecily and an ancient tea set from some previous owner, and a couple of Rudy and Cecily sliding down decrepit bannisters.

They make it back to the first floor and head into the kitchen to grab lunch before the flooring crew arrives.

Rudy pops a bagel into the toaster and moves to make a protein shake. He is digging around in the cabinet when his mom finds him. “Rudy? Can I talk to you?”

He turns around. “Sure.” Amber puts some afternoon coffee on; Cecily rummages through the fridge. He can tell that both of them are listening.

Mom sighs and leans against the wall. There isn’t much kitchen left to talk in, really, besides the sink and a few cabinets that act as a makeshift pantry—and most of those will be gone this afternoon once the crew comes in to start the flooring. “I know that we’ve been . . . hard on you, lately. That you haven’t been happy with the choices this family is making about the account.”

That’s the understatement of the year, Rudy thinks. He wonders where she’s going with this.

“I know you want to do other, wilder things, but . . . it’s just not our brand, Rudy. And now isn’t the right time to try something new,” she says. “Why don’t you put your music online, huh? Learn some pop songs or something—you could be our pop star!”

Rudy cringes. “I don’t play that kind of music.” And girls don’t really swoon over boys that play blues standards, he almost adds.

“Why not?”

“I just . . . don’t want to,” he says, giving up trying to explain. Music is something he does for himself, not to get other people to . . . like him on the internet. And if something he posts actually does well, Mom wouldn’t let him stop, would she? He isn’t Cecily—he doesn’t want his hobby to become something he has to do for social media. Besides, at this point he’s a little more interested in the strange things happening in this house than he is in posting for their account.

Like the rabbit. Could it really have just . . . wandered in there? Swam all the way down into the garbage disposal? Or . . .

When Mom had first removed his admin