The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

“Thax?” I called again, before groaning softly and then turning and crawling into the walls of the trunk and through the bottom. My feet hooked on the rungs of an old ladder and I held on tightly as I made my way down into the dark depths.

Holding my breath when I passed damp rocks with mold and mildew slicking the sides, I moved faster, hoping the bottom of the tunnel was near. I sighed with relief when after the very next rung my feet landed on solid ground.

Soft drips echoed from the darkness.

My eyes adjusted to the dim light shining down from the open trunk. I considered for a moment that I should close the trunk door behind me, so I at least had my have a heads up, but I didn’t have the heart to crawl back up the rotting ladder. I turned, knowing my mistake may be fatal, but charged through the darkness anyway.

My sneakers slipped on the damp rock under my feet, eyes adjusting more and more as the tunnel, which was barely wide enough for me to pass through shoulder-to-shoulder, began to widen. A dim yellow light flickered just out of my line of sight, and I rushed forward, eager to reach whatever final destination may be at the end of this tunnel.

Maybe Thax had come exactly this way—maybe this exited out into the sewer pipes of Shelter Island. Maybe I was steps away from my freedom.

Awareness tingled through me, feet pushing me as I prayed for Thax and freedom at the end of the tunnel. The stone walls opened up more abruptly then, a small domed area—like an earth-and-stone version of the atrium at the library—only where that one sang with birds and life, this suffocated with silence and darkness.

I could see now that the dim yellow light was reflecting from a tunnel pointed in the opposite direction to the one I’d come through. Like the spokes of a wheel, I counted four tunnels hollowed out under the estate of Usher House and Gardens.

An entire world under its feet.

“Thax?” I called into the tunnel with the light. I waited, straining for a reply, when one came in the guise of a scratching noise. My fear dialed up, but the light beckoned, the possibility of Thax or an exit or both was too powerful to turn me around.

I took cutout steps forward, tentative and quiet, until my patience evaporated and I took a few more quickened steps.

I could now tell the light shone from a small doorway. I hovered just at the edge of the shadows, ready to slip inside when the loud scraping noise returned, followed by a soft grunt. I wasn’t alone. I prayed Thax was just on the other side. I crept closer to the stone, hiding myself deeper in the shadow as I listened and waited, measuring my breaths to control my violent heartbeat.

And then, the door thudded closed.

I was shrouded in darkness, again.

PAST

Zara - Winter 1964

“Yarrow, my love, you’re too good to me.” I leaned into my brother, our shoulders touching as the small gathering of media and entertainment journalists snapped away with their cameras. A morning show crew had just presented us with a Happy 16th Birthday cake on live camera for a few million of our closest television fans to see.

Yarrow remained wooden at my side.

He spoke little these days, but I think that was part of his act. We each had one. We’d become known as the Usher House Twins, and a lot worse depending on if you were local to Shelter Island.

The islanders had creepy and sometimes downright sinister names for us, but they were only reacting how they were meant to; more than writing, the governess had a talent for spinning a living narrative.

The day the new Yara was born was the day the real Zara died.

It was me that was buried six feet under, reality I’d lost touch with long ago as I became the thing required to put Usher House on the Hollywood map.

Thankfully, the few scenes of Lilies in the Cellar that were required for Yarrow and I to film were all on-site at Usher House, many external shots of the house and Yarrow and I walking hand-in-hand in our matching uniforms. It was all eerily similar to life, and yet so not.

The days that the director and producers were at Usher, Mother made sure the foster children were cleaned and scrubbed and spent all day deep in arithmetic and science texts. Those days, the kids often complained, were the worst. They may have been deprived of sunshine and fresh air in the cellar, but without the governess’s overshadowing presence, they found freedom.

A reporter interrupted my thoughts then. “Yara, the head of the production company said in an interview last week that he anticipated offering you a starring role in the next film, is that official and are you ready to take on a leading role in such a dark film franchise?”

“Nothing has been signed yet,” the governess interjected before I could answer. “Look for a press release shortly, but at this time nothing is in writing.”

“What do you say to the critics that have commented on the possibly improper relationship between the twins, Ms. Usher?”

The governess’s spine stiffened, her eyes turning hard as nails. “I will not entertain such impropriety. Shame on you and your publication for propagating such immoral drivel.”

“Have you started writing the follow-up to Lilies in the Cellar yet?” Another journalist thrust a recorder into the governess’s face.

“I have not,” she spit.

“Do you have a title?”

“I’m considering a few. You’ll have to read The Times piece when it comes out next week, I gave their interviewer a lot of juicy behind-the-scenes Hollywood details.”

The journalist rambled into the next question: “Can you tell us why the last director has decided not to be involved in the sequel?”

The governess’s eyebrow arched. “Aren’t you quite the little investigative journalist? Well, I’ll give you a hint, the