Becky had turned off the highway on a whim, not sure where the country road would take her.
It had been more than twenty years since she’d driven that part of Indiana, and she had planned to just shoot straight through on her way to Chicago.
But something pulled at her.
And then, after miles of twists and turns, narrowing gravel roads, she suddenly knew where she was.
When she pulled into the overgrown driveway of the old Tompkins house, Becky’s stomach roiled, just like when she walked past as a teenager. She couldn’t believe the place was still standing, or that she had dared stop at the town’s infamous “haunted house.”
And then, she went inside … and nearly jumped out of her skin when Sandra greeted her in the kitchen.
Sandra, her best friend in high school
Sandra, with no Facebook account.
Sandra, who had just … disappeared.
“What are you doing here?” Becky asked.
“I don’t really know. I just felt like I … had to come.”
After a few minutes of reintroduction, the women decided they’d poke around the place.
“Let’s go to the attic!” Sandra said.
Becky frowned. “You mean where all the ghosts come to hide when they don’t know they’re dead?”
Sandra laughed. “You don’t buy that old folklore, do you?”
“What are you looking at?” Becky asked when they’d been in the attic for awhile.
“Just this empty picture frame,” Sandra said.
Becky walked across the dusty floor to get a better look, then giggled. She had been mesmerized by the same object earlier.
“What’s so funny?” Sandra asked.”
“That’s not an empty frame,” Becky said. “It’s a mirror.”
She stepped behind her friend, and smiled into the mirror. Hers was the only relection.
She turned to look at Sandra, but the attic was empty.
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