Chapter 1

The floor was hard beneath Shayne as she opened her eyes slowly. Sunlight from the window above the sink blinded her. Her head ached and her stomach felt sick. She tried to shake off the dizziness and focus her gaze. She found her body weak, and couldn’t seem to muster the strength to sit up. She was sprawled across the dirty black and white checkered tile, looking up at the yellowing ceiling. Her head was next to the ugly metal leg of a kitchen table she had never seen before. Shayne blinked rapidly, trying to clear away the mental fog. She lifted her throbbing head and looked around. This looked like her kitchen, but at the same time it didn’t. She knew that only minutes, possibly seconds ago, she had been standing with her grandma, trying on the locket she had been given. But she was alone now, Grandma Rachel had disappeared. Everything was strange and different. How could everything have changed so quickly and why am I lying in the floor? she asked herself silently. Her eyes were wide with fear and confusion.

She continued to look around the room as her nausea subsided. This was the same tile she had seen Rachel scrubbing on hands and knees only last week. Yet it was suddenly dirty and yellowing like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. The sink was piled high with dishes. She stared at the appliances that littered the marble counters and spilled over to a table that Shayne knew she didn’t own.

Where am I and how exactly did I get here? A second glance around the kitchen confirmed the growing suspicion that this was indeed her house. The antique sideboard was still there, as well as other things she recognized. She seriously doubted there could be another kitchen in the world that she could mistake for her own. Shayne pulled her shoulders from the floor painfully and sat upright. She couldn’t recall ever hurting this badly. Every muscle felt bruised all the way to the bone. It was the pain that assured her she wasn’t dreaming. Never had the Anderson house been so ill kept, and only in a dream could it be that way now. Besides, how else would someone explain why everything suddenly seemed tired and old? Shayne squinted her eyes and tried to focus on what she last remembered. She was trying on the locket in the kitchen... The locket! She involuntarily reached to her throat. It lay against her tender collar bone. She fingered it happily as her head swam. Then she remembered the swirling dark and the feeling of falling. That’s it, she thought. I must have passed out. That would explain why I’m in the floor. But it still didn’t explain the kitchen’s shabby appearance or Rachel’s sudden disappearance.

Shayne slowly began to force herself to her feet. Groans and hisses ripped from her chest as she moved. The shear agony caused her normally graceful moves to seem choppy and uncoordinated. After considerable effort, she managed to stand up and glance around at her surroundings. There has to be a reasonable explanation.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the old brick Anderson house, another person took a long deep breath and closed his eyes. The auburn-haired man opened his eyes and sighed silently. He stared into space as he shook his head to clear it. He would not allow himself to think of her now. He would not focus on her strawberry hair or remember her laugh. No, not today, he thought as he turned the screwdriver. The bolt tightened under his angry force and the hinge was secure once more. He dropped his hands to his sides but stayed in his crouched position.

He wanted to keep turning. He wanted to push and pull and turn till the bolt snapped clean. Maybe he would be free, if for just the smallest second he let the anger overtake him. He shook with it. He was sick with it. He had spent the last ten years eating, sleeping, and breathing, nothing but guilt, anger, and pain.

But breaking the marbled vanity would not bring him relief. Only the dead girl could do that, but she was gone now, and she wasn't coming back. There was nothing left of her but this old house and a haunting memory that he would never be free of. He threw the screwdriver into the sink and swore under his breath. It was always worse when he was alone. Sometimes he thought he could still hear her laughing in the wind. It couldn’t be, he knew. It was just the house taunting him with its hereditary memory. He sure hated the quiet.

He mentally kicked himself for his self-pity as he rose to his feet. He looked into the bathroom mirror at his reflection and grimaced. His eyes were black with anger, his mouth turned down into a frown. Wrinkles were beginning to form over his forehead and around his eyes from all the frowning. He knew he looked like dirt. He’d been up for three days straight with dreams of the red head and the proof was huge dark circles under his eyes. The deep frown on his face stretched his rugged features in a gruesome sad way. His normally well groomed hair was tousled and sticking up about an inch from his head.

He silently chuckled at his chicken coop hair. “Just because you’re on vacation, doesn’t give you the right to let yourself go,” he said to himself as he wet his hands and smoothed his unruly mop. He tucked his dirty tank top it into his favorite well-worn jeans and tapped his brown work boot against the floor.