The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (ebook reader for manga TXT) 📕

sat at the same table for lunch like always, but they couldn’t help that. Lux and Bram were practically doing the whole cafeteria a favor just by sitting there so that people could ogle them. But although they’d had conversations with everyone around them, Lux and Bram hadn’t directly spoken. She hoped no one had noticed.

The sooner she texted Bram, the sooner their fight would be over. Hopefully.

“Okay, let’s go,” Lux told Wyatt.

She tucked the kid in again but his eyes stayed open, two giant pools of concern. “Can you check the window? Just to make sure?”

Lux forced a smile. This bedtime routine was dragging. She was going to ask for a raise. She went and pulled back the curtain. “See? Nothing there.” No one anywhere near the window, no one in the trees, no one on the sidewalk. She did spot someone in the playground, though, sitting on the swings.

Perv.

She didn’t care how nice this neighborhood was or how much yard space this house had—you couldn’t pay her to live this close to a playground. A million rugrats running around by day and the skeeviest people at night.

“Can you just stay until I fall asleep?”

Lux rolled her eyes but figured she could text Bram from here as soon as Wyatt nodded off. She took a seat in the rocking chair in the corner of Wyatt’s room. Her hand buzzed and she looked at the screen. Her heart did a little skip when she saw that it was a text from Bram. He was ready to make up, too.

Kid asleep?

Not yet. He hears monsters.

She watched the ellipses blinking.

So you told him about me? Devil emoji.

Lux grinned. It’d probably be healthier if they talked about their fight, maybe tried to work it out so it didn’t happen again. But this—pretending nothing had happened at all and sweeping it under the rug—was a million times easier. Lux was about to text back when the furious barking started. Lux groaned.

“Sugar!” Wyatt said, springing up in bed. “We left Sugar downstairs!”

“Sugar’s fine.” But even as Lux tried to get Wyatt to lie back down, Sugar wouldn’t stop whining. Eventually, she was screeching and Lux could hear the dog’s little nails pawing at the bottom of the stairs.

“You have to get her,” Wyatt said.

“Fine,” she said. “Stay in bed.”

Lux stepped into the hallway; the dog’s barks were louder there. The weird thing was, along with the barks, Lux thought she heard shushing. Like someone was trying to calm Sugar down.

When she got downstairs, Sugar was busy chewing on her toy. Lux swooped the puppy up, ready to take Sugar upstairs, but something caught her eye. She stared at Wyatt’s Star Wars action figures on the living room floor, trying to figure out why they looked so … off. And then she realized the oddest thing. Instead of lying in a heap like always, the toys were all upright, standing in a circle.

Lux kicked her foot out and the figures toppled over, some spilling far across the hardwood. Usually she hated how much noise this house made, but now she stood frozen in place, listening. For once, the creaking old house was silent.

Unease settled over Lux’s skin like a dusting of fresh snow. She had the unshakable feeling that someone was here with her. But when she looked around—through doorways and behind club chairs—there was no one.

A moment later came the noise from upstairs. Footsteps over her head. “I told you to stay in bed,” she muttered. She raced up to Wyatt’s room, secretly glad to get out of the living room. But Wyatt was in bed, sound asleep.

Lux stood in the doorway, trying to reconcile this peaceful image of him with the footsteps she’d just heard. She held Sugar closer to her chest and struggled to remember the sound exactly. Finally she convinced herself that she’d misheard it, that it must’ve been the pipes.

She closed the door to Wyatt’s room and went back downstairs. She sat on the couch with Sugar, stroking the puppy’s puffy white fur. She felt like a movie villain, but having what amounted to a breathing lump of cotton candy lying across your lap was a pretty good thing in a very old house when it was this late at night.

Then Lux heard it. The tapping noise Wyatt had described.

It wasn’t just her imagination, because Sugar perked up suddenly, her little body totally stiff, ear flaps up.

Only now, the tapping was on the living room window.

It wasn’t a knock, more of a plink, like a long fingernail was rapping slowly on the glass. Or a pebble. Was it Bram? Could he be chucking stones at the window in a warped attempt at romance? Lux went to the window and pulled back the curtain in one swift swoosh.

There was no one there.

It must have been the wind.

Throwing pebbles at the glass.

There was a new tapping, now at the door.

She swiped at her phone screen and pulled up her message thread with Bram. Was that you at the window? Are you at the door now? But when she read what she’d written, she held her thumb down to delete it all.

She sounded crazy. As much as she wished she could, Lux couldn’t sink into the couch. And she couldn’t ignore the persistent noise, which grew louder with every passing moment. She untangled her legs, placing her feet silently on the floor, and clutched Sugar. She made her way to the foyer. There couldn’t be anyone at the door.

But there was someone at the door.

Lux saw it now, the doorknob twisting first to the left, then, slowly, to the right.

“Bram?” she whispered. She got closer. “Bram?” she said more insistently, her cheek pressing against the wood. Lux wrapped her fingers around the knob. There was no resistance. She swung the door open.

No one.

She shut the door quickly, hugging Sugar to her chest. She was imagining things—this old house was making her imagine things. Like the noise she now heard above her.

Pipes. The old pipes.

But Lux