Chapter 4 - The Hallway Stayed Awake After Us
Milo waited until the house went quiet. I sat on the edge of his bed with my shoes still on because he told me not to take them off. The lamp was off. The hallway light made a thin line under his bedroom door.
He held up one finger to me. That meant don't move. I nodded.
He got down on his knees and put his face close to the floor. He watched the line of light for a long time. I could hear the clock in the hall ticking. Somewhere downstairs a pipe knocked once and then stopped.
"Still on," he whispered.
Evelyn always turned the hallway lights off at nine. She had told us that was the rule. Big house, big electric bill. Milo had said we would go when she turned them off, because then we could use the flashlight without her seeing it from under her door.
But the light stayed on.
Milo stood up slowly and put his hand on the doorknob. He didn't turn it all the way. He cracked it maybe an inch, just enough to see out. Cold air from the hallway came in and touched my face.
I got off the bed and went to him. He didn't tell me no this time. I stood behind him and looked through the crack over his arm.
Down at the end of the hall, near the double doors, the light was too bright. It hurt my eyes after the dark room. And in that light I saw her.
Not all of her. Just the bottom of her dress. The dark red fabric hung straight, and her shadow stretched long across the dark floor toward us. She wasn't moving. Her shoes made no sound on the wood. The maroon color looked almost black under the warm bulbs.
I grabbed Milo's sleeve. He put his hand over mine fast to keep me still.
Evelyn was standing in front of the wallpaper. Her back was to us. Her pulled-back hair caught the light. She reached up with both hands, and I heard a sound like tape pulling off a roll. A long rip.
She pressed something flat over the wall. Her arm moved back and forth, smoothing it down. I couldn't see the flowers from that far, just her shoulder working.
"What's she doing?" I breathed.
Milo shook his head a little. He leaned closer to the crack.
Evelyn stepped back half a step. In her other hand she held a white cloth. She folded it once and pressed it low on the wall, under where she had put the tape. She wiped upward, slow. Then she looked at the cloth. Even from our door I could see a dark spot on it that wasn't there before.
My stomach felt sick. I remembered the red line sliding down that morning, how it didn't stop. Milo's fingers tightened around mine.
She wiped again. Then she bent down and wiped the wood trim. Careful, like Mom used to wipe the counter after dinner when she didn't want Dad to see a spill. Twice, three times. She folded the dirty part inside so the white showed again.
Then she put another strip of tape on. The rip sound came again. She smoothed it with her palm.
She stood there a second with her hand flat against the wall, not moving. Her shadow didn't move either. I stopped breathing because I thought she heard us. Milo eased the door closed until only a sliver was left.
We waited. My knees hurt from crouching. Milo's breathing was loud next to my ear.
Through the sliver I watched her pick up something from the floor. The roll of tape. She tucked the cloth under her arm. She looked left, toward the double doors, and right, toward us. I pulled back fast.
Her shoes made one soft tap on the dark floor. Then another. The hallway light clicked off.
Darkness dropped over everything. The line under Milo's door went black. I could still see the shape of her maroon dress in my eyes, like after you look at a lamp too long.
Milo didn't open the door again right away. He counted in a whisper. "One. Two. Three."
We heard her bedroom door close down the hall. The lock turned.
Only then did he crack our door open again. The hall was empty now, lit just by the nightlight by the stairs. Far down, where she had been, I could see a pale square on the wallpaper. The tape caught what little light there was.
And at the bottom edge of it, even in the dark, there was a thin dark line starting again. Wet. Coming back down over the tape's edge.
Milo saw it too. He closed the door all the way and turned the lock on our side. He sat down with his back against it.
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"We're not going out there tonight," he whispered. "She's guarding it."
I climbed back onto his bed and pulled the blanket up to my chin. I kept thinking about the cloth folded over, hiding the red inside the white.
