Towering

the notebook. Her mother had locked her in her bedroom? What kind of crazy person was I living with? But maybe, I thought, her mother had known of some danger, had wanted to protect her. I wanted to read more of the notebook, to find out. It ran on for pages and pages, but suddenly, I felt tired, so tired I couldn’t read or think or do anything else but stumble to the bed to sleep. I hid the notebook under my pillow for later reading.
    The pillow was old, soft, and the sheets smelled like dust. I wondered if they’d been changed since Danielle had left.
    Then, sleep drowned out all thought or reason or anything but darkness.
    I woke some time later to the howling of winds and the driving sound of rain or maybe snow. Through it all, there was a tree branch, tapping, scraping on my window, persistent and annoying as my mother’s cat. I tried to pull the pillow over my head but ended up with a pinfeather against my cheek. The scraping grew louder. Then, there was a voice. A voice? Impossible. It was just the wind, howling. But it sounded like a voice, a shrieking banshee voice, and it screamed, “Let me in!” The scraping got louder. I remembered the closed, shuttered windows, but now, it sounded like the shutters were open, banging against the house.
    Finally, I had to get up to stop it. I’d open the window, break the branch off, and get back to sleep. That was all. I willed myself to stand despite my weariness.
    But when I went to the window, it was already open. Open or maybe broken. Yes, broken. A rush of freezing air assaulted my face, and as I stepped closer, intent on finding the branch, a hand grabbed my wrist.
    It was an icy hand, too cold, almost, to be real, and I shivered at the touch of it. I tried to pull my own hand away, but her fingers held like a claw machine, and a sad voice said, “Let me in! Please let me in!”
    “Who are you?” I said, though even as I did, I knew. My eyes found the window, and I knew.
    “Dani,” she said.
    Dani! Danielle! I stared at her. The face was something like the girl in the yearbook photo, if she’d been dug up from a grave. Her cheeks were white and ghostlike, with mottled blue patches. Her dark hair flew behind her. I gasped and, again, pulled my arm back. But this time, I took her arm with me, scraping it against the broken window, causing blood to run down and onto my own hand. Still, she held tight.
    “Let me in!” she begged. “I have been wandering in the woods all these years! Let me in!”
    The window was too small to let her in, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, and it was on the second story besides. I couldn’t even see how she was standing there. Maybe she was floating, flying like a ghost.
    Or a hallucination. Of course! I was dreaming! I was still asleep. Yet her hand on my wrist, the blood dripping down mine, it all felt so real, and her voice was so pathetic.
    “Let me in! Please!”
    I tried to reason with her. “I can’t let you in a closed window, and I can’t open it with you holding my arm.” Why was I talking to a hallucination?
    Her eyes bugged out, huge and horrible, but she must have seen the logic in what I said. She let my arm go. I snatched it back and began grabbing things, books, anything I could find to cover the hole in the window. Once I’d done that, maybe I could sleep.
    “Let me in!” Her voice was softer, blending with the wind and snow.
    “I can’t! You’re dead!” Suddenly, I knew she was, knew she was like all the other dead things that haunted me. I had to close the window, let it go. I heaped more objects on, but I saw the pile moving, swaying. “Go away!”
    I heard footsteps in the hall. Then, my door opened. “What’s this?” a voice demanded. “Why are you in here?”
    She stepped forward and I saw her. Fully dressed in a blue dress, a scarf on her head, Mrs. Greenwood wasn’t as old as I’d envisioned. Josh had said a hundred or so, but clearly, he’d exaggerated. She couldn’t have been more than sixty or so if she’d had a daughter my mother’s age, though it was clear that she’d had a hard life, with her daughter disappearing and all. She was tall, with gray hair piled in a bun and eyes that pierced my soul. “Why are you in this room? And why are you screaming?”
    “I’m . . . Wyatt. Emily’s son. Josh gave me the key. This was the only room open.”
    “No one comes in this room. No one!”
    “I’m sorry. But I . . . I saw her.” I glanced at the window. The