Chapter 6:The Static on the Tape
404 Words
The fluorescent lights in the interrogation room hummed with a sick, yellow vibration. Chloe sat at the metal table, her hands tucked under her thighs to hide the fact that they wouldn't stop shaking. Across from her, Detective Miller sighed, clicking his ballpoint pen over and over.
"Let's go over it one more time, Chloe," Miller said, his voice weary. "You say you drove to your grandmother's house at 412 Blackwood Lane. You say your mother is currently in the hospital in a catatonic state. And you claim the house... what? Dissolved?"
"It didn't just dissolve," Chloe whispered, staring at her reflection in the one-way glass. She was terrified to look at it for too long. She was afraid her reflection would blink when she didn't. "It folded in on itself. Like paper. The debt was settled, so the house didn't have a reason to exist in this world anymore."
The detective leaned forward.
"We sent a cruiser out there, kid. There is no house. There hasn't been a house at that address since the fire in 1944. It’s just an empty lot with overgrown weeds and a rusted gate."
Chloe felt the room spin. 1944. That was the year the Original made the deal.
"But I was there! I have the bruises! My mom is literally in a coma because of what that... thing did to her!" Chloe shouted, her voice cracking.
Miller shoved a photo across the table. It was a police drone shot of the property. It was empty. But as Chloe looked closer at the grainy image, she saw something that made her blood turn to ash.
In the middle of the empty, weed-choked lot, there was a single, standing vanity mirror. And in the reflection of that mirror, standing in the middle of a field that didn't exist, was a young girl who looked exactly like Chloe, waving goodbye.
"I need to go," Chloe said, standing up so fast her chair screeched against the floor.
"Sit down, Chloe. We aren't done."
"I am," she said, her voice suddenly cold and hollow, sounding exactly like her grandmother’s. "The contract doesn't care about police reports. It only cares about the next of kin."
As she walked out of the room, the detective didn't stop her. He couldn't. He was too busy staring at the camera monitor, realizing that on the video feed, the chair Chloe had been sitting in was empty.
- Writer
