Chapter 6 - THE DRESS

She had kept the same blue dress folded in a cedar box for years.

Or thought she had.

The creature dragged the scrap toward the hallway.

Caleb whispered, “It wants us to follow.”

“Then we don’t.”

The creature stopped.

Its body flexed.

A child’s voice came from it.

“Mara, I’m cold.”

Mara’s knees almost failed.

That was exactly what Lena had said the night before she died.

Mara had never told anyone.

Caleb saw her face.

“It’s inside your memories too.”

“No.”

“It knows things from you.”

“How?”

He pointed at her left hand.

A black line ran beneath the skin near her thumb.

Mara stared.

The creature had touched her when she dropped the tweezers.

She remembered a sharp sting.

She had ignored it.

Now the line moved.

Only slightly.

But it moved.

“Wait.”

“Move.”

“If it’s in your hand, cutting randomly could make it worse.”

“I’m not letting it reach my head.”

Caleb looked at the black line.

Then at the Halverson notebook.

“Maybe we don’t have to.”

He opened to the final pages.

One entry had been written in frantic block letters.

THEY HATE IRON.

Mara looked at the fireplace poker.

The creature in the hall had kept its distance from it.

Another line:

HEAT DRIVES THEM OUT. IRON KILLS THEM.

Caleb built the fire hotter.

Mara heated the end of a sewing needle against the flame.

Her hand shook.

“Do it,” Caleb said.

She pressed the iron against the black line.

Something moved violently under her skin.

Mara screamed.

The black line raced toward her wrist.

Caleb grabbed her arm.

“Hold on!”

He pressed the heated iron ahead of it.

A tiny dark thread burst from the skin near her thumb and dropped onto the floor.

It writhed.

Caleb crushed it under the iron poker.

A sound filled the cabin.

Not from the creature.

From below.

Hundreds of voices screaming at once.

Then the trapdoor slammed so hard the table lifted.

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The cellar latch broke.

And the door began opening.