Already the image had grown dull in her mind. The distorted face had gained a slightly cartoonish appearance. She could still remember the utter, heart-freezing terror from the moment, but now the reaction felt overblown, like a nightmare that consumed her on waking but gradually faded with each passing hour until it felt irrelevant.

Margot pulled a face as she chewed through the sticky, crumbly block of oats and raisins. She’d expected something like that would happen. As her would-be-psychologist roommate was fond of saying, the human brain was an expert at rationalizing and diminishing things that it didn’t fully understand.

That didn’t mean she could safely discard the memory. But she was grateful. She’d have to sleep in the Gallows Hill house that night, and she didn’t think that would be possible if the mirror image was still clear in her mind.

Once she’d cleaned up from her meal, Margot carried her luggage up to her old bedroom. There would be other spare rooms hidden behind the closed doors, but she’d run out of daylight and the idea of searching the aging house at night seemed like it would be tempting an unpleasant fate.

Besides, it felt appropriate to return to the old room. It had been hers once. It would be hers again.

She used her heel to nudge the door closed, then exhaled heavily as she placed the luggage cases on the floor. The ceiling light’s thick glass shade had gathered years’ worth of dust and discoloration, and it dulled the light more than diffused it. The shadows around the space were heavier than Margot would have liked, especially in the corners, but at least the bedding was relatively clean.

The house felt too large and too empty. Margot stood near the end of the bed for a moment, her eyes running over the faint tan patterns in the wallpaper, as she listened to the wind howling beyond the window.

She wasn’t sure how her parents had coped with the building. Her grandmother had told her she was an only child, and there had been no other relatives mentioned in their will. They must have spent every night like Margot now was: alone in a house vastly too large for them, bouncing through a handful of familiar rooms while countless other spaces remained sealed and forgotten.

It would have been a lonely way to live.

Margot crossed to the window. Through it, she caught a distant blush of light, filtered through the patchy trees behind the property. That would have to be the town. She’d driven through it on her way to the church that morning but hadn’t stopped to examine it any more closely.

See? People do live nearby. You’re not entirely isolated.

She dabbed her tongue across cold lips. The lights seemed miles away.