Becca had to agree. Danny filmed her as she looked over the dust-covered furniture and the spiderwebs in every corner. Her eyes stopped as they fell upon the large, dark-red stains all over the carpet. “What is that?” she said, pointing, her stomach turning. “That can’t be . . . blood, can it?”

“It’s unlikely,” Frankie said, their voice shaking. “No way it’s blood. There are all sorts of things that could turn this color after a long time.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and go with that,” Danny added, still kneeling down and zooming in to get a wide, slow, dramatic shot of the stains. “Otherwise I might have to run away screaming.”

Becca looked around the rest of the room. It was so dark in here, it almost looked like there were shadows climbing the walls. Thank goodness for the light on Danny’s camera, as well as for the sunlight that was able to filter through the filthy, dust-streaked windows.

“The sooner we can get out of here, the better,” Becca said. “I think we can all agree on that.”

“Absolutely,” Frankie and Danny said together.

“Let’s spread out a little and check for clues,” Becca suggested. “But everybody stay in the same room. We should make sure not to lose sight of each other.”

“Agreed.” Danny started exploring the area behind the stains, using the light on his camera to light up the darker corners of the room. Frankie moved to the wall right next to the door, looking over the framed photos that hung over the peeling, rotting walls.

Becca walked across the room, stepping carefully around a filthy couch and a cracked coffee table, until she found a dresser of some sort up against a wall. On top of the dresser were a variety of dust-covered trinkets—porcelain cats, miniature teacups, a tiny gold violin with a diamond in the center. “Whoa,” she whispered. “Some of this stuff is actually pretty cool.”

Beneath the trinkets was a length of lace doily, which had probably been white at one point in time but was now yellow and brown from various stains and gatherings of dirt. She wondered how long the house had been abandoned—clearly nobody could live here in the house’s current condition.

Right?

“Hey,” Danny called from the other side of the room. “You might want to come see this.”

“Did you find a clue?” Frankie asked without turning away from the framed portraits on the wall, too entranced by whatever was in the photo.

“Absolutely and definitely,” Danny confirmed, which got everyone’s attention quick. “Come see what’s written on this mirror.”

A message on a mirror? Becca quickly made her way over to Danny, who was still filming the mirror that was propped in the back corner of the room. She wasn’t able to see the message until she got closer: a question written in shaky, red letters.

What is Danny Watson afraid of?