The ladder folded. The attic door swung back up … and clicked shut.

“NO!” cried Amy, crawling through the dust and pushing down on the attic door. But it was no use—she knew the door used a locking mechanism, and that you could only access it by pulling the cord from the outside. She knew this because her dad had said the same thing to her, every single time she’d gone up there.

And now here she was.

Locked in the attic.

In the dark.

Alone.

Fear stabbed through Amy, making her breath heavy. She could feel the attic around her, dark and huge and endless, forcing dusty air into her lungs, crawling with mice and spiders and centipedes and all sorts of creepy crawlers that wanted to swarm over her and scuttle up her face and into her mouth.

Amy slammed her fists on the attic door, hoping someone would hear her, but there was no reply, no call from downstairs. She felt like she might faint, terrified that Mom and Dad would forget, that they’d leave her up here forever until one day they went looking for art supplies and found her mummified corpse curled up in a corner—

The door clicked, and slowly opened downward.

Light flooded up at Amy, making her laugh with relief. She clambered down the stairs, wondering who had heard her banging on the door.

Halfway down the ladder, she stopped. A little part of her fear rose back up inside her.

Rover sat in the middle of the hallway, watching her.

Amy glanced from the dog to the ladder beneath her feet. The only way to unlatch the door was with the cord. Had he jumped up and grabbed it in his mouth, using gravity to pull it down?

It didn’t look like that, though. If Rover had done that, the ladder would’ve unfolded forward, leaving him on the other side.

So how had he pulled the string?

Amy remembered Rover taking the picture of himself with the iPad, and felt a little like she’d never left the darkness of the attic.

Katie had said he could communicate with her, and you could take a picture with an iPad using a remote. But actually pulling down that heavy door …

He couldn’t have …

“Rover?” called Katie from somewhere in the house. “Rover, where are you?”

Rover stood and walked off just as Dad emerged from his office. He watched the dog go with a frown.

“Looks like that pooch has got another little hot spot behind his ear,” he said. He looked at Amy expectantly. “Find ’em?”

“What?” asked Amy.

“The art supplies. Wasn’t that what you were looking for?”

“Uh, yeah.” Amy was still desperately trying to understand what had just happened. “I, uh …”