Chapter 3

"Okay, trippers," Leo says to his camera, "the family has directed me to Room 7. This is where Sarah Jenkins tragically ended her life."

He pushes open the door.

It groans.

The room is thick with stale air, the floral wallpaper peeling in damp strips.

The single bed is stripped bare, mattress stained.

"They say she used a knife," Leo narrates, his flashlight beam cutting through the gloom.

He scans the floor, the corners.

Then, his light lands on it.

Under the edge of the rickety nightstand, something glints.

A rusty hunting knife.

"Well, well, what have we here?" Leo murmurs, zooming in.

He doesn't touch it. Smart.

"Mr. Jenkins, Mrs. Jenkins, Mark? Can you see this?"

On the video call, Dad squints. "That's... that's my old hunting knife. Sarah... she must have taken it."

"It was hers," Mark interjects quickly. "She always had a thing for knives."

Another lie. I hated that knife. It was Dad's pride, always locked away.

Leo continues his search.

"And look at this," he says, his light falling on a small, dark square near the base of the wall.

A photograph.

Burned at the edges.

He carefully picks it up with gloved fingers, turns it over.

It's a picture of Mark, smiling, younger.

On the back, scrawled in what looks like dried blood, are the words: "YOU WILL PAY."

"Chilling," Leo says, holding it up for his camera and the family to see.

"That's my photo," Mark gasps, hand to his chest. "And that... that looks like her handwriting. Oh my god."

Planted.

So obviously planted.

The knife wasn't there. The photo wasn't there.

Not after I...

Leo looks appropriately somber. "This certainly paints a picture of a very disturbed individual. The family's claims of a vengeful spirit seem to be gaining some traction here."

The online comments explode.

"She's evil!"

"Poor Mark!"

"Lock her spirit up!"

I want to scream.

But I have no voice.

Only the wind whistling through the broken window pane.