The Valley of Lost Stories by Vanessa McCausland

Author:Vanessa McCausland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Emmie

Emmie snuggled into Seraphine’s warm little body as lightning lit their room. The rain flicked at the windows like insistent fingers. The storm thundered and thrashed against the valley walls, but Sera didn’t stir. Her daughter’s lashes twitched; she was lost deep in her dreams.

Emmie had fallen into sleep easily. She had drunk too much red wine with dinner, they all had, full of relief that Sim had been found. But this wild storm felt like the brewing of something ancient inside her. She had never liked storms. And this valley flashed and roiled with it.

She prised herself from Sera’s clasp and reached out for the comforting light of her iPhone. It was 3.13 am. She opened the screen and found the photo. The dread was still heavy inside her. She never should have posted the picture to Instagram in the first place. She had no idea things would go the way they had.

She had seen the likes and comments first. Hundreds of them. Her heart was beating fast and her mind raced. What was it about this picture? The kids were lined up in front of a crumbling façade in the mines. It was true, it was a nice shot because the children were all caught in motion, like birds mid-flight, not one of them looking at the camera. And the light was otherworldly, beautiful. And then she saw it. A face. Hollow-eyed and vague, but still, the shape of a human visage in the left-hand corner of the window at the top of the photo. She gasped and adrenaline spiked her system.

She was being so careful to post something where the kids were not overtly identified that she never saw it. It looked different the more you stared at it, like an optical illusion, shifting, oily. Was it just the reflection on the dirty glass of the window? She scrolled through the comments. Some people thought it was the face of a woman, others a child. Others had a scientific explanation about what could have caused light to refract in such a way. What everyone seemed to agree upon was that it was there. People had messaged her asking where the photo was taken so that they could research who the ghost might be. Thank God she’d never identified where they were staying and that where they were staying was so remote and little known.

She had ignored everything, all the questions and comments. Her immediate instinct had been to share the news with Pen, to tell the others that this photo had gone viral, but it had started raining and then she and Pen were running back over the bridge, soaking wet. Sim was missing and everyone was panicked, and then, when she was finally found, they were all numb with cold and relief. They’d crowded around the fire in the lounge to dry out and drink wine and hot cocoa, cowering against the elements raging outside. The kids had toasted marshmallows, and Caleb had brought them

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