Haunting Adeline

Next, I pick up the weathered letter. It’s addressed to Gigi.

My Genevieve,

It pains me to write this letter. I sit here and I mourn. For what could have been. For what could still be but yet you refuse to see.

I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you, Genevieve. I’ve loved you though you have married another. And now that I know you have given yourself to a different man—a man that’s not me, my love still persists.

I’ve waited so long for you already, and now yet another has come between us. Has stopped me from taking you as mine.

Why do you insist on doing this to me? To us?

It plagues me. Keeps me from sleeping at night. The only thing I can think of doing is cutting you from my life to end this misery. For good.

Sincerely,

Your true love

“What the fuck did I just read?” I ask in a strained whisper. Daya reads over my shoulder, and when I look back at her, her wide eyes are on me, alight with confusion and concern.

“That sounded ominous. Threatening,” she says, her green eyes glancing at the letter like it’s a curse written on paper.

I nod distractedly, setting down the note and sorting through the pictures again. Looking for clues on who this man might be.

But there are none.

“He looks so familiar,” I murmur, studying another picture. They look to be at a party of some sort. The image is in black and white, so I can’t tell the color of the dress, only that it’s a dark shade. Jewels decorate the ends of her sleeves and around the collar of the dress. And of course, I don’t need the picture to be in color to know she’s wearing her red lipstick.

The man has his hand resting high up on her thigh. With the way he’s clutching her, it almost seems possessive. Domineering.

I’ve never met this man in my life and yet I know he’s a damn bastard, that I can bet money on.

And by the strained smile on Gigi's face, and the tightening around her eyes, my great-grandmother clearly thought so, too.

“Hold on, let me take pictures and upload them onto my computer. I can do a reverse image search.”

I watch her do her thing, her brow pinched with concentration. Within minutes, she’s turning the laptop towards me, staring at me carefully.

“Mark’s father. That’s who’s in all these pictures.”

My eyes snap to hers while my heart rate picks up speed.

“Are you thinking the same thing as me?” I ask.

“What, that your great-grandfather’s best friend could have been in love with Gigi and killed her when he found out she was having an affair with a man that wasn't him?” she summarizes, plucking the exact thoughts out of my head.

She sighs and stares down at the photos. “I don’t know. It’s a big conclusion to come to just based off of some creepy photos and a note. While the note does have a threatening tone to it, it certainly isn’t enough to convict him of murder.”

I nod, having thought the same thing. Something about these pictures puts me on edge and gives me a creeping chill down my spine. As much as I revolted against Gigi's diary and how she fawned over her stalker, it never gave me a bad feeling the way the note and pictures do. Still, I can’t solve a murder case purely based on feeling. I need evidence.

“Logically, Gigi's stalker is still more likely, but that doesn’t mean Mark’s father being the murderer is out of the question,” she goes on, absently picking up one of the pictures and observing it.

“I see motive in this note. So, even if it’s a small chance, I think we should still look into it.”

“Have you found any more information on Ronaldo?”

She sighs. “Yes. He died in 1947 of a cardiogenic shock.” My brows plunge.

“A heart attack?”

She shifts. “A broken heart. He died of broken heart syndrome.” My mouth dries. “I found some family history on him, but not much else. His life was kept pretty tightly under wraps, and I assume his boss had something to do with that.”

“So, a dead end,” I conclude, nodding my head. I bite my lip, rolling it between my teeth as I contemplate my next move. “I think I need to go up into the attic,” I say with resignation. I may love ghosts, but fuck, that doesn’t mean I still have the desire to be possessed by a demon or whatever is up there.

Daya's sage eyes whip to mine. I told her about the last note I found and how I felt there was something very negative up there.

“You’re a masochist. You’re go

I snort. “I think it would’ve done so by now if it really wanted to. There could be more up there.”

Daya sighs. “I’m going to die today,” she mutters.

“You won’t die, just maybe a little possession,” I chirp as I round the island and make way towards the staircase.

“Yeah, and guess who I’m terrorizing first?”

That cold, heavy weight instantly drops on my shoulders the second I enter the attic. It’s like in those cartoons when a piano drops out of the sky and lands on top of an unsuspecting person.

“Okay, hurry the fuck up, I don’t like it up here,” Daya says, her voice tight with fear. It’s crawling across my bones too, sending my heart racing. Yet, heat slithers through my muscles, settling low in the pit of my stomach.

I use the flashlight on my phone to search through the walls. I start with where I found the last note, but all that’s left are cobwebs and spiders.

I make my way over each wall, pressing on the wood paneling in hopes of finding one of them loose. It’s not until I get close to the mirror that I find one. The wood rattles beneath my palms, and with the heavy feeling surrounding us, I waste no time ripping the wood from the wall.

I bounce the beam of light around in several different directions, finding nothing but more bugs and webs. I almost give up, until I see a flash of something shiny.

“I think I found something,” I a

“Thank fuck,” Daya mutters from behind me. I barely hear the words. Plunging my arm into the hole before I can consider the bugs, I grab at the piece, my hand closing around something plastic. I go to pull that out, but my hand grazes what feels like paper, so I make a grab for that too.

I swipe at my arm, cringing at the feel of cobwebs sticking to me. I don’t even look at my arm, I just keep brushing it off all while beelining for the steps.

“Let’s go,” I breathe, right before I’m nearly knocked on my ass from Daya pushing past me and ru

Whatever is in my hand, it’s something big. I’m as sure of it as I am of the eyes on my back, watching me leave.

Slamming the attic door behind me, I lean against it and heave, shaking out the bone-chilling cold that seems to cling to me like glue.

“I’m never going up there again,” Daya says, panting.

“I don’t think I want to, either,” I say. Finally, I look down at my hand and see a Ziploc bag with a gold diamond encrusted Rolex in it and blood streaked across the plastic. And the note in my hand is a quick scrawl that says, “hide this, no one can know I did it. Remember that.”

“Holy shit,” I breathe.

“Let me see it. We can’t touch it or we’ll get fingerprints on it, but those have serial numbers. I can probably trace that back to its owner.”

We rush down into the kitchen, the demon residing in my attic forgotten. I find a pair of spare rubber gloves that Daya and I used when we were cleaning out the house. She snaps the gloves on and carefully pulls out the bloodied watch.

“I don’t want the blood to flake off, but I need to remove the bracelet in order to see the serial number,” she murmurs, handling the watch piece with care. “Do you have a thumbtack?”

I whip around and open up the junk drawer in my kitchen, confident I have one somewhere. After rummaging for a minute, I let loose a celebratory ah-ha and hand Daya a blue thumbtack.

It takes her a minute, but she finally gets the bracelet unhooked between the lugs of the watch.

“Motherfucker,” she curses.

“What?”

“Someone scratched at the serial number. It’s barely legible.”

Daya looks up at me, disappointment radiating from her green eyes. I deflate, a frown tugging my lips down in defeat.

“I’m not go

I nod, trusting Daya to figure it out. She’s incredibly intelligent, and her resources on finding out information are astronomical.

And then a light bulb goes off in my head. “In those pictures with Gigi, Frank was wearing that watch.”

I pick through all the papers scattered across the island until I find the small stack of photos.

“Same watch,” I reiterate, handing the pictures over. Daya peers down at the photos, a grin pulling her lips up.

“Now we just have to prove it.”