The
Empty Room
by
Sarah J Clemens
Genre:
Psychological Suspense, Thriller, Mystery
Rain
soaked and dreary, it was a 1901 abandoned Victorian that newlyweds
Dean and Elizabeth Montgomery hoped would fulfill their dreams of a
new start in life, even if the town of Eastbrook, Maine was nestled
under a constant blanket of fog.
The
first neighbor the couple meets dashes those hopes when he raises a
bizarre question: what happened to the last person who lived in their
house? A cryptic question, but nothing to worry about. At least not
until the couple looked under the floorboards inside the house.
Under
mounting pressure from the residents of Eastbrook to stop questioning
the past, Dean and Elizabeth are driven deeper into the history of
the house, the town, and their neighbors. When the couple discovers
what happened in Eastbrook, keeping the secret could save their
lives, but uncovering the truth might be worth the risk.
What
happened inside The Empty Room is a mystery until the last page. A
gripping psychological suspense, the story takes readers on a
cat-and-mouse game where some secrets are better off hidden.
The
two were quite uncertain as to why it seemed so difficult to step inside the
room. They had
trampled across every inch of the house and looked through the belongings of a
man they had never met, but felt as though they were intruding to even stand
outside the door of an empty room.
Dean
was a problem solver though and had finally settled on a way to get over that
feeling.
As
he stood behind Elizabeth, just outside of the door frame, and with his coffee
cup still in one hand, he put the palm of his hand on her back and gave a
strong push.
She
stumbled awkwardly into the room.
“There,”
he said proudly as he took a sip. “What do you think?”
“I
think that you’re going to have a hard time sleeping tonight,” she replied.
He
found it ironic that he had already weighed that possibility before he shoved
her, and had still decided to do so. He smiled. “I’m good with that.”
He
took a few faltering steps behind her before taking a deep breath and stepping
inside completely.
They both looked around and identified the same exact features they had seen
the first time they stood outside the door: an entirely empty room with a sheer
white curtain covering the only window, now with a new perspective standing
inside.
Compared
to the rest of the rooms in the house, this room was small. It had a closet on
the left
wall and the window on the back wall, which looked out into the backyard. There
was nothing
special or unique about the room, except this one wasn’t crammed to the ceiling
with personal touches.
Dean
and Elizabeth stared at each other as though competing for a prize in a
contest, when Dean’s concentration fixated on something else. She followed the
direction of his eyes to the wall behind her which had abruptly claimed his
attention.
He
had only stepped a few feet inside of the room when he eyed something on the
east wall behind his wife. As he walked around her, she turned to look. He
still clenched his coffee cup tightly in his left hand but reached up his right
hand and ran his palm along the wall. Elizabeth stood in silence behind him and
waited for an explanation. His hand paused in areas and then continued up and
down until he reached the corner of the room.
The
wallpaper, which was striped with thick bands of blue and slender bands of
green, had stolen
his concept of the English language, and he ignored his wife’s persistent
calling of his name.
“Dean?
Dean. Dean!” she insisted without a response from him. She approached him from behind
and grabbed ahold of his shoulder and shook him.
He
stumbled back upon reality long enough to mumble, “What is that?” he said, half
dazed.
Elizabeth’s
curiosity had remained occupied on her husband’s behavior until she too caught
sight of what he had been eyeing. Covered by the blue and green wallpaper was
the faint and somewhat abstract outline of something beneath the paper.
“Go
get me something to get this wallpaper down.” The sound of his voice was urgent.
He sat
his coffee up on the window sill and ran both hands along the wall.
Elizabeth
froze for a moment before turning toward the door. She had just
reached the
hall when
he called out, “Hey, wait. Look at this. It peels off.”
She
turned sharply on her heel and headed back toward him.
“Here,
can you help me with this? I’ll grab the top corner,” he said.
Each
gripping a piece of wallpaper, they slowly pulled back the sun-faded sheets as
it wilted off the wall. The persistent rain and wet weather, along with a
poorly insulated window would make for some mold problems later on down the
road, but for now, it made the process of removing wallpaper move at a much
more rapid speed, and with their joint efforts the paper pulled cleanly off the
wall.
The
two stood with the now crinkled wallpaper clutched in their hands. Dean
released his grip
and dropped the ball of paper. He took a step back from the freshly unveiled
wall.
“What
on…” Elizabeth’s mouth gaped open and she seemed faced with the same loss of speech
that her husband had experienced moments ago.
The
wall, originally painted a now-faded yellow color, was splattered in red.
Dean
reclaimed the step that he sacrificed an instant earlier and squinted at the
wall. The two had questioned the intentions of a man who would leave everything
he owned behind and they had possibly found the answer, but now, the question
shifted to whether or not they wanted to know.
Sarah
J. Clemens is the author of the debut mystery novel, The Empty Room.
She started writing The Empty Room in 2008 and formed her own imprint
in 2016 called Off the Page Publishing.
She
started out her professional career working as a news assistant for
her local newspaper before finding a passion for the law and pursued
an education in criminal justice. In addition to writing fiction, she
is also a legal assistant with an Associate of Arts and a Bachelor of
Science in Criminal Justice with an emphasis in Human Services.
Sarah
was born in California and now lives and works in Boise, Idaho. She
has the same sarcastic sense of humor as the characters in her books,
and she has an unparalleled love for animals.
1 comments:
Only very scary things come to mind.
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