Chapter 28

Sammy was eight years old when she learned that grown-ups didn’t always hear the same things children did.

Every night at exactly 2:13 a.m., she heard someone knocking beneath her bed.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Her mother insisted it was the old pipes.

Her father blamed the house settling.

But pipes didn’t whisper.

“Sammy,” the voice said one night, soft as rustling paper. “There’s a girl trapped under here.”

Sammy pulled her blanket tighter around herself.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“My name is Sammy.”

She frowned. “That’s my name.”

“I know,” the voice replied.

The next morning, Sammy told her parents. They exchanged worried looks and blamed her horror books.

“No more scary stories before bed,” her father said.

That night, the knocking returned.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Please,” the voice begged. “You have to let me out before she notices.”

“Who notices?” Sammy asked.

Silence.

Then:

“The woman pretending to be your mother.”

A chill crawled up Sammy’s spine.

She stared at the crack beneath her bedroom door. Down the hallway, she could hear her mother washing dishes and humming softly.

The voice under the bed began to cry.

“She took my place,” it whispered. “She’ll take yours too.”

Sammy’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re lying.”

“I can prove it.”

Tiny fingers emerged from beneath the bed.

They were covered in dust and scratches.

And wrapped around one wrist was a faded pink friendship bracelet.

The bracelet Sammy had lost when she was six.

Her breath caught.

Slowly, she slid off the mattress and knelt beside the bed.

“Sammy?” her mother’s voice called from the hallway.

The little hand under the bed trembled.

“Don’t answer her,” it whispered urgently.

Footsteps approached the bedroom door.

“Sammy?” her mother called again, her voice too cheerful. “Open the door, sweetheart.”

The doorknob rattled.

Under the bed, the frightened voice whispered one final sentence.

“Whatever happens…”

The bedroom door creaked open.

“…don’t let her realize you know.”

Sammy looked from the impossible hand beneath her bed to the smiling woman standing in the doorway.

Her mother’s smile widened.

“Who,” her mother asked gently, “have you been talking to?”

From under the bed came the sound of a child desperately trying not to scream.