Chapter One

I tossed my duffel bag on top of the purple bedspread, and a puff of musty mothball air wafted up my nostrils. The bedroom hadn’t changed since my last visit fourteen years ago. The lacy canopy bed with matching sham pillows. An old dresser and mirror set with a dusty glass vase full of fake lavender roses. An ache of guilt weighed heavily on my chest. I hated myself for letting so much time pass without visiting my Aunt Birdie. She’d died quietly in her sleep a month earlier, leaving her house and small estate to me, April Culpepper, her last surviving relative.

“April, are you still there?” My mother’s high-pitched voice came through the speaker from the cell phone in my hand.

“I’m in my room, the one I used to sleep in when we visited with dad. Now I’m feeling nostalgic.” I picked up the silver-framed photo on the dresser—a picture of an eight-year-old me with Aunt Birdie standing in front of the house.

“You’ll have plenty of time to reminisce. The most important thing is that you get that job with Dr. Crenshaw tomorrow. Harold spent a lot of time organizing the interview.”

My shoulders slumped. It hurt how my mother minimized my grief. It was true that my stepfather had done a lot for me over the years. It was also true that my mom had never bonded with Aunt Birdie, my biological father’s aunt. Because my great aunt was a “pointy-nosed hillbilly,” as my mom liked to say. It explained the disgust in her eyes when she looked at me, a replica of my father. The man she wished she’d never married. I set the photo back on the dresser. “Don’t worry, Mom. I promise I’ll be at Dr. Crenshaw’s office on time and put my best foot forward.”

“Good,” my mother snapped in her signature I-know-what’s-right tone. “You’re twenty-five years old, and you have an opportunity to become responsible. Make sure you land that job. You’re going to need it.”

Heat rose up my neck, but I tamped down the annoyance of her bossy tone. “Sure, Mom.” I dreamed of having one of those nice mother and daughter talks like in Hallmark movies. Then I could tell her how badly I wanted to improve myself and become more responsible. That I was ready to move past the trauma and bad choices of my past. That all I wanted was to live on solid ground, in a place where I was safe and surrounded by people who I loved, and who loved me in return. That I believed I could make Danburg, Virginia my new home.

Unfortunately, there was no use explaining that to my cold-hearted mother. She worried that I was doomed to fail if I lived alone in a new town. “Sell and move back to Florida” was my mom’s mantra.

No one could talk me into going back to the empty life I’d left behind in Florida. After Clay, my boyfriend of one year, ditched me for a redheaded cokehead with an apartment, my self-esteem hit rock bottom. Inheriting this house gave me a chance to put all of that behind me. I had a purpose here in Danburg. I felt it in my bones.

“April? You still there?”          

My muscles ached and all I wanted was a deep sleep. “Look, Mom. It’s after two in the morning. The long drive from Boca wiped me out, so I’m going to bed.”

“Fine. Just make sure to call me after the interview. I want to hear how it goes.”

I ended the call and plugged my cell phone into the charger on the nightstand next to the bed. I slid open the sash window, and a fresh June breeze brushed past my face. Notes of jasmine and lilac perfumed the air. Crickets chirped and the leaves rustled in the forest behind the house where I used to pick blackberries with Aunt Birdie.

Too tired to reminisce, I kicked off my sneakers, brushed my teeth, then flopped back on the bed. My body sank into the middle of the sagging mattress, and I finally closed my eyes.

Cough.

An electric jolt jump-started my heart, and my eyes snapped open. Had someone coughed? I pulled the quilt up under my chin and listened. The creak from the old, wooden bones of the house was just as I remembered.

My eyes wandered to the plastered ceiling and the original, ornate cornices. But there was a small attic overhead, and my aunt had been a bit of a hoarder. Could the ceiling collapse on top of me? It was too dark to see signs of stress, and I contemplated getting out of bed and turning on the light for a better look.

I grumbled and rolled to my side. I needed to stop overthinking. I’d researched the geology of this part of Virginia. The earth in this town was granite and gneiss, not the porous limestone that riddled the bedrock of Florida. This was a solid house built on solid ground.

A few months after the collapse, my sisterly trauma therapist had said that the chance of any person falling into a sinkhole once in their life was almost zero. Based on those statistics, the chance of it happening to me twice had to be negative zero. Right? I was only twelve years old, and she had let me roll with that assumption, though I didn’t really believe it myself. Anyone could get buried alive at any time.

The sheer curtains billowed in the gentle wind, and I rolled onto my back, breathing in the night air.

A distinct, skunky smell drifted into the room. I flinched. Someone nearby was smoking weed. That explained the cough. Were there kids in the woods behind the house? Or maybe a neighbor in their backyard enjoying some solitude?

None of my business. I took a drink from my water bottle on the nightstand, then dropped my head back onto the pillow.

But the smell of pot grew stronger, like it came from inside the house. Every muscle tensed, and I stayed still as a corpse.  No one was here when I arrived thirty minutes ago. I’d checked all the rooms. I’d parked my van in the carport at the side of the two-story house, then entered the kitchen through the back door near the carport. I’d made a quick scan of the downstairs—the creepy bathroom under the staircase, the living room, the small dining room on the other side of the foyer. The house had no basement and only a small crawl space under the house.

“Hmm, hmm, hmm…”

Panic squeezed air from my lungs making it hard to breathe. Someone downstairs was humming. Then the humming stopped, and I gulped a breath.  

How could I get out of the house? Jumping out the second story window could cause serious injury. Was it safer to try and run out the front door?  I grabbed my phone and crept to the open doorway of my second-floor bedroom. I looked in both directions of the short hallway. The bathroom was on my right. The master bedroom, the room where my aunt had died, was across from me, next to the smaller third bedroom that was used for storage.

I tiptoed into the dark hallway and toward the top of the staircase. A floorboard creaked on my last step. My legs froze. Low light from living room cast a glow in the small foyer at the bottom of the stairs. Prickles spread over my skin. I’d turned all the lights off before I went up upstairs to bed.

Smoke drifted up the stairs. I put my hand on the wall for balance. Aunt Birdie?

No. I didn’t believe in ghosts, and if I had, it was unlikely my teetotalling aunt started smoking in the afterlife. A voice inside my head urged me to call 911. But what if I disturbed a burglar? Then what? Would I get killed before the police arrived?

“Hey,” a deep voice called out. “Are you up there?”

My heart jumped to my throat. Fuck. It’s a male. “Who are you?” I blurted.

“A friendly neighbor.” 

His casual and cunning tone made my skin crawl. Had my aunt given a key to a neighbor? “W-what are you doing in my house?”

“Your house? Ohhh, you must be the new owner.” His voice lightened.  “Welcome to the neighborhood. Come on down. I don’t bite.”

My stomach was rock hard, but my legs were weak as Jell-O. The intruder’s tone insinuated this was his home and I was a guest. Clenching my fists, I stepped halfway down the staircase until I saw him—around sixteen years old, sitting in the armchair looking straight at me. His white-blond hair was strategically dishevelled, like a punk anime character. He wore black jeans and a scruffy, white T-shirt.

My eyes darted toward the front door. The deadbolt was locked, just as I had left it. I scowled at the kid. “How did you get into my house?”

“Your front door was unlocked.” He took a long drag off his joint and blew out smoke rings.

My vision narrowed in on his smug face. I wasn’t sure if I should be afraid or angry. I felt both because I clearly remembered checking all the external doors before I went upstairs. I was careful like that. Both the front and back doors had deadbolts—the front door deadbolt could only be accessed from inside the house. Only the back door had a keyed deadbolt. Both were locked.

The kid must have been hiding in the house, and I’d been too tired to notice.

I stomped downstairs, unlocked the front door, and flung it open. “Please leave my house.” I wished my voice hadn’t been shaky. 

The kid raised his hands. “Whoa. Settle down.” He flicked ashes from the joint onto the oak floor. “Birdie’s house has been vacant for over a month. I’ve been keeping an eye on things… on her behalf and all of that.”

“Who are you, and how do you know my aunt?”

“I’m Butch.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Your next-door neighbor. I was friends with Birdie my whole life. She wouldn’t mind if I hung out here once in a while.”

“I’m sure she would have minded you dropping ashes on the floor. Clean it up.”

“Sure.” Using the toe of his black Doc Marten boot, he scuffed the ashes into the floor.

My hands clenched and unclenched. It was best that I avoided a confrontation with this creep, so I took a deep breath, tamping down on the fire raging in my veins. The law firm that handled Aunt Birdie’s trust had guaranteed me that no one else had a key. It didn’t matter, because tomorrow I would have the locks changed. “Well, Butch, I live here now, and you’re trespassing. I ask again; please leave.” Pressing my back against the open door, I pointed outside.

“So soon? I thought we could spend some together… get to know each other.” He winked, then smiled with teeth so white they looked painted.

“Get the fuck out,” I said in a tone that grated my throat.  

“Fine.” Butch stood, then snubbed the joint out on his tongue and stuck it in the back pocket of his baggy jeans. He shuffled toward the door. “Make sure you lock all your doors next time,” he said as he walked out the door. “Not everyone around here is as nice as me.”

I slammed the door and turned the deadbolt. But I had locked it before I went upstairs. I know I did.

After making a quick check of the downstairs windows confirming that everything was locked, I closed all the drapes. Now the house reeked of weed, and my adrenaline was in overdrive. It didn’t look like anything had been ransacked, but I hadn’t had a chance to take inventory of everything in the house, so how could I know if anything had been stolen?

With my heartbeat pounding in my ears, I pulled back the threadbare rugs, searching for a trapdoor which might have led to the small crawl space under the house. Nothing. And never in my life would I crawl under a house.

I turned toward the stairs. The attic?

A bead of sweat dripped into my eye, and I wiped it away. Did I miss something? I walked upstairs to the hallway and stared at the cord dangling from the manhole If I pulled the cord, folding stairs would drop, and I could climb up and check if anyone had been in the attic.

Nah. Not now. Not when I was all alone in this house in the middle of the night. What if another person was up there? What if Butch had been living in the attic the whole time? He was already in the house when I arrived an hour earlier, so he must have hidden someplace, and I didn’t see him. That was the only thing that made sense.

I paced the hallway, feeling pissed, scared, and in need of a friend. I hugged myself. A friend. I didn’t know anyone in this town. No one to call or ask to come over to help me feel safe.

My only real friend was Hayley. We’d been besties since we were eight, way before the sinkhole incident. Her family had moved away from Florida when we were eleven, but we’d stayed close and in touch ever since. Now she’s married to a wonderful man and living in South Carolina. They had a baby girl only one week ago and were suffering from lack of sleep. I couldn’t bother her with my worries at three o’clock in the morning.

Reaching out to my mother for support wouldn’t help because she’d tell me to phone the police. That wasn’t an option. I’d made my own mistakes as a teenager and preferred to avoid contact with the law. Besides, Butch hadn’t done anything to warrant a call to the police.

In a few hours, I’d arrange to have all the door locks rekeyed so no one could get into the house uninvited again.

END FIRST CHAPTER

Thank you for taking the time to read the first chapter of my upcoming book, THE INTRUDERS: A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER. If you would like to read more chapters, please join my reading group where I will offer interested readers more further chapters.

I hope to publish this book by mid-year 2025.