ivoturk

CHAPTER 1 (CONTINUED) The night brought no sleep. I lay in bed, the blanket pulled up to my chin, staring at the ceiling. My mother's pendant. Around the neck of a doll. Deep in the forest. Clean. Unweathered. As if it had just been placed there. The small wooden figure lay on the nightstand. I hadn't brought it back to the kitchen. It belonged here now, next to me, as if keeping watch. Or watching me. Around three in the morning, I heard a sound. It wasn't a knock, not a scratch. It was a soft, regular tick... tick... tick..., like a clock that didn't exist in the house. I sat up. The sound came from below. From the cellar. I got up. The hallway floor was cold under my bare feet. The cellar door was closed, as always. The strip of light beneath it was dark. I pressed my ear to the wood. tick... tick... tick... It wasn't a water pipe. It was too regular. Too precise. Like a mechanism waiting for something. Or counting something. I stood there for a minute, maybe longer. Then I went