Free Sinister Entity by Hunter Shea

 
    Selena’s left hand darted for the knob. She put on her most menacing face and pulled the field hockey stick up as high as she could.  
    Her overhead light flicked on and off and she felt something brush across the back of her neck, as if she had walked under a cobweb. She sensed someone right behind her, but the noises had come from the closet.
    The knob twisted within her hand of its own accord and the door flung wide open.
    There was someone in her closet.  
    The girl nestled amongst her clothes stared back at her, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth open in a silent scream.  
    She was the mirror image of Selena, only paler, with deep, dark eyes that were as unfathomable as the farthest reaches of space. The girl in the closet raised her hands in protest, her chest heaving as though she was shouting but no sounds escaped her throat.  
    Selena dropped the stick, trembling. She backed away on legs that had been stripped of all muscle and bone.  
    Her lips trembled as she sputtered, “No…no…no.” Her stomach dropped and she had to pee with an urgency she had never felt before. A jolt raced through her body when she collided with her chair. She grabbed its back to keep from falling, her gaze never leaving the phantasmagorical mirror image standing amidst her clothes and cheerleading uniforms.  
    The girl, Selena’s twin, also moved back farther into the closet, pushing dresses aside, a look of pure terror on her face.  
    Selena could scream, and she did.  
    She screamed until her entire family came bursting into her room, until the girl in the closet retreated to the dark recesses, back farther than the physical limits of the closet itself, fading into the nothing from whence she came.  
    Selena screamed until her throat was raw and blood flecked her panicked mother’s nightshirt.  

Chapter Fourteen
    Jessica Backman handed the manila envelope to Aunt Eve while a tornado of butterflies fluttered in her stomach. They sat on the back deck so the morning sun could warm them while they drank coffee. The birdbath in the yard was full of skittering, wet sparrows.  
    “I wanted you to read it first, so you can give me the thumbs-up or -down,” Jessica said.  
    Eve used a nail to tear an opening along the top flap. She was still a very pretty woman, her smooth, lightly tanned skin and short, blonde hair making her look at least ten years younger than a woman approaching her late forties. It was only when you were close and her guard was down that you could catch brief glimpses of the sorrow that always lurked in her eyes, sometimes hiding in the tiniest corners but never, ever, entirely gone.  
    “And who was the one who did the background check?” Eve asked before pulling out its contents.  
    “Swedey, the guy who does all of my web stuff. He’s one of those hacker geniuses who can find out anything about anybody. I gave him two full weeks to look up everything he could about Ed Home. I want to make sure this guy is on the level.”
    Eve’s shoulders slumped, her face quizzical. “If you’re so uneasy about him, why even bother going through all this trouble?”
    Jessica looked down at her coffee. “There were some things he said that kinda stuck with me.”
    She offered no more in the way of an explanation. The background check was ten pages long and involved everything from Ed Home’s birth certificate right up to the present.  
    Eve raised an eyebrow but didn’t press. “This is going to take a few minutes.”
    Jessica eyed the sparrows, stretched her arms and took a sip of coffee. “That’s okay. I have nothing but time today. It’s nice being out in the morning sun for a change.”
    Because of her chosen profession, if she could call it that, sunlight was something she usually slept through, especially during the downtime between semesters. She felt an afternoon getting some vitamin D was in definite need.  
    Eve spent the next fifteen minutes reading and re-reading the report while