Free Spirit Mountain by J. K. Drew, Alexandra Swan Page B

third box.
    My heart raced. I wanted to open it, but I feared what I might find inside. A thick layer of dust caught the moonlight coming through the triangular window near our position and the particles flew about the room, covering our clothes and skin.
    “This is crazy. What if my grandma has something private in there?”
    “Everything up here is private, I’m sure. Look at this place.”
    “That’s just old furniture, New York.”
    “Logan, do you see how much dust these boxes have on them?”
    He nodded.
    “That rocking chair doesn’t have a speck of dust. That means someone uses that chair regularly. And maybe I’m mistaken, but the damn thing still feels warm.”
    “That’s crazy. Why would my grandmother sit alone in the attic when she has an entire house to herself?”
    “I don’t know.” My hands trembled as I reached for the box to open it. “Can you flash your cell phone light here?”
    He fumbled with his phone, but managed to turn on the flashlight app and shine it on the old, weathered box. Three small spiders scattered. I jumped. “Oh my God, that scared me.”
    With a mix of fear and anxiety, I lifted the lid and stared into a box of photos and old memorabilia-type items.
    Logan sighed. “It’s just her old photos.”
    I grabbed one in particular that appeared different, shiny, actually. Bringing it closer to the light from Logan’s phone, I took in the fine details. “Look at this.”
    He took it from me and studied the miniature oil painting. “That’s Grams in the background, next to a few townspeople.”
    I leaned forward, pointing at a young boy who had the same eyes and stoic look as Logan’s grandmother. He even resembled Logan. “Who’s that kid?”
    “I don’t know. But this guy right here must be Mitch Castleborough because he’s pointing to the new town sign that has his name on it.”
    “That’s him. I can feel it. That’s Castleborough, for sure, which dates this picture back to 1795, Logan.”
    “Maybe that’s a relative of Gram’s and not actually her.”
    I heard Logan say those words, but I hardly processed them. Everything started piecing together in my head like a jigsaw puzzle—the attic, the rocking chair with the mirror burned around the edges, the mortars and pestles with finely ground herbs, the old oil painting with his grandmother standing next to a boy. My stomach was tied in knots.
    The room felt like it was closing in on me, its darkness threatening to drown me. My heart raced and I circled around reaching for something to brace myself. Then a scary thought crossed my mind. I frantically glanced around. I had to know. Stumbling toward the old rug on the floor, I flung it up to reveal a pagan star—the pentagram—etched into the floorboards.
    Logan ran to my side and grabbed my arm. “Are you okay?” Just as he said that, he saw the engraving, too. “What the hell is that?”
    Everything came flooding toward me like a broken dam. My hand trembled as I reached for Logan’s cell phone, the light now shining toward the floor. I slowly lifted it to shine it in the darkened corner in front of us.
    Two beady eyes glared back at us as Grandma Edith rocked in the corner, a godawful smirk across her face.
    “What the heck?” Logan jumped back. “Grandma?”
    “We’ve got to go.” I dropped the wooden stairs and nearly jumped down, but Logan caught my arm.
    “We can’t run,” he said through his teeth. “We have to get to the bottom of this.”
    “You have no right being in my attic, Logan. This is not your fight.”
    “What are you talking about, Grams?”
    Edith stood and shuffled her feet toward us. All I could think about was hightailing it out of the attic. When Edith spoke, her words quavered with emotion. “It was my son who they strung up on that mountain because he tried to spare the life of the mayor’s daughter.”
    Confusion swept across my face. “Who is your son?”
    She whipped her head toward me, revealing jet-black