Norma's ragged, shallow breaths sounded like a windstorm in the empty kitchen. She held her chest as she watched the book, hoping it was a trick of the light. 

It was not.

Harriet had been here.

Was returning Winter's Fire to Norma the last thing Harriet did? Did she pay for the gesture with her life? Any number of things could have been lurking between the girl's house and her own, waiting to stretch its clawed hand out and drag her into its putrid maw.

Norma's eyes swam in tears. She took the book from the stack. The edges of the pages seemed different in an unnoticeable way. Unnoticeable to anyone other than Norma, that is, because she owned the book. She knew it inside and out. She could tell right away that the back page was missing. 

Where was it and what could be written on it? Norma she wondered.

Then a most shocking thought came to her: if the book is here, Harriet had been here. This had been the last stop she made before she vanished. 

Norma's mind flashed to the attic and the things she saw there, to those girls wrapped in rope in the photos she'd glimpsed. Glimpsed but not studied. She tried all night not to think about how the photo she'd seen best had looked familiar. Who was she? Was Norma's mind playing tricks on her? Couldn't it have just been a woman from a magazine?

An invisible hook in Norma's chest that was urging her to have another look. Two things counted against her, however. Baron was home. He slept like the dead at times, especially when he drank as heavily as he had that night. The other roadblock on her path to discovery was the height issue. Simply standing on the step stool to put away clean dishes on the top shelf of the pantry made her a bit unsteady. Climbing those stairs to the attic again felt like suicide.

As Norma lay there contemplating, Baron let out a mirthless chuckle in his sleep.

Is he capable of the kind of thing I'm thinking? Norma wondered.

Immediately, she decided that he was. If he was capable of hitting her, capable of putting bullets in the body of his best friend without blinking, who knew what else he could do.

Shaking, Norma crept to the attic hatch. It'll be fine. I just did this a while ago and it's not so bad. Her heart was flying, but she took deep breaths and reminded herself this was for a good cause. She refused to let herself think about slipping and falling, laying twisted and broken at the bottom, being found by Baron in the morning and--if she survived--beaten for her efforts. 

The ladder clattered down and a lump formed in her throat. It wasn't the thought of waking Baron, because he was sleeping deeply, she made sure before she left the bedroom. It was the trip up that bothered her. Mustering all of her nerve, Norma climbed. As she climbed, she recited a silly little rhyme she'd been taught as a kid, just to occupy her mind from the current situation. At the top, she emerged on her hands and knees to keep away from any possible bats, and crawled over to the box with photos in it. 

Once her flashlight illuminated the first photo, Norma wished she didn't know the face looking back at her.

It was a waitress that used to work at Pop's a couple years ago. Norma tried not to think of her name, but it was like neon lights flashing bright in her memory: Beulah Long. Beulah, with her bright green eyes. Green as emeralds. Green as fresh clover. Green like Harriet's eyes. 

Norma didn't want to connect Beulah to Harriet, but the honest truth was that Harriet had left town a few years ago and, even though she had gotten job in a new state and had plans to move there, nobody had ever heard from her again after her last shift at Pop's. Norma wouldn't have known if she hadn't heard Katie Carnes talking to the cashier about it at the grocery. 

Now, in these photos, here was Beulah, naked, with rope wrapped around her arms and body, suspending her from above. Some kind of gag was strapped around her mouth and she didn't look happy about the position she was in. Her thick mascara was smeared down her face, her eyes both pleading and frightened.

Why would Baron have these photos? The goodness in Norma wanted to make excuses, needed to explain away this horrible thing...but Norma didn't have time. 

"You shouldn't have come up here," Baron said behind her.