Chapter 9 - June

June knows.

June’s father knows.

But neither one knows the other knows.

The truth, that is.

June doesn’t know the whole story, but she knows what she saw. She knows that there can’t have been a girl down in the well, unless she wasn’t a girl at all, because the well was boarded up. Ordinary girls can’t teleport into wells, or phase through solid wood planks without breaking them first. And she’s never had a particularly overactive imagination.

June’s father has seen ghosts before. He knows what they look like, he’s seen his wife more times than he can count. But he also knows that they aren’t real. And yet...it’s nagging at him. There’s a possibility, he knows, because he knows what happened here.

And so, they eat their Cheerios in silence.

Until.

“June, what exactly did you see down there?”

June looks up, confused. “It was just my imagination, you said.”

Her father shrugs. “Just...what was it?”

June sighs. “A girl, older than Lottie. Dark hair, all wet.”

“Are you sure?”

June nods.

Her father pulls out a picture. “Is this the girl?”

June squints at the photo. It was taken a long time ago, definitely, but the girl is unmistakeably the same one. She is young, maybe seven or eight. Dark curls frame her face, and she's smiling. She stands next to another girl, closer to June's age, with blonde hair and a serious expression. A woman and a man stand behind them, all in old-fashioned clothes.

“Yes.”

Her father tucks the photo into his pocket. “Well, you must've seen the photograph, then. It was hanging on the wall when we moved in."

On second thought, June realized, she had seen the picture on the wall. Her cheeks burned red. "Sorry, it must've been my imagination then...excuse me."

"June-"

But June was already running for the well.

The grass pulled at her feet, trying to anchor her to the ground, but she kept going. She had to see the girl again.

Instead, she fell.