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I’m starting to wonder if I ever woke up at all. Then, for some reason, my father’s voice bubbles up between my ears.
“Don’t be afraid of the dark, Cas. But don’t let them tell you that everything that’s there in the dark is also there in the light. It isn’t.”
Thanks, Dad. Just one of the many creepy pearls of wisdom you had to impart.
But he was right. Well, right about the last part at least. My blood is pounding and I can feel the jugular vein in my neck. Then I hear A
“Do you see what I do?” she asks, but before I can answer, she surrounds me with corpses, more than I can count, strewn across the floor like trash, and piled up to the ceiling, arms and legs arranged together in a grotesque braid. The stench is horrible. In the corner of my eye, I see one move, but when I look closer I realize that it’s the movements of bugs feeding on the body, twisting beneath the skin and lifting it in impossible little flutters. Only one thing on the bodies moves of its own power: The eyes roll lazily back and forth in their heads, mucus-covered and milky, like they’re trying to see what’s happening to them but no longer have the energy.
“A
“These are not the worst,” she hisses. She’s got to be kidding. Some of these corpses have had horrible things done to them. They’re missing limbs or all of their teeth. They’re covered in dried blood from a hundred crusted-over cuts. And too many of them are young. Faces like mine or younger than mine, with the cheeks torn away and mold on their teeth. When I look back behind me and realize that Mike’s eyes have opened, I know I have to get out of here. Ghost-hunting be damned, to hell with the family legacy, I’m not staying one minute longer in a room filling up with bodies.
I’m not claustrophobic, but right now I seem to have to tell myself so very loudly. Then I see what I didn’t have time to before. There’s a staircase, leading up to the main level. I don’t know how she had me step directly into the basement, and I don’t care. I just want back up in the foyer. And once I’m up there, I want to forget what’s residing underneath my feet.
I make for the stairs, and that’s when she sends the water, gushing in and rising up from everywhere—cracks in the walls, seeping up right through the floor. It’s filthy, as much slime as it is liquid, and in seconds it’s creeping up to my waist. I start to panic as the corpse of the bum with the broken neck floats past. I do not want to be swimming with them. I don’t want to think about everything that’s under the water, and my mind’s eye makes up something really stupid, like corpses from the bottom of the stacks opening their jaws suddenly and scrambling out along the floor, hurrying to grab my legs like crocodiles. I push past the bum, bobbing like a wormy apple, and am surprised to hear a little moan escape my lips. I’m going to gag.
I make it to the stairs just as a pillar of corpses shifts and collapses with a sick splash.
“A
Relief lasts about half a second. Then I shriek like a chicken and throw myself away from the basement door, expecting water and dead hands coming to drag me back down. But the basement is dry. The gray light spills down and I can see down the steps and a few feet of floor. It’s all dry. There’s nothing there. It looks like any cellar that you might store ca
Damn A
I stand up and brush my shirt off even though there’s nothing to brush off, looking around. I’m in what used to be the kitchen. There’s a dusty black stove and a table with three chairs. I’d really like to sit down on one, but the cupboards start opening and closing by themselves, drawers slamming shut and the walls starting to bleed. Slamming doors and smashing plates. A
A sense of safety settles on my skin. Poltergeists I can take. I shrug my shoulders and walk out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, where the dust-sheeted sofa looks comfortingly familiar. I collapse down on it in what I hope looks like a pretty decent impression of bravado. Never mind that my hands are still shaky.
“Get out!” A
“What if I won’t?” I ask.
“You came to kill me,” she growls, obviously deciding to ignore my question. “But you can’t.”
“What part of that actually makes you angry?” Dark blood moves through her eyes and skin. She’s terrible, disgusting—a killer. And I suspect that I am completely safe with her. “I will find a way, A
“I don’t want to be away,” she says. Her whole form clenches and the darkness melts back inside, and standing before me is A
“You didn’t once,” I say, not exactly disagreeing. Because I don’t think those corpses downstairs were just creations of her imagination. I think that somewhere, Mike Andover probably is getting slowly eaten by the walls of this house, even if I can’t see it.
She’s shaking her arm, down near the wrist where there are lingering black veins. She shakes harder and closes her eyes, and they disappear. It strikes me that I’m not just looking at a ghost. I’m looking at a ghost, and at something that was done to that ghost. They are two different things.
“You have to fight that, don’t you?” I say softly.
Her eyes are surprised.
“In the begi
“Now our skins have grown together,” she goes on. “I am her. I am it.”
“No,” I say, and the minute I do, I know it’s true. “You wear her like a mask. You can take it off. You did it to spare me.” I stand and walk around the sofa. She looks so fragile, compared to what she was, but she doesn’t back away, and she doesn’t break eye contact. She’s not afraid. She’s sad, and curious, like the girl in the photograph. I wonder what she was when she was alive, if she laughed easily, if she was clever. It’s impossible to think that much of that girl remains now, sixty years and god knows how many murders later.
Then I remember that I’m really pissed. I wave my hand back toward the kitchen and basement door. “What the hell was that about?”
“I thought you should know what you’re dealing with.”
“What? Some bratty girl throwing a hissy fit in the kitchen?” I narrow my eyes. “You were trying to scare me off. That sad little display was supposed to send me ru
“Sad little display?” she mocks me. “I bet you almost wet yourself.”
I open my mouth and quickly shut it. She almost made me laugh, and I’d still like to be pissed. Only not literally. Oh crap. I’m laughing.