by Skylar Finn
“Yeah, but this means—”
“This means we can’t leave,” said Emily. “Not until the snow stops. And by the looks of it out there, it’s not going stop anytime soon.”
They brought the rest of the firewood in and piled it up next to the hearth. Jesse examined the thermostat then went to the basement to check the heater. Emily thought darkly that there was nothing wrong with the heater. She knew there was something else behind the coldness of the house.
Emily opened Matilda’s laptop again and stared at the screen in total frustration. Chewing her lip, she tried Andrea then Emily then Richard—
Emily heard a distant scream from downstairs. She jumped up, the laptop falling to the ground with the crash. She ran to the hallway just as Jesse appeared at the top of the basement stairs, wild-eyed and pale as—well, as a ghost.
He slammed the basement door shut and pulled a chair in front of it.
“I just saw something in the basement,” said Jesse.
“What did you see?” asked Emily.
“I don’t know! It was like a shadow, but huge and terrible and it wasn’t my shadow, it was moving on its own—”
Jesse looked over Emily’s shoulder and screamed. Emily whirled around and saw it: the shadow, the one she had seen the previous evening, glided past her along the wall and disappeared down the hallway after turning the corner to the parlor.
There was a popping noise, and all the lights went out.
“Now do you believe me?” she said.
They gathered all the candles they could find and lit them in the kitchen before bringing them to the living room where the fire still blazed.
“Do you think it’s afraid of fire?” said Jesse fretfully. “Like maybe if we stay in this room, we’ll be okay?”
“I think it’s Matilda,” said Emily. “I think she needs our help.”
“Who cares!” Jesse was practically shouting. “I get that we had our problems back home, but I can’t deal with giant shadow people chasing me around a house that isn’t even mine! We’ve got to get out of here, tonight.” He pulled up his phone and frantically looked up flight times, then flung his phone across the room in total frustration. “There are no flights out! Everything’s canceled.”
Inwardly, Emily rolled her eyes. Anyone could have concluded that with a single glance outside. However, she didn’t want to agitate Jesse any further. Aloud, she said only, “Maybe the snow will let up by morning.”
“But what if it doesn’t? What if it just keeps snowing and snowing and the ghost kills us and Richard finds our frozen bodies—”
“Ghosts can’t kill people,” said Emily reasonably. She was trying to reassure Jesse, but also herself. “They’re not, you know…solid enough to do that.”
“How do you know?” asked Jesse, running from window to window. He reminded her of Widget when she heard them come home but didn’t know which door they were coming through. “They’re not even supposed to exist! Who knows what they can do? Wait, what’s Richard doing?” Jesse stopped abruptly by the side window overlooking the yard.
“Richard? Is he out there?” Emily went to the window and stood next to Jesse, peering out into the snowy darkness.
“He has snow shoes! Maybe he’ll let us borrow them!”
“And do what? Walk back to Florida?”
“How can you joke at a time like this? We need a Plan B. Listen, I’m getting those snow shoes. Can you look through the closets and see if Matilda owned skis? Just in case. We’ll ski to a bed and breakfast if we have to. I don’t even care.”
Emily sighed. “Whatever you say, Jesse.”
He wrenched the front door open, grimacing at the wind and snow that blew into his eyes, before throwing himself out the door.
Emily decided to search for the skis, if for no other reason than to honestly tell Jesse she couldn’t find any when he returned. She couldn’t fathom that Matilda and the children had spent a lot of time skiing in the mountains.
Emily went to the hall closet with the tea towels, the one Andrea described the first time she wrote on the typewriter. She didn’t recall seeing a pair of skis behind the mops and brooms, but maybe it was just because she hadn’t been looking for skis.
The door was stuck. Emily rattled the handle, then with a loud wrenching sound, she pulled the door open.
There were no skis, but there, at the bottom of the closet, she saw a small door leading to the hidden passage. Maybe there was something she had missed in her first pass, when Jesse came home and interrupted her before she could reach the attic: an important clue that would reveal what had happened the night Matilda disappeared. After calculating the time it would take Jesse to wade through the snow, argue with Richard about his snow shoes, and wade back, Emily made a decision.
She dropped to her knees, opened the door, and disappeared inside.
Jesse waded through the knee-high snow, gasping as he struggled to inhale the thin, freezing air. Running through snow was even harder than running through sand, and the toolshed looked like it was impossibly far away.
He squinted against the fat flurries that blew in his face. He could see Richard just ahead of him, gliding across the snow’s surface on his snow shoes like a water bug on a lake. At least, he thought it was Richard. The man was so bundled up it was impossible to tell.
Richard approached the toolshed on the edge of the property. Removing a set of keys from his pocket, he opened the padlock on the door and disappeared inside. Jesse hastened his approach. It was cold and wet, and the snow had already soaked through both his boots to his socks.
When Jesse reached the doorway, he was startled to find that Richard was nowhere in sight. Instead, he found the empty shed lit with a portable lantern. The lantern was sitting on the floor of the shed, next to a square hole in the ground.
“What the—” Jesse got closer and looked into the hole. A series of rungs embedded in the side led down into a void.
Jesse didn’t know what Richard (or whoever it was) was doing in that hole, but he didn’t want to find out. He looked around for the snow shoes. He’d just take them and go back to the house, that was all. But something else was bothering him. What had Emily said? About the house, and what she had found…There’s a secret passageway in the walls and it leads all over the house…there are doors into practically every room…anyone who knew about the passage could have come into the house at any point and taken all of them…
What if this was part of the network of tunnels and it led to the walls inside of the house? What if Richard—or maybe not Richard at all—was making his way to the house right now, with Emily unaware and by herself?
He reached for his phone. His pocket was empty.
“Shit,” Jesse mumbled, remembering how he’d thrown it across the living room when he discovered that there were no available flights. “I really don’t want to do this,” he muttered, even as he was already in motion. He took off his enormous parka so he could fit inside the narrow opening and placed it on the ground. He picked up the lantern and lowered himself into the hole.
Her second time in the walls of the house, Emily felt overwhelming fear and dread combined with what was unmistakably a tug of excitement. If this was one of her novels, this would be the penultimate chapter, when the stakes were at their highest: would the heroine escape? Would she solve the mystery and win the day?
Emily paused as she heard a strange thudding noise, one that seemed to come from the vicinity of the basement. It was hard to tell from inside the walls. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to encounter it.
Emily crawled faster through the passageway, bypassing the doors that led to the kitchen and parlor. She ascended the incline that led up the stairs past Matilda’s bedroom until she reached the small door that opened to the inside of Andrea’s closet. Instead of opening it, she tested the rungs of the small ladder opposite the door. It seemed steady enough.
She scaled the ladder to find out where it would lead.
Jes
se climbed down the metal rungs of the ladder with the lantern’s handle between his teeth, trying to not think about all the things he couldn’t see. He didn’t think there were bugs; it was too cold and dry, and he hadn’t seen a single insect since they moved to Colorado. But there were worse things than bugs. Jesse remembered the shadow from the basement and almost stopped and climbed back out of the hole. Then he remembered Emily, alone in the house, and pushed forward.
He dismounted the ladder at the bottom, jumping down lightly onto a hard, packed surface that felt like dirt. He raised the lantern to examine his surroundings. Even with the bright light clenched in his fist, he could scarcely see more than a foot ahead of him. It appeared he was in a long and narrow tunnel of the same tightly packed earth he was standing on. He couldn’t see or hear anyone ahead of him.
Shining the light ahead, he went forward into the darkness.
Emily climbed the ladder, coming to a stop when she reached a trapdoor above her head. There was a wooden latch on the inside of it similar to the one on the other passage doors. She turned it clockwise and pushed. Her effort was met with resistance, and Emily momentarily panicked. What if she had to go back and risk running into whatever she heard? Whatever she told Jesse about ghosts not being able to hurt people, Emily didn’t want to confront the shadow inside a dark and narrow tunnel within the house. What if it was on its way here now?
The door gave way, and Emily saw that it was hidden beneath the rug decorated with toy trains. She pushed the rug aside and swung the door upward so it rested on the floor of the attic.
Emily crawled out of the trapdoor and closed it behind her, covering it back up with the rug. She figured if anything was following her, it could probably pass through solid objects (she’d thought this earlier, watching Jesse frantically wedge the chair under the basement door), but it gave her some peace of mind, anyway.
Emily heard something coming from the corner of the attic. It sounded like music. Spooked, she went closer to see what it was.
It was the jewelry box. It stood open for its slowly spinning ballerina. Or at least, she had been a ballerina.
Until someone had cleanly decapitated her head.
Jesse ran through the passageway, sweating in spite of the cold. He was afraid he wouldn’t make it to the house in time. What if Richard did something to Emily? He always knew there was something weird about that guy. What if it wasn’t Richard at all?
Jesse stopped when the light from his lantern fell on a small door set in the wall. He opened it, revealing a dusty corner of the basement. Jesse wondered if Richard had exited here and crept up the stairs; then he remembered the chair he had wedged under the door earlier. He felt a small thrill at his own precognitive brilliance, then froze. A shuffling sound echoed in the passage somewhere above his head. Whoever it was, they were still in here.
And Emily still didn’t know.
Emily stared at the ballerina as she performed her slow pirouette of death, the sinister music of the music box tinkling on a loop. Who had done it? Was it one of the living, or one of the dead? And what was that sound behind her?
Emily could hear a steady scrape: the sound of boots on a wooden ladder. She looked at the rug, where she’d rolled it neatly back over the trapdoor. Who else knew about the passageway besides her and Jesse? But she hadn’t told Jesse how to get in from the outside, and she didn’t see why he would come in that way. It had to be someone else.
Emily frantically dialed Jesse. She could hear the phone ringing downstairs, echoing in the huge old drafty house. What if Jesse was still outside? She had to get downstairs.
Behind her, the trapdoor thudded and the rug began to rise. Emily felt nostalgia for the huge and horrible black shadow skating along the wall. This somehow felt worse, and imminently more threatening.
She flung the attic door open. Above her, the trapdoor hit the floor of the attic with a loud thud, the same noise it had made when she swung it open and emerged from the hidden passage.
Emily ran for the stairs.
11
Jesse clambered up the passage when it sloped gently upward. He paused briefly while he struggled to catch his breath on the landing. The light of his lantern fell on a rectangle in the wall. Jesse pushed it open. The room was pitch black and impossibly small. He held his lantern higher and realized he was inside the pantry in the kitchen.
Jesse burst out of the pantry into the kitchen and ran into the hallway, calling Emily’s name.
“Jesse?” He heard her voice on the stairs and had never been more relieved in his life. She thundered down the stairs and ran into his arms. “There’s someone here! They’re in the house!”
“I know, I was coming back to warn you. I thought it was Richard, but now I’m not so sure.”
They heard the sound of heavy footsteps above their heads.
“We have to get out of here,” Jesse said.
“But the snow—”
“I put chains on the tires when we got here,” Jesse said. “If we can just make it to the truck, maybe we can get out of here. I’d rather take my chances out there than in here.”
They ran for the kitchen door, pushing it open against the snowdrift that formed against the other side. Slipping and sliding down the coated wood stairs, they ran across the side yard for Jesse’s truck. The truck was buried under mounds of fluffy white snow.
Jesse tossed her the keys. “Get in the driver’s side and start the engine while I clear the windshield and shovel out the wheels.”
Emily ran to the truck and clambered into the driver’s side. Jesse grabbed a shovel from the flatbed of the truck and dug at the snow around the wheels. Emily put the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine briefly sputtered to life and then died.
“No!” Emily pounded the wheel and tried to start the truck again. Nothing.
“Jesse!” she called. He didn’t hear her over the howling wind. She jumped to the ground, landing in a huge pile of snow, and waded her way over to him. “The truck won’t start!”
Jesse looked at her in disbelief. Ice crystals formed in his eyebrows and beard, and she thought randomly of the Claymation Jack Frost in the Christmas special she watched every December as a child.
“He must have done something to it,” Jesse shouted over the wind. “Sabotaged it somehow.” He opened the passenger door and got in the truck. Emily got in the other side. They closed their doors against the wind. It was still cold, but now they were no longer being snowed on and could hear each another without interference from the elements.
Emily was scared, in a different way than she’d been seeing the ghosts of Matilda and Andrea. It was different from the fear she felt hearing the man in the attic. Now, she was frightened of the elements. She had never felt a cold like this. They weren’t dressed for the weather. Where they came from, it didn’t even snow. She doubted they would make it halfway to town before they developed hypothermia. Emily looked up at the dark house where Matilda had met her dark fate. Was she destined for the same end?
She took her phone out and dialed 911.
“911, what is your emergency?” A pleasant, reassuring female voice answered.
“I’m at my house and I’m trapped by the storm, but someone broke in and they’re still in the house,” Emily said in a rush.
“Are you in a safe place?”
“Kind of? I mean, not really. For now, I guess?”
“Try to find a safe hiding place and remain as quiet as possible. Do you own a firearm?”
“No,” said Emily. For the first time in her life, she wished that she did.
“Okay. Find a secure place to wait, as safe as you can, then call me back if you’re able to. We’ll get someone out there to you as soon as possible.”
She looked at Jesse. “She says we should hide.”
Jesse looked around the yard. “We’re too exposed in the truck, unless we hide in the flatbed and cover ourselves with the tarp. But if he looks for us there, we’d be sitting ducks. He c
an easily get into the toolshed. He’s already in the house. There’s no way we can go back inside.”
“We have to,” said Emily.
Jesse looked at her incredulously. “Why would we do that?”
“Widget,” she said.
Emily and Jesse had always been compatible for the reason that they agreed about most things. Often their agreements were unspoken and automatically assumed. For this reason, there had been no discussion over whether they would return to the house to get Widget before they hid: Widget was part of their family, and neither of them was willing to leave her behind.
Now, the couple crouched beneath the porch under the back stairs. “It comes out at the basement first,” said Emily.
“I know he’s not in the basement,” said Jesse. “He might have tried that first, but the door to the upstairs was jammed.”
“We should hurry,” said Emily. “Before he realizes we’re not in the house.”
As they ran along the inside of the wall, Emily was unable to stop herself from picturing the man in the house inside the walls with them. She didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
They came to the door that led to the basement and opened it, stepping onto the cold cement. Jesse held the lantern up. It cast a small circle of yellow light on their immediate surroundings.
A sharp creak of the floorboards resounded directly overhead.
“He’s still here,” said Jesse.
Emily looked around frantically. Where was there a hiding place big enough for two people?
The light in the basement flickered on and off with a buzz.
“The power’s coming back on!” said Jesse.
Emily stared at the light. “I don’t think it is, Jess.”
The light flickered on once, twice, three times. The third time, Emily saw it: a warped old chest in the far corner of the basement, next to Jesse’s carpentry tools.
“Look!” Emily pointed to the chest just as the light flickered out again. They made their way across the basement, trying not to walk into anything or kick anything over and alert the intruder to their presence. Emily felt her way blindly in the darkness, groping along the carpentry table and hoping she wouldn’t inadvertently grab the circular saw. Finally, her toes hit something hard and hollow, and she grasped for the handles, pulling the chest open.