by Aly Noble
“Exactly what you think,” I murmured. “Price isn’t here. But something else is.”
Estelle looked at me for a long moment, her eyes occasionally flickering with what almost seemed like a shred of disbelief. Finally though, she turned her attention back to the house. “Right. Okay. I guess that’s all we could’ve done.” She let out a sigh. “Now we go in.”
I nodded a little. “Now we go in.”
“I’m going, too!” Rose said aggressively, wrenching her arm away from Lancer. “My baby’s in there, and I’m going in and getting her out.” She looked at me like a stranger. “I don’t know what the hell is going on in that house or with you or anything else other than what you’ve told me…” She sighed, forcing herself to calm down enough to speak to me. “But I have to. You understand?”
Again, I nodded. And then I glanced toward the cop on the scene. “Well? Gonna do your job?”
“I’ve never liked your attitude, James,” he said, jabbing a finger at me. “But it’s my job to make sure Bethaline Roberts is home safe once this is done.”
I scoffed at his response and looked toward the roof. Jonah was gone. My eyes found the doorway one more time, and I drew myself up before leading the way inside.
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The floorboards groaned as I crossed the threshold into the front room, Estelle just behind me with Rose and Lancer trailing behind. The inside of the house was dark—perhaps darker than it should’ve been, given the time of day and the snow coating the grounds outside. Some of the white crystalline flakes had been swept into the threshold by the wind. The shadows seemed richer, and the light seemed to end sooner past the windows than it should have.
Otherwise, things seemed relatively normal. Normal enough that I could’ve been imagining the rest.
I started to reach toward the gun inside my jacket and stopped as soon as I realized I was only doing so for my own security. I couldn’t kill an entity with a gun. If anything, I’d accidentally shoot someone in our party or spook the police officer nearby. I let go of the firearm and removed my hand from my jacket. “Stay on your toes,” I murmured.
“And start believing in ghosts,” Estelle said pointedly to Lancer. At the moment, it sounded comically like a movie tagline. “Also maybe put the gun away. There’s nothing in here to shoot except, well, us.”
Lancer looked angry at the prospect of holstering his weapon but compromised at least by lowering it. Once the gun was down, I glanced into the living room, down the hallway, and up the stairs, wondering what to do now that we were here.
Rose knew exactly what she’d do, as it turned out. “Bethaline!” she called, immediately setting off toward the stairs.
I started to stop her, but reconsidered. I figured there’d be no stopping her now that she was inside. I looked over at Lancer. “Go with her. Estelle and I will check things out down here,” I murmured. To my surprise, he nodded and started after Rose without argument, his hands flexing lightly around his gun as he moved to follow her.
Once he was halfway up, Estelle and I looked at each other. “Could you tell where the sc—sound came from?” I asked.
Estelle shook her head, disregarding my unspoken denial. “Not really. I’m still not convinced this isn’t a trap.”
“I know,” I said. “You take the living room, I guess. I’ve got the hall and the kitchen.” When Estelle nodded, we went our separate ways and—as much as I hated pulling the horror movie “let’s split up” cliche—I knew that
Chapter 29
The floorboards groaned as I crossed the threshold into the front room, Estelle just behind me with Rose and Lancer tailing along at the back. The inside of the house was dark—perhaps darker than it should’ve been, given the time of day and the way the snow outside would reflect the light. The shadows seemed richer and the windows less transparent. The light seemed less than it should have given the time of day.
Otherwise, things seemed relatively normal.
I reached into my jacket for Jeff’s gun, and something about the angle of the weapon felt wrong. Had I shuffled it around accidentally? It was possible that it had moved, but I should have felt it shift.
Ultimately, it didn’t really matter, I decided as I removed my hand from the inside of my jacket. Don’t be stupid. You can’t kill a demon with a gun anyway.
I felt like I’d had that thought before.
“Start believing in ghosts,” Estelle snapped beside me, and I looked at her. She was glaring at Lancer, who had his gun out and ready. Just what we needed in a haunted house—a trigger-happy cop. “Put the gun away. There’s nothing in here to shoot except us.”
Angrily, Lancer lowered the gun a few increments but kept it out and a little too raised for my liking, given that the guy was such a raging dickweasel.
“Bethaline!” Rose called, hurrying up the stairs. Lancer hesitated before following her.
“Hold on,” I said a little too loudly. My head was suddenly pounding.
“What?” Estelle asked. Rose and Lancer had both paused on the staircase.
“I…” I knew I’d sound crazy, but I had to ask. “Didn’t we just do this?”
Estelle’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What are you talking about?”
“I just…” I thought better of it and shook my head. “Never mind.”
Rose and Lancer continued upstairs, and Estelle and I remained behind. I couldn’t wrap my head around the way this felt—wrong and repetitive.
I vaguely listened to Estelle reiterate her predictions of an impending trap. Something wet and warm graced the back of my neck, and I reached back to investigate. My fingertips followed the sticky trail of moisture to the broken scab on the back of my head.
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I crossed the threshold into the front room. I couldn’t quite remember why I was holding my hand out, but I was. Given that there was nothing too strange about it, I dropped it back to my side and turned to suggest a “divide and conquer” search when I realized—or maybe remembered—that I was alone.
Who was supposed to be with me?
Who was I looking for?
Were there answers to either of those questions? Or was I just coming home?
I attributed the sensation to a weird form of déjà vu and moved on, but I had to wonder what I’d been doing. Had the car accident from hell banged up my head worse than I thought? How could I not remember what I had to have been doing just five seconds ago?
I didn’t have my purse. I also didn’t have my keys. I must’ve been working outside. Shoveling the walk?
It was winter. And I did have a coat on. That had to be it.
Satisfied with that, I walked inside and figured I was due for a cup of coffee—my head hurt a little, and the yard work I’d been performing had really worn me out apparently. I actually felt like I’d been hit by a bus. I opened the kitchen cabinet where I kept coffee fixings and took out a tub of ground coffee, unscrewed the cap, and habitually inhaled deeply to catch a whiff, the caffeination process always starting with the strong smell of—
I paused mid-filter placement and stepped back to hover over the container, tilting it sideways to be sure there was still coffee in there after all. It was two-thirds full—precisely as I’d left it—but I couldn’t smell it. I brought the container up to my face and breathed in as intensely as I could without actually huffing the coffee grounds.
Nothing. Was there something wrong with my nose?
When I drew back from the container, I gave the label another look and noticed that all the fine print that should’ve decorated the space around the brand name wasn’t there. The nutritional fact chart had black marks where words and percentages should’ve been, but they didn’t actually translate into anything except scribbles.
I set the container down and stepped backward. Experimentally, I shifted my jacket down and sniffed my armpit to check my nose. I could smell my deodorant and a bit of sweat just fine, which meant the coffee just didn’t smell like anything. When
I moved back to the counter and took a pinch of the tub’s contents, they didn’t feel like real coffee grounds either.
Dropping the grounds back into the container, I stepped around the counter and walked to the adjoining dining area, peering around the corner into the living room. Some part of my brain persisted that I was just being paranoid, but everything about what had just happened had been weird, from the odd texture of the coffee grounds to the label that looked like something out of a very detailed, life-size dollhouse. Despite the itch of paranoia, the living room looked the same.
Because of course, it did.
Because I was being crazy.
I’d almost gone back into the kitchen when something stopped me. I stared hard at the couch and couldn’t comprehend why I was getting strange vibes until I’d caved to my unease and had made my way over to it. I steeled myself before leaning down and pressing my hands against a cushion. It didn’t give. As plush as it looked, it felt like solid, hard plastic.
I circled around to the bookshelf nearby and rapped a knuckle against the side. It gave a plasticine thump. Come to think of it, the coffee had felt that way, too—like hard, sharp bits of plastic. And the floorboards always made noise at the front door when I walked in, but they hadn’t this time.
I pumped my foot against the “hardwood” floor, and it sounded like I’d landed a swift kick to a plastic kids’ playhouse.
Nothing in here was real, and yet it was, but it still wasn’t, and I was supposed to be doing something. There was someone I was looking for. There were people I was supposed to be with. Why else would I have wondered about those things when I walked into the house? What the fuck was I doing before I came in here and, higher on the priority list, what was happening now?
I bolted toward the door and twisted the handle before hurling it open
Chapter 29
and sprinting into the house.
I jolted to a stop on the threshold, which still clunked like heavy plastic.
I looked around and whirled again toward the door. I had just run through that. From inside. I should be outside. I was outside before!
Wasn’t I?
Bethaline.
I was trying to find Bethaline. She was in here. But why was she in here? Who was I with?
Why am I still in the house?
I took out my phone. It looked like my phone, but heavier. I tried the power button to wake the screen, and it didn’t depress. It wasn’t real either.
Angrily, I shoved my phone into my pocket and ran my hands through my hair. The gun jostled in my jacket when I raised my arms—wait, why did I have a gun?
I took the gun out of the inside pocket of my jacket. It certainly looked real. I ran my fingertips over the barrel, and it was such a goddamn relief to feel real metal, warm in places from pressing against my stomach.
Maybe it wasn’t real either though. Maybe… Maybe it was a trick. A false promise. A red herring.
I had to test it. Just to know. Just so I could be sure. For myself.
Making sure I was truly alone, I adjusted my grip on the gun and extended my arm, pointing it down the hall toward the kitchen window at the other end. I cocked it and narrowed my gaze to the dead center of the glass pane, my finger hooking around the trigger.
This is stupid. I should be doing this outside.
Despite a nearly compulsive urge to squeeze my hand, I lowered the gun and turned back around to face the door. For the time being, I shifted the lever to decock the gun and pulled the door open again, taking a moment to look outside before I tried walking out again.
The problem was that there was no outside. White nothingness spanned the doorway. I cast a glance at the door I was holding before once again trying to walk outside.
Chapter 29
The floorboards groaned as I crossed the threshold and this time I knew precisely what I was supposed to be doing.
I knew that I was looking for Bethaline. I knew that I was in the house with Lancer, Rose, and Estelle—or at least I had been. I knew that Jonah was somewhere, armed with his scythe and hopefully gearing up to come to our aid any minute now.
And I knew that the house was being manipulated somehow by the entity attached to it. That I was being manipulated. My memories had been wiped, and the door led to nothing. The front doorway was a loop, and the other doors probably were too. No matter how many times I tried to leave, I would be sent straight back in. At least the plasticized nightmare stage was over.
I’d just taken a breath to call for Estelle when a bloodcurdling scream erupted from the hallway, muffled by the basement door. Different from the cry we’d all heard earlier, this was the scream of an adult woman.
I lurched forward and started running toward the hall when a hand caught my arm from the darkened living room doorway. I jerked, but relaxed a little when I saw it was Estelle. Another scream—this time mingled with pleas for help and my name—carried up the basement stairs and now, with the words, I recognized the voice as Estelle’s.
But Estelle was with me.
I looked at her. She shook her head quickly, her eyes wide with terror as she kept a vise-like grip on my arm.
The screams began anew, and I instinctively looked toward the door again. It was a trap. It felt like a trap. She’d been right. It had all been a trap, and this was part of it. I could hear my heart in my ears. I knew it was just another trap.
But what if it wasn’t?
I looked back to Estelle and studied her. Trapped in this artificial loop, how could I say with certainty that the truth, the validity of what I heard, was any more true or real than what I was seeing? What made this Estelle more real than the other I was hearing wailing for me from the bowels of the basement?
A sharp pain exploded in my head.
Something changed in Estelle’s face.
Chapter 29
I was blisteringly hot. Uncomfortable. Everything around me was too close, and I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. It felt like I was in a full-body suit, but I—
My thoughts curtailed as I heard the front door close, the floorboards creak. I was reentering the house, but I wasn’t actively doing anything. I was moving, but I wasn’t telling my limbs to move.
I wasn’t me. I couldn’t be.
Every step felt like I was being dragged, upright, into the house. The movements were hesitant and careful. The feet knew the floorboards and avoided the noisiest ones.
My head was turned when the living room came into view and I, in fact, wasn’t me. I’d known, but it was another thing to see it. I knew the face though. From clippings and online references. From a black and white photograph on newsprint.
Somehow, I was wearing the skin of Becca Price.
Once I was aware of what was happening, I couldn’t un-realize it. I could feel her organs moving, her veins pushing blood around me like I’d actually been packed inside her skeleton and I was being manipulated forward with our outermost layer of blood and muscle.
This is the day, I began to realize. This is the day he killed her.
As if to confirm, she passed a desktop calendar that marked the date off up to February 16th. Days before the infamous February 21st, when the Prices were actually found in their Arizona home, far from where Becca had actually died.
We moved toward the kitchen doorway, but hesitated when Becca thought twice and doubled back for the poker beside the fireplace. She thought about calling out Connor’s name to figure out where he was and it was strange how I knew that—I couldn’t hear her thoughts, but I could feel them. Almost like I was having them, myself, but the sensation wasn’t as intense as it would have been were they actually mine. Absently, I noticed the kitchen tile was different—here, it was dated and fit the look of the house, unlike the standard linoleum that was there now. I wondered if the update had something to do with what I was about to see.
Becca took us to the kitchen and, together, we surveyed the counter space, the alcove for the pantry door, the other doorway leadin
g into the hall that fell adjacent to the basement door. She knew where to go, but she didn’t want to. She’d hoped that Connor would be upstairs where they could talk. She didn’t want to go into the basement.
I didn’t want her to go into the basement.
Still, when she didn’t find him upstairs, she figured she didn’t have much of a choice. She could wait for him to come up, but it would just prolong the inevitable. She’d confront him, tell him she was done with this and that she wouldn’t tell anyone (although she likely would so long as she felt safe), but she couldn’t handle any of this anymore. He wasn’t who she’d married anymore.
Becca walked to the basement door and, just as her fingertips brushed the handle, it turned and began to open. She hurried to take a few steps back out of the way, holding the poker behind her back—our back—her back?—as Connor stepped out.
He looked surprised, but maybe like he’d expected this at some point. Perhaps just not right then. “Hey, Bec,” he said gently. “Everything okay?”
This was a different Connor Price than the one I’d contended with. Despite still being a ruthless murderer and a sick psychopath who took pieces of his victims as makeshift trophies in ziplock bags on a corkboard downstairs, he seemed more human here. Perhaps because this was before he’d ever been touched by a demonic entity. Or perhaps it had something to do with Becca. Maybe he actually cared about her.
It was equally possible, I told myself, that this was his ruse to keep her in check. All were likely possibilities. Maybe it was even some combination of the three.