by Aly Noble
Becca faltered a little. She’d faltered before, many times. This time, she couldn’t. She could smell the acrid scent that wafted up from the basement. She knew that smell. He’d dedicated other spaces over the years to housing that horrific, telling stench. She could barely live with knowing what he’d done to those girls. She wouldn’t stick around to watch it continue.
“Can we talk?” she asked with more bravado in her mind than in her voice.
He looked bothered, but acquiesced. “Okay. Sure.”
Connor shut the door and took the lead into the kitchen, which gave Becca some relief. Now she didn’t have to turn her back and show her hand to avoid looking suspicious. She skittered to stand at the edge of the counter nearest the doorway and waited for him to get settled.
I noticed that his hands were flecked lightly with dark red specks, but I had no real way of knowing if Becca saw them, too. In general, it was a horrific thing to see him, to be in the same room with him and feel vulnerable again after watching him die at my hands just hours ago. At least it felt like hours ago. I couldn’t be sure how long it had been since this morning. Hours? Days? Years? Was I even still alive? Was this incontinuum of background noise and half-truths some form of purgatory?
Becca’s voice snapped me out of what would’ve surely blossomed into a full-blown panic attack. “I can’t do this anymore, Connor. I’m sorry.”
Connor’s brow creased. “‘This’? You mean us, right?”
She nodded. We nodded. “Look, I’m not gonna say anything. It’s not my place, not after all I did nothing about. But I can’t live like this. I hope you get right with yourself and everything, but I can’t help you. I know that now.”
“You do help me,” he persisted softly, which was what set Becca off.
“No, Connor, I don’t,” she snapped. Despite the frustration I felt in her, her tone was hurt. “I’ve done everything I can think of and this—all of this—is still happening. Right now and as of two o’clock yesterday, you were supposed to be landing in Pittsburgh for a business trip. You’re here. You got fired months ago! I called your work, and they sounded sorry for me. They thought you were having an affair when I said you were still going on ‘business trips.’ I’d be relieved if you were having an affair instead of what you’ve really been doing!”
“Bec, listen—please,” he started in, his hands raised in a pleading gesture. This time, she did notice the specks of red on his palms and fingertips.
“Don’t ‘Bec’ me,” she gritted, holding out her free hand in a way that strongly urged him to stay where he was. I saw him watching her movements, and he seemed to get an inkling from her single-handed gesture that she was hiding something behind her back. “I can’t watch the news. I can’t watch the news because every two or three months I see another one’s gone missing. And some of them aren’t you. I know that.” Her throat convulsed as tears threatened to dismantle her argument. “But I never know for sure. It could be you. All I know for sure anymore is that you’re never where you say you are.”
“Becca,” Connor pleaded gently. “I know. I know this hurts you. And I know that this isn’t what you wanted. I’ve said before that I can change—I think I really thought I could. But I understand you wanting to go.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “You… You do?”
Connor smiled a little bemusedly, the expression almost boyish. “Of course I do. This isn’t the life you wanted. I’m not the version of myself you wanted. I get that, baby,” he said soothingly.
I recoiled inwardly as Becca started to relax, even gravitate back toward him. She felt silly for picking up the poker. She felt silly for being scared of him. She was the only one he really cared about. He’d do anything for her.
I knew he was just offering her bait. More than anything, despite knowing this was probably as good as a simulation, I wished I could warn her.
Her frame went lax as he carefully started walking toward her again and I even felt her smile as he reached out seemingly to hug her. Instead, he grabbed her hair in one hand and the arm she was concealing in the other and wrenched her head back, using his body weight to pin her while he grappled for whatever she was hiding.
She screamed, and the vibration from the sound rattled my bones. I couldn’t feel anything she was feeling, but I saw it all much too closely. I felt her experience of the pain—the frenzied slams of her heart against her ribs, her quick, sharp breaths inflating her lungs, the heat that permeated her skin from pain and the body of her husband.
When he wrenched her arm from behind her back, she was ready and angled the poker with an instinctive flick of her wrist toward his gut. With his own strength added to the assault, the poker impaled him.
He sucked in a breath and stumbled back from us, looking down at the metal tool sticking out of his stomach. Becca’s hands were over her mouth as she looked between his face and what she’d done. “Connor, oh my god, I’m so—”
She never finished. Connor lurched forward and caught her by the throat. He forcefully threw her down and slammed her head against the kitchen tile until she was too dazed to struggle, and her hair was wet and sticky against her neck. Becca coughed, and the sound turned to a gurgle as blood pooled in her mouth. A tangy, metallic flavor like copper pennies slithered down our throat. She choked on it, and I saw red droplets splutter from her lips into the air, landing near our ears. She found the will to turn just enough to not drown in her own blood, and it seeped from her mouth as soon as gravity was its willing partner.
We watched Price stumble forward, past the counter. Despite his drive, he didn’t make it out of the dining room—he collapsed, and I saw then that the poker had sunk deep enough to protrude from his back. His own blood trickled from his mouth, and his hands were coated with the fresh blood of his wife. He stared at them blankly before he slowly began to draw on the tile. I couldn’t see what he drew, but the air seemed to change when he was done.
A cold hand touched Becca’s face, and this was the first thing that she felt that I actually felt, too. She died around me then, but I remained, watching from her lifeless eyes. Despite being unable to see him from my vantage point, I knew who had come.
The hem of dark, inky blue robes that were tattered at the edge came just slightly into view as the figure rose from beside Becca and stepped forward. More than garments, they were a diaphanous structure of power—a perfect marriage of light and darkness, one ending where the other began. The fabrics were assembled by something that went beyond what I knew. Defied it.
The unnatural stillness didn’t seem to touch where the figure stood. Price looked over and regarded him, his eyes turning feral as he took in the sight of the newcomer. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Your deliverer,” Jonah replied.
Price sputtered, and blood dotted the floor. “No,” he gritted, sudden spasms in his neck craning his head unnaturally sideways. “No, you’re not.”
Jonah didn’t speak again. Instead, he slowly made his way toward Price on the floor.
What could only be described as a low howl seemed to reverberate through the walls—the sound was unlike that of any creature or person I’d ever heard. Price’s shoulders wrenched backward, and his head snapped back. His eyes stared unseeingly toward the ceiling at first, and then focused to stare at something I couldn’t see. Something was moving beneath the skin of his back.
Whatever it was, Jonah saw it, too. He lunged forward, and his hand was extended far enough outward that I was able to see the scythe in his hand. The weapon gleamed and then transformed, larger now with semblances of the smaller version.
Price’s head wrenched sideways to look at Jonah, and the room exploded like the site of a sonic blast. Becca’s limp corpse was thrown against the base of the fridge. Shadow encased the room in unnatural darkness, and the scythe was torn from Jonah’s hand by the blast. The weapon flew end over end and shifted back into its smaller form just before it careened through the kitchen window and sailed to
ward the woods and the river beyond.
Jonah shuddered, his back to me as his robes started to disintegrate. I heard him murmur something under his breath and attempt to retrieve his weapon, but his sudden weakness put him on his knees. The rest of his robes fell apart around him and sank into the tile. Now, he was the Jonah I knew. The trapped reaper in a house haunted by the horrific human being who’d lived there. A deep gash was blossoming, bleeding along the back of his head—it was the same wound I’d seen him wear before. It was a mirror image of Becca’s killing blow.
Past him, Price convulsed on the ground, a hard snap sounding from his gut as the poker broke in half and was pushed out of his regenerating body. The movement in his back became more frenzied, and a bellowing screech tore from his throat as he transformed, piece by piece, into the demonic creature I remembered. The second set of arms exploded grotesquely from the planes of his back, his skeleton cracking and grinding as it was reorganized and additional anatomical spaces were created to house the new limbs.
Price’s eyes went dull and lightless and cast about the room with new life and new hunger. They first fixed on Jonah. Price lurched forward, and Jonah disappeared before he reached him. The blast had shoved Becca’s body upright against the fridge, and it was slowly starting to slump forward. Price inhaled sharply through his nose, and his head swiveled our way, the kitchen light catching dully in his eyes.
I found myself holding my breath as he listened, waited like an animal for a sign of life where there was none.
I saw him start crawling our way just before Becca’s corpse fell forward
Chapter 29
onto the threshold.
I lifted my head. My head.
I touched my hair, brought it around to look at the color. Red. I was me again. I was alive. Theoretically.
I started to get up, but I slid on the wood and I realized that my hand—the one I’d used to check my scab—was bloody again. Caked with it this time.
My struggle started anew and, the moment I sat up, static filled my skull. It was white noise cranked to the nth degree. It hurt. Enough to make me collapse back down to my hands and knees. I held onto my head and tried to find a way out of there—anything to get away from the noise. Knowing the front door was a loss, I lurched toward the living room, but just before I put my red hands on the doorframe, the room within turned impenetrably black.
I recoiled with a whimper that didn’t sound like my voice. I craned my head back to look upstairs, but the steps ascended into nothingness, too. My attention turned to the only other avenue—the hallway and the kitchen at the other end. My skull hummed violently as if it housed hundreds of hornets. Blood trickled from my nose onto my lips. I wrenched my arms forward and started to crawl. The static intensified with my progress, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I’d made it a third of the way when the kitchen doorway blacked out, too. The static finally died in the same instant, but not without leaving me with blood on my face and leaking from my ears. The only sound remaining was my own labored, panicked breathing. I was still staring straight ahead when a faint shimmer interrupted the void.
I immediately wondered if I’d imagined it. I wouldn’t have been surprised. However, it happened again and I found myself moving toward it. If it was a trap, it was a trap. This whole place was a trap. The point was that this might not be.
I dragged myself down the rest of the hallway, and the glimmer grew more material with every increment of progress made. I struggled to sit up, to stand and maybe get closer to the only source of light in a house of shadows, even if it meant nothing.
My arms gave out again, and I hit the floor. I heard something move in the hall behind me before I was seized by the back of my shirt.
Chapter 30
I spilled across the base of the staircase, and my breath exploded from my lungs in a swift oomph.
Someone slapped me in the face.
I flailed out against my attacker, but my wrists were caught by careful, deliberate hands. “Miri, stop!”
My eyes finally focused on Jonah’s face peering down at me, looking much more whole and solid than before. He was still a little gaunt, but he looked ten times better than he had on the roof. That was at least an upside of the last few…hours?
My mouth was dry when I tried to speak. “What happened?” I finally croaked.
“There was an open rift inside the front door. You were both trapped in it for a few minutes until I was strong enough to get you out,” he said. “You were the hardest to pull through.”
“Is that a fat joke?”
“Yes,” Jonah mumbled flatly, unimpressed by my half-dazed remarks.
“Wait… It’s only been a few minutes?” I asked, finding it hard to come to terms with that.
He nodded. “Three and a half, to be exact.”
“Fuck,” I mumbled. I realized something else he’d said was strange. “You said ‘both.’ Who’s ‘both’?”
“You and Estelle,” he said.
“Where are—?” I started to ask, but a stab of pain went through my head.
“They went upstairs,” he said. “I don’t know where they are now. All I know is that you and Estelle were the only two in the rift.”
I nodded shakily. “Okay. Bethaline?”
“I can feel her,” he said quietly. “She’s alive. But I can’t sense where in the house she is.”
I tried to sit up. “Do you have a good guess?”
Jonah watched me sit up before replying. “The demon would be most powerful where it was unleashed in the house. Where it had to latch on. I imagine that if it’s looking for a meal or a fight—and if it lured Bethaline in, it is—it’ll be there.”
“My bedroom,” I filled in for him. He just nodded. “I saw you. When you came for Price. And Becca. One of the… The visions or realities or whatever I had in the rift, I guess, was that day.” His brow creased slightly, and I asked, “It… Do you think you can beat it this time? Like this?”
The furrow in his brow smoothed. “I wasn’t ready for it then. I’m ready now.”
I hoped he was. I nodded as well as I could without jarring my brain. “Okay. Where’s—?” Before I could ask, I saw the answer to my question. Estelle was sitting by the living room doorway near the corner beside the front door. Her face was marred by bloody trails across her face. I realized they had been made by her own fingernails. She was shaking and staring at her hands.
I looked at Jonah. He gave me a look back that told me to be careful. “I’m going to test the energy up there. Diving into this isn’t going to save Bethaline. Collect yourselves. The rift is broken.”
With that, he disappeared and left us alone. I looked back at Estelle and deliberated over the best way to approach her. It looked like just about anything would be enough to spook her or make her lash out. I was in a similar state of mind. Finally, I found my voice. “Estelle?”
Her gaze on her hands turned a little panicked, and she started shaking her head.
“Estelle? Look at me,” I murmured, sick to my stomach and trying to be the one in control for as long as it would take to convince her to leave the house. She slowly turned her head and her eyes met mine, but it felt like she didn’t see me at all. “Maybe… Maybe you can go outside. Wait for me. All right?”
Her lips barely moved, but I heard her whisper, “Are you real?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know how to convince you that I am, but I am. We got stuck in a rift. Jonah got us out.”
She sucked in a breath. “Can’t leave.”
I figured she meant the door trick. It only made sense that she’d tried to run, too. Had she seen what I’d seen? “I couldn’t before either. Maybe that’s different now.”
“You tried to kill me,” she said, and she sounded more coherent now—not accusatory, but like she was telling me what she’d seen. “I don’t think it was you… Or you just didn’t know I was there. You pulled out a gun and aimed it at my face.”
&
nbsp; My blood ran cold. She’d been in the hallway when I’d almost tested the gun. That had been me.
She shook her head a little. “But you didn’t… I don’t think you knew I was there… You wouldn’t—”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” I murmured. Even though the worst hadn’t come to pass, I still felt like I might throw up. “I had no idea you were there. I think the thing in this house was trying to get rid of us. Trying to make us… I’m so sorry.”
Estelle swallowed hard and seemed to steel herself to look at me. “I know. You didn’t do it though. I was just scared. I couldn’t move, and you couldn’t hear me…”
I nodded and forced myself to my feet. “Come on. Jonah said the rift was broken. Go on outside and get some air. I’ll get Bethaline and the others.”
“You can’t do this by yourself,” she murmured.
“I’ll function better knowing you’re okay,” I told her. “If the fighting spirit returns, come back in and kick some ass.”
That gave her the out she needed, the lack of permanence in leaving to take care of herself. And then, at the very least, she’d survive. I liked to think that if we didn’t make it out, she’d be able to convince this small town of what had really happened in this godforsaken place, but I didn’t think she’d be believed on her own. More than any of that though, I realized I just wanted her to be safe.
I helped her up and opened the door, part of me wishing I could sprint outside and keep running until there was nothing left. I winced slightly at the cold wind in my face, but it felt surprisingly good on my clammy brow and hands.
Estelle looked at me. “I’m sorry. I’m not as strong as you are.”
“Or as stupid,” I reasoned.
She smirked weakly. “That, too.” Estelle paused a beat before hugging me tightly. “Just come back.”
“I will,” I said, hoping I was right.
With that, Estelle stepped carefully out of the house and walked from the porch into the yard, making an effort not to look back that I could see from the doorway.