Chosen

by Adam Dark

  When he got back in the car, he handed one of the beef jerky bags and a bottle of tea to Peter, who took them both and nearly tore the beef jerky bag in half. He didn’t say anything, but it was probably because he’d crammed his mouth with dried beef and was obviously way too busy trying to chew his way out of it.

  “You’re welcome,” Ben said. Peter popped the lid off his tea and took a long, gulping drink. Ben started to wonder why April was taking so long when she’d literally used the bathroom less than an hour and a half ago at his place. But he might as well use the opportunity. “I should have at least told you first. Sorry.”

  Peter swallowed and finally turned to look at him. “Probably, yeah.”

  “She can’t make anything worse. You know we can use all the help we can get, right? It’s not like people are lining up to step inside a demonic house just for fun.”

  “I know, man.” Peter closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest, either in appreciation of the food or in some kind of resignation. Maybe both. “I was just expecting this to be something else.”

  Ben smirked. “You gonna be a dick to the demon too if this doesn’t go the way we want it to?”

  Peter rolled his head along the headrest to look at him again. “I mean, if I have to.” The corner of his mouth twitched.

  Feeling like maybe they’d gotten past Peter’s issue with April, Ben opened his own bag of beef jerky and chewed on a bit of it before April finally got back into the car. “Ready?” he asked through a mouthful.

  She waved her hand and gave a little bow from the back seat. “After you.”

  Peter stifled a laugh at that, but the fact that it came out at all might have been a good sign.

  * * *

  Whatever lighthearted conversation they’d managed pretty much keeled over and died an hour later when they turned off the frontage road into Oakwood Valley. Despite still living so close just outside Boston, Ben hadn’t been back here since Christmas two years ago. Last year, his parents had flown out to Michigan to spend two weeks with his older sister Abigail, her husband Mark, and their daughter Denise. He hadn’t been that relieved in years when he heard they didn’t expect him to come home for the holidays, but of course he just told them he’d miss them and hoped they had a good time with his sister’s family. Going back home was the last thing he ever wanted, and he never would have if his parents hadn’t insisted repeatedly since he’d started at BU. This sleepy town with its long, wide dirt roads and patchily updated houses with sprawling acres and the general store next to the tiny outdoor sports shop made him feel like he was drowning. But he kept driving, because what else was he supposed to do?

  They passed Oakwood Valley High School, and whether or not Peter tried to suppress it, his groan filled the car. Neither one of them had had a particularly positive high school experience, to say the least. Just a few blocks down, the Presbyterian church rose quietly into view, only a few orange and brown leaves still clinging to the grounds’ many trees. The image of those trees ripped from the ground and scattered across the grass like so many matches spilled from the box ripped through Ben’s mind. That was from that other world, the version where everything was green-tinged and rotting and destroyed. That didn’t make being here now feel any less sickening at all.

  When they passed Peter’s parents’ street, Peter jammed his elbow onto the door’s armrest and dumped his forehead into his hand. A heavy, anxious sigh puffed out his cheeks, and Ben wanted to tell him to quit making it worse. He glanced back at April once in the rear-view mirror; she peered out her own window with something like surprised approval in her wide eyes and gentle, curious smile. Then she looked up to meet his gaze in the reflection and opened her mouth, as if she wanted to comment on how nice the place was. Ben couldn’t help it; he looked away quickly and focused on the road. He knew it was rude and that he’d totally shut her down, but he just didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t. Fortunately, April just raised her eyebrows and looked back out her own window.

  Eventually, the businesses on either side of Main Street thinned out until all that lined the road was dirt driveways and almost-bare trees. The green, slightly bent sign for Wry Road came up a few yards on their right, and Ben slowed down almost without thinking about it.

  “Dude, pull over,” Peter muttered.

  “What?”

  “Pull over, Ben. Just stop the damn car!”

  Heart thundering in his chest and thinking his friend had seen something awful, Ben did as he was told, glancing wildly out his window and the windshield. “What’s going on?”

  “Just…” Peter pulled out his inhaler, puffed on it twice, and held his breath. When he finally let it out, his long sigh trembled, and he leaned forward over his own lap to grab his head with both hands.

  “Pete?”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “What’s wrong?” April asked quietly.

  It wasn’t really intentional, but both guys in the front ignored her. “What are you talking about?” Ben asked.

  “I can’t.” Peter’s voice was muffled against the legs of his jeans. “I thought I could, man. But I can’t. I can’t go back there.”

  Ben really wished his friend hadn’t just totally come undone, because it was starting to eat away at him now, too. But he tried anyway. “We have to—”

  “No we don’t, Ben. We really don’t. Nothing’s gonna happen if we just turn around and go back to Boston right now.”

  Slumping his head back against the headrest, Ben stared out the windshield at the bare trees looming over the wide dirt lane Main Street had now become. He hadn’t pulled this card in a long time, but that might just make his point that much harder for Peter to ignore. “Maybe nothing happens to you,” he said. “But then I’m stuck again. Ian’s not going to just drop it and leave me alone if we don’t do this. If we don’t at least try. The voices are back. It’s not all the time like before, but I sure as hell would like to find a way to keep them from getting there again. If we don’t go, Pete, we leave Ian in there. And anything we might learn is flushed down the toilet, and I might not ever figure out how to get my life back.”

  Yeah, he realized April was still in the back seat, listening to this whole thing and probably wondering why she’d ever wanted to join these two nutjobs in the first place. He couldn’t say he didn’t care—he definitely didn’t want her thinking she’d wasted her time—but the most important thing was hoisting Peter out of this dark hole so they could do what they came here to do.

  “Then you and April go,” Peter muttered. “I’ll just stay here. I can call for help if you’re not back in a few hours. No one else knows we’re here.” He sniffed. “I’m totally useless anyway.”

  “No you’re not—”

  “I hid under the bed.” Peter nearly shouted the words as he reared up from leaning over his lap. Then he looked at Ben. “That’s all I did. You brought Ian upstairs, and I just hid under the bed. Crying. I didn’t even try to help him.” His eyes glistened, and his jaw worked soundlessly as he ground his teeth together.

  “You got me out, Pete.” Ben held his friend’s gaze, knowing exactly what kind of shame Peter struggled with now. “I’d be stuck in there with Ian right now if you hadn’t shoved me through that window. I need you, man.”

  For a minute, Peter just stared at him, looking like he was about to start crying now, too. Then he closed his eyes, leaned back, and vigorously rubbed his forehead with a shaking hand. His next sigh trembled too, but definitely less. “All right.”

  “All right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You good?”

  Peter lowered his hand. “Yeah. Just go.”

  “Okay.” Taking a deep breath, Ben put the car into drive and slowly eased forward again. He wanted to look up at April in the mirror one more time, let her know silently that everything was okay, but that felt too much like disrespecting Peter. She’d just watched something she wasn’t really supposed to see, and he hoped she knew not
to talk about it. Ever.

  It surprised him that he’d managed to sound so sure of the whole thing, and he had to admit it wasn’t entirely for Peter’s sake. He’d been pep-talking himself—a little. The last time they were here, all six of them together, Ben had been the one who argued over and over that they shouldn’t be here, that they had to leave, that they couldn’t come back. Nico had pressed him especially to not be such a wimp, and Ben hadn’t really had any problem with that because he knew Nico had been full of it and he knew they were better off never even looking at Wry Road again. But when they’d all been invited and so easily drawn into the house that night by the old man who’d only told them how lonely he was and how much he’d love their company, Ben had been the only one of them who seemed to realize how wrong the whole thing felt. And when the house did what it did best and his friends had turned on each other and themselves, Ben was the only one who hadn’t totally lost it. He’d kept his cool—relatively—and tried everything he could to either get his friends to listen or to get them help. Back then, he hadn’t known where that courage and fortitude had come from, and he still didn’t know. The rest of his life after that night had been one endless string of never finding it again—until now. Well, what perfect timing.

  His guts felt like they were being pulled out of his body one slippery handful at a time as he turned right onto Wry Road. A few leaves skittered across the dirt in the rising wind, and he forced himself to look up the long drive to the highest point of the rundown old orphanage peeking out over the top of the steep hill. There it was—101 Wry Road; his nightmare; the place where his childhood had ended in a bloody, terrifying flash and something else entirely had begun. Eleven years, and he never thought he’d be here right now, inching his foot down on the gas pedal to keep them creeping forward.

  About halfway up the hill, his Honda shuddered for a minute, jerked forward, then completely died. “Seriously?” Ben threw the car into neutral and turned the keys in the ignition back and then forward one more time, but nothing happened.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Peter commented, apparently having chosen to mask his terror again with sarcasm. Ben would have taken the sarcasm instead any day.

  The car started to roll backward, and Ben stepped down on the brakes. He reached out to put the gear in park, then thought better of it. If the car had died because of how close it was to the house—which seemed entirely possible, given everything they knew about how weird and unexplained this place was—he probably wouldn’t be able to start it again here. “Hold on.” He tried to restart the engine one more time just in case, but of course that didn’t work. So he pulled up the emergency brake instead and left the car in drive. They might need to get out of here pretty quickly, assuming they didn’t get pulled into that house forever—or worse. All he’d have to do at that point was release the emergency brake and let the Honda drift back down the hill until he could start it again. Hopefully. Hey, it was better than having to push.

  Peter slammed his hand down on the door handle. “I guess this is our stop.” He had to try a few times before he forced open the door; the wind had picked up now coming from his side of the car. Then he grabbed the leather messenger bag, slipped out of the car, and the wind shut the door for him.

  Ben turned around to meet April’s gaze in the back seat. She didn’t look particularly scared, only alert, but she had no idea what they were walking into. No one else did. “We have to walk from here,” he told her.

  She actually smiled. “Yeah, I figured.”

  That smile was contagious. Ben returned it, even though it felt super stiff, like after a few hours of walking outside in Boston’s blistering winter cold and then trying to talk. Then he opened his door and stepped out onto the steep dirt road. The last time he’d been on it, they’d all ridden their bikes. At least this way, he wouldn’t be as exhausted when they reached the top; his legs were longer and moved faster than they had when he was twelve. But he still wasn’t any more eager this time to make the climb.

  The wind gusted again, bringing more leaves and a hollow whistle through the bare branches. He zipped up his jacket all the way to the top and stuck his hands into his pockets as he stepped in front of his Honda. Peter stood there too, glaring up at what they could see of the house from here. Then April’s door shut, and she came to stand on the other side of him.

  For a moment, despite the wind and the dead, skittering leaves, it felt like time had stopped. Then Ben cleared his throat. “Okay.”

  19

  The hill was a lot less steep than he remembered, but it made sense. He’d climbed a lot of hills since that night, only none of them had sent him willingly toward the waiting horrors that might end him entirely after today. Man, he needed to cut it out with the drama.

  Their breath puffed out of them in the frigid air, the sun muted behind the damp, gray clouds that made this second week of November feel more like the middle of winter. Nobody said a thing about the cold. When the wide yard and the front porch came into view, a rolling, horrified scream tore through the bare branches and almost echoed down the hill behind them. They stopped.

  “Did you guys hear that?” April asked.

  Ben took in the house with a slow sweep of his head and sighed. “Yeah.”

  “It sounds like someone’s screaming,” she said. The sound came again, and it might have even morphed into terrified pleas, if Ben didn’t know better. “Yeah, that’s… it sounds like someone calling for help.”

  “It’s not,” Peter said flatly, slowly turning his own head to eye the sprawling yard and the dead brown grass and the lifelessness here.

  “Just ignore it,” Ben added. Then he turned to look at April. “Trust us on this one.” Her blue eyes were wide, as if she couldn’t believe he and Peter would be so apathetic toward these cries and then realized they had to be telling the truth—as if she suddenly knew everything they’d said about this place was real. Now she did look really scared. Ben raised his eyebrows and nodded at her, silently asking if she was okay. April blinked, then nodded back, and they trudged forward.

  Ben caught a glimpse of the shed on the far side of the old, worn-down house that had once been an orphanage for troubled boys. He’d gone in there a long time ago, before that night, looking for Nico and finding garden tools, shovels, chains. Then he’d found the bones, a few on the ground but mostly buried beneath the layers of ash in the firepit. This time, he didn’t feel even the slightest urge to go exploring. They weren’t here for that.

  When they stopped together in front of the porch stairs and gazed up at the crooked front door, it felt eerily like the way he and his friends had approached this house eleven years ago—tentatively gathering at the bottom step; talking about beating the record of who could stand on this porch the longest without running away screaming; prodding each other with half-serious jibes because none of them wanted to look like the baby; Ben telling them he needed to get home, because his mom would kill him if he was late. Only now, they weren’t children competing for who could be the bravest of them longer than anyone else. Now, four of them were gone. Ben’s mother wasn’t waiting for him to come home; like Peter had said, no one even knew they’d come back to Oakwood Valley. And only the two twelve-year-old boys who’d lived that night—and every day after that as ghosts of who they might have been if they’d never come here the first time—knew what they’d find on the other side of that door.

  It was actually Peter who took the first step up onto the warped, splintered wood of the front porch. Ben just watched him, relieved to see his friend had managed to pull himself back together. Now Peter acted like he had two days ago when they’d put The Lesser Key of Solomon to surprisingly effective use—cautious but still composed, taking the lead. The boards creaked and shifted under his weight, then he stood on the porch and briefly glanced back at them. “So…”

  “Right.” Ben followed, the groaning steps making him cringe, and April followed closely behind. Just being on the porch felt differen
t than standing below on the dirt driveway. It felt colder here—quieter—and if he hadn’t known what kind of freaky impossibilities were actually possible in this messed-up world, he would have thought he’d imagined it.

  The door didn’t swing open like it had that night. No old man stood behind it to ask, ‘Can I help you?’ or if they’d like to join him inside. No inexplicable and irresistible force drew them forward across the threshold, as if they stood on a conveyor belt waiting to be carted off to some sort of macabre processing center. Ben stood there with Peter and April beside him, staring into what remained of that night and his consuming memories—cold, empty darkness.

  The wind picked up again, howling amidst the next round of panicked screams coming from somewhere behind the old house. The leaves drifting across the porch and fluttering where they’d caught against the stairs sounded like the voices—so many of them, whispering and taunting—which Ben had heard for the first time that night in the room where Ian was taken from them before they escaped. Ben took one more step forward and grasped the frozen doorknob. It let out a shrill squeak when he turned it, and the door creaked open into the darkness.

  It was really cold inside the house, too, which was nothing like what it had been the first time. The wooden floors were caked in a layer of dust, the fireplace was cold and empty but for the rising mound of ash that looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades, and the walls rattled against the wind. They stepped farther into the house and to the left, where the living room opened up into a surprisingly high ceiling with a massive chandelier hanging from its center. The last time Ben had seen that, it shook and glistened, tinkling playfully before it loosed itself from its hook to come crashing down on top of Max. But now, it was lined with dust, muted and dull. Cobwebs stretched between its many curled prongs, the older, broken filaments filtering down to reach toward the living room floor.