Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  We both halted, though, our progress toward a second and possibly even steamier kiss arrested by a distant first-floor shout. That of someone calling out for Lucas.

  The two of us snapped apart. Grabbing our fallen sage bundles, we hurried for the door. On the way out, I caught sight of the desk from which Erik’s music had floated that first day I’d come up here. The desk now lay on its side—toppled. I frowned as Lucas and I wound down one set of steps after the other, halting only when we reached the middle of the grand staircase.

  Patrick stood below, peering up at us. His words were enough to distract me from my questions surrounding the desk, which couldn’t have thrown itself over.

  “It just opened,” he said.

  Lucas and I didn’t have to ask what he meant by “it.” Instead, we both hurried down to the foyer, then streamed past him into the kitchen, where Charlotte and Wes stood facing the open basement door.

  “Did you see it open?” asked Lucas.

  “Heard it,” replied Wes.

  “Patrick!” Lucas yelled to the front of the house.

  Patrick’s steps pounded down the hall, slowing as soon as he reached the kitchen, a sage bundle in his own hand now.

  “Watch this door, will you? I think . . . I think whatever we’re doing . . . it’s working. We’ve got this thing cornered now. But we don’t want it locking us in.”

  “Yeah,” said Patrick, glancing back the way he’d come, probably thinking about the now unguarded front door. “How long have I been saying we need two of me?”

  “If you hear us scream,” said Wes.

  “Run,” finished Patrick.

  “You’ll feed my fish?” asked Wes.

  “If I get that far,” mumbled Patrick as he stared into the darkened doorway. With that, all of us grew silent in the face of our new task, one that Lucas had assured me would be our last. Was it possible the sage could eliminate the evil that resided here? I wanted to believe it could.

  Lucas hit the light, illuminating the basement’s bare-bones wooden stairs. Emboldened, he then passed beyond the threshold of the cellar door. The three of us followed behind.

  Once in the basement, all of us went from corner to corner, spreading the smoke, Wes muttering prayers under his breath. Then, with the deed done, we gathered in the center of the room, our backs pressed together, as if suspecting something would jump out at us, or that one of us would become possessed like Rastin.

  “Is it over?” called Patrick to us, his voice tense and uncertain.

  “Hopefully,” said Lucas. “But it looks like we won’t know for sure until later.”

  I let out a long low breath, eyeing the shafts of sunlight that sneaked down the stairs from the kitchen.

  Erik.

  No matter what he was—was it possible he was free now?

  Was it possible I was?

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, DAD came home in a cast.

  After picking him up, I’d gone to get Charlie, and we all returned to the house.

  Though I’d waited for questions to come pouring out of Dad, none had. Not until we’d settled back into the house that I hoped would stay as quiet as SPOoKy had left it.

  First, as I expected, Dad had asked about the smell. He’d assumed I’d cooked something, and since he couldn’t go upstairs to find the smell up there, too, I let him think that I had.

  Then, all too predictably, came the questions about Lucas. Had I been with him all day? Were we a “thing” now?

  “Maybe,” I’d told him as I’d brought out a stack of blankets for him to sleep with on the couch. Tomorrow, I’d have to see about getting a bed set up on the ground floor, at least until the cast came off. Something that presented still more complications. Namely, halting my father’s progress on this house, which ensured we wouldn’t be moving until, earliest, spring or summer. Dad was going to be miserable until the doctor cleared him to work. But the trade-off amounted to more time with Lucas.

  Dad, probably still groggy from pain meds, hadn’t pressed for more details about Lucas or last night. And once I had him situated on the couch, I took Charlie upstairs to my bedroom, still not trusting to leave her in her own.

  I texted Lucas as soon as I had Charlie tucked in with me, and put my phone on silent as she finally began to nod off.

  After giving Lucas the all’s-well update, he texted back.

  Are you still coming to school tomorrow?

  I smiled and typed a response.

  Not sure yet. I want to see everyone and thank them again. It depends on Dad. Knowing him, though, he’ll probably insist.

  Did he ask about us?

  He asked if we were a thing.

  Only two seconds passed before his next text.

  And?

  And I put him off. But I think he knows we are.

  This time, a delay of several seconds before Lucas’s answer.

  Maybe I’ll still get to kiss you one last time before I die.

  I rolled my eyes, unable to suppress a grin.

  Maybe.

  * * *

  I FELT THE dream first.

  The sensation of smooth gliding layered over an almost imperceptible swaying.

  The soft lapping water . . .

  All of that told me where I was even before I opened my eyes.

  When I did open them, it was to see the deep velvet-blue nighttime sky colored by patches of cerulean and spattered with bright stars, all of it glittering like swirled diamond dust.

  Lying on my back in the boat, its wooden edges in my periphery, I couldn’t help the soft “ohh” that escaped my lips.

  Had I ever seen anything so beautiful in my entire life?

  The slow passing of the sky and the sound of disturbed water had me sitting up fast in the boat, so that I suddenly found myself face-to-face with the answer to that exact question.

  He stood at the stern, sculling us forward over the water with the long staff he held between both hands.

  “Erik—”

  He made no reply. Just watched me with a steady and serious stare, grave and breathtaking as any dark angel.

  The glassy waters of the lake mirrored the sky, giving the disturbing illusion that the world had no up or down. Trees lined the darkened shore that surrounded us on all sides. But no sounds or movement emanated from the forest, and no wind whisked over the waters. We were somewhere, but also, as had been the case with the other dreams, nowhere at all.

  And like always, it was just the two of us.

  “Erik,” I said, my voice too loud in the near silence. “What’s happened? Where are we?”

  “There exists on the grounds a lake,” he said. “Not too far into the woods. Didn’t you know?”

  I scowled at his response, as the growing sense that something wasn’t right began to expand within me. Dad had mentioned the lake, but that the realtor had told him it now belonged to an adjacent lot.

  “Why did you bring me here?” I asked him.

  “I wish to thank you, Stephanie,” he said coolly. “For setting me free.”

  “S-so,” I stammered, “it worked. The curse. It’s broken?”

  “I told you. The curse can never be broken.”

  I frowned, tilting my head at him, confused. Why was he acting this way?

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked. “Did . . . did we somehow make it worse?”

  To that, he said nothing, just lifted and lowered his staff, driving us toward the shore that never seemed to get any closer. The ripples raced one another to infinity over the star-specked waters. As they vanished, I redirected my attention, noting for the first time what I was wearing.

  A gown.

  Satin drop-shoulder sleeves adorned my arms, linking with a burgundy bodice that hugged my torso. Layered skirts a
nd petticoats covered my legs—garments of another time.

  Erik had always been responsible for how the world appeared in these dreams, but this marked the first instance that I myself had incurred any change. And this dress. I’d seen it before. On the masked figure. The one who had attempted to draw me into the basement. The one who had looked so much like . . .

  “Did you do this?” Returning my gaze to his, I gestured to the gown. “You should probably know that dresses aren’t really my thing.”

  “The list of transgressions I am to beg pardon for grows, then,” he said without sounding sorry at all. “But it does become you.”

  Fear shot through me at this response, driving my heart to speed up.

  I shifted. “Erik. What is going on?”

  He raised the pole, slid it back into the water, and pushed off.

  “Eri—”

  “Erik is dead,” he snapped.

  I blinked, taken aback by this sudden show of temper. He’d been short with me before. But never unkind.

  My sense of alarm growing, I swung toward one side of the boat and peered down into the waters, hoping to catch sight of the bottom that, as evident by Erik’s use of the gondolier pole, couldn’t be too far off.

  The eyes of my own frightened reflection met with mine.

  “Do take care,” he cautioned. “Should we capsize, you’ll wake, and my spell will be ruined.”

  Spell?

  “What’s happened to you?” My fear grew twofold. “You’re—”

  “The boy,” he said, cutting me off. “You must forget him now.”

  My mouth fell open. This wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned Lucas. I shut my mouth, my jaw flexing with the unwelcome thought that Erik might have witnessed the kiss in the attic. And that prospect summoned within me a snarl of complicated emotions. Because Erik himself had almost kissed me once. And in that moment, I had wanted him to. That kiss had never happened, though. And Lucas had kissed me. Besides that, Erik was . . . he was . . . God, what was he?

  Whatever he was, he was not alive, which must have been why he’d stopped the kiss. Because he knew as well as I did that the two of us were separated by more than just time.

  At least we had been . . . until last night.

  “I . . . didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said in a whisper.

  “I can assure you that is quite impossible for you to do,” he said without meeting my gaze.

  “You saw us, didn’t you?”

  His eyes narrowed on me. “I see everything that happens inside of my house.”

  My heart clenched suddenly tight, heat rising to my cheeks along with an odd sense of guilt over my kiss with Lucas.

  I couldn’t sit here, though, and let myself be surprised that Erik cared for me. After all, I came back into this nightmare house because I had grown to care for him.

  “L-last night,” I said. “Erik—”

  “I told you not to call me that.”

  “No, you didn’t.” I gripped the sides of the boat. “You said that Erik was dead. But you’re not dead, are you?”

  “It no longer matters what I am.”

  “Last night,” I pressed, “I was really there with you on the other side of the house. It wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. And that’s why you wouldn’t take off the mask. You didn’t want me to see that you don’t look like this. That the stories about what happened to you are true. That’s what you were trying to tell me in the conservatory.”

  “The music,” he said, pretending like he hadn’t heard me. “Now that you are here, that is all that shall matter.”

  My frown deepened. Because the way he’d said the word “here” had felt somehow . . . loaded.

  “But . . . this is a—”

  The words dried in my mouth, stolen by my own sense of suddenly screaming alarm.

  Erik had brought me here for a reason, to a setting that confined me to a boat. And the conversation he’d led me through, full of holes and non-answers, had been meant only to distract me.

  He must have seen the realization dawn in my eyes. Because he stopped rowing, a small smile touching his perfect lips. It was a smile, however, that did not reach his eyes. Eyes that no longer carried the warmth or sadness I had seen in them before, but now suddenly displayed far-off, inhuman, light-like glints.

  The boat rotated, and my gaze fell from his tall, straight form to his image reflected in the water’s surface.

  Panic surged into my heart, sharp, piercing, and cold as an ice pick.

  Though I wanted to scream at the sight of his reflection’s crimson garb and death’s head mask, I acted instead, remembering what he’d said about this dream being a spell—his spell.

  I pushed out of the boat and dove for the waters.

  Though my body made a splash as I hit, I did not end up in the lake. I instead toppled—awake—from someone’s arms, landing atop a floor of beautiful carpeting.

  At once, the sound of lapping water revealed itself to be the soft ticking of a clock, and I found myself faced with a fireplace outfitted with tiles showing feathery paintings of birds on porcelain. The carved deer’s head watched me from its mounting over the hearth, its antlers casting long, wicked shadows up the wall.

  No . . .

  The stag was too small to have owned the whole of those curved, spiked shadows. Their true source came from something that loomed behind me.

  I dug my fingers into the carpet, and my breathing came quick now. Because there was no question of who I would see when I dared to turn and look.

  What.

  PART

  II

  FIFTY-TWO

  Lucas

  “You have to be certain if we are seriously going to do this,” said Patrick. “Absolutely, positively, irrevocably certain.”

  I glowered at him from across the restaurant table, irritated at him and the rest of the SPOoKy crew all over again.

  “Yeah, because you know me,” I snapped, folding my arms as I leaned back in the booth. “I really like to make stuff up. Especially when there are people’s lives on the line.”

  “No,” said Charlotte. “You don’t make stuff up. You just leave stuff out.”

  “Preach,” said Patrick while giving his sweet tea a stir.

  I sent Charlotte a glare, one that she gave right back until I had to look away. Because, as much as I hated to admit it, she was right.

  “You had it all figured out, didn’t you?” she went on. “Didn’t think to run any of the alternate-side-of-the-house stuff by us before deciding yourself what it all meant.”

  “This from the person who didn’t believe Stephanie from the start,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, well, looks like you were the one who didn’t believe her this time,” Charlotte countered, her words burning. Because, again, she wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t believed Stephanie. Not until nearly a week ago when, after the sage cleansing, she’d vanished in the middle of the night from her house.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ve already apologized. Yeah, I thought I had the answer. I thought I knew what we were facing. I did what I did because . . . because I figured you all would have come to the same conclusion anyhow. For me, in that moment, the bottom line was that Stephanie needed help and we were all she had.”

  “Because we didn’t even try to contact anyone else!” said Charlotte, who, along with Wes and Patrick, still didn’t know about my reaching out to Rastin. Now, though, didn’t seem like the best time to bring that up.

  “In all fairness, Charlotte,” said Wes, surprising me by possibly coming to my defense, “I can’t say I don’t follow Lucas’s logic.” He paused to aim his kohl-rimmed eyes at me. “Not that I’m excusing the way you handled things. But, at the end of the day, who’s to say we would have approached the issue any differently if we had gotten the story straight from Stephanie.
I, for one, would have still gone in.”

  “We all would have,” snapped Charlotte. “That’s my point. But what’s yours, Wes?”

  “My point,” replied Wes, “is that, regardless of what Lucas did or didn’t tell us, we’d still probably all be sitting here right now talking about Stephanie, who would still be missing.”

  “That’s the thing, though,” said Patrick. “This discussion right here?” He stabbed the table with a finger. “It isn’t about whether or not we would have gone in. It’s about whether or not we should go back in.”

  “And why the hell wouldn’t we?” I challenged.

  “Lucas,” said Patrick. “They found Stephanie’s blood on the floor in Charlie’s room.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my temper rising by another notch. Because we’d already had this conversation. “I know the cops found her blood, but—”

  “Apparently, her dad also has a record.” Wes again. “And he resisted arrest.”

  Okay. Now I wanted to throw something. Instead, I took a pause and a breath before speaking again. Because I had to be reasonable if I wanted any of them to see reason. “You might resist arrest, too, if someone you loved went missing and, instead of being able to look for them, you were getting locked up.”

  “We’re not saying we think her dad hurt her,” said Charlotte.

  “Really? It seems to me like you are.” I frowned at my hands on the table, at my untouched food, at the enormity of the mistake I’d made in ever letting Stephanie walk back into that house. Also, in putting my own judgment ahead of hers after she’d been brave enough to confide in me.

  Now here I was kicking myself like I’d done every hour since the morning she’d failed to show up to school. Not to mention officially groveling for help from my own paranormal investigative team. And if I couldn’t talk them into joining me on an admittedly insane-sounding interdimensional rescue mission? What then?

  “Mr. Armand’s looking pretty bad right now,” Patrick said. “And if we get involved, we’re bound to also. That’s all I’m saying.”