by Val Crowe
Wade turned to us, eyes wide, lips pulled back from his teeth. “Here we are,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, savoring each sound in the phrase.
Rylan suddenly rushed across the floor for the window. She swerved to move around Wade, darting quickly, her breath loud, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, like a steam engine.
“Wade, stop her!” I yelled.
Wade snatched at her, pushing her back into the wall.
She wailed, reaching for the window.
“We have to get her out of here,” I said, rushing forward to take her by the arm.
“But we just got here,” said Wade in his strange, gravelly voice.
“We all have to get out of here,” I said, certain of it now. There was something about this place… The barnacles might be gone, but there might be more here, something else, something strange and unnatural.
Rylan fought me, trying to get at the window.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “What’s your middle name?” I demanded.
She groaned.
“Rylan, come on, stay with me.”
Wade turned away from me, back to the window. He let out a funny sounding laugh.
“Wade?” I said.
“Here we are,” he murmured, laughing again. “Here we are.”
“Come on, Wade, snap out of it,” I said.
Rylan smashed her forehead into my nose.
I cried out, losing my grip on her.
She went running for the window, and I reeled, trying to get myself together, to go after her. I slammed my eyes shut and opened them.
And everything was different.
* * *
The room was bright and full of music. There were two bunk beds shoved against the far wall, both of them with the covers crumpled at the bottom, the pillows skewed. There were movie posters on the walls. First Blood and The Terminator. The beat of “Your Love” by the Outfield pulsed into my temple, and it bled into everything else.
A girl was pressing her body into my chest, wriggling against me. She was all curves and softness and laughter. She had freckles on her nose and her eyes were half open.
I was aroused.
What the fuck was this? Where was I? Where was Rylan?
The girl ran her hands over my arms, over my stomach. I wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of jeans with holes at the knees.
The window was open and the white curtains were fluttering like ghosts in the cool breeze from outside.
The girl’s hand went flat over my stomach, under my belt, down, down, down…
I threw my head back, gasping.
That was good.
She giggled. “I knew you’d give in eventually.”
My jaw worked. “Rylan.” The world was waves of hot, purple pleasure, and I couldn’t think.
The girl put her mouth on mine. “Heather,” she whispered against my lips. “At least call me the right name. There’s only one of me. You guys shouldn’t forget.”
“Stop,” I said. I tried to move. It was difficult. Everything was strange, and I was confused, and it felt good, but my head was pounding, pulsing with the music and that wasn’t good. No, maybe it was, and—what was Heather doing with her tongue?
I did move, but only to push her up against the wall, next to the window, next to the fluttering curtains. I trapped her there and it was my tongue moving against her, my hands on her body. I was pushing at her clothes, shoving them out of the way, baring her skin to me, inch by inch by inch.
“You want a piece of this,” she muttered, and I was realizing that her voice sounded slurred. “Everyone wants a piece of this.”
“Mmm,” I agreed, and I put my mouth on her bare skin.
She shuddered, back arching against me. “Say it,” she said.
“Say what?” I muttered.
“You want me.”
“I want you,” I said.
“You want me bad.”
“I want you—”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Deacon!” A sting of a slap against my cheek. A flashlight shining in my face.
I couldn’t see anything. I was blinded.
“Deacon, what the hell?” Rylan’s voice. She sounded like she was crying.
“I can’t see,” I mumbled, throwing out a blind hand and colliding with the flashlight. I knocked it out of her hand, and there was a clattering noise as it hit the floor. It was dark.
“Fuck!” said Rylan, her voice high pitched. She rushed over to pick up the flashlight, but she didn’t shine it at my face this time.
I was lying on the floor next to the window in the room where Heather Olsen had fallen. I scrambled to my feet, looking around. “Where’s Wade?”
“I don’t know,” said Rylan. “I don’t even know how we got up here. I feel like I blacked out somewhere on the steps. And then, I woke up, and I was down the hall, and my palms were skinned up and…” She held up her hands to me, shining the flashlight on them. They were bleeding. “I came looking for you both, but I only found you. You were convulsing, like you were having a seizure or something. I thought…” She took a shaking breath. “We have to get out of here.”
“Where’s Wade?” I pushed past her, out into the hallway. I raised my voice. “Wade!” I shouted.
“Deacon, please,” said Rylan, pitiful. “We have to get out of here.”
“Not without Wade,” I said, heading down the hallway, maneuvering around the debris of propped-up doors and the skeletons of bunk beds, shining my flashlight everywhere. “Wade!”
There was no response.
“Deacon,” came Rylan’s wavering voice.
I turned, my flashlight cutting through the darkness in her general direction, but not illuminating her. “You want to leave, go.”
“We’ll call his phone,” she said.
“You do that,” I said. “Go outside and call him. I’m going to find him.”
“No, I’m not leaving you alone in here,” she said. “What if it gets to you again? Come on.”
“I’m not leaving Wade,” I said. “Come with me, then.”
A sob from Rylan.
“Get down here, Rylan,” I growled.
She picked her way down the hallway and once she was close to me, she clung to my arm. She didn’t say anything else, though, only whimpered occasionally. She was incredibly freaked out—like, so freaked out I could smell her sweat.
But I couldn’t afford to be afraid. I needed to find Wade.
So, dragging Rylan with me, I searched the whole building. There were two wings on each floor. I went up and down each of them, looking in every room, looking in the bathrooms, tearing aside moldy, shredded shower curtains, searching every common room. I looked everywhere.
But he wasn’t in the building anymore.
Eventually, I had nowhere else to look, and Rylan started to speak up again, quietly saying that we should leave.
We did.
We stood on the sidewalk and I dialed Wade’s phone. Why I hadn’t tried to call him in there, I didn’t know. Everything was strange in there. I put my phone to my ear and listened while it rang. I was also listening for the sound of the ringtone somewhere close, because he had to be nearby. He couldn’t have simply left.
He didn’t pick up.
I didn’t hear the phone ringing somewhere either.
“Maybe he went home,” said Rylan, hugging herself. “Let’s go check his house.”
“He wouldn’t have done that,” I said in a tight voice.
“Deacon, he’s not here,” she said. “He’s not answering his phone. Maybe… maybe he got scared like I did.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. Or maybe… maybe the dorm ate him.
* * *
Rylan was pacing in the living room of Wade’s apartment, hugging herself. “I don’t know what happened in there. I never get like that. Do you have any idea how many haunted places I’ve been in? I’ve never been so afraid. I thought I was going to shit myself.”
W
ade wasn’t here. The door had been unlocked, and the light had been on in his bathroom, but he wasn’t there.
I stood in his bedroom, looking at his bed, the blankets in a tangle in the center of the bed, and I felt ill. I had been angry with him. I hadn’t forgiven him for what happened with Olivia. I had lost Olivia. What if I’d lost Wade too?
Wade was all I had.
Sure, it was as shitty thing he did, but I knew that there was nothing that Wade could do that would mean that I wouldn’t eventually forgive him. We were family—more than family, we were Wade and Deacon.
Where the hell was he?
“I’m kind of embarrassed.” Rylan dragged her hands over her face. “I don’t know what happened in there. I really don’t.”
I didn’t know what had happened either. Because she’d been about to throw herself out the window. Why hadn’t she been successful? I hadn’t been able to stop her.
“I think Wade saved me,” she said. “I think he dragged me away from the window and threw me down that hallway. I think that’s why I hurt my hands, from breaking my fall. But then… where did he go? Oh, God, what happened to him, Deacon?”
I swallowed hard. “We have to go back.”
She shook her head furiously. “No. I can’t go back there.”
“He’s in there. He’s got to be in there.”
“We looked everywhere. He wasn’t there.”
“But he has to be,” I said.
“Listen, I don’t think you should go in there by yourself,” said Rylan. “And I’m not going back in there. No way am I going back in there.” The barnacle settled around her neck, curling up like a satisfied cat.
Damn.
If I left Rylan alone, she might hurl herself out a window.
But if I didn’t go back to the dorm, I might lose Wade. Hell, maybe I’d already lost him.
No, I couldn’t let myself think that. I stalked across the room, heading for the door of his apartment.
“Deacon?” said Rylan. “Where are you going?”
“You need to get to the first floor of some building and stay there,” I said to her, throwing open the door.
“You shouldn’t go back alone,” said Rylan, hurrying after me.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “He’s my…” I shrugged. “I have to find him.”
* * *
I looked up at the dorm. It was after midnight now, and it seemed doubly dark and doubly sinister. I stood next to the porch, shining my flashlight into the gaping maw that was its front door. “Mads?” I called.
“Deacon.” Her voice was behind me.
I turned. I didn’t need a flashlight to see her. She was glowing, just a little bit. She tucked her hair behind her ears, and she looked worried. “Something happened to you.” She reached out to touch my chest.
I flinched at the coldness of her fingers going through me.
“What did it do to you?”
“Wade,” I said, ignoring the question. “Is he in there?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “He’s in the dorm somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Is he…” I swallowed. “Is he alive?”
“I can’t say for sure,” she said. “I think so.”
I sucked in a noisy breath of relief. Maybe I could get him out of there. I started up the front steps.
“Wait,” said Mads. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to go in there.”
“Of course it’s not a good idea,” I said, and I climbed onto the porch.
“Damn it, Deacon,” said Mads, her voice right at my ear.
I pushed into the house.
The air seemed to pulse, a satisfied sigh reverberating in the air around me. I decided to ignore that. “Where is he, Mads? Can you sense him?”
She shook her head, looking around.
I looked too, and now I could see dark shadowy forms, human-shaped, moving through the rooms. They walked past me. They walked through me. When they did, it was cold and shivery.
I shone my flashlight around.
And settled on the steps. They were vibrating, letting out a little hum, calling to me. It was the steps that were sighing, sighing in the voice of a girl, beckoning me…
I took a step forward.
“Deacon,” whispered Mads.
I looked at her sidelong. “He is in here.”
“I don’t think you can find him,” she said. “You’ve made some kind of connection here, you’ve let it get its hooks into you—”
“What?” I said.
“Whatever’s here,” she said. “Whatever’s waking up.”
“I can’t leave Wade alone,” I said, and I moved into the room. I went into the living area, shining my flashlight over the floor, behind the ratty sofas there, as if I was going to find Wade simply lying out there in the open.
Mads kept up with me. “I’m not saying you leave him alone. Just that you need help. Someone else could come in. Someone who’s not sensitive. I don’t think it would react in the same way if it was someone else.”
“Wade!” I called.
“He can’t hear you,” said Mads. “Save your strength.”
“Where should I look?” I said, turning in a circle. He wasn’t in this living area. I knew that much.
“I don’t know,” Mads said. “I can’t pinpoint anything. I don’t like it in here. You’re no good to Wade. Get out.”
“No.” I gripped the flashlight tighter and moved forward. I went past the row of mailboxes. I came to the room where the window was, where guests could be checked in. I shined a light inside the window. The check-in room was empty.
To my right were the steps. They shimmered, sighing at me. I wanted to go up those steps. I lurched toward them.
“Deacon!” Panic in Mads’s voice.
I stopped moving. I took a deep breath. Better to clear this floor than to start up the steps yet. Besides, there was something about the steps that set my teeth on edge.
Squaring my shoulders, I stepped past the stairs and went deeper into the first level of the dorm. There wasn’t much back here, really. Two bathrooms, one for women, one for men. The doors were ripped off and the toilets were missing. I shone my flashlight over the walls. There was some graffiti there that said, Heather Olsen gives head in hell.
Nice.
Wasn’t that from The Exorcist?
No, that was “sucks cocks in hell,” right?
Yeah, okay. I backed out of the bathroom and continued down the hall. An old Coke machine sagged against one wall. Beyond that was a big room that must have been another common area. It was crowded with a tangle of tables and chairs, like the kind that might be used in a seminar classroom. I searched through all of them, shining my flashlight under each table. Wade could be anywhere.
A sigh, right behind my head.
I turned.
Nothing there.
But the air felt oddly warm, like a… caress.
I swallowed.
What the hell was going on in this place?
I thought about the steps again.
I really wanted to go up those steps.
Wandering out of the room, I peered down the hallway. I could see the bottom step from here. It was pulsing, shimmering, beckoning.
A tickle went up my spine. It was awful. It was nice.
“Deacon,” said Mads.
Mads. Oh, God, Mads. Mads was like this. She confused me, just like this house did. I wanted her. I wanted those steps. I needed…
I was moving across the floor, heading toward them.
“Wait,” said Mads.
But I didn’t.
Only a few more feet and I was on the steps, climbing. I was taking them two at a time, just like Wade had before, and there was an urgency in the air, vibrating around me. I needed to climb. I needed to—
“Deacon, stay with me.” Mads was desperate.
I didn’t listen to her. I went faster.
&n
bsp; I could feel something reaching down the steps. It ran warm fingers over my shoulders, over my chest and belly.
I gasped.
The fingers darted under my skin.
There was a fire inside me, starting under my belt and traveling downward, to the root of my crotch. It was tingling. It was warm and good and enticing, like someone had wrapped her hand around me and was leading me somewhere. When I got there…
I shuddered.
I didn’t know if I wanted to get there.
But I had to go.
“Deacon,” said Mads.
“Mads,” I murmured. Mads in those short shorts, crossing her legs as she sat on the counter in the Airstream. My body pulsed. I rushed up the stairs even faster.
“Deacon, he’s not up there,” said Mads. “Don’t go back in that room.”
But I knew that was exactly where I was heading, back to the room, because I could hear the voice of Heather Olsen beckoning me. She was moaning breathily, calling to me. “You want me. You want me bad.”
I did.
I wanted whatever was in that room, wanted the pleasant heat of it, even wanted the forbidden terror behind it, something that was red and ripped and jagged, that might tear into me, but the gush of it would be a release, and I was wound so tight now. So, so tight.
“Deacon,” Mads’s voice was fading.
I burst up the steps and tumbled into the room and everything was buzzing and bright and good and gushing.
The room was empty, but the walls were expanding and contracting, and the window was lit up hot and blue-white.
I fell to my knees in the center of the room, letting out something like a moan.
It rushed at me, too fast for me to see it well. It was like the thing that Wade’s barnacle had turned into. Just a flash of it. Just one quick look.
Female. Pale skin, stretched too tight against bone. Eyes like empty holes to a dark well of insanity.
I flinched. I wanted to push her away now.
No, no, no, not that. Get off me. Don’t touch me.
But it was too late. Squeezing me, stroking me, and I was past the point of all return, falling over the brink into some kind of awful ecstasy as my essence exploded and spurted and—
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sun was hot on my face.