Another blank room—rug on the floor, bit of junk, closet door. Breathing hard, we ran to that door, Adam flung it open. No one in there. Just old coat-hangers and dust.
We spun back around, not wasting a second, and the door slammed again.
“Dammit! I can’t use magic to open every door in the place—twice!”
“I can kick them in but this one’s facing wrong.”
“Kick them in from the hall side.” Magic on this one again and we ran out. Down to the next, back to the landing at the top of the stairs. “Gideon, Wade, Vel!”
No answers. I flung my caterpillar light down the hall that we had yet to explore. Another light down the stairs, praying someone saw, that maybe it would wake one of them from whatever nightmare they were living. I hoped it wasn’t as bad as ours.
Adam kicked the door with the sole of his motorcycle boot planted squarely next to the knob. On impact, his boot and whole leg exploded in flames.
He yelled, leaping back, falling, wrenching his hand from my grasp. When he hit the boards the flashlight crunched and went out. The first time he’d really seemed shaken up all night. I feared forced solitude. Maybe fire was a phobia for Adam.
“It’s not real!” I shouted even as he dropped, understanding at least this much in a flash. “It’s a projection! You can make it stop!” I almost fell on his leg, dropping the light so both hands could clamp down on his shin.
Adam scrambled away, slapping his thigh, then covered my hands with his as I kept talking.
“Interact and it will stop. It’s just a trick. It’s not real.”
He sucked in a few deep breaths, clutching my hands into his old jeans. Gideon had had on real motorcycle pants. Adam couldn’t be bothered or was just too hot for it. It was even warmer upstairs than down. Well over 90ºF up here even at night. But not actually on fire.
“Okay?” I leaned in, also breathing hard, while Adam hunched over his own legs until our heads touched. “Remember … some of what you see in here isn’t going to be real.”
He nodded. “Have to keep moving. How’ll we know if twenty minutes expire?”
“I’ll set my phone. Grab it. Front pouch.”
The daypack had a small front pocket and a main compartment. Adam grabbed out the phone in a flash and I set the timer for eighteen minutes, then zipped it back in there and we scrambled up to hurry into the next room. Another closet door. We had to check inside.
“Stay in the doorway and I’ll look,” Adam started. “Keep this one open.”
“No.” I grabbed his hand. “We stay together. You already bashed this one, it shouldn’t lock anyway.”
We ran to the closet door and Adam yanked the sliding door sideways. This one was also empty, other than the floor, where a little heap of gray, white, and orange fur lay in a bloody pulp.
12
“Vel!” There was a sob in my voice as I dropped Adam’s hand to bend for the broken little body.
Before I could touch the bloody fur, the fox sprang for me, jaws wide and screaming, froth and blood splashing from the mouth.
I also screamed, swinging out the light like a weapon, ready to club the fox as I leapt back and sideways, Adam grabbing me.
The fox tore past us, tufts of fur and a spatter of blood cascading off him as if being ripped apart before our eyes. Still shrieking a terrible battle cry, he hurtled across the room, and out the broken door that hadn’t shut behind us. His scream traveled down the hall and stopped abruptly.
“Not real,” Adam was telling me this time, pulling me forcibly to my feet. “Wasn’t a true critter, Ripley.”
“It was—they’ve done something to him—” I was almost crying, clutching Adam and horrified by the blood and slaver like a rabid, psychotic beast.
“No.” Adam shook my shoulder. “Wasn’t him. Sure it wasn’t. Know how I know?”
I finally looked at him.
“No stink,” Adam said firmly.
I gulped and sniffed. He was right. My nose was nothing special, but I’d noticed the softly pot smoke/skunky smell of Vel in fur form. Even after being supposedly confined to a closet, there was no trace of that smell in there.
Adam kicked at a tuft of fur and it ceased to be when his toe made contact.
I nodded, still shaken. He pulled me from the room.
We ran on, clock ticking with my pounding pulse and speeding breaths. Again, we shouted for them and I sent out a light. We started down this other side of the hall. Only a few doors this way, including one large front turret room. What about the attic? But, if we couldn’t see any clear way to get up there, surely our friends wouldn’t be there either. They could, however, easily be downstairs, and the house had already proved itself massive.
“Gideon?” Adam called down the hall as I opened the next door.
“See something?” I looked around, swinging the light.
Adam had perked up, but he shook his head. “All shadows.”
“This is just a bathroom. Wade? Vel? Can you—?”
Adam’s hand tightened on mine. Still, he wasn’t paying any attention to the room before us, sideways to me.
“Ripley…?”
Footsteps vibrated the floorboards—something rushing toward us.
“Gideon?” I turned, lifting the light.
“Gid!”
He was there in a flash, running into us, smashing Adam and sending both crashing to the floor several feet away on the landing, yelling something in their own language.
I also yelled, rushing after them—in no doubt this time that it was the real thing: real, live Gideon reunited with us, and apparently set on murdering Adam.
13
“Gideon! No! It’s us—stop it!” I threw magic at them, trying to blast them apart, but the energy did no more than knock Gideon over. At least he wasn’t on top of Adam, yet he had both hands around Adam’s throat, crushing his windpipe while Adam thrashed and growled, twisting at his wrists.
They rolled to the top of the stairs, kicking each other, Adam gagging and spluttering, Gideon yelling, seeming to swear at him, though I couldn’t understand him. I followed, trying again with the magic, desperate to wedge force between them, calling Gideon’s name, willing him to hear and understand me.
Adam was panicking, gum spit out, unable to breathe while he fought. The magic again knocked Gideon back, but he clung to Adam’s throat as if for his own life.
“—away from her, you bastard!” Gideon seemed to think he was protecting me from Adam. Could he be seeing Adam as the demon? Or did he know this was Adam but thought he’d turned on us?
“It’s not real! Gideon! It’s me! Let him go! What you’re seeing isn’t real!” I threw green and white lights in his face, hoping to jar him back to reality with us, frighten him with the magic. He was too far gone, eyes wide and unseeing, blank to this world, furious and terrified as he wrestled his foe.
Adam was turning blue, eyes bulging, when someone else dashed from the hall at my back, the same way Gideon had come, right past me, and kicked Gideon in the head. The blow was so hard his hold was broken with his whole body crashing sideways over the edge of the stairs.
The noise was deafening, even after the shouting, as Gideon tumbled and bounced his way down the long, curving flight. Toward the bottom, he smashed through the banister, sending splinters flying, and fell to the floor below with a sickening crash.
“Adam?” But I didn’t rush in or bend over him, whipping up the light first to shine into the face of… “Fulco!”
“Arr!” He threw up a hand over his eyes, turning away.
“Sorry! What are you doing? Where were you?” I didn’t want to turn my back on him, still unsure if he was for or against us—but he’d probably just saved Adam’s life.
“Where were you?” he snarled, moving back to get away from the light. “I have been trying to get Sir Righteous the Wolf to banish his fervor.”
“Didn’t you hear us call?” But he’d reminded me of more pressing concerns.
“Fulco, we met a demon. He’s given us a time limit to get out. We probably have ten minutes. Where are the others?”
“I have not the faintest idea, Miss Ahearne. I did not join this expedition with the intent of babysitting your wayward flock of fools, yokels, and degenerates.”
I was on my knees with Adam by then, while he gasped and held his throat. He was trying to get to his feet, knowing how precious our time was, but gagging and retching, unable to talk. Would his throat heal if he changed? Then maybe he could find the others also, but that presented its own problems. Like even more time just to do it.
“Adam? I’m sorry. I should have been able to stop him.” I held his head, kissed his hair, frantic and trembling while I tried to cast soothing and healing energy into him, sending air to his lungs and healing turquoise and lavender light to his throat.
“Gideon?” I called at the stairs. “Is he moving?”
“It would not appear so, Miss Ahearne.”
“No!” I shouted. “Just say no! We don’t have time for you to be so condescending! Where are Wade and Vel?”
“Unknown,” he snapped, turning his back to me.
“Help us find them.”
Adam was on his knees while I pushed a water bottle at him. He managed to drink, gagged, spewed it back up, then sipped more slowly and kept it down. I checked the phone and stuffed it into my back pocket. Less than nine minutes.
“You didn’t see them? While you were with Gideon back there?”
“The fox for a moment. The mage not at all.” Fulco, with no light but superior night vision, walked past the bathroom door to look in there and try the door at the next room, the front turret bedroom or whatever it was. I was glad of his help, at the same time even more alarmed by his casual movements and indifferent tone. He didn’t have a life left to lose. Nor did the chaos around us seem to bother him.
Adam pulled himself up on the newel post, still wheezing. I grabbed my flashlight, took his arm, looked down to see Gideon motionless below, and rushed to check the last rooms up here.
“We have eight minutes to get us all out of here,” I told Fulco. “Please help us find Wade and Vel. Quickly.”
“Book,” Adam gasped.
“Did you see the book?” I threw open the door with magic. “An old diary? I have no idea what it looks like, but we don’t have time to go through boxes.”
“No.” Fulco glared into the turreted room with us. Empty aside from a broom on the floor and rolled up rug.
“Wade! Vel!” I ran for the next room, Adam stumbling as he still held his neck, following valiantly while he struggled for each breath.
“Change,” he croaked.
“No time.” I could have let him get on with it and checked in the last two doors but the idea of releasing him and being even feet away to keep checking while he stopped to transform was so terrifying I couldn’t let him go.
The door stood open for the room at the end of the hall, where Gideon and Fulco must have been. Totally empty aside from a closet door. I pulled Adam to this and yanked it open.
I screamed as the blast of wind swept me in, dropping my light to cling to the doorframe and Adam, who yanked me back, bracing his feet. The gusts howled in my ears and through my hair, blinding and burning, sweeping out into a great blackness, over a canyon, into open space, spinning through nothing and everything.
Going through, falling, plunging into that black pit would mean death and worse, trapped here, damnation, suffering, eaten away by the demon who was now the soul of this house. All of this impending doom crashed over me with the wind and roar and tornado of it, twisting and dragging me in and down, down, down. My breath was ripped away on another scream, crying out Adam’s name, throwing a magic block into the black hole vacuum at my feet. The magic did nothing at all. I was so spent, little bits of magic adding up and draining me, that it hardly even made a light. Adam, on the other hand, fought the tide, yanking me back and having the presence of mind to kick the door shut.
We tumbled to the ground, knocked flat with our own momentum to escape while the force was severed by the slamming door.
No time to catch my breath or discuss the matter. I was already clawing for the door out by the time we hit. Choking and fighting for each breath almost as much as Adam, I grabbed the light and we scrambled, staggered, fell out of that room after again having to use magic to open the door.
I couldn’t keep this up. Growing faint, dazed by the drain and heat and panic. Six more minutes. We hadn’t even started downstairs.
One last door up here.
“Fulco?” I choked, even more scared that he was gone. There, he’d only return to the stairs. “Can you go down and help him? He should have snapped out of it.” I didn’t wait for an answer but opened the last door.
14
“Hello, Ripley.”
“How’s our little chickadee?”
“Come on, baby.” Long, purple hair.
“We’ve sure missed you, kiddo.” Glasses and a lopsided grin.
My mom and dad opened their arms to me.
I stepped forward, too weak and dazed to dash into their embrace, too overwhelmed and relieved to think.
“It came back,” I gasped, voice breaking. “You gave it back to me.”
“We told you it was a gift, Ripley.” Mom smiled gently.
“Now it’s our gift to you,” Dad said, arms still wide. “So you can see us again.”
“It is.” Tears splashed down my cheeks. “It always was a gift. I should have listened to you. Right at the moment I needed to see you it was gone.” I ran forward. “I’ve missed you so much. I can’t do this without you.”
Crack—a blow across my jaw like a bolt of lightning. I screamed, plunging sideways, flinging up my arms to block the unseen attack. A violent yank on my elbow brought me up short, catching me before I hit the ground. Someone was gasping in my face, hot and close and strong, holding me in place.
“Ripley…” His voice wasn’t sweet and loving like theirs. His was choked, harsh, a gasp as if an iron fist still closed around his throat. His forehead touched mine as he held onto me. He was shaking, though not nearly as much as I was.
I clung to his arm, his shirt, leaning in, fighting each breath into my lungs. All this time, I hadn’t felt like the magic shields and circles had done much. I’d been wrong. Only now they were failing. I’d had it easy until now.
I stumbled back through the door with Adam, hardly able to open it. Hand on his shoulder, his arm around my back, we stumbled our way down the stairs. With a few minutes left, the only hope we had of survival was finding our friends and somehow getting out. Could we get out? Would it be enough?
My face still hurt with a ringing, hot sting where Adam had slapped me. I tried to think of that to narrow focus instead of my whole body, bone-deep fatigue and panic that snatched my breath. It had felt like a quick kick from a pony in the moment. Pretty sure, though, it was just a slap.
Gideon was still on the floor by the time we reached him, Fulco there also, though he didn’t seem to be contributing to recovery efforts. Gideon groaned and shifted in the broken spindles.
“Gideon? It’s us. You’ve got to get up. We’re getting out of here.” We hardly paused with him, still looking in all directions for the other two. “Wade? Vel! Hello? Fulco, get him on his feet. Please—we’ve got to get out.”
Heart in my throat, I checked the phone. Two minutes. My head spun as bile rose bile rose. How were we supposed to succeed in two minutes? And was this even accurate? We might have thirty seconds or even a minute less than what it showed. Or more, I reminded myself. I’d played safe setting it. Should be a bit more.
Adam and I ran back into the dining room, me calling and waving the light everywhere, Adam just trying to breathe and keep us going. Around the main loop of the lower level, into the back turret room below the room with the four-poster bed. The room with the single stiff chair left in the middle.
Wade sat in that chair. Pale as f
og, staring straight ahead, he did not blink when the flashlight beam passed over his face.
“Wade!” Too terrified either to run to him or away, I froze—Adam also rigid beside me as he sized up this unknown behavior.
Wade did not stir, perfectly still and silent in the empty room. Afraid to touch him, unable to leave him, without the luxury of time, we had to run in.
“Can you carry him? Wade?” Sure something horrible would happen, unable to draw up anymore magic, yellow lights flickering in my eyes, I nevertheless reached to grab his shoulder while Adam also leaned in to take hold of Wade.
Wade did not scream or attack or anything like that. He fell over. Eyes still wide open, skin waxy, strangely cool to the touch. He was dead.
15
“The door! Someone get the door open!” Somehow, getting out of this house became linked in my mind with Wade’s survival. He would come back, revive, start breathing again, if only we broke from this nightmare of chaos in the endless house. Fresh air and bullfrogs, wild fields and open lake reflecting moonlight—these things would keep him with us, break the spell, end the curse. I don’t know why I thought so. I’d never heard of someone coming back to life once their body left a haunted house bent on ending them. It certainly hadn’t worked for my parents. Yet one became the other in those frantic seconds. Escaping before time ran out didn’t just mean freedom, it meant miracles.
No one could get the door open. I had nothing left to throw at that door more impactful than pounding fists. Adam carried Wade. Gideon, limping and dazed, was at least on his feet and knew who we were. When he couldn’t open the door he kicked into a window. His foot bounced off like bulletproof plexiglass, almost knocking him down.
I dashed through the dining room, heading again for the back of the house. Hadn’t there been a back door? Yes, a porch that wrapped all the way around.
I was running, the others following, when the timer went off on my phone.
House of Chaos Page 5