Lucy swiped the plaster dust from her fingers. She wanted it off her hands, off her skin. Her own fast movement, white skin flashing in the dark, almost set her running. She hurried across the hallway to get away from the words.
The lightless corridor was shapeless and endless. It seemed to slide over her as she moved along it. This what being swallowed alive feels like, she thought.
The second patch of plaster dust drew out of the shadows ahead of her, growing more defined as she closed on it. Lucy scanned the wall for any sign of another message. It seemed intact. Whoever had cut the words into the wall opposite Todd Lowe’s room must have carried the dust on them to this point. The huge shape of the open wardrobe loomed in front of her.
To Lucy’s left, the staircase dropped away into the hallway below. On weak, rubbery legs she approached the top stair. As she reached out a foot to step down, she felt the eyes burning into her back.
SKINNED FACES WATCHING.
Lucy swung out a shaking hand to grab for the bannister. Her fingers found the handrail and she gripped on. She stood, her breath rushing, her heart hammering, trying to work up the nerve to look over her shoulder. All the time she felt the eyes boring into her.
Slowly, Lucy turned to look into the gaping black mouth of the wardrobe. As she did, something smashed—glass smashed—loud in the darkness downstairs.
Lucy screamed and snapped back to the noise.
“Alex?” she pleaded. “Please, Alex, stop this. Mommy’s really scared now.”
The house had fallen silent once more.
Below, the light of a street lamp diffused through the stained-glass windows that framed the front door. Six squares of frail light painted onto the entrance hall floor. Six squares that looked as if the night might consume them at any moment.
Lucy began to descend the stairs. She had to know, no matter what waited in the shadows for her. As she reached the bottom step, the bannister on her right fell away and she stood, tiny against the huge darkness that filled the room. To her right, the light on her answering machine blinked, a chilling reminder of the rough voice caught in the hallway the previous night.
NO GOD
The sound of breaking glass had come from across the hall, in the lounge. She crossed the glowing squares, one unsteady step after another.
Get out! Get out now! The thought screamed into her mind. She could run, bolt for the door. Get out! Before it’s too late! But she continued on, towards the lounge and whatever terrible revelation awaited her there, her shadow stretching back into the darkness beside her like a tether to the night. Until she had seen Alex, she was tied to this place.
14
The lounge door stood ajar. A sliver of solid black peeking in the gap between the painted white wood and the frame. The eye of a much larger beast beyond. Lucy was well aware that the living room had two doors, and that whatever had shattered the glass might have already left the living room by the other door, rounded on her by passing through the dining room or the kitchen, and back out into the hall. That it could have seen her crossing the hallway, masked in the deep shadows that surrounded her. Lucy turned away from the door.
And froze. Although she couldn’t see, she had the overwhelming sense that she’d connected with another gaze in the dark, as if whatever watched her had silently drawn her eyes to the spot where it waited to be found.
Lucy squinted into the darkness. Now they’d locked gazes, what would it do next? Whatever was coming, she couldn’t move. Fear had robbed her of any chance she might run.
The memory came out of the darkness at her first.
“Are you here? Are you there? Here I come… Hiders beware!” Hide and seek with Alex. They used to play for hours. He would hide and she would seek. He’d hide—they very rarely played with him as the seeker—then she’d close her eyes and count to fifty, listening to him moving around the house, settling on a spot, changing his mind, and then moving to a new hiding place. Once she’d hit fifty, she’d open her eyes and, with a voice she imagined a giant might boom Fee Fie Foe, she’d begin to call out her poem. “Are you here? Are you there? Here I come...
Hiders beware!”
Alex had been terrible at hiding, almost always giving himself away with a squeal of delight the moment she’d begin her poem. Lucy would happily play round after round to hear that joyous laugh and see the huge grin he wore from the first game they played to the last. Now, rooted to the spot in the dark, she sensed no joy at all from whatever watched her across the hallway.
Lucy opened her mouth to speak but all she managed was a fearful whimper. She tried again, trying to force the words out. The voice that followed was hoarse, shaking as badly as her body. “Are you here?” she called, her eyes searching the black ahead. “Are you there?” Everything was so terribly wrong. Still Lucy called the words into the darkness.
“Here I come…” Lucy took a step forward. When she played hide and seek with Alex, she would already be moving, hunting for him by the time she got to the final line of the poem. Hearing her moving about, he’d often begin giggling with excitement. The hallway remained silent. “Hiders beware.” Lucy tried with all her heart to imagine her little boy waiting in the dark for her but, as she forced herself to take another step towards the thing that stared at her across the hallway, she grew more and more certain that it wasn’t Alex.
15
Lucy stayed close to the wall, running the fingers of her left hand along the chalky plaster as she crossed the room with small, unsteady steps. All the time she could feel the unwavering stare fixed on her.
SKINNED FACES WATCHING
It didn’t make sense that Alex would have written those words. Lucy knew him, knew the things that woke him in the night, knew his nightmares. Most times, the monsters in his closet were just the monsters he’d seen on TV. One time she’d woken to find him standing by her bedside whispering about a scary man muttering in the dark. It didn’t take long for her to realize he’d had a nightmare about an old man they’d seen in the shopping mall earlier that day. Alex’s monsters were literal, plucked from the world around him, the sort of spooks that should keep a seven-year-old up at night, not the awful mutilations that the messages evoked. Lucy had protected him, done everything she could to keep him from the darkness of the world.
Until that terrible night.
Her fingers pressed harder into the wall; harder still. She was no longer walking by the wall, it was holding her up.
And then it was gone. The wall disappeared so abruptly Lucy fell into the doorway. She screamed, grabbing blindly, catching handfuls of air, before managing to grab a hold of the doorframe with her right hand to stop her fall.
She clung to the frame, her heart slamming in her throat. The fall had spun her around. She’d lost her bearings.
And she’d lost track of the black stare.
Lucy whirled around to look behind her.
The hallway was empty. She could no longer feel the eyes burning into her. She scanned the shadows. If it had been Alex, why did she feel no warmth coming from it? If it had been Alex, why did she feel it was silently sizing her up, like an animal before it attacked?
Her watcher had disappeared back into the darkness that had birthed it. At least when she’d felt its stare she’d had some idea of where it might come at her from. Now everything further than a few feet around her was the same blurred black, a mass of shadows that could rush forward at any moment, forcing their black fingers into her throat, choking her screams.
16
Lucy stood in the living room doorway. The sound of breaking glass had come from this room. The weak glow of a distant streetlamp crept around the heavy curtains in the bay window. She listened. She couldn’t hear the world outside. There didn’t seem to be any glass at the foot of the curtains. The sound didn’t seem to have been a window shattering.
T
rying not to stumble, her hands sweeping a path in front of her, Lucy began to cross the room. As she reached forward she thought of herself in her nightmare. Of frightened fingers stretching out towards the broken boy.
The shape materialized in front of her at almost the same moment her hand brushed the thin frame. She snatched her hand back from the chair. She’d noticed the high-backed chair on the first evening, the way it faced the wall like a child being punished. Now it faced her. As if someone had sat watching, waiting for her to enter the room.
The seat was empty now.
Across the room, low to the ground, a glimmer caught Lucy’s eye. Something flickered, silver on the floor ahead. Reluctantly, she stretched out her shaking hands once more and began to edge towards the light.
As she got closer she realized the flickering came from light reflecting on broken glass. This must be the source of the noise.
More pieces appeared. She stepped unsteadily onwards, trying to feel for shards before placing her bare feet down. More and more shards surrounded her feet, a black mosaic reflecting the night around her. The large mirror had fallen, or been torn, from the wall of the lounge. It lay face down on the floor.
Lucy knelt before it. The cord the mirror had hung from lay snapped in two across its back. Gently, she placed her fingers under the frame to lift the mirror up, then stopped.
Alex didn’t do this.
She’d tried to silence the doubt, upstairs, in the hallway, but it was just getting louder and louder. A whisper growing to a scream.
She gripped the mirror’s frame, sheets of broken glass shifting, grinding as she raised it from the boards.
You did this!
You reached into the darkness with all your heart,
and what have you pulled from it?
She lifted the mirror further, revealing her reflection, sliced a thousand times across the pieces of broken glass surrounding her. It revealed the room behind her, too.
Lucy leaned the mirror back against the wall. What she saw reflected made her cry out in horror.
Another message had been carved into the ceiling.
PEELED OPEN BELLY
“Oh no, oh no!”
The pieces of the mirror collapsed under their weight, falling from the frame, smashing on to one another, shattering with a huge noise that sent Lucy reeling backwards. She scrambled to get up, slipping, her bare feet sliding over the slivers of mirror. Broken glass sliced across the soles of her feet, tearing through the soft skin. She screamed, stumbling through the darkness, running for the doorway.
She heard glass break, a piece jammed in her foot snapping as she stepped down on it. She felt it shift and drive deep into the sole. The pain made her cry out. She buckled, throwing all her weight onto the other foot. She mustn’t stop! If she stopped now, whatever waited in the darkness would find her. The grey-skinned thing that had lured her into the house would draw from the black, its body stinking of spoiled meat, ready to tear into her flesh the way it had scored its threats into the walls of the house.
She could feel the skin on her feet splitting as she ran. By the living room door, her box of cuttings had been upended, the paper she’d hoarded scattered across the floor. She ran over them, her blood staining the words that had driven her to madness.
…then he put the gun in his mouth
…kidnapper committed suicide
Lucy had bought 1428 Montgomery thinking that she might contact Alex, but Alex wasn’t the only person who died that terrible night.
…killed himself
…monster found dead too
17
It listened to Lucy struggling to open the front door. She’d locked and bolted it to keep the world out, and now she was fighting against a trap of her own making. It listened as she shook the door in its frame, fumbling in the dark to slip the bolts she’d fastened.
Finally, she tore the door open, and she ran, her ripped feet slippery with blood, skidding and almost losing her footing on the frigid boards of the porch. She ran, her feet screaming as they pounded over the frozen ground. She ran until she fell against the side of her car.
Her hands shook so violently she could barely hold her car keys. She scored the paint, trying to jam the key into the lock.
Steadying one hand with the other, she finally drove the key home and tore open the door. She fell inside the car, slamming and locking the door behind her. Only then did she turn to look back at the house.
Darkness spilled from 1428 Montgomery, its shadow stretching over the lawn, over her car. Even now she wasn’t safe from it! Lucy pulled her knees up to her chest—another barrier—her ruined feet resting on the edge of the seat. She thought she saw movement, in the doorway… The door rocking from where she’d ripped it open? On the night she’d seen the figure, she’d been able to make out the house clearly, but now, as if the darkness inside it had grown too large to contain, the front of the house was cloaked in black.
Lucy’s panicked breathing blasted loud in the small space of her car. As she huddled, wide eyes darting manically over the black house, her breathing changed, snatched gasps that burned her throat into out of control sobbing. What had she done?
18
At the end of the corridor, like a hulking dark sentry, the wardrobe watched the stairs. Last night it had watched Lucy. She had sensed its glare, turned to look into its black mouth, before the sound of breaking glass had torn her away. Had she looked longer, she might have noticed the plaster dust gathered beneath the wardrobe, or the edges of the letters scored into the wall behind it.
No one had set foot in Anna Lowe’s room since the removal company. Bob Taylor hadn’t had to be at the house that day, but he’d watched as each room had been dismantled and packed into boxes. He’d made sure no one disturbed the curtains he’d drawn or tried to look into the room where Alex had died. He also made sure that everyone who entered the house had their ID checked. That morning, he’d stood in the lounge and watched Karen Guzman watching him from her car. He knew she’d take any opportunity to get into the house. He’d protect the families from the awful truth of that night for as long as he could.
Anna’s room had no interest to Lucy. She only cared about the room where Alex had died. As far as she was concerned, the darkness was welcome to it.
In the corner of the room, low to the ground, where Anna’s bed had stood, a series of rough letters had been scratched deep into the wall.
WaTCH you sLEEP
The shadow found Lucy asleep. She lay across the back seat of her car—knees still tucked up to her chest, her feet raw and glistening in the morning sun. Even after everything, she hadn’t driven away. She couldn’t leave 1428 Montgomery behind.
The shadow grew closer, stretching across the seat until it blocked out the sun. Lucy stirred but did not wake. And then someone was knocking loudly on the window.
Lucy leapt back away from the noise. She huddled in the corner of the back seat, wide eyed, her gaze fixed on the shadow pressing against the window.
What had she done? She hadn’t meant to fall asleep! But she was just so exhausted! She’d watched the house for as long as she could, watched for the approach of the thing that had stalked her. She’d waited for its shadowy form to draw through the dead garden, to follow her to her hiding place in her car. The black figure tried the door handle.
She was helpless, a cornered animal.
“Lucy! Lucy! It’s okay. It’s me, Doctor Bachman.”
Lucy didn’t move.
“Lucy, what’s happened? Please, open the door.”
After a long moment, Lucy began to edge across the back seat, her eyes on the figure the whole time, afraid that once she got close enough she’d discover that it wasn’t Doctor Bachman at all, but instead something grotesque wearing his skin.
Doctor Bachman had seen the wounds on Lucy’s feet,
the blood streaked across the back seat. He tried the door again.
“Lucy, it’s okay. Please open the door.”
Lucy’s hand rested on the lock. She looked up to the shape in the window. The sun behind it hurt her eyes. It shifted, trying the door once more.
Hesitantly, Lucy unlocked it.
19
Doctor Bachman slowly opened the door, afraid that Lucy might bolt if he startled her again.
“Here, let me help you.” He reached out a hand to Lucy.
Cautiously, she took it. It was warm. Not like the awful things that moved through the house. A wave of relief rushed through her. She started to cry.
“Lucy, it’s okay. Whatever’s happened, it’s over now.”
Gently, Doctor Bachman helped Lucy from the car. He put her arm over his shoulder, supporting her, taking the weight from her torn feet. If he’d been ten years younger, he would have offered to carry her. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
They rounded the trunk and stood before the house. Lucy stopped.
“Are you alright?” Doctor Bachman followed Lucy’s gaze. “You don’t have to go back in there, you know. I can get someone to take a look at your feet at the hospital.”
Lucy’s eyes were fixed on the window of Todd Lowe’s room.
Can you see me? Are you waiting for me?
“I have to.”
They moved through the hallway, Doctor Bachman supporting Lucy—uninvited guests—two small figures swallowed by a beast neither could yet comprehend.
In the kitchen, Lucy had sat alone while Doctor Bachman returned to his car for supplies to treat her feet. She sat rigid, eyes fixed on the door, her hands gripping the edges of her seat until he returned.
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