by K. F. Breene
A soft giggle drifted from the corner of the room we were in.
We all spun at the same time.
The little girl from before, with her pixie face and strange smile, stood under the heavy velvet curtain, her skin glowing white and hair hanging limp around her face. She giggled and swayed as if exulting in the attention. Her hand came from behind her back, revealing an old-fashioned nail file with what looked like a sharp point. The tip was covered in glowing red. Blood.
Without thinking, I took off running. I couldn’t help it. My brain had shut off, and my legs took up the call.
It turned out everyone else had done the same.
We all sprinted from the room at the same time, splitting up and heading for whatever door was closest. Another kid, six or seven, burst out from the door down the hall, the shape Scarlet and I had seen earlier. He ran at us with childlike glee, his face a grimace and his hands bent into claws.
More laughter trailed us from the other side. The voice sounded like it belonged to a boy going through puberty, his voice cracking as he wailed. Giggles from the pixie girl followed us out of the door.
My stomach dropped when I saw who was down the hall, her face screwed up in a rage-filled howl. Janine.
“Oh my—”
She turned and ran in the other direction, savage and untamed like all the others. Did that mean Alex was here somewhere, too? Dead but not dead? Destined to spend eternity in this horrible place.
“Was that—”
Amidst the fear and pandemonium, a new feeling rose in my middle. A pulsing sort of pull—the sensation I’d always felt with the Old Woman, but stronger than I could remember.
Braiden swore behind me.
I narrowly dodged the little boy sprinting past us, only to see what he was running from, glowing in the dim light.
Her.
Here.
“No.” I put on a burst of speed, panic rising in my throat and choking me.
A teenager stepped out of a dark corner, reaching for me. And my earlier question had been answered.
I dodged Alex’s hands, scared by the seething anger contorting his face. My heart lodged in my throat and pain twisted my gut as my shoulder hit off an arched frame. I found myself in a hall and heard Scarlet scream somewhere behind me. I half turned to look, still wildly running forward. That small, unexpected slowdown had Braiden smashing into my back, just as out of control.
We crashed into the wall and staggered toward a dead end.
“Scarlet,” I said, fighting around him and running back to the door. Alex, a stocky kid with glasses, stood in front of the door with his hands out. Scarlet stood on the other side, her eyes as wide as saucers and her face screwed up in terror.
“It’s him,” she said. “It’s him. He wants to kill me.”
“It’s not him anymore. It’s a shadow, badly twisted by this place.” Not thinking, I swung up my foot. My shoe rammed into the center of his wide stance, hitting his apex from behind but still getting a solid crunch.
He crumpled to the floor and curled into a ball, howling with pain.
“They’re real,” Scarlet said. “They are real.” She jumped over him, more agile then I’d ever seen her. “Are they real?”
I waved her past me. “As real as the knife thrower.” Alex, at my feet, disappeared. I lifted my gaze in time to see a running child on the other side of the room wink out of existence.
The Old Woman drifted into the archway, alone in a suddenly placid hallway. She beckoned to me, a sad smile on her face. The throb in my middle urged me to step toward her.
“Let’s go.” Scarlet pulled at me.
My feet felt heavy. My thoughts swam.
“Ella, come on.”
I grudgingly let Scarlet pull me back, each step like wading through quicksand. But the fuzziness surrounding my mind started to clear a little. The throb within me faded.
“Why are you waiting here?” Scarlet demanded.
I blinked, fighting through the fog, and realized Scarlet had addressed the question to Braiden. We all stood at a dead end in a strangely short hallway. “There’s no escape here. Come on, hurry—”
But it was too late. A yank on my gut preceded the Old Woman gliding out from the archway, her feet skimming the ground.
“This can’t be a dead end,” Scarlet said, shoving me to the side. “It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense. The house extends farther than this. There must be a room beyond this wall.”
Braiden stuck his arm in front of me and pushed me behind him. “I lost my smudge stick. I dropped it.”
“I don’t think it matters,” I replied.
“No. Will I die if I touch her? Is that how this works?” he asked.
“I don’t know. All I know is we’re not supposed to follow her to the mansion. But we’re already here. So…I guess now we’ll find out why no one ever returns.”
“No, we won’t.” Braiden’s muscles flexed under my palms. “Whatever happens, run, okay? Keep yourself safe.”
“No, wait, there has to be another way—”
“Yes, there does.” Scarlet thumped on the wall. “I will not die here. Not here, where no one will know what happened to us. I’ve been invisible to everyone all my life—I don’t want to die that way.”
“Stay safe,” Braiden whispered, and dashed forward.
Chapter Thirty
I grabbed Braiden’s shirt as something clicked behind me. Scarlet grunted, and then a squeal from rusty hinges echoed through the hallway.
The Old Woman beckoned us closer. The pull just about tore me in half—everything in me wanted to step around Braiden and go. I had to. All I could think about was fulfilling whatever duty she had in mind for me.
“Do you see?” Scarlet yelled triumphantly. “Do you see? Never discount a nerd with great survival instincts.” She pulled at my shirt, moving me away from the Old Woman. Away from where I wanted to go.
“No,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who or what I was denying.
“Come on!” Fabric ripped but held, pulling me back.
I staggered a few more steps backward, my grip still firm on Braiden’s shirt. But he was walking back with me, slowly at first, then in jerky movements.
“Here we go,” Scarlet said, her voice strangely far away. “Just a little faster. Here we are. Walk like zombies, that’ll do. Oh crap—”
My shirt was yanked one last time and then abruptly set free. Instead of rocking forward, I found myself falling backward. My foot had stepped onto nothing.
The Old Woman’s pull snapped away, replaced by blind panic. I reached out to grab something, but only empty air met my fingertips.
The scream never made it past my lips.
My butt hit the ground, the impact forcing my teeth together with a click. Braiden fell on top of me a moment later, his chest smashing my head sideways and his stomach pressing down on my chest. The door we’d fallen through shut with a soft click.
He rolled to the side. “Are you okay?” he asked, his breathing frantic.
“Do you have any fat on you at all?” I felt the side of my face as I struggled to sit up, needing to get going but having a hard time convincing my body to cooperate.
Braiden didn’t answer my somewhat serious question. “She didn’t come through.” He looked at the door a couple of feet above us. The handle was rusted, but otherwise it resembled all the other doors in the house. From this side. There had been absolutely no indication of its existence from the other. “We’re safe.”
The lights in the room—or wherever we were—were on. A flickering candle encased in glass sat on a shelf built into the wall. There was another one down the way, and the dancing shadow cutting across the floor hinted at more of them around the corner. The other direction was the same.
We were far from safe.
“We need to get moving.”
“Yes, we do.” Scarlet stood a few paces away, looking at the walls. The black, unfinished boards had small gaps between them
that gave us glimpses of the building materials used for the house. The air smelled stale, as though it hadn’t felt a gust of wind in centuries. “This is nuts. I’d read that there were rumors of secret passageways in this place. I assumed it was just hearsay. But when the logic in the hallway didn’t add up…”
“Her logic and mine are sorely different,” Braiden mumbled as he climbed to his feet. He offered a hand to me. “I never would’ve believed that was a hidden door. How would you even get in and out without people seeing? And why does this place have so many sitting rooms?”
“Well, it’s definitely a strange place for a hidden door, but not as strange as the staircase that leads to nowhere,” Scarlet said. “I wish the ghosts in this house weren’t trying to kill us. I’d love to wander through and discover all the hidden places. It is fascinating. I bet there are a ton of them.”
“We need to find a way out of here before whoever uses this place comes wandering through with a machete.” I dusted myself off.
“Why not have any stairs?” Braiden was staring at the door. “Honestly, it makes no sense. Who built this place, M.C. Escher? And how come we didn’t see the light on the other side of the door?” He scratched his head.
“All good questions.” Scarlet inspected the candle. “Maybe this hallway was put in after the McKinleys decided to try their hands at serial killing. In which case, they were trying to make it good enough, and not perfect. That would explain the lack of stairs and the strange location.”
Braiden’s hands found his hips. “There is no way this tunnel was put in after the house was built. They would have needed to put it in at the time of building.”
“Oh really?” Scarlet stepped away from the candle and caught me edging down the hallway. She started after me. “By that rationale, how do you suppose the conversation went about the staircase to nowhere? Oh hey, Builder Guy, can you build me a stairway up to this ceiling here?” Her voice dropped an octave. “But we have no access to the third floor there, ma’am.” She raised her voice again. “I know that. Just build it up to the ceiling.” Dropped. “For what?” Raised. “I have my reasons.” Dropped. “Well, okay, ma’am, you’re the boss. But I have to tell you, that is crazy.” Back to her normal voice. “I doubt that’s how it went down. Guests would’ve been freaked out.”
“Or amused,” I ventured.
“No.” Scarlet shook her head adamantly. “Freaked out. That is just weird. It’s unnatural. This door is a secret hallway. It makes sense. That stairway…”
“Unless that was also a secret door?”
Scarlet sighed. “It doesn’t make sense if it was, but I guess—”
“Name one thing we’ve just gone through that makes sense!” Braiden said too loudly, trailing along after us.
There was more of the same around the corner, but a new feeling oozed along my skin, prickling between my shoulder blades and giving me the willies.
I rubbed my arms and looked at the slats in the boards beside me, terrified I’d see eyes staring out.
“This is another reason this portion of the house couldn’t have been built at the same time as the rest.” She indicated the slats in the wall. “It isn’t finished. Sure, there are little shelves for the candles, but that’s it. They didn’t finish the walls.”
“It doesn’t matter when it was built.” I kept to the very middle. “It feels like something bad happened here.”
“Well, that’s no mystery,” Scarlet said. “Violence. Murder. Evil deeds.”
“It definitely feels that way,” Braiden murmured, and I could tell he felt what I did. The press. The ickiness.
I stopped in front of a door, this one lower than the last, about a foot off the ground. I could just see Braiden shaking his head down the way.
“We have no idea what is through that door,” I said.
“That’s true. But we have no idea what will be through any of the doors except the one we came through,” Scarlet responded. “The layout of the second floor is still a big question mark.”
“The Old Woman would probably expect us to come barging out of the first door we came to.” I wiggled my shoulders, the awful feeling around us getting progressively worse.
“There were two ways we could’ve gone,” Scarlet said. “She’d have a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right way. After that, it’s more guess work.”
“Go to the next one.” Braiden shifted from one foot to the other. “And hurry. I don’t like the pressure in this hallway.”
“The pressure?” Scarlet asked.
I veered right with the hallway. The heights of the candle-bearing shelves weren’t uniform. Or, at least, they didn’t seem to be to my untrained eye. This place did look a little rough, like it had been slapped together by a do-it-yourself weekender. “We aren’t alone.”
Other than the little squeaky noise she made, Scarlet didn’t comment. She followed along behind me quietly, the reality of the situation probably settling back down into her awareness. The puzzle of the architecture couldn’t compete with mortal danger, not even for her.
At the next door, we stopped in front of four steps.
“That is half the height of a normal door.” Braiden didn’t make a move forward. “It looks like a kid’s door.” He shifted and half turned away, not looking at it anymore. “I’m afraid of what we’ll find through that one.”
“Let’s take the next one,” I said softly.
“What do you think happened to Leo and Cliff?” Scarlet asked in a small voice. “And what do you think the others are doing?”
“It’s best not to think about that. Not yet,” Braiden said. “We need to concentrate on getting out. We can send help once we escape. Until then, we’ll keep moving through the house, waiting for it to exhaust its energy. Hopefully we’ll find the others as we go.”
The next door was ground height, full-sized, and its handle looked less rusted than the others. We stopped in front of it, nearly at the end of the hall.
“Our other option is to go back and around,” I said, staring at the generously used handle.
“What about the next door?” Braiden asked, pointing to the very end of the hall.
“I think we should just get it over with.” Scarlet pulled at her collar. “Something feels…weird.”
“Let’s take the next one.” Braiden shivered. “Something about this one…” He shook his head.
I didn’t question him. I turned as the jiggling of metal echoed through the hallway. I hadn’t made it five steps when the door swung inward.
Braiden flinched and pushed Scarlet and me forward.
“Well, well,” I heard in a slightly affected accent, the words and tone as smooth as silk. I couldn’t help but look back.
An attractive, dark-haired man in his late twenties or early thirties stepped into the doorway. “Look who is loitering on my stoop.” His eyes, dark brown and shrewd, flicked between us before sticking to me. A smile accented his striking features. “You’ve finally come, have you? Good. She’s been waiting, you know. For years. It is not polite to make her wait. She wants to show you something.”
Scarlet put her hand on my shoulder—a light touch at first, sharing her shock. Then firmer, pushing me. Then shoving.
“Go,” she said through clenched teeth. “Go!”
I jerked sideways, turning it into a run, then a sprint, pumping my arms as fast as I could. Whereas the Old Woman pulled at me, beckoning me to her, this man’s presence felt like barbed wire abrading my skin.
We reached the other door as the man stepped into the hall, his charming smile not reaching his eyes. “It is not polite to keep her waiting.”
I grabbed the handle and turned. It didn’t move.
“No.” I turned harder, reaching for it with both hands. And again, adding a kick for good measure.
“Here.” Braiden handed me his flashlight before taking my place.
Deep and hearty laugher drifted down the hallway. “It is not polite to make her wait.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Braiden rammed the door with his shoulder and turned the handle again, his arms bulging with the effort. His hand moved, ever so slowly. Forcing the tumbler to finally click over.
He pulled it open, the area beyond blessedly dark.
“Go.” He waved us through. “Hurry.”
The man with the charming smile took another step forward, watching our escape. “Where do you think you can hide?”
I kicked something in the almost pitch-black room and tripped, falling flat onto my face. I’d be speckled with bruises when this was all done, but at least I’d managed to hold on to the flashlight.
Scarlet grunted and fell on top of me, pressing my body into the thing under my shins. It was soft and firm at the same time. Slightly warm.
“No.” I bucked Scarlet off and scrambled to my feet as Braiden grunted. His trip didn’t turn into a fall. He staggered into me, tilting wildly and grabbing me to stabilize himself.
“Sorry, Scarlet,” he muttered.
“I’m not Scarlet,” I said, grabbing his sides to help him keep his balance.
“I know.” He hugged me close and finally stilled. “I think I stepped on her arm.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, soaking in his comforting warmth. I knew a moment was all I’d be afforded.
“That wasn’t me,” Scarlet said. I could just make out the outline of her form, crawling along the ground. A moment later, the harsh beam of her flashlight clicked on, showing a beautiful oriental rug in shades of blue and green. She moved her flashlight, casting a glow on the object that had tripped us.
Scarlet sucked in a breath and dropped the flashlight. The beam spun dizzyingly, finally stilling on a crimson stain. The edge of a person’s ruined scalp just barely invaded the glow.
My stomach swam and I dug my face into Braiden’s neck, willing the bile to retreat back down my throat. His arms tightened around me.
“Who is it?” he asked in a barely steady voice.