“What are you looking for?” he asked, a bit surprised by the sound of his voice, by the tremor in it.
“I don't like the dark.”
He didn't bother to point out that he had found her walking along by herself at night on a stretch of road that had been pitch black except for the moon.
They drove like that for a while, mostly in silence, and from time to time the girl told him to turn. One street was very suburban, lined with lampposts, cars in driveways, Halloween decorations on nearly every stoop. Another was almost entirely woods. Several times, Michael looked in on Jillian in the backseat, but she snored on peacefully. Though his thoughts were muffled by the Guinness, he found his mind wandering, or at least drunkenly stumbling. The girl was afraid of something. First she was lost. Then she wasn't. She recognized a street, but now they had followed an odd zigzag through the valley so that he was no longer certain they were even in the same town.
Several times he began to drift and had to jerk the wheel to keep the tires from hitting the rutted shoulder of the road. They were now on a broad, winding way that led up a hill. Ranch houses hid in the trees, and he spotted an A-frame, which he'd always thought one of the oddest choices for a home. His face felt pleasantly warm, his hands as oddly numb as his feet. He was tired, and combined with the alcohol in his system and the warm air pumping out of the heating vents in the car, the tiredness was catching up to him.
Michael opened his window about halfway. The October air rushed in and he breathed it in, enjoying the feeling of it in his lungs. Fresh, crisp autumn air, with more than a hint of winter. He blinked, sat up a bit straighter, and glanced over at the girl.
She made no response, only continued to search the road ahead. Whatever had spooked her about the trees before no longer seemed to bother her.
“If you're cold, I can close it.”
As if she had not heard, she raised a hand and pointed through the windshield. “That one. That's where I belong.”
About time, Michael thought. But when he looked out through the windshield, he frowned, and without even being aware of it, moved his foot from accelerator to brake, slowing the Volvo's ascent up the hill.
The house was in a dead-end circle at the top of the road. The hill continued upward, however, and though set back and surrounded by trees, the house loomed over the road as if it stood watch. It was an enormous, sprawling thing with darkened windows, the property untended. Once it would have been called a mansion, but Michael felt that size alone shouldn't earn a place that word. Its condition had to count for something. Michael knew only a little about architecture, but even so he felt that the house was an odd combination of styles. In front there was a single turret splitting a gabled roof, and a porch that seemed entirely out of place, wrapping around one side of the house's face but not the other. In the moonlight he could see that several shutters were hanging, shingles were missing from the roof, and at least one window was broken. The place was simply falling apart.
Yet someone was home. A light burned in a second-floor window, and another up in the turret.
This is where I belong, the girl had said.
Michael shook his head, brows knitted. In the backseat he heard Jillian mumble softly in her sleep. She whimpered, as though she were having a bad dream.
“Listen, are you sure—” he began, turning to the girl.
But even as he spoke, she popped open her door.
“Wait. Wait a second,” he said quickly.
She held the door open and turned to him. Her face had gone slack again, the same distant eyes, the same vacant expression she had worn when he had first gotten a close look at her illuminated by his brake lights.
“Come find me,” she whispered, her voice smaller than ever. She sounded even younger, then. A tiny child, afraid to go to sleep alone at night. Afraid of monsters in the closet.
“Find me if you can. Will you?”
Michael blinked, trying to make sense of it. He nodded. “Sure. Sure, I will. But listen, sweetie, I don't think you should—”
She turned away, running up the hill toward that dark shambles of a house. Her blond hair flew behind her as she ran, catching the moonlight, though the rest of her seemed to be enveloped by the night.
There was a dinging noise inside the Volvo. She had left the door open. Michael swore and glanced into the backseat. Jillian's expression was troubled, reinforcing his thought that she might be having a nightmare. He got out of the car, engine still running, and walked around to shut the passenger door. The interior of the Volvo went dark, save for the glow from the dash.
He turned to watch the girl as she reached the front porch of the house. She went up the steps and in moments she had disappeared inside as if the place had swallowed her. No one had come to the door to greet her. No other lights had come on. Save for those two illuminated windows, in fact, the place looked deserted. Uninhabited.
Michael took a step toward the house.
Wait. What the fuck are you doing? He stopped, staring up at the house, conflicted. He swayed, his balance off, and bent his knees a little to keep from falling. Just go. Get in the car and go. You heard her say it. This is where she belongs.
The temptation to drive away was powerful. Her parents had to be there. They were probably sleeping. Was she young enough to realize that she could just sneak in and they wouldn't know she was gone? Was it possible they could have been sleeping the whole time? But that made no sense. He had picked her up miles from here. On foot, it would have taken a long time for a little girl to travel that distance.
So what, Michael? What's your plan? If the place is empty, you'd have to go to the police. And if it's not, if the parents are freaks and that's why she was nervous, well, you'll still have to go to the police. It's like quantum science, that German physicist and his cat. As long as you don't go up there, you'll never know, so neither option is true.
He started around the front of the car, unwilling to even look up the hill again. But when he reached his door, when he opened it, he knew he was fooling himself. He had to know that the girl was safe.
Besides, he thought, glancing around at the road and the woods, you don't have a goddamn clue how to get out of here. Without some directions from her parents or whoever, you won't get home till morning.
With a sigh, he glanced into the backseat to check on Jillian. She was still completely out, but he felt a moment of trepidation leaving her alone in the car. Another look around, however, and he realized that the chances of another car going by, never mind anyone on foot, were next to nil at this time of night. Michael reached into the Volvo and turned the engine off. He pulled his keys out, shut the door, and clicked the button that locked the doors. The locks slid into place with a reassuringly solid thump.
Michael gazed up at the house again. Though his extremities were still sort of numb, he felt the bite of the chilly wind on his cheeks as he started up the hill. The moment he began to climb toward the house, however, he felt his equilibrium failing again.
How many bottles of Guinness did I have? he wondered, and for the first time, realized that with his friends buying him drinks, he had lost track. Now here he was in the middle of nowhere, getting himself involved in something that was clearly none of his business.
He managed to stumble up the hill, though the longer he stayed on his feet, the more his stomach began to feel queasy. Michael was determined now, though. He was practically at their doorstep. There was no way he was going home without finding out exactly what was going on here. What kind of people were they?
Only when he reached the porch did he pause to really look at the house again. He gazed up at it, craning his head so far back that he nearly tumbled down the hill. It was even more dilapidated than he had thought. Several windows were cracked. On the porch there was a swing; it rocked gently, set in motion by the wind, emitting a steady creak that sent icy fingers of dread dancing up his spine.
The front door was not entirely closed. Even from the base of
the stairs he could see that it hung open several inches, only darkness inside.
He wanted to turn around. To go straight to the car, to his blissfully unconscious wife, and get out of there. To forget about the little girl, and this entire night.
“Scooter?” he called, and immediately felt an utter fool. The name was so silly that saying it out loud was like nails on a blackboard.
“Hello?” he ventured. The only response was the creaking of the porch swing and the silence from the dark interior of the house.
Michael hesitated, glancing back down at the car. The face of that little lost girl was etched deeply in his mind.
Find me if you can. Will you?
What the hell had that meant?
He started up the steps, agonizingly aware of the moldering house. The paint was peeling, flaking. And as he climbed the stairs he caught a scent on the breeze, the smell of old newspaper and of decay.
“Hello?” he tried again.
Someone's got to be here. The girl went right in the front door. The place might feel empty, but it isn't. It can't be.
There was no doorbell.
Fuck it. Someone is here.
Michael knocked on the door three times in quick succession. The sound echoed down the hill and inside the house. The force of his knocking swung the door inward, until it hung half open.
“Hello,” he said again. Or perhaps this time he only thought it.
With one final glance down at the car, he took a breath, nodded determinedly, and went inside.
CHAPTER THREE
The house creaked with age and the wind. Michael had expected dust to fill his nose, had expected the place to be empty, save for dirt and broken furniture and cobwebs. But the house was not at all what he expected. What he found instead was worse, in a way.
Moonlight streamed in through the windows, casting a yellow gleam of illumination, though the corners were lost in shadow. It seemed odd, that luminescence. The moon had not seemed quite so bright when he was outside—not nearly bright enough to provide him so much light.
The house was clean. That was the thing that really surprised him. Not a single dust mote floated in the splashes of moonlight that dappled the foyer. Something struck him as odd about the wallpaper, and the paintings on the walls. As he ventured deeper into the house and peered into the moon-washed parlor to the right, Michael realized what it was.
The house was a relic out of time, as if it had been decorated in the 1940s and had remained untouched since then. It reminded him of his childhood, and of old Mrs. Standish, who had been born in the house across the street and had lived there until she died. Whenever Michael had to sell chocolate bars or raffle tickets as school fund-raisers, Mrs. Standish was always generous with her time and her money. By then she had lived in the house nearly eighty years, and even the knickknacks on her shelves had yellowed.
This place was like that. Blanched. Yellowed, and not just by the moonlight. The sofa and the carpet and the divan in the parlor were all faded. Michael stood in the foyer, looking in, and then his gaze drifted toward the grand staircase ahead of him, and the corridor that ran alongside it into the heart of the house.
It was like stepping into an old sepia-toned photograph.
Despite the cracked windows and the disrepair of the exterior, someone obviously lived here or it wouldn't have been kept clean at all. Michael shuddered as he thought of that little girl having to live in this dreary old place.
The girl.
He realized that he had not heard a single sound since he had entered. Now he took a deep breath and moved deeper into the house. He ought to call her name. He knew that. Yet he was reluctant to disturb the silence, as though doing so might awaken something better left sleeping.
He licked his lips to moisten them, the rich, earthy taste of stout still on his tongue and palate.
“Hello?” he ventured. His voice was a dry rasp, and the house seemed to swallow the sound.
Listing slightly to one side, as though trying to keep his balance on shipboard, he started down the corridor that ran beside the stairs. The air inside the house was crisp and unsettlingly odorless, so that when he caught just the whiff of a scent, it made him pause and blink his eyes several times, trying to determine what it was.
Cocoa. Hot cocoa.
Michael shook his head, knitting his brows. That made no sense. And anyway, the scent was gone almost the instant he had recognized it. He started forward again, only to stop himself at the realization that the arched entrance to the dining room was on his right. His head felt muddled again, worse than it had before. He peered into the grand old room, with its wide windows, its crystal chandelier, and the high-backed chairs around its long, elegant, claw-foot table.
Perfectly clean, yet the wallpaper here was just like elsewhere in the house, and the upholstery on the seats was faded.
How? his mind ventured. Michael glanced back the way he had come and realized he had no memory of having walked the last dozen feet or so of that corridor. He glanced about him. The corridor continued straight ahead. To his left, beneath the stairs, was a heavy door that he felt sure led to the cellar. Not there, he told himself, shivering. No way did that little girl go down there.
Ignoring the door under the stairs, he continued along the corridor. It was ridiculous, the way he swayed, as though he had continued drinking long after he knew he had stopped.
For the first time, Michael began to wonder if someone had doped him, or dropped something into his drink. Ecstasy, maybe. He had no experience with the drug, so he could not compare this light-headedness to its effects.
“Shit,” he said, pausing to bring a hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He sighed and dropped his hand away.
And discovered he was standing in the middle of the kitchen.
“Jesus,” Michael whispered. He flinched back from what his eyes saw, D'Artagnan boots heavy on the kitchen floor. Abruptly he felt absurd, standing there in the kitchen of strangers in his masquerade costume.
He should leave, he knew that. He was intruding. A drunken man—and yes, you are drunk. No use denying it. An idiot in a costume, wandering around a house that didn't belong to him. What would the girl's parents think if they found him there, now? Would anything he could say to them come out right? Thoughts of the police continued to plague him.
But the house . . . there's something not right about this place.
“Fuck it,” he whispered. He had seen her come in. Despite its outer appearance, the place was clean enough. Someone lived here. That meant there was someone here who was responsible for her.
Michael felt himself fading again. The alcohol. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just this place. Maybe I'm fading just like the wallpaper. Just like the furniture.
A frisson of alarm went through him. What the hell had he been thinking, coming in here? An image of Jillian passed out on the backseat of the car swam up into his mind. His responsibility was to her.
Heels rapping on the kitchen floor, he turned in a circle as he got his bearings. One door probably led to a pantry. There was another tall, wide door that he assumed would take him back to the main corridor. And then there was a narrow door that hung open to reveal a set of steps leading upward. Back stairs, not at all uncommon in houses of this age and size. But with the luminous moonlight not extending itself up into that stairwell, there were only shadows up there.
Fire.
Michael frowned, nostrils flaring. He sniffed the air, and caught the scent again. Logs burning in a fireplace.
He took a step toward the exit.
Peppermint.
Another, and he froze.
Popcorn. Fresh popcorn, with plenty of butter.
A breeze came from somewhere else in the house, one of the cracked windows, he assumed. It caressed his face, and brought with it the smell of new-fallen snow. Yet with the next draft he was sure it was not that clean winter scent, but the smell of spring rain and flowers.
Michael listed s
o badly to one side that he nearly fell over.
It occurred to him that if someone had put something in his drink, he could be hallucinating. A finger of dread traced along his spine, and yet he also found the thought oddly comforting. It was, at least, an explanation.
He took a deep breath, careful to inhale through his mouth to avoid any more strange aromas. Then he started for the door again, intent on getting out of there. Whoever lived in this fucked-up house, he was happy to leave them to it. A tiny voice in the back of his head reminded him that he had no way of knowing how to get out of the neighborhood, but he ignored it. He just wanted to be gone from here.
His hand was on the knob. His eyelids fluttered and he thought he might black out again, or whatever it was that had been happening to him before. His fingers curled more tightly on the brass door handle, and he refused to let go. The feeling passed. He tugged the door open and was relieved to see the hallway beyond. A bit further down was the entrance into the dining room. On the far end he would emerge into the foyer, and the front door was waiting for him.
Come find me.
He blinked. The little girl—Scooter, she said her name was Scooter—had said those words. But now he'd heard them spoken again. Somewhere nearby. In the house.
Come find me.
Michael dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and glanced over at the narrow doorway, and the steps that rose up into darkness beyond.
“Olly-olly-all-come-free!”
The voice was distant, drifting down those stairs to him, but it made him stagger back a step, just the same. It was not in his head. It had not sprung from a bottle, like the cottony taste in his mouth and the way he had lost seconds here and there since entering the house.
The voice had broken the silence, and now it was followed by a rapid scatter of footsteps upstairs. Children. Not just the one girl, but several of them. He could hear their laughter, a distant trilling like morning songbirds, like water over stones in the brook behind his childhood home.
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