Return to the Dark House

by Laurie Stolarz

  I bite the inside of my cheek, imagining the camera like a ticking time bomb, about to go off. Taylor stands by my side, listening in, one of the earpieces turned outward.

  “This building used to belong to August Prep,” the voice continues. “The school opened in 1896. Thomas Shumacher, the owner of this estate, wanted to create a small, multi-aged academic environment that would cater to alternative learning styles and accept boys from all walks of life and with various areas of interest. I lived at this very boarding school, where five years prior to my admission, a student had committed suicide.”

  “Too bad that student wasn’t you,” Taylor says, speaking to the camera on my head.

  “Parents pulled their sons from August as rumors about the suicide spread,” the voice continues. “Many believed the building was haunted. By the time I got here, the number of students had dropped from forty-eight to just twelve. Do you believe in hauntings, Princess? Things that go bump in the night?”

  “And now for the million-dollar question: Why does he keep calling you Princess?” Taylor asks.

  I shake my head. I don’t have an answer. There’s a prickly sensation all over my skin.

  “You’ll have just four hours to save the others,” the voice says. “In order to do that, you’ll need to get through every challenge and follow all of the instructions.”

  “Every challenge?” I whisper.

  “Every challenge has a clue,” he explains, as if speaking directly to me. “If you want to find the others, you’ll need to collect all of those clues. Now, let’s begin. Proceed to room number two.”

  Taylor hands me the flashlight. She has her own—one of those mini keychain ones. She clicks it on and begins to look around, heading to the area behind the statue. There’s a doorway to the right of a grand staircase. She pushes the door open.

  We’ve found the kitchen. It’s huge—like for a chef—with high ceilings, stainless-steel appliances, and a crumbling tile floor. Beyond the kitchen is a dining area with long rectangular tables. I angle my flashlight all around and catch something moving out of the corner of my eye.

  To my left.

  By the fridge.

  I shine my flashlight at it, feeling my whole body tense.

  “Holy shit,” Taylor says, following my gaze.

  A boy’s face is there, on the fridge door. Blond hair, angry eyes, a scowl across his lips. The image is transparent, as if it’s being projected somehow. I turn to look behind me, where there’s a wall of cabinets. I open a few of the doors, wondering if there might be a camera hidden inside.

  “It’s gone,” Taylor says.

  I swivel back around. The image has vanished. But still I can feel someone’s eyes on me. “Let’s go,” I say, leading us through the dining area.

  We take a turn into a hallway. Candles help light the way—wall sconces positioned about five feet apart. I shine my flashlight over cracked walls with peeling paint and insulation peeking through the ceiling.

  “Bingo,” Taylor says, standing in front of an open door. She angles her flashlight at the number two hung on the wall.

  I move to stand beside her, and peek inside the room. More candles light up the space; they’re set atop elementary school desks lined up in rows. There’s a portable chalkboard at the front of the room. The words WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE are scribbled across the surface.

  “Remind me why I followed you here,” Taylor says. “And why does it smell like rotting fruit?”

  I take a step inside. A screen drops down behind the teacher’s desk, covering the chalkboard. An old-fashioned film projector at the back of the room, just a few feet away from us, clicks on. The screen goes dark and grainy.

  I turn to look at Taylor, just as the classroom door swings shut, nearly smacking her in the face. She jumps back, into the hall. I hear the lock turn.

  “Ivy?” she shouts. The doorknob jiggles as she struggles to get back in.

  I try the knob too. It doesn’t budge. The door is solid wood; there are no windows to smash. My hands wrapped around the knob, I yank with all my might, my foot propped against the wall for added strength.

  There’s a clamoring sound in the hallway. A moment later, the knob pulls away in my grip. I go soaring back, landing smack against the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Taylor asks.

  I get up. My back aches. There’s a clanking sound against the door on the other side. She’s trying to get her knob back into place.

  I try as well, aiming my flashlight into the hole; it seems there’s a metal bar that I need to fit through a squarish space. After several seconds, I finally get the bar to slide in, but the door still won’t open.

  “Would you like a cookie?” a voice asks from behind me.

  I turn to look. There’s a girl on the projector screen. Little Sally Jacobs from Justin Blake’s Night Terrors films. I recognize her right away: her dark red braids, her purple sundress, the skeleton keys jammed into her eyes.

  She’s holding a tray full of cookies. “This batch just came out of the oven.” She smiles wide, despite the blood running down her cheeks. “I also have fresh lemonade inside my house. Want to come have a glass?”

  The movie projector makes a click-click-clicking sound. Meanwhile, it’s quiet out in the hallway now. I place my ear up against the door. “Taylor? Are you still out there?”

  “Hellooooo,” Little Sally Jacobs sings. “I believe I asked you a question. Cat got your tongue? Or maybe I’ve got the cat’s tongue.” She giggles, pulling a short red tongue from behind her ear like a coin trick. The tongue wiggles between her fingers. She pops it into her mouth and swallows it down like candy. “Yummy, yummy in my tummy,” she sings.

  “Taylor?” I call again, knocking on the door.

  The image of Little Sally Jacobs darkens on the screen. The background behind her grays as well. It looks as if she’s hidden in shadows. I can no longer see her face or features, nor can I tell that her dress is purple.

  By the time the image lightens, it’s morphed into a woman—someone much older than Little Sally Jacobs. Wearing a long black dress, the woman has her hair pulled back into a tight bun atop her head, and there are deep lines in her face.

  “You’re a naughty, naughty girl,” she hisses. The lines in her face seem to deepen and multiply as she moves closer and her image becomes bigger. It looks as if she’s moving out from the screen, as if this footage is three-dimensional.

  She points at me, her finger waggling left and right, scolding me, forbidding me.

  “Taylor?” I shout again, unable to recognize the woman. She isn’t from one of Justin Blake’s films.

  “Go stand in the corner,” she snaps.

  I bite the inside of my cheek, waiting for the moment to pass.

  “You heard me,” she continues, moving into the center of the room, as if the image has morphed again, become a three-dimensional hologram. “As a student here at August Prep, you will do as you are told. Now, if you don’t go stand in the corner, you won’t ever get to see your friends. Is that what you really want?”

  My mind starts to race. By friends, does she mean the other contest winners? Does it include Taylor too?

  The woman has a cookie now. “Mmmm,” she says, moaning over its goodness. A trickle of blood drools out her mouth and rolls down her chin. There’s an eerie grin on her face. “Oatmeal-raisin. Would you like a bite?”

  I brush Parker’s T-shirt bracelet against my cheek, reminding myself why I’m here.

  She grimaces when I don’t answer. Her eyes narrow into slits. “I’ll tell you one final time,” she says; her teeth are stained with red. “Get in the corner—now!”

  I do as she says, moving to the far corner of the room, reassuring myself that there are still more challenges to tackle, more scenes in his movie. The killer’s going to play with me for a while.

  “Ivy?” Another voice.

  I turn to look.

  Natalie’s there, on the screen. The hologram is gone. />
  “Where are you?” she asks, looking all around as if trying to find me.

  My heart beats harder. My pulse races faster. Was this prerecorded? Or is it possible that it’s live, that she knows I’m here?

  Her wig is off. Her hair’s uneven—shorter in some places, longer in others. She’s wearing the same clothes from the Dark House amusement park night—the layers of black and gray.

  “You’re probably wondering how I’m still alive,” she says. “I saw the rough-cut version of the film. It looked like I died, didn’t it? Like a giant piece of pointed glass fell on top of my head. But I was able to step back, thanks to Harris’s warning, just in time. The glass landed on my foot—my leg, actually—right above my boot laces, hitting an artery.” Staring straight into the camera, she kicks her foot out from beneath her dress. Her leg’s been wrapped with a bandage. “There was a lot of blood, Ivy. I hope you never had to see it. Lucky for me, our elfin friend doubles as a medic.”

  Her face looks exactly as I remember it, if not a bit thinner: pale blue eyes, pointed chin, dark full lips. The background behind her has been blacked out, so I can’t see where she is.

  “My clue for you is April showers. Now, can you guess where you need to go next? I’ll give you a little hint.” She reaches into the pocket of her dress and takes out a tiny book. “Shhhh,” she hushes, placing her finger up to her lips. “There’s no talking in here.” She opens the book up to the middle and begins to read.

  I nod, suspecting I know the answer to her clue.

  “Oh, and before I forget,” she says, moving closer to the camera, as if about to let me in on a secret. “If you’re seeing this video, then you know that Harris has been right all along. He was right about the amusement park, wasn’t he? And about your fear of being videotaped? So, know that he’ll be right about this.”

  Huh?

  “He has a warning for you too,” she insists. “Don’t let her out—”

  Static cuts off her words, filling the room with an ear-deafening hum. I remain staring at the screen, not wanting to move, desperate for her to reappear.

  But she doesn’t.

  And I can’t—move, that is. My chest tightens. My head feels even dizzier than before. I clench my teeth and hold my breath, while the room starts to spin. I silently count to ten, waiting for the sensation to pass, remembering something that Dr. Donna used to say: “The physical side effects of the emotions that we feel…those are as temporary as the emotions themselves.”

  After a few moments, I’m able to squat down to the floor. I lower my head between my knees, hoping the rush of blood to my brain will give me a surge of stability and enable me to breathe normally.

  “Ivy?” another voice.

  I can hear again. The hum has stopped. I lift my head—the room wobbles into place—and peer over my shoulder.

  Taylor is standing by the projector. There’s a remote control in her hand. “Are you okay?”

  The door is open again. Both knobs are in place.

  “I went to look for something to wedge into the door crack,” she tries to explain. “But I couldn’t find anything, and so I gave the knob another shot. Wait, are you okay?” Her face scrunches at the sight of me.

  I can feel the panic all over my body—a cold, tingling sensation. But there’s another sensation too. Hope? Gratitude? Is there a word that falls in between?

  Because Natalie’s still alive.

  There isn’t doubt in my mind now.

  IVY FILLS ME IN ON what happened, looking all around as she does—into the hallway, at the projector screen, over both shoulders, and in the far corner.

  “Natalie’s alive,” she says. “It was her, on the screen. April showers.”

  “Okay, my head hurts.”

  “That’s the clue. Natalie said it.” Instead of shedding any additional light, Ivy moves out into the hallway, ever eager for more punishment.

  I begin to follow, just as a door slams shut somewhere, freezing me in place. There’s a sound of footsteps—wooden heels against marble floor tiles. I can’t tell which direction it’s coming from. I look back toward the classroom, and then down the hallway. A few moments later the footsteps stop, but still my heart keeps pounding.

  “There,” Ivy says, spotting a sign for the library. It points us just a few doors down. “That’s where Natalie said we need to go.”

  I follow Ivy inside, immediately struck by what I see. The names of all the contest winners (FRANKIE, PARKER, NATALIE, GARTH, SHAYLA, IVY, and TAYLOR) are splattered across the walls in dark-red paint. There are portraits of all of us too, done in a Renaissance style with rich colors and serious expressions.

  While Ivy moves toward the portrait of Parker, I check out the one of Garth. His dark eyes are mesmerizing; I can almost feel them somehow, watching me, studying my every move.

  The library is about the size of a gymnasium, with super-high ceilings and a monster fireplace that’s big enough to stand in. There’s a main circulation desk at the front, a baby grand piano at the back, a bunch of study tables in between, as well as rows and rows of books.

  Ivy and I move to the reference desk—a thick mahogany island littered with the dust of broken tile. I aim my flashlight at the ceiling, where there’s a hand-painted scene of seven sad-looking children sitting in a circle, all holding the same book. “Creepy super freaky,” I mutter, also noticing a three-tiered chandelier.

  Ivy searches the desk, in hopes of finding another clue perhaps. “There’s crackling again,” she says, placing her hands on the headset.

  I move closer to listen, bracing myself to hear his voice.

  “Welcome to the library, Princess,” he says. “The smell of fine literature lingers in the air, doesn’t it? The notes of vanilla and nutmeg? The acidic scent that comes with paper and ink. Ricky Slater used to escape in here to read the greats: Hemingway, Poe, Keats, Proust…you name it. One thing most people don’t know about Ricky, however, is that it was the voice in his head that he was really trying to escape—the one that told him how inadequate he was: socially defunct, unable to relate to those around him, even on those rare occasions that he tried. The reason I know all of this…as you can imagine, Ricky was a hot topic after his fatal departure, not to mention that I’m the one who found his suicide note—stuck in the pages of Madame Bovary, his most checked-out work. I want you to go find the note now.”

  Ivy stares at me, her mouth snarled open, as if there’s a booger hanging out my nose.

  “What?” I sniff.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Well, duh. Ever see The Amityville Horror or The Conjuring? I don’t mess with spirit shit.”

  As if on cue, music starts to play from an old-fashioned record player in the corner.

  I go to check it out. It’s one of those big, boxy players with the automatic arm and the vinyl disk that goes round and round.

  A female voice sings: “I’ve got my eye on youuuuuu, Sweet Cherry Pie. My eye’s on youuuuuu, oh, no, I can’t deny. Oh, Baby Boooooo, I’ll be coming for youuuuuu.” Denise Kilborn’s voice; she’s one of my dad’s favorite singers.

  The rhythm is slow and haunting. It’s being played at the wrong speed. There’s a lever at the top of the player. I move it a notch to fix the speed, but nothing happens. I click the power off, but still the machine plays—even when I smack the arm off the record, scratching the needle across the vinyl. The music is obviously coming from somewhere else.

  I shine my flashlight all around, searching for a speaker. Instead I find two glowing red lights, two aisles over, in the stacks of books. The lights hover over a set of encyclopedias.

  I move closer, angling my flashlight between the bookshelves, able to see that the lights are actually eyes.

  They belong to a boy—the same one we saw in the kitchen, against the door of the fridge.

  Ivy screams at the sight of him—a bloodcurdling wail.

  I move to the end of his aisle. The boy looks freakishly real. H
e has a stark white face and blond hair, and is dressed in prep-school gear: khaki pants, navy suit jacket, leather loafers, striped tie. He’s standing against the wall, staring in my direction.

  I get even closer; I’m just a few inches away now. He looks about fourteen years old.

  “Taylor?” Ivy’s voice. She’s standing behind me, at the end of the aisle.

  There’s a pile of books at the boy’s feet and something metal gripped in his hand. He grabs a book off the shelf, opens it up, and plunges down with the metal object: a librarian’s due-date stamp. The word DIE! appears on the inside cover.

  He tosses the book, grabs another, and does the same; his teeth clench with the force of his stamping.

  DIE!

  DIE!

  DIE!

  He goes to take yet another book—a copy of The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe. But instead of stamping, he pauses. His eyes zoom in my direction again, as if he can really see me.

  The music stops. The boy’s lips part. He’s mouthing something, but I can’t hear him.

  “What?” I move closer.

  “Get out,” he hisses. A deep, angry voice.

  A shiver runs down my spine. I take a step back, bumping into Ivy, letting out a gasp.

  She pulls me away, her fingernails digging into my skin as she brings me back to the main area, with all the study tables. “Did you blow out some of the candles?” she asks me.

  It takes my brain a beat to make sense of the question—to notice that while most of the candles in the library remain lit, the ones on the study tables have all been blown out. Tendrils of smoke linger in the air, as does the smell of sulfur.

  “No.” I shake my head.

  “Someone’s been here. With us.”

  No shit, Sherlock.

  Her flashlight stops on a sign at the end of a row of stacks, denoting the call numbers of the books contained within.

  “The Dewey Dummy Decimal System.” I sigh. “Some evil librarian’s idea of classification.” I angle my flashlight over the card catalog—basically a hutchlike piece of furniture with a bunch of narrow drawers containing a bazillion tiny index cards. “Lucky for you I used to volunteer at my school library. The ball-busting, menthol-smelling librarian insisted that I learn Dewey, the old-school way.” I open up the appropriate drawer, and sift through the row of cards, eventually finding the right one. “Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary,” I announce, pulling the card out. “Eight-forty-three-point-eight.” I move my flashlight beam over the series of call numbers at the ends of the rows of stacks, finally landing on the right one. “Bingo,” I say.