After a few minutes, I rolled over, studying the ceiling. Come tomorrow - my right arm would be covered. Just the left after that, and I’d be done. Prepared to pull Gray through to this side - to the land of living permanently. Out of limbo.
And then what? What comes after? How would I be able to face him? To tell him everything that had happened - the decades which separated him from the world he knew? Would he be happier having survived? Or would this strange new world seem darker to him? I hoped not. I hoped he’d see everything and want to stay with me. Then again - what choice did he have.
Maybe that was the appeal. Someone who couldn’t leave me. If that were true, I would be just as bad as Simon. Inevitably, I’d chase him away. How could he want to stay with someone who caged him? While his world would center around me for a while, I had to create an environment where Gray could thrive. Impossible. Difficult - but I could do it. God only knows how - but I had to be able to do it. Saving Gray meant nothing if he woke in a world which haunted him more than the limbo where they trapped him.
With the lights on, I fell asleep - the manor dragging me under quicker perhaps for Carreau’s presence in the back of my mind. But the place I awoke wasn’t anywhere within the old house that I remembered ever being. Stone pressed into my back. An entire stairway pushing up against my skin while my feet - bare - pushed into crackled stone. Spots of dirt gathered there. Not dust but actual earth. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling on a long cord. Back and forth, it moved like a pendulum. Electricity flickered around its coil.
In Ose’s office, the hair hung thick and heavy. A blanket which weighed over everything, spreading across the limbs and pressing down until I couldn’t tell where I began and ended. Inside this new room - the basement? It was almost like there was no air at all. Each breath returned with empty lungs. Cold crawled across my skin. Not enough to draw me to shiver, but a resonating frost which dragged every speck of heat out of me until only the emptiness remained.
But I wasn’t alone. Something slithered in the dark out of the corner of my eye where the light couldn’t reach no matter how far it swung. Whispers hissed low. Something unfamiliar in its familiarity which lingered long after it should have died, and though my head spun in the thin air, I recognized the symbols carved into the rough faces of the wall. No amount of paint could cover them. Not enough bleach in the world to clean off the blood on this floor. Even a whole foot of dirt over the top couldn’t hide the red.
The world hummed. Low and resonating through the stone. Too low. Deep in the belly of the beast - the monster built into this house rested here. In this basement, and none of the spirits moved. They hung - women and men sprawled where they had breathed their last breaths. Fallen and tormented - because they believed it would give them power. A massacre.
"Soon." A man’s voice echoed in the dark.
He curled at the foot of the stairs. His body almost leaned against my leg. Everything in me screamed to run back up those stairs, but I hadn’t come down them. My legs wouldn’t work. They resisted every urging as the man hummed. When he spoke, his lips didn’t move. His entire body vibrated like it was made of sound.
"Soon."
Soon what? Soon it would all be over. Soon the spirits in the house would be free once the construction crew wrecked the place and broke the runes - broke whatever spell bled into the floors and walls? Something so powerful not even fire could burn it out? Or would the dead face something worse after it was done? Had they planned to summon something? Would all the souls - even those like Rory and Mrs. Hayward - get drawn into something hideous and evil? Drawn down into the belly of the beast?
If I got Gray out, would we both live with that guilt for the rest of our lives? Or would the markings on my arms tie me to the same fate? I didn’t intend to sacrifice anybody. My soul - I had believed - to be my own in those moments when I found myself believing I had a soul at all - that anything more than my eyes could see existed. That there was something bigger than all this, but with this magic - with ghosts - it made it a bit easier to hope.
"Soon."
Swallowing, I found my voice. "What is soon?"
In the far arc of one of its swings, the bulb froze. Electricity hummed, crackling as it flickered. All across the room where they lay, the spirits vibrated - calling out the word again and again: "Soon - soon - soon…"
A shadow swirled - tall and humanoid, and when a new voice joined the echoing mess, the racing of my heart sunk at Carreau’s thrumming tone. They always say that. Soon - soon - soon…pathetic. They cannot tell time. No idea what is happening above. It isn’t a warning. They are begging. Caught and stuck and driven mad. How much do they despise each other? Caught in this Devil’s Trap with those they murdered and who murdered them. Poor little souls.
Above me - where stone met wood - the stairs creaked. Dressed like a nineteenth century dandy, Carreau sauntered down the steps. His blond hair perfectly combed. As his half-lidded eyes scanned the room, only disdain colored his features.
"Did you bring me down here on purpose?" he asked. His voice sounded far gentler but just as deep as when he threw his thoughts directly inside my head. "No - you don’t have the skill for that, do you? This must be that ridiculous woman."
My palms pressed, pushing against the stairs, but I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body strained, but I was just as paralyzed as the spirits surrounding me. Despite that, I asked, "The Governess?"
He blinked at me - his long eyelashes fluttering. "Hayward."
The cook? The surprise seemed enough to override whatever part of my mind told me I had to keep still. Standing, I shifted to face him. "How about you go off and see your boyfriend, and I go off and see mine, and we pretend we didn’t see each other?"
His nose wrinkled. "If I release my hold on you, there’s a chance you’ll wake up, and I won’t be able to follow you out. It takes a considerable amount of energy."
"Why don’t you just follow Tom home for Christmas instead?" I offered like the self-centered jerk I was. "Get some of that positive energy or whatever?"
In a swirl of darkness, he flickered. Around and around the bulb swang, casting his shadow larger and shorter on the walls until the man vanished, and only his shadow remained. Then darkness stretched out once more. At the top of the stairs, the door clicked, swinging open, but the moment my hand rested on the doorknob, I woke up alone in my bed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Christmas music blared through Zeke’s shop. His needle buzzed, humming through the air as he bowed over my arm. Already, the symbols and lines curved over my shoulder. Stark black against my ever paling skin. After so many weeks, I ought to have been used to the pain. Piercing my skin again and again, the ink painted me, joining me to the house and turning my body into a weapon. A knife to pierce the gap. The last piece of a horrible puzzle so many had tried to finish before me.
Pulling back, Zeke sighed. "Almost done. I swear, kid, you’re pretty tough." My skin burned. "And lucky. If any of these had gotten infected…"
He didn’t have to say it. I begged him not to in my mind, and as my luck would have it, he fell silent. His eyes shimmered as he stared down at the black lines twining down my forearms to where he had left off at my wrists. Hands were delicate. Complicated. As if the rest of the markings which netted my body were anything else. A single wrong line, and nothing mattered.
To come so close and to fail because of a line on my back I couldn’t see. It haunted me. Back when Rory still stuck to me outside the manor, I begged him to look at the lines again and again. Each time, he proclaimed them right. No matter how many times he said so, I found panic building up inside me nonetheless.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Zeke settled forward to start again. "Just a bit more. Then the next arm next week…"
"The 30th," I corrected.
Sitting back, he nodded. "Can’t believe it’s almost here. You’re staying over at that place from the 31st on, right? I looked into it - into the k
id, like you said, and they didn’t have an accurate time of death, but it was early, wasn’t it? Just a bit past midnight on the 1st?"
"Yeah."
Bowing over my arm once more, the needle shook, but I held still. I breathed through the pain, ignoring the way my hand wanted to twitch. Fighting against the urges building inside me to move. To pull away. I could do this. I would do this. For Gray. I could throw myself on the fire - risk it all for him. When the end finally came, we would be together, curled around each other in the emptiness of that crypt. The corpse of this nightmare might gather around us, but I would break him free of the selfishness which bound him - the thirst for power built into the foundations by a family who massacred themselves, the greed of two doctors twisting the world around them to fight for a chance at a life they only served to abuse, and the rest could fall aside.
Even Rory. Mrs. Hayward. Were their lives worth risking the balance? Hadn’t Rory died chasing this exact goal. He understood it. For addiction - whatever madness burned in his veins thanks to Carreau and Ose, he had to have recognized what this might mean for him. Even the Governess - if she truly cared for Gray like the other two said - her spirit, where would it go in the end? And why did it strike me now to care? Why so close to the end?
Like a fool, I begged myself to be selfish. If I could focus on Gray - on the weight of him in my arms and the way his existence would utterly change my world (for the better, I had to believe this, always for the better), then I could not distract myself with the horrors and the sacrifices of those who had drowned themselves to give him life once more. They knew the cost. God help us all - we knew the cost.
When Zeke pulled back, the pain remained. An itch and burning spreading up and down my arm. My nerves - still unaccustomed to the process - screamed, sending signals to my mind which refused to follow, but they would dim. The ones on my back barely itched anymore. When all this ended, Gray might trace them. I imagined it sometimes. The way his long fingers might slide across the dark marks over my body. Even when I wished for our love to be something pure - untainted as it already seemed too dark, I couldn’t stop my mind from going elsewhere. To the breathless way we kissed. He flushed every single time. His cheeks pinked. Flushed and pretty as he nuzzled into my shoulder, horrified and excited, and the excitement won every single time.
And he kissed me just as breathless. What started as his hand in mine turned to his lips upon my cheek, drawing closer and closer time after time until the soft brush of his lips against my own sent my heart racing. I would never forget that kiss. Curled on the bed he claimed was mine back before I realized how real he was. Back when I threw away life for the dream of him. Before the world rewarded me for my suffering - my anguish with the sweetness of his affection.
"You know the deal," Zeke announced as he set his equipment aside. "If there’s any peeling, let me know. We can do any last minute fixes on the 30th. I haven’t taken any other appointments."
"Thank you."
The big man smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Tears gathered on his lower lid. "Rory was my best friend. He - shit, kid - he’s the reason my life turned out this good. I’ve got my own store - the most beautiful wife, best kids...god, I wish he had lived to see all this." The tears spilled over, and he rubbed them away with the back of his hand.
Suffering seemed a measurement of love. Rory said he didn’t want Professor Haggard to care about him or to be trapped by him, and thinking that kept me from bringing up the unknown of what might happen to Rory when this was all said and done. If he and the other spirits went down in a not great way, Zeke deserved to believe otherwise. Rory would’ve wanted it that way.
"Still, thank you."
He nodded, waving me off. A week without food started easily enough, but after fighting in that chair for hours, I could feel the hunger brewing in my belly. It slunk around like a snake, slithering here and there until it could push and curl within the core of me, leaving little for me to do but keep moving forward. Luckily, Tom wasn’t around to notice this. If he realized I hadn’t eaten - and had no plan to eat for the next week - he would wreck me.
Or report me to health services. Talk about a group I didn’t need to deal with - not now or ever. It would be hard enough finding a lie to cover Gray once I got him out. If they caught me - what would I even tell them? I couldn’t even find the right lie to completely get Tom - my stupidly awesome roommate - off my back. What would a bunch of psychologists think? Kid goes through insomnia and depressive periods - tattoos himself in six weeks - full body. Well, full from the neck down. I could never wear shorts or short sleeves again without someone seeing what I had done, but that wouldn’t matter once I had Gray.
And wasn’t that dangerous? Putting all of my happiness onto one person. Someone I couldn’t talk about - not until he was here with me. Someone who inspired me closer and closer to the edge - almost had me hospitalized - though it wasn’t his fault. Never was his fault. But how would somebody else see it? What excuse could I use? Was I doing a religious fast for Christmas? Self-punishment for breaking away from my family? Which they’d probably think was a bad sign too. Maybe they’d even call them. Tell my parents that their son was having suicidal ideations.
Which wasn’t true. I didn’t want to die. I just wouldn’t mind it if it meant being with Gray. Death wasn’t the end. Recognizing the unhealthiness of that thought should have gotten me some credit, but I knew how those people think. Every thought I had slipped closer and closer to reason enough to institutionalize me, so I had to keep them to myself. Just one more week. If I could bully my way through, it would be fine.
One arm left. My chest swelled with something. Not hope. Nothing so positive. Maybe anxiety? That weird stomach churning uncertainty where everything headed in the right direction, but it couldn’t last. I couldn’t recognize why. Wouldn’t know until I had stubbled right into the trap, but after a rough night, Carreau hadn’t shown himself. Small wins, right?
Of course, Tom sensed my mood from miles away. Or he just had shit timing. My phone rang, and with a huff, I answered, "Hey, Tom, guess you made it home safely."
"I texted you when I got in last night. Didn’t you see my text?"
Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I held back my sigh. "Yep. Didn’t you see my response?"
"So...weren’t you getting another part of your tattoo today?" he asked.
"Yep. I actually just finished the appointment and confirmed the last one," I told him as I headed back toward campus.
A wheezy inhale came down the line, but whatever caused it must’ve not lasted long as Tom quickly pushed, "When’s that gonna be?"
"The 30th! Just in time for the New Year."
Humming along the line, Tom said something to somebody on the other end of the line before coming back and asking, "So - you got any plans for New Year’s Eve?"
"Nah, I’m not really planning that far in advance."
More mumbling and then distracted - "What about the vigil with Chad and Cheyenne?"
I would have Gray by then. No way would I spend time with those two considering. "I won’t be around for that."
"Won’t be - where’re you planning on going?"
This was ridiculous. "Tom - you’re home. Be with your family. Enjoy it. Bye," I said, and I hung up on him.
Seriously, that guy took mother henning to a new level. Sheesh, maybe he’d be better once he had a chance to calm down and realize I could take care of myself.
Ha - like that would happen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There came a time when hunger shadowed me. Even in the blank abyss where dreams took me when the manor wouldn’t have me, I couldn’t escape the bile churning - eating at the emptiness. All I wanted was to spend another night in Gray’s arms. To know he understood. We never discussed his death. Never spoke of what it might mean for me to bring him back, so the uncertainty weighed on my shoulders - leaving me unbalanced.
"Hush now," a soft voice whispered. A delicate finge
r pressed into the furrow between my brows. "You’ll give yourself a headache worrying."
Warmth radiated. Around me, the cold which haunted me in the last day or so when my stomach begged to be fed, I forgot how another person felt. The warmth of touch. Alone - without Gray or any of the clusters of my classmates, the frigid air crept into my bones. But in his arms, I learned the lesson a thousand times over.
Slowly - no energy to sit up - I opened my eyes, and Gray smiled down at me. His lips curled. My heart skipped a beat, and the cold urged me to bury my face into his stomach. Hadn’t he seemed the cold one? Trapped in the strange world between life and death - hadn’t he chased the feverish apathy away from my mind in the beginning? Back when this was only a dream, hadn’t his touch eased the fire inside me? Now, just the sight of him set my skin ablaze - rushing red through me as his gentle touch warmed and grounded me in equal measure.
"We should talk," I murmured into his shirt.
Softly, he shushed me. "I haven’t seen you in days, James. We can take our time."
One day, after I saved him - days when I could support us - ensure his safety and my own - in those days I would be patient. Take time to simply enjoy the ease of his presence. Of my body against his. For now, I needed to plan, to be certain Gray understood and would come through this whole. Despite every bit of me wanting to curl around him, I pushed myself up, brushing a strand of hair behind the soft curl of one of his ears.
"Have you noticed my tattoos?"
His eyes rolled. "I wasn’t about to comment. It is your body."
"I’m not getting them for me. Do you remember Rory?"
Gray blinked. Pulling away, he studied me. I had seen the expression before but never on his face. Simon looked at Reggie like that. Like he belonged to him - like I belonged to Gray.
My heart pounded, and my dick stirred - because I had no sense of propriety. All I could think to do was pull him close, kissing him. Our tongues entwined, and the gentle closed-mouth pecks of our early romance became something else entirely. Pushing him down onto the bed, I pressed between his long legs. Trailing his hands down my back, he tugged at my shirt, stroking up the skin of my back beneath. With a gasping breath, I pulled back - throwing off my shirt before diving down to press against him, aligning our bodies from lips to crotch.
All That We Say or Seem Page 15