by E. M. Parker
“Do it now.”
“No.” The voice that answered sounded like Hannah’s. “I can’t do it.” But it wasn’t Hanna’s. “This is wrong.”
It was Olivia’s.
“You have to.” Hannah’s once soft voice boomed with spite and hatred. “He took me away from you. He has to pay too, just like Donald did.”
In the millisecond that it took to blink, Fiona was someplace else; someplace dark and cold and unfamiliar. But it also felt present, grounded, and real.
The first image that Fiona saw in the darkness was Arthur Finley, on the ground, his body immobile. His eyes were wide with fear as he stared at something that Fiona couldn’t see, and he didn’t speak.
Olivia suddenly appeared above him, holding the knife that she took from Fiona’s kitchen. She was shaking.
“Please.” Hannah’s voice in the darkness. “I can’t leave if you don’t.”
“But I don’t want you to leave.”
“It’s cold here, Liv. And so dark. It feels just like dying did, but it never stops. I just keep dying and dying and dying. Do you want that to keep happening to me?”
Olivia shook her head, as tears streamed down her face in furious bursts.
“Then kill him. Let me finally be free.”
Olivia took a deep breath, held it in, and raised the knife above her head.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” Arthur Finley tried to move, but couldn’t. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do.”
Olivia brought the knife down in one swift motion. Arthur was screaming before the blade had even penetrated his flesh. When it did, he went silent.
Before Fiona could see what happened next, she was back inside Donald Tisdale’s living room. When she saw no sign of him, or the noose, or Hannah, she knew that she was back in present time and space. She knew that Olivia and Arthur Finley were here too. And she had to get to them.
Fiona didn’t know how long she had been on the floor; she only knew that it was a struggle to get to her feet. Once she made it up, she ran straight for the door.
She stumbled as she crossed the doorway into the hall, losing her balance and falling hard to the floor. When she looked back at Tisdale’s apartment, she saw a dark, formless mass hovering inside the door. The more Fiona stared at it, the more it began to take shape, until its features mirrored the girl that she knew to be Hannah. But the thing she was looking at wasn’t Hannah. It was something cold, and empty, and evil.
Fiona rose to her feet, only to fall again. When she looked back at the doorway, the thing wasn’t there anymore. When she turned to lift herself up, it was in front of her, blocking her path to the elevator. Hannah’s face, or the spectral representation of it, was expressionless, yet the anger that radiated from it was consuming.
Suddenly unable to move, the only thing that Fiona could do as the thing approached her was cower away from it. She closed her eyes as the frigid chill of its being slowly settled into her bones. She couldn’t speak, so she mouthed the words please don’t over and over until she couldn’t anymore.
“Oh my God. Fiona?”
When she opened her eyes, the thing was no longer there.
But Iris was. “Sweetheart, are you okay?” She dropped her small basket of laundry and offered a hand to help her off the ground.
“Yes, I’m okay,” Fiona answered in a subdued tone that was not at all reflective of the overwhelming relief that she felt in that moment. “Where did you come from?”
“I was headed down to put a few things in the wash when I heard something. I don’t make it a habit to investigate strange noises in this building. It would be a full-time job if I did. But something told me to check out this particular noise. Thank goodness I did.” Iris suddenly pulled out her cell phone and began typing.
“What are you doing?”
“Sending a text message to Quinn telling him to come over.”
“You should be calling the police.”
“The police?”
“Something really bad is happening here.”
“Involving who?”
“Olivia and Arthur Finley.”
“My God. What is it?”
Fiona struggled to piece the fractured images together. “Is there some kind of basement level in the building?”
“Yes. It’s a large storage space that Arthur uses. Why?”
“That’s where he and Olivia are. We have to get down there.” Fiona started toward the elevator.
“Wait a second. Why would they–”
Fiona stopped. “I don’t have time to explain it, Iris. But if we don’t get down there to stop her, she’s going to kill him.”
Iris’s face flattened with shock. “Who? Olivia?”
Fiona shook her head, still struggling to process the thought.
“Her sister.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“TAKE OUT THE KNIFE, OLIVIA. TAKE IT OUT NOW.”
The words resonated in Olivia’s mind like an angry thought. But it wasn’t her inner voice she was hearing. It was Hannah’s.
“What will happen if I do?” She was forced to say the words aloud, as Hannah left no room in her head to think them.
“He’ll bleed. And then he’ll die.”
Olivia looked at Arthur Finley, lying on the ground, his hands cupping the area of his leg that had been penetrated by the knife. He didn’t speak, but she knew he was in pain. She wanted to ask him if he was okay, but she was afraid of what would happen if she did. So she played along, like the good little sister that she was. Hannah was a whopping fifteen minutes older than her, and in the all-too-brief time that they’d had with each other, she never let Olivia forget that.
“And when he dies, will this all be over? Will you be able to finally leave?”
“It will all be over, Liv. I won’t hurt anymore. You don’t want me to hurt anymore, do you?”
The tears came the moment Olivia reached for the knife handle. “No, I don’t.”
Arthur Finley looked at her with wide, fearful eyes, but he was powerless to stop her. Hannah had seen to that. It was Olivia who knocked on his door. It was her voice that lured him out of his apartment and into the storage basement. But it was Hannah who made sure he didn’t leave.
Olivia wasn’t sure how she did it, but she seemed capable of a great many things now. And unfortunately, none of them were good.
There were times when Hannah’s presence was a source of comfort, especially on those long nights that Olivia spent in her room, waiting out the latest fight between her mother and Noah. She never saw Hannah, but she felt her spirit, and it clung to her like a warm blanket. Those were the times that allowed Olivia to remember her sister for the good person that she was. She remembered Hannah’s laugh, loud and giddy and infectious. She remembered the way she always fidgeted with her glasses, sighing every time they fell off her nose – which was a lot. She remembered the way Hannah fussed over her; always seeing to it that her kid sister’s hair was just right, making sure that her clothes, worn-down as they were, always matched, and giving her advice on what to say to the kids at school so that they wouldn’t dislike her quite so much.
But that Hannah was mostly gone.
When Olivia felt her presence now, she didn’t feel warmth. She felt emptiness and guilt. And it was guilt that allowed Hannah to lead her here, to this dark, cold basement, to do something that no part of her wanted to do.
“What are you waiting for? They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“Mom and those two police officers. We have to get them next.”
Olivia took her hand off the knife handle. “What do you want to do to mom?”
“This is all her fault, Olivia. She’s the reason I ended up like this. And if we don’t stop her, it’s going to happen to you too.”
“But mom didn’t do anything. It was Donald Tisdale.” She looked on Arthur with scornful eyes. “And him.”
“She did everything. She n
ever loved us. She hated us. All she wanted was to be with Noah. We were just in the way.”
“That’s not true,” Olivia countered, knowing in her heart that it was.
“She wanted me to go away. And when I did, she was secretly happy. That’s why she didn’t look for me. That’s why she never liked to talk about me and took all my pictures down. I didn’t even exist to her anymore, just like Eva doesn’t exist to her anymore. And if we don’t stop her, she’s going to find a way to make you not exist too.”
Hannah’s voice began to stab at her brain like a million pin pricks. She grabbed her head and attempted to shake the pain away, but it wouldn’t stop. “No. Please. I don’t want to.”
“Do it, Olivia. For me.”
“I can’t hurt mom, or anybody else.”
“You have to.”
“This isn’t you, Hannah. You were a good person, just like me. It didn’t matter what mom, or Noah, or anybody else did. We were good. We still are. Don’t let them turn you into something else.”
For the first time, Hannah’s voice took on the soft resonance that Olivia had always known. “But I am something else.”
“No you’re not. Your spirit is still the same. Nothing can change that unless you let it.”
Olivia’s mind was suddenly silent.
“Hannah?”
“Don’t confuse me, Olivia.”
“I’m not trying to confuse you. I’m trying to help you remember.”
“But I can’t remember.”
“You have to try.”
Another long silence. Then, “No. I have to leave.”
“Hannah…”
“Help me leave.” The familiar voice that Olivia knew was gone, replaced by the one she feared.
“I can’t, Hannah. I’m sorry.”
“Do it. Or I will.”
Olivia stood up and backed away from Arthur. She filled her lungs with as much air as they could handle, then let it all out with a single word. “No!”
In an instant, the pain in her head subsided. The space in her mind was clear, leaving room for her own thoughts, her own will, to take over.
She knelt beside Arthur Finley, who had been silently watching her.
“You hurt my sister and you do deserve to be punished. But I don’t. I deserve to live and be happy, just like Hannah deserved to. You took that from her, but you won’t take it from me.”
From someplace distant, she heard her mother’s voice. “Olivia? Are you down here?”
Olivia stood up, preparing to call out to her. But before she did, she looked down at Arthur. “I’m sorry I did that. Just make sure you don’t move so it doesn’t bleed worse. Someone is coming to help.”
Olivia suddenly felt pain in her head, much worse than it was before. Then she heard a sound, like ripping paper. Then everything went black.
“Too bad they won’t make it in time.” Olivia heard her voice say the words, she could even feel her lips forming them, but they came from someplace outside of her. “I wanted you to die slowly and painfully, like I did. But because Olivia wouldn’t help me like she promised, that can’t happen now. So it has to be fast.”
Olivia felt like she was on a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean, being pulled and pounded and thrown in every direction by giant, angry waves. She was powerless to resist it, powerless to stop it. She couldn’t see the knife handle, but she felt it in her hands as she ripped it out of Arthur Finley’s leg. The last sound she heard was his screaming. It exploded in her mind like a thousand light bulbs turned on at once, then steadily grew dimmer and dimmer until it, and everything else she had recognized as existence, faded into complete nothingness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE SIGHT OF ARTHUR FINLEY’S partially-open front door only exacerbated the stirring of dread inside Fiona’s chest.
She had wanted nothing more than to come down here to see him milling about the lobby, like he usually was, waiting patiently for the inevitable distress call that was part of his everyday existence. Seeing him would of course raise very real and very frightening concerns about the state of her sanity (or lack thereof), but if he was safe, it meant that Olivia was likely also safe. She would find a way to deal with the personal consequences. If she was lucky, she would eventually find a way to laugh them off when Corona Heights, and every terrible experience she had in it, was finally behind her.
But the notion was wishful thinking at best. The outcome of her trip down here, she now understood, could not have possibly been any different.
“Should we at least go in?” Iris asked as she stuck her head inside the door. “He could still be inside.”
“He’s not,” Fiona said confidently.
Without saying anything else, she continued down the hall until she came up on another open door. This one led to something very dark.
“Is this…”
Iris nodded. After typing something else into her cell phone, she joined Fiona in the doorway. “I’ve only been down there once. When I first moved in, I had more stuff than would fit in my apartment, and Arthur let me store a few things. I had to add fifteen bucks to the rent every month, but it was worth it. I haven’t been back down there since, and had no plans to unless and until I moved out. It’s a little creepy down there, even for me.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“It wasn’t supposed to.” She moved past Fiona and began making her way down the stairs. “It doesn’t look like there are any lights on, so stay close. I don’t need to lose you down here on top of everything else.”
Too late, Fiona thought as she took her first step down. I’m already lost.
While they were in the elevator, she had tried to explain as much as she could about her experience in Donald Tisdale’s apartment, as well as her experience with Olivia before that. Iris didn’t say anything, even after she had finished, which wasn’t like her at all. And Fiona couldn’t escape the sense that she was somewhat irritated at the notion of being here.
Iris suddenly chuckled. It was very light, but under the circumstances, very startling.
“What’s so funny?” Fiona asked in a nervous whisper.
“Nothing,” Iris answered with a matching tone. “It’s just that things can get so easily misconstrued sometimes. I understand that, and I’m working on expressing myself better. Trust me, it has nothing to do with you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That was my long-winded way of saying that I’m not irritated. Quite the opposite, actually.”
Fiona’s mouth flew open with shock. “Oh my God. How did you…”
“Not now. Did you hear that?”
The instant Fiona’s foot touched the last step, she heard it.
“That had to be Arthur,” Iris declared.
Fiona nodded. His scream was barely audible, like he was someplace far away. “He has to be down here, right?”
“He is.” Iris stopped to listen. “And so is she.”
Fiona stopped too. When she heard the other voice, she grabbed Iris’s arm. “Olivia. My God. We have to find her.”
Iris grabbed Fiona’s hand to prevent her from running away. “You can’t just take off down here. You can barely see two feet in front of you and there’s no telling what you’ll run into. We have to find some kind of light.”
Another scream, this one measurably closer.
“Damn it, Iris, we don’t have time. She’s going to kill him.”
Without any regard for Iris’s words or her own safety, Fiona took off running in the direction of Arthur’s voice. The only thing she could see as she looked back at Iris was her stunned face illuminated by the glow of her cell phone.
“Fiona, please wait!”
“I can’t. Call the police!”
It only took a few steps for Iris to fade completely out of sight.
“Jesus, somebody help me!” Arthur’s voice was somehow further away now.
Fiona stopped. “Shit.” With a wave of panic co
ming over her, she changed direction and ran toward where she now thought his voice was coming from. But she wasn’t sure where it was coming from anymore. She stopped again; blinking several times to force her eyes to adjust to the dark, and took off running again.
She didn’t get more than ten feet before she ran into something very large and very hard, hitting it shoulder-first. The force from the impact sent her careening backward. She stumbled, but kept her feet. Ignoring the radiating pain in her arm, she pushed forward, only to run into something else, resulting in the loud clang of metal meeting cement. The noise reverberated in her head long after it was over, and she was forced to put her hands up to her ears to stop the auditory bleeding. When the bleeding finally ended, she brought her hands down. That was when she heard the voice.
“What did you do to my daughter?”
Before Fiona could fully process the question, she felt something cold and heavy graze the side of her head. The glancing blow was enough to stun her senses, and for a moment she saw nothing but tiny orbs of light dancing in the darkness. When the dancing lights faded, she saw Natalie, standing less than two feet away. The object that she’d hit her with was clutched tightly in her right hand. Even though her face was cloaked in darkness, Fiona was sure that she was smiling.
“So what did you think you were going to do? Kidnap her? Keep her in your apartment?”
Fiona slowly backed away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Like hell you don’t. So are you and Arthur Finley both in on this?” As she approached Fiona, she raised the object in her hand. “It’s not happening, you fucking witch. Do you understand? You’ll never get anywhere near her again.”
A swell of anger suddenly rose in Fiona’s chest. “How dare you. After everything you’ve put that girl through. She’s constantly in fear, she sleeps on the goddamn floor, you use drugs right in front of her. Someone should take her away from you.”
“Just like someone took your son away from you? I know all about it, Fiona. Don’t think you can judge me, because you can’t. You’re no better. At least I still have mine.”