Would it even be possible?
He wasn't sure. But before he had a chance to see if Mike's bag was still around, and if there were all the things they needed for the ritual in Witchcraft and Demons, the boy himself showed back up.
"My favorite game?" the boy screamed.
"I don't know,” said Gregory nervously.
And the boy jumped impossibly far, landing on his hand, and snapped three of his fingers all at once. Gregory let out a scream.
"It's the guessing game, you dolt," the boy hissed. "I'm afraid we have to pick up the pace a little bit, Gregory. It seems that your nasty little friend decided to start a couple of fires. If you can put them out, I'll give you an easy question. I know it seems like I can ask you how to spell your own name, and you'd get it wrong," hissed the boy.
"I…"
"If you can put the fires out, then I simply want you to answer me this: what is your name? But if the fire still burns, your question will be, how do you want to die? Believe me, both questions are harder than they seem on the surface," he said with his bright shiny teeth.
When he vanished, Gregory dropped to the ground and started to cry.
Chapter Seventy
Wynne couldn't find anyone in the hallway.
Smoke was billowing from several rooms, under the doors, through the cracks in the walls.
She was intensely nervous. She hadn't seen the boy in a while, but also she hadn't seen anyone else. It made her wonder if she was alone in this layer of the house.
She gently fiddled with her hair. Something touched her ankle, and she let out a scream.
Her feet were already running down the hallway when she glanced back to see what grabbed her.
Calleo.
The cat had scared her so badly that she had run down the hall. She leaned against the wall and slumped to the floor, tears streaming down her face. Tears of relief. The fear, the uncertainty. She never knew if it would be friend or foe.
"I can't…" she whispered to the cat. Tears were still streaming down her face. "I can't do the things that Pear can do. How can I help?"
The cat seemed to make a long, irritated sigh. He closed his blank eyes and shook his head slowly.
Wynne waited for him to say something to her, to give her direction.
But he turned and started limping forwards. He was in bad shape she realized, definitely some broken bones. "I'll carry you, if you want."
At this, he cocked his head and turned back to her. He didn't walk back, obviously too sore to even bother. She gently gathered him in her arms. "You have to show me where you want me to take you."
And he let out the tiniest, weakest meow. As she walked down the hallway, he flicked his tail and she turned the direction he was telling her to go.
Soon they wound up in the kitchen. "Don't tell me I have to make more toast."
The cat managed to look incredibly smug, then again made no further effort to communicate.
She held him uncertainly, looking around the disheveled room, her hand gently stroking the cat's ears. Suddenly, she realized his tail was flicking and smacking her again. She looked where he was looking. He was staring at the door to the formal dining room.
Not a place she wanted to visit again.
But she listened to the cat and stepped in.
It was still half set up, the salt star still glistening on the table.
She set the cat on the edge of the table and he gingerly stepped out of her arms. He looked like he was in a lot more pain than she even realized at the beginning. He walked over and rested next to a pile of books. He laid his paw on top of one, closed his eyes, and started to sleep.
"Are you okay?" she wondered, staring at the cat. He looked old, exhausted, and in pain. Would he survive this?
Would she?
The book he was lying on said Witchcraft and Demons.
Chapter Seventy-One
Barnett was now dragging Aurora. As soon as she was belted to him with the yarn, she stopped being complacent. At one point, she turned and tried to claw his eyes out.
He considered cutting the tether and letting her just float off into the house.
There was an element of her being lost forever in the hallways of this burning house that seemed… pleasant.
And that was the worst part. Because he wanted to save his wife, not let her die. And yet, he found himself wondering if there was any hope left for her. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. She reminded him nothing of the girl he fell in love with all those years ago. The woman he never cheated on, even after he got famous.
As he got famous, and rich, and more gorgeous, so did she.
She got breasts, injections, eyelashes, nails. She tried to look like that infinitely young, perfectly cultured woman by his side. She was his soulmate.
And yet.
He was at the end of his rope. Literally and figuratively. "Aurora, come this way," he hissed at her. His club was still tightly in his hand. He was gripping it so hard his knuckles had turned white. His entire arm threatened to go numb at any moment.
He was puffing and huffing, the pure anger coming out in hot tight little breaths. "Aurora!"
She was muttering about puke. As if that boy could just vomit their daughter back up. He had tried to console her and remind her that the ghost had killed Pear. Their daughter was dead. It was time to move on and kill the monster that killed their daughter. Namely, the nanny. Wynne, that uppity little girl who they lived with for all these years. She had become unreliable, she was the scourge that had invited ghosts into their lives. He was now wondering if she in fact invited the ghosts to the penthouse. If she started the whole thing, if she was the first domino in this entire dreadful situation.
He was going to kill her.
She took his daughter, she took his wife. The one was dead and the other was helplessly broken.
Aurora let out a soft moan. And he felt the rope suddenly tighten and then slacken. He turned to look at her and she was backing up towards him. Suddenly, in a big breath, she started to run. As she ran, the rope suddenly snapped tight, just as she got to the end. The wind was immediately knocked out of the both of them as the yarn from around their waists sucked in tightly.
"Aurora!" screamed Barnett between heaving pops. His stomach hurt. He wondered if she could pull hard enough to make them upchuck. It seemed plausible. Then she'd get her vomit.
She was gasping and crumpled at the end of the rope just a few feet from him. He crawled over her with the club in his hand and had this inkling of the idea that maybe he could just knock her out. If she was unconscious, he could stow her somewhere. She’d be fine until he could kill Wynne and get back to her in no time, long before she woke up.
Her hands were covering her face and she started to cry. "You made me lose him. I saw him down the hall. See, please, Barnett. We have to give him this," whimpered his disheveled wife.
Her eyes, even without the caked-on makeup, were gorgeous. And he loved her.
"We don't even know if ghosts can puke,” said Barnett in a soothing tone. "I need you to come with me, Aurora."
"Come with me,” she whimpered back.
And in the end, like always, Barnett obeyed his wife.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Everything inside of Gregory was telling him to stop.
His body was fighting the very idea of trying to go into the room that was covered in flames. He slid his T-shirt up over his nose a little bit.
This was difficult to do with his arm still in its sling. But even with his mangled arm pressed tightly to his chest, he could use that hand to help mask his face. Even with broken fingers. With his good arm, his remaining arm, he'd have to try to put out the fire. He went to the room with the most smoke first, contemplating that if it was this bad now, it was only going to get worse.
It was a mistake.
The bed was a huge ball of flame. He immediately dropped low to the floor and tried to scoot across it. How could he put this out? He did not have
a fire truck. He didn't have anything. As soon as he got even remotely into the room, he immediately regretted his decision to come in at all. He was going to burn to death. That thought was firmly cemented within his brain. Burn to death.
The heat was already phenomenal.
He could feel his hair was starting to curl and crinkle.
He decided to turn back, but it was too late. He was already too far into the room to go back and too afraid to go forward. For a moment of absolute terror, he was frozen.
But then his brain came back to life and he started coughing on the smoke. He scurried to the door.
To his dismay, he was not in the hallway, but instead had somehow managed to go into the bathroom. Bathrooms had water at least.
His heart was pounding loudly in his chest. He tried to figure out a way to get the water to the fire. The little sink had a cabinet under it, but there wasn't anything in the cabinet. But then he realized there was a hand-held shower head. It was connected to a short hose, maybe five feet long. He turned the water on full blast, the coldest water he could get. It was sweltering in here already. Quickly, he doused himself, hoping that he would offer some protection. He tried not to notice the crisp broken hairs falling to the floor.
Than he pointed the little hand-held shower out of the bathroom door. He could just barely reach the bed, and he immediately felt helpless. His small stream of water against that roaring fire.
It was hopeless.
And this wasn't even the only fire.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Calleo reclined with his eyes closed, lying on the table while Wynne carefully went through the book.
She read the section that detailed how to set it up, and what to do three times.
This didn't seem possible.
It was too horrible. She glanced up at the cat and back down at the book.
She closed her eyes and tried to memorize it. In the heat of the moment, she didn't want to forget the step. Calleo suddenly opened his eyes.
In a soft bubbling hum of his voice, he spoke into her mind. "Fire. I can't hold us here. Do what you must."
And like the shutter of the camera going off, she felt a click. It was subtle, but then she could hear the fire and smell the smoke in the air.
They had been in a separate layer, but they were now… together. The fire was big.
Wynne could feel it; there was an electric trickle in the air. She could feel the layers of the fire.
There was an odd, intense sensation of Gregory. She wondered for a moment if Barnett was still trying to kill her. But she didn't have time to think about that right now.
Because she suddenly understood what they had to do. "No, Calleo, no. This can't be right; it's too awful."
The cat glared at her and then he closed his eyes. She could hear his chest wheezing while he rested.
She began to set up the table for the final exorcism. She was tempted to call to Gregory, through the air, using her sudden, newfound strength. But she didn't want to run it out.
Instead, she set up and hoped the boy would come. She was going to need his help.
The last thing she did was get a knife from the kitchen. As she carried it to the table, she wondered if she would have the strength.
Chapter Seventy-Four
"I saw the boy," whimpered Aurora. She was talking in whispers, but she didn't seem to be looking at anything. Instead, she was still wandering, as if pulled by a thread through the air.
She often stumbled and hit the wall twice.
Barnett was getting angrier with her. "Where?"
"We have to make it puke,” she whimpered again.
Barnett wondered how long this house was. This hallway seemed to go on infinitely. They been wandering back and forth and back and forth and then…
There was a soft click like someone tapped their teeth together by accident. "Aurora?"
Suddenly, the hallway was no longer infinite.
In fact, Barnett recognized where they were, only one turn away from the kitchen.
He considered the idea that perhaps he should leave his wife tied to the kitchen, get her some tea. Then he could continue hunting Wynne.
They stepped into the kitchen. Very slowly, he started to warm some water. Aurora seemed to calm down, as if the frantic, desperate desire to poison the ghost had dissipated for a moment.
Just as the kettle started to whimper, he heard the sound of the chair being pulled out slightly in the formal dining room.
What if it was Wynne?
Chapter Seventy-Five
The tiny stream of water was sizzling in the air. Now the room was getting steamy, but the fire hadn't been saturated, not even a little bit.
Gregory was trying to crouch while spraying the water. He was choking on the smoke. He kept trying to dip his head as low as he could, but the hose was just barely long enough to make it around the corner. Any lower, and the water wouldn't make it out the door.
He heard a soft click, like someone had shut a door softly.
Suddenly, the fire was much smaller, and the smoke was less thick. Then he heard two quick clicks. The boy appeared.
The smoke was utterly gone.
"I put the smoke in the other layer. Put out this fire quickly,” said the boy. His teeth were gleaming.
Gregory tried. He kept trying to spray the last little bits of it, but it kept flaring back up.
"How do you want to die?" said the boy. His eyes were still black and shiny, but they were angry little slits. And his fist clenched.
"My name is Gregory,” said Gregory, refusing to answer the question. "I got the fire out. My name is Gregory." He waved a hand at the bed.
Steamy smoke was still rising, but he was right, the fire was finally gone. The bed was blackened, and Gregory suddenly could see a burned human on top of it.
"Why am I still here?" whispered the boy.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Wynne carefully was straightening the salt on the table. She was trying to make it go from a circle to the shape of a David's star. The blood-red candles had been burned to smithereens, so she replaced them with new blood-red candles.
She took the silver mirror and set the tiny bits of it together as quickly as she could. She winced as a sharp shard slid into her hand. Carefully, she plucked it back out. Once it was set in place, she looked at her handiwork.
The crystal would have to be rehung. The image of what she was about to do flickered through her.
She rummaged through Mike's bag and found a little vial of water, but she hoped it was holy water.
There was nothing else to do besides start. She was as ready as she could be.
Starting couldn't happen alone; she'd need at least two more people. Her hand was already bleeding from the glass, so she took a moment to drip her blood along the salt star.
Even with all of the details from the book, and Calleo's urging, she wondered if this was… wise.
She wasn't sure if she was powerful because the main layer had more strength, more psychic power. Or if Calleo had been holding her back before. Or something else that changed, something she didn't quite understand yet.
But she had a clear idea that this ritual that she was about to perform would be easier because she had strength. Not that it would be easy. In fact, it would be brutal. She glanced at the knife again.
Wynne sat at the head of the table. She put a couple of drops of what she hoped was holy water in the center of the salt star, dripping on the mirror fragments. Now her blood and the holy water streaked the mirror. The candlelight was reflecting into it and up into the crystal.
The effect was similar to a disco ball, the tiny little specks of light filtering through the room. The smoky haze in the room had suddenly dissipated.
"How did I get here?" said the boy.
Wynne snapped her head around and saw him staring at the setup.
"You only have one question left to get wrong. That's the truth. One wrong answer and I win. Answer me this w
rong, then you all are mine forever. You will never leave this house, you'll never exist," he said with a calm certainty, staring at the table and everything Wynne had set up. "Why am I here?"
Wynne frowned. "How can I answer a question you don't know the answer to?" she said. She could feel him nervously standing. The way he was looking at her setup, the salt star, his eyes flickering back and forth at everything he had. She knew that she was nervous.
"Tell me,” said the boy.
Wynne closed her eyes, her hands carefully sitting on her knees. She tried to concentrate.
And the boy hissed.
"Stop that. Answer my question!" he screamed. "Stop."
Wynne started to hum. She was using every bit of her concentration to prepare herself before she fully began. Witches and Demons, which was she going to become?
She thought maybe the boy would try to knock everything over, that she would have to set up again. But his hesitance to touch her, to touch the table, to touch anything gave her hope.
The boy slid out a chair and sat down. "This will be fun."
But the door suddenly slammed open and Barnett was standing with his club.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Barnett could only see red.
There was the woman who stole his daughter. The woman who made it so his wife was now broken.
He completely missed the presence of the boy, instead charging her. He knocked her off the chair in a rush.
She let out a scream.
But Aurora was teetering along behind him, at the end of the little piece of yarn.
She saw the boy. "I have something for you,” she whispered to the boy. He cocked his head to her.
"A present?" The way he said it had a hint of recognition. He knew presents tended to involve a knife in his back.
Sunblocked Summerhouse Page 11