Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

  No. This doesn’t make sense, she thought, but she grabbed it anyway. She could cup it in her fist the way she’d seen her mom do with her car keys when they crossed a dark parking lot by themselves. God, her mom. She hadn’t bothered to read the email she’d sent from Italy. Shouldn’t her mother be worried by that? Shouldn’t she have called or texted to make sure both Vivi and her dad were still alive? Of course not, she thought. She’s too busy with that Kurt guy. She’s probably having the time of her life. Same went for Heidi and her other friends. The texts had gone from few and far between to nonexistent. That’s what happens when you’re the one who always texts first, she reminded herself. Even Heidi didn’t care about what was going on with her. It would be good to finally be rid of them all.

  She fitted the cross into the palm of her hand, the long end sticking out from between her pointer and middle fingers like one of Wolverine’s claws. If that creepy short-haired woman came after her, Vivi would give her a fistful of silver right in the stomach. Or maybe her arm would fly through the woman’s torso, like punching air. But Vivi didn’t have time to think about things like that. She had to find her dad and get them the hell out of this house.

  She was about to make for the door when she heard the soft chime of a text message. Her father’s cell phone was on the floor, glowing from between his desk and the wall. She snatched it up, flipped it over.

  He’s looking forward to meeting you.

  Another came after the first.

  He can’t wait to meet you.

  A third.

  See you soon.

  She dropped the phone onto the desk as it continued to chime, text after text blinking onto the screen. It was broken. It had to be. It was why her dad had left it downstairs, having abandoned it instead of taking it with him when he had gone to bed. Because he had to be in bed now, right? He was upstairs, sleeping. Where else could he be?

  Suddenly, the idea of her father not being in the house at all turned her nerves electric with panic. What if he had finally seen the ghosts for himself? What if he had gotten so scared he had run out of the house without realizing he had left her behind?

  “No, he would never do that,” she whispered. Except that he had left her mom, so why couldn’t he leave her, too? Was there really that big of a difference?

  It’s not you, it’s him.

  Her bottom lip quivered at the possibility. Her fingers tightened around the cross in her right hand. Maybe her dad really didn’t love her anymore. If he could stop loving Vivi’s mom, it meant he could stop loving anyone. And wasn’t that why she had been drawn to Jeff in the first place?

  Why was she suddenly so scared?

  Because it’s real, she thought. Because they’re here and they shouldn’t be. Because they’re dead and I’m alive and none of this should be possible.

  And yet there she was, some strange woman waiting on the opposite side of the door, Jeff promising to come to Vivi the way she had hoped he would.

  You’re getting what you want. So stop running away.

  She turned and made her way to the door, scared to see the room that lay beyond it, terrified to see that woman standing there, smiling. Because maybe her eyes would roll into the back of her head. She’d open her mouth as if to scream and her mouth would only grow wider, so wide that she could hardly see her face at all. Or she’d start bleeding like the girl in the mirror had. That woman couldn’t be alive. She was one of them.

  But she had to swallow her fear. She had to have faith.

  With her hand on the doorknob, she sucked in air and turned her head away, as if looking in the opposite direction would somehow give her strength.

  Vivi stepped into the living room that shouldn’t have existed, then bolted for the stairs. She took them two at a time, and yanked open her bedroom door, never looking back at who might have been right on her heels. But she stopped short of bolting inside, staring into the room that was supposed to be hers. The space she had come to know as her own was gone. Her red-and-black striped comforter and thumb-tacked band posters were replaced by a bed covered in an ugly brown blanket. A multicolored woven rug lay in the center of the room. A vase full of pine branches decorated the bedside table. The sweet scent of smoke filled her lungs.

  But one item had been spared in the shift. The black paper rectangle of Vivi’s homemade Ouija board rested at the foot of the bed, waiting for her to continue what she had started before going downstairs.

  She swallowed, tamping the butterflies that beat their wings against her insides. Everything about the room felt wrong. Reason told her to stay out, but she took two steps forward.

  It was time to finish this.

  It was time to meet Jeffrey Halcomb.

  52

  * * *

  Saturday, November 20, 1982

  Three Months, Twenty-Four Days Before the Sacrament

  AUDRA’S BEST CHANCE was to convince Jeff that what he believed about her wasn’t true.

  She hadn’t lost faith.

  She still loved him.

  She wanted to be with him forever.

  “I dreamed about you last night.”

  Jeffrey sat next to her, his eyes diverted, both of his hands holding hers as the rain pattered against the windows of his room. He didn’t look up when she spoke. He hardly looked at her at all anymore, as though seeing her swelling belly disgusted him, but she could tell he was listening. The muscles in his hands twitched just slightly, as though something about her statement had flipped a switch that had been off for far too long.

  “I dreamed that I was walking through a field of wheat in the sunset, and there was a man in the distance silhouetted in gold. The closer I got, the more I knew I was in the presence of God, and even though I was scared, I kept moving forward because I wanted to see his face.”

  Jeff finally looked up. His expression was thoughtful, hopeful.

  “Imagine my surprise when I saw it was you.”

  He said nothing. He only smiled. But something about his appearance made it hollow.

  He didn’t believe her. He didn’t want her back. She was too far gone.

  She was nothing but a vessel now.

  She could see the rejection in his eyes.

  53

  * * *

  IN THE LIVING room, Audra Snow’s things were gone. So was the dark figure that had stood in the corner. But Lucas knew Jeffrey Halcomb was still there.

  There was a bang in the kitchen, like a pot hitting the countertop. Lucas vacillated in his open study door when something rushed past him, rushed right through him. He staggered back. The air left him in a gasp, squeezing out every last bit of oxygen from his lungs when the door slammed shut in his face, trapping him inside.

  He stumbled away, the backs of his legs bumping into his desk. All at once, the drawers flew open. One fell to the floor, spilling its contents across the dull brown rug. What the hell was this, a poltergeist? Was stuff like that actually for real? He clamped his teeth together and shot a look at the door.

  Jeanie, he thought. I’ve got to get Jeanie.

  He shoved himself away from his desk, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted, but it didn’t budge. He tried again. The knob didn’t give, not even a little. He veered around, his eyes fixed on his chair. If he couldn’t go through the door, he’d smash the window, then work his way back inside to get his daughter. But his approach toward the chair was cut short. The door flew open again, rattling against the adjacent wall.

  Lucas spun around. He hesitated at the now familiar sight of Audra Snow’s old furniture. It was as though the mere motion of the door opening and closing had transported him. The place was the same, but time had reversed itself by over thirty years.

  He rushed past Audra’s old living room without giving himself a chance to think. Because if he did think, he’d have to consider how any of what was happening was pos
sible. The people in the orchard. The laughter. The voices. The table. The furniture that had been stacked even after the house alarm had been installed.

  Every conclusion seemed insurmountable. Every answer was nothing short of unreal.

  That was when it dawned on him, a realization so unbalanced it stopped him short of Jeanie’s bedroom door. Jeffrey Halcomb had asked Lucas to move into this house knowing full well what was inside, what would happen. Halcomb had never intended to grant Lucas the interview he had promised, and Echo’s motives had never been to help Lucas with his book. She’d given him the photographs to keep him where he was, to root him to Pier Pointe.

  Because there was something here.

  Something no logic-minded person would ever consider real.

  Something he himself had cast aside as weird fiction while, perhaps, Jeanie had taken the notion far more seriously.

  I don’t want to go to Uncle Mark’s.

  I want to stay here.

  He tore open Jeanie’s door, and at first he didn’t see her. For a flash of a moment, he was sure his life was over, certain that his body was going to give in beneath the sheer weight of his fear.

  “Jeanie?!” He bolted into the room. That was when he saw her, his little girl kneeling inside her closet as if in prayer. A square of black paper rested beside her knees. She didn’t turn to look at him. Jeanie, who was always quick to snap her head around and give him a disapproving glare, didn’t seem to even know he was there.

  “Jeanie,” he said, choking on her name. Jeanie’s failure to respond only heightened his anxiety. He stumbled toward the closet, caught himself on the jamb, his mouth going dry at what he saw. There, covering the wall, were pictures of Jeffrey Halcomb and his family. Jeff, outlined in yellow highlighter to give him an angelic, ethereal glow. Jeff’s photo framed with squiggles of black Sharpie and silver paint pen—swirls and curls and hearts and childish sentimentality. Jeff winked at him from a small wallet-sized portrait Lucas hadn’t seen before.

  You’re too late, it said. I can love your kid better than you ever could.

  Something inside him shifted. His apprehension began to dwindle beneath the smolder of anger—the same impatient ire that had consumed him not more than a few hours before.

  “Jeanie.” Lucas took a single step forward. He extended his arm, grabbed her shoulder. It woke her from her daze. She turned her head, and for a brief moment, her eyes were far away.

  “Jeanie . . .” The uttering of her name lifted a veil from her face. That distant, almost glazed-over stare melted away, leaving his daughter alert, startled. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “What is this?” His gaze settled on what he could only imagine to be a makeshift Halcomb shrine.

  He could read her expression. She had seen something. While he was downstairs, hearing the laughter of dozens of people, seeing the shadow of Jeffrey Halcomb standing in the corner of the living room, something had happened to Jeanie as well. But rather than figuring out what that was, he caught her by the arm and pulled her up. The sheet of paper crumpled beneath one of her feet, the silver pen too light to read.

  Suddenly, she tore her arm away from him as if revolted by his touch. “No!” she screamed. “Leave me alone! I have to finish this, I have to do what I said!”

  “What are you talking about?” He reached for her again, but Jeanie shoved him away. “Stop.” He nearly barked the word. “We’re getting out of this house. Now.”

  He grabbed her, wrenched her toward the door, but somehow she stayed in place. Eighty-five pounds of little girl, and he couldn’t budge her from where she stood. Her feet were cemented to the floor.

  “Jeanie, stop screwing around! We need to go!” He pulled her forward again, but she was rooted in place. She was made of stone, and he had suddenly lost all his strength. “I’m serious, Virginia.”

  Jeanie shook her head at him. There was something wrong with his kid. He watched her narrow her eyes and slowly cant her head to the side. She didn’t have to say the words for him to read her questioning expression.

  Virginia . . . ? Who’s Virginia?

  “This is crazy . . .” he said. “Don’t be weak.” He didn’t reach out again. But he couldn’t just leave her there, no matter how inexplicably angry he suddenly felt. The girl who was standing in front of him looked like his child, but it wasn’t Jeanie—not anymore. And he wasn’t sure he even cared. Fuck it, he thought. Let her mother deal with her. But he couldn’t just leave her.

  “Jeanie,” he said, trying to reel in his agitation. “I don’t care what you promised to whom, you understand? Let’s go.”

  She didn’t move.

  Goddammit!

  He reached toward her again, but he didn’t make contact. Just before his fingers grabbed hold of her arm, a rush of air hit him square in the chest. It was like a bottled hurricane, uncorked, pointed directly at him. He was nearly knocked off his feet as he stumbled backward, away from the closet and out of Jeanie’s room. The small of his back cracked hard against the upstairs railing. It was the only thing that kept him from flying head over feet to the red bricks of the ground floor. The wooden banister shuddered against the sudden impact. His legs folded beneath him like broken twigs.

  The anger was gone, leaving nothing but panic.

  But despite his rapid-fire pulse, his attention never wavered from his daughter. He was zeroed in on her as he sank to the floor. Her expression was a tense mélange of anger and despair. She opened her mouth to say something, but only the first few words managed to escape her throat.

  “You’re a liar. You don’t love—”

  Before she could finish, the bedroom door swung inward, slamming hard enough to rattle its frame.

  Lucas leaped up. He threw himself at the door, fully expecting it to stay shut, fused to the jamb like his study door had been. But it fell open and he fell with it, back into Jeanie’s room.

  Except it was no longer Jeanie’s room, but a place Lucas had never seen before. Ugly. Plain. A bouquet of pine branches sat atop a bedside table. A simple bed was covered in a brown blanket.

  “Jeanie?!” He spun around where he stood, searching, as though she could hide from him in a room so small. But she was gone.

  Her stuff. Her room. His daughter.

  Vanished.

  A scream clambered up his throat.

  Echo. Where was she? Where the fuck was she?

  He staggered down the hall to where Echo should have been, shoved open the door in search of his temporary babysitter, but all he found was a vacant air mattress among stacks of boxes he had yet to unpack. He stepped inside, Caroline’s careful handwriting printed across brown cardboard: LOU’S BOOKS. Suddenly, he ached for her. All he wanted was to hear his wife’s voice, to cement himself in some sort of reality, any sort of reality that reminded him of how the world worked. His yearning was felt in little more than a blink of a second, nothing but a quick flash of nostalgia devoid of the facts. The fights. The affair. The imminent divorce. Too short to give him any shred of relief from the disappearance of his only child.

  Lucas turned, ready to throw himself back into the hall, to check Jeanie’s room again, to scream for Echo’s help despite suspecting the worst of her. I can’t do this alone. But the guest bedroom door swung shut just as it had in Jeanie’s room, barricading him in the same way he’d been locked in his study not a few minutes before.

  He grabbed the doorknob. Déjà vu. It didn’t turn, not even a wiggle. He gritted his teeth, tried to shake it free, but instead of the door opening, the walls began to vibrate again. Lucas let go of the knob and took a few backward steps, staring at the walls that now looked as wavy as a midsummer highway throwing off heat. He swallowed as the door and wall before him warped yet stayed the same.

  “What the fuck,” he exhaled, barely audible even to himself. The air went thick with electricity, heavy and cumbersome. He
stood motionless, afraid to set off a static spark, imagining the entire house going up in flames if he made a wrong move.

  But he couldn’t just stand there. He had to find his girl. Reaching out, he dared to brush his fingers across the plane of the wall that flexed like thin plastic, undulating like bad reception on an old TV. It licked at his fingertips with a soft hiss. He pulled his hand back, unsure whether the sensation was cold or hot. When the room seemed to settle into a state of stability, Lucas sucked in air, knowing exactly what he was going to see.

  His stuff would be gone. The house would be different yet, somehow, mind-bendingly the same. Perhaps, this time, it would stay different, permanently. Maybe this time he’d be stuck on the other side.

  He pulled open the door with a mix of determined reluctance—hesitant, scared. Just as expected, the house had transformed. But now it wasn’t just the superficial things within it being replaced by those that had existed long ago. Along with the wallpaper and carpet and furniture and framed pictures, the night beyond the windows was replaced by the bright glare of day. Up until now, certain rooms had been reimagined and misplaced, but he always found himself on the side of familiarity. That was all gone now. He could sense it the way a parent anticipated catastrophe. The air smelled different, felt thicker.

  Oh God, this isn’t the present, he thought with certainty. This is 1983.

  He stepped into the upstairs hall with bated breath, an intruder in his own rental home. He waited for the voices—the same ones he’d heard earlier—but the house was silent. So quiet that he could hear the trees gently creaking outside. There was the lightest jingle of a wind chime somewhere, dancing in the breeze.

  He crept past the door that should have led into Jeanie’s room. It stood wide open and inviting. The window was open, the curtain pulled back, filling the room with bright afternoon light. A pine-scented breeze pushed the drapes to and fro. He was drawn to the view, if only to see what the outside world looked like. Staring across an endless expanse of trees, he realized that he could have been a thousand miles from Pier Pointe without ever knowing. The landscape was a perfect repetition of green. The only suggestion that he may have been in the wrong place was the vibrant blue sky, not a rain cloud in sight. But he could still hear the ocean, wave after repetitive wave crashing onto the gray and rocky shore.