They are guttural, inhuman, spitting things. They plague the air with their signs and spines.
Her ebony hair hides her face, but could Cage see it, he would flee the room, soiled.
He would be too late.
Her body, doll-like, rises by inches, humming in the air like an earthquake. Cage stares as she rises, the pulsing air quivering through skin and muscle and bone until his very soul must quake.
Her joints crack as she unfolds, up, up, until her feet hang in the air, higher than his head. Her arms unfurl, spread wide, her fingers straining, curling in like claws as though she is still, still, trying to contain the Thing.
Her darkness.
Then her hands are quaking too, and the windows quake, and the walls quake; dust dislodges itself from fissures that run like veins through the stone, filling the room with fog.
Cage stumbles back, crashes into the chair, and drops the branding iron. It melts into the wood. The chair splinters beneath him and he is thrown to the floor amongst the debris. The entire room is lifting up around him: curtains, carpets, bottles, vials, and the Cursèd Book with it. All but him.
When she lifts her head, Roan can see his terror, can see herself reflected there.
She is the nexus of all things.
She is the heart of the volcano.
She screams, the world hums, Cage freezes, shakes, rises into the air.
“P-please—”
She laughs. She screams. She
Cage is dead by the time he hits the floor.
Roan stares at his body for only a second before she grabs the book and throws herself out the window.
PART 5
Within the Mountain
Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortured and remain forever.
—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
DR. FAUSTUS
ZOEY
NOW
Chapter 29
MY WORKING
October 29
I’ve decided to cast a spell to reveal the entity. Pole has been searching the house all day, and he just left to search the grounds and courtyard. He won’t find anything, but he’s too logical and practical to admit that there is something supernatural going on.
I have lavender, dragon’s-blood incense, some thyme, a sprig of lemongrass, and some cowslip. I can use the cowslip for the finding element of the spell, but I’m not sure what to use for potency. Lavender, I guess.
All I can do is try.
Pole finished searching the house. He didn’t find anything. He’s pissed off with me now and doesn’t want to talk. He’s gone up to that room with the skulls in it. Suits me. I can’t work a spell with him around. Let him be angry.
Suits me fine.
It’s done. I’ve done it.
Now, I wait.
Zoey Camera Footage
Date: October 29
The girl is standing in the doorway for a full minute before Zoey notices. Her hair, a brilliant copper, hangs loose and long, down to her hips, and though her face is beautiful, her expression is terrible.
When Zoey finally sees her, she screams.
Roan’s letters, which Zoey has been photographing, slip off her lap and pour all over the floor like spilled milk.
“Holy shit!”
The girl stares, steely eyes unnervingly strange.
Zoey steps closer, eyes narrowing. “Are you… a ghost?”
The girl frowns. “Fuck, no.”
Zoey’s arms, which had been raised in surprise, fall to her sides. “Oh.” She shakes her head. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I was compelled to come,” the girl says with a scowl, “by your Conjure.”
It’s Zoey’s turn to stare. “By my…” Her sentence falls away as her eyes drop to the chain around Copper Girl’s neck.
“That’s my heirloom ring. You’re the one who’s been stealing from us!”
The girl steps into the room and closes the door, shushing Zoey. “All right, calm down.”
Zoey holds out her hand. “Give it back.”
The girl hesitates for only a moment, and then removes the chain and hands it over. Zoey clutches it to her lips.
The girl turns to go, but Zoey catches her arm. “Hey, no you don’t, you little klepto! Why the hell did you take this? And how did you know about Conjuring?”
“Klepto?”
“Thief? Burglar? Crook?”
“Oh. Well. Yes.”
Zoey shakes her head. “Who are you?”
“Can you let go of me, please? I really don’t want to hurt you.”
Zoey snorts. “You. You don’t want to hurt me? Dude, I took karate lessons. Tell me who the hell you are!”
The girl wrenches her arm from Zoey’s grip. “Calm down, Zoey.”
Zoey steps back, her finger raised. “How the hell do you know who I am? What is this?”
“I stole your notebook.”
Zoey’s eyes narrow. “And you read it.”
“I had to know who you were and why you were here. This place only attracts the worst kind of humanity.”
“That’s it, I’m calling the police.” Zoey strides past her, but the girl jumps in front of the door holding out her hands.
“Wait a second—I’m”—she swallows—“I’m sorry. Please just… sit down. I’ll explain myself.”
Zoey looks her up and down, and folds her arms, but remains standing.
“My name is Len. I come here a lot.” She looks around at the dark green walls. “My own private obsession.”
Zoey unfolds her arms. “Me too.”
Len smiles. “I noticed. I just wanted to see what you were like. I… I wanted you to leave.”
“The note in the fireplace ash. It was you.”
“Yes. I thought you’d be scared off. But you weren’t. You’re different from the kids that find their way up here now and then.”
Len turns into the room with a sort of sigh, and then her eyes travel down to the letters on the floor.
“W-what are those?”
Zoey hurries over and crouches down, attempting to gather the sheets into a pile. “Shit. I can’t believe I just dropped them. They’re really old.”
Len goes very still. “What are they?”
“Just letters.”
Her eyes stray over to the wardrobe. “Where did you find them?” Her voice is soft.
Zoey nods to the closet. “In there.”
“In a box?”
Zoey stands, the letters piled up in her hands. “You know about them?”
“I found them ages ago. But the pages—they’re blank.” Len turns to look at her, almost desperate. “They’re blank.”
“No. Look.”
Len bares her teeth and growls, “You’re lying.”
Zoey holds one up. “See?”
Len looks away and holds up her hand as though shielding herself from sunlight. Zoey reads it out, instead.
“‘Father, I’m lost in this place. Dr. Maudley is a stranger. Why could you not tell me of him or of his other wards…’ It goes on like that mostly. There are dozens and dozens of them.”
Len slides down the closed door until she is sitting, head bowed. Zoey waits, her eyes roaming over Len’s form, waiting. Several times, she opens her mouth to say something, but then closes it again.
“How is it,” Len says softly, “that you can read them, and I can’t?”
“Maybe because you refuse to look at them?”
Len shakes her head. “I found them… They were just blank pages. All I see are blank pages.”
“Well, I’m not lying,” Zoey says, placing the letters back into their box.
“I know.”
Zoey pauses. “How long have you been here? How long have you been watching me and Pole?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Poulton was right…” Zoey says suddenly. “There was no ghost. Only you. I accused him of stealing from me… Shit. He was right all along. There are n
o ghosts here. Only you.”
“There are ghosts here,” Len says through her hands, which are now over her face.
“No, there aren’t. There’s only you. You, who steal my things, you who caused the worst argument I’ve had with my best friend, and you, who left that stupid fucking note in the ashes!”
Len is on her feet in an impossibly fluid movement. “I’m telling you, there are ghosts here. I’ve seen them.”
“I’m taking you to Poulton so he can see that he was right all along.”
“Listen,” Len says, holding up her hands as though she wants a truce. “I’m sorry if I scared you, but I was only trying to get you to leave.”
“Yeah,” Zoey says wryly. “‘Get out. While you still can.’ Very original.”
“I wanted to protect you.”
“Forgive my skepticism,” Zoey snaps. “Move.”
“Let me just explain.”
“Fine,” Zoey says. “But I’m taking notes.”
October 30
Len came here looking for signs of the Roan girl. That’s what she said initially, before she said she was looking for “evidence” of Roan. Signs, as in, signs she had been here. Apparently Len knows all about Mill House, more than I do, even, but she won’t tell me any of it until we agree to leave. Except, she said that when she tried to leave, she found she couldn’t. She also wouldn’t explain what she meant by that. Sounds kind of mental.
She doesn’t know why I can read the letters when she can’t, and it turns out that Poulton can’t either. So, yay for me. Either I’m crazy and making up the letters in my delusional brain (Mum would totally agree) or there’s some cosmic reason that only I can read them. And maybe Dad could too.
And get this. Not only does she know that I can Work/Conjure/Cast—whatever. Turns out I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time. Dad too. Apparently we don’t need any of the herbs, candles—none of that crap.
It’s just something in my blood. Like, literally something I was born with.
She calls it Unclosed. It sounds so… insane, but… it also makes so much sense. She said that the Unclosed are people born with access to death. She said that people are born with a doorway inside them. That for most people the doorway only opens twice (at birth and at death), but that for people like me—and like her—after we’re born the door stays slightly open—Unclosed. Mediums, psychics, ghost experts… the real ones are Unclosed. Gifted.
Well. She didn’t exactly say gifted. She said cursed, but she’s more of a glass-half-empty kind of person.
Anyway, she said she’s come across Unclosed people before, but never one as strong as me. Usually the person just has a sixth sense or strong intuition. Sometimes it’s a person who can sense a presence or know it’s going to rain before it does. But with me… it’s much stronger.
I told her about Dad. I told her about how he could do it too… until he lost it all. How it must have been a huge Conjure for him to lose himself so fully.
She had no idea what I was talking about. The price we pay… She says it doesn’t work like that. She said there’s no price. It’s like our eyesight or our taste buds. Part of us. She thinks that it must have been something else—something biological, like Alzheimer’s. But she doesn’t know. She hasn’t seen.
But that’s not the hardest part. Because now I have to take her to meet Poulton. And I doubt he’ll be as forgiving as me.
October 30
We talked for a couple of hours until she got sleepy. I said she could go back to wherever she sleeps, but she said she’d rather stay with me so I didn’t get into trouble with “that guy.”
I let her have my sleeping bag. She’s asleep in there right now, but I’m too wired. I have to get down everything she said. It’s like this whole other world exists that I should be a part of, and I never even knew.
I want to learn as much as I can, but I don’t know how much to believe. And yet… she said so many things that make sense.
That the “original” Unclosed lived hundreds of years ago, but that I am the descendant of someone who was once an Original. We all come from one place. She wouldn’t say more there. But she did say that each Unclosed person has a particular Conjure. There are six of them, and each has a symbol associated with it. (She gave me the names but I forgot them. NOTE: GET THE NAMES OF ALL THE CONJURES FOR MY NOTEBOOK AND BEGIN STUDYING WHAT IS KNOWN.)
Also, the symbols—she called them sigils, or Conjures—are all important, but she warned me that they’re dangerous and shouldn’t be read aloud (are these symbols, these… Conjures… some kind of alphabet, then?). She was hesitant to show them to me but said maybe she would in the future. (She said she would never teach me to speak them. NOTE: FIND OUT WHY SPEAKING THE SIGILS IS DANGEROUS.)
Another thing: her mother was also Unclosed, but she’s dead. She asked me to describe my Conjure. I’ve never really thought about it, and I didn’t know what to say, so she told me to just tell her about some of the Workings I’ve done.
“They’re all about finding something,” she said. Then she looked at me.
She said I’m a Finder/Revealer. I find what’s lost. I compel the hidden to be seen and come forward. Of course. She said she felt my Conjure like a pull, and that she can resist most spell work. She said I’m strong.
I’m good at something.
I’m a strong mothafuckin’ witch.
I feel cooler than I ever have in my whole life.
And then she said something that made my stomach churn.
“Watch out for that guy.”
“Who? Poulton?”
Her expression darkened. “Yeah.”
I laughed. “Why?”
“He’s started to feel it. The house.”
My smile fell off in a hurry. “What do you mean?”
“This house. It affects them. Normal people, I mean. They don’t know what they’re feeling. With us, it makes our Conjures stronger. It tries to tempt us to use our power.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
Her head snapped at me, her hair flying. “Yes! Don’t you understand where this stuff comes from? I guess you wouldn’t.” She took a breath. “Being Unclosed is being cursed. We were… bred. In an evil, ritualistic way. With sigils inviting Lucifer to touch us, each and every one. Even though you’re a descended Unclosed, your power comes from a dark place. I try not to use my Conjure unless I have no choice.” She broke off, peering around. “But this house tempts me. It’s always tempting me.”
“I’m… evil?”
“By nature. But we have a choice. Each and every one of us.”
I told her that I don’t feel evil. Not at all.
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s different for someone so far away from the Original. Or maybe it’s because you don’t speak—” She broke off and convulsed in the funniest way, as though she had just come close to the lip of a precipice and had held herself back at the last moment.
“Don’t speak…” I prompted her.
She looked at me sideways and shook her head.
“Fine. But explain what you mean by Poulton being affected.”
“Like I said. The house affects normal people. This whole mountain is infected by darkness. It’s insidious. Like poison slowly seeping in. Nothing survives here. Not anymore.”
“It compels us to use our Conjure…” And I realized that she had handed me the answer. Dad. He came to this place and he Conjured. It was that simple. It is that simple. My father is lost forever because he was drawn here and he couldn’t help himself, and he paid the ultimate price.
And now I’ve gone and followed right in his footsteps.
“Watch it with him,” Len said again. “With your friend. I’m not joking about this place. If it compels us to Conjure, it will do much worse to a normal person like him.”
“Maybe Pole’s Unclosed too and doesn’t know it.”
She shook her head. “You know he isn’t.”
“Well, I haven’t noticed anything off. He’s just
angry with me about accusing him of taking my notebook.”
She shrugged. “He’s scratching.”
That got my attention. She said it starts with scratching and irritability. I couldn’t say anything then, because that’s exactly what Dad does. He scratches, as though there is something in his skin he’s desperate to claw out.
So I’m sitting here, writing down everything that’s happened, hoping I can escape the one fact that eluded me and that now haunts me.
While I’ve been doing checks on myself every day, I forgot to notice what was happening to Poulton.
Here he is, in my arms. My son. He is small, and blue, with strange little black eyes, and he is beautiful. I have named him John, for his father. He is so small that I can comfortably write while rocking him. One little fist lies upon my finger, tiny and blue. I sing him lullabies.
I have rebuked both John and Nebula, and told them to stay away. I need no cleaning! I need no assistance! I am with my son, and that is all that matters. He is no bigger than the side of my hand and is of such a vivid red when he came out that I almost mistook him for the son of Satan before my eyes cleared.
I am a mother. I am mother.
FROM THE DIARY OF
HERMIONE SMITH,
30 JANUARY 1584
Chapter 30
AN OFFER
She should be dead.
Instead, she’s moving.
Or… the ground is moving.
Above, the sky churns like an upset belly, clouds fighting one another in endless, unceasing layers of gloom. There is no sense of day, or time, or hour. She simply is.
The movement continues, steady paced, bumpy, and she almost falls, yet doesn’t. Why should the ground move so?
Time passes, she supposes, and eventually the movement beneath her back stops, but the clouds above continue their petty argument. Warm turns to cold with a slide and a thud, and she knows suddenly that she is lying on the mountain. She can feel its cool awareness beneath her like a corpse.
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