Altogether, my three entries point at one common factor in all these strange occurrences: me. But I can’t think of what hypothesis to make from that.
I set my phone aside and go through my messenger bag until my fingers land on the plastic folder containing the deed to the Manor and Mom’s clue card. I read the back of the card. The greatest power comes from within you. Dig deep. Your hands can handle the heat. In the house on the edge of the woods, the rotten key lies. Yours to finish what I started.…
Was Mom seriously unwell? Was she seeing omens and warnings everywhere? Paranoid about some paranormal force pursuing her? Did she believe there was some higher purpose to her erratic actions? Did she go from innocent walks through the woods to self-mutilation and bloodletting?
I analyze Mom’s message and the deed’s conditions, sentence by sentence, but my stubborn brain insists on showing me the memory of Del digging in the crawl space, her burnt hands burrowing into the earth.
The greatest power comes from within me? I don’t feel that powerful. And what’s with all this inspirational crap anyway? Especially coming from Mom, who cut herself and behaved like nothing was off. Like she didn’t need help.
Growing angry, I roll my hands into tight fists, my nails digging into the flesh, breaking the skin. Surprised at the pain, I let go and stare at the bleeding crescent marks on my palms, barely visible in the dim light. To relax, I start humming the lullaby Mom used to sing to me, the one about the warrior, the handmaiden, and the queen with her army. The blood of the first three, it’ll break down the walls … I’d never given it much thought, but now, as I study its weird lyrics, an oddly visceral response starts to build inside me, my blood thumping faster and faster. As if my particles, the building blocks of me, are rearranging, making me into something … else.
Dig deep.
Okay, Mom, I’m going to dig. I’m going to find whatever it is you’ve hidden in this house. And when I find it, you won’t be a nagging mystery anymore, just a sad memory I’ll revisit when it rains. But for now, I’ll go to the basement and finish what my sleepwalking friend started—I’ll dig.
Blue Haven Research Institute: Incident report #42A382
Supporting document: Eyewitness statement
Subject: Arista Kazan
Date and time: February 23, 8:34 a.m.
Location of interview: Research Lab 3
Interviewer (I.): Please state your full name, age, and position.
A. K.: Arista Kazan. Twenty-nine years old. Senior research fellow in physics at BHRI.
I.: Ms. Kazan, please describe what happened the night Patient X had an episode that led to the destruction of the Institute’s west wing.
A. K.: Patient X … We started calling her that because she doesn’t like the sound of her real name. Every time someone drops “Abigail” or “Abbie,” she panics, pulls at her restraints, and screams. Twice on my watch now, the wound on her left hand, where the little finger’s missing, has opened up from exertion and her stitches had to be redone. I’m told she’s been here in the Institute’s care close to ten years, and her wound hasn’t healed; it’s been seeping blood on and off all this time. And what makes it so much more dangerous is that Abigail’s blood is so augmented because of what happened to her in Promise, it becomes volatile whenever Abigail is agitated, emitting anomalous black-body radiation. And you know what that means.…
I can see the evidence on our equipment every time Patient X loses her calm in a bad way. Usually, these moments—the radiation release incidents—are linked to her emotions and can be predicted by our monitors, but this time something was different. It is my belief that Abigail used her blood’s radiation-generating ability deliberately, so she could attempt an escape. She wanted to warn someone of some imminent danger.
I.: Ms. Kazan, it is not your job to make assumptions or draw conclusions about Patient X’s motivation. Tell me what happened during your shift, the night Patient X escaped her room and harmed herself in the west wing.
A. K.: Okay, sure. That night was like any other night for me. I did my first round, then went to my lab to run some tests. It was quiet. When I was on my second round, sometime past midnight, I saw a white bird—a raven—peeking into Patient X’s room through the barred window. The patient became visibly animated, started screaming at the bird, warning it to stay away from her and her family. I checked my equipment remotely, but there was no sign of an incident coming, so I went back into my lab. It was during my third round that … I don’t remember what happened exactly.
I.: What’s the last thing you recall?
A. K.: Patient X saying my name. She never called me, or anyone really, by their name, never made eye contact with any of us at the Institute. But that night, she said my name, and I approached her room and opened the little window in the door so I could talk to her. After that … I remember waking up on a cot in the Institute’s recovery room. What happened? No one will tell me!
I.: Ms. Kazan …
A. K.: Please tell me, Dr.
I.: We hadn’t thought it possible for a human to develop such abilities, but Patient X has proved us wrong. Ms. Kazan, you were compelled by Patient X to release her. She then attempted to find her way out of the compound. When she realized she couldn’t leave, she cut herself and caused the biggest radiation leak in our history. This took place in the Institute’s west wing. It has now been sealed off. There were no survivors.
A. K.: Oh my God! I … How could this happen? I … It’s my fault.…
I.: You shouldn’t blame yourself, Ms. Kazan, but since your standing with Patient X has been permanently compromised, you’re being reassigned.
A. K.: No! I can’t lose this job. Dr. you can’t get rid of me. What’s going to happen to my lab? My samples? My research? I can’t go through this again.
I.: You’re not losing your job, Ms. Kazan. You’re way too valuable to the Institute—you have progressed our understanding of blood anomalies in Promise by leaps and bounds. On the contrary, we’re promoting you. It is a special project, of sorts, and you’re uniquely positioned to do it. As part of your new role, we ask that you reach out to your former PhD advisor Tom Holland and offer to fund his research into the Promise anomaly. You’re to relocate to Promise and lead Tom’s research team there. You’re to set up a portable research base and launch a blood drive campaign. It is the special kind of proteins that we’re after that can only be found in blood samples. Our goal is to identify other individuals like our Patient X—augmented humans … as well as the augmenters.
A. K.: The augmenters?
I.: Ms. Kazan, what do you think is causing blood anomalies in Promise?
A. K.: My educated guess is that it’s geophysical activity in the woods—the same phenomenon that shuts down all cellular and radio activity and causes it to snow in July. It emits black-body radiation that spikes once in awhile, but it’s never reached critical level. Yet.
I.: Yes. But unfortunately, that’s only the beginning.
15
FINDERS KEEPERS
Every cell of my body shrieks “Hell no!” so it is a sheer feat of will on my part to make the trek from my room to the basement (again), to take the stairs down (again), and to face the shapeless, muted darkness of the crawl space (again!). Mom’s words feed on my brain: dig deep … the rotten key … finish what I started … the ravens … my hidden treasure, my heaviest burden …
What was your heaviest burden, Mom? Is that what killed you in the woods?
It’s so quiet down here, I can hear the house breathing. Once I reach the bottom of the stairs, I stand still, breathing slowly to quell my rising panic. The lack of sleep combined with Del’s freakish incident combined with the last twenty-four hours of flying and driving makes me jittery and prone to hallucinations. For a moment there, I think I feel cold fingers curling around my ankle, but it’s just a draft. There’s nothing here but old memories and years’ worth of useless junk.
I manage to take control of my ramp
ant imagination just enough to move closer to the gaping mouth of the crawl space. That draft I feel on my legs is definitely coming from there, and the air is heavy with the stench of overturned earth, making me think of open graves and cold crypts. No way am I touching the raw soil on the other side of the crawl space with my bare hands—the thought sends a jolt of revulsion through me. Besides, Del did burn herself somehow during her infernal digging spell. Maybe there’s a hidden hot water pipe buried in the ground or, worse, a loose wire giving off sparks.
Delaying my descent into the crawl space, I survey a selection of rusty, sad-looking tools lining one of the basement’s walls. One’s missing—I must’ve left it where Del was digging. I need a shovel anyway, but it’d be difficult to move around with something that long in the constricting room beyond the crawl space. Besides, the shovel’s wooden core makes me think splinters. So I settle on a garden spade.
I do a double take when I notice a couple of flashlights stacked on the crooked shelf next to the tools. How could I have missed them earlier? I grab one flashlight, and, miraculously, it works. Thank the same mysterious source that stocked the fridge with eggs and wine and had clean bed linens just waiting for you, a nasty voice whispers in my mind.
I fight an overpowering impulse to hang the spade back on its hook, throw the flashlight into a corner, wash my hands, and crawl back into bed. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and pronounce the end of our short-lived trip, and we’ll get into our Kia and drive off, the Manor be damned.
But when I continue into the crawl space despite my mind’s protests, I know the truth is that I’m not going anywhere until I find out what Mom’s heaviest burden was and why it had to be surrounded by such a thick shroud of secrecy.
And so, armed with the garden spade and a flashlight, I enter the crawl space and approach the spot where Del was digging up the floor. I inspect the damage done. For one skinny girl, Del sure managed to overturn a whole load of dirt in record time. Her accomplishment is a hole about fifteen inches deep. Done with her bare hands. Impressive!
I keep the flashlight on, placing it on the ground facing the hole. Fueled by my mystery-solving drive and growing anger at Mom for making me do this, I stick the spade into the predug cavity and push on.
After about ten spadefuls, I hit a hard surface. The excitement of the moment makes me forget all about my earlier squeamishness. Vibrating like a tight guitar string, I roll up my sleeves and attack the dirt with my bare hands, pushing the ripped-up soil to the side. For seconds all I can hear is the racket of my animalistic digging and thunderous breathing.
A faint glint of metal catches my eye as a strange object emerges from the dirt. After removing another fistful of earth, the buried object is revealed: a metal box, darkened with mud and time. While the box is not large, its weight, as I heave it out of the hole, suggests that its walls are reinforced steel or something equally dense.
The box is locked. Is this Mom’s heaviest burden? Let’s find out. Before I climb back out of the crawl space, I point the flashlight into the darkness: The ground of the small crawl space is seriously messed up, like an army of the undead has risen out of it. It’s amazing what a girl can do when she puts her mind to it!
Clutching my find close to my chest, I clear out of the crawl space.
I must look filthy. As far as I can see, my knees and my arms up to my elbows are covered with dirt, and there’s probably a wild glint in my eyes that gives away exactly how disturbed I am right now.
Cat-silent, I move up the stairs, hoping not to wake Del. Back in my room’s attached bathroom, I wash my hands, careful to brush the dirt from under my nails. The water in the sink turns brown, then finally transparent again. One look in the mirror prompts me to stick my face under the running stream as well. Good enough. Now, the box.
A simple storage container, nothing interesting about it, if not for the runic symbols crudely etched all over its lid and sides. I haven’t done the necessary comparative work, but I bet the symbols are the same as those encasing the Manor’s main door and the rest of the building. My knowledge of runic symbol systems is close to nonexistent, but what I do know of ancient protection symbols points to the intent of warding the Manor (and this metal box specifically) against someone or something. I guess it worked; the box looks like it’s been untouched for years.
I run my fingers over the runic writing and a sudden heat comes off the symbols. I jerk my hand back and stare at my fingertips, half expecting the skin to crack and peel. It doesn’t, but a slight tingling remains where I touched the runes.
As I fiddle with the lock, a faint scratching sound comes from the window. I hurry to the glass, the absence of curtains or blinds making me feel exposed. I listen, but there’s no repeat sound, so I turn my attention back to the box and its lock. The lock is small, of the generic type sold in airports for luggage. A type of lock that wouldn’t be hard to cut with pliers. I saw some in the basement, right next to the garden spade I used for digging. That would require going back to the basement, of course.
But then I visualize the ring holding the Manor’s keys. I didn’t pay it much attention when we entered the house—I was too eager to get in—but there were five, maybe six keys on that ring, and at least one seemed tiny enough to fit into this particular lock. I might as well try that before I start messing with the lock for real. I check my messenger bag for the key ring, and once I lay my eyes on it, I know my observation was spot-on: The miniature key is a perfect fit. The lock clicks open and the lid slides up.
Another glossy card. The image: Three ravens (one black, one gray, and one white) form a triangle around a heart, the same kind the girl from Mom’s first card holds in her hand. A bleeding human heart, looking freshly ripped from someone’s rib cage. Thanks, Mommy!
I start to read another message from Mom scribbled on the back of the card, but then I see the rest of the stuff in the box and everything else seems unimportant.
Another scratching sound from the window. A raven lets out a caw, but I pay it no attention. As I gawk at the contents of the box, the muscles of my face tense, my mouth twisting into a grimace, first of confusion, then disgust.
If this were a horror movie, this would be the moment when I come across a creepy doll with human eyes watching me or when I find myself locked in a room with a cursed mirror, only a flimsy curtain standing between me and its hex.
In the box, three glass vials filled with red liquid sit snug in slots cut out in a Styrofoam brick. The blood looks fresh, not yet coagulated. It whirls around when I pick up one of the vials. But how can it be? The metal box looks like it’s been sitting buried in the basement, undisturbed, for years.
A thump against the window makes me look up. Clutching one of the vials, I flick the lights off and go to the window. Spooked by my sudden movement, something takes off from the windowsill so fast that I only catch a glimpse of it. A splash of white against the inkiness of the night. A white raven?
Shivering, I come back to the box and sit on the floor, facing it. After close inspection, I find that each vial is marked with unique letters. The same elegant writing I’ve been seeing a lot lately—Mom’s writing. The vials are labeled ET-H, GD, and ED.
The first label has Mom’s initials. Ella Townsend-Holland. Mom’s blood, then. And the others?
Shaking my head in frustration, I set aside the matters of the blood’s freshness, origin, the vials’ creepy location, and that Del seemed to know exactly where to dig for them, and I read Mom’s second clue. It’s got her signature cryptic style, but it’s pretty well spelled out—what Mom wants me to do now becomes alarmingly clear:
As I read and reread Mom’s “instructions,” I wish someone like Buffy Summers was around so she could ease this strange situation with a quirky remark. But no one’s around—just me (frowning and shivering on the inside), three vials of at least a decade-old, uncoagulated blood, and Mom’s plea for me to go cut myself in the woods.
I place the flash card back into the b
ox, lock it, and shove it to the back of my empty closet.
16
THE ENEMY ON OUR PORCH
Even hidden away in the closet, the presence of the blood vials is tangible in the room. Vibrating, enriching the air with their subsonic call. A ghost planet unseen by telescopes but felt because of her gravitational pull, the box and its contents call for me, draining me of sleep and reason. I’m nothing but a small celestial object caught in their orbit.
Can’t sleep. Can’t get Del’s glazed-over eyes out of my mind. Can’t stop thinking of Mom, of the nightmare her life must’ve been—the endless cycle of self-mutilation in the woods, driven by her all-consuming belief in some higher purpose. I’m meant to think of a door closing when I draw my own blood? The rational part of me laughs at the idiocy of this idea, while another Hayden—the one who wants to believe in magic, the little girl who thought her mother was an elfish queen in hiding—is ready to go into the woods now and do exactly as Mom’s instructions say.
But I don’t go anywhere. I stay in bed, flat on my back, and listen to the rain and wind gently assaulting the roof’s shingles, dislodging bits of wood and stone, sending them ricocheting off the walls before perishing into the mud. I read a story once where a woman lived in an isolated house just like this one; every time she lay sleepless in her bed on a stormy night (and it rained a lot in that story), listening to the way the storm made the house sound possessed, she imagined it was a small child playing with a jar of marbles in the attic. Of course, in the story, the house was haunted.
I have to make a conscious choice to stop thinking about hauntings and possessions. Even with my penchant for scientific explanations, I’m not immune to irrational fears and occasional night terrors. When I finally start to fall asleep, a half-forgotten memory of Mom emerges from the depths of my mind. I’m five, and the two of us are walking through the woods, collecting rocks, twigs, and dried-up leaves from the forest bed. The intent is to make a collage, Mom says. I want to help, so I reach out for a low-hanging branch and break its leafy tip off. It’s for our dinner table’s centerpiece, I try to explain when Mom frowns at me, but she speaks before I can.
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