Brighter, a supernatural thriller

by V. J. Chambers

  "Sit down," said Blair, gesturing to a seat at the table. Ramona did. "I'm going to go look in the bathroom. Wait here. I'll be right back."

  Ramona looked at the stain on her knee. It had grown. It clung to her leg. These pants were definitely done for. She'd never get the blood out. Blood didn't come out of fabric easily. It took cold water and soap and scrubbing. Easier just to throw them away. They were ruined.

  Blair returned, carrying bandages and antibiotic ointment. "Jackpot," she said. "Lift up your pants leg." She started to kneel in front of Ramona.

  "Oh, don't be silly," said Ramona. "I can do it."

  Blair settled on her knees. "Are you going to lift it up, or am I going to have to do it?"

  Ramona rolled up the leg of her pants, wincing a little. The scrape wasn't bad, but it was bleeding a lot. It hurt. Blair mopped at the blood with a wad of toilet paper. She wasn't gentle about it. Ramona bit her lip. "Really," she said. "I can do it."

  "I've got it," said Blair, scrubbing away at Ramona's knee. "It's not deep or anything. I think you'll be fine."

  "I know," said Ramona.

  Blair smeared antibiotic ointment on the wound. "I just didn't want you going all night without getting this bandaged."

  Huh? Ramona wrinkled her nose in confusion. "I was going to put a band-aid on it as soon as I got home," she said.

  "Oh," said Blair, as if realizing she'd said something she hadn't meant to say. "Of course you were. But now you won't need to." She opened a large band-aid and laid it over Ramona's scrape, pushing down on the sticky parts. "There," she said. "Good as new."

  "Thanks," said Ramona.

  Blair got to her feet, crumpling the bandage wrapper in her hand and looking around for a trashcan. "You're welcome," she said. Finally, she spied one in the corner, crossed to it, and tossed the wrapper inside. "So you came here because you were looking for Garrett?"

  "Yeah," said Ramona.

  "I've seen you two hanging around a lot," said Blair. "I don't get it. That guy is bad news."

  "He's okay," Ramona muttered.

  "He's a jerk," said Blair. "I wish you'd stay away from him."

  "Well, I just wanted to talk to him for a second," said Ramona.

  Blair shrugged. "If you must. He's down in the basement." She gestured.

  The door to the basement looked like a huge, black mouth to Ramona. Ready to swallow her up, like the big, bad wolf or the whale in the story of Jonah. She didn't want to go down there. "I'll just talk to him another time," said Ramona.

  "He's been down there for a while," said Blair. "You should probably check on him."

  Ramona inched toward the door. At the doorway, she stopped. The door to the basement was an old one, like the ones in farmhouses. It didn't have a knob, it had one of those wooden latches that slid into a matching groove on the doorframe. "Garrett," she called into the darkness.

  No answer. She turned to Blair. "Are you sure he's down there?"

  Blair nodded. "I saw him go in."

  Ramona put one foot on the first step, feeling along the wall for a light switch. It was so damned dark down there. She shivered. She couldn't find a switch. Maybe it was at the bottom of the steps. Sometimes the light switch was at the bottom. She took a few more steps, clutching the railing since every step she took down took her farther from the light. She didn't like the way the basement smelled. It smelled like mold and age and decay. As she reached the bottom, she could hardly see. She collided with several spider webs, and she thrust them away from her skin, shivering.

  She felt for a light switch again, but couldn't feel anything. "Garrett," she called. She turned back to Blair. "I don't think he's—"

  And she broke off, because the door at the top of the stairs was closing. She heard the latch click closed, locking her in. And she realized that if Garrett were actually down here, he would have turned on the light himself....

  Chapter Nine

  Ramona gulped in dark, musty air. She hadn't moved since the door at the top the stairs had closed. She still craned her neck in that direction, the imprint of the ever-narrowing sliver of light burned into her vision. She didn't think she quite believed what had happened. She hadn't been locked down here, had she? In the blackness? In the musty, close, suffocating blackness? No. NO. NO.

  Ramona wanted to scream, but as much as she tried to gulp air, she couldn't. Her lungs had ceased to work. Her hands went to her neck, fluttering in the darkness. Breathe, she willed herself. But she knew it was no good. She wouldn’t be able to. She was freaked out, worse than she had been in a long time.

  Ramona was claustrophobic, and the close mustiness of the cellar had triggered all her worst fears. She gasped soundlessly, reaching out in the direction of the door, and then her legs fell out from beneath her and she collided with the last step. She hurt her already skinned-up knee, but she couldn't cry out. All she wanted right now was to be able to breathe. Air. That was it. Just...air. Blindly, Ramona clawed at the steps in front of her, and her fingers felt purchase. In a clamoring frenzy, she wrenched herself up the stairs, using only her arms, as her legs seemed to have stopped working. She only knew she was at the top when she collided with the door. Ramona began to bang at the door with the flat of her hand. Her movements became more and more decisive, banging harder and harder, until her hands clenched into fists and she was punching at the door as if she could break it down.

  She remembered doing this before.

  When Ramona was four years old, her favorite game on earth was hide and go seek. Ramona didn't have any siblings, but she played with her parents, especially her father, who always hid in obvious places and then seemed astonished that she could find him. Similarly, no matter where she hid, her father would search for her in the most ridiculous places, calling out things like, "Where's Ramona? Is she inside the coffee pot? No. Is she underneath the television set? No. Where could she be?" Generally, she giggled so much in delight that her father found her, or she popped up from her hiding space and said, "Daddy, I'm here, silly!" As she'd gotten a bit older, her ability to hide had gotten better.

  That particular afternoon, she'd accosted her father as soon as he'd come home from work, demanding that he play hide and seek with her. Her father had patted her on the head and said, "Maybe later, honey. Daddy's tired." Ramona had persisted in begging her father to play, until he'd gotten angry and told her that if she didn't stop pestering him, he'd never play hide and seek with her ever again. Ramona knew this was an empty threat. He'd made it before, and nothing had ever come of it. She figured this was just a jumping off point for negotiations. So she'd told her father that she was going to go ahead and hide, and he could come looking for her whenever he was ready. She'd skipped off, barely listening to her father calling after her, "Ramona, do not hide! I am not coming to look for you! Ramona! Do you hear me?"

  Ramona had crept through her house, looking for places to hide. She wanted to pick a very good spot this time, but she'd played hide and seek so many times in her house that she'd used most of the good spots. She debated and rejected several places. Not the shower. Not underneath her dad's bed. Not behind the curtains in the living room. After all, her mother was in the living room watching TV, and she always gave away Ramona's hiding places. Then she spied the door to the hall coat closet, which was slightly open. Perfect! She slid inside, scooting aside some boots that were stored on the floor and pulled the door closed after her. Then she waited.

  She waited a long time. Finally, she called out for her father to come look for her. Maybe he'd forgotten that she was hiding.

  More time passed. Ramona began to think that perhaps her father had actually been serious in his threat not to play hide and seek with her ever again. She was disappointed. But she was also getting hungry, and she thought it couldn't be too much longer until it was time for dinner. So she decided to leave the closet. Maybe if she was very good, her father would play with her the next day.

  Ramona tried the doorknob. It wouldn't turn! She h
adn't checked to see if the knob on the closet had been locked when she went inside. Her mother was always saying it was stupid to have a lock on the outside of a closet door. And her father always locked it on his way through the hall, because he knew it annoyed her mother to unlock it. It was a way that he teased her.

  "Every time you do that, you waste fifteen perfectly good seconds of my life," her mother would say.

  "Yes, but in those fifteen seconds, you're thinking of me," he'd laugh back at her.

  "Yeah," she'd say. "I'm cursing your name."

  Now, because her father was a joker, she had locked herself in the closet. Ramona began to panic. She started to pound on the door and to yell. No one came. They were probably both watching TV, and they couldn't hear her. She pounded and pounded and pounded, until she was sweaty and out-of-breath from effort. And as her breath came in gasps, she began to have a harder and harder time catching her breath. She felt like her throat was closing up.

  When her parents finally did miss her and discover her in the closet, she tumbled out wide-eyed and frightened, her hair and clothes plastered to her skin with sweat. She'd had nightmares about being in the closet for weeks and ever since then, when she got in tight, closed-in spaces...

  Ramona's knuckles were bleeding. But she realized that she was breathing. She was gasping and gulping air because she'd worked herself into a frenzy pounding on the door. But she was breathing. She stopped moving and collapsed against the door, resting her cheek against it and glorying in the fact that she was breathing. BREATHING. Waves of relief racked her body.

  But no one had heard her pummeling the door. No one was out there. What time was it? She'd come to the library directly after work, and Garrett usually closed the library about a half hour after the admissions office closed. Where had Garrett been anyway? Had he gone out for a smoke behind the library or something? Was it possible that he'd come back in while she was at the bottom of the steps, trying to make a noise or call for help or do something and closed the library?

  Oh God, it must be that. Because if Garrett was out there, he would have opened the door and let her out of the basement. No one was in the library. Blair had locked her in, and she was going to have to stay here for the entire night!

  Shit. That was what Blair had said. She'd said she wanted to bandage up Ramona's knee so that Ramona wouldn't have to go all night without getting it cleaned up. What a bitch. How could Blair have done that to her?

  Well, that didn't really matter, did it? She had to get herself out of the basement, and now that she was breathing again, maybe she could do that. The latch on the door was a sliding kind. It fit into a groove on the doorframe. So maybe, if Ramona could slide something through the door, she could ease the latch open. She spent as much time as she could stand it searching through the dark of the basement for something like that. But even though her eyes had adjusted a little, she couldn't really make out anything in the darkness.

  There didn't seem to be anything in the basement. At all. The mustiness and smallness of the room made it hard for Ramona to be there. Several times, her throat almost closed up on her again. Finally, she gave up. She wasn't getting out tonight. But tomorrow, Garrett would open up the library, and she would be free. She just had to hold on all night.

  To pass the time, Ramona played the Kevin Bacon game. She connected Kevin to every actor or actress she could think of. She could almost never do it in six moves or less, though. Finally, after the last tiny bit of light disappeared from the cracks around the door, Ramona fell asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, leaning half supine on the steps. But Ramona didn't realize she was asleep. In her dream, her latest quest to connect Kevin Bacon to another actor continued.

  "Drew Barrymore," she murmured to herself, "was in E.T. with Henry Thomas who was in Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt who was in Sleepers with Kev—"

  "Ramona," said a voice.

  Ramona lifted her head, looking around her. In front of her on the steps, sat Angelica. Angelica was glowing.

  "Angelica," said Ramona. "I saw you on my porch the night you died."

  "No, you didn't," said Angelica. "You saw one of the monsters."

  "The monsters?" said Ramona.

  Angelica nodded. "They keep us here in the vortex," she said. "We keep them alive."

  "We?"

  Angelica pointed behind Ramona's head, and Ramona twisted around to look down the steps. The basement of the library was crowded with glowing bodies. The people were crammed against each other. Some of them were trying to move and stepping on each other. They wore clothing from all different eras of history. And to her horror, she realized she recognized some of the faces. Mason. Blair. Owen. Dawn. Cecelia.

  Suddenly, Ramona realized that the glowing bodies were all around her, jammed five and six people to a step. They were crushing her, and she pushed at them. They just pushed closer. They were all trying to touch her. Putting their fingers on her face. Some of them had started to scream, a high-pitched sorrowful keening. Some of them were whispering her name over and over. Over all of them, she heard Angelica's voice. "Save us, Ramona. Save us. Let us out."

  Ramona struggled against the throng of pressing, brilliant bodies. "Save you how? Save you from what?" she cried. "I'll do anything you want, just stop touching me!"

  Their fingers were all over her face, and they were pushing them into her orifices. Her mouth. Her nostrils. Her ears. And then they thrust their fingers into her eyes. She shrieked. The world went white.

  "Save us from them," said Angelica.

  Ramona was lost in a whirlwind of whiteness. Hot light surrounded her and then—she could see again. But she wished she couldn't. There were floating people-like things. Wearing long robes that faded into nothingness at the ends. Their fingers were long and pointed, tinged in blood. But the worst was their faces. Their long, long faces, with deep hollow eyes, gaping at her, utter emptiness and dementia in their depths. And their teeth. Fangs like icicles, cold and bright. Teeth like pine needles. Like open cobra mouths. They reached for her, their claws open, their eyes gaping, their mouths stretched impossibly open, so wide, and so deep, infinitely and unendingly bright, their teeth glistening, and Ramona screamed and screamed and screamed and—

  Chapter Ten

  Garrett had called Ramona last night, but she hadn't picked up, and she hadn't called him back. It was probably just as well. He had known that it was a bad idea to call her, but he wanted to tell her about his weird encounter with Blair that afternoon. He knew something that Blair didn’t want him to know. That was clear. And Ramona knew something too, because she'd seen the ghost of Angelica. Blair didn't seem to want the two of them to compare notes. Part of Garrett wanted to hang out with Ramona all the more, just to piss Blair off. But the two of them having sex probably hadn't been the best of ideas. He'd just been so drunk. And he really did like Ramona. Really.

  As he opened the library that morning, he considered if it meant anything that she hadn't called him back. Probably not. Maybe she'd been busy or something. He let himself in through the back door and went into the workroom to make some coffee. He stopped short. That was weird. There was a purse sitting on one of the chairs in the workroom. Was there someone in here? Blair? Would she never leave him alone?

  "Hello?" he called.

  In response, someone banged on the basement door, from the inside. "Garrett?" said a small voice from within.

  Jesus! He ran to the door and yanked it open. Ramona was inside. She looked awful. The backs of her hands were ragged and scabbed over. Her face and hair were streaked with blood. She stumbled out of the basement, and he reached out to support her.

  "How did you get in there?" he asked. The basement of the library always gave him a little bit of the creeps. He didn't like the fact that no matter how often he closed the door, it always seemed to open back up again. When he was in a rational mood, he attributed it to kids in the library opening the door. In an irrational mood, he thought...

  "Blai
r locked me in," said Ramona. Her voice was hoarse. Dear God, she'd probably been screaming for half the night to be let out.

  Garrett guided Ramona to a chair. She sat down heavily. "I'm claustrophobic," she said softly.

  Garrett tightened his jaw. "I'm going to kill her."

  Ramona shook her head. "No."

  "I'm serious. Dead. She's going to be dead. She can't come in here and fuck with my head and then lock you in the basement and—God, what happened to you?"

  Ramona rubbed her face with her hands. "I freaked out is all. It's so dark in there. I had these dreams..." She shuddered.

  "We're doing something that she doesn't like," Garrett says. "We know something."

  "What do we know?"

  "I don't know what we know."

  "Great."

  "Anyway, she can't push us around like this. It's not like I don't know where she lives."

  "Garrett, you're not really going to like...physically hurt Blair, right?"

  "Look what she did to you," Garrett said. He didn't know exactly what he was going to do, but right then he was so angry, he felt like the world was colored red. So maybe Ramona was just his friend. Maybe she was more than that. He didn't know. But he did know that the sight of her like this stirred things within him. Mostly, he was angry with himself for letting this happen to her. He should have known she was in the basement. Christ, he must have closed up the library while she was already in there. He should have realized. Seen her purse. Something.

  But he couldn't change the past. So he had to do something to atone for his guilt. He had to go find Blair and wring her neck. For a second, he could almost feel her neck in his hands, and it wasn't a bad feeling at all. It was actually very, very good.

  "You aren't serious," said Ramona tiredly. "You can't go after her."