The House

by Christina Lauren

  Delilah cast the light of her phone into first doorway. It seemed ordinary enough: a large bed draped in fluffy white down, a nightstand, a rocker flanked by gleaming windows. The next held a set of twin beds, identical quilts covering each one. The wallpaper changed abruptly just before the third room, where a sea of hunter green abutted a yellow wall of dandelions.

  She stopped in the doorway of a nursery, the space practically bulging with sloppily packed boxes, various toys spilling from beneath the cardboard flaps. Delilah remembered Gavin saying that the house provided whatever was needed, and she couldn’t help wonder who all this was for. Gavin? Someone before him? Someone after?

  The sun had all but gone, and the room swam with strange shadows. A doll peered at her from the top of the bookcase, its head lolling to the side, glass eyes dull and—thankfully—lifeless.

  She moved down the hall, stopping short at a creak just behind her. She stood still, breath locked in her throat, the hair on the back of her neck standing up straight.

  Delilah had always been the kind of girl who let her imagination run wild, and though she was certain that was the case now, it did nothing to stop the pounding of her heart inside her chest.

  “Get a grip,” she told herself, certain she would turn and find nothing but an empty hall, nothing more than stairs and darkness behind her.

  Her brain buzzed with a memory of Gavin telling her that she was safe here, that the house would never hurt anything he cared about. She did her best to remember those words now, as the floorboards creaked again and an almost imperceptible growl sounded behind her.

  With a deep breath she gathered her courage, spinning so quickly her skirt twisted around her legs. She blinked, searching up and down the empty hallway, shining her pathetic excuse for a light into each of the empty rooms.

  Nothing.

  Delilah narrowed her eyes, taking a shaky step forward. Then another.

  She was almost certain the table had been much farther away.

  This was the same house in which she’d danced and laughed with Gavin only yesterday, she reasoned, walking into his bedroom and closing the door behind her. This was the house she wanted to know, to trust, whose world she wanted to join. Still, on instinct she moved to set the lock, but of course there wasn’t one.

  Gavin’s room overlooked the backyard—far from the only lamppost on the opposite end of the street—so it seemed darker than any of the other rooms. Delilah directed her light in front of her, following the white-blue glow to Gavin’s nightstand. She found the candles right where he said they’d be—tucked near the back of the drawer—a yellow disposable lighter beneath.

  Needing both hands, Delilah reluctantly set down her phone, saying yet another prayer as the lighter sparked in the darkness. It took two tries, but the wick eventually caught flame, the room gradually lightening as it grew.

  As she placed the candle on the table, a sketchbook caught her eye. She picked it up and settled herself back against Gavin’s pillows, opening it carefully across her lap.

  The book was heavy and well used, the pages swollen with ink and charcoal. The leather creaked in the silence, long spine brittle with age and years of use.

  The first page held a bird drawn so realistically that Delilah couldn’t help but run a finger along the wing, half expecting to feel the downy softness of feathers. There were a few drawings of her: under the tree at school, at the movie theater with Dhaval, listening to Mr. Harrington in English. She felt a wild, possessive rush at the thought of Gavin sitting on this bed at night, drawing her.

  The book was nearly full, and Delilah continued to flip through the pages, her eyes growing heavier with each passing minute. Despite her earlier unease, there was something comforting about being in Gavin’s room, on his bed and surrounded by his things. His smell was everywhere. The room was warm and a little humid, and it was easy enough to close her eyes and pretend that he was there now.

  She fell asleep almost peacefully, slipping into the softness of flannel and down, feeling as if the blankets were arms wrapping themselves around her. And maybe they are, she thought, just as everything went dark.

  • • •

  Something was wrong.

  Delilah opened her eyes with a start, wondering what woke her up in the first place. She blinked into the darkness, her eyes slowly focusing on the bleary shapes surrounding her, on the flickering candle next to the bed.

  She shifted slightly, meaning to disentangle herself from the blankets now twisted around her legs and across her torso, when a sound came from somewhere in the dark recesses of the house. It started out small, nothing more than a single, muted thump, and was easy enough to ignore. Delilah closed her eyes and settled back in, waiting for sleep to reclaim her.

  But it happened again. And again. Growing louder and more insistent. . . like a heartbeat.

  “Gavin?”

  Delilah waited, head still fuzzy with sleep, straining to hear any movement, wondering if perhaps Gavin had returned home while she slept.

  A shiver moved up Delilah’s spine as she continued to listen, her eyes wide and trained, unblinking, on the shadows around the large bed. She thought about the claw-footed table in the hall, the curtains that had closed so forcefully the first time she’d come to the house. She wondered what other kinds of things existed here, and what exactly happened inside these walls while Gavin was away.

  The rational side of Delilah’s brain chastised her, reminding her that she had a tendency toward the dramatic and insisting that if she intended to be a part of Gavin’s life she would need to learn to deal with things and not let her imagination run wild at every creaking floorboard or bump in the walls. The house was alive after all; it was only natural that there would be the occasional sound or two.

  Delilah peered through the dark and up to the fluffy clouds painted onto the blue ceiling. They floated peacefully across the plaster sky, and she tried to relax, to block out the steady thumping that continued from somewhere below.

  The moon rose above the large tree just outside Gavin’s window, its light breaking through the narrow gap in the curtains to stretch across the floor. The clouds were easier to make out now, the shapes mimicking small objects tucked into the fairy-tale sky: a teddy bear, a sailboat bobbing along the choppy waves. But with the added light came the realization that something had changed. The blue sky had turned stormy and dark, and menacing clouds began to roll across an increasingly turbulent sea.

  Delilah shrank down into the blankets as she watched the scene above her, how the storm seemed to swallow up the imaginary sailboat, along with whatever calm she had managed to regain. Sweat made her clothes cling to her skin as her gaze traveled down the walls, over paintings and drawings that seemed to stop moving as soon as she looked at them.

  Though Delilah could only imagine having slept for a few short minutes, the candle had practically burned itself out. It had been yellow—she was sure of it—but now bloodred wax slid down over the candleholder in smooth rivulets. The flame had dimmed, flickering slowly in the still air, and out of the corner of her eye she could see something moving along the wall.

  Delilah strained to make out the shape.

  The faint pattern inside the wallpaper seemed to stir, the edges becoming blurry before sharpening again. She blinked several times, certain she had to be seeing something that wasn’t there. The pattern looked like spiders. Only a few at first, but then more and more, so many that the wall seemed to undulate with them. Their legs were thick, covered in coarse hairs, and their bodies were so plump and round that it turned her stomach with an instinctive panic.

  “It’s not real,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight and hoping she could wake from whatever nightmare she was having. A flash tore through the room, and Delilah gasped, blinking up to where lightning streaked across the ceiling.

  “It’s not real.”

  Delilah’s heart raced, the sound of her own pulse roaring in her ears. She tried to push up from the bed,
but her limbs seemed locked in place, her mind unable to fire the impulse needed to move.

  Spindly legs carried hundreds of black bodies skittering across the wall, so many that she could hear them. They moved in waves, scattering this way and that, finally arranging themselves into what appeared to be words.

  BUT

  HE’S

  OURS

  The words formed as if they had been pushed from the wall before seeming to dissolve back into it again. Delilah was frozen, a scream caught in her throat. The blankets constricted around her, pinning her down, trapping her arms at her sides.

  The bed vibrated, and she tried to peer over the edge, to see anything. The footboard began to tremble; the sound of groaning metal screeched all around her. For an instant the candle seemed to burn brighter, the flame and her own terrified expression reflected in the brass rails near her feet. Delilah watched in horror as they grew right in front of her, elongating, the ends sharpening like spikes as they reached toward the ceiling.

  She began to thrash about, trying to break free, the binds beginning to cut into her skin. And all the while, above the sound of scurrying spiders and the deafening scream of metal, was the thump from downstairs, the recurring beat of a racing heart.

  Delilah began to cry, hot tears streaking down her face. A scream tore from her, piercing the darkness just as everything grew silent. Her arms and legs suddenly freed, Delilah scrambled backward, pulling her knees to her chest.

  The lights seemed to all come on at once, and the sound of a door opening and slamming shut again rang throughout the house.

  Gavin.

  Delilah blinked into the sudden brightness, quickly scrubbing the tears from her cheeks just as her name was called from downstairs. Her eyes flew to the ceiling, where fluffy clouds now floated across the most serene blue sky Delilah could ever remember seeing. There were no spiders, nothing more than gray-blue paper covering the walls. The bed looked perfectly ordinary, too. Brass rails with a soft quilt tossed haphazardly across, not a single fingerprint to mar the pristine finish.

  Her head hurt.

  “Delilah?” Gavin called again, followed by the sound of his feet as he ran up the stairs.

  “I’m in here,” she said, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice.

  “There you are,” he began, his face falling as he took in her expression. Judging by the panic that quickly overtook his features and the way he raced across the room to sit at her side, she must have looked much less calm than she’d sounded. “What happened?”

  Delilah gripped his hand, cool and steady in hers. “Nothing,” she insisted, feeling herself calm as she realized she must have dreamed it all. “I fell asleep.”

  “Nightmare?” he asked, smoothing her hair.

  “Just a dream. I’m okay, promise.”

  Gavin seemed to relax, bending to slide his lips carefully over hers. “Must have been pretty bad,” he said, meeting her eyes.

  Delilah shook her head and wrapped her arms around his waist. Gavin’s heart beat strong and steady beneath her ear, chillingly similar to the sound that had woken her in the first place.

  “Just a dream,” she repeated, closing her eyes, trying to convince herself, too.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Her

  Delilah didn’t sleep much that night, afraid to close her eyes and find herself in the same nightmare. She’d had nightmares before, but this one was different. It felt real. So real.

  She was crabby at breakfast, earning a reproachful look from both of her parents. She spilled milk as she poured it into her hot cereal, stubbed her toe on the table leg, and got caught rolling her eyes when her mother began discussing the long hair on the new male bagger down at the grocery store.

  “Mom, his long hair doesn’t make him a criminal.”

  Belinda Blue snorted, pulling her tea bag from her cup after a single, weak dunk. “I want this town to be what it used to be. Quiet, clean, and safe.”

  It was Delilah’s turn to snort. “It is those things, Mom. A hippie bagger doesn’t change that. Maybe it’s good that we have someone here now who’s from Portland, Oregon. Maybe it will open our eyes a little.”

  Her mother paused, planting a fist on her hip. “What do you want, Delilah? You want life to always be one adventure after another? Why can’t you be happy here? Why do you always need adrenaline and wildness and things you can’t predict?”

  Delilah felt her smile straighten. So this was how her mother saw her: reckless, unpredictable, and rebellious simply because she’d stood up for a boy six years ago and didn’t mind long hair on a bagger. The impression couldn’t possibly come from anything else; her mother hardly knew her. “No, Mom. I just want life to be interesting.”

  “Well,” her father mumbled from behind his paper, “whether your life is interesting or ordinary, you still have to live it.”

  Delilah felt strange and bent out of shape, annoyed at her inability to shake off a silly nightmare.

  Because that’s what it had to be, she decided, not wanting to recount the horrific images and sounds that played over and over in her head, but wanting to find some thread that didn’t fit, any detail that would reassure her that nothing had really happened.

  Gavin’s house is good, she repeated to herself while walking to school. His house is good and loves him; it would never do anything to hurt me. It’s just protective, like a mama bear protecting its cub. Like any new person in his life, I have to prove myself.

  He was waiting for her at their tree when she turned the corner, a sketchbook open in his lap, head down, fingers smudging some part of his drawing. It was the same book Delilah had been looking at before she’d fallen asleep. She had to push down a visible shudder.

  She crossed the grass toward him, the thin layer of icy snow crunching beneath the soles of her boots.

  He looked up, nose and cheeks pink from the cold, and smiled at her. “Hey,” he said simply, pushing himself to his feet.

  Delilah smiled back at him, reaching out to take his hand, warm and wrapped in thick brown gloves.

  “Sleep okay?” he asked, a trace of worry in his voice.

  Delilah shrugged, noncommittal, and they moved hand in hand toward the school. “What were you drawing?” she asked, nodding to the notebook he’d tucked under his other arm.

  “Oh,” he said, taking it out and opening it to a page near the back. “It’s a weird one.”

  Delilah looked down at the familiar ivory paper, at the smudgy fingerprints along the edges. She felt her face grow pale, counted out the time in her heartbeat.

  Gavin had been sketching a spider. The same spiders from her. . . dream.

  “What is that?” she asked, feeling her heart make its way to her throat.

  Running a hand through his hair, Gavin peered down at it. “I don’t know, really. Just popped in my head, I guess. Like I said: weird.”

  Delilah closed the book and took his hand again. “Come on. We’ll be late.”

  • • •

  Delilah’s headache still lingered from that morning.

  She could feel Gavin watching her all through class, his gaze heated and pressing against her skin. For once she was grateful for the long lecture that day, boring as it was, because it gave her the perfect excuse to stay quiet, to try to sort out the tornado of questions in her head.

  She tried to work out how Gavin could have known about the spiders, right down to the thick, hairy legs, the stripe of red along their round, brown backs. She ran her fingers over the insides of her wrists, looking for marks like the ones she’d felt cut into her by the blankets, but found nothing but the faint blue streak of veins beneath her skin. Intellectually, she knew it was just a coincidence, but why did it feel so strange? For a brief, terrifying moment she wondered if the house could have seen her dream, but pushed it away just as quickly, realizing how insane that sounded.

  Delilah looked down to where a crumpled piece of paper had been tossed to her desk. She pulled it into h
er lap, glancing up to the teacher before opening it.

  Are you ok?

  A quick glance over her shoulder, and her eyes were met by Gavin’s. He nodded toward the note, motioning for her to answer it.

  Just tired. Didn’t sleep much.

  Mr. Harrington turned his back to the class as he began writing that night’s homework on the board, and she slid the note back to Gavin. She didn’t have long to wait. The note, paper creased and folded haphazardly, landed in front of her again.

  Come over after school. I want to draw you.

  She nearly choked on her gum. Draw her? A quick glance over her shoulder and she was met with Gavin’s eyes, dark and serious. He motioned to the paper again.

  Delilah bent down over her desk, face hot, the dream conveniently pushed to the back of her mind and obscured by a rush of heat. Gavin wanted to sketch her, like a real artist. The idea unleashed a cloud of butterflies in her stomach.

  She swallowed, picking up her pencil with shaky hands, and wrote a single word:

  Okay.

  It was just a dream, after all.

  • • •

  The walk back to Gavin’s house seemed longer than usual. Gavin held her hand the whole way, his little finger drawing the simplest, yet most distracting, circles against her palm.

  “I’m home,” Gavin called out as he stepped into the house, and when she followed him inside the door, Delilah pulled up short.

  She felt as if the day before must have changed something in her. She was almost positive she’d never stepped foot in this house before.

  The late-winter sun streamed in through the curtains just the same as it had before, and the trees gleamed emerald and green from the backyard. The fire stoked itself and burned brighter for Gavin, the room warming all around them. But the human eye is amazing at finding straight lines, and Delilah could tell at once that every angle was slightly skewed. Some were soft and sloped, others rigid but oblique. Nothing came together at right angles or with any standard metric. Doors tilted slightly or had one square corner, one rounded, much as Delilah knew her left foot had always been slightly longer than her right.