One by One

  Then why are you doing it?

  Alice looked down at her feet, aghast. She was already on the third step.

  Thump…

  There wasn’t a dry spot on her face, the sweat, tears, snot all mixing. She was crying like a baby, her chest hitching, the fear greater than any she had ever known. The stairs stretched, almost endless, a path beyond the wall, the roof, into the darkness of the woods. She would never be off these steps, even if the horror upstairs didn’t kill her. She would die here, just like Mary did, and they would stay here forever, waiting for the next family to feed to the demon house.

  And then, a second later, she stood at the top of the stairs, shivering, burning, dying all at once. It was dark up here, the only light issuing up from her bedroom below.

  The sound…it stopped.

  It had, and an even deeper, relentless silence fell over her, engulfing the world. There was a light hovering on the wall of the hallway. It was wrong somehow, something impossible, something her brain struggled to make sense of.

  You know what it is.

  She tried not to admit it, but Alice knew exactly what she was seeing. The half door leading to the crawl space and attic was open, and from within, a faint light was shining out.

  There was no going in there. It was packed full, she knew it; she had seen it for herself more than once. And yet, when she walked a few steps forward and peered inside, she found a path cut through the wall of junk. She had to lean down to slip under the short door, and then she was inside, in another world. The weak light emanating from the back of the space dimly illuminated a narrow hallway constructed from random pieces of the former family. The cast-iron bed frame was pushed aside like an open gate, and the walls of the makeshift corridor were constructed of lawn toys, playhouses, picture frames, and long-forgotten pieces of furniture. A face stared at her from a moth-eaten painting, a young girl standing on an orange hillside as the sun set behind her.

  The floor was creaking, unfinished wood, flat pieces of pressboard that had grayed with time. It was like venturing into another dimension, a place of the forgotten, where all the things that people lose or don’t need go to spend eternity in silence.

  The path veered left, and she realized the light was above her now, on some higher plane than it had been before. Her foot bumped against the first wooden step, and she finally understood where she was going. Her father had told her, but like everything else in this mad house of mirrors, it didn’t make sense until she saw it. There was one entrance to the attic in the master bedroom, but there was no ladder going up. Now this was the only way in, a secret passage that threaded the perimeter of the second floor and ended in a narrow staircase that led to the attic itself.

  She took the first step, and the smell hit her hard enough to almost knock her back down. It was a mélange of odors hitting her all at the same time – the strangely familiar scent of untouched dust, the universal flavor of attics and basements. The sharp tang of sweat. And something else. Something darker. An earthy smell, like mulch, like shit, like unwashed bodies that stank so violently you couldn’t tell whether they were alive or dead.

  Trembling, Alice crested the top step and walked finally into the light. It was an assault on her brain. There were too many things to see, too much to process.

  Candles burning in a small circle.

  Faint, crude crayon drawings pasted on every wall, pictures of families, smiling, Xs drawn on faces, blood drawn on crotches. A mattress, filthy, draped with an ancient comforter designed with My Little Pony characters. Floors, walls, ceiling painted pink and decorated with misshapen flowers, rainbows, clouds. Something dead, furry, curled up and rested on the floor, at the edge of the candlelight, something she knew even if she couldn’t quite spare the brainpower to admit that she knew.

  And of course, her family.

  Dean.

  Mom.

  Dad.

  The three of them sitting in a semicircle on the opposite side of the room, their faces bathed in the yellow light radiating from the candles.

  And the blood.

  Around foreheads. Dripped onto shirts. Oozing into the ropes that bound their hands, around the gags in their mouths. Blood that had dried into crusty, brown splotches.

  Dead.

  No.

  Frank moved, raised his head, looked up, and saw her. And in his desperation, he began to stomp his foot. It looked to be the only thing he could do.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Was he asking for help? Begging her to set him loose? Alice didn’t know, but it didn’t matter either. She couldn’t have helped him if she tried, because she was a ghost herself, already dead, already carried to some impossible place where nightmares were real.

  Frank’s head lurched forward, and his eyes darted to the side, past her, behind her, and Alice suddenly understood.

  He’s warning you.

  Of what?

  Of the thing standing behind you.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It felt familiar somehow. That sensation.

  Where was she?

  A cave.

  A cave?

  Yes. It was a field trip, silly. It was only a few years ago. Don’t you remember?

  Yes, of course. The cave.

  They told you to stay close to the group, but something about the place just kept drawing you in. You wanted to stand there, in one of the huge, wide-open caverns by yourself, without the other kids. They were ruining it with all their chatter, the boys trying to wrestle, the girls playing with each other’s hair, the kids with phones already taking selfies.

  Yes, that was it. Alice could see it in her mind, the quiet grandeur of the place, a sort of dignity to the yawning, black emptiness that was wasted on her classmates. She wanted a moment, just a moment, to see the cave as it was, to experience the truth of it.

  So, you lingered farther and farther back until it was just you and one of the distracted parents. And when you saw your moment, you slipped behind a section of jagged wall and let them all pass.

  Alice had held her spot until the cave grew quiet. Then she walked out and stood there, alone, feeling the open majesty of the place, equal parts humbling and terrifying.

  But why was she thinking of that now?

  There had been some intangible quality in the cave, a feeling on her skin, an almost imperceptible kind of sonar that told her, even in pitch blackness, that this place was bigger than she could ever imagine. That feeling returned to her in the attic, a feeling that she was standing at the edge of some vast expanse, that the room was bigger than she would have thought possible.

  Frank was stomping the floor in front of her, flinging his head back, trying to speak through the gag in his mouth. Something stirred in the immense, cavernous darkness behind her. Alice turned and stared. Something shuffled. A shape growing, towering, a head taller than even her father. And in that sickly yellow candlelight, it came for her.

  There was no time to think, to consider, to plan. She only caught pieces of it, the vast height, the wide shoulders, and, somehow, a delicate, ruined splash of pink. Her family didn’t matter. Her plans didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the deep, all-encompassing thought that ran through her head, all of her voices singing in unison.

  Don’t let it touch you!

  The feral part of Alice took over, and she ran, sprinting down the stairs like a gazelle. Something brushed against her back, a strong, heavy thing.

  Its hand! A monster’s hand!

  As she made it halfway down, the stairs began to rattle as something heavy took to the steps above. Alice screamed and leapt. Her body folded as she hit the bottom. One knee bent up and slammed into her lip, and she tasted blood as she clawed through the dark, twisted corridor on all fours. Her pursuer, that thing, was at her heels. It knew the winding tunnel of its lair better than she did; somethin
g heavy thudded down on one of her shoes, nearly pulling it off.

  It wants you! It’s hungry! Don’t stop, don’t stop!

  The air at the end of the corridor was fresher, colder, as if she were emerging from a buried coffin. Alice shot out like…

  …a rabbit…

  …and she clambered to her feet, turning the corner of the stairs and gazing down them, gazing down at the precipice, the cliff that had taken Mary’s life.

  No! Not the steps! It wants you on the steps. The window. The ladder. Hurry girl, hurry!

  She sprinted to her parents’ room and tore open the window. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her pursuer appear from the crawl-space door, an impossible shape, too big to even fit through such a tiny opening. That struggle was the only thing that saved her; she was out the window before the thing could stand, out into the cold, hands on frozen metal, feet slung awkwardly over, climbing, slipping, plunging, the ground rushing up to meet her while a filthy hand reached down, trying to grab her. She landed flat on her back in the fresh snow, the breath rushing from her lungs. For a moment, she only lay there, staring up, waiting for the creature to plunge down, to take her, to end her.

  Alice was dying. She knew she was. Nothing in her life up to this point had ever felt like this, so there was little doubt in her mind. She was still, wrapped in the frozen white, and waited for her breath to return. A second later, it did, and the fear of imminent death was replaced by the fear of the hunt, the fear of predator and prey. She couldn’t tell if it was still snowing or not, but it didn’t matter. The wind blew the loose flakes into her eyes, blinding her vision for more than a few feet in front of her as she found her feet and began to move.

  The snow slowed her down, and as she plodded around to the front yard, she was struck with how absurd her love of snow had been before this moment. It was a rare thing, a special little slice of time that was gone as soon as it appeared. But that was before, in a different life, a life where she wasn’t being hunted. Now, this snow, the deepest she’d ever seen, was just another punchline in a cruel joke.

  She stopped in the front yard, staring up at the mostly dark house. There were no tracks in sight, no sign that the monster had come this way. Stopping, even for a short moment, was enough to send a cyclone of guilt swirling up inside her.

  Dad was almost dead.

  She believed it.

  I’m sure he is now.

  She believed that too. The distance between her and her attacker was just enough for her to experience something other than abject fear, but it wasn’t enough to send her back in. She doubted anything would be enough to make her do that.

  The moon was bright now that the snow had cleared, and the sheen of white reflected it brilliantly. She could find her way without a flashlight.

  And where will you go?

  To safety.

  The neighbors? You’ve never seen them. It could be a mile, maybe more.

  A mile wasn’t so far, she thought, shivering. But it was a lie. The snow was up to the tops of her boots, and even though she was dressed in long pants and hoodie, it wasn’t enough. She remembered sledding a few years before, assuring her mom that she was fine in jeans and a light jacket. In less than ten minutes, her pants were soaked up to the knee, and her teeth were chattering. That was with less than three inches on the ground. This…this wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before.

  The road then. Yes, the road.

  How many cars have you seen?

  There was no point in arguing with herself. The road was all but invisible, no tracks to be seen. As far as she could tell, no one had driven this far out for hours. They were home, tucked in, safe and prepared for a storm that would assuredly shut everything down.

  “I’ll just walk,” she cried to the silent yard.

  Go ahead. Die out here. Die in there. It’s all the same.

  The cold grabbed her then, cutting through her terror. The fear-driven chemicals in her body had begun to recede, and for the first time, she really felt it, the cold gripping her with icy fingers, and she considered what it promised. Dying out in the snow would at least be quiet.

  But it will hurt.

  The tears on her face were starting to freeze, and Alice slipped down to one knee, sobbing.

  “It’s not fair.”

  Who said it would be? a sharp voice asked. You’re still alive. That’s more than some of us have.

  “Mary?”

  Does it matter who I am? Either way, I won’t help you. The only one who will get you out of this shit is you. So, now comes the big question. Run? Fight? Die? Your choice. But choose quickly.

  There was nothing else for her inner voice to say. This was a crossroads, a moment that every other moment after depended on. It was all too abstract, too distant now that she stood alone in the snow up to her shins. She glanced back up at the house, and all at once, it became real again. A shadow stood in the frame of the bay window, watching her struggle, watching her decide. A moment later, the figure was gone.

  No! that inner voice screamed, giving her a reason to move once again.

  Don’t let it touch you.

  She ran, not into the white emptiness but back toward the house.

  Get inside. Find a way to lose it and get back inside. Call the cops. Call for help. Do something, girl!

  She raced toward the opposite side of the house, the side with fewer windows and doors, the safer side. Her lungs were burning when she came to the wooden fence, and she stopped, peering through the boards, watching the area around the rotten swimming pool. Nothing stirred, not even for a second.

  Alice flipped the latch and stepped through. If she was quiet, she might be able to sneak in behind it, to make it back upstairs. Her mother had her phone with her, she always did, and if she got up there, she’d have the chance to—

  A shadow detached from the wall and reached for her. It was waiting, hidden in the darkness next to the house, and it emerged from the dark, a monster made of hair and pink, a creature with filthy hands as strong as iron. It reached for her, mumbling something incoherent.

  Don’t let it touch you!

  A primal, irrational fear took hold of her, and Alice stepped back, back, back until the ground fell away beneath her and she tumbled into some new blackness. She landed on her back six feet into the deep end of the pool. The dark water was frozen, and her head thumped against the ice, hard; the world began fading to black around her. In the haze, there was something that rose above her confusion, a sound that echoed from one side of the empty pool to the other.

  A crack.

  The stench was enough to bring her back, to break through the fog that loomed over her head. It seeped up, all around her, a black smell, rising through the cracking ice. She could feel it, the sewage creeping up her back, oozing out through the fissures in the ice. Overhead the shadow peered down at her.

  It didn’t matter. Death didn’t matter. Nothing mattered as long as she was balanced on a thin sheet of ice over a pool reeking of shit. She rolled gingerly onto her stomach, spreading her weight as evenly as she could. Tendrils of broken ice spread out around her palms, her legs, her stomach, and all around her; the stench rose and swallowed her. She crept forward, to the side of the pool, the cracks and pops following her all the way, always with her, a new, awful shadow.

  Somehow, the ice held as she crawled to the edge of the pool and began to reach up. The old, torn liner was slick with ice, snow, and frozen algae, and no matter how hard she grabbed it, she couldn’t get a grip.

  “Please, please, please…”

  She had shimmied up to her knees, giving up on the liner, reaching higher, but she still couldn’t grasp the lip of the pool. The ice was giving way under her, and at the last second, she wrapped a piece of the plastic liner around her hand and began to pull herself up even as her feet broke through the thin ice. She was
up, the liner wrapped so tightly around her hand that it was surely bleeding. She pushed her feet against the side and climbed, eyes closed, her entire being focused on the singular goal of getting out of that fucking hole.

  Alice was halfway up the wall when she heard it. A moan above her, a sound like an insane child. There was a moment, a split second, when the voice inside warned her, that some deeper, instinctual part of herself tried to take control.

  Don’t look! Please, don’t look!

  But it was an impossible thing to ask. Alice had no choice in the matter. She did look. And she saw it, leaning down, so close to her face that she could see the eyes for the first time, dark and wild. A hand reached for her.

  She screamed. She slipped. She fell.

  There was a crack, loud enough that it felt as if it had come from inside her body, as if a painless, invisible bone had snapped. There was barely even enough time for her to make sense of it before the grimy blackness swallowed her. Even with her eyes clamped and her mouth closed, she felt it, a foulness beyond compare, leaking into her pores. She felt the sloping side of the pool, so slick with filth that her hands and feet could find no hold. She fought back against the revulsion, against dying in the worst, most inhuman way possible. But her fighting did no good; she was dying, and she was drowning in a pool of shit. It was the kind of thing that the boys at school would make up.

  Would you rather die in a pool full of shit…

  Except of course, this was real. This was happening. Her breath was catching. She longed to scream but didn’t dare. The world fell quiet around her, a cold, damp, awful place.

  This is where you die.

  There was no peace in the thought. No final moment of clarity before the end. Just fading. A candle burning itself out. And somewhere in the growing blackness that was Alice’s existence, she sensed something in the filth next to her.

  Water splashing. Strong hands lifting her out.