Mom went back to work, and Lily went back to the spare room to take her anger out on the junk taking up space in the house that was hers, whether she wanted it to be or not. She turned on the Hamilton soundtrack and got aggressive. She was not throwing away her shot, but she was throwing away pretty much everything else. At least most things were already in boxes that she could carry out to the dumpster. There were boxes of cloudy glass vases, boxes of used batteries dusted with acid powder, boxes of shoes so worn out that even the secondhand store couldn’t use them. None of it was useful. It felt good to hurl it into the dumpster and hear it thump against the metal walls.
She had uncovered the entire spare bedroom now. All that was left was Barbara’s china and the junk on the dresser. One thing caught her eye on the scarred, old wood, though: a set of keys with a mangy rabbit’s foot on the key ring. That might actually be useful. Dad had not made good on his promise to have more keys made for the house.
Lily took the keys to the front door. As she had surmised, the newest-looking silver key could lock and unlock it. There was also a car key, old and worn with a Toyota logo on it. One medium-sized key reminded her of the key for Rachel’s boat. That made sense—maybe they used to have a boat here, too. And then she saw a small, heavy brass key. One that might be just the right size to open the secret door that led under the stairs.
As she walked outside, she definitely felt more fear than hope. After all, you didn’t lock doors for no reason. She knelt, the gravel making dents in her knees as she considered the key and the lock.
Lily paused for a moment and took a deep breath. She had no idea what she would find behind the little door, but she suspected that it would not be good. Her neck tickled and her shoulders hunched with that now-familiar feeling of being watched, and she looked all around the yard. There was no one there that she could see—but there never was.
She swallowed her fear and put the key in the lock.
It fit perfectly.
23.
Time seemed to stop. Lily’s knuckles were white as she held the key there without turning it. It occurred to her for the first time in her life that a lock, like a light switch, had only two positions. It was either closed or open, on or off. There was no in-between. Lily herself, on the other hand, felt like she was always somehow in-between.
She willed her fingers to turn the key in the lock, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She could imagine so many horrible things behind that door—bodies and bones and clumps of tangled hair and coiled snakes writhing and thousands of spiders—and she was painfully aware that she was home alone. No amount of screaming would bring any sort of help.
A dog howled in the bushes, and she startled and pulled the key out of the lock. Buddy burst out of the forest, the fur raised along his back. He didn’t look like a friendly, desperate goof just now. He was barking, growling, frothing at the mouth like he’d gone mad. Lily stood, clutched the keys in trembling fingers, and pressed her back against the house. Buddy advanced on her, walking stiffly, his head down at an unnatural angle as he growled.
“Hey, now, Buddy,” she said, her voice low and calm. “It’s just me. We’re friends, right? We’re buddies.”
He didn’t stop, and she looked frantically from side to side, hoping for some way to escape. But there was nothing she could climb, no door she could run through, just the flat sides of the house, the swamp, the deck, the flimsy screen door of the pool cage.
He barked, loud and shrill, and her fingers jerked open. The key ring dropped out of her hand and hit the ground with a clunk. Buddy lunged for her, and she kicked out as hard as she could, hating herself as she did it. Her foot met his soft body, and he yelped in surprise and—was it fear?
When she looked down, Buddy had the rabbit’s foot in his mouth and was staring at her like she’d betrayed him. He whined softly, turned, and slunk back into the bushes with the key ring.
The beast that had been stalking her was gone, and her only remaining friend was abandoning her.
“I didn’t mean to kick you, Buddy! I thought you were going to bite me! Come back. Please? I’ll get you some pizza.”
But the dog didn’t turn around or even flick an ear. He had disappeared completely into the undergrowth with the jingling keys, his tail tucked between his legs and his head down.
Now he was ignoring her, too.
And the door under the stairs?
It was still locked.
24.
Not knowing what else to do, Lily went back inside and continued cleaning out the spare room. It was just work now, just something she had to finish, and it had lost any appeal or sense of adventure. She didn’t need to dig into every box and drawer looking for some secret answer to all the questions around her. She’d found the keys she’d been looking for, but they’d only made things worse. It felt like every choice she’d made was the wrong one. The shame and guilt over Rachel’s accident had already been eating her alive before she’d kicked Buddy. So now she would stop texting Rachel; she would stop calling for Buddy. She didn’t want to hurt them any more than she already had.
By dinnertime the spare room was clean, and Lily’s mom unexpectedly gave her a big, warm hug and told her she was proud of her. The dumpster company was scheduled to come get the dumpster soon, and that was that. Maybe if she just kept her head down and ignored the ghosts and their business, the ghosts would ignore her, too. Maybe her parents had been right. Pretend to be normal long enough, and you start to believe it yourself.
That night, everything seemed a little brighter. Lily’s mom was in a good mood after a great day at work. Her dad’s job was going well, and he actually seemed to be tuned in at dinner. Her mom had finally decided where Lily would be going to school and had printed out some info at work. There wasn’t a drama club, but there was a spring musical and even a small stage in the cafeteria. Lily took all this good news as a sign. Things were going to be okay. Period.
She went to sleep feeling content and optimistic.
But when she woke up in the middle of the night, something was very, very wrong.
It was too dark.
The room felt crowded, full of rustling, looming shadows, the air thick with rot.
She wasn’t in her bed.
Whatever she was lying on felt soft and damp and spongy.
Nearby, someone sighed.
And it wasn’t either of Lily’s parents.
She heard something move, heard a subtle click, and white-blue light filled the space as an old TV turned on to a dead channel. She was in the den downstairs, but it was full of towering piles of junk and garbage again, exactly the same as the day they’d moved in. The only difference was that the couch where she was lying was cleared off, and both of the big recliners were in their places, their backs turned to her. The stacks of boxes and bags loomed around her like the skeletons of a destroyed city. It felt like something out of a zombie movie, when there’s nothing left of the human race but bones and rotting towers.
Someone cleared their throat, and one of the recliners slowly swiveled to face her with a rusty creak. Sitting in the chair, his face a collection of hideous crags and cracks in the shifting gray light, sat an old man.
The old man looked like he was dead.
His skin was thick and grayish, pulled tight over his bones and then hanging like melted wax. His eyes, perhaps once a bright blue, were opaque white and wet where they peeked out from under drooping eyebrows with long white hairs that waved in the air like antennae. He wore baggy pajama pants, a faded ball cap, and the sort of slippers everyone gave to grandpas they didn’t know well. His white T-shirt was stained yellow like the ones she’d cleared out of the laundry room, but was stuck to his body by seeping patches that looked like pus. She wanted to scream and run away, but she was frozen in place. Her eyes were the only things she could move, but try as she might, she cou
ldn’t close them.
She knew immediately that this was Brian, the man from the photo album and the spirit that had spoken to her and Rachel through the Ouija board. Despite her terror and inability to move, he didn’t feel mean, like he wanted to hurt her. He just seemed sad.
“Been waiting for you,” he said, his voice gravelly and deep and tired, tinged with a Southern drawl and accented with a wheeze.
“You have?” she asked, as her tongue had finally come unglued from her mouth. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
He shook his head. “Nice try, but screaming won’t save you. We got to talk.”
For several minutes they sat there in silence. The old man’s eyes were dead white with no pupils, but it seemed like he was focusing on something far away. There was no sound except for the ever-present hum of the orchestra of frogs, bugs, and night birds that seemed to never simmer down in a Florida summer, and the quiet rustling of the bags and cardboard around her, kissed by roach feet and the soft, furry bodies of spiders.
“What’s happening?” Lily finally asked.
The old man cleared his throat. It was a wet, sick sound, his breathing pained and moaning. “You got Britney all riled up,” he wheezed. “And I can’t control her anymore. Never could, really. That child is like an August storm. You think it’s gonna be a nice, sunny day, but then everything goes real dark real fast, and you got no choice but to run for cover.”
Lily didn’t know what to say to this. She had never been accused—by a ghost—of upsetting another ghost, and she could no longer tell dream from real life.
“I’m sorry?” she tried.
He snorted. “Sorry ain’t gonna make things better.”
She tried something different. “You’re Brian, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. That’s me.” He nodded and adjusted his ball cap. The flash of scalp she saw underneath reminded her of rotten mushrooms caving in. “Now, I don’t mind you-all being here. I reckon somebody’s got to keep the place nice, no matter what Britney thinks. I was here a heck of a lot longer than she was, and it’s my place. Built it with my own two hands. I liked it quiet, but I don’t mind you folks. Britney’s another story, though.”
“What happened?”
Brian sighed heavily and resettled himself in the beat-up recliner. He didn’t seem like he was in a hurry, but Lily was beginning to feel like something bad was coming. She glanced to the front door, but it was obscured by piles of paper and cardboard. She wanted to check to see if it was locked. Then again, she knew that no lock could stop the truly scary things in life.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” Brian went on. “Don’t like to think about it. But I suppose somebody has to know what happened here. I bought this house to retire to. My wife was long gone—cancer—and our daughter, Melissa, had run off real young, made some mistakes in her life. Figured it would be nice and quiet here—do a little fishing, float in the pool, die in peace some day.”
He barked a laugh and blackish liquid leaked from the corner of his mouth.
“Which I did, outside of the peaceful part. But before that happened, the police showed up one day with a social worker and a little girl I’d never seen before, clutching a sad ol’ stuffed pink bunny. Said she was my granddaughter, and I was her closest remaining relative. She was only six, undersized and scrawny little thing, all scared and twitchy, weird and angry. Turns out she was Melissa’s kid and they’d been living out of her car, somewhere up in Georgia. Melissa got into some bad stuff and died, rest her soul, and so they came lookin’ for me.”
He paused to stare into the darkness like the news was on and he was waiting for the weather.
“So there I was, sixty-six and living off by myself for twenty years like a dang hermit when this messed-up little kid gets dumped on me. I didn’t know what to do. It was hard, taking her out in public—her mama had made her odd. Didn’t know how to act around people. She’d grab stuff she wanted and hiss if you tried to take it back. Real territorial. Never would let go of that dang bunny and wouldn’t let me wash it. Filthy thing. But she needed stuff, and I had my computer, so I just started ordering clothes and whatever. It was just us and Amazon.” He held out an arm and gestured to the room beyond, and Lily finally understood why the house was heaped in cardboard boxes.
“I sent her to school, but she was always in trouble. Couldn’t cooperate, didn’t want to do what anybody said. They put her in special needs classes, and she got better. Learned how to read and got good at it. Her teacher recommended I get her a dog, kinda like a helper. Something to love, some way to reach her. So we got Buddy.” He reached down between his leg and the recliner and held out the now-familiar collar, the tags winking in the TV’s gray light. “And it worked. She finally let go of her bunny to play with Buddy. He was a good boy. But he wasn’t a trained dog, you know. He was just a friend. I thought I could count on ’im to keep an eye on her.” He sighed sadly.
“One summer morning I woke up around eleven—I always slept in late—and she didn’t come down for lunch. I hollered upstairs but she didn’t answer. Even hobbled on up there, which was hard for me, with my knees, but she wasn’t in bed. I checked all the rooms—it wasn’t like this then. I kept up with the trash, put the boxes in the recycling like you’re supposed to. Kept things clean. Even checked that little crawl space outside that she liked to play in. Nothing. Then I noticed Buddy standing out on the dock. Dog was dripping wet and staring at the water, barking and growling and whining.”
Lily could feel the story going bad, and she wanted it to change, but it was like trying to stop an eighteen-wheeler barreling right at you at full speed. She’d felt this way back in Boulder, the night that everything had gone wrong, like she was starring in the play but someone else was directing, and they’d changed the ending on her mid-monologue. All she could do now was lie there, waiting, helpless to stop what was coming.
Brian took a deep breath, and his eyes blinked a few times and leaked a little fluid.
“I went on out, and there she was. Just a-floating in the lake, facedown, dead and still.”
Lily tried to imagine what that would be like and couldn’t. She had never seen a dead body—not counting Brian, right now—and had only been to one funeral. She pictured this old man and Buddy out on the dock on a summer morning, seeing…something truly horrible. She tried to speak, to offer condolences, but it was as if the dream had stolen her tongue again, or perhaps Brian’s emotions overpowered everything else.
“I called nine-one-one, and they sent out ambulances and a fire truck and police, all that. I didn’t know what had happened. It made no sense. The child swam like a fish. I taught her myself. She spent every day playing in that pool, back when it was shiny blue and pretty. She loved to sit on the bottom and hold her breath and look up at the sky.” His voice was shaking now. “I know it sounds like she was trouble, and she was, but it wasn’t her fault she was that way. I loved her, fierce critter that she was. When they fished her out of the water and put her in a body bag, I had me a heart attack. Keeled over right by the dock.”
He exhaled like the hard part of the story was over.
“They took her to the morgue and me to the emergency room. Doctors gave me a bunch of prescriptions, told me I had to take better care of myself or I’d have another heart attack, a worse one. But that child took the last of my heart with her. I came back home and never saw a doctor again. Quit going out. Just ordered whatever I needed on the computer. Let things stack up. It was my time to go, nothing left for me here. I wanted to die.
“And I did. Right here in this chair.”
He pushed the recliner up to sitting and put his feet on the floor, leaning forward to get Lily’s attention. She was stuck to the couch, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. She felt like a broken doll, cracked and cold. The hairs along the back of her neck rose, and goose bumps raced up he
r arms and legs. Lightning flashed through the heavy white curtains, and thunder boomed, and Lily could feel the pressure in the air, bearing down as if something was coming. Coming to get her.
“But Britney don’t rest so easy. And I’m sorry, but since she couldn’t make you leave, she’s got somethin’ else in mind. And I can’t help you.”
Thunder boomed again. The lights went out. The TV went black.
The only sound was the doorknob turning.
25.
Terror exploded in Lily’s heart, and she bolted to her feet. Whatever hold Brian’s ghost had exerted over her was gone. She was no longer frozen. Maybe, like with the Ouija board, Britney had driven him away. Thanks to the darkness, Lily couldn’t see if the recliner was empty or not, but whatever was left of him, Brian was on his own.
With the room pitch-black and still full of towers of newspaper and cardboard and garbage bags, Lily didn’t know where to go. If she tried to maneuver through the labyrinth, she would knock things over, shove things—and make noises that would lead straight to her. She wanted to hide, but she knew that this place was Britney’s more than her own, and wherever she went, Britney would follow.
The door squeaked open.
“I told you to go away.”
The voice came from the open door. Britney sounded so young but so hurt and angry. Lily almost answered her, almost apologized and promised she would leave, even though she had no way to make it happen. But if she spoke, Britney would know where she was. She dropped to her hands and knees on the dusty wooden floorboards.
“I told you to leave Buddy alone. But you kept trying to take my stuff. My dog. My room. Mine. So you’re gonna be mine, too.”
Quietly, Lily scurried over behind the recliner, which was closer to the door. She heard squelching footsteps crossing the boards. Her mind showed her images of a drowned little girl, purple lips and gray-white skin stretched and bloated. She imagined black holes where eyes should be, where crows and vultures had plucked away the squishy whites. She imagined hair laced over with algae and water weeds. Her breathing sped up, and her heart pounded, and she started to go dizzy and numb. She had never felt so hopelessly trapped.
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