by Val Crowe
I didn’t respond.
“Now that Kadan’s in my life, things are different. I want that for you. I want you have to someone who needs you, and someone you need in return. I want you to have—”
“I have that,” I said. “I have you. I have my mom. I…” I have Mads.
Wade nodded slowly, but he didn’t say anything.
It sounded like a pathetic list, really. And I didn’t actually spend a lot of face time with either Wade or my mother, admittedly. I was on my own a lot. But Mads was there. I wasn’t alone.
“What do you even know about her?” said Wade. “Who was she before she died?”
Hadn’t I just been wondering about Mads’s other life?
But before I could say anything, she was there. She appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, looking a little bit breathless and ready to get moving.
“The gun’s in the basement,” she said. “Kadan doesn’t know any more than that. He saw Tex take it down there, and when he came back upstairs, he didn’t have it.”
“Well,” I said. “It’s better than nothing.”
“What’s better than nothing?” said Wade. He looked around. “What? Is she in here now? Man, give a guy a little warning, why don’t you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I parked my truck in the driveway of the Sanford House that afternoon. I’d been on the phone with Wren on the way over. She was still having contractions, but she was insistent that she wasn’t going back to the hospital without Philip. She’d told her sister that he was stuck in an airport across the country, his flight delayed. She had claimed he was on his way.
So, no pressure or anything. I needed to get into the house and find the gun and get Philip out…
I mean, I guessed I should probably find Philip first, right? Get him out of there, and get him to the hospital to be with his wife. If he was free of the house, he’d be safe.
I hoped so, anyway. I hoped that spirits in the house hadn’t permanently attached to him.
I wasn’t even sure if that could happen, but I had been at this long enough to know that I couldn’t expect to know anything about what might happen. Anything was possible, no matter how horrible it was to imagine.
I thought of dragging Philip out of the house and unleashing him on his newborn child while he was still in the grip of the violent spirits that had latched onto him.
No, I couldn’t let that happen.
I would look first for the gun.
Slamming the door to the truck, I surveyed the house, which stood imposingly over me, glaring down in the afternoon sunlight. Something about the house was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t know if the house looked different than it had before, or if it simply felt different.
Ripples of dread traveled up my arms as I gazed up at the monstrosity of a building. It seemed too awful to call it a house anymore. Houses were places of comfort and this was a place of something far worse.
“Mads?” I whispered.
“Yes,” she said, and she was next to me, only she seemed insubstantial.
“I’m going to the basement first,” I said.
She didn’t respond.
“I know that Wren wants me to get Philip, but I can’t go after him and drag him out. I need to resolve everything first. And then, only when I’m positive that the spirits are gone, only then can I chance taking him to Wren and the baby. It’s my responsibility. I let this out.”
“You can’t go in there with any guilt,” she murmured. “It’ll use it.
I swallowed. She was right. I shut my eyes and I made myself hard inside. I didn’t care who was dead or how they had gotten that way. I didn’t give a flying fig about Wren’s unborn child. None of that mattered.
Then, squaring my shoulders, I made my away across the lawn toward the house, which seemed to take up too much of the horizon, which seemed to slant at an unnatural angle against the blue sky.
When I climbed onto the porch, the front door opened on its own. The knob turned and the door creaked a little as it swung wide for me.
The house wanted me. Of course it did. The ghosts always wanted me. They wanted to feed.
I stepped across the threshold, steeling myself for some kind of attack. They might come at me from any direction, and I had to be ready to evade them. If they fed on me, I would be out cold for who knows how long. I couldn’t afford that. Wren needed me to do this as quickly as possible.
But the house was still.
Too still.
There should have been the movement of air, a breeze coming in from the open door or particles of dust floating in the air or something. But nothing seemed to move. It was stale and pristine inside, like it had been vacuum-sealed.
The door shut behind me on its own.
The loud sound echoed through the house.
I flinched against my will.
But if the ghosts weren’t coming for me, there was no reason to linger. I started through the living room towards the kitchen. I didn’t look at anything, just put my head down and used my shoulders to push through, like a linebacker. I would get to that basement and find that gun and stop all this.
I got to the kitchen and barreled across the room to the door to the steps. I hurled it open.
And on the other side, I did not find steps.
Instead, I opened a door onto the the interior of the Airstream camper.
I looked behind myself into the kitchen and tried to back up. I didn’t want to be led on some wild goose chase. The house was trying to get me away from the gun…
But if I’d opened the door to the basement, then I was in the basement, right? This was a trick.
I shut my eyes, and thought, Not real, as hard as I could.
When I opened my eyes, I was still in the Airstream, only the door behind me was closed, and I couldn’t get back out. I banged on it, muttering a few swear words.
A soft moan from behind me.
I turned, and I saw myself and Mads on the mattress in my camper against the far wall. We weren’t wearing any clothes.
Mads was straddling me, and I was lying under her, my head thrown back, my eyes closed. I was gasping.
Something pulled me closer to the tableau, which felt oddly as though I was intruding on someone else’s private moment, except for that fact that it was mine. It was mine and Mads. And it couldn’t happen anyway, not like this, because she didn’t have a body.
Mads was undulating against me, moving up and down in a slow rhythm, and she was moaning in time to the movement of her hips and thighs.
I kept moving closer, floating through the air, drawn toward it.
Soon, I was right next to the bed, and I could see myself, and the face I was making was less than flattering, and I felt acutely uncomfortable. I had an odd thought that I couldn’t figure out why people filmed themselves having sex, because I was pretty sure I was never going to be able to have sex again without feeling really self-conscious about—
That was when I saw Mads’s face.
Well…
Her lack of a face.
It was impossible to describe what was there. Her hair blew back from a formless void of nothingness. Except… it wasn’t nothing. I peered into it, and there was something in there. Something that splashed and slithered and beckoned. It was laughing.
I couldn’t breathe.
I was falling into it, and it was hideous, and—
“Deacon.”
Something slapped my face.
I came to, lying on the steps down into the basement, gasping.
Mads floated over me, her expression concerned.
I looked into her eyes, and they glittered.
I shuddered. “Did you hit me?” How had she made contact with my skin?
“You need to wake up. He’s coming,” she said.
I struggled to sit up.
And that was when Philip rushed up the stairs at me, cackling maniacally.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Phil
ip slammed into me, driving me back into the steps.
The hard wood smacked into my back in three different spots, and it hurt. I tried to wriggle out from under him.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and he breathed into my face. His breath was hot and fetid. He was laughing, and he didn’t sound like Philip or Tex or anything human. He bent his forehead to mine.
He was going to try to feed on me. Oh, hell, no.
I wrenched my body sideways, pulling something in my back that protested at the sharp pain, but I got my face away from his. Now, twisting, I grabbed at the steps and yanked, trying to tug my body upwards.
No good.
He was pinning my lower half to the steps.
“Hold still,” he said, his voice grating and odd. “I need to get into you.”
I tried to kick him, tried to move my knee or my foot, but I couldn’t. He was holding me in place. And the way that I had twisted my body was sending sharp, shooting pains up and down me. I cried out in agony and frustration.
“Need to get through you,” he grunted. “You’re so bright. So sweet.”
“Philip, Wren’s in labor!” I gasped.
“We all want through, Deacon,” said Philip, except now it wasn’t Philip at all. It was a chorus of voices coming from Philip’s mouth. Distorted voices, all together. They didn’t sound human. They didn’t sound real. They were… they were wrong.
The sound of them made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and my insides turn wrong side out. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream.
“You’re the bridge. You’re the pathway,” sang the awful chorus.
I wrenched myself back around to face him. Now, he could get at my face, but I didn’t care. I needed to stop that noise from coming out of his mouth. It was going to drive me absolutely crazy. I couldn’t handle the sound of it. That sound shouldn’t exist. It couldn’t exist.
I dug my fingers into his face. My thumbs went into his mouth, my pinkies into his eye sockets. “Stop,” I said through clenched teeth. “Just stop.”
“Let us out,” said Philip, his voices mushed by my fingers in his mouth.
I tried to get my leg out from beneath him. This time I managed it. I put my foot against his chest and pushed.
He went tumbling down the steps, feet over his head.
He landed at the bottom, motionless, and he gazed up at me with wide, unseeing eyes.
“Fuck.” Had I just killed Philip? I dragged my hands over my face. I couldn’t handle this. I had to get out of here. I had to run. I was going to go and get in the Airstream and drive away, away from all of this.
But no.
I couldn’t. Because I would carry this guilt with me. It would come off me in waves. And I attracted spirits who would latch onto it, and bring it to life and play my failure for me over and over and over again.
I got to my feet. I was shaking. I managed to make my way down the steps and I knelt next to Philip. I grabbed his wrist.
He had a pulse.
I sucked in a breath through my nose and I stood up.
Okay, I needed to find this gun.
I took a step into the basement, and I staggered. The power down here was intense. This was the source of all of it. Why had I never come down into this basement before? Something must have been keeping me from it, cloaking the energy.
I could feel the energy’s source. It was coming out like a beacon from a spot across the room.
I started to walk towards it.
The basement was unfinished. It had a cement floor and naked bulbs burning above. The insulation in the ceiling wasn’t covered with anything. It was on display. There was a washer and dryer against one wall, a ratty rug in front of them. Shelves on one wall contained boxes. There was a peg board with tools hanging on it. Hammers, wrenches, garden shears.
Just a typical basement, but it was full of power.
I took shaking steps toward the power, and then I could feel that it was just above my head. It was up in the ceiling. I couldn’t reach, so I pushed a box over and stepped up on that. Then I pulled aside the insulation and found the gun.
It seemed to vibrate in my hands.
I wrapped my hands around it, and suddenly I wasn’t in the basement any longer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The bedroom.
The one upstairs that the Bentleys had turned into a nursery. It was dark inside, and I was in the middle of the room.
A crack of light under the door.
I turned toward it.
The crack of light widened as the door opened. “Cheyenne?” came Tex’s voice. “Where are you? You know I’m going to find you.”
In the shadowy light from the door, I saw Cheyenne sitting in the corner, hugging her knees to her chest. She was crying.
“Come on, babe,” said Tex. “I didn’t even hit you that hard. And besides, you know this can all stop. All you have to do is tell me where you hid it.”
She shook her head. “I’ll never tell you anything.”
He strode across the room to her and snatched her arm. He pulled her to her feet.
She let out a ragged sob. “Stop it, Tex.”
“I’m not the one in charge of stopping it,” he said in a soft voice, as if he was trying to reason with a particularly idiotic child. “You’re the only one who can do that. Tell me where it is and—”
“Never,” she said.
He sighed, and he let go of her arm. “Listen, Cheyenne—”
All of the sudden, Cheyenne made a break for it. She ran for the door, scrambling past Tex.
Tex, surprised, grabbed for her but was too late.
She slammed the door on him and hurried into the hallway. She ran to the door to Kadan’s room, and she shook him. “Come on, sweetheart, wake up.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Tex, coming out of the bedroom.
“Kadan and I are going to stay somewhere else tonight,” said Cheyenne.
“Like hell you are. You can’t leave me,” said Tex. “What will you tell people? What kind of lies are you going to tell them about me? Because if they knew the kind of horrible bitch you’re being, they would all side with me, and you know it.”
Kadan was getting out of bed. He looked terrified.
Cheyenne ignored Tex. “Let’s find you some socks and shoes, sweetheart,” she said to Kadan.
“But I’m in my pajamas,” said Kadan.
“That’s all right,” said Cheyenne. “We’ll get you other clothes in the morning.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” said Tex, folding his arms over his chest. “You can’t leave.”
Cheyenne was busy pulling socks out of Kadan’s dresser. “I had a copy made of the key to my car,” she said. “It’s fucked up that you insist on keeping my keys, Tex.”
“You did what?” Tex roared. “Every since you hid this from me, you’ve been acting so selfish. You don’t care anything about anyone except what you want. Well, maybe you want your keys, but you know that I get nervous when I don’t know where you are—”
“You’re going to be plenty nervous,” said Cheyenne, helping Kadan put his feet into his shoes. “Because you’re not going to have any idea where I am. I’m never going to tell you. And as for what I hid in this house, I don’t care anymore. You turn the place apart looking for it. I’d rather have my little boy and be away from you than to have—”
Tex hit Cheyenne, slamming his fist into her stomach. “Shut up,” he said. He was panicked, and his voice had taken on a whining quality.
Cheyenne bit back a cry of pain.
But Kadan yelled and started to sob.
“Shut up, you brat!” Tex screamed at Kadan. He stomped out of the room.
Cheyenne straightened, gasping.
“Where did he go, Mommy?” said Kadan.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Cheyenne. “Let’s just go.” She took Kadan by the hand and they hurried out into the hall. But when Cheyenne got to the top of the steps, she saw
that Tex was down at the bottom at the door.
He was holding a gun. He had it against his own temple. “Take one step, and I’ll blow my head off!”
Cheyenne stiffened.
“I know you don’t care about me anymore,” said Tex. “But do you want to kill me?”
“Tex,” said Cheyenne. “Put down the gun.” She took a step down, bringing Kadan with her.
“Stop!” screamed Tex. “If you keep coming, I’ll do it. I will. I love you, Cheyenne, but you hate me, and you’re killing me.”
Cheyenne squared her shoulders. Her voice came out low and even. “I do hate you,” she said quietly.
Tex’s eyes widened. Seeming to sense this ploy he was trying wasn’t going to work, he moved the gun, aiming it outward. “Okay, then, stop right there, or I shoot the brat.”
Cheyenne let out a tiny shriek of horror.
Tex laughed. “Yeah, that got your attention, didn’t it, bitch?”
Cheyenne was frozen, looking from Kadan to Tex and back again. “Okay,” she said in a quiet voice. “Okay, Tex, just calm down, all right?”
“Come down here,” said Tex. “You come down the steps, Cheyenne.”
“Sure,” said Cheyenne. “Just don’t hurt Kadan.”
“Come down the steps!”
Cheyenne started down the steps. “Don’t point it at him. Point it at me.”
Tex laughed.
“Just point it at me, please,” said Cheyenne.
“You can’t leave me, Cheyenne,” said Tex. “You have to understand that. You belong to me. You’re mine.”
“Okay,” said Cheyenne. “Whatever you say. Just please.”
“I’ll point it at you,” said Tex. “Sure.”
She reached the bottom of the steps.
Tex grabbed her, pulling her against his body. He wrapped his arm around her waist, his front to her back. He fitted the gun underneath her chin.
She cried out.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” said Tex quietly. “You’re going to leave me.”
“Tex, I’ll stay,” said Cheyenne. “Of course, I’ll stay.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Tex. “You’re just trying to stop me from hurting you or the brat. But the minute I’m not paying attention, you’ll sneak out. And I can’t have that. You don’t understand. You can’t do that to me. I need you.”