The Dead House - Kurtagich Dawn - Страница 28

I reached for the handle and gave a push, and the door creaked forward with an eerie whine that echoed around the room. The house was bare, unfurnished and covered with a film of dust, velvety thick. Desolate leaves—the remnant of an autumn long past—breezed their lonely way along the floor, carried by the dank, rotten air. A giant chandelier in the wide entryway hung on an ominously rusty chain, draped with cobwebs that even the spiders had long abandoned. There was a looming sense of emptiness about the place. Even the mildew smell seemed oddly distant and weak, like the remembrance of a scent.

And yet… somehow I sensed I wasn’t alone.

I climbed the rickety stairs to the first floor, feeling more vulnerable and naked than I had outside, each foot tentative on the warping, decayed wood. I was momentarily afraid I’d fall through the floor into some pitch-dark basement with no doors.

The second story was just as gray and foggy as outside, and I half-expected to hear thunder rumbling through the ceiling. It was oppressively small, with long, narrow corridors that seemed endless and labyrinthine, punctuated by ancient and blackened candle sconces.

I felt a sudden yearning for Carly, so powerful that it hit me like physical pain. I called her name. “Carly? Are you here?”

I wanted her to answer. I was terrified when she didn’t.

I was so alone. Too alone.

Something subtle seemed to move behind the wall, and I stepped hesitantly closer, not entirely sure I wanted to look.

It wasn’t a wall at all, but a mirror covered in a coating of dust so thick that it looked like wallpaper. A smoggy version of my face stared back at me, wide-eyed. I wiped away the dust, leaving a gleaming streak of polished silver in the wake of my hand.

This reflection was not me.

The eyes were no longer clear and blue; one was bloodshot with a blown pupil that made it look entirely black, and the other was a faded gray—dreary, like everything in this forgotten place. A cheap imitation of blue. They were pitiless, unseeing eyes, wide with malice, the whites yellow and full of bile. Her skin, stretched tightly over her skeletal frame, tinged a yellow-gray as she leered, black liquid congealing out of a mouth that was too large as it grinned.

“Me,” she gurgled, and the black liquid seemed to emulsify as it fell from her cracked, red lips and landed on the floor in gobbets of mush.

It was the girl. The one who has been watching me. But she was rotting. Or was it Carly? I didn’t know. I still don’t know.

I took a startled breath. “Who—”

Without warning, her smile vanished, replaced with a garish scowl, teeth bared, her eyes flat and dead, but wide and manic. She reached out—through the mirror—and grabbed my throat. I felt her broken nails dig into my skin.

“Me!” she screamed.

I fell backwards; the thing dragged out of the mirror with me, and I saw that she was nothing more than a shredded stump of a torso—her legs and pelvis were gone, leaving ribbons of fatty tendons and muscle. Her half body thumped the floor wetly. I managed to wrench myself free and run farther into the house, along a dark narrow corridor and towards a wooden door that stood apart, brand-new, surreal, and gleaming in the dilapidated abode. I heard the girl dragging herself along the floor after me, her long nails clawing at the splintered wooden panels. I glanced back once, saw her hand extended, her mouth a yawning black hole, and screamed. There was no echo.

I burst through the door and found myself stumbling into the foggy evening, gulping down gasps of brine-tinged air.

Behind me the house stood suddenly far away, watching me. Now I could see that it sat on a hill, and both hill and house were on the verge of crumbling over a precipice into a cankerous sea far below in that slow, fuggy way of dreams I’ve read about so often.

The sea wanted the house.

The house wanted me.

The girl was nowhere to be seen, and I felt more alone than I have ever felt, even in the oblivion of nonexistence.

Later, Attic

Dee, I had a dream. A nightmare. A house. A dead freaking house. I felt that house like it was a part of me… God, it was so real.

Something else.

A deep, black stillness has come over me, Dee. Slowly, like time itself is bending around me, decaying at the edges. Nothing seems real. Still nothing from Carly in the Message Book, even though I wrote out what Lansing told me… the lie. But nothing, no reply.

Something is wrong.

I scoured the room looking for tiny squares of purple—jeans, no; dresser, no; bathroom mirror; nothing. And then—I found one! On the corkboard over our desk. Except… it was my note. The one I left her yesternight, the one that said No note?

Still there. Completely untouched.

What the hell is going on? I feel sick, Dee.

I pulled out my Post-its and scribbled a message for Carly with shaking fingers: “Are you okay? Why didn’t you write me? Is Lansing right? Am I hurting you by writing to you? Please tell me.”

Having no sign of Carly makes me feel exactly as I did in the dream—terrified and alone. Even though I’ve never seen or spoken to my sister, she is always there in her scribbles and in the evidence of her movements by the little acts of kindness—a new book, a folded sweater—that she leaves behind. But this morning, our room looked unchanged, and I suppressed a shudder at the nothingness I felt in the pit of my gut.

Just like at the end of my… nightmare.

I still feel it now.

Maybe she was busy. Maybe she needed time to process the anniversary. Maybe she went to talk it over with Naida.

I’m going to check.

[If Kaitlyn went to talk to Naida, no record of the conversation has been found.]

38 81 days until the incident

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Saturday, 13 November 2004, 9:00 pm

Attic

Still nothing from Carly. Dee, what’s happening?

4 blue pills

12 white pills

32 yellow capsules

How many should there be? I don’t know. I should have been counting!

She discarded me directly in bed, and it was warm, the mattress soft—as though she’d been lying there for a while. I went straight to the Message Book, a dead, horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what I expected. A note telling me she was actually doing better? That she and Lansing agreed on her treatments? That Lansing was trying another trick on us?

All I got were white pages with nothing in them. My own message glared at me with amusement and derision, and I suddenly felt panicked. Where is Carly? Why hasn’t she written to me?

I’ve always heard her words, even though I was only reading them, because without them, the silence feels deep and dangerous.

I hear Aka Manah sniggering somewhere in the shadows.

“Go away,” I tell him. “Leave me alone.”

But his breathy sounds seem only closer.

Later

I picked up the phone, even. I was going to call Dr. Lansing. The closest thing I have left to a parent. I picked up the phone… almost dialed the number. Hung up.

What could she do except tell me I was “integrating”? That I shouldn’t be afraid?

She lost my trust long ago, when she first called me a symptom. And now I have nowhere to turn.

The girl is here. So thin, so painfully thin. She is grinning even though her yellow hair falls like spiderwebs into her waiting hands.