The Dead House - Kurtagich Dawn - Страница 63

John coughs, his lips rouge. Kaitlyn cries out once, then scrambles over to him.

“John—John—”

He coughs again, and a spray of blood follows, then a bubble of crimson pops on his lips. He is breathing very fast, and each exhale spills blood from his nostrils.

“Oh, my God, John, please!”

Kaitlyn grabs him as he collapses, his weight on top of her legs. Her cries die away as she watches him breathe, her hand pressed to the wound she created.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay.” Over and over, she says it. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to!”

His eyes stare as his breath quickens, and more and more blood spills from the wound in his neck. He twitches, twitches again, and Kaitlyn stifles a sob as she strokes his hair. It is a terrible, lengthy process, during which Kaitlyn watches, her face contorted.

Ari stirs, coughs, leaning over to gasp in desperate breaths. His eyes meet the scene in front of him just as John stops his desperate inhalations, seizes briefly, and then stills.

Kaitlyn’s lips tremble, and her eyes fill with tears.

Ari staggers to his feet and hurries over to the door. He swings it shut just in time to contain Kaitlyn’s scream, which lingers on and on, as she bends over John’s dead, bloodied body. When the scream ends, another takes its place, and another. She grips John’s shirt, now vividly scarlet, and Ari has to pry her fingers free.

She continues to scream.

One must wonder why, in all the minutes John lay dying, she didn’t call for help.

For several long minutes, Ari keeps guard at the door while Kaitlyn sits over John’s body, her whole frame a small, sunken heap. She is shaking.

“We need to do something,” Ari says quietly. He is hoarse. “Kait. We need to get rid of the body.”

Kaitlyn doesn’t stir.

“His body,” Ari says slowly. “We need to get rid of it.”

“I didn’t… mean to—”

“Kaitlyn. If they find him and see that knife—and your hand? They’ll lock you away for life.”

“Maybe they should.”

“Stop that. We’ll take him to the chapel. To the Forgotten Garden. We’ll bury him there with the graves. It’s more than five hours until sunup. We’ll make it.”

“I’m a… I stabbed…” Her words slur, and she begins to mumble incoherently.

Ari walks over to her and slaps her, hard. Her head is flung back with the impact, and she expels a tiny squeak.

“We—need—to—get—rid—of—the—body.” Ari enunciates each word. “The Forgotten Garden. We’ll bury him. I need your help.”

Kaitlyn peers up at him through her tears and nods. “The Forgotten Garden… okay.”

Ari helps her to her feet, and then they each grab one end of John; Kaitlyn takes his feet but drops them soon after, her arms shaking. It takes them five minutes to climb the stairs, Ari dragging most of John’s weight, at which point the motion-activated camera clicks off.

[END OF CLIP]

103

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Date, Time, and Location Not Noted

The smell is evolving—is that bad?

I closed my eyes to shut out the memories of my life, which now includes the hardest heartache ever experienced. I fell into sleep—sleep that still feels like falling. I fell into the dark, felt vaguely the moment when Ari left me to go to his dorm and clean John’s grave dirt from under his fingernails, and then I was fully asleep and in the Dead House, and all was silent. I sensed its emptiness like a weight—knew I was alone. Whatever darkness lingered before had now moved on.

Or maybe it only slumbered.

Or maybe it’s so much a part of me now that I can no longer distinguish it.

But the smell—that old mildew scent—had changed, deepened, turned into something like fine musk, and I liked it.

This was it, I knew. For if the house was empty, or sleeping, I had a chance to find the door.

Knowing that John was the Shyan didn’t make this easier, but at least it cleared the path. For, without the Shyan to lead and contain it, surely the Olen would subside into the fabric from which it had come. The fabric of time and space and a universe I could never understand.

I was angry not to have fought harder to locate Carly while she was still there, still a part of me. But if I could find the doorway that Haji spoke of, the one Carly had been dragged through, then I could go beyond and have a chance of finding her—maybe we were still linked by some invisible thread. The thread we had always taken for granted.

I tried not to dwell too hard on the thought that, if the Dead House was my mind, and I found the door… was I then going out of my mind? An unwelcome sensation like cold water trickling down my back and into my shoes came over me. But I had to go.

I wish you had been with me, Dee. You know, you and Ari are now my sole comforts.

I searched and searched, quietly at first. Haji had said we’d know the door when we found it. But I didn’t find it. On the ground level, I roamed rotting parlor, abandoned hall, decrepit foyer, and endless galleries. Upstairs, I searched each sweeping bedroom, which stood empty and uninviting; the leaves shuffled and whispered across the floor under the tread of my boots. I ventured up another level and found the attic, but a sign of any door that did not belong? Nothing.

Then, at last, down to the basement, at last, down to the basement, the only place I hadn’t yet searched. I stood at the door, pressed my ear against it, and there inside, I heard the dreadful sound of some large beast sleeping.

I didn’t understand. Why was it still there?

I strained to feel around the thing, hoping I might sense whether he was guarding something. Guarding the door. But I didn’t feel anything beyond the giant’s sleeping form. What shape it took, I have no idea, but as I was going to suck in my courage and slowly open the door—possibly creep around whatever lay there—a sensation of someone watching overcame me so suddenly that I turned.

And there she was. The dead girl, grinning at me as always, only her grin was sad and empty and more… sympathetic. But she was fading, Dee, as though some omniscient artist was erasing her in front of my eyes. And she was still dripping wet.

And that was when I knew what she had always been trying to tell me.

The Dead Sea.

The door.

The exit.

All this time, looking for a door, I had never once considered that it might not be a conventional entry point at all. As soon as this idea lit itself in my mind, a window to the right of me, a little way down a darkened corridor, bent and twisted itself into the shape of a door, just big enough for me to fit through.

I looked back at the girl, who was now no more than an outline; saw myself as I currently am—an emaciated thing, an empty vessel, a lost cause—and I smiled.

“Thank you. For telling me to escape Lansing. For giving me Carly’s journal. For showing me the way.”

She continued to grin as she faded away. Was she some residual part of Carly? Was she some unconscious part of my own mind—a bit of my sanity, slowly decaying until she had served her purpose? Was she you, Dee, leaving me? A warning of Carly slipping away? Or was she a little bit of mercy from God, who maybe hadn’t quite forgotten me in the shadows? I don’t think I’ll ever know.

I walked over to the little window-door calmly, stepped through into the outside and the awaiting mists, and heard the great rushing Dead Ocean.

Elmbridge’s roof seemed so small, compared with where I then stood, looking down over the edge of the crumbling cliff. I looked out at the raging waters, which crashed violently, but slowly, dark and fathomless.