The Dead Friends Society, page 18
He slid the Blu-ray back with a twinge of loathing, resenting that the world kept turning, and kept filling with movies he would never get a chance to see. He ran a hand over the spines of all the Blu-rays, fanning them out and speed reading the titles. Each one was a little dagger in his heart. He knew it was stupid that discovering a box full of movies is what finally made the passage of time hit him so hard, but he didn’t care. It was fucking bullshit that he’d never get to see these movies, it was total fucking bullshit that— Wait? Is that Toy Story 4? Eli picked up the sequel’s Blu-ray, marveling at the quality of CGI in the tiny screenshots on the back.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said, and all of a sudden, the Blu-ray went from weighing practically nothing to being heavier than a station wagon. Eli could barely process it before Toy Story 4 dropped out of his hand. Then a scream came from the staircase. He flipped his head around to find Abbey and her friend staring in his direction.
“Shit. Shitshitshit.”
He ran to the far side of the living room and ducked to hide from their cameras. Eli scrunched up his body as small as he could and crossed his fingers that he wouldn’t cause more trouble than they were already in. He really didn’t want to disappoint Rose. He’d been so stupid to let himself get distracted by goddamned movies.
Wes carefully slid his hand out from Javier’s. He waited anxiously to see if it would wake the man up, but Javier remained steadfast asleep. Wes leaned over, his face inches from Javier’s. He could see the sides of Javier’s nose vibrate as he snored, and marveled at how such a small, ordinary nose could make such a godawful, bone-rattling sound.
Wes pinched Javier’s nose shut, sealing off his air supply. The snoring stopped, and Wes soaked up the silence until Javier’s mouth dropped open and he began sucking in air again. Wes clamped his free hand over Javier’s mouth, shutting off his breathing entirely.
It only took seconds for Javier’s body to start shaking. Wes might not have been able to wake the man up before, but oxygen deprivation certainly did the trick. Javier’s eyes flew open, and he started pawing at his nose and mouth, trying to stop whatever was suffocating him. Javier’s hands passed through Wes's ghost body. The sensation made Wes's skin crawl, but he refused to give up. He didn’t know if Javier could see him right now or if the old fart could only feel him, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the fear in Javier’s eyes as he realized something was choking him.
Wes closed his own eyes and imagined the wall in the basement, imagined rot coursing across it, tearing apart the barrier between the house and whatever laid beyond. Javier started thrashing, but Wes ignored the dying man, picturing only the rot and the freedom it would bring. It would be over soon enough. Just a few more seconds and he’d be able to go check the wall in the basement. And if Javier proved to be too small of a sacrifice to tear it down, Wes was positive the two teen girls would take care of the rest.
Abbey and Willa stood on the staircase, staring at a copy of Toy Story 4 that had seemingly just thrown itself out of a box. After Willa stopped screaming, the two shared a stunned silence. This wasn’t like the game with the lamp. The light would only ever turn off when she was looking in the other direction, so Abbey hadn’t seen any light switches flipped. But Toy Story 4 floating in the air and then falling to the floor? Yep, that was some straight up Poltergeist shit. On the other hand, the Pixar movie just happened to be one of her and her mom’s favorite movies. That couldn’t be a coincidence, right?
“I want to go home,” Willa demanded.
“Right now? Are you serious, Wills? We just saw—”
“I want to go home.”
“We can’t give up now. Let’s just find your phone and—”
“Abbey, I want to get out of this fucking devil house right fucking now. So, are you going to wake up your dad, or am I?”
Abbey starred at Willa. She’d never seen her act this way before. Willa was one of the most indecisive people she’d ever met, so for her to be so forceful was a big deal. It was as if Willa had barreled through a tunnel of fear and came out the other side having discovered a resolve she’d never known; or at least never let Abbey see before. Abbey sensed there was no use arguing about it. She couldn’t talk Willa into going along with her after this. She was done. The house was haunted AF. Period. End of story.
“I’ll go wake him up.” Abbey said and reluctantly headed back up the staircase.
The master bedroom was only a few feet from the top of the stairs, which didn’t give her much time to figure out how she was going to spin this to her dad. Hey, uh, Dad, I know it’s the middle of the night on the first night in our house, but it’s totes haunted so Wills needs you to drive her home. Is that cool? Kthx. He’d warned Abbey that her friends might treat her differently if they bought the house, but she’d brushed it off. The murders here didn’t scare her. The idea of living somewhere with such a wild history was exciting to her, though now didn’t seem like the best time to admit that much to Willa.
Abbey knocked softly on Javier’s door. “Hey, dad? I’m coming in.” She cracked the door, poking her head in first to make sure he was still in his pajamas. Then she screamed.
Eli sighed when the girls went upstairs to get the dad, but found his relief short lived when Abbey started screaming “Dad! Dad!” Eli didn’t know what was wrong, but his gut knew Wes was responsible. His imagination tortured him with a slideshow of things Wes could be doing to that nice, innocent man.
Eli raced to the second floor but hung back at the door to the master bedroom. It was wide open, the lights had been flipped on, and he hesitated to rush in. If the girls were still waving that damned camera around, they could see him.
The girls shouted for Javier to talk to them, but all Eli could hear was a muffled response. He took a deep breath — Rose would be pissed if they spotted him, but so be it — and peeked around the corner to discover a mind-melting scene of universes colliding.
Willa was in the corner of the room, asking over and over if she should call the police. Javier was on the bed, his arms thrashing wildly, his face and lips blue. Abbey was shaking his shoulders, as if trying to wake him from some horrible nightmare, even though his eyes were wide open and bulging out of his head.
None of them could see Wes pinning Javier down, his hands clamped over the man’s mouth and nose. But Eli could. He could also see Javier and Abbey’s arms passing through Wes, unable to fight off the invisible force. The blending of realities convinced him now, more than ever, their universes (the “umbral plane” as Rose had called it) were separate, and Wes had found a way to bridge the two.
“Wes, stop!” Eli shouted.
“Oh, hey buddy,” Wes looked at him with a maniacal smile twisting across his crooked face.
There was something about that smile that cut right through the thin fraternal bonds Eli still shared with Wes. He wasn’t looking at his brother. He was looking at a monster. A monster who had to be stopped. Eli was all instinct, no hesitation.
He ran at the bed, and while every instinct told him he was about to run straight into Abbey, he closed his eyes and pictured himself leaping not at her, but through her. Eli felt a strange sensation, like moving through a waterfall, and his eyes opened as he passed through Abbey and slammed into Wes, tackling him off the bed and onto the floor. Wes rolled like a test dummy thrown from a car crash. The back of his head hit the wall hard. Eli scrambled to his feet, towering over his older brother.
Wes tried to stand, but wobbled, dazed from his crash. He lurched up at Eli. “I’m gonna give you the ass whooping dad never did.”
“Fuck you, Wes! I can’t just stand by anymore. Not this time.”
Eli kicked Wes square in the chest. The blow knocked the wind out of him and sent Wes back on his ass, gasping for air just like Javier. Wes looked up at Eli, defiant but defeated.
Eli looked down at his brother, a dozen new afterlife theories swirling in his thoughts. He’d thought the rules were simple, that the ghost universe and the living universe couldn’t interact at the same time. Obviously, he was wrong about that but figuring the specifics out would have to wait. As he stared down at his whimpering, rage-filled brother, he wondered if the afterlife changed Wes or if this place set free what had always been inside him.
In the past, Eli could always excuse or forgive or simply refuse to admit how much darkness was in his brother. He chalked it up to the number his dad had done on Wes and assumed, perhaps naively, that as Wes grew up and lived a life free of their dad’s shadow, he’d mature. He’d stop acting like such an asshole and be the kind, decent person Eli had spent endless hours playing Sega with as a kid. But now that darkness was undeniable and Eli feared, perhaps selfishly, that no amount of mental gymnastics could excuse or forgive this.
Wes's head throbbed from smacking the wall. It was so simple to Wes, so obvious, and they were all so fucking stupid for not seeing that these people existed for them to sacrifice. He stared up at his little brother and felt sad. Eli was supposed to be the smart one, so why couldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t he see that Wes was doing them all a favor? “I’m opening the door, you dipshit.”
Eli still didn’t get it. He just stood there, huffing and puffing, and Wes realized his beanpole of a brother would never understand. Wes wasn’t being selfish; he was being a hero. He was just doing what the rest of them could only wish they had the balls to do. They were all trapped in this stupid fucking house and the only way out was to use these stupid fucking people who made the stupid fucking choice to move into this stupid fucking hellhole in the first place. The girls and the old man were asking for it. They might as well have been waving flags that read “Use us, Wes.”
“All you’re doing is hurting people,” Eli said.
Wes laughed. Long and hard. Eli told him to stop laughing, but Wes couldn’t help himself. Everyone was just so fucking stupid, even Daddy’s favorite little computer nerd.
“I said stop laughing,” Eli repeated.
Eli clenched his fist in a pitiful attempt to look like a Real Tough Guy. His brother could never pull off that look. He just didn’t have it in him, and the idea that Eli, of all people, would stop Wes, made him laugh and laugh and laugh. That’s when Wes noticed Willa looking his direction, paranoia filling her preppy, pouty face. She could hear him. Soon enough she’d be able to feel him.
Wes slowed his laughter as he stood up.
“What are you doing?” Eli asked, but Wes ignored him. He couldn’t take his eyes off Willa, and even though he didn’t think she could see him yet, he knew she sensed him. He just needed to get closer, needed to touch her like he’d touched Javier and Abbey. Wes brushed past Eli.
“Wes! What the hell are you doing?” Eli shouted. Wes didn’t bother looking back at him. He was doing something Eli would never be man enough to do.
But Wes should have looked back. If he had, he might have seen Eli’s surprisingly powerful right hook sailing toward the side of his already pounding head. Instead, all he saw was Willa disappearing into a narrowing tunnel of darkness as Eli’s sucker punch knocked him unconscious.
Javier thought he was in a dream within a dream. That was the only explanation that made a lick of sense. In this dream, he’d woken up unable to breathe, with an invisible force clamping his nose and mouth shut. Once he woke up from the dream-within-a-dream, everything would be okay. Only, he wasn’t waking up. No matter how much he clawed at whatever was on his face, no matter how much he pounded on his chest trying to give himself the Heimlich, he wasn’t waking up. He was dying. Slowly. Painfully. But then his dear, sweet Abigail ran to his side, an angel out of the darkness, and seconds later his lungs filled with air.
“Dad! Dad, what the hell happened to you?”
“Do you need me to call the police, Mr. Moreno?” Willa asked from the corner, her hands shaking. She held her phone out, eager to dial.
“No, no, no. Don’t call 911.”
“Are you sure, dad? It looked like you were having a fucking heart attack,” said Abbey.
“Watch your language.”
“Watch my fucking language?” Abbey laughed. She slapped him playfully on the chest. “Watch your fucking heart, dad. I can’t lose you, too.”
Those last words stung Javier. He sat up, slowly, rubbing his face, stretching it out. His jaw and chest were sore, but his heart felt fine. Sure, it was still pounding, but that was reasonable all things considered. He tried to remember a checklist of heart attack symptoms, but all that came to mind was your left arm was supposed to tingle. He flexed his arms and hands. Nothing was tingling.
“I’m not having a heart attack, girls.”
“Then what the hell was that?”
Javier shook his head, unsure how to describe it. Abbey turned to Willa. “Willa, gimme your phone. I’m calling 911.”
Javier shouted “No!” a bit louder than intended and both girls flinched. All he wanted to do was calm them down, reassure them that everything was okay. The truth was he needed to reassure himself that everything was okay. He was feeling better by the second, but that still didn’t explain what happened to him.
“You need an ambulance, dad.”
“I’m not paying an arm and a leg for a stupid ambulance, Abbey.” Javier could feel himself growing hot in the face. He didn’t mind talking about money in front of his daughter — he prided himself on being an open book with her, especially after everything that happened with Lora — but he didn’t like to do so in front of one of Abbey’s friends. It was already bad enough that he felt awkward every time he drove his crappy pick-up to Willa’s fancy McMansion to pick up Abbey, but he wanted that to stay his problem, not his daughter’s.
“What I mean is, if I need to see a doctor, I can drive myself. But the fact that I can drive myself means I don’t. Right?” Javier stood, stretching further, trying to reassure the girls how normal everything was. He wasn’t going to tell them his chest ached, but that’s because he could tell it wasn’t a heart attack. It wasn’t an internal pain. It felt like he’d been hit with a baseball bat. “It was probably just sleep apnea or something.”
Abbey rolled her eyes, waiting for a better answer.
“Or, what’s that thing? Where your mind wakes up before your body does?” Javier asked.
“Sleep paralysis,” Willa answered. Abbey shot her a you’re-not-helping look. “What? That’s what it’s called. I saw a documentary about it.”
Javier latched onto Willa’s suggestion. He pointed at her like she’d just answered right on Jeopardy. “See, Abs? Sleep paralysis. That’s all it was.”
“Bullcrap.”
“Bulltrue.” Javier countered playfully. “What are you two girls doing here anyway?”
Both the girls grew quiet, their eyes darting back and forth, having the kind of looks-only, telepathic conversation teen BFFs were adept at. The silence grew awkward, but Javier knew better than to guess what the problem was. He’d been burned too many times in the past trying to guess what had gotten them into a M-O-O-D. His default response was “Is it boys?” (It was never boys.)
Willa stepped forward. “I’ll be honest, Javi, I got a little spooked and I really just kind of… could you take me home?”
“Did something happen?”
“No, no, no, nothing like that. I just…” Willa shot Abbey an apologetic look. “I just get scared easily, and with this house’s history and all… I just... I’d like to sleep in my own bed tonight, if that’s okay. And if I call my mom to wake her up—”
“She’ll never let her come back.” Abbey finished. “You know how Mrs. Gordon gets.”
Willa, not wanting to be the one to bad mouth her own mom, screwed her face up into a sort of frown with raised eyebrows that looked like a bad Robert DeNiro impression. Javier wanted to laugh at it but knew better. Now wasn’t the time. He stared at the pair of them. One of ‘em was lying, he just couldn’t tell which one. Abbey rocked back on her heels slightly, looking embarrassed and desperate for the whole conversation to be over. Javier sighed.
“Sure. I can take you home. Just give me a minute. I just had a heart attack after all.” Abbey’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped. “Kidding! I’m only kidding!” Another dad joke grand slam. Nailed it.
Chapter 26
Rose and Drew had been arguing in circles while keeping their eyes on the rotting wall. It bubbled and spread like lava after Eli left the basement. Thankfully, it settled down before the holes became large enough for The Fireman to fit through. It was the one reason Rose was glad The Fireman was so enormous.
“We can’t just wait here for him to pop back out again like we’re playing fucking whack-a-mole,” Drew said.
“I know that, but we also can’t just go climbing in there, looking for a fight.” Rose said, hoping Drew wouldn’t point out the fact that they could fit through the largest of the holes. It’d be a tight squeeze, but not an impossible one. Either way, Rose wasn’t super jazzed about the idea of worming her body through a hole in the wall and into the hollow side. She was pretty sure she knew what laid beyond there, and it wasn’t some crawlspace the previous owners had patched over. It was the rotten soul of the house. It was the same black void in which she’d found The Fireman earlier. Visiting it on a psychic level had been bad enough. Rose wasn’t eager to step her actual feet in it.
“Can we seal it up?” Drew asked, though even she didn’t seem too confident about that idea. A new layer of drywall wasn’t going to keep him out. The rot would eventually eat through it, too. But… an idea formed in Rose’s mind.
“I think I might know what to do,” Rose said, her mind racing, trying to think if she could pull this off — if she even knew how to pull it off…
“Talk me through it, Rose,” Drew said.
