One House Left, page 22
“If not you, then him,” Dad says, morphing into a version of Tyler with hollow eyes and teeth like crumbling stalactites.
Then the real Tyler is running to me, crying, telling me he won’t let me die too. He doesn’t see the jagged bottle, its shards cracking under his feet. He doesn’t see the arm pulled back like a slingshot. He doesn’t see our story shifting until it’s too late.
His hands clutch his chest and he stumbles but doesn’t fall. Instead, he sways on the spot, then turns his palms over and says, “Mom has all our handprints in lockets.”
He laughs to himself, then sits as I push against the wound.
“Sorry I couldn’t save you,” he says. “We should have done the Corpse’s Grip instead.”
He chokes on his chuckle while his heat fills my hands.
“At least our story won’t die,” he mutters. “We’re an urban legend now. We died on Murder Road.”
“No. We’re not dead yet.”
“Seb is.”
“But we’re not leaving him here. Right?”
“Whatever you say.”
Tyler’s eyelids flicker and I slap him across the face. “Stay awake.”
“I think I’m already asleep,” he whispers. “This feels like a nightmare.”
The glass covering the kitchen floor crackles as I rush across it, and then I hold one of the chairs over my head and slam it against the table. It shatters on the second swing and I frantically search for something the perfect size.
Shards pierce my skin as I push through the glass but the pain only drives me on. Then I’m sliding the thinnest strip of wood I can find into the frame of the cellar door, cursing when it breaks in two.
“There must be something!” I shout, running back into the corridor and smacking one of the thick chair legs against the boarded-up front door.
“Stop,” Tyler says. “Come here.”
“I can’t stop. You need help.”
“Then help me.”
Tyler’s outstretched arm falls to the floor and I crouch next to him, his fingers clammy and quivering, while ragged breaths fill the suddenly stifling air.
“I need you to remember some things,” he says, grunting as he wipes my tears away. “Just in case.”
“No.”
He laughs, then holds his chest. “You can’t say no. I need you to tell my family that I love them. Tell my sisters that I wouldn’t be the same without them, tell our parents they are legends, and tell my brothers…”
Tyler’s body judders then settles as he blinks hard and whispers, “Tell them I was planning on being the best big brother they could imagine.”
“You still will be.”
He laughs again, then shakes his head and says, “You don’t have to keep pretending, Max. I know what’s happening.”
I slide my hand out of his and run into the hallway, and then I scream until my throat is sore and my head is pounding.
I scream until Tyler’s eyes close and don’t open again.
I scream until there is nothing left to save.
Then I go to him, as faint mumbles dance across his lips, and I listen to whatever he wants to say.
There’s a thud somewhere deep in the house, then another.
I stand and wait for whatever comes next, because I’ll fight to the death if I have to.
There’s a crash and the shadows come again. It’s my father and one of his children, coming back for one last try. Then a face breaks through the gloom—an uncertain smile and a hand soft against my cheek.
“You’re safe now,” someone says, but I don’t believe them.
I hold Tyler until they gently release my fingers; then he is carried away by people with quick hands and quicker tongues.
“Are you hurt?” they ask, but I let them find out for themselves.
A small boy stands in the corridor, scuffed knees poking out of his shorts and sadness filling his washed-out face. His eyes slowly close and he turns away from me, his edges fraying then fading to nothing.
When I turn, I see a girl in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame and one leg swaying between outside and in, between safe and not.
I know her from somewhere. But she steps back as other people help me outside, into a gallery of sun-kissed collages, my eyes stung by the light.
As I sit on the sidewalk, strangers watching me from a safe distance, I remember Nate standing outside his old house and the girl who lives there now.
She waves before a man takes her hand and leads her away.
“It started with a bloodstained girl,” I say, to no one, to everyone.
I don’t know everything about Murder Road, but I do know that. And as I watch the person who might have saved me walk home, I wonder if it could have ended with a girl too.
Part
3
50
They take Seb out last, zipped inside thick black plastic.
They slide him into the back of an ambulance and gently push the doors shut, as if they are scared to wake him.
When they took Tyler away, the sirens blared. But Seb leaves in silence.
I study the people on the other side of the police tape, searching for two faces that I’m sure are long gone. Then I look for the girl who rescued us, even though I know she has already been ushered home, her parents desperately trying to erase what she saw before it stains.
I focus on the things I know, because everything else makes my head hurt.
“I can’t keep pulling dead kids from these houses.”
When I turn, two police officers are standing on the sidewalk, one of them giving me the death stare.
“When will they learn?” she asks. “How many times have we boarded up these places now?”
When her colleague doesn’t answer, she says, “This is the fifth time in less than three years. They should knock the whole damn street down.”
I study the ash-stained building that Rowan pulled those kids from, then the three directly next to it.
“Excuse me,” I say. “What exactly happened in those houses?”
One of the officers laughs as the other turns away. “Are you serious? Like you don’t know.”
“I’m sorry, but … I’m not sure I do. They were all abandoned, right?”
“Of course they were,” the officer says. “Eventually—too late, if you ask me—people realized that you didn’t risk living in the untouched houses.”
“Untouched?”
“Untouched by the Hiding Boy. But they still came. Some got out. Most didn’t. I guess now, if you believe the story, your friend was the final sacrifice.”
“Enough!” Her colleague pushes past, leans close to me, then whispers, “Why did you come here?”
“We were tricked … by Rowan Campbell and his brother.”
“Rowan Campbell? The hero of Cherry Tree Lane?” The officer shakes her head and chuckles. “I doubt that very much.”
I don’t argue with her. I’m too tired and too broken to start a pointless battle with a stranger. Instead, I try to make sense of one more thing.
“I always thought the deaths only happened on a specific date.”
“That used to be the case,” the officer replies. “But I guess something changed, because the last five houses, they’ve all become murder scenes in the space of three years. It’s out there, if you read the right reports. But whoever stirs this stuff online—they’ve muddied our facts with their fiction.
“I figured the last few victims knew the truth but came anyway. You don’t travel that far for nothing. They weren’t from here, that’s for sure.” She looks at the people behind the tape and gives them a sarcastic wave. “They keep their distance these days.”
It was a trap. Nate used what we thought we knew about Murder Road and left us to die.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” she says. “I hear one of them might make it.”
I tense every muscle in my body until the officer touches my shoulder and whispers, “You’ll need to come to the station to give a statement. And we can call someone to take you home, okay?”
I nod. Even though that’s not going to happen.
When she turns back to her colleague, I slip between the cop cars and ambulances until it’s just blank space between me and wherever I want to go.
I go back to Nate’s old road and watch the house he used to live in. One day, I’ll thank the girl who lives here now; the one who saw through a monster. For now, I go to Seb’s car, holding tight to the keys I took from the landing carpet.
I can’t sit in his seat. Instead, I rest my feet among the half-finished water bottles on the passenger side and pull his phone from the glove box.
When I type in his code, our smiling faces fill his home screen, and I stumble onto the curb and retch.
He’s gone … and it’s all because of me.
Don’t blame yourself for the actions of assholes. Mom’s voice fills my head and I wish it were that easy. But the moment that knife plunged into Seb is on repeat and I can’t turn it off.
“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I stare at the photo of the three of us—before Nate, before this. Why didn’t I realize that’s all we ever needed? We were perfect, and I ruined it.
I jolt at the sound of a siren, quickly scrolling through Seb’s phone until I find Nate’s number.
“Hello?”
His voice is a rock dropped deep into my soul, sending waves of panic and rage high into the air.
“Hello? Seb?”
I want to scream, He’s dead! But instead, I whisper, “It’s me. You failed, Nate. We got out.”
There’s silence, muffled sounds, then, “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s up to you,” I say, my heart stalling as I add, “But I’m looking at Seb and Tyler right now, and we won’t stop until we tear you down. You lied to us.”
“It’s not that simple,” Nate says. “If you knew the truth…”
“I’m pretty sure whatever you have to say won’t make up for the fact that you locked us in a house from hell!”
I hold one hand in the other, desperately trying to stop the shaking. Then I carefully put the phone back to my ear and say, “We’re going to the police. Right now.”
“Bullshit.”
“I dare you to not believe me.”
I hang up before he can say another word. Then I press my hands against my mouth and scream, over and over until the birdsong creeps back and sweat drips down my forehead.
If none of us is dead, Nate failed. If he failed, he’ll come back.
Let their sacrifice be your last. That’s what he and Rowan said before they ran.
I search online for any clues that other people have died here, at the times the police officer referred to.
If you look for “Murder Road,” you only see the patterns people want you to see. But if you search for “Cherry Tree Lane,” and you go past all the blog posts and forums and conspiracy theories, you find the truth.
They were right. People have been dying here every nine months or so for the last few years. If you drew a line from Nate’s first house to his last, would it cover all the places these people came from?
I should have asked what hospital Tyler was taken to. I should call my mom. I should do so many things that I don’t think I can do, because I need to end this. Me. The almost-final girl.
Screams rip through my skull and I smack myself on the side of the head, trying to force them out.
I’m scared to blink, because my eyes are growing heavy and I can see fragments of the moments when Seb was pulled into the darkness, when he collapsed in front of me, when Tyler rammed the knife between his fingers, when the fractured bottle was forced into his skin.
I leave the car and walk farther into town. If I stay where I am, the police will find me, and that can’t happen yet. A sign declaring that Belleview is the town “where happiness is found” looms over me, an image of the sun ironically faded white by the real thing, rust creeping from the corners.
When I look closer, I see that tiny scratches cover the metal—Ready or not. Whatever you do. The Hiding Boy is coming for you.
There are names too. Harriet Souter. Eloise Witchell. Tammy Witchell. Hayley Osborne. Frank and Josephine Oswald. Derek Thornby.
Those are just a few of them, the names sprawling across the sign like two-word horror stories.
I shudder at the thought of someone carving Seb’s name here one day and quickly walk on.
There is a park Nate might have played in; a school he might have gone to. I find a row of stores with half their fronts boarded up and the other half barely surviving.
There is nothing magical here. There is only horror and whatever exists on its edges.
When Seb’s phone rings, I crouch on the sidewalk and steady myself.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” Nate asks.
“We’re sightseeing. No wonder you moved to Montgomery-Oakes. This place is a dump.”
If I pretend to be okay, if they can’t hear the terror clawing up my insides, or the ghosts of everyone I’ve lost fighting for my attention, this might just work.
“I’m glad you got out,” he says.
“Fuck you.”
I hear laughter down the line, but it’s not Nate. Then a deeper voice—Rowan’s voice—fills my ears. “We’re sorry it had to be him.”
“Glad.” “Sorry.” These words don’t belong in their mouths.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Nate says. “You want to lure us back there. But we know that street a lot better than you do, Max. I’m so sorry about Seb.”
“What are you…?”
“It had to happen. There was no other way.”
“Liar! There’s always another way!”
“I wish that were true.”
Nate’s voice cracks before Rowan says something I can’t make out over the static.
“We’re near the grocery store,” I say. “Come by yourself.”
If I can separate Nate from his brother, maybe I can at least work out why this happened. If Rowan comes with him, he’ll see that I’m alone and probably kill me on the spot.
There’s silence for a long time, but I don’t hang up. I listen to Nate’s stilted breathing, his sobs, his sniffs, until eventually he says, “If I’d been honest with you from the beginning, would you have run away with me?”
“Would Seb still be alive?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
“I really am sorry, Max. I know you don’t believe me, but…”
“If that’s true, at least tell me why.”
I picture Nate’s hand pressed over his phone as muffled words slip through. Then he sighs and says, “Okay. I’ll tell you everything.”
The shadows worked silently, crowbars glistening in the moonlight while heavy breaths bloomed then splintered like the wood slowly cracking before their eyes.
When the board covering the door gave way, wings slapped the sky and a distant howl sliced through the muggy air, leaving a sliver of icy terror to stroke their spines.
Four of the shadows stepped back, while one crouched by the rusted lock, humming a lullaby until it finally stood, arms outstretched, then bowed.
The front door clung to its warped frame as they pushed, and then it sailed softly open, allowing them to hurry through before creaking closed.
As they lit their candles, the darkness shrank to the edges of the hallway, like the blur of old-fashioned photographs, ready to snap back the moment the flames were snuffed out.
The five friends came into focus, all with the same fragile smile. If they hadn’t known one another so well, they might have seen relief or happiness or excitement. Instead, they saw only terror.
Their words were fractured, their faces like crumbling Halloween masks, their bodies leaning toward the door they had just broken through.
But they stayed, until the fear was replaced by a nervous excitement that showed itself first through tics and giggles, then through voices shattering the silence.
They shouted and they laughed and they bounded from one room to the next. Then they blew every candle out and sat in a circle, chanting words they had read online, feeling braver than they had any right to feel.
They didn’t hear the whispers stirring above them. Or the scratching behind doors no one thought to lock anymore.
Their chatter drowned out the creaks that houses make when you’re not alone, heavy feet resting almost silently on each step until there was no escape.
The flames came fast, pushing them into a front door that wouldn’t budge.
They screamed until thick smoke forced its way deep into their throats and throttled every sound.
Then they wished, silently, desperately, hopelessly, that they had listened to the boy who warned them not to come.
* * *
When the front door burst open, four ash-stained shapes ran through, while a fifth cowered in the corner.
“Come on!” Rowan bellowed, pulling on their limp arms then reaching beneath their shoulders and yanking them up.
“What’s happening?” the boy muttered, and as he staggered into the light, Rowan replied, “You’re an idiot. That’s what happened.”
For a few seconds, hacking coughs and the snarl of greedy flames were the only noises on Cherry Tree Lane; then sirens filled the air, the flashing lights on the vehicles suddenly lining the curb revealing anxious faces peering through cracked curtains.
Rowan lay on the overgrown grass, staring at the stars and thinking about the time he got really into astronomy. Like so many things, it was a passion that quickly burned out, the books he pleaded with his parents to buy now lost in his siblings’ wardrobes.
When he tried to laugh, it came out as a splutter that turned into a call for help—a paramedic rushing to him and asking questions he must have answered … somehow.
His mother’s voice broke through the commotion, her warm hands on his face as she checked him for damage.
“Is he okay?”
“I’m fine,” Rowan replied. But she ignored him, nodding emphatically as the medic said the same thing, with more words, less rage, and the proviso that she drive him straight to the hospital.
