Chapter Twenty-Five

TWENTY-FIVE

As you might imagine, the police had all sorts of questions for me.

There were four of them this time—Jones and McDouglas plus two new officers, fresh-faced lads whose uniforms seemed too big for their bodies. One of them, the skinnier of the two, was named Price. The officers kept referring to the other one as Coop, but there was no way that was his given name. Everyone seemed to be looking at me out of the corners of their eyes at all times.

“Been doing a little yard work?” McDouglas asked me as soon as he saw my muddy appearance, his face full of suspicion.

“I think you’ve had a bloody nose, ma’am,” Coop said to me, gesturing above his lip while trying to avoid eye contact.

I rubbed at my nose, where the blood had long since dried. Oh well.

Coop and Price went upstairs to poke around, and I tried to pay attention to Jones’ questions while simultaneously worrying about the extent to which the officers could see the blood.

The officers repeated Katherine’s account of all the new information they’d learned. They’d chatted with both Bill and Dave, it turned out, plus a couple other employees at the motel who managed to remember who Hal was simply because Bill wouldn’t shut up about him. According to the group of them, Hal had stayed at the motel for about one day and spent most of the time coming and going. Nobody was sure where Hal had gone each time, but someone said he had seen Hal unloading two large containers out of the back of a cab in the early evening. They couldn’t tell what was in the containers, but said they looked heavy. Nobody asked questions. People tend to keep to themselves ’round here, Bill had explained, and Hal certainly had seemed to, staying in his room with the blinds drawn long after Bill’s shift ended and Dave’s started. Dave estimated that it had been about midnight when he noticed a cab pulling up in front of Hal’s motel room. He peered through the glass of the office door, and—sure enough—saw Hal dart into the cab, with those two large containers of something or other in his hands. He said he hadn’t seen Hal anymore after that, and it was a few days later that they’d found his room abandoned.

Dave didn’t get a license plate number, but that was no bother for the police. In a town this small, tracking down which cab company responded to a midnight call to the Value Lodge was simple. The cab driver remembered Hal, not because he knew about Hal’s books or anything, but because it was late and Hal had had those two big containers. “Can’t tell you what was in them,” the driver told the police, “but it smelled like gasoline. My cab stank for the rest of the night.”

The cab hadn’t dropped Hal off exactly at the house, but instead half a mile away. The cab driver thought this was odd. “It looked like I was leaving him in the middle of the woods,” the driver had said. “Nothing around for miles. I told him I could drop him closer to where he was going, but he insisted. Walked away lugging those two big containers of his.” The driver had watched Hal walk down the road a little ways, and seeing as our house was the only one on this street, it wasn’t difficult to guess his destination.

“I’m going to need to ask you some more questions about the night Hal left,” Jones said to me, notepad out. Her eyes were sterner than they had been the first time we spoke. I offered her a seat at the kitchen table but she remained standing in the hallway. I stood with her, although I would have much preferred to sit down.

“Of course,” I said. When the police showed up the pranksters had scattered, spooked by all the new activity in the house. A good thing too—I had a feeling this conversation with the police would warrant my full attention.

McDouglas ambled into the kitchen, surveying the scene. He had been loitering in the living room and the dining room earlier, seemingly not looking for anything in particular so much as looking around, making mental notes of everything. “It’s a bit of a mess,” he said. “I don’t remember things being in such disarray the last time we were here.” He looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “Everything okay?”

“I’m going to need you to recount the events leading up to the night Hal left,” Jones said.

“Well,” I said, my brain feeling a bit like a jigsaw puzzle scattered across the table, “we had been having disagreements.”

“Yes,” Jones said. She already knew this part.

“About the house,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Hal wanted to leave,” I said.

Hal wanted to do more than leave. Hal wanted to destroy everything. Ever since that ill-fated encounter with Master Vale in the basement, Hal hadn’t been quite right. He was silent and twitching, and he had locked himself in his office, angry at nothing and everything. Plotting. He was determined to show the pranksters in the house who was boss once and for all, and he had decided he wasn’t going to waste his time coaxing Master Vale into submission through sentimentality. He decided that he was going to use brute force.

We have to burn it down,he said to me. His voice was a wobbly whisper, as if the things that lived in this house could hear him. Which they could.

“He wanted to leave,” Jones repeated.

“Jesus Christ,” Katherine moaned. She was pacing the kitchen, hands in her hair. “You’ve already had this conversation.”

“Yes,” I said, ignoring Katherine, “he wanted to move out. He didn’t like it here.”

You are not burning this house down,I had said. The first time we’d had this conversation, we were side by side in bed—back before enough repetitions of this conversation ensured that we no longer shared a bed. I had looked around the room, the spacious master suite with the hand-selected furniture, original hardwood floors, and—opposite us—grand picture window shining with moonlight. Who would ever have wanted to burn this down?

“Why didn’t he like it here?” Jones asked.

Margaret,Hal had said, his voice low and insistent, the things that live here are evil. You know this.

I thought of Fredricka and all her helpful company. I thought of Jasper, who did little besides lie in a broken pile in the closet. I thought of Blythe, who had calmed down considerably once we stopped using the fireplaces and moved the piano out of the house. I thought of Elias, who was harmless so long as you respected his personal space. I thought of Angelica and her friends, seasonal and cyclical, who were mostly just annoyances. The only thing in this house that was evil was Master Vale. Not a high percentage of evil, all things considered.

“He didn’t like it,” I repeated. I couldn’t think of a convincing enough lie. Everything was too busy. Coop and Price returned from upstairs.

“The rooms are a little messy up there,” Coop said to McDouglas. “I saw a stack of dishes on top of the toilet. And it looks like there are a bunch of pillows that have been ripped apart.” His eyes darted to me for the briefest of moments. “Not sure what that’s about.”

“It smells like bleach,” Price said. “There are worn spots on the walls, like someone has been trying to scrub something off.”

McDouglas nodded at the two of them, his mouth a line. He kept his eyes on me.

“Jesus,” Katherine muttered. She was on what seemed like her hundredth lap of the kitchen, arms wrapped around herself. “They need to be checking the woods. I don’t know what they’re doing looking around in here.”

“He just?.?.?. didn’t like it?” Jones raised her eyebrows at me, unconvinced.

“This seems like an awfully nice house,” McDouglas said, “ignoring the present state. What’s not to like?”

Margaret.Hal’s voice had dipped into little more than a shaking exhalation. In the dim light peeking through the bedroom window, I could see that his eyes were wide, his face terrified. These things are going to get us in the end.

I had looked at Hal, my face bold. I didn’t whisper. Not if we play by the rules.

“He just?.?.?.” I couldn’t quite explain. “He was used to me going along with things. With what he wanted. But I wouldn’t do it this time.”

“And why wouldn’t you?”

“I?.?.?.” I looked around. I had already explained to them what this house meant to me. I gestured absently. “This is my home.”

This is our home,I had said to Hal. There had been a time when I thought Hal was my home. I thought that, of all people, he ought to understand.

No, it isn’t,Hal said. It’s their home. And it needs to burn.

Jones sighed. “All right. Let’s skip ahead to the night Hal left. Tell me what you remember.”

I’m going to do it, Margaret,Hal had said. I need you to help. Come with me. Please, come with me.

“He decided he was going to move out,” I said, “with or without me.”

I’m not leaving,I had said to him. I was standing in the kitchen, leaning against a counter, munching absently at a sleeve of crackers. I was comfortable. I was happy—reasonably so, at least.

Please,Hal had begged. I’m ending this. I’m getting gasoline. I’m getting matches. I am coming back, and I am burning this place to the ground.

“Tell me about his mood,” Jones said.

The night he left, Hal had gotten down on his knees, clutched at my hips. I’ll end this without you if I have to, but God, Margaret, I don’t want to. Don’t make me do this without you.

I’m not going anywhere,I said. I considered that I ought to be sadder, but what would the point of that have been? Hal wanted to leave and I wanted to stay. We could both get what we wanted, a beautiful final compromise.

You’ll have to leave eventually,Hal said, looking up at me with wet eyes. I’m not lying to you, Margaret. I’m ending this.

Do what you must,I said, and nibbled at the edge of a cracker. Needs must when the devil drives. I could almost hear Fredricka say it, even though she was nowhere to be seen.

“He wasn’t angry,” I said to Jones. “He was sad.”

I heard a creak of wood on wood as Price wriggled the chair out from underneath the basement doorknob. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him open the basement door. I swung my body in his direction, eyes wide.

Price examined the back of the door. “Are these Bible pages?” he asked.

Jones’ eyes were on me. “Something wrong?”

“There’s mold down there,” I said, the only thing I could think. “Black mold.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Jones said, voice stern, eyes never leaving me.

“It’s not safe,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. The pranksters were shy when visitors came over and could, apparently, choose not to be seen at all, but I had no idea what Master Vale would think about an intruder in his space, especially so recently after he had tried to come upstairs. He was probably itching for some company, and not in a hospitable way.

“You were talking about the night Hal left?” Jones said, pen still resting on her notepad.

Price disappeared down the basement steps. Coop followed just behind him.

“He left,” I said, my voice tight and nervous, eyes flitting to the open basement door. “He called a cab, got in, and left.”

I can’t believe this is the choice you’re making,Hal had said to me, standing on the front porch, the cab idling in the driveway.

I had said nothing in response, only stood in the doorway and watched him. He was making choices too. He always failed to see that.

“And did you see or hear from him again?” Jones asked.

“No,” I said.

Nothing had happened that first night Hal was gone. I stayed up late, drinking tea with Fredricka, chatting while she cleaned the kitchen. There was no word from Hal the following day and I was surprised the house didn’t feel quieter in his absence. I supposed that, given how much he had kept to himself over the past few months, I had gradually gotten used to the silence. Fredricka made a roast for dinner, and I turned in early. It all felt very right, as if this was the way it had been meant to be all along.

It was a little after midnight when I woke up to somebody moving through the house. It wasn’t one of the pranksters—they tended to be quiet, unless they were shrieking at you—and besides, I could recognize Hal’s footsteps. I heard the front door close behind him and listened to him stomping around the first floor. His feet were heavy and slow, like he was carrying something cumbersome. I heard a scrape and a thud as he set whatever he was carrying on the floor. I hoped he hadn’t scratched the wood.

The moonlight shone through the picture window and my eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light. The bedroom was empty, save for myself, and the door was shut. I heard Hal’s footsteps approach the stairs. He lifted himself up one step, two steps, then paused. It was silent for a moment, and I pictured Hal standing on the stairs and looking up, making decisions. Then I heard his footsteps turn and walk down the stairs and back through the first floor. Whatever he was considering, he’d changed his mind.

I heard a scrape and a grunt as he lifted the heavy object. His slow footsteps traversed the first floor, accompanied now with the occasional groan as he lifted the object. Quiet but distinct wet splashes.

Slowly, the thick smell of gasoline wafted up to the bedroom.

He set the object—a gas can, I assumed—down in the hallway. It sounded lighter now. Footsteps in the kitchen. I heard a squeak as he opened a cabinet to retrieve something. Then he walked to the basement door. I heard him grunt, heard wood cracking and popping as he pried the boards off the door. Then a creak, the door opening. I pictured him standing in front of the gaping mouth of the basement, staring down into the darkness, his hand on the doorknob, Bible pages fluttering next to him. There was another scrape and another grunt as he lifted the gas can, and I heard his footsteps fade into the basement.

Silence.

He was too far away for me to hear what he was doing now, but I could picture it nonetheless. The first floor already properly doused in gasoline, he was going down to the source of all the trouble. It wouldn’t be long now, I supposed, before I started smelling smoke. I wondered if Hal planned to flee up the basement steps and out the front door. Would he watch the house burn down from the driveway? Stay until it was nothing but a pile of ash in front of him? Or would he sprint down the road, leaving the memory of the house and all its pranksters far behind? Regardless, one thing was certain—he would not be coming up the steps to get me.

Be that as it may,I thought. I wasn’t leaving, not out the front door, anyway. I faintly wondered what might happen to all the things in this house that didn’t leave, after there wasn’t any more house. Would they fade away into nothing, disappearing inside themselves like they did sometimes, just not reappearing? Or would they find some way to stay? Haunt a nearby rock, perhaps. Something made me think it would be the latter. The things in this house, they didn’t seem shaken so easily by something so trivial as fire. I supposed I wasn’t either in the end.

Perhaps, afterwards, I could join them. We could all move in circles together, kicking up a fuss in September.

I took one last look around the bedroom, taking in the way the moonlight shone against the hardwood floors, the ornate furniture. This really was a beautiful house. I rolled over in bed, pulling the covers up around me. I closed my eyes. Things weren’t so bad. I was home.

I drifted off to sleep, full of peace.

“Can you think of any reason he might’ve come back here?” Jones asked.

I shook my head, most of my attention still drawn to the basement. If I wasn’t mistaken, I heard a startled cry sound from the direction of the steps.

The next morning, the morning after Hal had returned with the gasoline, I was only partially surprised to find that I opened my eyes. It was a beautiful morning, and the sunlight beamed through the window, making the room glow in a nearly heavenly manner. I raised myself up, looking around. The bedroom was undisturbed, the door still closed. Everything looked as it should have. I pinched myself. It hurt.

I walked slowly, so slowly, down the stairs. The house was bright, yet quiet. All was still. I could smell the gasoline heavy in the air. I walked into the living room, holding my nose. Yes, Hal had gotten this room all right. I saw wet stains on the furniture and sighed. It would take forever to get the smell out of the upholstery.

“I need you to be very honest with me,” Jones said. “Did you see Hal back at this house after he left?”

That morning, I walked out of the living room and back towards the kitchen, towards the basement. The boards from the door were scattered across the floor and the crowbar was propped up against the wall. The door was closed. I hadn’t heard Hal close the door last night, but it was closed now. From the looks of it, it had slammed so hard that a small crack snaked down from the top of the door and nearly midway to the doorknob.

“Jones? McDouglas?” A tiny voice sounded. It was Price’s. He had walked back up the basement stairs and was standing in front of the door. His face was white. He looked seconds away from being sick.

Truth be told, I hadn’t even needed to see that the basement door was closed. I already knew. I likely knew before Hal even left, before he even thought about the gasoline, why the house was still standing. It’s a bit of knowledge you can never quite put your finger on, a fact that isn’t quite real, like the way you know when someone is watching you, like the way you know it might rain later even when the sky is blue. Like I knew even before the sonogram told me that my baby would be a girl, and her name would be Katherine.

Ah,I had said to the basement door. So that’s how you feel about that.

I hammered the boards back up over the basement door. I never went down there again. There are rules to these things, and consequences for breaking them.

“What is it?” Jones asked Price.

Price’s lips moved wordlessly. He stared at us. He raised one arm, pointing down into the basement. “He’s down there,” he said.

Jones’ eyes widened. Her notebook flipped shut. It would appear that the questions were over.

McDouglas sprang into action, one hand touching the gun on his belt, the other suddenly wielding a flashlight. He darted down into the basement just as Coop ascended the stairs, looking equally as nauseated as Price. He coughed into his sleeve. His eyes landed on me.

“My God,” he said, “what did you do to him?”

Katherine cried out and sprinted towards the basement. Coop blocked her way, positioning his body in front of the doorway, his arm outstretched to keep her from coming any closer.

“That’s my father,” Katherine yelled, struggling to get around Coop’s body.

“Trust me,” he said, blocking her with his arm. “You don’t want to see him.”

Katherine pulled away from Coop but didn’t try to get past him. Instead, she paced in tight circles in the hallway, lost. She pulled at her hair, her face torn. “Oh God,” she said. “Has he been down there this whole time?”

Price nodded at the floor. “It would appear so, ma’am.”

Katherine stopped in front of the officers. She looked at them, her eyes red and wet. “And he’s?.?.?.??”

Coop nodded firmly. “Yes,” he said.

Katherine bent in two. She screamed something indiscernible, something about Jesus and fuck and no.

I had lines here. I should comfort her. I should do something—hug her or tell her it would be okay or offer her tea. But all I seemed to be able to do was watch the scene play out in front of me: actors on a stage, stumbling through their lines.

Jones hadn’t taken her eyes off me the whole time. The notebook was gone. Her hands were on her belt.

McDouglas went up the stairs. His hand was still gently touching the gun on his belt. His face was stoic. He caught Jones’ eye, nodded at her. “We’re gonna need to call Homicide.”

“Homicide?”Katherine asked.

Jones nodded at McDouglas, then turned back to me. Handcuffs materialized in her hand. “Margaret?.?.?.”

Wait.

I snapped back into being, my brain spinning again. I took a hasty step away from Jones and her handcuffs, my palms out in front of me. I mean you no harm. At my sudden movement, all officers touched their hands to their guns, poised and ready for action.

Katherine looked around wildly. “What’s happening?” she asked.

“Wait,” I said. “I can explain.”

“I would advise against that,” Jones said, taking a slow step towards me, “because everything you say can be held against you in—”

“I know,” I said. “But that”—I gestured at the basement— “wasn’t me.”

“It wasn’t you?” McDouglas asked. “Who was it, then?”

I sighed. It was time for honesty.

“It was the house,” I said.

Five confused faces stared back at me, four of them belonging to people who were looking for a reason to draw their weapons and fire. Jones took another step towards me, and I shuffled backwards. I was well inside the kitchen now, the officers carefully following.

“The what?” Jones asked.

“The house,” I said. “Well, not the house specifically. Master Vale. It was Master Vale who did that, I promise.”

“Mom?” Katherine said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I know how it sounds,” I said. “But I swear to you, Hal went into the basement—he shouldn’t have done that. He was trying to?.?.?. and Master Vale got him.”

Price looked at Jones. “I didn’t see anyone else down there.”

“Margaret,” Jones said, her voice calm. She had maybe taken a class in this, in speaking calmly to people who sound off their rockers. “Who is Master Vale?”

“He used to live here.” This was not going to be received well, but the truth was my last option. “Back in the eighteen hundreds. His family built this house. The Vales. You’ve heard of the Vales?” The officers gave no indication. Katherine looked like she was about to snap into pieces. “He was one of their children. Well, Penelope’s child, anyway. He’s not mentioned in the papers much. I think they were ashamed. He was born out of wedlock and—” I shook my head. “Different times.”

McDouglas had quietly looped around to my side, so he stood between me and the back door, prepared in case I tried to flee. He needn’t have worried—I wasn’t going anywhere.

“He lived here in the eighteen hundreds,” Jones repeated.

“He isn’t a nice man. Wasn’t a nice man.” I was never sure of the proper tense. Master Vale both is and was, and likely would continue to be. “He killed the pranksters. I’m sure of it. I’ve seen it. Sort of. They come and go. In September.”

Coop and Price exchanged an incredulous look. They were out of their element. The academy hadn’t properly trained them for this.

“Pranksters?” McDouglas asked.

“The children,” I said. “The ones who went missing all those years ago. Angelica and Julian and the others. They’re here too. They’re not bad, though. I think they just want to warn me.”

“Jesus Christ, Mom,” Katherine moaned. “You need to stop talking.”

“No,” I said, connecting dots in my mind. “I think they wanted to tell me.”

“Margaret,” Jones said, “I just think you need to come down to the station.?.?.?.” She extended her hand, the one with the handcuffs.

I wasn’t being convincing. Maybe I should start at the beginning. “There are things that live in this house,” I explained. “People that used to live here. Bad things happened to them. But they aren’t bad people, not all of them. Some of them want to help. Like, there’s a housekeeper?.?.?. and a boy?.?.?. Elias.” I rolled up my sleeves, showed them my scars, my bandages. “See?”

Jones’ eyes widened.

“Mom,” Katherine hissed, “stop talking.”

“Elias isn’t bad,” I said. “He just bites.” I held my arms out and took a step closer to Jones, so she could get a better view. Now Jones took a slight step backwards. The mud from the grave had gotten into the cracks in my scars, and the exertion had caused my more recent wounds to reopen and bleed through the bandages. It all looked a lot worse than it was.

“I?.?.?. ,” Katherine said in a thick voice as she looked at Jones. “I think she did that to herself.”

“Katherine can’t see him,” I explained, “but he’s there.”

“The older scars, I thought Dad did that to her,” Katherine said. “But now I don’t know.” She hugged her arms around her chest. “I don’t think she’s well.”

“Margaret,” Jones said, “how did you get those injuries?”

“I told you,” I said. No one was listening. “Elias did them. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so tired. The screaming, you see. Anyway, I didn’t see him there and he bit me. Elias isn’t the problem, though. It’s Master Vale.”

“She’s talked about this Elias person before,” Katherine said to Jones. “That’s what I mean—I think she’s seeing things.”

I didn’t appreciate Katherine talking about me as if I weren’t here. “Hal could see the pranksters too,” I said. “Well, he could see some of them. Sometimes. He could see Elias. He didn’t like Elias. But it was Master Vale that Hal really didn’t like.” I smiled. Full honesty now. “That’s what Hal was doing. He was going to burn it all down. He thought he could get rid of Master Vale once and for all. But?.?.?. Master Vale got him.” I could feel tears springing to my eyes as I said this. I had never spoken it out loud before, not even to Edie, although Edie seemed to know, anyway. “If he had just followed the rules?.?.?.”

“Rules?” McDouglas asked.

“That little test I did with her,” Katherine was saying. “It was supposed to assess her mental state or something. See if she knew where she was and what day it was. She did really bad. I think she’s been losing time.”

“We had rules,” I said, wiping at my eyes with a dirty wrist. “You don’t go near Elias. You don’t light fires. You just ignore Angelica and the other children. You don’t go in the basement. That’s where he lives, Master Vale. Things get bad in September. Hal was afraid of September. But we would have been fine if we had followed the rules. We deal with Elias. We call Father Cyrus over. We—”

Jones and McDouglas exchanged a look. “Cyrus?” McDouglas asked.

“Yes,” I said, remembering that he was dead now too. “If he were here, he would tell you. He knew about the house. But—”

“Margaret, Father Cyrus was very sick,” Jones said, her expression one of pity.

I looked up at her sharply. “You knew Father Cyrus?”

“We got calls about him all the time,” McDouglas said. “The church thought they could handle him, but he needed to be in a home. He was constantly wandering away. He was obsessed with the supernatural, convinced there were demons everywhere. He would break into people’s houses and people would come home and find him trying to perform some sort of exorcism in their living room. I can’t tell you how many times we—”

“That’s?.?.?. No,” I said. “I mean, that’s what the church said, but?.?.?. that’s not right. He was?.?.?. that is, whenever I saw him?.?.?. he was fine. And I saw him just a few weeks ago. He?.?.?.” I remembered his fit by the basement door. “I think Master Vale tried to get him too. He opened the door and?.?.?. flies came out of his mouth. That’s why there are so many flies in here.” I waved my arms around excitedly. They had seen the flies. They had even mentioned the flies the last time they were here.

“Ma’am,” Price said timidly, “the flies are here because there’s a dead body in the basement.”

“You should see the number of flies down there,” Coop added.

“I think she’s been eating the flies,” Katherine said quietly. “She vomited earlier, and—”

“Margaret, did Father Cyrus try to convince you your house was haunted?” Jones asked.

“No,” I said, “he was the only one who believed us.” I looked at Katherine pleadingly. I needed somebody to believe me. “You haven’t seen any of them? Not Elias? Not Angelica and her friends? There is a broken man who lives in the closet in your room upstairs.?.?.?.”

“There’s a what?” Katherine asked.

“His name is Jasper. Don’t worry. He doesn’t do much. He just flicks a match, and it never lights. He tried to burn the house down too. Have you seen him?”

“I haven’t seen anything,” Katherine said.

“What about the blood?” I asked.

“The blood?”

I looked around at the police officers. “Did any of you see the blood? There’s blood that pours from the walls upstairs. I clean it, but it keeps coming back. Did you see it?”

Their incredulous looks told me that they had not seen the blood. The pranksters’ inclination to choose who could and couldn’t see them was tremendously inconvenient at the moment.

I looked back at Katherine. “And I don’t suppose you heard the screaming? I know you’re a heavy sleeper, and what with the sleeping pills—”

Katherine’s eyes widened. “Sleeping pills?”

Oh, right. She didn’t know about that. I looked away, sheepishly. “Um?.?.?.”

“What do you mean, sleeping pills?”

“I’m sorry, dear,” I said. “I didn’t want you to be bothered with all this. The screaming gets pretty bad by the end of September. I didn’t want it to keep you awake. So?.?.?.”

“So you slipped me fucking sleeping pills?” Katherine was not taking this news well. “You drugged me?”

“Just a little bit,” I said. “It’s only DoZZZe-Rite. We can talk about it later, if you’d like.” I ran my hands through my hair, thinking. My eyes darted around the room, looking for something, anything that might convince the officers that these things I saw were real. My eyes landed on a pile of mud near the back door, the spot where the garbage bag containing the bones of Elias’ mother used to lie. Where had Fredricka hidden those bones? It was risky, but worth a shot.

“Elias’ mother,” I said, gesturing at the back door. “Her bones are somewhere in the house.”

Four hands on guns again.

“No,” I said, hands up. “I didn’t kill her. She died ages ago. Master Vale was behind it in some way. I can’t be certain. But she is—was—buried out back.”

Everyone’s eyes were on me. Nobody seemed to believe me.

“I feel bad about digging her up,” I said. “I really do. But when I dig her up, Elias goes away for a bit and things get a little more peaceful.”

“Where did you say the bones were?” McDouglas asked.

I looked around the room wildly, craning my neck to peer down the hallway. “I don’t know,” I said. “They were in a garbage bag. I don’t mean any disrespect. I used to keep them in a vase whenever I—” I shook my head. “Not important. Fredricka moved them. I don’t know where she put them. If I can just—” I took a step forward towards the hallway, meaning to go look for the bones, but three bodies suggested to me that this was a bad idea.

McDouglas glanced over at Coop and Price. “Did you boys find any garbage bags up there?” he asked. “Possibly filled with bones.”

Coop shook his head.

“Nope,” Price said. “We would’ve told you.”

I sighed. “No,” I said, “you probably just didn’t see it. Fredricka likes to hide things inside other things.” I turned and started opening up cabinets, rummaging through the hodgepodge of trinkets Fredricka had moved into them. Clothing. Picture frames. A small lamp. Several—and I mean several—piles of dirt. I turned back to the officers, and waved an arm at the cabinets. “See?”

Everybody looked concerned. I glanced back at the cabinets. It would have been much more convenient if there had been bones in them.

“My grandma used to do stuff like this,” Price said quietly. “Towards the end. She would rearrange things. Stack things.”

“I know how it sounds,” I said. “But I swear to you I dug her up just earlier. I grabbed each of her bones with my bare hands and tossed them into the garbage bag. Her femur, her ribs, her spine, her skull. They were all there.” I ran my hands through my hair, which felt like a coarse, dirty tangle. “Where the fuck did Fredricka put them?”

“Is that why you look like that, Mom?” Katherine asked, gesturing to the length of my muddy body. “Were you?.?.?. trying to dig up a dead body or something?”

“Or maybe getting ready to bury a dead body?” Coop muttered. Jones shot him a look.

Jones moved closer. “Margaret, you can tell us all about this once we’re down at the station. We promise, we’ll listen. We’ll give you all the time you need to make sure we understand.”

This was going poorly. I needed something on my side, some piece of concrete evidence to convince them that I wasn’t crazy.

“Edie!” I exclaimed.

“Oh God,” Katherine groaned, hands over her face.

“Edie has seen them too,” I said, clapping my hands together. “She’ll tell you. Call Edie over. She’ll set everything straight.”

“Who is Edie?” Jones asked. I could tell by her expression that she thought there was a good chance that Edie wasn’t real. Luckily for me, Edie was real.

“She’s my next-door neighbor,” I said. “We’re close friends. She comes over to see me every few days. She knows everything. And she’s seen these things too. She knows they’re real. Call Edie.”

Jones and McDouglas exchanged looks. “Your next-door neighbor?” Jones asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Call her. She’ll tell you.”

“Mom,” Katherine said, “who the hell are you talking about?”

“Edie,”I said. “My friend Edie. She lives just next door. She walks over all the time.”

“Ma’am,” McDouglas said, “you don’t have any neighbors out here. The closest house is nearly ten miles away.”

I turned to look at McDouglas, my brow furrowing.

“Where would she have walked from?” he asked.

I stared at him. He was right. We didn’t have any neighbors out here. That was one of the things Hal and I liked about the house. And yet?.?.?. he wasn’t right. Right? Because Edie came over to chat with me, her plump figure waddling down the driveway three or more times a week. She came from somewhere. But where? I felt like my brain was skipping like a needle on a scratched record.

Jones looked at Katherine. “Have you met this Edie person?”

“No.” Katherine shook her head slowly. “Nobody has been here except you guys.”

“You have seen Edie,” I said excitedly, remembering. “That morning you came back from?.?.?. the bartender’s.” I whispered this last word and I saw Katherine look around, face flushing. “When you drove up the driveway, Edie and I were talking on the front porch.”

Katherine stared at me.

“You walked right past us,” I said. “Edie waved at you.”

Katherine’s face didn’t look quite right. “Mom,” she said, “you were sitting alone on the front porch that morning.”

The scratched record in my brain skittered again. “No?.?.?.” I frowned. “That’s not right. Edie was there.”

“No, Mom,” Katherine said, “you were alone. I remember because I thought it was strange that you were just sitting there, not doing anything. I thought you might have been waiting up for me. It made me feel awful that I had left.”

“No?.?.?. ,” I said, but the record in my brain wouldn’t advance any further. This made no sense. Edie was real. She was my only friend, my only living friend. I told her everything. I hadn’t had a person in my life to whom I could tell everything in so long.

I pushed past Jones and walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Price and Coop touch their hands to the guns on their belts, waiting for me to do something dangerous.

“Margaret,” Jones called after me, her voice a warning, “where are you going?”

“She lives next door,” I repeated. I needed to see. I needed to see if there were houses next door. If I could just peer down the road, I could see where she might have come from.

I stopped when I got to the front door. There was Edie, peering in through the window. She was smiling, but the smile looked sad. She tapped on the window with a finger.

I turned back to the officers lining up behind me. I pointed at the window, grinning triumphantly. “See?” I said. “That’s her.”

None of the officers said anything. They looked very, very worried. Coop and Price kept glancing at Jones and McDouglas, looking for guidance.

“Mom,” Katherine said, her voice vibrating, “what are you seeing?”

I pointed harder. The woman in the window, obviously. “Edie,” I said. “She’s on the front porch. She must have seen the police cars and come to check up on me.”

“Margaret.” Jones’ voice was a body of still water. “There’s nobody there.”

“What?” I turned to look out the window again and suddenly Edie was inside the house, standing in front of the window. I flinched, startled. “Jesus, Edie,” I said, hand on my chest. “How did you get inside?”

I heard Katherine moan obscenities behind me.

“Margaret,” Jones said, “who are you talking to?”

“I’m sorry, Margaret,” Edie said. “I wanted to tell you. I really did.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked her. “Edie, I need you to tell the police that I’m not crazy. They don’t believe me about the things in this house. But if you tell them you’ve seen them too?.?.?.”

I’d never seen a smiling person look so sad. “I just enjoyed your company so much,” she said. “And you seemed like you really needed a friend. I wanted to tell you, but you were so happy thinking that I was?.?.?. well, you know. So, I could never get up the courage.”

“Edie,” I said, “what do you mean?”

I could hear the officers behind me moving closer but taking care not to get too close, not yet.

“Mom.” Katherine was sobbing. “You need to stop this right now.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to be friends anymore.” Edie smiled at me. A tear was caught on the swell of her cheek.

“Margaret.” Jones’ still voice came from behind me. “Can you tell us what you’re seeing?”

“Edie?.?.?. ,” I said. I could feel tears starting to form in my own eyes.

“I lived in this house before you and Hal,” Edie said, the tear drifting down the curve of her cheek, down her face. “When you did all that research into the house, I was certain you’d find out. But I suppose my name never made the paper.”

“You were the person who bought the house in the nineties,” I breathed.

Behind me, Katherine was still crying, still asking me to stop.

“It was so lonely here,” Edie said, her smile flickering in and out. “I never could find a way to live with the things in this house, not like you did. They terrified me. And it was so, so lonely.” Her voice cracked.

“Edie,” I whispered, “what did you do?”

Her smile returned, but only slightly. “Sleeping pills,” she said.

I felt like I was filling with water again, sinking. Everything around me was heavy and blurry. Things moved more slowly underwater. I reached out and took Edie’s hand and saw the world through her eyes: saw the master bedroom as she had decorated it, full of pinks and flowers; saw the light fading in the corners; felt the cloudiness sink into her brain, murky and thick but not yet powerful enough to dull the stab of sadness that rested in her heart.

Edie smiled at me and squeezed my hand. She gazed around the house, into the living room, down the hallway, up the grand stairs. “This really is a beautiful house,” she said.

“I know,” I replied.

“Margaret.” A hand was on my shoulder, soft, practiced. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk. “Why don’t you come back into the kitchen with us?” Jones asked.

I released Edie’s hand to face what was likely a very concerned audience. I was aware that my tears had cut lines into the dirt on my face.

“Mom,” Katherine said, “your nose is bleeding.”

I touched my hand to my face and examined my fingers. Indeed, my nose was bleeding.

“That happens when I touch them,” I explained. My explanation didn’t seem to relieve anyone’s worry.

I let Jones’ gentle hand guide me back down the hallway, away from Edie. I looked behind me. Edie still stood in front of the living room window, a small smile on her face. She waved. I waved back. Jones’ hand became firmer on my shoulder, guiding me faster.

“Nobody here thinks anything negative about you,” Jones said, nothing but compassion in her voice as she led me to the kitchen table and directed me into one of the chairs. She sat down in the chair next to me, her body facing mine, her hands clasped on the table. I’m your friend here. “We all just want what’s best for you.”

“Your daughter told us about your?.?.?. behavior,” said McDouglas. “She told us about the things you’re saying you see. The weird things you’ve been doing around the house. Moving things. Forgetting about things.” Whatever class Jones had taken that made her good at talking to crazy people, McDouglas hadn’t taken it.

“I’m not seeing things,” I said, but the fight was out of me.

“Margaret,” Jones said, “nobody else can see what you’re seeing. When you were over by the living room—did you see someone there?”

I looked up at Jones. I said nothing.

“Did you see that friend you were telling us about? Edie?”

I nodded.

“You know we didn’t see anyone there, right? None of us.”

“Sometimes people can’t see them,” I said, but now that I thought on it, it seemed as if most people couldn’t see them. Edie was the only other person who saw every single one of them, just like me, and it turned out, she was a prankster herself.

“They’re not real, Margaret,” Jones said, leaning forward.

“They’re?.?.?.” I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. Hal had seen the pranksters—some of them, at least. He and I had gone into the basement and tried to fight Master Vale. Master Vale had bitten a chunk out of Hal’s leg, and Hal hadn’t been the same after that. He’d locked himself away in his office, with his whiskey.

Or was that before? Had he started with the whiskey even before last September, and I just hadn’t noticed? Time moved funny around here, in stutters and cycles. It was hard to know when things had happened, but they would certainly happen again.

Jones cleared her throat, contemplated her next few words. “Katherine tells us there’s a history of mental illness in your family?” She phrased this as a question, but she knew the answer.

My eyes landed on Katherine, who looked away. Apparently, she had been in more communication with the police than I had thought. They were all quite chummy, it would seem.

“Something like that,” I said. “But I’m not crazy.”

“Are you sure about that?” McDouglas asked.

Jones glanced over at McDouglas. I have this handled, her expression said.

“Nobody who is crazy thinks they’re crazy, Mom,” Katherine said.

“These things you’re seeing,” Jones said, her face kind, “they’re all in your head.”

“I can touch them,” I said. I could also walk straight through them, but that didn’t seem to help my case.

“That can happen sometimes when people see things,” Jones said. “The things seem very real to the person experiencing them. They talk to the person, tell them to do things, threaten them. But they aren’t real.”

I thought about Fredricka asking me about dinner. I thought about Edie keeping me company on the front porch. I thought about the pranksters pointing and pointing at the basement. I thought about Elias. I thought about Master Vale. “Threatening” was certainly a word that could describe those last two.

“If I’m being honest,” Jones said, “I was worried about you that first time we visited the house. Your thought process seemed scattered, nonlinear. You seemed distracted. I wondered if you were seeing something else in the room but were trying to hide it from us.”

“I wondered that too,” Katherine breathed. She was standing next to Jones now, a co-interrogator. And me, I had no one on my side anymore. “I know you know I was worried earlier today, Mom, but I’ve been worried for a while. Even before I came here, when we talked over the phone, I could tell that something was off about you. Officer Jones has it right. Scattered.”

“I?.?.?.” I wasn’t sure what to say. I was fine. I thought I was fine, anyway.

“Katherine tells me you don’t spend much time out of the house,” Jones said. “And when you two ventured out, you seemed paranoid. She told me you would get fixated on little, unimportant things. Graffiti on a bathroom stall. The names of hotel clerks. A song playing on the radio. She said you seemed to think that these things were messages for you.”

“They were,” I said. They were. Right?

“Sometimes when people see things that aren’t really there,” Jones said, “they get paranoid, think that people—even strangers—are watching them, out to get them. They think that things are trying to communicate with them in some way, like through television commercials.”

“Or a song on the radio,” Katherine interjected.

“And with Hal,” Jones said. “I know your relationship was hard. Katherine told us about the abuse. And you know that we know about the alcoholism. You know, people with mental illness often find themselves in abusive relationships. I don’t know what it is. Maybe there are just certain types of people who prey on weakness.”

“That’s not really?.?.?.” But I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. I wasn’t weak. I was flexible, accommodating.

“I know you and Hal were fighting, Margaret,” Jones said. “You said so yourself. Was it as bad as Katherine thinks it might’ve been after you two moved here? I don’t know. But it certainly wasn’t marital bliss, was it?”

I shook my head. It certainly wasn’t.

“Did the fighting have anything to do with your mental illness?” Jones asked. “Katherine told us about that book she found in his office. The Shadows and You. Was he insisting you get help, go to a hospital?”

He had been insisting I leave. But leave?.?.?. to where? I was having trouble remembering.

“But you didn’t want to go anywhere,” Jones was saying. “You wanted to stay here with him. In your home. You didn’t want to go to any hospital.”

I certainly didn’t.

“And then he wanted to leave,” McDouglas said. “That must’ve been difficult.”

“We understand how you must have felt,” Jones said. “How you must have reacted. You two had been together for— How long? Thirty years? And then Hal wants to leave? After all he’s put you through?”

“You were willing to put up with his alcoholism and his abuse,” McDouglas said, his voice sad. “And he wasn’t willing to put up with your mental illness? What an asshole.”

“Of course you were upset,” Jones said. “Of course you lashed out.”

“It was Master Vale,” I said, but my voice was barely audible. My eyes were fixed on the table. The world around me was foggy again. Everything they were saying somehow made both no sense and all too much sense. My own father had seen shadows, had talked about the government bugging our lamps. Sometimes he forgot things. Sometimes his words didn’t make sense. Sometimes he had to go away for a little while. Taking a vacation, my mother said. When he returned, he would be dull and his hands would shake. He wouldn’t talk about the shadows or the bugs for a while. But he always started up again. These things are cyclical. These things are also hereditary.

“Right,” Jones said. “But if Master Vale is in your head, who actually did that to Hal?”

“But I don’t?.?.?.” My voice was shaking. “I don’t remember it.” This was true. I didn’t remember killing Hal. But I could tell you exactly what he looked like down there. I knew he was in the back corner of the basement, in that little room where we had found Master Vale. (Or had we? Had Hal and I gone down there? Or had that been just me? Just something I dreamed up?) I knew he was crumpled up against the wall, his body broken, limbs bent in on themselves. I knew his shattered face was twisted in horror. I knew that, just like Jasper, he had a matchstick in his hand, never to be lit.

“Sometimes when people do terrible things, things they wouldn’t do if they were of sound mind, they don’t remember much of it,” Jones said. “Sometimes they don’t remember any of it at all.”

It would have been an easy thing to do. Hal had been drinking the night he came back, of course. And he never had come up to the bedroom to ask if I wanted to leave with him. He would have been focused on his task down there in the basement, and not in his right mind. I was quiet when I moved, always had been. He wouldn’t have heard me. And he had left the crowbar at the top of the stairs, so easy to grab. It made sense to wait until he was in that little room in the basement. He wouldn’t be able to see me coming. I would have him cornered. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself, not from the first blow. The first blow was critical.

“Does he have a matchstick in his hand?” I asked, eyes still on the table. “Hal? Down there?” I had so many visions in my head and no way to tell which ones were real. I needed confirmation.

Jones looked at Coop and Price questioningly.

Coop nodded. “Yes, ma’am, he did.”

I set my jaw, nodding slightly. “And what happened to him,” I asked, “does it look like a human could’ve done it? That is, a person all by themselves?”

“Jesus,” I heard Katherine hiss.

Coop looked uncomfortable. “It’s hard to tell,” he said. “It looks like there’s a lot that happened to him.”

I nodded again.

Jones reached across the table, laying her hand gently on mine. “Margaret—are you remembering something?”

“People who see things,” I said, “do they kill people?”

I heard Katherine let out a sharp, shaky breath.

“Not usually,” Jones said. “But in very extreme circumstances, it’s possible.”

I figured I could consider these circumstances extreme. In my mind’s eye, I could see the pranksters fading, drifting from transparent to nearly invisible. With no trace left behind, it was hard to say if they had even been there in the first place. I looked at the scars on my arms. They did closely resemble the scratches Hal used to leave on me in those early days. Now that I examined them closely, I couldn’t see how they came from teeth at all.

“People who see things,” I said, “do they hurt themselves?”

“Sometimes,” Jones said.

I looked around the room, saw what utter disarray the house was in. The cabinets were still thrown open from my search for the bones, revealing the smattering of random objects that lay inside. The sink was a grimy mess, covered in mud and debris. There was dirt everywhere, dark footprints and handprints covering most surfaces. And the flies. God, how had I gotten so used to the flies? This did not appear to be the kitchen of a woman who was doing well.

“People who see things,” I said, “do their houses look like this?”

Jones surveyed the kitchen. “Yes,” she said.

I looked up at Katherine. She was crying. She had been crying a lot today, the thing I was supposed to keep her from doing. Right now all evidence would suggest I had failed. I supposed I had been failing at quite a large number of things these days.

Jones gripped my hand more tightly. “Margaret, we want to help you,” she said. “We need to take you down to the station, to arrest you, but now that we know what you’ve been experiencing, we can make sure you go somewhere with people who know how to treat you. These things you’ve been seeing, they’ll go away with medication. We can be sure you get that medication, get the care you need.”

“You probably won’t even go to prison,” McDouglas said. “They’ll put you in a facility where they treat people like you, people whose mental illnesses got out of hand. They’ll help you get well while you’re there.”

“Please, Margaret,” Jones said, “let us help you.” She sounded so sincere. And I was so, so tired.

I was still looking around the kitchen. I would miss this place. This room in particular, even if it was a mess. Slowly, I nodded. “Okay,” I said.

Katherine put her hand over her mouth. Her emotion was unreadable but palpable.

Jones smiled. “Okay,” she said. She released my hand and the handcuffs materialized again. Her eyes flitted down to the cuffs, then back to me, her expression apologetic. “We have to,” she said.

“I understand,” I said. I stood up and turned around, hands behind my back.

Jones motioned for Coop and he moved behind me, taking her handcuffs and placing them over my wrists. The metal was cold, pinching.

“Margaret Hartman,” McDouglas said, positioning himself directly in front of me, “you are under arrest for the murder of Harold Hartman.” He said other things too, things about me remaining silent and something about an attorney, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to take in every last detail of the kitchen, trying to ignore the cold click of the cuffs around my wrists. I wondered if they would have tea where I was going.

“Not too tight?” Coop asked. He kept a hand on the cuffs.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“You’re doing great, Margaret,” Jones said, moving through the kitchen, towards the hall. She nodded at McDouglas. “I’ll go call this in.” She disappeared down the hall, the front door creaking open as she stepped onto the porch, off to warn the station of my arrival.

McDouglas turned to Katherine, who still had her hand clasped over her mouth, tears wetting her palm. “You can follow us to the station, if you’d like.”

Katherine nodded, releasing her mouth. She grabbed her purse from the counter.

McDouglas exhaled, looked at me. “Ready?”

I wasn’t. But it would appear I had little say in the matter. “I suppose,” I said.

Coop’s hand tightened on the cuffs, and he pressed a palm to my back. He turned me and we began walking out of the kitchen, heading down the hallway. Price followed just behind, with McDouglas bringing up the rear.

Katherine—purse tucked under her arm, car keys already in hand—jogged forward until she was in step with me. She took a deep breath and squared her jaw, a soldier ready for battle. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, although it was unclear if she was speaking to me or herself. “We’re going to figure something out.”

“Katherine,” I said. Her eyes met mine. She looked quite like me after all, her hard angles having softened with time, lines forming on her face just as they had formed over mine. She was all grown-up, I realized. An adult who took deep breaths even when she felt like wailing. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”

She looked away, blinking and swallowing. “It’s okay,” she said, although we both knew it wasn’t. We were halfway down the hallway now—I could see the blue of the day outside through the open door. Just past that, Jones was partway to the cruiser, glancing back at us to be sure we were following. The time to say the things I wanted to say was limited.

“I didn’t want to tell you about any of this,” I said. “I didn’t want you to be afraid. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I should have told you.”

“Yeah. You should have,” Katherine said. A deep breath in, out. “But I know how you are. You were trying to protect me.”

“I was,” I said, although it would seem my protecting days were over. No one could protect Katherine from whatever was about to happen to me after we left the house and I got into the back of the police car. The weight of all of this would fall squarely on Katherine’s shoulders, and I wasn’t sure how I could shield her from it.

My eyes were wet. “I don’t know what to do now.”

Katherine glanced at me, putting on a smile that almost looked like courage.

“What you have to,” she said. “After all”—she faced forward again—“needs must when the devil drives.”

I stopped walking so abruptly that Coop bumped into my back. He made a startled noise.

“Margaret?” McDouglas said. “Let’s keep going, huh?”

“What did you say?” I asked Katherine.

Katherine was a few paces ahead of me, not realizing that I had stopped. She turned to look at me, her face questioning. “Needs must,” she repeated, unsure if she ought to be answering me, “when the devil drives.”

“Where did you hear that?” My voice was little more than an exhale.

Katherine frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know it, I guess. It means, like, when you have to do something unpleasant—”

“I know what it means. But I had never heard it”—I breathed—“until I came to this house.”

“I’m sure you heard it somewhere before, Mom,” Katherine said, but I could tell by her expression that she had just placed where she had heard it as well.

“No,” I said, a sharp, clattering exhalation.

“Margaret”—McDouglas stepped closer—“what’s the problem?” His tone suggested that there wasn’t supposed to be any problem, but that wasn’t how any of this worked.

That was when the moaning started.

It was almost inaudible at first, faint as the whistle of the wind, and for a moment, I thought it was in my head. But the noise persisted, picking up in volume and conviction and working its way towards a sound that would become screaming within minutes. I could feel the moaning rattle something deep inside my chest, the way bass notes rattle the box of a speaker. Katherine’s face told me that the noise wasn’t in my head. I turned to see McDouglas glancing around in confusion, and Coop and Price looking scared.

“Are you doing that?” Katherine asked me. “Are you making that sound?”

I shook my head. It was clear the moaning wasn’t coming from me. It sounded as if it were coming from both nowhere and everywhere simultaneously, pouring out of the walls of the house itself. It sounded as if the house had finally had just about enough of everything and was ready to let us all know it.

“What the hell is that?” McDouglas said, hand on his belt.

Click.

The cuffs on my wrists sprang open and clattered to the ground. I felt the cold air and the lingering sting of the sharp metal on my newly bared wrists. Slowly, I moved my hands from the small of my back and examined my freed wrists, turning towards the officers as I marveled at this new development.

Coop and Price drew their weapons.

I raised my hands in the air. “That wasn’t me,” I said.

“Everything all right in there?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jones turn around. She started moving back towards the house, her hand touching at her holster. As soon as she saw the officers with their weapons, she started moving faster, jogging up the porch steps and towards the door.

The door slammed shut so hard the house shuddered.

“The fuck?” Coop shouted.

The doorknob jiggled. The sounds of Jones banging on the door and shouting at us to open up were just barely audible over the moaning. I could tell from here that the door wasn’t locked, but I wasn’t about to move closer to investigate, not with three guns still aimed at me and an ever-increasing moaning suggesting that the guns were likely to be the least of my concerns very soon.

A liquid noise started to my right, the sound of something wet moving—like water over rocks, except the liquid seemed thicker than water and slower as well. I turned and saw blood pouring down the stairs, more blood than I had seen in any previous September. The gleaming red substance ran down the stairs in globby rivulets, a grotesque waterfall. A thick, meaty smell came with it, like pennies and rotting flesh. Within moments, the blood began to pool at the bottom of the stairs, inching towards us.

Katherine screamed.

All five of us stepped backwards, trying to stay out of the way of the thick red ooze. I pressed my back into the wall behind me, cornered. I was no stranger to getting blood on my feet, but this seemed like an entirely new ordeal. Coop and Price pointed their weapons at the stairs, as if that would do any good. I couldn’t blame them for being so upset. They likely had zero experience with houses that bled, and besides, even I could admit that this was quite a lot of blood.

“What in the hell—,” McDouglas started.

Thud.

A loud noise from the side of the house, the living room. We all jumped, whirling towards the offending wall, searching for the cause.

Thud.

This noise came from the front of the house, near the door. We all swung our heads around again, looking for nothing. Katherine inched back down the hall, away from the sound.

Thud.

McDouglas swallowed. “Jones?” he called. But the sound couldn’t have come from Jones—the sound of her fists could still be heard clearly against the door, and this new noise was too far up the house. Katherine and the officers glanced around, but I stayed still.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

The sounds came faster and louder, attacking us from every side. I remained planted against the wall, doing my best to remain calm as the pounding closed in on us. The officers whirled their heads around so fast that they might have given themselves whiplash. Coop and Price ducked down, as if they could see some offending entity that was causing the violent noises. They needn’t have bothered. I knew what was causing the pounding.

“The birds,” I whispered.

Thud thud thud thud thud.

From all angles, birds—large and black and angry—screamed their way into the sides of the house. We could see them through the windows, careening down against the house in their vengeful suicides. They screeched and cawed as they approached, but we could barely hear them over the moaning and the pounding and the little whimpers that Coop and Price seemed intent on making. The birds slammed their weight into the walls, the door, the windows. They left smudges of blood after they shattered their necks, feathers lingering in the air after each carcass plopped to the ground.

“What the hell is happening?” Coop yelled.

The moaning was much louder now—guttural, angry. It was as if it wished to slide a knife into my eardrums and drown out all sound that wasn’t itself. It was coming from everywhere, and it was spiteful.

“Margaret?” McDouglas said as if I had something to do with this.

Just underneath the moaning and the birds and the screaming of the officers, far too faint to be of any consequence, were pounding and shouting. Jones was still at the door, hammering against the wood with both her fists now and ripping at the doorknob, screaming at us to let her in. Nobody else seemed to hear her, and I had a feeling that her being outside was far preferable to being inside, birds and all.

“Sorry,” I said to Jones, who didn’t have a chance of hearing me.

From out of the kitchen, behind everybody, darted Angelica. She ran full tilt, her mouth open but soundless, her stringy hair whipping about and her dirty dress fluttering behind her, her skinny little arm gesturing back towards the basement. Her head was cracked open and her eye wasn’t right and she ran like something awful was chasing her.

Everyone screamed. I had to admit, Angelica even startled me a little as well. I hadn’t expected to see her anymore.

Coop and Price pointed their weapons in front of them, prepared to fire. They tracked her with their guns but mercifully didn’t shoot. Angelica snaked between the lot of us and disappeared into the living room.

They can see her now,I marveled.

Julian leapt down from the banister of the stairs, landing on all fours, his intestines splattering onto the ground. He perched on the floor for a moment, his hands and heels in the pool of blood in front of us, his knees near his ears, the yawning hole of his abdomen twisted in on itself. He opened his mouth in a snarl, pointed at the basement, and scurried away like an animal. Coop and Price, shouting obscenities, swung their guns after him.

The moaning was definitely screaming now.

“What the fuck is happening?”Katherine yelled, whirling around amid the onslaught of pranksters darting about.

“Margaret,”McDouglas said, his tone suggesting that if I didn’t stop this nonsense right now, I would be in big trouble. I didn’t know what to tell him. This was new.

A jet-engine noise sounded to my right and Elias erupted into the room in a whirl, his mouth a spinning kaleidoscope of teeth, howling loudly enough to overpower the screaming. His black eyes were full of rage and somehow looked at all of us and none of us simultaneously. He flew through the room, snapping his teeth at anyone he could reach, seemingly intent on drawing as much blood as possible.

I grabbed at Katherine’s arm, pulling her away from Elias’ path of destruction. None of these pranksters were particularly violent—just a lot to look at—but Elias warranted distance.

“Stay back,” I warned everyone, although nobody seemed especially keen on approaching the hurricane of a boy howling his way through the hallway. Two of the officers cleared a path, pressing themselves against a wall, and Price half jumped onto the stairs, slipping a bit in blood as Elias whirled past him, a maelstrom of rage.

Katherine screamed and leapt into the air, half crashing into my shoulder. Behind her, the boy with no legs was dragging himself into our midst, scrabbling and falling as he lifted his arms to point at the basement. He was a little slower than the others—an unfortunate effect of his lack of legs—and we all got quite a good look at him as he slid through the room. He left a trail in the blood as he pulled himself through, like a tire cutting through mud, but the gory debris he usually left in his wake was masked by the mess already on the floor.

I saw Price aim his weapon at the boy. I was about to shout something about the futility of Price’s actions and plead with him not to put a bullet hole in my nice hardwood floors, when a screech from behind him turned his attention away. Blythe was crawling down the side of the banister, clinging to the wooden balusters like a rodent. Little flakes of ashy charcoal floated off her crisped skin and landed in the blood. She pulled her slim torso over the top of the banister and shrieked at us, her jaw long and her blistered lips revealing an expression full of malice. You would have thought we had a fire lit. She leapt from the banister to the ceiling and scurried away towards the front door, evoking from McDouglas a string of profanities that would have rivaled even Katherine.

All this time, the birds pounded against the walls, loud and incessant; they sounded seconds away from breaking their way into the house. The screaming was earsplitting, rattling the insides of our brains. I couldn’t hear Jones anymore—either she had run for cover or the birds had gotten her. Coop and Price whirled around like madmen, pointing their guns at everything, nearly falling over as they slipped in the blood, which was now everywhere. Katherine clung to my arm with a bone-splintering grip, cursing and jumping at each new terror that presented itself. McDouglas was watching me, seemingly expecting me to wiggle my nose and turn this whole mess off.

“I don’t know how to stop this,” I told him, my voice barely audible.

The screaming had now reached that place—the place where you couldn’t really tell if it was screaming or laughing. The laughter seemed like a bad sign. It seemed to foretell something very, very exciting that was about to happen, depending on one’s definition of “exciting.” History would suggest that the house and I had different definitions of “exciting.”

Then it all stopped.

Silence hit the house like a brick, a wall of nothing where there had once been sound.

The birds stopped.

The pranksters vanished.

The blood stilled, settling on the floor in calm puddles. The scream-laugh echoed in my brain, but the only real sound to be heard was our ragged breathing.

The silence seemed like a creature in and of itself. It was like a feral cat huddled in a corner, equally likely to purr as you pet its head as it was to sink its fangs into you. In these situations, I’d learned that it was in my best interest to simply wait and see.

Coop and Price lowered their guns. Everyone was wide-eyed, open-mouthed. Katherine had one hand tight on my arm, the other clutching her keys in a white-knuckled grip. She was apparently ready to use them as weapons if needed. McDouglas peeled himself off the wall, turned to me.

“What the fuck was—”

He didn’t have time to finish.

It happened to Price first.

It was challenging to put into words, exactly what started happening to Price. When bodies do new things, things they were never designed to do, language fails. The best way to describe it is like when a spider is sprayed with insecticide. There is a certain way that spiders die, an unnatural way—twitching and contorting, limbs twisting in double upon themselves. They bend onto their backs, writhing and breaking, their bodies good for nothing except playing out the end of their little lives. They stay like that after they die, lying on their backs, bodies dried out, bent in odd, damaged ways. They don’t look like spiders anymore after that—they look like pained husks, broken bellies laid bare to the world that placed them in such a predicament to begin with.

That is to say, what happened to Price was unpleasant.

It started with his arms. His fingers and wrists twisted inward towards his chest, bending in on themselves until the bones gave in. His wrists cracked at sharp angles, jagged protrusions suddenly visible underneath his straining skin. The skin of his right wrist tore, revealing a blade of white amid red, red, red. He stared down at them with wide, shocked eyes, as if he didn’t yet comprehend what he was seeing. Then the bones in his forearms snapped—splitting down the middle like dry branches in the fall—and he understood. He screamed. Blood squirted out of him as his skin popped open in harsh lines, spraying onto the walls and the floor and a little bit on Coop’s sleeves.

Price’s legs cracked beneath him and he fell like a tree, tipping backwards and catching himself against the wall, sliding onto the bloody floor as his body convulsed. His ankles turned themselves inward at that same sharp angle as his wrists, the hems of his pants protruding and slick with blood. When his shins snapped, his pants tore open, the splintered bone stabbing through the thick material of his uniform.

I shot an arm out in front of Katherine, as if we were riding in a car and the person in front of us had slammed on their brakes a bit too suddenly. I had absolutely no idea how I meant for the action to help in this particular circumstance, but it seemed the only action my body was physically capable of. Muscle memory, I supposed.

Coop screamed Price’s name, crouching on the floor next to him. He put his hands out, palms towards Price’s body. He looked like he wanted to touch Price, to help him, to fix him, but was afraid of what might happen if he attempted to do any of those things.

The sound Price’s femurs made as they splintered was memorable. Price’s legs were now jagged lines and his limbs were curving into his core, bracketing like a cage. His whole body twisted and shriveled, his skin looking surprisingly dry and wrinkled considering the amount of blood pouring out of him.

Price was screaming. He was nearly louder than the house had been just a few moments ago. I had a sense that I ought to be screaming as well, but it would seem that I was no longer able to produce any sort of sound. Instead, I kept myself pressed close to the wall, arm still out in front of Katherine, my unblinking eyes glued to the thing that was rapidly becoming a disassembled version of Price’s body.

Next to me, Katherine was making a wailing noise—part cry, part profanity—intermittently muffled as her hands flew up over her mouth.

Price’s chest caved in on itself with a shattering noise. A pit formed in the center of his body where his ribs used to protect the delicate organs underneath. The cage of bones curled in and snapped and ruptured something that contained quite a bit of blood. Price’s face twisted and broke, snapping directly down the middle. His screams changed, taking on more of a gurgling quality. Everyone in the room was saying some variant of “Christ” or “fuck.” I still seemed unable to produce noise. I stared on, my eyes wide but my mouth closed.

And then it was all over for Price.

The silence reentered the room, unwelcome but barely noticed as everyone filled the space with gasps and sobs and Price’s name and curses and questions that were likely never to be answered. Coop began backing away from Price’s body. He had little flecks of Price’s blood across his face and hands. He was whispering something under his breath that I couldn’t quite make out. Whatever it was, he was saying it over and over and over.

Then Coop’s arms started to snap, the cracking noises of his bones breaking the momentary stillness that had settled in when Price’s body was no more. Coop stared at his twisted arms in horror, little whimpering noises coming from his mouth. He looked down at Price, understanding, seeing what was to come. Then he looked at me, his expression a question, a plea. I shook my head. Sorry. I couldn’t help him. There was a louder crack, a definite, uncompromising noise, and Coop howled, falling to the floor.

Katherine screamed and cursed.

Coop’s legs were collapsing in on themselves, closing into hinges that hadn’t existed on his body seconds ago. He was a writhing spider, too late to do anything to prevent the poison that bent his body into an incorrect shape.

McDouglas was on me. He had his gun out, and he pointed it in my face.

“I don’t know how you’re doing this,”he shouted, “but you need to stop it right now.” His hands shook, making the gun waver as he stared at me. Katherine screamed and I pushed her away from me. This seemed like the sort of thing she shouldn’t be close to, not that anything around her was much better.

My eyes drifted to McDouglas’ face, then to the barrel of the gun, then back to Coop writhing on the floor as his body broke apart. I said nothing. I raised my hands up at my side—I’m unarmed. I surrender. Don’t shoot—but the action didn’t have much enthusiasm behind it. I had a feeling that nothing I did from this point forward mattered very much at all. I remembered Jasper up in the closet, all folded in on himself like Price was currently, like Coop was working his way to being. I remembered the match in Jasper’s hand, the one he never got to light. This house—Master Vale—had very particular opinions about the sorts of things that went on here, about people—me, specifically—leaving.

Don’t.That was what the rule had been. What the rule seemed to be.

“Oh,” I said, “it’s too late for that.” McDouglas was unlikely to know what I was talking about, but that was low on my list of concerns at the moment.

Coop was fighting, trying to keep his bones together. He was losing. He knew it.

“Make it stop,”McDouglas shouted. “Make it stop right now.” His eyes were wet. His face wasn’t the face of a trained officer comfortable taking action in high-pressure situations, but rather of a terrified child seconds away from hiding under a bed.

Blood poured from Coop’s mouth. His jaw wasn’t straight anymore. Like with Angelica, one of his eyes was starting to lose its position and texture. Breathing didn’t seem to be coming easily for him at the moment, likely due to the gaping hole that cracked across his chest as his body folded itself lengthwise. Something inside him made a popping noise and his blood splattered across the wall.

“I am going to count to three,”McDouglas yelled, his red face only a couple of feet from mine. “And then I am going to shoot you in the fucking head.”

“NO,”Katherine screamed. She moved closer, which was probably ill-advised. “Put the gun down.”

Coop’s choked gurgles were quieting. His eyes rolled back in his head, pointing towards two different corners of the ceiling. It wouldn’t be much longer for Coop now, which, at this point, was good news.

“One,”McDouglas yelled. He stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the gun directly into my forehead. I felt the cool metal against my worry lines. The gun shook in his hand, but from this range he was unlikely to miss.

I raised my hands a little higher in the air. It was all I could do, really.

Coop was still and silent, a broken spider on the floor.

“Two,”McDouglas yelled.

I looked at him past the barrel of his gun. “I can’t do anything,” I said. I wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting out of me. We’d broken the rules, all of us, and we were about to face the consequences, as unpleasant as they might be.

“Put the fucking gun down,”Katherine screamed.

The last sputter of bloody air escaped from Coop’s lungs—whether from his mouth or through the deep crevice in the center of his chest was unclear.

“Three,” said McDouglas, his voice suddenly serious, a decision made. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Then his chest snapped in half.

Katherine shrieked.

Something wet hit my face. I had a feeling it was blood.

McDouglas dropped to his knees. The gun clattered to the floor.

Katherine sprang away from McDouglas’ body, flattening herself against the wall. Her feet skittered and slipped in the blood, as if she could somehow escape through the wall if she only pushed hard enough. She shouted something at him, something that might have been his name.

He wasn’t listening. He was already halfway to becoming a dead spider, shattered arms bending into his split ribs, legs twisting themselves into something unrecognizable. He flopped onto his back, howling, his chest opening and cracking, revealing to the room the inside parts of himself that no one ought to see. McDouglas seemed to go faster than Price and Coop, jerking and spasming on the floor, shouting and gurgling and snapping and cracking and twisting and eventually going still, his ripped skin sagging as his limbs relaxed into their contorted positions across his body. His eyes were on me when his face split, and then they weren’t anymore, drifting in two different directions by necessity.

And then it was over. Three bodies bent and broken and lying in a pool of blood, some of it theirs, some of it the house’s. I stared. I could do little else. It would seem I had once again lost the capacity to make any sort of noise—not a single sigh, whimper, or cry, let alone actual words. The best I could do was breathe—long, forceful exhalations out of my nose that tickled my mouth, which was seemingly glued shut forever.

The silence was back, so real that it was practically tangible, a monster that filled the room with its presence. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn I could reach out and touch it, scratch it behind its ears. I would have sworn it could have bitten me.

The front door crashed open, and I nearly rediscovered my ability to scream. Jones raced in, gun drawn. Her clothes were tattered and she had scratches covering her face and hands, little trickles of blood leaking down the lines beneath her eyes, along her mouth. She had feathers sticking out of her frizzed hair. The birds had gotten her all right.

Jones skittered to a stop just a few feet into the house, and it looked as if her body stopped functioning. Her eyes went wide; her jaw slackened. The hand holding the gun dropped limply to her side. She gaped at the carnage of the house.

“What?.?.?. ,” she started, looking at the pools of blood, the dead-spider remains of her fellow officers. Her eyes landed on me. She looked as if she wanted to raise her gun but couldn’t quite find the coordination. Her mouth moved. You?

I shook my head. Time for words. Time for a lot of words. Explanations. Clarifications. Pleas for mercy. I wasn’t capable of any of that, but it seemed in my best interest to try. I opened my mouth.

Jones’ gaze shifted. It landed on something just behind me. Her mouth closed. Her eyes widened. The next breath that came from her was sharp, unsteady. Horrified. She took a step backwards.

Behind me, Katherine made a small noise. A sort of choked whimper. I turned, my pulse hammering in my ears.

Master Vale stood directly behind her.

I had never seen Master Vale in the light of day before, only in shadows. The sunlight streaming into the hallway made his skin look so pale as to be nearly transparent, the angry lesions screaming red across his body in stark comparison. I could see how his clothes, dirty and ragged, hung from his emaciated form, dangling loosely, as if his bones had shrunk to the slightest of twigs. He towered over Katherine, his twisted body looking as if it could be twice her size. He was the stillest I’d ever seen him, his gnarled limbs like those of a statue as they hovered just behind Katherine, not touching, not yet. He was smiling, his cracked lips pulled back to reveal an overjoyed row of rotted teeth. He was so, so happy.

I suddenly felt as if my legs had been taken from me, my guts sliced open. My chest didn’t feel like it had exploded so much as it felt like a boat rapidly filling with water and descending into the depths faster than I could bail it out. I was sinking.

Katherine still had her purse clenched under her arm, her keys trapped in her fist. Tears streamed down her face and her mouth looked as if it were trying to form words with little success. She must have seen something in Jones’ face, in my face, some look that communicated what words never could, because the color drained from her cheeks and her tears stopped as suddenly as a faucet shut off.

Master Vale’s hand—all knotted knuckles and needle fingers—came to rest on her shoulder.

Katherine’s arms dropped to her side. Her keys clattered to the floor. Her purse landed at her feet. She stopped blinking.

I was underwater. The world around me was black, the sky barely visible from my depths. I struggled, my limbs pushing and heaving as they pulled me towards the surface, seemingly miles away. But I was a strong swimmer, and I surfaced with a gasp.

“NO,”I shouted.

Master Vale’s arms closed around Katherine like a bear trap. Katherine screamed, a sound that shook the house, and then he had her. He pulled her backwards, his long legs lunging towards the open mouth of the basement. Katherine kicked and struggled, feet off the ground, trying to run in midair. She writhed in his grip but he had her. He had her, and he was laughing.

“Mom,”Katherine screamed as she disappeared into the black of the basement.

The door slammed behind them.