Chapter Twenty-Two #2
We freeze and stare at each other.
Callum whispers, ‘Was that a woman’s voice?’
‘You heard that too?’
‘Yep. Do you see anything?’
I should be able to see it, but I can’t . I shake my head. ‘No. I feel it, though.’
His jaw clenches, then he points forward, moving further into the house.
‘Jase,’ he calls out. ‘Are you in here?’
‘Slow up,’ I hiss.
He ignores me and keeps walking until he’s standing on the bottom step of the grand staircase at the heart of the room.
‘Jason?’ he calls up the stairs.
‘Callum, shh. Slow down. Give me a second to—’
He wheels around, his mouth twisting into a cruel sneer.
‘Stop telling me what to do.’
I stumble backward. ‘Callum.’ There’s something strange about his face. Something I don’t recognise. All the light is gone, the glow, the beauty replaced by a darkness that’s hard and ugly.
He slowly straightens up, lifting himself to his full height, his shoulders pressed back as he looms over me. He takes one measured step forward, then another, inching me across the room with his body.
‘What are you doing? Stop it. Callum! Stop it!’
I glance over my shoulder to check my surroundings, and in that moment, he grabs me, a hand on each arm. He squeezes so tight that I yelp. He holds me in place, his fingers digging into my flesh as I squirm and wriggle against his grasp.
‘You’re hurting me,’ I cry.
He stares at me with eyes that aren’t his. They’re cold and empty. The eyes of the dead. No spark, no life, no Callum. Something has control of him. I can sense its foul presence crawling beneath his skin.
I scream into his face, ‘Callum, fight it!’ But he doesn’t even blink.
He brushes his knuckles against my cheek and coos, ‘Shhh, Holly.’ His voice sounds strange, unnatural. ‘Everything’s going to be just fine. We’ll be together forever. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
He takes another step forward, backing me up against a long dining table and pinning me with his thighs. The edge of the wood digs painfully into the small of my back as I struggle under his weight. He runs a delicate hand up and down my throat.
‘Let go,’ Callum purrs. ‘There’ll be no more Holly the Freak if you just let go.’
Don’t listen, it’s not him, it’s not him, it’s not him .
I clench my fists, trapped at my sides, and focus all my energy on the presence slithering inside him.
‘Leave him or I’ll destroy you,’ I say.
A cackle bursts from his lips. ‘You destroy me, you destroy him, girl,’ the thing inside Callum hisses, contorting his face in rage. A second later, his expression softens. ‘Please don’t kill me, Holly!’ Callum’s voice pleads. And then the thing inside him laughs.
It’s not him .
‘Focus on my voice, Callum! I know you’re in there. You can fight this! I believe in you.’
‘How sweet,’ the thing croons, then Callum lifts a hand and, with a twisted grin, clutches my throat.
I gasp for breath as his grip tightens. ‘Callum, no. Please don’t do this,’ I manage to croak.
His eyelids flutter, his hold on me loosening slightly, and that tiny crack is all I need to bring my knee up and connect with his groin with as much force as I can muster.
Callum howls, stumbling backward, and drops to the floor, clutching at his crotch.
Coughing, I grab a chair and prepare to launch it at him. But then he looks up at me in shock, and it’s his eyes, Callum’s eyes, bright green and filled with pain.
‘What the hell, Holly?’
‘You need to leave.’ I grab the collar of his jacket and drag him behind me, sliding him over the polished wooden floor towards the front door.
‘What’s going on?’ He tries to scramble to his feet but stumbles and lands heavily on his side.
I stop and look down at him. His face is a mask of fear and uncertainty.
‘Something possessed you, Callum, and you tried to choke me. I can’t trust you in this place.’
‘What are you talking about?’ He crawls onto his knees and stares up at me. ‘I would never hurt you, Holly. Never.’ He pushes off the floor and I take two quick steps back.
‘You need to leave.’
He shakes his head as he rubs the place where my knee so expertly landed. ‘No,’ he says, and pulls his gun from the back of his jeans.
I gasp, raising my hands to protect my face.
‘No, no, no. Holly, no.’ He places the gun on the table and backs away, his palms up. ‘It’s for you. Take it.’
‘Just go, Callum.’
‘I’m not leaving you in here alone. No way. I don’t know what just happened, but if it happens again, you can shoot me.’
‘What?’
‘Just try to aim for somewhere non-fatal, okay?’
I fumble for his gun, my eyes glued to him. ‘Don’t you remember anything?’
He shakes his head back and forth, horror now lining his face. ‘No, nothing.’
‘It doesn’t matter. If it got to you once, it could try again.’
‘Then you shoot me, but I’m not leaving you. We stick together.’
An ache bursts in my heart. I take a slow breath. I can’t believe what I’m about to say.
‘Stay in front of me.’ I point the gun at him.
He lifts his hands in the air and turns around.
‘Not with your hands up, you idiot.’
He looks over his shoulder. ‘Oh, right. Of course.’ His hands drop to his sides. ‘It wasn’t me, Holly, I swear. Whatever I did, it wasn’t me.’
‘I know it wasn’t. I could feel it wasn’t.’ I touch my throat. My skin still burns from where his grip tightened.
‘What did you feel?’ he asks.
‘Something ugly. Different from anything I’ve ever experienced.’
‘Why didn’t you do your thing and destroy it?’
‘Because I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘Holly… you might have to.’
‘I won’t. It caught us by surprise. I won’t let that happen again.’
We climb the stairs, which creak and groan under our feet.
Callum’s out in front, me behind with the gun raised in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
The second storey is almost pitch black, and every shadow that snakes up the wall or stretches across the floor make us stop and gasp.
We edge along the hall, pushing open each door, the light from our flashlights falling on well-made beds with heavy wooden posts that are dark and austere.
Most of the furniture is cloaked in sheets that drape over dressers and hide frames on the wall.
I peer under one and find a mirror, jumping with an embarrassing squeal at my own reflection.
The house is neat and clean and free of dust, as if someone had been recently living here and only just closed the house up. No spiderwebs or evidence of mice or rats.
‘Does this seem way too pristine for a house that no one has lived in since Brendin Western died, what, seven years ago?’ I ask.
‘Maybe Rosing has someone who comes in and cleans?’ Callum says.
‘I can’t imagine anyone from town wanting to do that.’
‘Do you sense anything?’
‘No. It’s quiet again. Way too quiet, especially after what just happened.’ He visibly shudders at my words.
We find the door to the attic and climb the narrow stairs. Here, we find dust and cobwebs clinging to every corner.
‘This is more like it,’ Callum says as he wanders around the room, peering at old chests and leather suitcases piled onto chairs. A shard of light shines in the window and I stand on my tiptoes to look through, seeing the familiar oak tree on the hill.
‘Okay, so he’s not upstairs,’ Callum says.
‘Then he must be downstairs.’ I pull up my best reassuring smile.
‘Jason,’ Callum calls as we step off the landing. I don’t stop him. There’s no point in tiptoeing and whispering anymore. The spirit is either laying low or lying in wait. Either way, our presence is no secret.
I mentally check in with Callum as we pass the spot where he tried to choke me.
It’s all him, but there’s also something else there now, as if the spirit left something lingering behind.
A trace of darkness that I’m positive wasn’t there before.
My grip tightens around the gun. I should have made Callum leave.
I’ve let my feelings for him cloud my judgement and now I’ve put both of us in danger.
We don’t find Jason in any of the rooms off the long gloomy hall on the lower floor. Not in the sitting room with the grand piano, the sheet draped over it hanging askew to reveal yellowed ivory keys, or the drawing room where cloaked armchairs cluster around the long-cold fireplace.
‘I don’t think he’s here,’ Callum says with a tremble as we leave the kitchen and head back to the centre of the house.
‘That’s probably good, isn’t it?’
‘But I still feel like he’s here. We must have missed something.’
‘We’ve checked every room.’ But then a thought hits me. Ice prickles up the back of my neck. ‘What about… the old cellar. What if it’s still here, hidden under this house?’
‘Where was it on the original plans?’
‘At the back, where the kitchen now is. Jason said the servants’ quarters were built over it. But there’s nothing in those rooms, they’re totally empty.’
Callum spins around and strides back towards the kitchen. I rush after him.
He shines his flashlight across the floor. ‘Would it be a trap door?’
‘I don’t know.’ I dash into the servants’ quarters and check the floors and the walls. He glances up as I come back out. ‘Nothing,’ I say. Then I spy something. ‘Callum.’ I point my flashlight toward an empty sideboard. ‘There’s something behind that sideboard.’
He shines his flashlight to where I’m looking, then his head snaps back around to me, his eyes wide.
‘Help me shift it,’ he says.
We pull and push on the sideboard, wiggling it back and forth over the timber floor until we reveal a wooden door, painted the same white as the brick of the kitchen walls.
Callum wraps his fingers around the old brass knob and slowly turns. The door swings open with a long creak. Then he shines his flashlight down the steep stairs.
My heart thunders.
He glances back at me anxiously, then calls out, ‘Jason? Jase, are you down there?’
A voice floats up from the shadows. ‘Cal?’
Callum gasps and sprints down the stairs, taking them two at a time.