17. Stolen
seventeen
Stolen
JAMES
My vision blurs, but I still see Ewan walk out of the basement.
No, not Ewan, but the ghost who is possessing him.
Things are going terribly wrong, I think, feeling distant from my body. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way...
My throat and lungs are burning, the spores are killing me.
Ewan...
I drag my nails against the stone floor and crawl, but the effort is too much and I lose consciousness.
When I come back to myself, I stare at my feet dragging along the stairs. Someone is breathing hard behind me and cursing. Lana... Lana is pulling me up the stairs. The light above us is too bright, and it hurts my retinas.
“Ewan...” I repeat.
“Hang on. It’ll be okay... I got you...” She sobs.
Four cats are helping her as best as they can by carrying my limp arms, their little teeth in my jacket. I feel a surge of affection for the felines. Ewan is right, they’re turning me into a cat person.
“Ewan...” I whisper.
Where is he? Is he okay? The dread pooling in my chest tells me that no, he’s not okay. The ghost took him. The entity stole him from us, and I failed to protect him.
We finally reach the top of the stairs and Lana drags me farther into the hallway. The door leading down to the basement closes by itself, locking the remaining clouds of spores downstairs. The copper taste of blood in my mouth is overwhelming. How much did I inhale?
She finally lets me go on the carpet and I crawl to my knees. Shirley is on the floor by my side. She’s crying and her clothes are soaked in blood.
I reach for her. “Shirley... are you okay?” My voice is raspy and barely audible.
“She stopped vomiting blood after Agnes was... eaten,” Lana says. “But I don’t know if it caused any internal damage. I’ll call for an ambulance. You need a hospital.”
Shirley shakes her head. “I think I’m fine... I’m just... We...” She swallows a sob.
“No hospital for me...” I say.
“But James, the spores—”
“No hospital.”
I don’t care about the damn spores. And how would we even explain what happened to us? We need to go after Ewan, and I say as much.
Lana shakes her head. “You’ve been out for at least an hour, and I had to drag you both up the stairs. I’m sorry. I don’t know where they went, James.”
An hour? “No...” I try to get to my feet but my legs give out and I fall down hard. The cat, Pearl, meows loudly as if scolding me. “We need to find him.”
“Yes. I just wanted to make sure you two were alive first. We’re no use to him if we’re dead. I’m going to get you settled, then I’m going to go look for him.”
“I’m coming... with...” I rasp.
In the end, I'm in no shape to even stand on my feet, and I'm forced to relent. Lana leaves Shirley and I on the couch in the great hall with bottles of water and painkillers, then she sets out with three of the cats—I didn’t even know the furry minions could leave the house.
Worry gnaws at us to let her go alone, but she promised to just look for Ewan and not engage with the entity. For all we know, the ghost discarded him in a dark alley.
If he killed him, I swear I’ll hunt him down and destroy him, even if it takes me years.
Lana comes back hours later, exhausted and red-eyed. They couldn't find him. The monster stole Ewan from us. He stole him from me.
Pearls sits on my chest, and I bury my face in her soft fur and try not to scream.
The three of us huddle in the dark, the house suddenly too empty.