Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Harper tried again, but still nothing. Frustrated, she started up the stairs, pepper spray in hand.
And was again overcome by the surreal feeling of moving yet not moving, a sensation more nightmarish than dreamlike.
She found herself at the top of the stairs and paused, trying to remember why she was there.
There were no doors, just a seemingly endless hallway that reminded her of the shadowy corridor in the abandoned barracks.
Reality blurred and shifted; lights flickered. The requiem music soared in her head. She couldn’t think straight. This should not, could not, be happening, and yet it was. She tried to focus.
Asher. I’m looking for Asher.
The house seemed to grow larger, as though expanding, then it started contracting. As if the house were breathing—as if it were alive. Sentient.
She was being watched.
The back of her neck tingled, and out of the corner of her eye she spied a shadow slipping past. When she turned it was gone, but then she heard something.
Low, unintelligible, barely a sigh but a distinct susurration tumbling down the corridor, coming closer, growing louder. The requiem music soared.
“Harper…”
At the sound of her whispered name, Harper returned to her body, to her conscious self. She was standing at the top of the stairs. The door to the Reflection room was just steps away, and she heard Asher softly singing that terrible song: “Why, why, why, Delilah…”
“Asher?” Harper called.
“Harper…”
The whispered voice that was calling her name did not sound like Asher’s.
High and lilting, it sounded like a woman.
Harper hurried to the door of the Reflection room, hoping Mario had been telling the truth: that somehow it had been cleaned up.
She could not bear to see the bloody mess reflected into infinity in all those mirrors.
The room was spotless, empty except for the chairs still arranged in a messy ring.
The mirrored walls had been cleaned and were creating their endless repetitions, and they appeared intact.
What was the crash she had heard? And where had Asher and Joel gone?
She could still hear Asher singing somewhere.
She hesitated in the doorway.
“Harper.” She heard a real, human voice call her name. It was Asher, standing at the end of the hallway. The expression on his face seemed odd. He was humming under his breath.
“I called 911. They should be here soon,” she lied. “You okay?”
Asher pushed past Harper to enter the Reflection room, where he stood in the center of the ring of chairs and started to slowly turn in circles, gazing into the mirrors.
“My sister was a believer in many things. This was her special room.”
“I’ve heard that.” Loath to enter the “special room,” Harper lingered in the doorway.
“According to Detective Serrano, some kids broke in here and held a séance.” Asher’s blue eyes were shadowed with sadness.
“Delilah and I ran around unsupervised when we were kids, a folie à deux, and we broke into the place, but it never would have occurred to us to do something like that. An animal sacrifice! It’s so… macabre.”
“You told me that. Asher, what was that crash I heard? And where’s Joel?”
A breeze from the window stirred the air, and the white curtain floated up. Only then did she notice glass shards on the floor. The large windowpane had been smashed.
Harper ran across the room, pushed the curtain aside, and looked down upon the dreadful sight in the garden below.