Chapter Forty-Eight
FORTY-EIGHT
WILLOW ESTATE IS ROTTING.
The front garden is overgrown. Brown and yellow weeds rise between decaying summer bushes and drowned perennials.
The grass is dead, wilted beneath puddles of murky water and windblown piles of autumn leaves.
In the pale, shadow-cast light of the storm clouds overhead, the chipped burgundy paint has lost its remaining luster, the house seeming more gray than anything.
When I enter the foyer, my bags slip from my hands.
Even though I’m only sixteen, Gigi left the house to me.
To be transferred into my name on my eighteenth birthday.
She’d always said that Willow Estate was a living, breathing thing.
That it was more like a familiar than a house, meant to belong to the women who built it, and their daughters and granddaughters and so on.
But Willow Estate is gasping for breath. Thin layers of dust coat the table in the hallway and obscure the pictures of Gigi and my late grandfather.
I slowly make my way through the first floor, each step more painful than the last.
In the kitchen I open the fridge and sigh as I’m met with two cans of Diet Pepsi and a handful of expired condiments. I collect the grocery bags from where I left them at the front of the house and set them on the counter.
My mind is still hazy, the sight of Petunia standing in a pool of blood stained on the inside of my eyelids. At least I had the forethought to grab a taxi to Dollar General before coming back to the estate.
Exhausted, I put the food away. Some ramen and a few apples, deli meat and bread.
Just enough to hold me over while I figure out what I’m going to do next.
When I’m done, I trudge up the steep staircase, my heavy bags thumping behind me.
On my way to my room, I ignore the cracked-open door across the landing.
I haven’t taken a bath since the night of the funeral.
After months of communal showers, I waste no time ripping open my duffel and hauling my toiletries to the bathroom.
Despite the violence with which I scrubbed my skin last night in the shower, Maureen’s blood is still caked beneath my fingernails.
I feel shattered and guilty. Dirty. Wrong.
The faucet to the claw-foot tub is cold as I turn the knob. Waiting for it to fill, I pull my clothes off and kick them under the sink. I stand in front of the mirror, bare several times over, and my face crumples as I meet my own reflection.
I don’t even recognize her, this ghoul of a girl.
Deep purple like a bruise beneath my eyes, and cracks in the corners of my lips.
My shoulders curl in, my hair is frizzy around the edges, the skin at my part is flaked and itchy.
Absently I remember the bath and jump, rushing to turn the faucet off.
Steam clouds the room, and I pant against it, too hot to breathe, not hot enough to burn away the memories of the last few months.
Lowering myself into the scalding water, I rest my head against the tub. Everyone says the pain of grief gets better with time, but time has been passing, and it’s only gotten worse. When I close my eyes, everything that’s happened unravels before me.
The memorial service. Maureen’s mournful speech. Malachi’s hate-filled eyes. I hold my breath.
The dream. The brochure.
I unlock my knees.
Campus. Meeting Daisy and Sam. Lucas.
My chin touches the still-too-warm water.
Invocation Night. The forest. Fiona. The hedge maze. My mouth closes as my lips dip below the surface.
Kai. Always Kai. Everywhere I turn.
I let my entire head sink below the water now, my hair floating around me like Medusa’s snakes.
Maureen. Zodiac Witch. Blood everywhere.
Releasing the air from my lungs in giant bubbles, I wait, a sharp burn tugging as my chest grows tight. I resist its pull. My heartbeat groans in my ears as I force myself to stay underwater.
Gigi is dead.
Maureen is dead.
And neither of them have to deal with this anymore.
All I want is to go back to before. But I can’t.
Maybe it’s not worth the fight.
Behind my eyelids, stars burst like fireworks.
A crashing sound reverberates through the porcelain and into my ears. I sit up with enough force to splash half the water out of the tub and onto the floor, gulping in a breath that sears the inside of my lungs. I cough and grasp my chest in panic.
They found me.
Malachi’s trembling lips against mine. His final warning.
I thought leaving was supposed to be the thing that saves me.
I claw at the side of the tub, scrambling out of it. The second my soaking wet feet touch the parquet floor, they slip, and I fall, my face cracking against the corner of the marbled pedestal sink.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I hiss, touching the tender spot above my right eye. A rivulet of blood trickles down my face, the edges of the wound puckering as it swells. The pain doesn’t matter.
I brace my hands against the lip of the sink and pull, heaving myself up before gathering my discarded clothes in one hand and putting pressure on my face with the other.
I need to think. I need to think. I need to think. What am I supposed to do? Are they here to finally kill me? I throw on a pair of flannel pajama pants and an oversized hoodie. I strain my ears, listening to the groans of the house. For footsteps. For cloaks sweeping across the floor.
Silence.
The stairs creak as I creep down them, toes curled over their edges. In the living room my shaking hands precede me as I cross into the kitchen. The dining room. The laundry room. The office.
I don’t find anyone. Still, tension stiffens my shoulders as I check all the locks on the doors and windows.
When I’m sure no one is downstairs, I climb back up, my eyes sore from forcing away my tears.
The second-floor landing is lit yellow with a stained-glass pendant that swings when I walk, my shadow dancing against the wall like a poltergeist. I’m halfway to the bathroom when I realize the sound hadn’t come from the first floor after all.
The door to Gigi’s room is wide open.
I tiptoe to the threshold and stick my head in.
It still smells like her. Vanilla and lavender and mint.
Everything is exactly as I left it. Once I got back home from the hospital, near midnight on my birthday, I made the bed with clean sheets.
I dusted her side table and tucked a new pair of house shoes into the corner, ready for when she came home.
Except she never did.
Padding across the thick, beige rug, I flip on the bedside light. My whole body trembles as I pull back the covers and crawl between the sheets.
I lie there in silence until sleep overwhelms me, the horrors of my mind devouring me bit by bit.
I don’t drift awake, I am yanked from sleep and thrust into an acute awareness.
There’s a knocking from below.
A steady thump-thump-thump that shakes the foundation of the house.
I trudge, bleary eyed, down the stairs, one foot still in the nightmare, sweat beading my forehead despite the frigid wind outside.
I know I’ve already checked every entry point, and I’ve fallen victim to paranoia once before, but that doesn’t stop my pulse from racing in the base of my throat.
The pounding only increases the closer I get to the sound. When I pass the mirror above the record player in the hallway, I startle and turn, peering into the depths of the dark living room. I swear I saw something moving back there. I call my magic to my fingers.
When I look through the French doors to the back porch, there’s nothing there, and the sound pulls me toward the kitchen. I do a double take at my reflection in the side door. There it is again, that blur behind me. I step closer, wiping my eyes, trying to make the image clearer.
And… yep, there she is… the woman from the woods.
Psychic-medium, Maureen had written beside my star sign.
Well, so far I haven’t been able to predict a single thing, and it seems like the only ghost that wants to communicate with me from the other side hates my guts.
This time her bones are covered in flesh and blood. But her face is twisted into a scowl. Seeing her like this, so close to human, I feel something needling at the back of my mind. Where do I know her from?
“What the hell do you want?” I grumble, though when I turn around, she’s gone.
On the other side of the island, the patterned runner jumps in time with the thumping sound. I push aside the barstool and kick up the corner of the rug.
A crack in the floorboards outlining a door just big enough for me to fit through. I hook my finger into the nickel-sized hole and hold my breath as I pull.
The void in the bottom of the house is pitch black and damp like the greenhouse in late April.
It exudes the same cloying scent of rot and decay as the school.
Shining my phone light into its depths, I realize it’s the old, unfinished basement.
I saw Gigi climb down there so infrequently that I nearly forgot it existed at all.
A cool breeze wafts from the opening, and I eye the vertical rungs like a ladder against one side.
“No fucking way,” I whisper. “Absolutely not.”
I move to close the door, but the hinges don’t budge.
“What the—” Confused, I glance up. The ghost is there again, her foot lifted, putting counterpressure against the wooden square.
Her eyebrows are lowered stubbornly. She has gray-streaked, densely coiled hair and a dimple in her chin.
The rest of the details are lost to the fact that I can see right through her.
“Okay…” Clearly she wants me to go down there. But am I really going to trust a ghost after what happened in the maze?
“This is the last time I’m listening to one of you,” I mutter, rolling my eyes when she points down the hole.
I drop in, legs first, and descend the ladder, my teeth chattering almost immediately. Once I hit the bottom, I step out and marvel at the expanse of the room.
Sweeping my light across the dark, I find laid-stone walls and shelves and shelves of canned goods and old boxes full of junk.
Next to a stack of wooden planks leaning against the wall is a light switch. I flip it, but nothing happens.
Cautiously I inch my way farther into the room, marveling at some of the vintage toys piled in half-rotted cardboard boxes. I’m thumbing through a stack of old magazines when another thump rings out behind me.
“Holy shit!” I yelp, turning around and fully expecting the woman to be standing there.
She isn’t, of course.
“You have got to stop scaring me like that!” I say to the air before my eyes catch on the box that has fallen from its shelf. A beam of light reflects off something spilling out of it.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I approach it.
The light is catching on the clasp of a brown leatherbound book.
Picking it up, I wipe the coating of dust from the cover.
Etched into the clasp is a symbol I’ve grown to know well.
The mark of the Cardinal. The edges of the pages are dark and charred in some places, like someone tried to burn the book but failed.
I tuck it under my arm and climb out of the basement, grabbing a glass of water before crawling back into Gigi’s bed.
Obviously the weirdo ghost lady wants me to look at this.
I pull my hair into a bun. When I search for a lever to undue the clasp, I find that there isn’t one.
I run my fingers along the metal, hoping that maybe there’s a button I can’t see.
I’m about to give up when I realize the necklace sitting against my chest is warm and getting warmer the longer I hold the book. Intrigued, I unhook the chain and press the twin symbols together.
A golden light swims across the etching on the small pendant before the faintest click separates an invisible seam, and the journal pops open.
The book smells old. Like, really old. Many entries have been torn out, but a shaky, slanted cursive fills line after line. Musings from a woman named Nora. Dated all the way back to 1926.
I begin to read.
I read until I am a sobbing mess, my fingertips numb from the pressure of leaving permanent indentations on every page.
I read until I am sick of it.
Until I am cleaved in half, cursed by the hands of fate.