17. Ascending Stakes #2
It’s wooden, painted white, and there are gaps between the stairs where you can see right down to Archer’s gorgeous floorboards below.
I notice the rug from yesterday is gone—the one that soaked up all Raul’s blood.
There are no bloodstains on Archer’s floor.
I wonder how long he spent cleaning that.
I’m glad it worked out for him. And for Raul.
I attain the top step with a bounce, encouraged by all I’ve got to gain, trying not to think too hard about what I’ve got to lose. Archer’s up, a second behind me, then he’s by my side here in the long, creepy hall.
“See how dark it is?” he says.
“Couldn’t hurt to turn on a light?” I suggest, a touch of humour in my voice.
Archer throws me a grin, a knowing look in his eye. “Watch,” he says. He reaches out, flips a light switch, and it comes on, it does, but it’s like someone pulled a shade screen in front of it. It comes on orange but dark, barely illuminating anything.
“And watch,” he continues, then steps off to the side and opens a door, revealing a bedroom.
I can see the two tall windows that look out onto the glorious British countryside.
I can see the blinds are up, the sun is shining.
But the light… It’s a suggestion of light.
It’s like the light itself is being gobbled up, stolen away.
“How is it doing that?” Because I assume it’s the creature taking the light somehow.
Archer, looking long down the hall to where all light disappears into a single void of pure black at the end, replies, “I don’t understand it.
I don’t think we’re in an illusion, not yet.
But it’s been like this since the day it arrived.
This darkness, metaphorical and literal.
Look.” He reaches across in front of me and opens another door, and it’s the same thing.
Huge windows that should let in so much light, but it’s fading out before it reaches us, leaving just a suggestion of what should be there.
Even so… something about this bedroom catches more attention from me than the last room. That one was sparse, white, and clean, very nice, but it had the feel of a guest bedroom.
This one… The walls are a deep green, the rug thick and floral in pinks and greens to match.
The furniture is old and wooden, as antique as everything else in this place, I guess.
And the bed… the bed is enormous. Four-poster (of course), twisting carved beams reaching up and up to the slanted ceiling, all exposed wood again.
The blankets look thick, the pillows soft and fluffy.
It’s a world away from where I sleep every night. A single bed in a small yellow room, sad and cold.
Part of me shrinks from it—the difference between our ways of living.
But another part of me wonders what it would be like to sleep in there.
With him. Wonders what he sleeps in. I wonder if he sleeps with anything on.
I wonder if his body is just as fit in the flesh as it looks through his clothes.
I’d be willing to bet money he’s all soft skin and hard curves, all pure masculine heat on linen sheets.
I wonder what his chest is like. His nipples. How he might respond if I bit them.
“Liam?” Archer’s voice, even as softly spoken as it is, shocks me back into the hallway. I actually jump and shout at the same time. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The… Your… Your bed. You…”
Wrong fucking answer.
He moves even closer when he leans past me to look at it. “What about it?”
Fuck, the smell of him. His sweater brushes my hand and fuck, yes, it is very fucking soft. Soft, like I just know his sheets are. “You um…” I tilt my head back a little to stop myself from sniffing his neck. “You sleep… there?”
Me and my incredible wit. Here we go again. Nothing’s going to catch a guy like Archer better than this mouth of mine.
“Yes. I…” For a moment he pauses, like just he’s realised I’m some lovelorn employee he’s asked over to do a job but who’s thinking about him in his bed, and all the things I would like to do with him in his bed.
Yes, it’s exactly that look on his face.
I’m sure of it. Until he says, “Oh, no. It’s… Come inside.”
His hand brushes mine as he moves past, and I wonder if it’s deliberate. It can’t be. But it pulls me like a chain, like it’s beyond my ability to let there be any distance between us.
I step straight after him, and… into the light?
As we cross through the doorway, we seem to cross some invisible threshold, out of the dark.
It’s absolutely flooded with light in here.
About a metre from the door, and you’d never have known the shadow lived in the hall.
I turn back. The doorway is black. So black I don’t want to go out there again.
“Strange, isn’t it?” he says, watching me.
And thank god my mind is back on ghosts and hopefully he can’t tell that I was high-key hoping I was about to be seduced.
“All the rooms are like this up here. I’ve warded them, so they’re safe, as far as I can tell.
” He runs a finger down the doorframe, along a ring of bright blue paint around the inner edge, only really noticeable when he points at it.
“I’ve done it here, and around all the other bedroom doors.
And over here…” He crouches down, lifts the edge of the rug, and reveals a thick line of what I’m guessing is salt hidden beneath.
I know from television that’s supposed to stop ghosts. Who knew it was real, though?
“Does it work on all of them? Even Simon?”
“So far, so good,” he says with a smile.
Then adjusts to more serious. “If you get into any trouble with a ghost—and I doubt you will, but just in case—there’s always the front door, like I said, but if you prefer, you can come in here.
Go into any of the upstairs rooms. The doorways are all painted.
The floors are sealed with salt. Just make sure you’re on the rugs or the beds. ”
I let out a small breath of relief, actually feeling a lot safer knowing it’s not a mad dash down those tall stairs if something comes at us, but just a quick sidestep.
“Any room at all,” he says. Then he adds, “All except the room at the end of the hall. Don’t go in there.” It’s casually stated, but oddly dropped.
“The…” I glance at the doorway. “You mean towards the attic? Where the thing is?”
“No, the other way.”
“That way down the hall?” I ask, pointing my finger to the left.
“Yeah, that way. Whatever you do, don’t go into the room at that end of the hall. It’s…” He threads his hands together, then pulls them apart, twirling them, as if he’s nervous. But he was totally fine a few seconds ago. “It’s my office,” he explains, a little too tightly. “It-it’s not protected.”
My eyebrows narrow, and I guess he gets the unspoken suggestion that it’s kind of odd he’d protect unoccupied guest bedrooms and not his office.
“I’ve been quite busy,” he explains, way too fast. “With all of this. This haunting, you know? Haven’t been able to work.
So, I guess… I haven’t had a chance to… do…
much work?” Then he stands very abruptly.
“Just don’t go in there. Okay? It’s not safe.
In fact, I’d say it’s the least safe room in the entire house. So maybe just… don’t?”
“Okay…” The urge to say ‘I wasn’t going to’ climbs up my throat, but given how childish it sounds, I swallow it back down. Still, it almost feels like it needs to be said. Like I just got in trouble for sneaking around.
“Great. Thank you. But here,” he swings his arm wide around his room, “is safe. Here is safe and good. All right?”
“All right.”
He points at the door. “But not there.”
“All right.”
He searches my eyes. “Never there.”
“Um. Okay.”
“Okay. Then let’s…” He gestures towards the door.
I don’t think I’ve ever once felt less like going through a doorway than I do right now, but this needs to be done, so I take a deep breath, lock my jaw, and follow him.
Like night and day, quite literally, that invisible barrier washes over me.
It’s comparatively so dark it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I walk blind for two whole steps, then some cold and miserable horror washes over me.
Like being… dipped in something. But some emotion.
Like being dipped in shock and offence and disgust, and it’s completely, horribly overwhelming.
Stumbling away from the feeling, I trip straight into Archer, who catches me with hands either side of my ribcage, which thrust me back up to standing, and almost smack-bang straight into the face of a woman. A woman tall and white and… transparent.
Fuck.
Fuck!
She’s a fucking ghost!
There’s a ghost right here in the hall.
I just walked straight through a ghost.
And she looks furious about it.
She looks exactly like she’s about to kill me.