19. To Bed, Perchance to Scream
nineteen
To Bed, Perchance to Scream
Liam
Edgar’s beak presses against the side of my jaw as I scratch his neck, and who knew ravens were this cuddly? He’s perched on my wrist, held against my chest, and honestly, he’s so adorable.
He’s also exactly the sort of peace I need in this house right now.
I won’t pretend walking into Helena wasn’t terrifying, disconcertingly nice as she seems to be.
But the way Archer is with her… It’s like meeting and chatting with ghosts is an everyday occurrence for him.
He told me the place was haunted, but this is something else.
It’s not just haunted in the way I imagine spooky old mansions are. This feels so… casual.
And clearly he doesn’t want me to know anything about it.
I hate to admit it, but that hurts. It shouldn’t, I know. This is his house, his haunting. I’m just an employee.
Yet when he closed that door on me just now… It’s like he was closing the door on ‘us.’ Or whatever I thought ‘us’ was about to be.
Maybe.
In my dreams.
Now here I am, just ‘the help.’ Some stupid guy who has no idea what he’s doing sitting alone in here while Archer talks ghost stuff with a ghost, even after he told me he’d tell me about ghost matters.
Failure. That’s what it feels like. Failure to impress or progress.
So Edgar’s soft croaks, the way he closes his eyes when I find a place he likes a scratch, that feels like an achievement. At least someone wants my company.
Just as the thought occurs to me, his eyes snap open and his head pops up. He blinks once, then opens his huge wings and flies straight back out the window.
Okay. Good. Great.
Completely alone in the haunted house.
Sitting here on the bed that belongs to the guy I like, who clearly thinks I’m useless, while he does the ghost job I’ve been hired to do.
Great. Perfect.
So do I just sit here? Or do I go out there and push my way into whatever’s going on?
Stay in the salt circle, he said.
Actually, failure or not, I’m absolutely not enough of a moron to go stepping outside salt circles to go wandering around weird and dark haunted houses by myself. So… I guess I’ll just sit here. Alone. On Archer’s bed.
And wait.
And wait…
Maybe I’ll lie down. Is that bad? I could be here for a while. Who knows what he’s doing. I haven’t heard a sound in like ten minutes.
Maybe he’s forgotten I’m here? Maybe I should call him?
I take my phone out, considering the idea, but it’s flat. Which is weird because I charged it overnight. It’s old and a bit shit, but it should last longer than this…
Maybe Archer has a charger by his bed.
I roll over and drop off the bed onto the floor to search down the side of the bedside table, where I guess it might have fallen since it’s not on top.
And there’s nothing. Just a perfectly dust-free rug in this perfectly decorated, perfectly nice room. Not even the smallest dust bunny under this bed. Not a thing in the dark but…
A small sparkle catches my eye, so I lean closer, trying to make out what it could be. It’s orange and flickering and…
It should not be this dark under the bed…
The realisation hits me with the heavy and sure weight of a gravestone. Just as it does, all the light around me fades. The room turns black. It’s just me. Nothing but me and this orange flickering glow that grows brighter and brighter.
I want to run. Every muscle in me is screaming, ‘Go now, get out of here.’ But the light, it’s… entrancing. It’s mesmerising.
Until it begins to fill out.
Until the glow illuminates into white all around it. Skeletal white, creeping closer beneath the bed, bare teeth and the two holes of a nasal cavity. Then, out of the corner of my eye, an inch away from me, that skeleton hand.
I reel back, hurling myself as far away from the thing as I can. My back smashes into the wall. Not Archer’s wall. A new wall. Some black and moss-covered stone wall, and I’m not in Archer’s bedroom anymore.
I thought it couldn’t find me here.
“Get away from me,” I whisper, my voice harsh and shallow.
But it comes anyway, the tik-tak of its bony fingers on the floor like needles down my spine.
My fingers scrape something hard and sharp—a stick or a branch. I flinch away, dust and dirt and what feels like dried leaves crumbling beneath my touch.
“Liam,” the thing hisses at me.
“Why the fuck do you know my name?” I shout at it.
But I’m not staying to find out. Archer said it’s the exact same space no matter how real any illusion looks. No matter whether that stick just cut me or that stone scraped my back. I’m still in Archer’s bedroom. “I’m in Archer’s bedroom,” I repeat aloud, doing my best to make it seem true.
The thing shifts forward, those blazing eyes intent on me as it crawls from beneath the bed, every movement out of place, even in this awful hallucination. “Liam…”
“Fuck!” My back slides along the wall when I stumble, and it’s cold, damp. The smell, it’s musty, like a crypt. Some unused place, deep underground.
I just need to move forward.
The bed is still there, that luxurious floral linen so out of place in this new space.
Everything else is gone—ahead of me, some long and endless corridor.
But I know the door is there. Or it was there.
Somewhere in the middle of it. If only I’d counted the steps, but why the fuck would I count the steps?
I thought I was safe. Archer said I was safe.
I walk. I walk straight forward, but even as I do, I’m too well aware I must be leaving the salt circle.
It’s not a ghost. Archer says this thing isn’t a ghost, and I believe him because I never heard of a ghost that could do this. Salt makes no difference to it. But god, what other ghosts might be in this house? Worse ghosts than Simon? Than this thing, even?
“Liam…” comes the voice behind me, harsh and insistent and close. So close I can’t stand to look.
I break into a run, hands out in front of me, blind, moving for the door, wherever it was, hoping, praying I can get through what looks like an unbroken stone wall.
They meet the hard, flat surface. Where the hall was, it’s now stone all the way across, blocking my path. It’s wet—damp and mossy. It’s part of the same hallucination as last night, this tunnel, or crypt, or temple, or whatever the hell it is.
“Liam…”
“No. No! Let me out!” My voice cracks out of me, desperate and hoarse, and I slam my hands down on the wall. “Let me out! Archer! Please!”
That clicking noise. It fills the air, the tik-tak skeleton fingers on the stone wall approaching, closer, always closer.
“Archer! Please!” I run my hands over the wall, desperately feeling for the doorknob or a latch that might open the real door. “It has to be here. It has to!”
“Liiiiiiiaaaaaammmmm,” it hisses out, and the breath slides over my neck.
It’s going to kill me.
Why doesn’t it kill me already? It could just reach out and…
“Archer!” I smash my hands down. Pain bites into my skin, but it doesn’t stop me doing it over and over, desperate enough to break bones.
“Liam?” A new voice. A woman’s voice.
“Helena?” By instinct I leap to my left, trying to get closer to the sound.
“I can’t get to you,” she calls. “It’s warded. Follow my voice.”
“Where are you? I’m trapped!” Yet I stumble on towards that sound.
“Keep coming. Don’t stop!”
As if I would. As if I could. Because I feel the presence of the thing, like it’s keeping step with me.
My whole body hunches towards the wall, expecting, any second, for those knife-like skeleton fingers to slice into me, rip my entrails out, do whatever it is things like that do to stupid men who thought they could ever become Spirit Extraction Specialists when they can’t even get a job as a grocery store shelf stacker.
Like I even wanted this job anyway! Fuck! This is not worth dying for.
My mum. My poor mum. Jesus fuck, why is this happening to us?
My hand smacks blindly against stone, my fingers, my arms jolting in pain. I flinch back, then realise what I’ve hit. This piece of stone, rounded, sticking out of the wall. This has to be it!
“Can you still hear me?” Helena’s been talking this whole time, and now I’ve discovered her, just opposite me.
“I’m here.” I yell. “I’m trying!” I grab the stone, a strange protrusion carved with intricate patterns. I tighten my fingers, turning it as hard as I can. It moves slowly, unwillingly, the sound of stone against stone crunching in my ears.
It takes every bit of strength I have, but it’s moving.
Helena’s still calling my name on the other side. My breath is harsh and my pulse is beating in my ears. But there’s a stark absence in the room.
The thing.
It’s not here anymore.
God, where the fuck is it? It was behind me, breathing down my neck, literally. And now it’s gone?
I don’t care. I can’t think about it. Maybe this doorway is all I had to get to. Maybe I’m safe. Maybe it’s Archer’s doorway warding that’s done it.
I shove my shoulder down, forcing as much pressure against the stone as I can, and with a final grunt, it gives way, spins over in one click, to reveal a carved stone skull from the underside looking up at me.
I grab it, wrench it, and the stone wall opens.
It opens slowly, with a deep groan, to reveal a glimpse of black space. Pure nothingness.
I don’t even care. I’m going through. Anywhere but here.
I wrap fingers around the edge of the stone door, yank it back with all my strength as I thrust myself forward.
Then come to a dead stop.
Jem.
Jem standing right in front of me. Not in the stone room. Not in Archer’s house. We’re somewhere else now. Someone’s house? Someone’s kitchen?
But the look on his face…
He looks so fucking scared.
There’s a loud bang, a shot like… like a gun firing.
And Jem goes down. Down onto the dirty floor of some house.
Jem with that bullet hole in his head, blood and brains everywhere, as his body spasms, as the light fades out of his terrified eyes.
My insides crumple. Everything falls away. Everything turns black, and it’s Jem. My big brother. Just us.
He reaches out for me—his hand coming for me in this void, just the two of us and nothing else.
And he’s dead. My brother is dead, broken and bloody. And he’s reaching out for me.
A hand curls sharp about my wrist, wrenches me. My shoulder slams into the wall, and I’m back in the hall. In Archer’s hallway. Back in the relative light of that light-dark twilight hall.
“Jem!” My knees hit the floor hard, my temple colliding with the wall as I fall.
I’m only vaguely aware of the rustle of red silk, of Helena down on the floor next to me. “You’re out. You’re free. Are you all right?”
“My brother. Did you see him?” The tears are pouring out of me, falling on my hands, on Archer’s floorboards, as I try to get my bearings. I drop back, landing against the wall, searching for him. But he’s gone. He’s gone again. And why do I keep seeing him? “Why is this happening?”
“It’s all right,” she tries to soothe me. “You just need to… You need to go. Downstairs. Back to Archer.”
“Where is Archer?” Why did he leave me here?
Hurt mingles with the fear, that he’d bring me up here, close the door on me. Leave me alone with that thing.
Then I’m hit with the realisation that I’ve come to expect him to take care of me. When I’m the one he’s paying to take care of him.
Then shame. Shame that sinks into the fear and mingles with all the sadness for my brother, all the horror for what I’ve just seen.
And I feel so awful.
I bury my head in my hands. I want to give in. I want to sit here on the floor and sob.
But I fucking can’t. I can’t.
I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to do this job. I’ve got to stop this awful thing that keeps attacking me like this, and I’ve got to get home to my mum.
“Where is Archer?”
When she doesn’t answer for the second time, I look up, and for the first time in my life, I have the experience of seeing a ghost, fully corporeal, looking… guilty?
Or at the very least, like she’s trying to hide something.
She says, “He’s had… rather a pressing emergency.”