Chapter 16
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” The game begins, and despite my insistence that I be included, I’m immediately regretting it as a chill spreads across my skin and over my scalp. This was a bad idea. The prickle of intuition was a warning that came too late.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” they continue, drunk and oblivious to my panic as my lips become numb. I try to clench my muscles, but there’s no responding sensation. I’m just here, hanging in the balance, like a bated breath.
“She’s looking ill,” they chant in unison. And I feel it as I realize that I can no longer smell the alcohol wafting off their words.
“She’s looking worse,” they continue three times as I lift off the ground. Gone is any insecurity that I might be too heavy to play, dispelled in the worst possible way. I’m a prisoner in my own body, unable to stop whatever’s coming, even as my stomach flips in fear.
“She’s dying,” the group says over and over as they lift me higher, their voices growing more distorted with each repetition.
“She’s dead,” they say in unison, voices deep and slurring, as I rise above their heads.
Levitating above the circle of burning candles, I can feel myself being pulled toward something surreal, like magic, as I slip through the hard-pressing fingers of what I know as reality.
I’m no stranger to feeling outside of my body—I can’t even count how many times I’ve quite literally wished to be floating consciousness—but this is different.
My body is a tether to everything I know, distant, but I can feel the tug of it at my periphery.
I focus on the flicker of orange candlelight creating undefined shapes against the wall, the erratic tempo of it likely similar to that of my heart, the beat of which I can’t seem to find.
As I slip away into the unknown, I have no choice but to wait for what’s coming to reveal itself. There’s a consciousness that lingers somewhere beyond me in the shadows that cling to the edge of the room.
There’s a dreamlike quality to everything around me, though. Hazy and inaccurate—the decor is different; furniture is moved around—but the Addams house is still recognizable.
I can’t move my head, but I watch myself stumble down the stairs.
I’m older, my hair is green, but there’s no doubt it’s me.
Behind her, I can only make out a pair of men’s shoes slowly coming around the bend in the staircase.
With soft-landing feet, he’s not quite in pursuit, but there’s something sinister about the presence—a hunter waiting for its wounded prey to accept its fate and yield to death.
I want to call out to her, to warn her, to beg her to fight, but it’s as if my lips are stitched shut. They remain numb and unmoving. I’m reduced to an unwilling witness.
At the bottom of the steps, my older self stumbles, swept into the arms of a much older Hawthorne.
There’s a brief exchange of words I can’t hear over the roar of my heartbeat, shared looks of longing and sorrow, the reveal of a glass bottle that stirs panic in his eyes.
He acts desperately as she fades, but there’s no stopping the inevitable.
They both know it. I feel it in my chest the moment she takes her last breath, as real as anything I’ve ever experienced. It rattles there, a promise, a threat.
I’m so young, and everyone keeps telling me that I have my whole life ahead of me, but I'm certain that I’ve just seen my own death. I’ve had many precognitive dreams, but this is something else. It knocks the wind out of me, sends my mind reeling.
My heart is pounding in my chest; it could split me open.
Feeling tingles in my toes, in my fingers, then the rest of my body.
My surroundings are the version of Hawthorne’s house that I recognize.
But instead of staring up at the ceiling, I meet a pair of cold blue eyes.
Despite the glare of candlelight that cuts through the lens of his glasses, his gaze bores into me, and by the weight of that look alone, I know him. Ivan.
I still can’t move, so I don’t flinch or shift away as he comes closer.
He smiles as his thumb traces over my lips.
I see him in a distinct clarity that I never have before, standing over me.
No longer swathed in darkness, I can make out his features—the lines that fan out from the corners of his eyes, the press of his lips—and his dirty blonde hair slicked back with a matching short beard.
I was never quite able to create a picture of the entity in my head, but instead of reassuring me, being able to finally put a face to a name, it unsettles me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.
The hunger in his gaze sinks its fangs into me, and it chills me to my core. All I know is that I don’t want to be here anymore, can’t handle another second of the unknown. Before I even register the decision, I reach for Hawthorne.
Ivan’s eyes snap to where my hand clasps around his wrist like he’s my lifeline. And right now, he is. But it’s not just that, Thorne is the one thing I can count on, my source of certainty, my safe place.
“Sol.” His voice comes from far away, but I latch onto it, using the sound to ground me as he calls to me again and again.
He’s the one thing that keeps me going day after day.
He’s my only friend, the closest one I’ve ever had.
If I’m honest, he’s so much more than that.
And it dawns on me then, just after watching my own death like a horror movie in the dark of the theater, that I realize that I love him.
That I would do anything with him, that I don’t want to do anything without him.
Ivan sees it too, and he tastes it greedily. He doesn’t like the flavor.
“Sol, wake up.”
Waking is jarring, like a rubber band snapping against skin. The dream is familiar, one I’ve had dozens of times. That night haunts me as much as my attachment does. What’s different is the deep pit of dread that opens within me.
Hawthorne’s absence is acute. The house is quiet, holding its breath, but my anxious thoughts are loud.
Persistent, uneven breaths rake through my chest as I stare up at the black ceiling. As if there’s a projection screen, I see my dream replaying there in unfortunate recollection. Above all the ruckus inside my head, the echo of my fear screams louder.
My premature grief of my inevitable death sits heavy on my chest. The uncertainty of what’s coming stirs up nausea in my gut. I can’t allow myself to dwell on it, or I’ll lose my mind like I almost have so many times.
People always seem to think that having premonitions—the sight, psychic abilities, whatever they prefer to call it—is a gift, something one would be lucky to covet. But I know better.
It’s a curse, especially for an anxious type like me with an impeccable eye for pattern recognition.
It’s no gift, it’s a life lived waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Tortured awareness that at any moment, the sequence of events could be kicked off, and that’s it.
There’s nothing to be done. Sometimes you can prolong the inevitable, but there’s no stopping fate.
It’s harder than ever to accept that fact when I’m back in this house. When his scent is all around me, forest and musk and wood—all things grounding and good. I could drown myself in it, that’s the way I’d love to go.
It takes everything in me to get out of the sheets, but I need to keep myself busy. I can’t afford to unravel, not when there’s so much at stake, not when Hawthorne’s life is on the line if we don’t navigate this all so, so carefully.
Doing some mundane task, like making the bed, should keep my mind preoccupied, but it’s impossible to focus on the simple task when the memories that reside in the house reach for me.
I can feel him searching for me. His frustration vibrates in the floorboards beneath my feet, it stirs the dust in the air, unsettling the very foundation.
It rouses the other spirits, their uncertainty palpable, but they stay away. Some are soothing souls, filled to the brim with concern—surely this is a stark contrast to the calming and welcome energy that Thorne’s home usually exudes.
Once again, I’ve brought dreariness and hostility into this house.
A girl cloaked in gloom will be his doom. It could have just been a cruel joke by a teenager dressed up as a psychic at a Halloween party, but instead of a mockery of a prophecy, we all know it’s the truth.
As much as I could linger on the past, the restless spirits are eager to show me what I’ve missed.
A flash of an office, furnished with dark wood and rich burgundy, beckons me in my mind.
As I make the bed, a series of images play behind my eyes like the reel of a viewfinder.
First a desk, then a drawer on the left, then a flash drive hidden in the false bottom.
The green high-thread-count sheets caress my fingers as I pull them taut, then lay the comforter over them.
Anticipation and curiosity tangle in my gut as I consider what these images could lead to.
Obviously, I’m meant to find something. I’m no stranger to seeing, no novice at interpreting messages I receive.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of being surrounded by the dead, it’s that they’re bored and nosy.
Finishing the bed, I follow the trail that’s been laid for me.
In the hall, I pause, waiting for the taut rope of intuition to guide me in the right direction.
Past the stairs, I venture forward until I reach a closed door on the left.
The metal knob is cold against my sweating palm as I grip and twist.
To my surprise, the room isn’t stale; a cracked window allows the crisp autumnal air to slip in. Even though no one is home—at least living, I close the door quietly behind me. Guilt rides my shoulders as I do.