20. Hailey
HAILEY
Henry was getting heavier by the second. I shifted him in my arms, careful not to wake him. He’d finally stopped crying—probably because he could feel how terrified I was, and crying would’ve just been redundant.
My room felt smaller than usual, like the walls were inching closer when I wasn’t looking. My phone lay on the bed beside me, the screen mocking me with no service. The Wi-Fi symbol blinked with its sad little exclamation point.
This was not how I pictured spending my evening—with a newborn, in a nightmare house, while the entire population of Tillington went full Purge outside.
I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand, catching the first tear before it could fall. A noise made me sit up straight in bed.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It wasn’t loud like the pounding on the other side of the house. This was delicate, purposeful, fingernail-on-glass soft. It was coming from my window.
“Nope,” I whispered, tightening my hold on Henry. “Nope, nope, nope.”
I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t going anywhere near it. I’d already seen enough messed-up shit to last five lifetimes. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my cheek to Henry’s hair.
“Hailey.”
My eyes flew open. I knew that voice.
“Hailey, it’s Eddie.”
“Oh my God. Hang on.”
I crossed the room, careful not to jostle Henry. My fingers shook so badly I nearly dropped the latch. Cold air rushed in, but Eddie’s presence made me feel warm.
Snow clung to his hair, and he wore the same black leather jacket as always.
“Get in here,” I hissed. “They’ll kill you if they see you.”
He slipped inside and eased the window shut behind him. When he turned to me, his face was etched with something forlorn and fragile.
“They can’t,” he said calmly.
“They can’t what?”
His eyes flicked to Henry, then back to me. Something in them softened.
“They can’t kill me.”
I stared at him. “Look, I’m sure you’re tough, but there are dozens of them, and they have knives and dinner forks. Tough doesn’t beat armed mob. Ever.”
“I know.” He shook his head and let out a deep sigh. “They already did, Hailey . . . a long time ago.”
“What?” My voice cracked. “They already did what?”
He took a step closer. It wasn’t threatening.
It was just close enough that I couldn’t pretend he was joking.
And suddenly, everything about Eddie clicked.
He’d always just appeared. He was always wearing the same clothes.
Even his haircut, his whole vibe . . . it was off. Not quirky off, decades off.
“No,” I breathed. “But you’re right here. You’re—you’re real.”
“I was,” he said gently.
I shook my head so fast it made Henry stir. “No. You’re alive. You’re like . . . sixteen? You go to school. You walk around.”
“Hailey, I died in 1965. I’ve been tethered to this town, this street, this house, for sixty years. I just wanted to help you, to make sure what happened to me and my family didn’t happen to yours.”
Glass shattered somewhere in the house.
“The people in this town,” Eddie continued. “They’re cursed. They have been since the Thorn family was murdered. They’re a mindless mob. They can’t leave and no one new can stay.” His gaze locked onto mine. “Anyone who moves into this house doesn’t make it out alive.”
My skin crawled. “All the stories? The families? My dad’s students joking about people dying here—”
“It’s not a joke,” he said. “That’s why I was trying to warn you.”
The room went cold, not figuratively, not metaphorically.
The air changed, pressing in on my ears until they rang.
The shadows along the walls stretched, peeled away from the corners, and then they stepped through.
Not the door or the window. The walls themselves softened like wet paper, and people began to emerge from them. A dozen at once.
They weren’t transparent or glowing like something out of a movie.
They were wrong, too solid in places and not solid enough in others.
A family stood closest: a man and woman, bloated and swollen, their skin stretched tight and mottled blue gray, mouths slack and eyes clouded—the unmistakable look of people who had drowned.
Between them stood three children, their hair floating gently around their faces as if still underwater.
Behind them were others. A man and woman with shotgun wounds in their chests, dark holes rimmed with dried black-red blood.
A teenage boy—Eddie—as he looked then, with a gaping hole in his stomach.
Near him, a little girl no older than seven, her dress stiff with old blood, a matching wound carved into her small body.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
A woman stood off to the side, rope burns angry and purple around her neck, eyes bloodshot and bulging. Beside her, a man with a crushed skull. Another family lingered farther back. A husband, wife, and little girl each marked with neat, deliberate knife wounds.
They filled the room.
“We were all trying to warn you,” they said together.
The voices layered and overlapped. Some were angry. Some sounded tired, and some sounded almost apologetic.
“You weren’t supposed to stay.”
“We didn’t mean to scare the baby.”
“We tried everything.”
I clutched Henry tighter, my arms shaking.
One woman stepped forward, her feet never quite touching the floor. Regret etched into her face.
“I turned the casseroles into maggots,” she said. “I thought for sure that would send you and your family packing. But you stayed.”
Another voice cut in, sharp and bitter. “I stood in your bedroom doorway for hours,” she said. “But you wouldn’t look at me.”
A little girl pushed her way forward. She wore black shoes with buckles, white socks folded neatly at the ankle, and a dark dress. Her hair was pulled back with a ribbon that had long since lost its color. “I tried talking to your mom,” she whispered. “But I think I scared her.”
Another woman spoke. “I even tried getting through to Henry, but I think my voice just put him to sleep.”
The room erupted again.
“I opened all the windows.”
“I turned the lights off.”
“I slammed doors.”
“I whispered.”
“You wouldn’t listen.”
My knees buckled, and I sank onto the bed, Henry pressed against me. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
“What do you want from me?” I sobbed. “What do you want?”
The room went silent.
Eddie stepped forward. “We want you to leave,” he said gently. “But first—you have to burn the house down. So we can leave too.”
Every head nodded.
“Burn it,” they whispered. “Burn it down.”
“But we can’t leave,” I said. “There’s too many of them.”
“You can.” He pointed toward the floor, toward the heart of the house.
“Burn it. Run and don’t ever look back.”
“But—”
The ghosts began to fade. Not all at once, not dramatically—just gone, like breath disappearing from cold air.
Faces blurred and bodies thinned. The room emptied in a series of soft absences.
The little girl’s shoes were the last thing I saw, the black leather dissolving into nothing.
Eddie lingered a heartbeat longer than the rest.
A crash thundered from the kitchen, and I twisted toward the sound, listening to see if they were getting close. Henry jerked awake, screaming.
“Eddie,” I whispered, but he was already gone.
Something metal flashed at the edge of the window, and then a pitchfork slammed through it. I screamed, twisting to shield Henry as glass shattered across the floor. The tines missed us by inches, burying themselves deep into my dresser.
Outside, a voice cooed, “Found you . . .”