Chapter Twenty-Six #3
and I immediately feel better about everything.
I might be walking toward my literal childhood nightmare, but at least I have two heart stones to protect me.
Harrison looks back at me, no doubt puzzled that I’ve somehow fallen behind. “Everything okay?”
I manage to smile. Something about the rocks steadies me. “Just nearly taken out by that group.”
Harrison sighs heavily. “Tourists.”
But there are none of those around the clock tower, like everyone who visits feels the same way I do. That we shouldn’t be
anywhere near it.
I catch up to Harrison, eyeing the clock tower warily. It stands on a kind of raised dais made of concrete, punching up into
the night.
I want to take off running—and screaming—in the opposite direction. The way I feel right now, I could run all the way back
to Des Moines without stopping until I get on a plane.
But that is not an option tonight.
Still, I don’t want to do this. Whatever this is. I wrap my arms around myself.
“Where are we supposed to meet Jack?” I ask as Harrison takes the first step that will lead up to the base of the actual tower.
I do not follow him. Even if it is all lit up like a beacon.
Because who knows what it’s a beacon for, except maybe demons.
“He must be inside.”
I take a step back without meaning to. Inside is a hard no.
“Harrison, I don’t think this is a good idea.” At all.
But the old man is moving up the stairs, a lot more nimbly than he came down the stairs in the antique store. Then he walks
right up to the base and somehow . . . opens a door. Even though I didn’t see a knob or anything.
Or a door, for that matter.
It’s a heavy cement door, apparently, and it creaks and groans as Harrison struggles to open it.
In any other situation, I would jump forward to help him, but the door opens into an empty black void.
I can see the void, but I’m a little more concerned that it can see me, too.
I’m shaking my head without realizing it, but Harrison never looks back. He simply steps right into the dark, terrifying maw
of the clock-tower doorway.
Leaving me out here on the streets of Midas, within touching range of this creepy clock tower, all alone.
I can’t quite breathe, can’t quite scream, can’t quite bring myself to act. I want to run, but I can’t leave him here.
I should go and grab him. Pull him back out and demand we go back to the diner and wait there for Jack. Or go somewhere else,
anywhere else, and find Jack.
But Harrison said Jack was here. With Logan.
My heart feels like it stops.
I did not think he meant inside the thing. Because who would go inside the demon slurping station from hell?
My heart kicks back in, at high gear—especially when I hear a kind of thud.
I can’t see Harrison anymore.
I hear a moaning sound and I want to run in the opposite direction. But I can’t possibly leave Harrison in there—whether he fell and broke a hip or the demons got him, I have to save him.
He can’t end up like Cleo. I can’t let that happen. I would never forgive myself.
But I’m also too aware that there’s hair on my neck that isn’t mine, whispering against my neck like it’s escaped the bonds of the locket.
I make a command decision. I might hurt an old man’s feelings, but I’ll do my best to save him, so hopefully that will even
it all out.
I tug the necklace up to get it off me, but it seems to tangle on itself—like it doesn’t want to let go.
In ordinary circumstances, the very notion of a creepy necklace fighting to stay on my neck would lead to me freaking out,
but not tonight. Tonight I don’t have time for a tiny memento’s disturbing shit when there’s a whole demon tower right in
front of me.
“I don’t want to wear this,” I mutter. I yank on the chain. Once, then again and again.
It doesn’t budge. But the stones in my pockets seem heavier, then. I concentrate on them. On Amelia, who brought me back here
early, at an impossible price. On my mother, who told Jack I was coming. On all the history I’ve studied, all the history
of this place that’s inside me, bones and blood.
This time when I pull, it snaps.
I can feel a stinging, burning sensation at the back of my neck that suggests it left marks, but I don’t care. I grimace down
at the locket, then toss it.
And if I hear a scraping, keening sound, well. I have bigger problems.
Because I need to follow Harrison into the thick, dark belly of this beast that’s haunted me my whole life, no big deal.
My body doesn’t want to listen to my mind on this, but eventually, I push myself forward. I climb up the concrete dais, one
resistant step at a time. I ease my way toward that door that I never would have thought was there—not that I’ve come anywhere
near this thing in the light of day—and find I’m holding my breath.
That dark maw is no less opaque when I’m a whole lot closer to it. I can’t see anything through that doorway. I reach for my phone to throw a little light on this, only to remember that I don’t have it. It’s in a tagged bag of my personal effects that I left on the floor of our rental car.
Besides, the service in Midas sucks anyway, so the urge I would have to call someone while using the flashlight app would
be denied anyway.
I accept that I am going to have to put my body into all that horrible darkness the way I accept all the shitty things that
I’ve had to do in my life, also in the dark. Walk out of terrifying neighborhoods. Piece together nights I can’t remember
and pretend that I was so drunk, such a partier. Go to sleep without ever knowing where I’ll wake up or what state I’ll be
in.
What’s one more nightmare next to all that?
I step forward.
Into the dark. Into the clock tower.
I’m shaking, I’m nauseated, I’m not sure my knees are going to hold me—but I do it.
“Harrison?” I manage to croak. “Jack? Logan?”
There’s nothing but black. And a dark kind of silence that feels heavy on my ears.
Until I hear it, coming from everywhere all at once.
The slurping.
I make an involuntary noise that sounds like what it is, pure fear. It echoes in this cold, empty chamber with undulating
shadows and heavy, damp air. But then it isn’t empty anymore. There’s a sudden light, but it’s not a relief, because I can’t
tell where it’s coming from. It feels wrong.
And what it’s lighting up is Harrison.
Harrison, who doesn’t look particularly gnarled and decrepit now.
He grins at me. Grins.
And there’s something horrible in that grin. A viscous black that reminds me of the first night Nora drove us through Midas.
But his laugh is worse. And when he speaks, that’s the worst part yet.
“You’re so predictable, my girl.”