Phobic (29 page)

“Damn,” he says again.
She’s in there.
He grips the phone so tightly his knuckles hurt. Piper’s mom committed murder to try and stop this implausible time loop that by rights shouldn’t possible in the first place. And now Piper is in there alone, about to do who knows what just to save her loser of a brother.

Back to the front porch again, Todd gives the door one last futile tug. When it doesn’t respond, he paces in front of the window while doing a quick mental scan of his options. Tried all the doors, the windows—wouldn’t budge. Call the police—that’s out.
All right, Todd, think.
He peers through the glass just in time to catch a glimpse of Piper’s slim form turning into the kitchen.

Toward the basement.

“Is she crazy?” He braces both hands on the gray siding. “Piper. Wait—Piper!”

She disappears from his sight. “Ugh!” He catches himself before pounding a palm against the siding and instead reels around and kicks the wicker chair as hard as he can. The white seat tips and slides a few feet.

“Hey, at least it wasn’t the house,” he tells the toppled chair as if justifying his actions.

How dare she do this to him, dump all this on him and then refuse to let him help? He could be in there; he could be doing
something
instead of standing like an idiot, helpless and pathetic. Blocked out. Her brother, the only family she’s got left, is missing. She’s seeing visions—ghosts for all he knows—and has this
Skeleton Key
connection to a house of all things. And yet she shoves him out like he’s nothing more than a shoulder.

Todd swipes the screen on his phone, ignoring the text from his mom asking what’s taking so long, and opens a search engine. His brain is a tangle; his chest is full of charcoal. He wishes he had a better understanding of what’s going on, but what should he search for, Augustus Garrett? Haunted houses, poltergeists? Maybe Garrett found a way to tap some alternate space-time continuum, to make his set reality move slower than what the rest of humanity experiences, and that’s how he’s pulling this off.

Todd’s always wished for a photographic memory. Now would be a really awesome time for something like that to kick in. Maybe there’s something he and Piper read, something he’s overlooking. What exactly is he dealing with here? And how can he extract Piper from it?

“Screw it,” he says, trotting down the purple front steps. The clouds overhead look dipped in orange, a sure sign of the sun preparing to set. If only he had more time.

Todd ducks beneath the linden tree’s low branches toward the backyard just as Sierra’s lime green Beetle pulls up and parks. Not at her usual stop—Jordan’s house across the street. But at Piper’s.

The charcoal in Todd’s chest ignites to full-blown anger once more. He storms over. “You get back in that car and keep going,” he says, driving a finger in Sierra’s direction and then toward the street.

Sierra swishes her brown hair and stands with one hand on the top of the car door she hasn’t had a chance to close yet. The haughty, self-assured look she usually wears is gone. Then again, it’s been wiped out since she showed up a few days ago with Piper’s zits.
Piper’s
zits. Todd still can’t believe what he’s seen. What’s real.

He meant it when he said he’d hardly noticed the acne on Piper. Her big blue eyes and smile were enough distraction for him. Sierra, with her pseudo flawless perfection, was a different story. It was like splats of mud on a classic painting. Who wouldn’t notice? And believe him, plenty of people had.

“A lot of nerve you have coming here,” he says.

Sierra folds her arms and tilts her chin away. “Jordan told me what you said to him.”

“Yeah, and I meant every word.”

Her brows fold, and she lets out an indignant scoff. What, did she think he’d apologize for telling him to go to hell, along with the other colorful expletives he’d used, after what she and Jordan did? Piper nearly
died
.

“I’m not here to talk to you,” Sierra says, finally slamming her door and trying to shuffle past him. Todd takes her by the arm and steers her back to her door. The last thing he or Piper need right now is Sierra snooping. Todd still has to figure out how to get back in there, and he doesn’t need her getting in the way.

“Let go,” she orders.

“You’re not here to talk to her either. Get out of here.”

“Something doesn’t add up!” she yells as if he’s pushed her too far. She wriggles from his grip and shoves his chest. Then at not moving him in the slightest, she checks herself and glances to the house behind him. “Something with her house. With my skin. I mean, how does an axe cut a
person
when it didn’t even…” Sierra shakes her head. “And the other stuff…they won’t stop, they just keeping coming…” She drifts off once more.

“What other stuff?” Todd asks, suspicion riding his voice.

Her voice is less confident when she goes on. “She wouldn’t tell me at the hospital, but maybe—I mean, is she a witch or something?” She touches her face, her fingers trembling, then lowers them as if in defeat.

“What do you even care?” Todd says in complete disbelief. “You’ve been a hooch to her since the day she moved to Cedarvale. What makes you think she’ll want to see you, let alone talk to you? And what other stuff were you talking about?”

She succeeds at shoving past him this time, chin in the air. The stately Victorian looks more looming and mysterious than ever—more out of place among the ordinary bungalows, including Todd’s red brick home, and Jordan Warren’s boxy, custom-built house. She marches straight up the porch and reaches for the bell.

The lights flicker all at once, a streak of lightning sizzling from within. White, blistering, unnatural light, like someone flicks a switch that connects every wire to turn on in unison.

“Sierra, wait!”

Sierra hesitates at the flash, then reaches once more. As she touches the bell the whole house alights again, this time with a palatable charge in the air that scorches the hairs on Todd’s arms.

In an instant, Sierra gets flung back, vaults right at Todd as if someone has a string tied around her waist and jerked it as hard as they could. Her head knocks his chin. He doesn’t register the sound of shattered glass until sense kicks back in and he sees fragments tinkling at his feet. He licks blood from his lip. A line of pain whips across his shoulder blades where he’d collided with the frame of the car door, and little pricks tell him there’s probably some glass embedded in the skin of his back.

Sierra is slung against his chest. His arms shake as he tries to hold her limp body from falling to the sidewalk.

“Sierra? Sierra!”

Gently, he lowers her to the concrete and brushes hair out of her used-to-be-awesome face. Her eyes are closed. Her chest isn’t moving.

All Todd can do is curse. In his head, out loud, swear words leak out.
I don’t have time for this,
he thinks
. I’ve
got
to get back into Piper’s house.
He remembers the first time he felt something more for Pipes than friendship, when she’d hugged him on her fourteenth birthday. It was the first time he’d held her and not wanted to let her go. The feeling hadn’t changed much since then. If anything it had gotten stronger, especially after the other night.

He thinks of the things he and Pipes have gone through the past few days, the newspaper articles, seeing Piper daze out as she’d seen people from the past. He glances at the journal lying in the gutter, recalling with absolute clarity the discovery the two of them had made not an hour ago. No time. No time. No time.

But despite it all, Sierra’s his friend too. Late-night football practices and movie nights at Jordan’s house, conversations he’s had with the shallow but friendly girl. He’s at a total loss as his shaking fingers make their way to her throat. No pulse.

He scrambles, glancing around for his phone that he was sure had been in his hand.

“Screw it,” he says once more, snatching the journal before hefting her limp form in his arms. He runs across the street, not even knocking before he forces his way into Jordan’s house.

T
ilting heavily on the wall, I make a slow descent down the spongy, mold-eaten stairs to the basement, fighting every inclination to bolt back up and let Todd in again. Each of my steps leads me farther into the golden haze, but it’s different this time, as if my body changes its consistency to fit in with the surroundings.

A girl wails, and with a gasp I realize it’s Ada. Two men I don’t recognize, both wearing the same cream shirt and brown vests and pants Thomas usually wears, each hold Ada by an arm. They must be more servants.

She’s in that yellow dress. Her black hair is ratted. Tears run down her creamy cheeks, and despair mushes her face. Her knees collapse, but the men hold her to her feet.

I scan in the direction Ada’s looking, and I cleave to the splintery stair rail for support, though it wobbles under my grasp.

A cuff encloses each of Thomas’ hands, and he dangles from two hooks hanging from the ceiling. Blood streams across his cheek and down his mouth. He looks bedraggled. Broken. The flesh at his wrists is rubbed raw. He’s been stripped down to a single, loose shirt and slacks, and the shirt hangs open to reveal several crimson gashes.

I don’t want to see this. But the sight—and the pain at my side—has paralyzed me.

Mr. Garrett dusts his blood-spattered hands on an apron at his waist, smearing red down its front. He turns to Ada, who bellows, pleading with despair.

“No! Don’t hurt him anymore, please!”

Mr. Garrett crooks his head. He tilts Ada’s face with a red hand, and a drop spills onto the shoulder of her yellow dress.

“Now do you realize the damage you’ve done?”

She whimpers; her face a crumpled disarray of flesh and tears. Her knees tremble, but the men at her arms stiffen their grimaces and hold her fast.

Garrett lowers his hand, and a slap-mark of blood paints her cheek. Thomas’s blood. He shows her a small, metal gadget. I recognize it from a diagram in Garrett’s journal; the hitch, the one that looked like an old ear-piercing tool.

“You will be trapped forever in this house with your sins, to contemplate them through the ages. You will watch others inhabit the home you ruined and be able to do nothing to absolve your treachery.”

Ada’s gleaming orbs pour with desperation to Thomas dangling in the opposite corner. Thomas’ head hangs. A chalky white pentagram is scribbled onto the concrete below him, and lumpy candles sit on each point of the star. Their flames dance.

Garrett bends his head to the same level as Ada’s. A hunter pestering his prey, antagonizing with simple nearness. “Will you now deny it?” he asks with sadistic softness. “Say it now, so he can hear you.”

Ada’s eyes clamp shut, her cheeks a wet, flustered mess. But she stomps and shakes her head.

“I know you can hear me,” she says, and then her voice grows louder. “Thomas, I know you can hear me. I’ll never deny you.”

Mr. Garrett straightens. His being overflows with hatred, a glistening dislike so intense it feels like that glance alone will burn straight through her. In one quick movement he stabs the hitch gadget to her throat.

Ada lets out a cry, and redness trickles from the puncture. Garrett clutches the gadget in front of her face. “When you die, this transfers your soul to wherever I choose. And guess where I choose, Miss Havens?”

He treads to the long silver table and
retrieves a hacksaw from the bloody aftermath. Then he moves over, blocking my view of Thomas. “If I cannot have her, no one will,” he says, holding the saw up so its few shiny parts glint in the dull light.

“No! Thomas!” Ada crumples with a wail. She pulls at the men holding her, and one braces her arm with two of his. “
Thomas!
”

Spine-chilling screams resound—screams filled with pain, along with Ada’s howling cries. I clamp my hands over my ears, but it’s not enough to block out the jarring sounds.

My stomach heaves and I break for the door at the top of the stairs, though I know I have no real escape. Vomit escapes my mouth, giving my cries a sour taste, splattering on the top step and hitting my black shoes.

Questions bash me from all sides. I don’t know how Garrett could do this. How jealousy could drive a man this far. And my dad—I want to know what
he
knew before he died.

Time lives on a line, rolling from one instance to another. But is it possible for everything to happen all at once, and we only participate in what
we
can see
?

This is what I’ve heard in the early hours of the morning. The thought hits me with a wave of convulsions, and I struggle to stay on my feet. The banister groans under my weight, but I can no longer support myself. Not when more screams hit the air.

The glow fades, leaving me with a damp cold eating at my skin. The sun sets outside, casting shadows over the furniture and threatening to drop me in darkness.

I’m a sweaty, vomit-y mess, and the bruises and my stitches throb. I squat on all fours and gawk at the black opening. The light dissipates completely at the top of the basement stairs. The screams also fade, but they won’t leave my mind. They echo in the lingering silence.