The Haunting Read online

  “What the fuck was that for?!”

  “I needed to send you back with proof,” he said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. I was pleased to see him suck in the cheek I’d hit, like maybe it’d hurt him a little.

  “Proof of what?” I snapped.

  He actually appeared annoyed. “That this isn’t really a dream, Nora. I can hear your little head in this state.” After a brief pause, he added in an apathetic tone, all the warmth drying up, “If you’d rather, I can send you back bleeding.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I snapped my hands up to defend myself, but he was gone and so was the circular brick room.

  Propped upright on the landing, I found myself looking up the stone stairs to a wrought iron gate. Beyond that was a starry sky, twinkling, calm, and inviting.

  Below the stairs where I sat were two concrete coffins. Torches whispered within the tomb, flinging erratic light in a wind I couldn’t feel.

  Silence stretched, below and above, leaving no indication of being watched —yet.

  I touched my cheek; the heat had faded, though it was still tender from the blow. That bastard, I thought angrily. He could hear my thoughts and…crap! He could hear my thoughts!

  I was fully awake now and bundled in the itchy wool blanket. If I heard my thoughts, I might be mad too. This wasn’t good. Thus far, I’d been protected, but what about now? He hadn’t said anything about becoming a Neophyte in the dream.

  Rubbing my face with one hand, I pulled down the blanket to make sure I wasn’t still in the clown costume. The chilly air invaded and goosebumps trailed like ants up and down my arms.

  I looked down at my dirt-stained pajamas. The thin T-shirt and penguin-decorated shorts wouldn’t provide much protection.

  Wrapping the blanket back around me, I let the warmth invade again. Comfortable, I eased to my swollen feet. The sleep, though desperately needed, was uncomfortable. Every muscle ached as if it had been the day after a long work out.

  My stomach gurgled as I leaned against the wall, still covered but at least standing.

  I wondered if there was food nearby. And if there was, would I eat it? The image of Joel’s severed thumb falling to the dusty ground in a roll forced me to physically shake the memory away.

  “Time to focus, Nora.” I looked up at the stars above.

  Gripping the blanket around my shoulders, I made my way up the stone steps, my socked feet making no sound.

  Stopping in the doorway, I faced a cemetery.

  A gothic iron fence surrounded the crypt. The rusted gate propped open crookedly, the top hinge having come apart, leaving the bottom to drag.

  I took a deep breath. It smelled like damp, freshly cut grass, making me homesick. I thought of my parents, of my little sisters…of Aunt Nell or should I say, Mom.

  “Focus,” I reminded myself with a grimace.

  Neive had said to make it to the house. Twisting in a circle, I couldn’t see a house in any direction. It was tombstones for as far as I could see, rows upon rows of them. If it wasn’t graves, it was tombs on either side of me or fat trees that looked like they’d been there forever.

  Hugging the blanket tighter, I felt anxiety building. Where were my friends? What if I didn’t make it to the house?

  Staring at the line of neighboring sepulchers, I knew that I’d prefer to walk away from them. The narrow buildings were too close together and shadowed. Maybe I could walk through the cemetery. There were trees to hide behind if I needed.

  Feeling a twinge of relief at the idea, I started to walk along the edge of the crypts. I kept a few rows of tombstones between the buildings and me.

  The air was electric. Insects didn’t hum, owls didn’t hoot, and no traffic sounded in the distance.

  The further I ventured, the thicker the trees and the more unkept it appeared. Gravestones looked more like stone slabs, chipped and brushed clear of names and dates. The lawn wasn’t manicured past a certain point, though I couldn’t recall where.

  Odd trees crowded together. One had knocked a tombstone over with an overzealous root that arched out of the ground.

  Walking around the trees and careful not to trip, I saw they’d grown thicker than the graves.

  My steps slowed as I realized I might have made a mistake.

  I stared at a forest instead of an urban area. Weren’t there usually houses around cemeteries? I had seen the obscure little cemeteries along the highway before, but there’d only been a few dozen headstones. They weren’t as big as this one.

  This isn’t the land of logic, though, I concluded and leaned against the nearest white-barked birch. Chewing on my lower lip, I tugged at the blankets around me, trying to make sense of my situation.

  I was alone. I didn’t have any of my friends this time. They’d guided me up to this point, mostly. I had Aidan all through the first Challenge, and I had Phoebe throughout most of the second.

  Then there was the subject of Neive. I felt my insides twist. She was alive. I wasn’t sure why I felt guilty that I hadn’t suspected that she could be. She’d been watching this whole time. I couldn’t just let her stay here, could I?

  Maybe Damien was right; I didn’t know this girl anymore. Yes, she was my twin, but I didn’t know her. She could be on Damien’s side for all I knew. Some sort of trick. Maybe she wasn’t Neive at all but part of Damien’s game.

  Feeling a burning streak of resentment, I pushed away from the tree.

  He had been using this memory against me since the beginning. Why stop now?

  It was an idea anyway. Could she have survived all this time? And if so, where? Here? Damien said she could wander, so why didn’t she come home? She’d been here since the age of five; she couldn’t have fended for herself. Damien or someone had to have helped her. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to let her go with us. Maybe, just maybe, Damien felt love.

  Maybe it was paternal. He would have had to raise her, watch her grow up.

  But Damien wasn’t a parent; he was a demon. Part, I reminded myself. He was part human too. That still didn’t explain why Neive never came home. Did she love him too? Or felt she owed him something?

  I touched my cooled cheek. He tried to kiss me. Had he tried with Neive too?

  Frowning, I clutched the blanket tighter. The last thing I needed to do was think about him.

  Trudging through the ankle-tall grass, I hopped over tombstones. I had to refrain from apologizing to the imaginary corpses I stepped over.

  Though I’d take this over a frozen landscape and an abominable snowman.

  Swinging around a thick oak tree, I saw a belly-crawling mist rolling and curling over itself to get closer. My stomach flipped, as it was moving faster than normal mist.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I stopped moving and listened to the pregnant silence. Keeping my eyes wide, I watched the shimmering shadows and imagined movements more than actually seeing any. The cover from the trees had darkened the area. This was a mistake. At least before I had full stars and a slivered moon.

  I struggled to control my short, shaky breaths, straining to see any sign of danger.

  A rumble at my feet was barely enough warning. Dirt exploded beneath me, blinding and stinging my eyes. Screaming, I flailed my arms, and the world tilted.

  The blanket cushioned my fall, leaving me less winded than I would have been otherwise. Eyes watering through the grass and dirt, I scrambled to my feet, leaving the blanket behind.

  A high-pitched scream, like that of an eagle, brought my attention to what burst free.

  It was blurry through the tears at first. The dark grey glob floated over the open grave. It had basic human shapes with a few distinct deformities.

  Wiping my eyes with the back of my arm, I got rid of most of the dirt.

  The thing had long arms, and bulbous knuckles that were nearly touching the ground. The legs were stout but curled up into folds of grey skin.

  Suddenly, I wished for the dirt back in my eyes.

  Layers of loo
se skin folded from the dirty skull and belly in flaps. Pointed bat-like ears perched high on either side of its rounded head. Its nose was wide and flat, nostrils flaring holes just above a lipless mouth. Abnormally large eyeballs lined with vivid red veins glowed in the dim light. I realized in a heart-stopping moment that they were focused on me.

  I swallowed the string of curses that first came to mind as I backed away several more steps.

  The thing floated closer. Its blank expression was deceiving. It couldn’t be thinking of anything pleasant. The sinister-looking creature advanced, pushing me back.

  I didn’t run. I wasn’t sure I could outrun this floating catastrophe of nature.

  My head spun with ideas. I needed to get away from it somehow.

  Was it herding me? It hadn’t attacked yet.

  Shifting to the right, the creature paused, stopping in mid-air. Those disturbing eyes never wavered as I side-stepped, giving it a wide berth. As I inched past its shoulder, the thing shrieked. The piercing sound made me jump. The thing landed on the ground and ran at me on fat, tiny legs. It could have been comical on any other day.

  Yelling in surprise, I stepped back the three steps, hands up to fend it off.

  The thing stopped and curled up its little legs, hovering off the ground again.

  “What I want is past you, isn’t it?” I said. “You’re trying to keep me from going there.”

  The creature stared back at me, unmoving.

  Tugging at my shirt, I glanced over my shoulder. Should I just venture back for another way around? I doubted I’d find many easier roads.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder. Screaming, I launched myself forward, batting at the clinging fingers.

  The hand let me go. It was just the creature, too far away to have touched me, even with those long arms.

  Making up my mind, I charged to the right of the floating, loose-skinned creature. It moved to grab at me, shrieking its teeth-grinding warning as I sailed past. I didn’t even feel the wind of its swing.

  At least I could avoid one more injury.

  My fingertip still throbbed from the nail being cracked down the middle. The three distinct deep scratches down my back still spasmed with each twist and pivot around the gravestones.

  Behind me, dozens of the same high-pitched shrieks resounded between oak trees.

  Peeking over my shoulder, knowing I shouldn’t, I saw at least five new graves explode in violent sprays of dirt. Five pairs of red eyes glowed through the debris, and all were aimed at me.

  Don’t look for them, I thought, fear clawing and pushing me forward. I wove past the headstones and thick tree trunks. Racing as fast as my legs would carry me, I knew my head start was failing.

  Their shrieks reverberated through the air, sinisterly close.

  I didn’t dare look back again. My head was swimming with my heartbeat, threatening to drown the shrieks. If only it had.

  I saw an iron fence ahead, and beyond that was the outline of a house. My legs burned with adrenaline and my lungs started to ache, but I couldn’t stop. Leaping over a three-foot tombstone, I saw the shadows of my pursuers catching up to my own. I tried to mentally stretch myself toward the solid black Victorian house ahead.

  Panicking, I glanced up and down the six-foot-tall fence line for any sign of a gate or a hole. The warmth in my stomach stirred, but I remembered how useful it had been when I wanted to find Cooper and veered left, toward a row of crypts. I could hide in one, hope they lose me and make another attempt later.

  “Nora!”

  Neive stood near a hole in the fence, one that hadn’t been there before. Twisting, skidding on the grass, I ran straight through the gap. The second I darted through I heard her scream. Skidding to a stop, I almost lost my footing in the turn.

  She was in the gap, standing partly in and out of the cemetery.

  Two grey-skinned creatures had Neive’s arm, though they didn’t cross through the hole. Instead, they were trying to pull her in.

  Seeing her struggle to pull away, I realized that if Neive was scared, I should be too.

  Grabbing the flailing arm on the safe side of the fence, I tugged, using my weight to draw her with me.

  But the creatures pulled back, winning the tug-of-war when Neive’s foot shifted over to their side.

  Neive groped for a better grip of me and wrenched me closer to her—to them. I thought of Cooper trying to drown us both.

  With one hand around her wrist, I grabbed her cloak with the other. Balling the cloak up in my fist, I shoved one foot into the fence for leverage.

  The shrill banshee cry was so piercing and startling, I almost let her go.

  I thought of Cooper. I’d let him go. I pushed him away, and he never came back.

  Pulling with all my strength, I leaned back.

  The creatures pulled me closer to them through Neive. I felt the pavement scraping against my sock, burning my heel, while the fence felt like it would split my other foot in two.

  Neive cried out when one good tug from them pulled her into the cemetery, except for the arm and cloth that I held.

  Still they didn’t reach through the bars to grab me, like I’d thought.

  “Nora,” Neive pleaded, her brown eyes wide. “I’ll come back later.”

  With that, she let go. In the same fluid motion, she knocked my hand away from her cloak, knuckles cracking into my injured finger. As I stumbled back in surprise, my shoulders ran into something soft behind me. I heard her scream as the creatures pulled her into their circle, hiding her body from view.

  “Wait, no! It’s me you want!” I called grabbing at the hanging object behind me to catch my balance.

  My voice disappeared in the rough wail of pain from within the cemetery. It wasn’t just fear anymore.

  As my fingers curled around the thing behind me, I realized it felt like cold denim.

  Spinning, I saw a body hanging from a tree that hadn’t been there before.

  This tree had sprouted through the pavement in the middle of the street. It had to be as thick as three of me and as tall as the Victorian house behind it.

  On one of the lower thick limbs, there was a taut rope.

  At the end of the looped rope was Cooper.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Noose digging into his throat, Cooper swung when I pushed him away. I struggled to keep my balance, but his sneakers jabbed me in the ribs once, and I fell backwards onto the pavement. Landing on my hip hard, I covered my mouth with my hand, stifling the swelling scream before it could escape. My hands were shaking, and I tried not to look at Cooper, only to find myself staring at him. Frosty crystals spiked around the edge of his face and clothes, not yet melted. He was devoid of all pink, human colors. All the light—the life—was gone.

  A husk, a shell, something that shouldn’t be so empty.

  Cooper’s death disarmed us all. Joel was right. If I hadn’t started throwing snowballs at our monster, Cooper might still be alive. It gave chase, dropping Phoebe, who technically was already dead, and Cooper had died. With no help from me, I thought bitterly.

  In the end, Phoebe’s words rang true. There was no use saving a drowning man. It didn’t make me feel any better, though. I’d failed them both.

  The failure wasn’t like a bad grade. It was a scar that itched and ached. Seeing him hanging from the tree, swinging like a trophy, pained my chest.

  I realized, in an instant, that it was quiet.

  Scrambling to my feet and turning simultaneously, I saw Neive was gone, and so were the cemetery monsters. The entire cemetery had faded, an outline in a field of black. Silence deafened, and I felt the bubbling frustration warming my stomach.

  In one deep breath, I screamed. I screamed so loud and hard that it hurt my already chaffed throat. I didn’t care, though. The pain only ripped another hole in the frustration, breaking it down to a carnal hatred.

  I wanted to hurt something instead of wrestling with this guilt and grief.

  Part of me wanted to
crumple to the pavement and cry until I couldn’t draw another tear. The other part, the tiny sane part, knew that I would have to leave Cooper behind me.

  I had to fight and win this Challenge. That was the only way I could really hurt him. And I’d take Neive with me.

  I glanced up at Cooper one last time, but it was brief as I forced my feet to take me away.

  Hugging myself, I tilted my chin up to stare at the foreboding house. It was similar to the Birket house except it was painted black. Broken shutters hung by grimy windows. The railing was loose and falling apart along the porch. Dead bushes curled over the broken railing and clawed onto the stairs with curled tips, looking like bony fingers.

  As I scuffled off of the pavement and onto the narrow, cracked cement walkway, I glanced at the yellowed grass on either side. I’d expected Read to be sitting there, but he wasn’t.

  The stairs were rickety, and the gnarled bushes snagged at my socks and scraped my legs. Balancing on the slanted porch, I noticed the rocking chair in the shadows. It rocked back and forth by its own accord, creaking the boards beneath it. Ignoring it, I stepped around the precarious holes in the floorboards until I reached the decrepit door. Above it was a wooden sign. Intruders Beware At Dusk.

  I reached for the doorknob, and the door opened on its own, the hinges shrill. It struck me as being ridiculous, and I bit back a smile. Every horror movie had a creaky door just before…

  The hinges groaned to a stop, revealing the house’s musty entrails.

  Spiderwebs glistened in every corner and near furniture that was covered in dusty, white sheets.

  Feeling my knees shake, I stepped far enough inside to see that there were five darkened—yet open—doorways that I could go through.

  Holding back the urge to glance over my shoulder and see if Cooper was still there in the street, I wished that I’d taken him down. But then what? Bury him in the fake cemetery where those things could have him?