On the far side of the room, a life-sized rubber doll is seated at the table. She looks like she’s made of the same material as a pool float, but her hair is similar to one of my barbie dolls. Her arms are stiffly placed on the table, and her dead, glassy eyes stare out at the room, seeing all without seeing anything.
Silas stands, strides over to her. “Do you like her?” He places his hand on the doll’s shoulders. “I even put a blue ribbon in her hair to make her look real pretty.”
A strange feeling creeps over me, a weightless, floaty feeling like right before I fall asleep at night.
He pulls the blue ribbon from Lucinda’s barbie-doll hair and carries it toward me. “Here, let’s put this in your hair.”
The room begins to shift, colors and shapes all moving together like a kaleidoscope. I fix my gaze on the doll across the room, the only thing not moving. I could swear she’s speaking to me, her rubbery lips moving like two fat wriggling worms. “We’re your friends now. Come and play with us.”
Time skips ahead, and I’m not sure if it’s the man or the doll that’s leading me up the stairs. I think I hear her say, “You should never go into someone’s house you don’t know. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?”
My brain tells me I should run, but I can’t. I can hardly walk. Someone is helping me move.
“What’s your name?” It’s the man again, and I’m vaguely aware that I’m in a bedroom, on a bed.
“Claire.”
His breath smells like smoke and something rotten. “Don’t ever tell anyone your real name. That’s a dumb thing to do. Anyway, I don’t like Claire. I want to call you Lucinda.”
The world goes dark.
MY EYES SHOOT OPEN again. Time has passed, but I don’t know how much. It’s still raining outside, and there are afternoon shadows on the wall. Moving hurts. My brain is foggy, and I can’t remember where I am. I turn my head to the side.
Dead eyes stare back at me. I blink wildly to clear my vision, remembering the doll. But this is not a doll. It’s a real girl.
I struggle to sit up. The girl is not moving. I touch her arm, and she’s cold, her skin purple. I know she’s dead.
A scream fills my soul and comes out of my mouth, but it’s not the cry of a seven-year-old girl. Suddenly, I’m back in my adult body as the realization rushes into my heart, my brain. Now I remember everything.
Silas Crouter would have killed me. The demon knew this and transformed himself into a terrifying form of the man in the most hidden recesses of my mind—a monster so scary I’d had to repress the memories of what he’d done to me.
I push off from the bed and throw myself against the door. It’s locked. I rattle the handle. How had I escaped if the door was locked?
Rushing to the window, I look outside and across the field. Silas is there, raising and lowering a shovel as the rain turns the earth into a river, slowing his progress.
He thought I was dead. I was supposed to be dead. But somehow, I survived. He was planning to bury us both.
The adjacent wall has a rectangular separation between sections of the wallpaper. It looks as though someone has wallpapered over a door. Or is it supposed to be that way? A secret panel? When I push my hand against the wall, it clicks and pops open, revealing another room with a bed, dressing table.
This was how I escaped—through the opening. I went out the back door and ran like hell through the rain—all the way to my house. Once I got home, Mom shook me until my teeth rattled. They were worried sick, thought I was dead. I never told them how close I’d been to death. I never told anyone what happened. Eventually, I convinced myself it was all a nightmare.
“Mommy!” Paris’s voice cuts through me, a laser, reminding me why I’m here.
“Paris!” I launch myself from the bedroom and into the hallway, where I nearly collide with Hyo. She struggles to carry Paris.
“Mommy!” Paris screams, reaching out for me.
I gather her into my arms and smother her face with kisses. “It’s okay, honey. I’m here. You’re fine.”
Hyo motions me forward. “Come. Come now. We have to go. The back door.”
Balancing Paris on my hip, I follow Hyo down the hall until we reach the staircase. As we descend, I brace my back against the wall for leverage. When we reach the bottom, I survey the downstairs. The living room of my memories is gone, replaced by a house that has fallen into ruin. The furniture is gone—even the couch and coffee table. Wallpaper droops in strips, and where pictures once hung, the walls are covered in graffiti.
CONDEMNED
LEVIATHAN WAS HERE
CURSED
A sound roars above our heads. A waterfall? A monster?
We crunch through broken glass, and several shards needle into my torn sneakers, tearing into my socks and the skin of my feet as we lumber toward the back door.
Julie’s voice calls to us like a megaphone on the other side of a football field. “Almost there. Keep going.”
“Don’t look back,” Hyo says. “Beyond the door, we’re free. This is where the portal ends.”
“How do you know?” I yell over the roaring in my ears.
“No more holes in the ground beyond this house.”
Julie again directs us. “The back of the house. Go to the back of the house. And then run!”
But if the portal ends here, that means I’m leaving Annalen behind. “No. I can’t go.” At the edge of the door, I pull up short, and Hyo runs into the back of me.
She pushes at me. “Go! Go!”
“Here.” I transfer Paris into Hyo’s arms, forcing the older woman to take her. “You’ve got to carry her on. I can’t leave Annalen behind.”
“No.” Hyo shakes her head. “The portal will close.”
“Mommy, no!” Paris screams. Her small hands clamp down on the neck of my shirt, and she clings to me. “Please, Mommy. Don’t leave me.”
My throat thickens. “I’m sorry, baby. I have to go back and get your sister.” I grasp her little hands and press my lips against them. “Then I’ll come home to you. I promise.”
Her tear-streaked face twists my heart and turns my stomach, but I have no choice. I’d never be able to live with myself if I left Annalen with that monster.
“Go!” I fling my hands in front of me, shooing them away.
Holding Paris close to her, Hyo leaps from the doorway.
With an involuntary sob, I do the unthinkable. I turn and walk back inside the house of horrors.
THE ROARING STOPS. Fear wells in me, a wall of water threatening to burst. Silas is here somewhere, and I have no idea where Annalen is or how to find her. I strain to listen. Silence presses in.
I return to the ransacked living room where fast-food cups line the baseboards encrusted with rat turds and years of dirt. A wind blows through an open window, rustling my hair. The smell of dust and mildew mingle together, and rain spatters my cheeks.
“Claire.”
I pivot around. Gen stands before me, a shell of the woman I once knew. Her dark hair is lined with streaks of gray, and her skin is the same color. Bluish pits underline her eyes, veiled with shadows. She wears what looks like a white, tattered nightgown.
How am I to know it’s really Gen and not the demon tricking me again?
She swipes a hand through the air, motioning me toward the stairs. I follow her, again moving up the steps, stopping at the closed door of the bedroom I’ve just escaped.
Gen places her hand on the knob. My eyes meet hers. Her pupils are gone, and in their place, the yellowish film of death has consumed the color.
My vision blurs. “Gen, I’m so, so sorry for what happened to you and the baby.” I shake my head. “I swear, I didn’t know what he was.”
Silently, she turns the knob and pushes the door open. I look at her expressionless face once more before stepping inside.
61
Another door.
“Annalen!” I scream, instinctively bashing my hands against the panel
. What feels like a forcefield of electricity sends me reeling backward onto the ground.
Immediately, I scramble to my feet again as hail falls all around me—inside the house. Icy pellets beat my face and the top of my head.
The door hinges give a rusty wheeze and a metallic whine as the door creaks open, and I step through into the dark bedroom of my nightmares. Everything looks as it did before—the floral bedspread, the purple carpet. A cheap print of a ship on the ocean hangs crookedly in a dirty black-rimmed frame. But the dead girl on the bed is no longer there. Neither is Annalen.
“Annalen? Where are you?” My voice breaks as my hand brushes over the light switch and the room flickers with a weak, blinking glow. I face the wall with the secret panel and prepare to pass through it, but the sight of a brown, leathery serpent slithering at the base stops me. The snake rears its head, flicks its tongue, guarding the space. Each time I move toward the wall, reach out my hand to push against it, the snake strikes out at me, hissing, baring venomous teeth.
I back away and shift my gaze to the window. The demon stands on the other side of the glass, watching me, his red eyes glowing, searing the dark.
“I’ve got her. She belongs to me now.” His voice no longer sounds like Steel’s. It has deepened into a growl, garbled and distorted.
“You bastard!” I lunge at the window, drawing back my fist and thrusting it into the pane. The glass shatters and slices through my hand. I cry out, pull my fist back through the jagged glass, the flesh covered in blood and gore.
The demon has disappeared, but I hear him laughing while winds howl through the broken pane, mixing with the hail, blinding me with its fury.
“What is your name?” I scream, more as a release of anger and pain than an assumption that he’ll tell me. “Where the hell is my daughter?”
Over the wailing wind, I hear Annalen’s voice calling out to me from the other side of the wall. “Help me, Mommy! Help me!”
“I can hear you, sweetie. I’m coming.” My heart feels wrung out, and I smack my bleeding hand against the panel and smear blood across the wallpaper. The snake strikes out at my ankle. “I can’t take it!” My legs threaten to buckle under me. “Oh, God, please help her! Help me!”
The moment stills, and the hail pelting my face suddenly slows to rain. At the base of the panel, the snake continues to slither back and forth. My eyes dart to the crooked picture. A ship tossed on stormy waters, giant waves rising on all sides. At the helm, a seaman holds a fishing line, leaning back with all his strength to reel in the great fish he has caught. But he can’t see what’s actually on the end of his line—a black creature with three heads that rises from the ocean. One head is like a dragon, another like a fish, the third is a serpent with rows and rows of piranha-like teeth, its mouth open, preparing to devour the ship.
The title underneath the painting reads, The Deception of Leviathan.
Something snaps into place. Leviat.com. The final puzzle piece. Levi Athan.
“Leviathan,” I breathe, twisting toward the broken window. Somewhere in the distance, the faintest outline of the demon I had come to know as Steel hovers in the fog. “Leviathan,” I call out. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You are the great deceiver, the bearer of witchcraft and mind control. I know you!”
He backs further away until his silhouette is only an outline.
“Leviathan, you will give me my daughter. And you will let us both leave here!”
When I turn back to the panel, only the tail of the snake is visible as it slithers under the door. Instantly, the wall vibrates, and even the floor shakes under my feet. The panel cracks from top to bottom, and a split runs in a jagged line down the center of the wallpaper, forming an opening large enough to step through.
But it’s not the bedroom I expect to see. It’s Annalen’s room. The broken lamp still lies in pieces on the floor. In the corner, my fairy garden glows under a spotlight, except the figurines are distorted grotesques of my fairies. One of them is a miniature likeness of the blow-up doll, naked, mouth open. Their movement is slight, almost imperceptible, but the figures twist and dance. Their arms shift positions. Their fingers transform into claws.
Annalen stands on the other side of the room—a silhouette against her window. Wearing only her bra and underwear, she sits on top of her bed with her knees drawn to her chest.
I exhale and leap through the opening. “Thank God, Annalen.” But my relief is short-lived.
Annalen rises and pivots toward me, poised as though her arms and hands are connected to strings, and a mad puppeteer has control of her limbs. With a loud shriek that feels like a spike in my ear, she flies from the bed toward me, baring her teeth. I try to grab her arm as she darts past, but she swings to the left, pouncing on me like a jaguar, dragging me to the ground. I grasp her shoulders, and using all of the adrenaline and strength in my biceps, I push, but her power is quadruple what it should be. She lifts me off the ground, and the room rushes by in a blur of colors as I fly backward. My back hits the wall, jarring me, knocking the breath from my lungs.
As I slide to the floor, I hear Leviathan’s watery cackle.
“I told you,” he hisses. “She is mine now. She does what I tell her to do.”
I struggle to my feet, but invisible hands shove me in the stomach, and I fall again. My head strikes the chest of drawers behind me. Disoriented, I look to the left and the right. Where is Annalen?
What sounds like an animal devouring its prey swings me around. Annalen stands there, snarling, growling, her eyes black as tar. My hand shakes as I reach out and attempt to touch her, but she slaps my arm away with a force that sends pain through my shoulder.
Leviathan’s voice cuts through the air like an underwater megaphone. “You’ll never win against her, Claire. She has my power in her now.”
Annalen advances, teeth champing, foam bubbling from her mouth. Attempting to keep her at bay with one hand, I manage to reach down with my other and pull the dagger from my pocket. Grasping the leather sheath, I press the jeweled cross handle into her forehead. Immediately she lifts off of me—the invisible strings of the puppeteer once more at work. Her body elevates, and she rises into the air, screeching like an animal in pain.
The force of her escalation lifts the sword out of its sheath, and the blade rakes across my palm before falling to the ground. Blood drips from my hand as I immediately tumble to the floor and grab for the weapon. The dagger spins away and across the room, stopping only when it reaches the wall under the broken window.
Right now, Annalen is not my daughter. She is something else. She drifts up to the high ceiling, bumping against what looks like a skylight, resembling the one we have in our foyer. But this ceiling is three times higher than the one at home. If she drops, she’ll fall thirty feet or more.
The bedroom window slides up, and with legs that are long and rubbery, far too spindly for a man’s, Leviathan steps through the open window. Rain blows all around him, saturating his clothing and his hair, which has transformed into tiny snakes, all moving and swaying. His jagged teeth gnash and saliva drips from his lips.
“See how easy it is, Claire? Once I’ve brought you down far enough, you’ll be just like the rest of us. It’s so easy to be evil when you’ve fallen so far—when you’re no longer a good girl.”
I glance up at Annalen. Her face is a mask of hatred.
“Annalen.” I choke out the words. “You’ve got to fight it and come back to me—to us—your family.”
“She doesn’t want to come back to you,” Leviathan snarls. “She doesn’t have the power to come back to you anyway.”
“You lie!” I scream at the demon while keeping my gaze on my daughter. “I love you, Annalen. Remember last spring when we went horseback riding? Remember how happy you were that day? We were all laughing, and you said it was the best day—”
“Shut up!” Leviathan charges. “Her days and nights will be spent with me now.”
“No!” I reach up to h
er. “Come back to me, baby. I love you so much. I’d do anything for you. Even if that means I stay here with you.”
Suddenly, Annalen’s face changes. The sneer slides away, and her eyes blink wildly as her head bumps against the skylight, forcing her neck over her chest. Panic devours her expression. Seemingly in control of her hands again, she presses them against the ceiling, trying to push away from her lodging. She clings to the wall. Then she kicks along like a swimmer, dipping below the skylight, almost within reach.
“Help me!” she cries out.
Instinctively, I jump up, making a futile grab for her ankle. A black tentacle wraps around my waist and wrenches me off of my feet, dragging me backward toward the bed, where I fall facedown. I thrash and flail as the voice of Silas Crouter rasps in my ear. “I have you again, little girl. Now, I’ll finish you off. Better late than never.”
His hands close around my throat, his knees press against my back as he tightens his hold. “Leviathan!” I shriek. “I cast you back to hell where you belong!”
The tentacle winds tighter and pulls me. Silas’s fingers release my throat, and I cough and gag as I’m yanked toward the open window, grabbing for anything to stop my movement. My hand grazes the bedspread, and I grip the fabric and drag it off the bed, revealing a blood-stained mattress. My head hits the top of the open window, and my feet batter the ledge. I grasp the frame and hold on as my skull digs painfully into the wood. The dagger I dropped earlier is just below my feet, and I strain, reaching down, wriggling my fingers. Wedged in the window frame, I anchor my heels into the wall. Sharp pain courses through my body, and a wail that hardly sounds like my own creeps up from my throat.
“Leviathan, you cannot have my daughter!”
The raised window starts to close, pressing into my spine and further folding my upper body over my legs. The compression is enough to allow my fingers to pinch the tip of the dagger between my pointer and middle finger.
Dragging the weapon up and resting the handle against my thigh, I manage to turn the blade downward. With calculated precision, I sink the blade in between my shirt and the tentacle, and with a war cry and one outward swipe, I cut away the binding limb.
The Neighbor: A terrifying tale of supernatural suspense Page 30
