by Emily Henry
“It will have,” Arthur said confidently, then turned and led the way back out of the cave.
I tried to hang back with Remy, but there was no discreet way for us to talk about Bill or the e-mails or anything else, and when we reached the cave mouth, we shared one last look and crouched to crawl out.
“We’ll figure it out,” he whispered, and I clung to that promise as if it were one he could actually keep.
The camera battery was, as we’d expected, dead. Levi had brought a fresh one and a backup memory card, but now he wanted to go right back to his house and pore over the footage. The sun was almost down, though, and Arthur was intent on getting back to the Jenkins House for his mysterious Operation Franny.
Plus, every minute Nick put off seeing the piano seemed to bring him closer to the brink of implosion.
So we set off again, hoods up and flashlights off.
We reached the back of the Jenkins House and crept around it silently, but it was like Remy had said: Though caution tape still hung in loose knots along the fence, the wind had ripped it into tattered ribbons, and the temporary lights, Bobcats, and everything else were gone.
Inside the house, we turned our flashlights back on, catching the ghostly patterns of dust kicked up from the floor.
“Stand in a circle,” Arthur commanded, taking his place directly in front of the HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner.
Sofía lifted an eyebrow and folded her arms. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” I said. “Because he wants this to be as dramatic as possible.”
Arthur lifted one shoulder. “Excuse me for wanting some decorum.”
“Where’s the piano?” Nick glanced around like he expected it to come barreling into the room with a machine gun.
“First things first,” Arthur said. “Now stand in a circle.”
Nick seemed put out that Arthur wasn’t as interested in exploring his piano lead as he was in my new ability, but apparently he was too anxious to look into it by himself, because he sidled up with the others around the overturned coffee table.
“Maybe we should hold hands?” Levi said.
I shook my head. “Or maybe that would turn me into a human electric chair.”
“Hands free it is,” Sofía said. “Now what?”
Arthur looked at me. “Why don’t you just start with the ceiling fan?”
He made it sound so easy, but if I couldn’t make the tracks switch on command, I didn’t see why this would be different.
Still, the others were watching, hopeful, and Black Mailbox Bill’s warnings kept running through my head. I needed to get a handle on this; to know how to stop it from happening, knowing how to start it was probably a good step.
I inhaled deeply and focused on the fan and the trio of light bulbs that blossomed from its center.
Was this even something I could control?
For all I knew, the being was calling the shots.
Icy dread dripped into my stomach, but I fixed my thoughts on the fan. I imagined it turning. Pictured current crackling through me, leaping toward the wiring hidden behind the drywall.
I dropped my gaze. Levi, Remy, Arthur, Sofía, and Nick were leaning toward me with bated breath. “Could you not stare?” I said. “It’s too much pressure.”
Arthur nodded. “Let’s all turn around.”
Still in our arbitrary ceremonial circle, they turned their backs, and I focused on the fan again.
This time, I leaned into the memory of light erupting from the disc. The pain branching across my skull under my scalp, and the humanoid light-face appearing before me for an instant.
But when the memory vanished, the living room was still dark.
“I can’t do it.”
“It’s okay,” Sofía said. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“She does,” Arthur snapped.
“Arthur,” Remy said harshly.
“She’s the one it chose to give this to,” Arthur said, anger sneaking into his voice. “It could’ve given it to any of us, but it chose her, and she’s going to figure out how to use it.” He flashed me a dark look. “Come on. I know what to do.”
He broke the circle and marched past the staircase, turning to the kitchen at the back of the house, and we tripped along after him.
He opened the door beside the pantry, revealing the basement stairs, and then held out his hand. “Here. Let me use your flashlight.”
“Why?” I asked. “You already have one.”
Arthur huffed. “Do you trust me?”
I rolled my eyes. “And they say there’s no such thing as a stupid question.”
He thrust his hand toward me, and I handed over my flashlight. “Stop being dramatic.”
He shone both flashlights down the basement steps, then glanced over his shoulder at the rest of us, gathered there in the kitchen. “Remy, Sof, Nick—I put three boxes in the trunk. Go grab them.”
“Are you serious, dude?” Nick said.
“That’s half a mile back,” Sofía said. “Why didn’t you tell us to get them before we left the car?”
“I was hoping we wouldn’t need them,” Arthur said. “It’ll take you ten minutes.”
“When did you even put them there?” Remy asked.
“When we stopped by my house and you took twenty minutes to do your business in the bathroom!” Arthur fired back. “Now hurry up—we haven’t got all night. And don’t open them.”
“Why doesn’t Levi have to go?” Nick said.
Levi’s eyes went wide. He held his hands up in surrender. “I’ll go, gladly!”
“No,” Arthur said. “You’re working the camera.”
Sofía shot me a mildly perturbed look, then faced Arthur. “If your mystery boxes will help, then fine, but we’re not packhorses, Arthur Schmidt. From now until you leave for school, expect to carry my purse.”
He waved a hand. “Just put it on my tab.” As the three of them headed toward the back door, Arthur turned to the basement again. “Levi, get your camera ready and wait here. Fran, follow me.”
Arthur descended first, dual flashlights cutting tracks down the dusty steps. Three steps from the bottom, a skittering noise rose from the back corner of the basement, and Arthur jerked the lights sideways in time to catch a massive rat disappearing behind a stack of mildewy cardboard boxes.
The air smelled dank and sour, and if there were any partial windows, they’d been blacked out. We could see nothing but what the flashlight touched.
As we took the last three steps, I tucked my nose into my jacket and slid my palm along the banister, both relieved to have a guide through the dark and unsettled by the thought that, at any second, my hand could brush something I couldn’t see.
I jerked it back to my chest as we reached the bottom step. Arthur’s flashlight wandered over the space: cement walls and floors and a labyrinth of cardboard boxes stacked in columns as tall as we were.
“Here.” Arthur forged ahead down a seemingly random path through the boxes, and I followed, weaving through, twisting back and forth until I’d lost track of where we were in relation to the stairs.
Arthur stopped and shone the light on the floor just ahead of himself. “Stand there.”
I shivered. I was half-soaked from the rain, and it was cold down here, but more than that, it was the dark, the shadows not even flashlight beams could break. “Arthur, what’s all this about?”
“Trust me.” He jogged the lights on the cement floor where he wanted me to stand.
I sighed and took my position. “Now wh—”
The flashlights winked out.
“Shit,” I hissed. “What happened?”
Arthur didn’t answer, but I heard a shuffling noise. “Arthur?” I reached through the void for him, and my fingers met cardboard. I turned, hands extended, feeling for my b
rother or an opening in the stacks of boxes.
Steps were pounding up the stairs.
“Arthur?!” I half yelped, stumbling forward. “Art, is that you?”
I hit another box and jumped backward, disoriented, lost in the darkness. The angry embers in my stomach flared into something bigger. “Turn the light back—”
My words dropped off at the sound of a door opening, then slamming shut again.
I moved toward the sound, hands still outstretched. “Arthur?”
There was nothing to see. Not even a dappling of moonlight. I reached for my phone, tapped it awake, but the bluish glow barely dented the darkness, and the screen was pixelated, unusable.
“ARTHUR!” I screamed.
My pulse kicked up to full-fledged panic, and my shoulders lifted, as if to protect my neck from whatever could be hiding in the dark as I tried to feel my way back to the stairs. “Arthur, come on!” I choked. “Let me out!”
I jerked backward in surprise and horror as my hands met something stringy and dry. Hair, I thought with revulsion, and stumbled sideways.
I swung my phone light toward it even as my stomach clenched, warning me I didn’t want to see.
A doll! Just a ceramic doll poking out of the top of a box stacked on top of two more. “Arthur,” I shouted, starting across the basement again, hands outstretched halfway. I wanted to find the stairs but only the stairs. Nothing else, nothing else, nothing else, I thought.
My fingertips met a smooth wooden surface, and I gasped with relief as I fumbled up it—the banister!
I threw myself up the rickety steps and caught the doorknob at the top.
It was locked. “Arthur, stop it!” I shouted, shaking the knob.
My heart hammered, and my back tingled like the dark had come alive behind it.
Something rustled on the far side of the basement. Rats, I told myself, though really I had no idea. Just rats!
But I still couldn’t handle having my back exposed. I turned and pressed my back into the door, pounding on it on either side of my hips. “Arthur, stop it now!”
He didn’t answer. Was he even there? Had he left me?
Was this his brilliant plan?
I pounded again, screaming for him, then Levi.
“PLEASE,” I begged, turning back to struggle against the knob. “PLEASE.”
Glass shattered behind me, and something scuttled across the floor at the bottom of the steps, and I whipped around again.
The basement had changed, lightened.
A black garbage bag had been pulled loose from one of the windows, and the resulting trail of light was enough to reveal movement.
Not a rat.
Something much bigger, hurrying through the shadows toward me.
A scream tore out of me. The lights overhead stuttered.
Oh my god.
There actually was someone in here.
I threw my body against the door, screaming. The lights strobed.
There was someone in here with me, a figure cutting toward me through the dark.
I slid down against the door, curled against it, fists pounding.
There was screaming on the other side of the door now too—Sofía and Nick—they were trying to get the door open, screaming my name.
But they weren’t the only ones. Someone else was screaming it much closer.
On the stairs below me.
The lights surged brighter, so bright I couldn’t see. Not just the overhead light, but whatever light lay beyond the now exposed window—the substation maybe, or the porch lights, or something else.
And then my eyes adjusted and I saw him bounding up the stairs toward me.
The figure who’d torn through the window covering. The other person calling my name.
“What?!” Remy shouted, wide-eyed, as he thundered toward me. “What is it, Fran? What happened? I heard you from—”
“Remy?” It was just Remy?
My heart felt like it was dropping back into my rib cage. The lights went out. The door behind me opened, and I fell backward, sprawling out across the filthy linoleum floor of the kitchen.
EIGHTEEN
LEVI, NICK, AND ARTHUR stared down at me, splayed out on the linoleum in a daze. Sofía ran over and crouched beside me. “What the hell were you thinking?” she screamed at Arthur.
Remy jogged up the stairs and knelt on my other side as Sofía helped me up to sitting.
“What happened?” he asked. “We were behind the house when we heard you screaming.”
“They happened,” Sofía raged. “When Nick and I got in here, they were holding the door shut while she screamed bloody murder!”
Levi tried to hide by sinking into himself, but his height wouldn’t allow it. “We thought you needed to be scared, Franny, and—”
“You mean he did.” Nick rounded on Arthur. “This is what it’s come to? You almost gave us heart attacks! Handsome Remy broke a gah-damn window to get into that basement! We thought something was killing her!”
He shoved Arthur, but Art barely seemed to notice. He was staring at me, breathless and flushed in the sober light of Sofía’s LED lantern. “It worked. I knew it would work.”
“I can’t believe you,” I spat, staggering to my feet.
He blinked, coming back down to earth. As his eyes met mine, his victorious expression faded into guilt, which quickly dissolved into a mask of cool indifference. “Yes you can.”
“Fine!” I shouted. “I can, and it makes me sick. How could you do that to me?” Now I shoved him, as hard as I could.
He stumbled into the kitchen countertop but quickly regained his balance and advanced on me. “I did that for you, and you know it! You have a gift, and you need to know how to use it, Franny!”
“Why?” I demanded, heart thudding viciously. “Because that’s what you would do? Because you can’t stand being normal? You’d scare your sister to death just to feel like you’ve got a starring role in a comic?”
Arthur’s eyes hardened and he stepped forward, forcing me back. “You said you trusted me. You knew what that meant.”
The anger dimmed just a little, crumbling back into the secret knot it usually lived in. Some part of me had known. I’d seen his shiny plan glinting behind his eyes and been complicit, because I wanted to understand and control this.
“You didn’t have to take things that far,” I said weakly. “Were there even mysterious boxes back at the car?”
Arthur cracked his knuckles. Hair sticking up in wild tufts, he looked every bit an evil mastermind. “Not as such.”
I faced Levi, who once again shrank like a Newfoundland who’d peed on the carpet.
“We never would’ve left you alone,” he said guiltily. “We just needed you to think you were. We wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”
“She could have gotten seriously hurt and you wouldn’t have even known,” Sofía said. “She could have fallen down those stairs!”
Arthur’s lips tightened. “I didn’t think of that.” He turned toward me. “Franny, I’m sorry I scared you.”
Nick slow-clapped. “So he does know the words.”
“There’s a reason we tried standing in a circle, sending prayers up to a ceiling fan first,” Arthur said. “I knew this wouldn’t be fun, but I also had a feeling it would work.”
“And it did.” My hands were still trembling and my voice came out thin and broken, but my body was abuzz.
Energy crackled along the life lines on my palms.
I looked past Arthur to the light over the kitchen sink.
It was different this time.
I knew what it was I was looking for in myself, as if I’d found a new muscle—a slew of them—that I hadn’t known before. They were—the closest word I could find—sore, distressed from exertion, but that made i
t easier to locate and engage them again.
I felt them spiraling down my center: at the crown of my head, in my throat, and under my sternum, all the way down to my crotch, and when I focused on them, it was like they could reach outside my body.
The more I focused, the farther I felt them extending. Though I saw nothing, I felt when they reached the bulb over the sink, and a second later, soft, golden light swelled to life from it.
“Holy—” Nick whispered, and the others turned to the sink, going silent, as if any noise would break my concentration, and it might have.
From the bulb, I pushed onward and felt the energy extending both left and right, branching out to travel through the underside of the cabinets on the wall.
The light fixtures set into them lit up one by one as I felt the energy reach them. When they were all lit, they pulsed faintly, light rising along with an audible buzz.
That’s me! I thought of the sound. I felt it inside my body, and I heard it with my ears, and I knew the two things were the same.
I was hearing myself, my energy, pass through something else. The others were silent, holding their breath.
I held my focus on each of the connections I’d formed and moved slowly around the corner, back toward the living room, seeing how far behind me the trails of energy could stretch.
The others stuck close to me, moving in a silent pack. Tentatively, I reached out for more: lit up the lamp on the floor beside the coffee table, the overhead lights, a box fan propped against the wall. I felt myself stretching thinner, starting to shake, but I could take it further.
I turned to the stairs for the second floor, and the not-quite muscles in me pulled tighter as the energy reached up.
If I’d had a marker, I could’ve traced the wiring hidden within the ceiling. I could feel the hidden veins of the house like they were an extension of me. The light over the carpeted steps eased on, and I started climbing, taking the buzzing energy all the way to the second-floor hallway.
The farther I spread myself, the more I felt the strain. I was shaking from it, like I was holding a metal bar over my head while someone added more weights. It was a new kind of pain I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe, like there was an invisible layer to the human body that usually lay sleeping around us, an inactive shell.