The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  “How do you get out of here?”

  “Piper,” Dad says, pleading.

  Not now, Dad. I brush my hands along the unfinished walls, searching for some opening. A crevice, a crack, something.

  “There’s got to be a way out.”

  “Do you know what I tried to say to you that day I was able to break through?” Dad says, pivoting to follow my investigation of the space. I don’t look at him. I can’t. Not after what he’s done. “That I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, and if I could go back, I’d do things differently. I would have burned this house down.”

  That gets my attention. “Yeah, but Ada—”

  “Ada would have been fine. It’s just like you said, Garrett messed with something he shouldn’t have. He lied to us. He lied to Ada.”

  “You mean burning down the house would have freed her?”

  “It would have freed all of us.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  I head back to the stairs, or where I came through above them, anyway, and drop to my knees. I’ll pry up the floorboards if I have to. No way am I staying in here. I’m getting out. I dig my fingers in between boards, but they won’t budge. I need a crowbar, a sledgehammer, a crane.

  But I jerk back. In a rush, Ada stands at the stairs’ head, ghostly once more. The sight of her sends my heart racing. I thought she faded when Garrett did. He said they were connected.

  “Why are you still here?” I ask her.

  “I told you, I am trapped.” She retrieves the hitch from the wall like I’d seen her do before. She holds it to me on the palm of her hand.

  “Using this, he did something else to me to trap me in those stairs,” she goes on, gesturing to the floor—and the staircase I know lies beneath it. “But no more; you have done what I never could.”

  “Let me out, Ada. This isn’t funny.” I go to step around her, but she sidesteps, blocking my way. I could go through her, but the thought alone is enough to make me shudder.

  “I could never touch that elixir of his,” she says. “You have completed my final step.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do,” Ada says. Her indistinct eyes pour into mine like molten silver, transfixing me. Her form glides toward me. The floorboards clatter with a threatening sound.

  “I could not have my vessel covered in those spots that made you look so horrid.”

  “Your vessel—?”

  “I was worried I had moved too quickly to complete the connection, after that boy attacked the house and harmed you instead. And Garrett—the fool—thought I was preparing you for him.”

  I peer over my shoulder, to my father, my mother’s clueless figure. “So this freak thing between me and the house, it’s because of you?” My mind stumbles to grasp what’s going on. “Does that mean it would have hurt you instead if you hadn’t passed your connection on to me?”

  Ada inclines her head as if she’s in on a secret I don’t know and takes a few steps toward me. “No, it was a transitional weakness. It will be remedied once you take my place fully.”

  “Sierra—the zits—you did it.” My hand goes to the stitches at my side, and I sink my head against the wall behind me. “So you think you can what, take my body, live my life and trap me here in your place?”

  Ada smiles. “My life was stolen from me. You barely live yours.”

  Her words stab. I thought she was helping me. I thought she was on my side.

  I attempt to straighten, force myself to hide the pain. “I live mine. I’m standing up to those kids now. I have Todd, too. And I’ll go to Interlochen. To college. Play music—”

  “But you will never get out of this house without a scholarship, will you?” She raises an eyebrow.

  “You—”

  Ada flags a hand at me. “No, no, you failed that all on your own.”

  My heart beats like it’s on the outside instead of the inside. “You can’t do this.”

  “I am already doing it. I am sorry, Piper. Truly. Earlier you mentioned standing up to our oppressors. Garrett was not my main enemy. Of course, I could not bear the parallel life I was trapped in. Watching Garrett butcher people, cleaning up his mess, losing Thomas over and over. No, Augustus Garrett was not my main enemy. This house is.”

  “But Thomas is still here, isn’t he? His ghost or whatever. Even if you get out…” My words die away at the cross between delight and cruel insanity on Ada’s pretty face.

  “Thomas already found his vessel.”

  My head spins. I thought Joel was captured for Mr. Garrett, but now it seems possible that Thomas has Joel.

  “He’s my older brother, you sicko,” I say, picturing what she and Thomas plan on doing once they get our bodies. “Maybe you’re just not meant to be with him, did you ever think of that? What if you guys do all of this and end up dying or something anyway?”

  Ada lifts her chin in that defiant way I noticed her do with Garrett, like she’s trying to keep a bead of water from dripping off her nose. “At least I will have moved on. I have been entombed in this house, Piper. I was trapped here in life as a servant. I am trapped here in death by a lunatic. You see?” She raises her hands again.

  “Even though he is gone, I am still contained. I live on without the elixir because of the way he ended my life. I must escape.” Her see-through fingers fiddle with the device that stuck her here in the first place. I wonder how she figured out how to use it.

  She’s got to be bluffing. Except my skin is now buffered smooth and I have a gash the size of Texas in my stomach.

  “The fact that you’re dooming me to the same fate makes no difference?”

  Ada’s face softens, and she lifts her eyes. I’m struck by the pity there. “It does make a difference.”

  “Just not enough of one,” I finish.

  I don’t think, I just run. But the room is so small; in no time I meet a wall. My hands flounder as if I can conjure some way to bust through the boards. I pound them with my fists.

  In seconds, she’s before me. I squeal, try to turn away, but her ghostly form tags me and something cool like metal pricks my neck. The hitch gadget falls from her grasp, hits the floor with a clunk.

  “I did it,” she murmurs to herself.

  “No—no!” I clutch my throat, grapple at the spot. I can beat this—I can make it stop. My fingers come back wet and panic carves out pockets in my chest.

  “He transferred my soul to the house,” she says, still staring at the hitch. “Now it will have yours instead.”

  “This is my body, not yours,” I say, ignoring her. “MY body!”

  In return, Ada ignores me, though I don’t see how she can. I thrash around inside, my system trying to fight whatever she just did.

  I rub my hands along my arms. The feeling intensifies, like splinters festering under the skin. The splinters begin to crawl, separating skin from my bones. Bugs gnawing, churning and skulking.

  My hands trace my body—arms, legs, face—but no matter what I do, the impressions won’t stop. Ada watches it all with this knowing look. My father looks on in pity. The other figures hardly notice I’m here at all.

  “Help me,” I plead, though speaking is a struggle. “Help me, Ada, and I can help you.”

  “You can do nothing for me.”

  To my dismay, she’s turning more solid by the second—the way she looked in my visions—only this time the golden haze is gone. She’s painstakingly beautiful, with creamy skin and natural beauty, the kind of girl who puts Sierra to shame. My mouth drops as her hair’s color fades into a dark blonde. The same color as mine.

  “Ada, I—” Nothing I say can possibly make up for what she’s been through. But she still has no excuse, no right.

  “You are my only escape.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way. He ended your li
fe—do you really want to do the same thing to me?”

  “It is how I can get my life back.”

  “Please—don’t,” I say, unable to control the emotion in my voice. Not when her face elongates so it’s less round and more narrow like mine. My nails bite into the skin at my cheek. Her eyes shift as well, becoming not quite so fierce and angular.

  I’m trying so hard not to husk my skin away, I draw blood.

  “Help me—” I wince. The scuttling. So much. Too much, they’re—too much. I force myself to speak instead of scream, especially when her face solidifies into mine so it’s almost like I’m looking at a calm mirror image of myself. “I’ll burn it down. You’ll—be free. We all will. This spell or whatever. Will stop.”

  “That will trap my soul for sure. The house must never be destroyed. Your father knew that.” I look again to Dad, waiting for him to pipe up. She must not know what he told me minutes before. I wonder which of them has it right.

  “Says who? Garrett?”

  Ada nods.

  “And you believed him?”

  Ada looks to her feet. Her long yellow skirt brushes the floor. The blood that dripped from Garrett’s hand stains her shoulder.

  “I am sorry, Piper. Believe it or not, I have always liked you.” She clasps her hands on either side of my head and looks straight into my eyes. Her icy touch cools the burning crawl under my skin.

  “Ada, don’t,” I plead.

  “Goodbye, Piper.”

  twenty

  nine

  The wood fibers are a part of me—like slivers under my skin, rough and gritty with each move I try to make. I’m confined in the inches-thick space between the siding and the framing, nowhere near wide enough to fit me if I were actually here. You know, in my body.

  Light flickers and turns inside out, like I’m seeing in night vision. The thin lath boards spread like mummy bandages, barring the way to my cage, and plaster oozes through the cracks. The strong smell of ammonia and mold sifts through.

  My body. The dirty little snitch stole my body! I push against the barrier. Instead of hitting the wall, my arms flatten and elongate, spread the length of it. And the spreading doesn’t stop, even as I touch the corner where the wood branches off in another direction. I pull myself back and taste the granular texture in my mouth, though it just makes me want to vomit.

  Oh my gosh, I’m not just inside the walls. I am the walls.

  I’m fluid, like a standing-up puddle that conforms to the two-by-fours behind the plaster. Claustrophobia takes over; the terror feeling of what I imagine being buried alive might be like. My lungs pump as if they’re trying to take control from my heart. Strange, that I have these sensations, though I don’t actually have a heart or lungs anymore.

  My father and his fathers wander once more as if lost, unsure of why they’re here. Dad is the only one who shows concern for me. He keeps muttering, “I’m sorry, Piper. So sorry.” I can’t worry about him though. It’s impossible to think about anything else.

  I touch a nearby two-by-four, but instead of just feeling the wood at my palm, the sensation stretches me again so I can sense the ceiling though it’s feet away. I’m swaddled too tight like a burrito, like someone holds a chloroform cloth over my face.

  “No,” I say, pounding the wood with an incredible sense of entrapment. I strike the walls, but every touch only exaggerates the extending, grainy sensation of wood covering me, invading my breathing canals. A blood-curdling scream rips from my throat, while at the same time, the boards around me let out a massive groan. I keep pounding, keep kicking.

  “Screw you, Ada!” I yell, but even the words taste like the rough texture of wood, and I’m the only one who can hear them. They don’t make it past my cage.

  “I hate you, do you hear me? I HATE you!” I sink to the floor though I don’t know how because there’s only inches between the lath in front of me and the framework behind.

  Tears burn at my eyes but don’t come—I don’t have a body to cry from.

  Joel is MIA. Ada has taken my body, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. Stuck here like my father, like my mother’s mind. I am part of my house now. I am my house.

  Enraged, I let out another soundless scream and the boards around me creak. At least my mom in prison has room. She may be restricted in a cell, but at least she has a few feet to pace.

  Squaring my jaw, I rise to my feet and feel the wood course down my legs as if they’re pegs instead of limbs. I wonder how Ada manipulated things when I can hardly move. She rattled doorknobs, lifted objects, pushed out the wallpaper. If she figured it out, so can I.

  There had to be a solution other than this. I don’t see how Ada stood this for so long. Over a hundred years of watching people be tortured—including the man she loves. Not to mention she relived her own awful death over and over. I know how stuck she was.

  But just because I understand her logic, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by and let her take my body.

  I’m not worthless like the kids at school have always made me out to be. My life has value. I’m a talented musician, and I plan on making something of myself. On getting out of this house. Never looking back, never once caring about Sierra or Jordan or any of those other idiots. And maybe having something in the future with Todd, too.

  I won’t let Ada do this. Because I love myself, with or without my mother around. I love my life, and I intend on living it.

  With a pungent sniff of ammonia and plaster, I think flat thoughts, since I’m part of the panels around me. Tentatively, I lift my feet one at a time. And I don’t fall back to the baseboards. I’m an astronaut, but gravity no longer pulls me to earth. Instead, it bonds me to my house.

  Keeping my feet off the ground, I sink, fast, sliding along the two by fours, shuddering as wood fills the emptiness inside me. I pass through the floor joists and feel the cool air in the basement.

  I make my way to the darkened room filled with garbage bags where I found Todd when he fell through. Joel lies on his side, coughing up blood as Ada-as-Piper removes trash bags from over top of him.

  She hid him from me. I’m ready to scream. He’d been here the whole time, but SHE HID HIM FROM ME.

  I clench my fists in attempt to contain my rage. I don’t want her knowing I’m here yet. The sides of Joel’s head where his ears should be are a grisly disarray.

  I force myself to stay silent. Joel, you’re alive. Thank goodness you’re alive.

  “I am sorry I could not prevent this,” AdaPiper mutters. It’s uncanny to watch her as me. To watch myself move around, to see myself as others see me. I’m skinny more than curvy, with long arms, and my face is pretty—prettier than I thought.

  Joel coughs again and grapples at the substantial gash in his chest. His feet scuff against the concrete, like he’s trying to move away from her. Does he know she’s not really me?

  AdaPiper dabs again at his chest. She yanks a long piece of gray cloth from a nearby garbage bag and spreads it over him. Kneeling at his side, she cocks her head. “Still, you are in no fit state to be Thomas’ vessel.”

  Joel’s eyes bulge, and his back arches, as if her words cause him physical pain. I grit my jaw, and it takes everything I have not to pound the walls. My voice doesn’t work. But even if it did, I’m still not sure I want her knowing I’ve figured out how to move yet. I’m afraid she’ll do something else to trap me further.

  I wheeze as a flurry of cold enters the room and the figure I saw in the library joins us. Thomas’ remnant is just as handsome as he was in color. It’s the first time I’ve seen his ghost since that night.

  “Is he ready?” Thomas asks, nearing AdaPiper. She faces him, her eyes brimming with tears. Green eyes. Not my blue.

  “I do not think it will work. I must find someone else.”

  Thomas’ ghostly hand reaches for her arm as Joel
sputters again on the concrete. Help him, dang it! Don’t let him die!

  “We are running out of time,” Thomas says, his voice spookier than it was in the flashbacks. “With Garrett gone I can already feel myself fading. It won’t be long now until I dissipate.”

  “Blast his connection,” Ada says to herself. “How long do you think we have?”

  Thomas lowers his head. I zone in on him. He does seem lighter, somehow. Bleached out. “Minutes. Not hours.”

  She composes herself, a soft smile on her face. I wonder if it’s weird for Thomas that she’s me. “Don’t fret, my love.” I goggle at my purple shirt and jeans and the fact that she just said the word fret. “I know someone who may be a better alternative.”

  Thomas narrows his eyes at her. “How can you get to him in time?”

  “He is her friend. He will come at my command.”

  My heart squeezes like it’s being sucked through a straw. Oh no. Todd.

  AdaPiper holds a hand to his stonewashed cheek. Her palm nearly goes through his face, and she has to pull herself back.

  “How I long to touch you,” she says before leaving the room.

  thirty

  The three of them stand behind Jordan’s black Escalade. The setting sun dims light from the sky, letting shadows slowly clothe the street. Todd closes the journal, feeling as though he’s just delivered a really strange discourse on extraterrestrials or some other ludicrous made-up notion. Then again, up until he’d seen the evidence with his own eyes, he had thought time loops and haunted houses were fictitious too.

  “Whoa,” Sierra says, touching her skin again in that way she’s been doing, like it bugs her. The wAay your tongue can’t seem to stop worrying at a canker sore. Her hair is still frazzled from being electrocuted, and she looks paler than usual.

  Jordan watches her. “Did you see something else?”

  She shakes her head, whimpering.