The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  “You’re here,” I say in the doorway of Layla’s messy bedroom. Pink, black, and gray bedding rumpled, clothes strewn here and there, a sports bra on the back of her chair. She sits on her bed, laptop in place, her fingers ticking against its surface.

  “Hey, Ev,” she says, pausing when she sees the look on my face. “What’s up?”

  I lose my composure and sink onto the edge of her bed. I show her my injured palm first, before telling her about Sierra at school and then at the store.

  “Crows were there too,” I say, shuddering. “I didn’t see them, but they heated my phone, Layla, they burned my hand when I got close to that door.”

  She sets her laptop aside, quiet in her thoughts and staring at my burn. “I don’t get it,” she says. “How can crows make a phone burn your hand? What’s so big about some random door?”

  The red burn mark stings, and the same vulnerability that struck earlier returns, rendering me more paranoid than I’d like.

  “I don’t know,” I say, making for the bathroom. Layla rises from her bed and follows me in, flipping on the light for me. “I think Nikolay would have told me if I’d asked, but he started talking about magic and Sierra being under some kind of spell, and I panicked.”

  I run some more cold water over my stinging hand. Layla digs in the cupboard and retrieves a bottle of aloe vera. “You think it’s happening to you too,” she guesses with an all too knowing look.

  I pat my hands dry. “I don’t know! I don’t know what it is. But Piper does.” I pause, realization burrowing in. “Sierra told me Piper had something to do with it.”

  “I can ask Joel,” Layla offers, opening the aloe vera for me. She dabs several glops along the burn marks. The slimy green liquid soothes the pain immediately. “I have a date with him tonight.” Her lips fight a small grin.

  “That’s good.” It’s an automatic response and obviously not rendering the interest she thinks I should display. “You two looked cozy last night,” I add, forcing a smile. That seems to do the trick. She beams, but it quickly fades as she takes in my hand once more.

  “But I’ll stay here. You shouldn’t be alone, Everly, I’ll—”

  “No, you won’t,” I tell her, hating that I would be the one to keep her from enjoying herself.

  “Are you sure?” she says.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay then. I’m trying to get this done before he gets off work. You okay here?”

  I blow softly onto my palm. “Yeah. Thanks for your help.”

  She beams and bounces back to her room before staring off with a dreamy expression. “That’s so hot, isn’t it? Getting off work. Having a legit job, not like Hector Loser-town Sanchez, the seven lay-off wonder.”

  Despite my melancholy, I laugh at the mention of her last boyfriend. She was crazy for him, but the lack of stability—and the fact that he still lived in his parents’ basement—was a major turnoff for her.

  “Joel lives with his sister,” I say, just to see her reaction.

  “Yeah, but he’s like, raising her.”

  My eyebrow quirks. “Piper’s close to my age.”

  “Then he and I aren’t much different, are we?” She grins again, returning to her laptop. “Seriously, though, are you going to be okay? I’ll stay here if you want me to. Joel will understand.”

  “No, it’s okay. You should go. Definitely go.”

  “Okay, then. I will. And done!” With a final slam on the enter key, she sets her laptop aside and dashes back into the bathroom to powder whatever needs to be powdered.

  Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are pretty much raised. I wish my parents understood that. Especially since it’s only two more weeks until my eighteenth birthday.

  With a sigh I return to my room. The sight of the half-empty boxes is another slap in the face. I can’t help picturing my mom packing up my things and shipping them off. She was probably glad to be done with me.

  I collapse onto the bed to examine my very dead phone. I smooth a finger over the crack, my body growing heavy. I have a job now, I tell myself. In a few weeks, maybe I’ll have enough cash to buy a new phone. Except I can’t manage to finish a whole shift.

  For some reason the sadness of not calling my parents slumps in, blurring my vision. I didn’t realize how much I was hoping to hear from them until I don’t have access to a phone. They could call Layla’s, but I’m not sure they have her number, and in all honesty, they probably won’t take the effort to call my aunt to get it from her. Pride runs like blood with Claudia James, and she’s not about to call her sister to admit yet another failure, that she can’t even get ahold of her rogue daughter.

  Tears sting my eyes, and I blink hard and fast. But blinking doesn’t clear the tightness in my throat. My shoulders fall, and I sink back against my pillowless bed, unable to keep myself upright.

  I need to talk to someone. Maybe I could use Layla’s phone to contact Jerry, but even then I don’t know what I would say. Layla got attacked by crows only I could see and one made my phone burn my hand? I don’t want to tell him I have a job, that my new boss is some sort of exorcist, or that my neighbor and new friend is hiding secrets from me. Or that a guy hotter than I care to admit gave me a beautiful book he bound himself.

  I groan. I left it at the store. I’ll have to get it tomorrow.

  Despair weighs on my limbs, a restless desire to fade away for a while, to try and forget all of this. I sling an arm across my eyes when a harsh buzzing resounds from my nightstand.

  My eyes shoot open. My phone—my very dead phone—is vibrating.

  Screen still cracked, still black, the thing slides just slightly as the rhythmic buzzing comes and goes. It slides, and then rises from the nightstand before slamming back down on it.

  The sight lifts the hairs on my neck. I stiffen, hardly daring to move.

  Layla bops in, wearing a frilly yellow shirt, and I startle.

  “Jumpy?” she asks. Before I can answer she flares out her arms. “What do you think?”

  Nerves punching, I make a motion, cutting across my neck. “Kill it.”

  “You don’t like this one?”

  My phone buzzes again. On impulse I veer toward it, accidentally knocking it from the nightstand to the floor. I reach for it with slow, tentative fingers, when Layla returns in another shirt, tighter-fitting and red with sequins in the front.

  I give her thumbs up, forcing myself to focus. It’s nothing. Maybe my phone just has rigor mortis. “That’s the one.”

  “Something wrong, Ev?”

  I’m too distracted by my galloping pulse to do more than shake my head.

  It’s dead. My phone was dead.

  Layla dashes out to the living room and peers through the blinds, twirling a strand of her hair and bouncing like a girl at the window of a candy store.

  “He’s here. Wish me luck!”

  I follow her to the door so we don’t have to yell across the space. “You got this.”

  She beams, one hand on the doorjamb. Her tongue tips to her upper lip before she turns the knob.

  “Hey, you,” she says, stepping out. Joel’s tired face lights up when he sees her.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “I hope you don’t have plans tonight, because I do—” She shuts the door, but not before I catch sight of Todd’s red truck idling in the parking lot. I sigh and return to my room.

  The small pink rectangle taunts me from my floor, daring me to touch it again. I consider stepping out, but what if something happens while I leave it here? It lifted on its own. I can’t trust the thing by itself.

  I snatch a shirt from my floor, dive for the phone and wrap it up in the shirt as quickly as I can. I break for the door, slamming it behind me.

  The scent of gasoline permeates the air. Todd rolls down his window as I approach. Eighties music wit
h a steady beat, heavy on the snare drum, booms from the speakers. Piper sits, not in the passenger seat near the window, but as close to Todd as she can get. Tears stain her cheeks and she rubs her reddened eyes, giving me a slight wave.

  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s been having a rough afternoon.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  She hiccups and gives me a feeble nod. Todd squeezes her knee.

  “Where did you guys go? And what’s going on with Sierra? She came into the store this afternoon and talked about having a girl’s memories, and…” I leave off before outright accusing Piper. “And then my phone burned my hand and I swear, I’m not making this up.”

  Piper releases an irritated scoff. “Not again.”

  “Please,” I say, startled at the brokenness in my own voice. “I know you know what’s going on. Please, can we talk?”

  Todd nods encouragingly at her as though she needs the reassurance.

  “Okay,” Piper says, sniffling. “Get in.”

  ten

  Todd drives to an exit on the outskirts of town. But instead of turning toward Buckley and Shady Heights, Todd passes the Best Western across the street and heads down a single-lane backroad I’ve never seen.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “For a drive,” Todd says.

  I could use a drive. I palm the wad of shirt in my lap, hands pressed around it in some kind of silent prayer, though if I were the praying type, I’m not sure what I would say. Dear Lord, please help me not to go crazy like Sierra?

  “We went to visit my mom at the penitentiary,” Piper finally says, breaking the silence. “After what happened with Sierra today, I needed some—” She exhales. “To see her. I just needed to see her.”

  “Oh.” I’m not sure what to say to that. Her mom is in prison? Not really a polite thing to ask questions about. Piper seemed really upset by whatever happened to Sierra; maybe her mom comforted her. Nice that someone at least has a maternal figure in her life who doesn’t try to control every aspect of it.

  “Here is good,” she tells Todd, gesturing to a collection of camping sites carpeted with a patchwork of grass poking between piles of snow. Circles of gravel surround abandoned fire pits, each one beside a single picnic table. A pair of bathrooms stands in the center of the small campground.

  Todd pulls into one of the empty campsites, and the three of us get out. “What are we doing here?” I ask, unsure. True, I barely know these two. Why would they take me out to some random campground?

  “Todd and I come here to hang out sometimes,” Piper says. “And talk. Just talk.”

  “Fair enough,” I say. The brisk wind whips through my hair, and I tuck my hands into my jacket pockets, wincing as the fabric grazes the burns on my right palm.

  I glance across the open fields, the mountains peeking in the distance, and not another car or person in sight. This is definitely secluded.

  Piper begins to pace. “My mother is in prison for murder.”

  My mouth opens, but I don’t ask the question. What did she do? “Piper—I’m so sorry.”

  She waves off my apology, jittery and agitated.

  “We lived in a really strange house, Everly. And you have to know she is the most amazing person and would never have done it under normal circumstances. But my house was not normal.”

  “Yeah, I remember Joel called it ‘interesting.’” That still doesn’t explain why her house being weird has anything to do with her mom being a murderer.

  She paces again before inhaling and stopping to look directly at me. “The truth is, there was a man trapped in time in my basement. He was evil—horribly evil, and would—gosh, I can’t even say it.”

  My breath catches in my chest. My mind races through possibilities, and I push hair out of my face.

  “It’s okay,” I encourage. “You can tell me.”

  Her eyes flick to me. While trepidation and uncertainty filter through, I nod in encouragement. I need to hear this. I need to hear I’m not crazy.

  With an inhale, she rambles, “He would kill the same twelve victims every year in order to perpetuate his spell over my house. A spell that kept him alive.”

  “A time-traveling serial killer?” I ask in shock.

  “His thirteenth victim always had to be from the present year to maintain the spell. For years he got one of my ancestors to get that last victim for him. So his spell could live on.”

  “So your mom…”

  “No! She would never! She was trying to stop it. She found out about what he was doing and thought—if she killed the chosen, prepped victim before Garrett did, that it would all stop. She was wrong.”

  My mouth gapes in alarm. “Then how did it stop?”

  Piper pumps her fists, still pacing. “I released a trapped ghost, and she helped me keep him from being able to drink his potion. But then that same ghost turned on me. She transferred everything she perceived to be wrong with me to Sierra instead so she could try and take my body for herself.”

  “Whoa—she tried to kill you?” This is unbelievable.

  “I was finally able to destroy the connection I had with her—with my house—but apparently that didn’t completely take everything away from Sierra.”

  “Wow,” I say from my cold perch on the picnic table, trying to sort through it all. No wonder Piper didn’t want to talk to me about it before.

  “Piper, I—” I don’t know what to say. “I can’t believe that happened to you. I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s done is done. I’m just sorry for Sierra, sorry it won’t stop for her. Sorry it’s happening to you now.”

  Todd leans forward at this. “What exactly is happening to you?”

  I swallow, not wanting to go on after hearing Piper’s story. “It seems…miniscule compared to what happened to you.”

  “We aren’t comparing,” Piper says. “I’d really like to help if I can.”

  “You said something about your phone?” Todd urges. “What happened?”

  “It burned my hand.” I show them my palm where the red rectangular burn mark stamps my skin. I fold it open, wincing at the small shoots of pain. “I was just standing there, and it burned my hand. And even though I know it was totally dead, it began vibrating again and it…lifted itself.”

  My words slow. I stare at my palm again, taking in the red lines and the dried aloe vera.

  Todd steps on the bench and perches on the picnic table beside me. Piper closes in, snuggling into his side.

  “Let’s see your phone,” he says.

  I hand him the wad of my shirt from beneath my arm. “It’s in there.”

  Todd unwraps the shirt and carefully lifts the phone, examining it like a specimen in a lab.

  “I’m not crazy, you guys. I dropped it. It was completely dead. Phones can’t move themselves.”

  Piper places a hand on my shoulder, the fabric of her coat crunching in the cold air. I jerk, not realizing how tightly I’m clenching all over. She gives a soft, sad smile.

  “We believe you.”

  “How long has it been doing this?” Todd removes its polka-dotted pink case and goes to work dissecting the phone’s insides.

  “Just today,” I say with a shiver. “Sierra showed up at the store, and then it happened right after that.”

  Todd’s eyes flash to Piper’s. She shakes her head at his unspoken question.

  “Has anything else…strange…been happening lately?” Piper asks.

  “Besides my nightmares coming to life?”

  “This is a piece of plastic and wiring, and electric circuitry,” Todd says, removing a small metal piece from within my phone. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Anything is possible,” Piper says. “The same thing used to happen in my house before it burned down.”

  “Your h
ouse burned down?”

  She sniffles. “Yeah, I forgot to mention that part. But before it did, it turns out my dead father was trying to contact me from a hidden room where his ghost was trapped. He tried using mediums like our TV and an old antique radio.”

  I blink a few times, waiting for the joke to roll in. Piper doesn’t smile, and Todd shrugs. “It’s true; I forgot about that.”

  “Lucky you,” Piper says, hugging herself. Todd snaps the pieces back into my phone and replaces the back cover before handing it to me.

  “I have no dead relatives trying to contact me,” I say, not wanting to touch the phone. But I can hardly let him keep holding it, so I take it and quickly tuck it into my pocket.

  “That you know of,” says Todd.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Hey, just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t know who you are—”

  “Because that’s not creepy or anything.”

  “—Or want something from you,” Piper adds.

  “You’re saying a dead relative is trying to contact me through my cell phone?” And burned my hand in the process?

  Piper and Todd both give me unassuming glances. Neither denies a thing.

  I’d laugh if the preposterousness wasn’t so believable. The wind pricks my neck, coiling its fingers down the opening in my shirt and sending goosebumps across my skin.

  “Everything we do these days is moving at the speed of light,” Todd says as though reciting a textbook. “Wire, fiber optics across the sky, these streams even go into space and back. Who’s to say they can’t cross to a different realm? One we can’t trace? What happens after death, is there a channel of some kind?”

  Piper shakes her head over and over. And over. “No way. Don’t even say it, we are not going to try and contact her.”

  “She could give us some direct answers. Your mom said she didn’t know.”

  “I am not summoning Ada, Todd. Not after all she did to me. She came back, said sorry, that’s as much contact as I ever want with her.”