‘What about Alex?’
‘He isn’t here,’ Danni said, remembering what her father had told her.
With his father, and our master. Where it likes to dwell.
She realised that she should have just followed her initial instinct all along and headed straight to the mill. But they had been drawn, tricked, into the house.
‘How do you know?’ Leah asked.
‘Because I do. And I know where he is.’
But, before they ran from the house, Danni needed to grab something else. They reached the bottom of the stairs and quickly doubled back, heading to the kitchen. Leah kept pace, even though she was clearly confused.
Danni ran straight to the kitchen cupboards and began to rifle through them, hoping that her father had kept a more extensive stash of alcohol than was in his bedroom.
The last cupboard she opened revealed what she was looking for.
There had to be close to ten bottles of spirits in it, most looking like scotch, but some were clear.
She grabbed them, handing some to Leah.
‘What are you doing?’ Leah asked.
‘Start pouring them out, everywhere you can.’
Danni started to do just that and clicked on the gas stove.
‘I don’t get it,’ Leah said, but she emptied out one of the clear bottles, regardless, onto the kitchen work-surface. It smelled like vodka.
‘We’re burning this place down,’ Danni said. She could smell the smoke drift down from upstairs; the fire was obviously spreading. Danni grabbed an old takeout menu from one of the drawers, held it to the gas stove, and it quickly took flame.
She carefully held it to a pool of the liquid on the floor and that too went up. She grabbed another couple of bottles and the mop from the corner of the kitchen.
‘Why are we burning everything?’ Leah asked.
It was a fair question, but not one there was time to answer. How could she explain to Leah that the ghost of her father, who had only moments before tried to attack her, seemed to momentarily regain some of his humanity and told her how to fight these things?
Use the fire.
It could well have been another trick, the same kind of misdirection that had lured them into the house in the first place, but she didn’t think it was. She had seen a change in… whatever the hell he was. Her father? An entity? Regardless, she had seen the malevolence dissipate, revealing something beneath.
Maybe that was her real father, the one she had barely known.
And, he had given her something: knowledge that could help. Hell, she had seen it work. The fire she’d started must have been the reason he vanished, because up until then he had been focused only on tormenting and hurting her.
She didn’t need to know how, or why, it worked, only that it had.
Danni quickly stripped off her over-shirt, revealing only a white tank top beneath.
‘Mom, what are you doing?’ Leah asked.
‘Getting us a weapon,’ Danni answered.
She handed the bottles she was carrying over to Leah and put a foot on the damp head of the mop. She yanked hard at the handle and in a single motion pulled it free. She then wrapped her shirt around one end of the wooden staff as tightly as she could, making sure it was secure in place. Then she doused it in alcohol before holding it over a nearby flame.
The head of her improvised torch ignited.
The fire in the kitchen was now really starting to spread, and the smoke worked its way into her throat, causing Danni to cough.
‘Come on,’ she said.
Before they could move, thunderous banging sounds erupted around them, startling them almost to the point that Danni dropped her torch. The impossibly loud sounds continued again and again, almost in anger.
In protest.
Cupboard doors flung open and then slammed closed over and over, and the heavy dining room table splintered, then broke apart, shards of its wood spraying everywhere.
Something was obviously pissed.
‘Mom,’ Leah yelled. ‘What’s happening?’
Danni pulled her through to the hallway to escape, but it seemed things would not be that easy.
The old hag and the tall man with the dislocated jaw both stood in front of the door, both motionless.
Danni didn’t even stop to think. She took one of the bottles from Leah and hurled it to the floor at the feet of the things that barred their exit.
Then another.
She tried to hold the torch out in front, as if it would ward off the entities like a crucifix to a vampire, but the old woman was on her quickly. The hag moved towards Danni with frightening speed and grabbed her by the throat, slamming her against the side of the stairs. The tall man advanced as well.
Danni struggled with the thing, but, as before, it was like fighting smoke. She quickly extended the arm with the torch to Leah, who was screaming in terror.
‘Fire,’ Danni croaked as the man took hold of her as well. She felt his massive, cold hands grab her head and begin to squeeze. The pain was immense, and she felt like her skull could crack at any moment.
Danni felt the torch leave her grip, but her eyes were now shut tight, an instinctive reaction to the pain.
Still she fought; kicking and lashing out, but all of it was useless.
‘Hey!’ she heard Leah shout. Then she heard another bottle break. Danni thought her skull was about to cave in completely.
Then she felt heat.
And the pressure eased up. The hold on her released.
Danni slid to the floor and managed to open her eyes. Her vision was blurred, but she could make out her daughter, standing close to flames that now blocked the exit—flames that were quickly engulfing everything around them. The two entities stood, looking at Leah, their forms beginning to fade away.
‘Come on, Mom,’ Leah yelled desperately. Danni began to crawl towards her daughter. The entities made no effort to stop them. Leah stepped forward and helped Danni to her feet.
They braced themselves and dashed forward through searing flames that licked at them and out into the cold night.
Danni dropped to her knees and began to cough and wheeze, purging the thick smoke from her body. Her head still throbbed with pain, and her vision was blurred. Slowly, she got to her feet and looked back inside to see the old woman and tall man completely melt away to nothing.
However, just before they vanished completely, Danni noticed that they looked… different.
More human, and their faces hung with a look of sorrow and regret.
Danni turned back to her daughter and saw that her skin was streaked and dirtied. Leah, too, was coughing, and Danni only now realised what kind of danger they had been in with so much fire and smoke billowing around them.
It had registered at the time, of course, but she was running on instinct, not knowing just how close they had come to being burned alive.
Leah, still holding the torch and one remaining bottle, hugged Danni and sobbed. Danni hated that she’d put her daughter through this, and hugged her back.
As scared, hurt, and exhausted as they both were, it was time to finish this.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked Leah, pulling away to look her daughter in the eyes. ‘You can go back if you want. There’s no shame in it.’
Leah raised her head, and Danni saw a look of grim determination.
‘I’m ready,’ she said, and the girl certainly looked it.
Danni nodded and took the torch from her. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s go save our family.’
Both women jogged quickly up towards the imposing mill ahead, barreling headlong into whatever was waiting.
26
THIS WAS IT. Danni could feel it.
It was time for them to end things.
Danni and Leah stood before the wooden door to the mill, which looked substantial, heavy, and more than a little weathered. Danni slapped a flat hand hard against the door.
‘Jon?’ she yelled. ‘If you’re in there, c
ome out. Let Alex go.’
There was no response, not that Danni expected one.
‘What do we do?’ Leah asked. ‘Do we just set fire to the mill as well?’ She held up the last bottle of alcohol, giving it a shake.
‘No,’ Danni said. ‘We need to get Alex out.’
Besides, the exterior of the mill was stone, and Danni had no idea how well that would burn. The house behind them, which was turning into a full-on blaze, was filled with flammable materials that would fuel the flames. But unless the mill had the same amount of junk inside, then the alcohol they had with them in the bottle would be useless.
Danni put a hand to the iron handle and clicked the latch. The door swung open easily with an audible creak, revealing a thick blanket of unnatural darkness beyond. The faint, flickering glow of the torch barely illuminated past the threshold.
‘Alex?’ Danni called. No response, at first, but she soon heard a scared whimpering coming, strangely, from a higher plane of space.
She held the torch out before her and stepped inside, feeling the temperature actually drop enough for goosebumps to break out on her skin. Going by circumference of the mill outside, Danni guessed that the internal floor space, which looked to be timber, was no more than ten feet in diameter. That wasn’t a lot of space, yet the torch didn’t give off enough light to see over to the far wall.
Danni was able to see thin timber posts that ran up vertically and knitted together with horizontal ones higher up, forming some kind of frame. Perhaps something left over from its time as a working mill. She looked up farther and heard something that made her blood run cold.
‘Mom.’
The voice was weak and came to her just as the light from the torch revealed something.
Up above them, about twelve feet off the ground, was Alex.
He was hanging from one of the horizontal sections of timber strutting. His arms were out to his side, in a position akin to being crucified, and an old, thin rope was tightly wrapped around them, securing him to the wooden bracing. His legs dangled freely and his face was bloodied—looking barely conscious.
‘Alex!’ she screamed and began to look around frantically for a way up there.
‘What should we do?’ Leah asked, clinging to Danni’s side.
Danni didn’t know, but there had to be a way for her to free him.
Before she had a chance to look around for something to aid her, another voice stopped her in her tracks.
‘Hi, Danni, glad you came.’
Jon stepped out of the darkness and into her space. Danni didn’t have time to act before he smiled and, with one swing of his arm, knocked the torch from her grasp.
She then felt his weight drop onto her and force her to the ground, pinning her down.
‘Get off,’ she heard Leah yell. ‘Dad, stop!’
The torch, still lit, lay just to her side, and Danni saw her daughter leap on to her father. The girl fought with him bravely and tried to pull him off of Danni, but he just pushed her back with one hand.
With the other, he struck her with a fierce punch.
A horrible crack echoed through the mill. Leah cried out and was sent sprawling to all-fours. Then Danni heard a clink, as the bottle Leah had been holding fell to the floor.
Danni exploded with rage and struggled against Jon with renewed vigour, clawing at his face. ‘You bastard,’ she spat. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
At first, Jon seemed taken aback by Danni’s ferocity, but he soon managed to overpower her and pin her arms to the floor. He brought his face down to hers, and Danni could see it in his eyes.
This wasn’t Jon.
Not anymore.
‘Stop,’ he said calmly and smiled. His breath smelled of rotting meat. ‘I swear to God, Danni, you are making things really difficult. If you don’t stop, then it’s Leah and Alex who will suffer. Do you understand?’
Danni didn’t stop, she continued to squirm and fight. ‘How can you do this to your family? You’re hurting your kids, Jon, think about what you’re doing.’
‘I’m not hurting them,’ he said. ‘I’m saving them.’
‘This isn’t normal,’ Danni went on. ‘Did you put Alex up there and bloody his face? Look at him, he’s helpless. Jon, think about what you’re doing. This isn’t you, something else is doing this.’
‘I know,’ Jon said.
Danni stopped.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I said. I know there is something else doing it. Something greater than us, Danni. And if we don’t do what it needs us to, then we’ll be destroyed. Torn apart in body and soul. So, you see I’m not lying when I tell you that I’m saving our family.’
Danni was thrown. She had seen the change in him recently, but he’d always been in some kind of denial about what was happening. But now Jon seemed to be fully aware he was being manipulated and was happy enough to go along with it.
‘No,’ Danni said. ‘You aren’t saving us. You’re condemning us. If you were saving us, you wouldn’t have forced us back here. You would have let us go. Hell, you would have come with us, away from whatever this thing is.’
‘I can’t,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I admit, it took a while for me to believe this was all real, but, Danni, it’s been speaking to me. That thing, it talks to me, and ever since I brought Alex back, I’ve seen how pleased it is with me. It’s shown me things, Danni, things I couldn’t have imagined. I’ve spent my life studying science and the ways of the world, of the universe, but everything I thought I knew was wrong. We, as humans, have no comprehension of how things really work. But I’ve seen them, Danni, I’ve glimpsed at a place beyond imagination. Don’t you see? Science, religion, any belief system humanity has clung to has been wrong. But I know the truth, and you can too. Can you imagine how powerful that is? How powerful we will be, knowing this, and being aligned with this entity? All we have to do is keep it happy, and it will impart unto us secrets that we could never otherwise know. Just think of all that knowledge, Danni. That truth. We can’t say no to that.’
Danni hoped that the man saying this, speaking this madness, was not her husband. That he was just a proxy for the thing behind all of this. Because if any part of the real Jon really meant what was being said, then he was dead to her.
She knew what this thing did to people. She had read the diary and knew that you didn’t just align with it.
It consumed you.
‘So,’ he went on, still smiling, ‘do you see now? Do you see why there is no need to run anymore? It will take care of us, we just have to give ourselves over to it.’
Danni was about to answer, but instead she screamed in absolute terror.
Something now stood behind Jon.
She had seen things this weekend that had terrified her; impossible things that made her question her sanity, but the thing that stepped into view now, that stood above Jon looking down at her, shook her to her core and infused her with a sense of terror and dread that she did not think possible.
Her mind could not really comprehend it: both human and not, a twisted waxwork of melted features, both of this world and another. It had dark skin and a bulbous head lined with many, many eyes. Or what she thought were eyes.
It made an inhuman sound, something that bellowed inside of her head.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Jon said.
‘Jon,’ Danni cried frantically, ‘let me go. Please, let me go.’
She squirmed and fought, and kicked and writhed, but could not break free of his hold.
‘There is nowhere to go, Danni. Nowhere else left to run. It lost you once, and it has no plans to lose you again.’
Danni then heard Leah scream as well, but could not see her in the darkness. It was a blackness that actually seemed to permeate from the horrifying creature above her.
The door to the mill slowly glided shut, seemingly of its own accord.
‘No more running,’ Jon said. ‘It’s time. It owns us now, and we have
to accept that. Give yourself over to it.’
Danni wanted to look away, but couldn’t. The demonic thing seemed to bore into her head with its gaze, and she could feel her mind start to break apart.
27
LEAH KNEW her mother needed her.
Her father, if that was really him, had Danni pinned to the floor and was mounted on top of her. The flaming torch that her mother had fashioned was discarded on the floor beside her, allowing Leah to see what was happening. She had briefly seen Alex, suspended high above them, but now he was again lost to the darkness.
However, Leah’s horrified attention was fully taken with the vile creature that stood above both of her parents.
She felt like she needed to do something, like she had when the old woman had been choking her mother.
But this? This was different.
The ghostly old woman was terrifying, and it had taken everything Leah had to push herself to act, but the thing that shared the space with them now seemed infinitely more dangerous.
Thankfully, both the monster and her father were focused on Danni. As much as she didn’t want to move at all, she knew she now had a chance to escape. Leah knew she could crawl to the door, pull it open, and just run.
But that meant leaving her mother and brother behind.
To die.
It was a terrible thought, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t fight this. She could do nothing to help her family.
Leah managed to bring her screaming under control and then rolled to her front, looking to the direction she thought the door was in.
She started to crawl forward, one arm in front of the other, focusing on the darkness ahead, not wanting to set eyes on that terrifying thing again.
Leah knew that if she survived, that thing would be in her dreams forever now. Her nightmares. She had no doubt about that. But she would rather she live with nightmares and ghosts of the past than confront something that would destroy her now.
It was safer that way.
Leah continued her crawling, trying to keep as silent as possible, focusing her eyes ahead.
As she moved, she felt her hand brush against the bottle she had been holding earlier. She remembered how her mother had used these bottles as a weapon earlier, and Leah paused. She turned her head; no longer able to ignore the struggles that were taking place so close to her. She saw that her mother’s head was lolling about and the woman had begun to scream. Her head fell to the floor and, for a moment, Leah made eye contact with her.
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