“Deem?” he said.
“Winn, thank God it’s you! Where are you?”
“I’m, I’m kind of lost, Deem.”
She could hear the confusion in his voice. “Look around you. What do you see?”
“A sign.”
“What does it say?”
“University Daycare.”
“University Daycare?” Deem repeated. “What university?”
“I don’t know,” Winn replied. “Wait, wait — there’s a car going past. The license plate is…Montana.”
“You’re in Montana?”
“There’s another sign…University of Montana. I’m in Missoula. I was just here, yesterday, with David. I can’t remember why I came back, though. I know this sounds bizarre, but I’m having trouble remembering why I’m here.”
“Don’t worry why you’re there,” Deem said. “Carma will arrange a flight home for you. Find some place to hang out until I can call you back. And conserve your battery, I assume you don’t have your charger.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Stay calm, Winn,” she said, quieting herself as she spoke. No sense in amping him up because I’m all amped up. If it’s like what happened to David, he has no memory of what just occurred. “I can explain everything when you get here. Just concentrate on getting home, OK?”
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll wait for your call.”
She hung up. Fuck! she thought. Montana? Winn went back to Montana, David went back to…Leeds. In both cases, where they were the day before.
In her mind, she saw the Creepsis landing on Winn, injecting him. It all happened so quickly, she hadn’t had time to react. Winn was down and screaming within seconds, and she didn’t have any idea what to do. Lorenzo urged her to drop out immediately, and once she saw that Winn was gone, she did. Then she woke up in the house, with no Winn anywhere to be seen.
Lorenzo believed that Bingham spawned the new houses initially, and kept Abraham, Joseph, and Althea separately in one, before the house started spawning copies on its own, when people completed the loop. How did Bingham do that? she wondered. He’s not just running around killing people; he must have some kind of power. Did that force mutate in the radiation? Has his ability morphed right along with his appearance, and when he tries to sedate a captive, it goes off rails and knocks the person back to the real world, to wherever they were the day before? Something he can’t control?
She stepped on the gas. Thirty more minutes, and she’d be at Carma’s.
▪ ▪ ▪
“I can’t call the agency, it’s too late in the evening!” Carma said, hysteria rising in her voice. “They’re closed! I don’t know how to reach any of them after hours!”
“Carma!” Deem said, trying to calm her down. “I can book the ticket on my laptop. Winn doesn’t need a paper ticket. He can go right to the airport and use his ID to take the flight.”
“Oh!” Carma said, lowering her hand to her hair and adjusting it, as though the crisis she had momentarily wrapped herself in had somehow knocked her hair off balance. “Could you? I’ll reimburse you. Just let me know how much it costs.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Deem said. “I can pay for Winn’s ticket home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Carma said, turning to walk into the kitchen. “I think we could all use a drink,” came her voice as it trailed off.
Deem sat down next to David. “That’s some story,” David said. “I can’t remember seeing the Creepsis, but I have had nightmares. Had one just before you got home.”
Deem looked at him. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by large, black rings. He doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping at all, Deem thought.
“Do you remember them?” she asked. “The nightmares?”
“They become clearer each time I dream. I’m trapped in a house. It’s as though it’s under construction, because there’s rooms missing everywhere, but I can’t get out of it, no matter what I try. I can’t remember if it’s the Blackham mansion or not, I’m still fuzzy on some details. The house is full of dread, of not being able to get away from something that’s always chasing me.”
“You don’t remember the Creepsis injecting you?” Deem asked. “If my theory is right, that’s how you wound up back here, and Winn wound up in Montana.”
“No, I don’t remember that part.”
Carma returned with a tray of cordials. She passed a Baileys on the rocks to Deem. It was a triple. Then she gave David a mug that looked like tea, little wisps of steam rising from it. Finally she took the other Baileys, a smaller one, for herself. “Drink up” she said, sitting across from them.
Deem took a sip of her drink. She noticed David hesitantly sniffing his tea. The look on his face told her he’d been forced to drink a lot of it lately, and was becoming sick of it.
“There’s something I’m just not comfortable with,” Carma said, tapping the side of her glass with her fingernails. “The bit about the house collapse.”
“You don’t think it will work?” Deem asked.
“Oh, I think it might work, but I’m not so sure about the Creepsis being dead as a result of it. He might be wrong about that.”
“He said that’s what Jacob’s father suggested,” Deem replied. “And he’s been right about so much else.”
“I couldn’t disagree more,” Carma said. “When it comes to mistakes, Lorenzo made many. Entrusting his journal to someone who didn’t or couldn’t help him, failing to reach Jacob, trapping himself — I’m not sure I’d trust his thoughts on the collapse, either.”
“Well, what then?” Deem asked. “Collapsing the house would eliminate the threat of people becoming trapped in duplicate houses. If it doesn’t kill the Creepsis, at least we’d be boxing it in.”
“You don’t know that it will eliminate the ongoing threat,” Carma warned. “You wouldn’t know for sure until you performed the collapse and opened the front door, to see whether or not a kitchen appeared. Its ability to duplicate may still exist, even after you perform the collapse.”
“Great,” Deem said despondently, taking a large gulp of her drink. “No options that would do any good.”
“We need more information,” Carma said. “We must form a plan that is more thought-out than Lorenzo’s, based less on assumption. The man can’t be blamed; he did his best for a hundred and twenty years ago. We must rack our brains for resources we can turn to. I’ll do so for the rest of the evening, and I suggest you do the same, Deem. As for you, David, I think you should rest some. You’re looking even weaker, I’m afraid.”
“Come along, I’ll take you up,” Deem said, setting down her glass and standing. She watched as David stood and wobbled a little on his feet, gaining balance before he turned to walk upstairs.
▪ ▪ ▪
“That’s unbelievable!” Winn said, eating a sandwich Carma had prepared. “All the way to Montana?”
Deem had just finished relating the events that Winn no longer remembered, including the entire story Lorenzo told them while inside Blackham mansion. He looked stunned.
“Why Montana?” Winn asked. “Why am I not trapped in a house back in Paragonah?”
“I have a theory,” Deem replied. “In the beginning, when Bingham attacked people like Abraham and Joseph, he was somehow able to store their bodies in duplicates of the house. These were duplicates he created, not spawned by someone completing the loop. So he has this ability. I think that ability morphed into something a little fucked up when the radiation hit.”
“What?” Winn asked.
“Bingham turned into the Creepsis, right? Head shifted to his back, and he looked even more like a giant, twisted spider. And he stabbed you with something, a sharp stinger that came out of its neck…where its head used to be. I think what it injected into you was supposed to transfer you to a duplicate house, in addition to paralyzing you. The radiation fucked it up, and now it sends you back to wherever you were a day ago, instead.”
“
If you’re right,” Carma said, “I imagine it’s very frustrating for the Creepsis.”
“So that means there’s still a duplicate house in Paragonah with my name on it,” Winn replied. “Waiting for me.”
“And the same thing happened to David,” Carma added. “Whatever the Creepsis injected into him, it’s slowly destroying him. He’s becoming weaker and weaker, plagued by nightmares and visions of a house.”
“A house that’s not yet complete,” Deem said. “He said the house he was seeing was under construction.”
“Perhaps that’s what the radiation fucked up,” Winn said. “It slowed down the creation of the duplicate house, and David couldn’t be sent there until it was finished.”
“Whether the fallout is to blame for the slowness of its construction or the creature’s control of things doesn’t matter in the end,” Carma said. “It may all be true, or only partially true. I suspect that when the house is finished, David will be pulled back to it. His body will go comatose, and he’ll be trapped in the house that has been prepared for him, just like Henry and the others.”
“We don’t have much time,” Deem said.
“We need a plan,” Winn answered. “Right now.”
“Carma feels that collapsing the house won’t kill the Creepsis,” Deem said. “He’ll still be there.”
“The collapse will bring every body that’s been stored in all the duplicates into one house, the original, right?” Winn said. “That will include David, if he’s taken before we can perform the collapse.”
“But how do we get him out?” Deem asked.
“He won’t be trapped at that point,” Winn replied. “He just leaves the River.”
“That’s the type of assumption that got Lorenzo into trouble,” Carma said. “I advise against presumption. You’re much better off assuming you’ll need to eliminate the Creepsis in order to free David. You’ll at least want to go in knowing how you’d get rid of it. Once it’s in the same house with you, along with all those bodies from the past, you’d better have some way of taking it out.”
“Where is David, now?” Winn asked.
“He’s upstairs, still asleep,” Deem replied. “He had a bad night. Lots of nightmares. He looks awful.”
“Poor kid,” Winn said, finishing his sandwich. “Where do we start? Any ideas, Carma?”
“I’ve racked my brain all night, and I can’t think of anything,” she replied.
“I want to call Steven and Roy,” Deem said. “They’ve been helpful in the past. They might have ideas, or know someone.”
“Go for it,” Winn replied.
Deem pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed Steven’s house in Seattle. She put it on speakerphone and set it down between the three of them.
“Hello?” Steven answered.
“Hi Steven, it’s Deem,” Deem said, waiting for Steven’s response. After a few moments of pleasantries and the introduction of Carma, Deem continued.
“Have you ever heard of a house that can duplicate itself? And trap people inside the duplicates?” she asked.
“Is that what you’re facing?” Steven asked. “Wow, that’s intense.”
“We’ve got a friend who will soon be trapped in it, so we need to figure out how to handle it. It may involve a creature, too. The house was originally haunted by the spirit of a murderer, who preyed on people who conducted a séance in the house. The radiation here has since changed him from a human into something twisted. We’ve been calling it the Creepsis, which is what the locals have called it for years. Any ideas?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” Steven replied. “Dad?”
“Can’t think of anything, Deem,” came Roy’s voice through the phone. “Sounds challenging.”
“We believe we can collapse the duplicate houses into one, but we still need a way to get rid of the Creepsis once that happens.”
“Well, there’s damn few things you can use as weapons in the River,” Roy said. “Lots of objects will transform, but most aren’t weapons. We don’t have anything like that, that I know of. You, son?”
“No, I don’t know of any,” Steven replied. “Perhaps there’s a way to collapse it further, make it so small it’s irrelevant.”
“We’re concerned about our friend trapped inside,” Deem replied. “We’re not sure if the energy that creates the duplicates comes from the house itself, or from the Creepsis. If it’s from the Creepsis, that might keep our friend trapped inside, even if we collapsed it to a pin prick.”
“I see,” Steven replied. “Well, we’ll have to mull it over here, see if we can come up with anything.”
“Use that pinhead in Ballard,” they heard Roy mumble to Steven on the other end.
“Pinhead?” Steven replied, as they had a conversation on their own.
“Yeah, that tech geek with the database,” Roy said.
“Oh, you mean Elliott,” Steven replied. “His name is Elliott, not pinhead or tech geek.”
“Whatever. We’ve got a huge credit with him, let’s have him do a search,” Roy said.
“Not a bad idea,” Steven replied. “How urgent is this, guys? It sounds pretty dire?”
“Very urgent,” Winn replied. “The clock is ticking.”
“Then Dad and I will leave to go talk to Elliott right away, and I’ll let you know what we find out.”
“Well, that is, Steven will go,” Roy said. “I will probably wait here to relay any important information.”
“What do we need a relay for?” Steven asked. “We’ve all got cell phones, dad. You just don’t want to deal with Elliott.”
“No, I don’t,” Roy said. “The goddamn putz can’t even look up from his phone for more than a half second.”
“After we get what we need from him, we’ll stop at that pie place in Fremont. How about that?”
No response from Roy.
“Listen, guys,” Steven said, “we’re on this. I’ll let you go. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know something, alright?”
“Thank you!” Deem said.
“Goodbye!” Winn added, and Deem ended the call.
“Let’s hope something comes of it,” Deem said. “They’ve come through for me before.”
“I wouldn’t expect much if this Roy has anything to do with it,” Carma said, standing and flattening her dress with her hands. “He sounds like a piece of work.”
Chapter Thirteen
“The screen is blank,” Carma said. “It isn’t working.”
“Just wait,” Deem said. Deem and David were seated the end of the dining room table, observing Deem’s laptop, and Winn and Carma were standing behind them. A video call was about to begin.
“Who are we talking to, again?” David asked. Winn saw that David could barely keep his head up. When he’d heard they were going to talk with an expert on this type of haunted house, he’d insisted on participating, but Winn was beginning to think it might have been a bad idea.
“Her name is Kari Happague,” Deem said. “She lives in Virginia. We got her name from Steven and Roy.”
“From Steven and Roy’s database guy,” Winn corrected.
“Well, what do we do, just wait?” Carma asked, growing impatient.
“I’m a little early,” Deem said. “She’s got another couple of minutes still.”
Winn shifted from foot to foot. He’d not slept well the previous night either. He was unnerved by the descriptions of David’s nightmares, of houses half-built, waiting to act as holding cells for Creepsis food. He had a few of the visions himself, and it made for a fitful night. Around 3 AM, having just awoken from one of the nightmares, he’d begun to form a desire to drive into town and have a big breakfast with lots of coffee. It had distracted him from the disturbing images that flowed whenever he tried to go back to sleep. Having seized on the breakfast plan for so many hours, he was waylaid when Deem announced she’d scheduled a conference call for 9 AM.
The screen flickered to life, and the face of Kari Happague ap
peared. She looked very thin and gaunt, and the way her face descended into the camera accentuated the triangularness of it, making her head look a little like a praying mantis.
“Hello?” she said on the other end. Her voice was high, and she was cheery. A smile spread across her very small mouth. It didn’t have far to spread.
“Hello, Kari!” Deem said. “I’ve got David, Winn, and Carma here with me. Thank you for taking a moment this morning to talk with us.”
“Of course!” Kari said. Winn marveled at how much sound came out of such a tiny mouth. “I’m on my lunch break here, so please don’t mind me if I take a bite of something now and then, will you?”
Winn could see the tell-tale signs of a cubicle behind her face. She’s at work somewhere, he thought. There were papers and a calendar tacked to the soft panel walls of the cubicle. He watched as she scooped a spoonful of yogurt into her tiny mouth. Winn was amazed that it opened wide enough to allow a spoon to enter.
“Did you have a chance to read my email?” Deem asked.
“Yes, quite thorough,” Kari replied. “Very vivid, too. Exciting! I’m jealous!”
I can’t believe this woman is an expert, Winn thought. She seems like a typical office worker, more interested in going home to watch reality television.
“We’re concerned about David here, as I wrote,” Deem said. “We need some way to stop the threat.”
“Well, I’m in agreement with your friend Carma that collapsing the houses will not get rid of the…” She looked down at something below the camera. “Creepsis. What a charming name! There are many names for it, but I like this one a lot!”
Someone walked into the frame behind her, and Kari raised a finger to the camera, pausing them, while she took a folder from the person and they exchanged a few words. When she was finished, the person left, and Kari dropped the papers into a basket behind her. Then she spooned another glob of yogurt into her mouth.
“Sorry about that — mortgages are really heating up this week! So, listen, no, you won’t get rid of your Creepsis by collapsing the houses using the method you describe. It’ll still be there. And anyone trapped won’t be released until it’s gone.” Another scoop of yogurt.
The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) Page 14
