by Amy Cross
"I'm already awake," I say, tiring of the game. Sitting up, I smile awkwardly, and I feel the dynamic in the room start to shift. This, in itself, might be a vestige of the power. After all, as far as I can tell, the power exists in the space between two people. Before, it was just in the space between Elizabeth and me, but now Holly's been added to the mix, which creates a kind of triangle. It's the triangle that adds to the power, because the triangle has three sides and it traps the power in the middle. This is the reason why I'm so excited, since I truly believe that we have a chance now of capturing and shaping the power. I just need a little more time to study it, to examine it, and for that I need some peace and quiet. I also need Elizabeth to finally acknowledge that it exists; I know she's felt it, so why won't she just admit that it's real?
"I'm sorry we disturbed you," Elizabeth says, hurrying over to me. "Did you sleep well?"
I nod, watching as Elizabeth's movement causes the power to shift. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear I can actually see the power sometimes, especially now that Holly's down here.
"We were talking about the bars in the window," Holly says.
"There's time for that later," Elizabeth continues. "Natalie, do you want some porridge?"
"No," I say, getting to my feet.
"You need to eat," Elizabeth says. "After yesterday -"
"I'm hungry," I say, "but I don't want porridge." I'm sick of porridge. Apart from occasional treats, porridge is the only thing we're ever given. If I have to eat another bowl of that pale gray slop, I swear I'll explode. Sometimes I feel like I'm full of porridge all the time.
"You want egg and bacon?" Natalie asks.
I smile.
"For that," she continues, "we need to get out of here."
"Please stop talking like that," Elizabeth says, barely able to contain her anger. "We all want a lot of things, but it doesn't help for us to keep talking about them."
"Maybe it does," Holly says. "Maybe you've forgotten how to hope for a way out."
"I want some water," I say. "I'm feeling -" Suddenly I freeze, as I see something move at the other end of the basement. Far beyond where Elizabeth and Holly are standing, something's shifting in the shadows. My heart starts to race as I realize that, once again, we're not alone.
He's here.
He's here.
He's here.
I should have expected this. After all, he probably wants to get a better look at Holly, to learn a little more about her. Still, the thought of him being down here is enough to send a chill through my body.
He's here.
I hate it when he comes.
"At least take this," Elizabeth says, oblivious as usual to the visitor. She passes me a glass of water and waits expectantly for me to take a drink. As usual, she's playing the mother role. I don't blame her. It's all she knows how to do.
"Thanks," I say quietly, keeping my eyes fixed on the shadows. I know he's watching me, and I know he's just taking his time before... Taking a deep breath, I try to stay calm.
"I was telling Elizabeth about the bars," Holly continues. "Natalie, I think we need to show her what happened last night. Do you think we could try it again?"
I watch as the figure in the shadows seems to move a little closer. "No," I say after a moment. "Not now."
"But maybe if she sees -"
"Not now," I say firmly. Although I dearly want to help Holly, and to show Elizabeth how the power works, there's no way I'm going to do it while he's loitering down here. As far as I know, he has no idea about the power, and I want it to stay that way. Sometimes, it feels as if the power is the only thing keeping me alive, and I'm not going to share it with anyone apart from Elizabeth and Holly.
"You see?" Elizabeth says, turning to Holly. "There's really nothing to talk about."
"We moved one of the bars," Holly replies.
"No," I say, panicking at the thought that we might be overheard. "We didn't."
"We did!" Holly says. "We stood right there and moved one of them. Natalie, you're the one who showed me -"
"No," I say again, shaking my head. "I didn't show you anything. You'd just going crazy 'cause of the ice bath and everything. You're imagining things." I turn to Elizabeth. "She's making it up. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. We were just talking, just joking around, but she took things too far."
He's coming closer.
Holly stares at me, clearly shocked. I don't blame her. After all, she probably thought I was on her side. I'll explain everything to her later, when there's no-one in the shadows, but for now I just want to keep quiet.
"This is what I was worried about," Elizabeth says. "False hope. I promise you, Holly, that if you live every day like this down here, you'll go insane. False hope eats away at you, destroying your ability to settle into a rhythm. It's not good for the soul."
He's coming toward me.
"Good for the soul?" Holly asks incredulously. "What the hell does that mean?"
"He's here," I whisper.
"You have no idea how to survive down here," Elizabeth says to Holly. "No idea at all."
Sighing, I try to block out their voices as they continue to argue. It's good that Holly wants to challenge Elizabeth, and most times I'd probably support her. The problem, though, is that neither of them is aware of the man in the shadows. I don't know why or how, but he always manages to sneak past Elizabeth, and now he seems to be able to sneak past Holly as well. Even now, he's standing over by the far wall, barely visible, but I know he's watching me. I don't know why, but it seems like he's always more interested in me than in anything else. Sometimes I wonder if he's a friend of the guy upstairs, but other times I feel as if he's completely independent. Sometimes I think he's a ghost.
As Elizabeth and Holly continue to argue, I watch as the figure moves through the shadows, walking around the edge of the room until finally he gets closer to me. I'm already starting to tremble as the thin-faced man crouches slowly next to me, his old bones creaking with the effort.
"Hello, Natalie," he says, his voice sounding old and paper-thin as usual. "I see you've got a new friend. Now, what's this I hear about a broken window?"
Ben Lawler
Today
I watch as the security guard walks slowly along the path, making his way to the house. It's just after lunchtime on a warm summer's day, and I've driven out to take another look at the house on Willow Road. To my surprise, however, it turns out I'm not the only one in the area. A security truck is parked out the front, and the guard seems to be doing his rounds, checking that the house hasn't been disturbed. I'm pretty sure this is a new development and there was no guard on duty before, so I guess Mayor Jones is serious about keeping people away from the place. Still, I doubt the guard has been paid to stay all day. The Mayor's office wouldn't pay for more than a cursory check every now and then.
Figuring I should probably take some precautions before I go near the house, I phone Joe Kukil. He's the only person I feel I can trust right now.
"Are you sure about this?" he asks after I've told him what I'm planning to do.
"Of course I'm not sure," I reply, keeping my eyes trained on the house. "I need to know what's going on out here, and I need to get in there before the film crew starts work next week. Just do me a favor, okay? If I haven't called you back within forty-five minutes, let the police know I need help."
"I think you're underestimating the house, Ben," he says. "That place is evil."
"I can look after myself. Anyway, if there's something in there, it only goes after women. There's no record of a man ever getting hurt." I watch as the guard comes around from the other side of the house, still checking the doors and windows. "I doubt anything'll even happen," I continue. "I just want to get some images for research."
"Sometimes I wonder about your interest in that house," Joe replies. "This seems like more than idle curiosity."
"Speak to you soon," I say as I watch the guard heading back to his van. Cutting the call, I wait
for the guard to drive away. I feel stupid for even bothering to ask Joe for help, but I guess there's no harm in being cautious.
Starting my engine, I drive along the road until I'm outside the house, and finally I walk through the garden until I'm standing in front of the main door. Right now, the house doesn't even look that creepy. Sure, the garden's overgrown and the doors and windows are boarded up with metal plates, but it just seems like an ordinary rundown rural house. I walk around the exterior, taking reference photos of the building, but eventually I realize that I'm delaying the moment when I have to go inside. Taking a deep breath, I go to the loose metal plate and find that it still hasn't been fixed. So much for added security.
Once I'm inside, I use the flashlight to take a look around the first room. Nothing's changed since the last time I was here, and I start picking my way through the pile of debris and junk that's been left on the floor. It's hard to believe that no-one even bothered to come and clean up properly after the house was raided all those years ago, but I guess no-one wanted the job.
Making my way to the basement, I walk carefully down the stairs until finally I'm in the part of the house where the three women were kept. It's a fairly large space, with just a single small window set into the top of one of the walls. I make my way slowly across the room, which turns out to be almost entirely bare apart from an old sink over in one of the corners. Turning, I aim the flashlight across the darkness, and finally I spot something on one of the walls. Hurrying over, I see check-marks from where someone was obviously counting days, although it looks like they eventually gave up. It's hard to believe that those women were down here for so long, and that they endured so much misery. If I'd gone through what they went through, I'd probably be in an asylum by now.
As I'm about to make my way back to the stairs, I happen to glance down and see something on the floor. Someone has carved the letter N into the stone, and a few meters away someone has carved the letter H and, a little further to one side, the letter E. Standing back, I realize that it's as if someone was marking the three points of a triangle. N, H and E almost certainly stand for the names of Natalie, Holly and Elizabeth, so I guess this was part of their life down here. I've read the conspiracy theories and the online essays about the women, of course, so I'm fully aware of the rumors about their activities. I'm not the superstitious type, but I'm gradually starting to come to the conclusion that some of those rumors might have been correct.
"Three witches," I say quietly.
Looking across the room, I spot something small on the floor in the corner. I head over and crouch down, and I find a set of little bones neatly arranged next to the wall. They seem too small to be human, but I'm not much of an expert in this kind of thing so I take a couple of photos before carefully picking the bones up and placing them in a plastic evidence bag I brought for precisely this sort of thing. The bones are probably completely irrelevant; most likely, some kind of animal crawled into this place and died. Still, I figure I might as well keep an open mind. In a place like this, even the most innocuous-looking thing could turn out to be important.
Suddenly there's a noise from above. I look up as I hear something banging in the room directly over the basement. There are three distinct bangs, as if someone is trying to get my attention. For a split second, it occurs to me that maybe I shouldn't go up and take a look, but then I realize that this is precisely the kind of thing that I came to look for. Rushing across the basement, I make my way up the stairs and finally I reach the kitchen, only to find that it's empty.
"Hello?" I call out.
Silence.
"I heard you!" I shout.
Still nothing.
"Great," I mutter, realizing that I didn't have my camera running, so I've just lost the opportunity to gain a little proof about the things that are happening here. I quickly rectify the situation by taking the camera from my pocket and hitting the 'record' button; from now on, my every step in this place is going to be documented.
"Hello?" I say again, walking slowly across the kitchen. "I heard you." I turn the camera so that it faces the door that leads through to the hallway. "I'm not a cop," I call out. "I'm not here to get you in any trouble. I'm just taking a look around."
Silence.
Walking through to the kitchen, I shine the flashlight up the stairs. As I start making my way up to the next floor, I realize that maybe I've allowed myself to become a little paranoid. So far, the house lacks the creepy atmosphere I was expecting, even after the events that happened the other day when I was here with Samantha. I assumed that I'd feel chilled to the bone as soon as I got inside, but it just feels like a regular house. Apart from the banging sound, there doesn't seem to be anything strange here at all. It's just an empty house.
I make my way along to the room where I found Samantha in the ice bath. It doesn't look as if the scene has been disturbed since the last time I was here. The floor's still wet, although the ice has melted and the bath is full of water. As I step into the room, I realize that despite everything that happened the other day, it seems that no-one has come to take a look around. Given the way I was questioned by the police, I'd have thought they'd at least have bothered to come out and see if there was anything to indicate what really happened. Whatever really happened to Samantha, the answer has to be somewhere in this room.
I check my watch and see that I've got another five minutes before I need to check in with Joe, so I grab some video of the bath tub and then I decide I might as well get out of here. I don't know what I was expecting to find, but generally the place seems to be something of a disappointment. So much for the idea that there'd be some kind of menacing evil lurking in the shadows. Maybe I've allowed my imagination to get carried away, and the house is just a house. Maybe Brenda Baynes really did just die of exposure nearby. Maybe -
With no warning, I'm suddenly struck by the feeling that someone's watching me. I turn, but there's no-one else in the room. Still, it's almost as if I can feel another person standing just inches from me.
"Hello?" I call out, stepping back into the corridor.
I wait for an answer, but there's nothing. Of course there's nothing; I'm just spooking myself out. Taking a deep breath, I remind myself that I need to get a grip. After all, it's easy for the mind to start imagining all sorts of things. Despite the fact that I can feel someone standing close to me, there's no-one actually there. I turn, but the feeling seems to move with me, as if there's some invisible man keeping pace with me. I step back into the room, but the feeling persists.
"Hello?" I call out again, although I instantly feel stupid. There's no-one here. Forcing myself to get over my fears, I take a step forward, but I immediately stop as I feel someone walk right behind me. Turning, I look back across the room, but there's definitely no-one else here. It's all in my mind.
Seconds later, I feel something brush against my shoulder. Turning, I find that once again there's nothing to be seen. I back across the room. It's one thing to imagine the presence of another person, but it's another thing entirely to start thinking I can feel someone. I want to turn and get out of here, but at the same time I'm determined to overcome my fear. Whatever's in this house, I don't want to run away from it; I want to face it, and find a way to stop it.
Suddenly I hear a noise behind my shoulder. I turn, but something slams into the side of my head and I'm knocked to the ground.
Natalie
15 years ago
"She's pretty," the thin-faced man says, sitting next to me and watching as Holly continues to examine the bars on the window. "She doesn't give up, does she? She seems to have a lot more spark that the other one. Do you like her?"
Staring at Holly, I try to ignore the thin-faced man's voice. I know he's just making idle conversation, and I know he's trying to trick me. He wants me to start talking to him, so that the others will think I've lost my mind. I don't know why he wants me to be ridiculed like that, but I'm not going to fall for his stupid games. He can sit and wh
isper into my ear all day long if he wants, but I won't respond to him. Not in front of the others. If I start talking to him, everyone's going to think I've lost my mind. They already think I'm pretty weird, and the last thing I want to do is confirm their suspicions. God, can't you just make this all end?
"I was upstairs yesterday," the thin-faced man continues. "I watched while our mutual friend was giving your new pal an ice bath. It was very distressing. He used the cattle-prod on her a few times first. Between you and me, Holly, I think he goes too far sometimes. Don't you? I mean, it's one thing to hold the three of you captive like this, but I think he pushes your bodies to the limit. One day, one of you will just drop down dead from a heart attack."
I take a deep breath. Sometimes, I find myself hoping against hope that the thin-faced man is just part of my imagination. If he's a hallucination, I can handle the pressure. All I have to do is block him out and eventually he'll go away, at least for a while. The problem, though, is that he always comes back. He loiters in the shadows and eventually he comes and talks to me. As far as I know, he never talks to Elizabeth. In fact, I don't think she even knows that he exists. She never mentions him, and she never reacts to him. So am I hallucinating his presence, or is she hallucinating his absence?
"Why won't you speak to me?" he asks.
I fold my lips between my teeth and bite down hard.
"Are you shy?"
I feel a shiver pass through my body. I want to turn and scream at him, but I know I can't do that.
"You're pretty too, Natalie," he continues. "When I said that Holly is pretty, I didn't mean to imply that you're not."
I guess I need to face the truth eventually. Now that Holly seems to also not notice him, it's obvious that I must be the crazy one. The thin-faced man is a product of my imagination, which means he's basically a part of me. Then again, sometimes he seems to know things that I don't know, which muddies the water a little. I wish I understood what was really happening down here. Sometimes, I think it's all being caused by the house. The man upstairs, the thin-faced man, the power down here in the basement... It's all the house's fault. I can feel a kind of energy coming from the walls.
