by Amy Cross
"Samantha!" I shout again, reaching my hand between the bars and tapping the side of her face. "How did you find us?" I wait for a response. "Samantha? Can you hear me?"
"She must have followed us," Elizabeth says, hurrying over to join me. "She must have been drawn to this place. After everything that happened to her, she can't shake the link."
"There's got to be some way for her to get us out of here," I reply, turning to see that the flames on the other side of the basement are now spreading to the area near the steps. At this rate, we're going to be burned alive within a few minutes unless we can come up with some kind of escape plan. "Samantha, can you go through the front door and then come into the kitchen and -"
"If she goes inside, Holly will get her," Elizabeth says, interrupting me. "Besides, I doubt the door's going to be easy to open, and the creature already knows she's here. It'll be cautious, but it won't want to let her interfere."
"Samantha," I continue, "you have to listen to me. We're trapped down here. If you see Holly Carter, you can't trust her. You have to..." I pause for a moment, realizing that Samantha doesn't seem to be paying any attention to me at all. It's as if she's completely out of her mind, just staring blankly into the house. "Samantha?"
"She's one of us," Natalie says, still standing close to the flames.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"I can hear her mind," Natalie continues. "She came here because of the power. Maybe she doesn't know what it is, not exactly, but she's drawn to it."
"Samantha, you have to listen to me," I say. "We're going to die if you don't help us!"
"Natalie's right," Elizabeth says, coming closer. "Samantha is one of us." She pauses for a moment. "She's been inside the house. She's been in the ice bath. She's had a piece of her leg cut open. She's just as much one of us as Holly ever was. It might be enough."
"But she can't -" I start to say, before suddenly I start to understand what she means. "Are you serious?"
Elizabeth nods. "The power of three requires three women to be down here, but it doesn't have to be three specific women. And Samantha's just on the other side of the window, so she might be close enough. Get out of the way." Pushing me aside, Elizabeth steps up onto the chair and reaches through the bars to touch the side of Samantha's face. "Can you hear me?" she asks. "We need your help. We've been through the same thing you've been through. We've been in this house for a long time, and we need your help to get out."
Slowly, Samantha turns to look at her.
"Can you feel it?" Elizabeth asks. "Is that why you were drawn here today? Can you feel the power? That sensation you can't explain, the feeling that something in here is reaching out to you... it's real! It's a powerful force that we can use if we work together, but we can't do it without you!"
"I feel..." Samantha says, but she seems lost and confused. "There's something wrong with me."
"There's nothing wrong with you," Elizabeth replies. "In fact, there's something very right with you. I just need you to focus on something for me. Can you do that? I'll explain later, but for now you just have to do exactly what I say. Don't worry about understanding why things work. Just focus on what I tell you to do." She waits for a reply. "Samantha, are you listening to me?"
She nods. "What do you want me to do?"
Elizabeth turns and looks back across the basement, which is rapidly filling with thick smoke. "Natalie!" she calls out. "Go over to the door!" She turns back to Samantha. "This is going to feel very strange," she continues, "but you have to focus on the image of the metal door, and you have to imagine it being torn down. Can you do that? We're all going to think about the same thing, and if we do it right, the door's going to break open. Do you understand?"
Samantha shakes her head.
"Just try it," Elizabeth says, as Natalie gets in position over by the door. "Just think about the door. You're part of the coven now, Samantha, so focus on using your powers. Think about the door. Allow your thoughts to join with our thoughts.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Samantha says, pulling back before Elizabeth reaches further through the bars and grabs her wrist.
"We don't have much time!" Elizabeth says firmly. "Just focus on the door. You'll see how it works! Just try!"
"Let go of me!" Samantha shouts, having apparently emerged from her trance-like state. "I don't even know why I'm here!"
"It's starting!" Natalie shouts, barely visible across the smoke-filled room. "Keep trying!"
"Focus!" Elizabeth shouts, turning to look across at the door.
Shielding my face from the smoke, I duck down and hurry over to the steps and then up to the door. So far, there's no sign of it moving at all, and it seems impossible that it could ever be forced open. After a moment, however, there's a deep, ominous clanging sound from the hinges, and the whole thing seems to start vibrating a little.
"It's moving!" I shout.
"Keep focusing!" Elizabeth calls to Natalie. "Samantha, we need you to help us!"
"I can't!" Samantha shouts.
"Just try!"
"I can't!" Samantha shouts again. "Get the fuck off me! I don't want to be here!"
"Just for one second!" Elizabeth shouts. "Try!"
"No!" Samantha screams, and at that moment the door buckles straight across the middle before seeming to melt down toward the floor.
Retreating back down the steps, I watch in awe as the entire door just flows like liquid down to the basement floor, leaving the doorway completely clear.
"We did it!" Natalie shouts, hurrying up the steps and stopping when she gets to the doorway.
"Wait right there!" Elizabeth shouts. "Samantha, we still need you! You have to just wait right by the window! Do you understand?"
"We have to get out of here," I say, grabbing Elizabeth's arm and leading her to the steps. With the smoke now spreading across the entire basement and the flames having caught hold of the timbers, we make our way up into the kitchen, which appears to have been badly damaged. The table has been overturned and the chairs have been ripped apart.
"Holly," Elizabeth says calmly. "She must be in agony."
"What do we do now?" Natalie asks.
"We have to find her," Elizabeth continues. "First we have to get Samantha, and then we have to go and find Holly and..."
"And what?" Natalie asks after a moment.
"We can't allow this to continue," Elizabeth says, with a hint of sadness in her voice. "Whatever's in her body, it's not Holly anymore. You have to understand that, Natalie. If we can defeat this thing forever, one life isn't a great price to pay."
"You want to kill her?" Natalie replies, shocked.
"I want to make sure this never happens again," Elizabeth says, hurrying through to the hallway and opening the front door. A moment later, she returns with Samantha in tow. "We won't get another chance. There are three of us, right here, right now, and if the past has shown us anything, it's that we have to take opportunities when they arise." She pauses for a moment. "Natalie, I always told you I was waiting patiently for the chance to end this. I know you thought I was stalling, and maybe I was, but that chance is here now. We failed last time, but we won't fail again."
"I don't understand any of this," Samantha says, turning to me. "I just want to go home!"
"Why did you come out here?" I ask.
"Because I..." She pauses, and it's clear that she doesn't know.
"Samantha," Elizabeth says, holding her by the shoulders, "you have to listen to me. You know what's in this house. You might not remember everything that happened to you, but the fact that you're out here is proof that somewhere, deep inside, you have a connection to the power that exists here. Right now, we need to have three people here who can use that power. I'm one, and Natalie is another, but we need you to complete the trinity. I know you don't understand what's happening, but there's no time to explain right now. If I just tell you what to do, will you help us?" She waits for an answer. "You feel it, don't you? In the air, all
around us. When he hurt you the other day, when he put you in the ice bath, you were opened up to the pain that exists in this place. We need to destroy this house, and we can only do it with your help."
Samantha stares at her for a moment. "I can feel it," she says eventually. "I don't know what it is, but I can feel it and I can hear it. It's everywhere."
Above us, there's a loud banging sound, as if Holly is smashing the rooms apart.
"The fire's still burning," I point out. "We don't have long."
"If we let the house burn down," Elizabeth continues, "the evil can escape. It'll be powerless, but it'll be loose and one day it might find another home. Now that there are three of us, we can end it once and for all."
"And save Holly?" Natalie asks.
"It's not about saving one particular person," Elizabeth replies.
"But we're going to save her, right?" Natalie continues. "We can't kill Holly!"
"She's just one life," Elizabeth says. "If we have to sacrifice her in order to destroy this thing, then we have no choice." She pauses, as there's the sound of more destruction above us. "It's time" she says after a moment. "We have to go up there and face her. We've waited long enough. It's been twenty-five years since I was first brought here. That's more than two thirds of my life. Natalie, it's been twenty years for you. We have to end this. The three of us have to go up there right now and end this evil forever."
She reaches out her hand, and Natalie quickly does the same. Slowly, reluctantly, Samantha also reaches out, and all I can do is stand back and watch as the three of them prepare to go and face the evil that has lurked for so long in this house.
Ben Lawler
Today
"Holly!" Elizabeth calls out as we reach the top of the stairs. "I know you're up here! We need to talk to you!"
Silence.
"She's hiding," Natalie whispers.
"She's scared," Elizabeth replies.
"Not necessarily," I add, looking along at the doors at the far end. "She might just be waiting for us. This might be a trap."
"Who are you talking about?" Samantha asks. She seems a little more aware of her surroundings now, and a little less dazed.
"There were three of us," Elizabeth replies. "Holly was just like us, a long time ago, but somehow the evil from this house got into her mind and turned her against us. The creature has a long history of using puppets to get what it wants. The true evil hides somewhere up here. We've never been able to work out what it wants, but right now it seems to have taken control of Holly."
"It's all true," I say, stepping toward Samantha. "I know it sounds crazy, but this house... There's evil here. Real, pure evil."
"But we can leave," Samantha says, clearly starting to panic. "It's not our job to deal with this. We can just leave, and tell people, and then the government can send the army or someone to deal with it. They can blow this place up and put a fence around it, or they can cover it with cement, or they can do something! Why do we have to have anything to do with it?"
"Because we're the only ones with the power to stop it," Elizabeth replies. "The creature's power and our power are two sides of the same force. The difference is, there's only one of it, and there are three of us."
"Do I have a choice?" Samantha asks, with tears in her eyes.
"If you turn and run," Elizabeth replies, "Natalie and I will go in there and try to stop this thing, and we'll almost certainly die. And no matter how far or how fast you run, eventually you'll end up back here, or it'll catch up to you. Right now, you just have to believe that we can do this. Don't you feel the power around us?"
Samantha glances over at me, and I can see from the look in her eyes that she's torn. She's been through so much over the past few days, and now she's being asked to put her faith in a group of people who must sound completely insane.
"Okay," she says eventually. "I don't know how, but I can feel it. It's like a connection between us..."
"It's a coven," Elizabeth replies. "A coven is formed when three women join together at a place where there are certain forces. That's what's happening right now."
Looking over at Natalie, I see that there are tears in her eyes.
"I saw him," she says after a moment, her voice trembling with fear. "I didn't want to say anything before, but I saw him."
"Saw who?" I ask.
"The thin-faced man," she replies. "It was just for a moment in the basement, in all the smoke, but I saw him. He was looking at me."
"It's okay," I tell her. "Just stay focused."
"You don't understand," she continues. "I haven't seen him for fifteen years. Not since we were here last time, but... The last thing he said to me, all those years ago, was that the next time I saw him, once of us was going to die. And now I've seen him again, so..."
"That doesn't mean anyone's going to die," I say, trying to calm her down.
She looks over at Elizabeth. "You're going to kill Holly, aren't you?" She waits for an answer. "I know you said you wanted to find a way to get her free, but you're just going to kill her. It's true, isn't it?"
"If we can kill her while the creature is still in her mind, this whole thing will be over," Elizabeth replies. "Once she's dead, the creature will be trapped. We just have to make sure that it can't get out before we strike."
"And you're willing to sacrifice her?" Natalie continues, clearly shocked.
"I'm willing to sacrifice a life in order to end this," Elizabeth says calmly. "One life, that's all. It's a price I'm willing to pay if it means we can end this today."
"That's nice to know," says a voice nearby, and we turn to see that Holly is standing in a nearby doorway. She looks completely different, as if she's been ravaged and knocked around, with cuts and bruises all over her face. There's a kind of terrifying intensity in her gaze, and I can't help noticing that she's holding onto the side of the doorframe, almost as if she's too weak to stand up properly. The wounds in her legs have opened up again, after all these years, and blood is dribbling down onto the floorboards.
"Get out of her body!" Natalie shouts.
"You should have stayed where I put you," Holly replies. "You had a nice, comfortable life down there in the basement, didn't you? You never had to work. You never had to wonder where your next meal was going to come from. Sure, you weren't free, all hidden away down there, but you were safe."
"The others weren't safe," Elizabeth says. "The ones who came before us. Catherine died. You would have killed us eventually as well."
"Nothing lasts forever," Holly says with a smile. "The whole world will kill you, if you give it long enough. All you had to do was put up with the occasional bath, and sometimes give up a small piece of bone as a kind of offering." She reaches into her pocket and takes out a small white object, the size of a pea. "I stored the bone up, you know. For a rainy day. It makes a nice snack. That's all I really wanted you for at first. I needed food. You made me angry, though. You were so ungrateful, as if you didn't care that I gave you so much." Carefully, she places the piece of bone in her mouth and starts chewing; she bites down hard, and eventually there's a cracking sound. "You'd be surprised how many times I lose a tooth doing this," she continues with a smile, before swallowing what's left of the bone.
"Why did you take Holly?" Elizabeth asks. "Why not me? Why not Natalie?"
"Weakness," she replies. "Holly thought she was the strongest of you all, but in many ways she was the weakest. She has a slight heart tremor. I don't know if she ever realized this when she was here before, but her body has always been troubled. She's already had one heart attack, and I have no doubt that she'll have others as time goes by."
"Then you'll need another body," I say. "Holly won't last forever."
"The previous idiot lasted for a long time," she replies, "but you're right. Holly will burn up sooner or later."
"And you're content to just hide in here?" Elizabeth asks. "You're happy to just hide away in a room, feeding off people you trap in the basement?"
"What are you?" I ask.
"I've asked myself that same question many times. I was born in this house. The people who lived here, many years ago, before I existed, were cruel and evil. They hurt one another, and they caused pain and suffering to other people. They didn't cut each other's flesh. It was worse than that. It was mental suffering. A whole family that delighted in twisting the knives in one another's backs. Some of them killed themselves. Some of them soldiered on. Eventually they died off, but they'd already left their mark. When they were all dead, their fear and pain hung in the still air, and eventually it settled on the floor like a fine dust. After enough time had passed, and the house had stood empty for a while, all that pain was left undisturbed and eventually the little particles of dust started reacting against one another, fighting among themselves just as the family had fought, and over time they gathered together until... Well, here I am, and now I've got a body of my own."
"But it's a weak body," Elizabeth says, gently pushing Natalie back before stepping forward. "You said it yourself. Holly's the weakest of us all, so why settle with her?"
"I'm not ambitious," Holly replies. "All I need is a body. Any body. I'm not looking to take over the world or even leave the house. I'm happy as I am. Of all people, Elizabeth, you should understand that. You were so willing to accept your fate. Accept it again, just as I accept mine."
"But aren't you tempted?" Elizabeth continues. "Are you so scared of the world that you'd hide away here forever? Look at you. Holly's body can't contain you. We found some discarded skin here long ago. Was that one of your old bodies too? Aren't you tired of these temporary homes? Wouldn't you like to get something more permanent? Don't you yearn to feel strength? Just once? Why do you keep taking weak bodies? Why not try taking a strong body for once? Imagine walking out of this place. Imagine exploring the world."
