Lilly was standing in the upstairs window, looking down at her. The young girl smiled and raised her hand in a gesture of goodbye. Behind her were more faces from the past. Chelsea had her arm around Tim, the familiar longing on her face as she smiled at him. Justin was there too, goofing around with his brother. They all looked out at her, a faint glimmer of approval filling the dark window. Rachel nodded back at them. She understood.
The vision of David in the living room window hadn’t been caused by delirium at all. It had been real. He had caused the explosion. Rachel didn’t know how, but she knew it was him. A tear slid down her cheek. He had died saving them.
Faint groaning to her left caught her attention. Nathan. She had totally forgotten that he was there with her.
She scrambled along the gravel towards him, on her hands and knees, not ready to try standing yet.
“Nathan, can you hear me?” she asked, cradling his head in her lap.
He was in a state. His clothes were torn, his skin ripped to shreds in places, a huge gash above his left eye. But he was breathing.
“Come on, Nate. You’ve got to wake up.”
Nothing.
“Please Nathan, I need you.” Tears began to fall more rapidly, splashing down on his forehead. “I can’t lose you too.”
His eyes flickered open. “Hey pretty lady. I ain’t going anywhere.”
Rachel didn’t know whether to laugh, or continue crying. She decided she could do both, as she bent over and hugged him. They embraced for several minutes before she let go.
Nathan looked at her. “Is he…?”
“He’s gone. Dead, along with the house. It was the only thing keeping him around.”
“And the birds?”
Rachel looked around, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper. There were no blackbirds circling overhead and no bodies littering the ground. The embodiment of the house had called them his children. Had they been connected to the house too?
She looked down on her friend with a smile. “They’re gone.”
“All of them?”
“Every single one.”
Nathan looked puzzled. “I don’t understand it, Rach. H-how was Justin alive?”
She looked up at the house, her eyes gazing in to the distance. The flames danced in them. “They were all here. They were always here.”
“Oh,” he replied, letting the night grow silent around them.
Then, they waited.
***
A long time after that, the fire department, along with the sheriff, arrived. They just sat there in silence, watching the house collapse in on itself, the fire eating away at the old wooden beams. Nathan sat up on his own, wincing every now and then with the pain. Rachel heard the blaring sirens getting closer, long before the red trucks crested the hill. She ignored the firemen, as they went about the dangerous business of putting out the fire.
Paramedics charged towards them. They asked questions like, are you hurt? Where is the pain? Can you move? She gave them simple answers, her eyes fixed on the burning timbers. She felt numb. The shock settling in no doubt, she thought. Was it truly over? A part of her believed she could have her life back. But another part, one much bigger, doubted it.
A familiar voice broke her out of her melancholy.
“Rachel, Nathan, thank God you’re okay,” Becky said, dashing towards them. She flung her arms around Nathan, almost bowling him over.
“Hey, easy there girl,” he replied, hugging her back. “I don’t know about okay, but we’re alive.”
Rachel said nothing. They would be okay. She wasn’t so sure about herself.
“What the hell happened?” Becky asked. “Where’s David?
“It’s a long story,” Rachel replied.
She noticed her two friends exchange worried glances, but neither said anything. The paramedics lead her towards an ambulance, informing her that the doctors at the hospital would want to give her the once over. Most of the words went in one ear and out of the other.
As they got closer, she noticed Sheriff Ross waiting there.
“Don’t go disappearin’ anywhere, Miss James,” he said, fixing his eyes on her. “We’re goin’ to want some answers from you.”
Rachel nodded and climbed in to the back. Becky sat next to her, taking hold of her hand. It was small comfort. She could see Nathan exchanging heated words with the sheriff, but couldn’t hear them. He climbed in and the paramedic slammed the door shut.
Within seconds they were speeding down the drive, the gravel crunching beneath the heavy black tyres. She stared out of the small window in silence. The house shrunk to a tiny dot as they moved away. The locket around her neck felt cold.
To my high-school sweet heart: Always and Forever.
She would be able to see the orange smudge on the horizon from the hospital, the flames burning all night long. It wouldn’t be until sleep caught up with her that she could forget.
But even then it stood, forever in her mind.
The house of wood.
Epilogue
Cold winter winds whipped up around the hillside, dashing through the lifeless branches of the woodlands. Gray, forlorn clouds swept across the sky casting long shadows over the desolate town. The sun hardly ever shone anymore. Or that's what the people had come to believe. Too much had happened. Too much that couldn't be explained.
The sounds of crunching under heavy feet filtered up into the cold air, as a female made her way up the winding path. The remains of a house sat on top of the hill. When asked about it later, people would have sworn that you could still smell the wood-burning. It was the last time she ever wanted to come back here. She didn’t want to ever see it again. But she had to make sure it was still gone.
As Rachel crested the top of the hill, the burnt out structure came into full view, the charred, wooden timbers reaching out towards the sky like bones in a grave. She bowed her head and thanked the Lord no one had rebuilt it.
The place had taken away everything from her; her home, her friends, it had even almost taken her life. There was an evil here. A darkness that had plagued the nearby town for too long. She couldn't feel it anymore, but something inside her wondered if it was over. A part of her wondered if it would ever be over.
She made her way towards the only tree that would have made up the garden of the house. It stood there, alone and untouched by fire. A child's swing hung lifeless on one of the branches, lacking a child to play with it. Next to the tree was the object she had come to see. A small gravestone with a single word on it. Lilly.
Rachel knelt down at the foot of the tombstone. She placed a single red rose in front of it.
“Thank you for saving my life, Lilly,” she said, resting her hand on the weathered stone surface. “If it hadn't been for you, I would’ve died here just like all the others. You watched over this place for all those years, trying as hard as you could to protect anybody stupid enough to come up here.” A single tear dripped down the lines of her face. She had decided to do this a long time ago; during all the sleepless nights she had spent at the asylum. No one believed her. Of course, Nathan tried to defend her corner, but he had his own problems to deal with. Even he had left town now, to start a new life somewhere else. There was nothing left here except the stale smell of death. “Well you can rest now. There's someone else that can do this for you.”
Rachel stood up, her eyes fixed on the burnt out structure. Even though it was completely gutted, it still loomed large and foreboding. She'd never let anybody suffer like she had.
Her right hand reached around to the back pocket of her black denim jeans. Her other hand clutched at a locket. She pulled out a handgun, softly cocking the trigger, as she raised it to her temple. This was it. There was no doubting, no fear, no ties to hold her back. We're all ghosts waiting to die, she thought, as her finger tightened.
Townsfolk would later claim that a clear shot rang out over the hillside at around four o'clock in the afternoon, only a few hours after she had
served her time and was released from the state psychiatric hospital.
After the sound disbursed, the swing slowly rocked back and forth. In the distance, five blackbirds soared across the sky.
THE END
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Discover the other titles in the series at: www.crookedcatbooks.com
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
The House of Wood Page 19
