“I know, but what was he doing here? No one ever comes over.”
I’ve got a better question. What was Sierra doing in the dining room? If Joel is this upset about me having people over, I’m not about to tell him she was snooping around. Or that she’s Jordan’s girlfriend.
“It’s not like he’s going to rat stuff about you to his dad, Joel. What’s the problem? What do you have to hide?”
Joel groans, making a long “kahhh” sound, and rubs his temples. “This is the last thing I need to deal with right now.”
“I didn’t want them here at all!” After how this evening has gone, I don’t need crap from my brother tonight, either. It’s not my fault if he’s had a horrible day. He opens the Pepsi. It resounds like a whip crack in the silent kitchen.
“I better get home,” Todd says as if he can sense an upcoming argument. “See you later.” He taps a finger to his heart—what we always do when the other needs a pick-me-up—and looks at me. I want to ask him so much, but he heads out the back door.
I wonder if he’s still hurting from earlier. Or if he’s going to tell anyone—ahem, Jordan—that he thinks my room tipped upside down. Or worse—if he’s going to tell them about my mother. The thought detaches my brain, until another one takes its place.
The bathroom earlier, with Todd. The heat from his glance. It must’ve all been in my head.
I pull out my phone to say what I couldn’t say to his face. For a minute I worry there will be more notifications on Facebook or Quizper, but so far so good.
Sorry about tonight, I text. I know I messed things up. Even though none of this whole ridiculous night would have happened if he hadn’t invited them over.
No you didn’t, he responds a few seconds later. Are you ok?
I guess I should give Todd a break. He’s just trying to help me. And Joel, too. I know he doesn’t want me doing anything that Jordan will blab to his dad about. Joel could lose his internship.
I’m fine. I add a smiley for good measure. Thanks for making me get out. It really was helpful.
And that last line isn’t a lie. Regardless of what happened, at least the rest of the night went by without anything else screwy happening. That would raise some flags for sure. I’m not sure what to tell Todd, though he deserves an honest answer. I wish he would just let it go, though I don’t see how he can. Not something like that.
I perch at the edge of my bed. Darkness cloaks everywhere—the windows, the hallway. I try to peer through it to the landing outside my open door, the direction of my parents’ bedroom. Longing so strong I can hardly stand it swells in my chest. If only I could talk to them tonight. Either of them, really, but mostly my mother.
I remember nights when Dad would be working late in his library downstairs, and Mom would come in before bedtime and linger in my doorway, smiling as if she knew something I didn’t. Watching me, asking questions about my day, about boys, about school. My longing shifts to frustration. If she was here she could help me know what to tell Todd. What to do about Sierra.
But she isn’t here.
Exhaling, I sink into my blankets, ready to let sleep help me forget things for a while, when a shuffling noise comes from the hallway. Everything in me stiffens. I knew I should have shut my door.
I hear an “ouch,” and I nearly scream as a man’s towering build sneaks through my door, shutting it behind him. For a split second I wonder if it’s my father—if I’ve somehow conjured him here just by thinking of him. He flicks the light on.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Todd, my heart pounding a billion miles a minute. I sink back to my pillow and blink a few times, willing my pulse to slow. Wind slashes at my window outside, and I glance at the clock on my phone. 11:27.
“You guys need to lock your back door at night,” Todd says. He’s wearing a tight-fitting Hurley shirt and navy blue sweats. He slinks over to settle near my legs on the bed. I squirm slightly at his tousled curls and comfy look. It’s not often I catch him in his PJs anymore.
It’s probably not a good idea to tell him that we never lock the doors. The house keeps people out well enough. Though I wonder why it let him in now when it clearly wasn’t happy with him earlier.
“Seriously,” I ask, stifling a yawn. “What’s up?”
I’m not sure what he could possibly want that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, or to at least text me about.
“Just thinking about you,” he says, scooting back to rest against the wall. “You okay after all those guys being here?”
I haven’t thought much about that, actually. Not since they all left. I’ve been a little preoccupied with everything else. “I guess so. Jordan was semi-nice to me. Never saw that one coming.”
“Huh,” Todd says. He sounds so fake. I punch his arm.
“You knew he would be, didn’t you?”
Something creaks in the silence of Todd’s smile, and I ram him, hard. “Get off, get off!” I whisper. Joel will flip if he comes in and finds Todd on my bed in the middle of the night.
Todd laughs and instead of ducking under the bed like I want him to, or leaping out the window, he lies down beside me. He jerks me down alongside him and wiggles his eyebrows. “What does he think we’re doing in here?” he whispers.
“Shut up,” I mutter, fighting a grin and the heat pooling in my legs and my cheeks. “You couldn’t sleep so you had to come pester me?” I get the urge to snuggle in closer, to feel his arm around me, and have to force myself to stay still.
I expect more banter, maybe some wrestling or something while I keep trying to force him to be quiet, but Todd blinks a few times and shifts to his back, staring up at my bedposts. “Something like that.”
Uh oh. I should have known he’s here to ask about my house. I peer around the wallpaper, peeling my ears for some sound. I’m not sure what the house will do if I come right out and tell him what I know of what goes on here. If I’m going to tell him the truth, probably not a good idea to do it while in my house.
For some reason I get a flash of a long-gone conversation. Joel, arguing with my mom.
“I saw it,” Joel said, “why won’t you believe me?”
“Just because you think you saw something—”
“Why are you covering for him? You’re always changing the subject; you can’t ever give me a straight answer…”
“I can’t right now, okay?” I say with a shudder, hoping he reads the insistence in my voice. I rub my eyes. “It’s late, and I’ve got my audition tomorrow, and I just have too much on my mind.” Please let it go.
“You can’t keep blowing me off about this.”
“You won’t believe me anyway.” This isn’t something he can Google. And even if he would believe me, I can’t blab the truth about my house while in my house. It’d be like gossiping about someone right in front of their face, and I’m not about to stoop to Sierra and Tabitha’s level.
“How do you know?”
Todd’s voice, even in whisper, is too loud that time. I sit up and rake my hands through my hair. Mom kept deflecting Joel’s questions, and he got so pissed. I don’t want to do that to Todd. I wonder if Mom even loved us at all. She wouldn’t give Joel what he wanted. Wouldn’t bother sticking around for me…
“Pipes,” Todd reprimands.
“Because you only believe what you can see.” The house gives a faint lurch, like it’s rickety and someone nudged it. I put a hand on his leg and peer around again, prickles creeping down my neck.
“Please go home,” I say. I pull out my cell phone. He reaches for it, but I smack his hand away and text: I promise I’ll tell you. But right now, I CAN’T.
Get the hint. Take it.
“Why?” Todd asks, too loud. “Joel’s asleep by now. And he really wouldn’t care that I’m here anyway.”
“Todd,” I whine, standing up. He stands too.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on. Are you like, in danger here?”
The lurching sounds double, roaring a
round us, a condemned building ready to collapse any second. He’s got to leave. He has to get out of here. I push him to the door, but he plants his feet and holds my arms to my side.
“Piper, I’m not leaving till you tell me.”
“Don’t say that,” I plead, but it’s too late. A scraping sound comes from somewhere behind me, like someone dragging an ice pick across the wooden floor. Shivers tack down my spine, and a few books plunge from the shelf of their own accord. Slam! Slam!
More books slide out, each one hitting the floor in succession, their unnerving crashes seeming to slap my skin. Loose pages fly into the air, and books pile as they commit suicide from their shelves.
Crunching sounds come from below, racking the house with a terrifying noise like a cross between a groan and a scream. The noise escalates with dynamo effect, until it rumbles the floor beneath my feet. I shriek. The floorboards behind Todd break away like pieces of an ice cream cone and leave a jagged hole, as if an invisible wrecking ball has dropped from the ceiling and torn a chunk of the rug away with it.
“What was that?” Todd asks, stepping back. “Piper, seriously, what’s going on?”
“Wait!” I yell, but it’s too late. He loses his footing and falls through the crater in the floor with a yelp.
“Todd!” I cry, squinting down through a haze of dust and the gaping hole in my floor. It’s dark; I can hardly see his outline on the ground at least fifteen feet in the basement below. Arms quivering, I gape around the once-again calm room.
The floor opened up. Bared its jaws and swallowed him. Beads of sweat slick beneath my clothes.
“Ugh,” he grunts in response. I jerk to my feet. A grunt—that means he’s alive. Oh my gosh, I just had that thought. At least he’s alive?
I dart past the hole, nearly tripping on the pile of capsized books, and make my way through the landing. I pause at Joel’s door, half expecting him to open it. He had to have heard something. I should go to him, get his help. But the last thing I want is to admit Todd snuck in—or that he’s now in one of the places we’ve been forbidden to go.
I’ll just get Todd and boot him out. Joel will never need to know.
I round past the entryway and Dad’s library just down from it, through the archway into the kitchen, until I make it to the door across from the china hutch. To the stairs leading to the basement.
Designs etch and swirl on the door’s surface, mocking my thoughts, taunting me. I take in waves of ragged breaths while Dad’s rules spin in my brain, along with that confusing apology he’d given me just after shoving me against the wall.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Dad had said, pushing his glasses up. “I’d like to show you what’s down here, just once. That way you’ll never have the desire to come down and see for yourself.” He knelt again. “I meant what I said, Piper. After today, don’t ever go down here. Ever.”
I nodded and took his hand. Together we climbed down the steps. We stayed along the walls, never venturing into the rooms, though he took me to each mostly empty space, flipping on lights. His palm slicked mine with sweat, and though his grip pinched my fingers, I sensed his unease and held tight, as if the second I let go I’d be swallowed up in whatever he feared down there.
Wiping my palms on my jeans now, I stare at the narrow, carved door, at the low brass knob that reaches the level of my hip instead of the easy level of modern doorknobs. The idea of Dad’s rules dumps cold all over me, especially because I’m about to break the first one.
No going into the basement.
But I have to help Todd.
The door gives off a lazy whine. I stand at the brink, staring down the wooden flight of steps. While the rest of my house looks as perfectly preserved as the day it was built, the basement is dusted with cobwebs and has a musty smell. The air chills instantly, and I place my foot on that first stair. It gives a little under my weight.
I can’t do this. I have to do this.
“Todd?” I call. Each step I take only hitches my lungs higher in my throat. We never dug for a basement when we moved the house. One day it was just there.
The large room is exactly how I remember it. Bare, except for the old iron stove. Dark and dank, the concrete floor riddled with cracks like lines on a map. My fingers make a slow journey down the banister. I wait for the house to do something else, to ward me away. But my heart flapping in my chest is the only thing moving right now.
I reach for the metal chain and click the naked light bulb on. It swings, shifting a dull, yellow glow around the low-ceilinged, damp space. A single set of wooden shelves resides at the far end, supporting nothing but an old pair of metal roller skates, the kind people used to tie to their shoes. The kettle-black, wrought iron stove looms in the corner, and my chest seizes. Like I’m afraid it will come to life.
Aside from mold covering the walls, a black shaft peeks in the opposite corner. The space surrounding it is stained black as well, and I realize what it is. An old coal chute.
The simple room branches off and leads to more darkness in the right-hand section of my house, completely shadowed like a cave. It’s the segment that would be beneath my bedroom. A soft crinkling noise comes from its direction. Dang it, Todd, why do you have to be in the dark part?
I move through the dingy light toward the murky area, taking deep breaths. Faint fingernails trickle down the center of my back with each step, tethering my skin. One foot in front of the other across the open space, keep my glance straight. In and out. Breathe. Get Todd and get out. Get Todd and get—oof!
My hips collide against something I can’t see. Several clanging noises join the impact, like knives being clinked together. My hands shoot forward on impulse and hit a definite, icy surface. Chills spear up my arms. My eyes see nothing in the grimy light besides the bare cement floor, but there’s something there.
A wet surface. My fingers are red.
“This is how things are,” says a female voice, and I stumble backward.
“Who’s there?” I say in panic. “Who said that?”
A cold giggle rides on the air, hitching up the hairs on my arms. “Todd? Where, please Todd, where are you?”
A grunt answers with almost physical force. I bust out a wail, turn and dash up the stairs in a mess of flesh and clumsy steps. I’ll get Joel. Call the police maybe. But I stop halfway up, panting in the cool musty air. Todd is down here—I won’t just leave him.
Holding down bile, I wipe what can only be blood on my pants and stick close to the walls just like I’d done when Dad took me down here years ago. I wind my way through the narrow room, trying to peer through the shadows lingering from the single bulb, until a slim beam of light from the hole in my bedroom above illuminates Todd’s body. He landed on several squishy sacks and two huge stacks of folded-up cardboard boxes. Propped up on his elbows, he coughs a few times.
“Oh man. Todd!” My body feels numb, but I force myself to his side.
“What was that?” he asks, running a hand through his hair. It tumbles back into his eyes and the light casts shadows on his body. The garbage bags beneath him crinkle with his movements.
I decide to play dumb, like before. “Your foot slipped. Are you okay?”
His brows rut and he looks all around like he sees something that isn’t there. “That!” he says, pointing at me. “That’s what I mean. Stop this, stop making stuff up.”
“I’m—”
“Want to tell me how we ended up in your basement?”
The memory of that girl’s voice haunts me, along with that invisible, bloody table. I push it down and try to think fast. “What are you talking about? You wanted to look for a flashlight down here.”
“Stop it. Just stop. I’m not stupid, Pipes.” He raises a hand to the back of his head. “I could have sworn things started…and the floor just…but it’s not possible.”
“That’s your problem,” I say. “You won’t believe me even if I tell you.”
Thank goodness he didn’t break
his leg. He’s lucky he didn’t directly hit the concrete. I try to force myself to move slowly, but it’s similar to walking away from a snarling pit bull instead of running for your life.
I peer behind my shoulder. Any second whoever that voice belonged to is going to appear, all gaunt-eyed and haggard, and slit our throats or something. Come on, let’s go, let’s go!
As if he has all the time in the world, Todd looks to the exposed piping above him, and sure enough the floor has repaired itself so there’s no hole at all. The auto-repair is nothing new to me; my house does random stuff like that all the time. I wish he’d hurry.
“Can you walk? We should—”
I yank his arm, frantically scanning the darkness but taking in nothing. Feeling anything but reassured, I tug harder until Todd stumbles into me.
“What the heck?”
“Let’s just get out of here,” I say, pushing his bulk. He veers to the center, but I ram him into the concrete wall, nerves sparking like they’ve been plugged into an electric outlet.
“Geez,” he mutters. “You know, you never told me you had a trap door in your bedroom too, Pipes. That’s the only thing I can think of that would make this make sense right now.”
“Todd—”
“You seriously need to get that thing hammered shut. Talk about a safety hazard.”
“Shh.” I shove him along the wall to the creaky stairs. Panic infuses my lungs, propelling my feet, but Todd seems to feel the need to lug along like a rowboat. Our slow progress is torture. Any second the basement will grow hands and snatch us back, trapping us forever.
I bully Todd into the kitchen. My palms clam over with sweat against the wood, and I take a few shallow breaths and slam the door, blocking the basement just as Joel steps into the kitchen.
Aw crap.
He stops, and the fury on his face is so distinctly like my father’s I recoil. I expect him to yell, but his voice is deadly soft. “Mind telling me what you think you’re doing down there?”
I open my mouth, only to close it again. I know what this looks like. Todd and me sneaking off in the middle of the night.
Phobic Page 6
