A shadow passed over the house--the entire house, like a huge invisible cloud--and she took off at a full on run for the door.
"You can't save yourself," Milo Dengler whispered as he shambled down the stairs. "Everyone will suffer now. You can't save yourself."
The ghost-image walked through Adam on the stairs. Adam's skin broke out in gooseflesh. He wiped sweat from his eye and rubbed at a spot on his neck. When he pulled his hand away, he saw blood.
The ghost-Dengler disappeared before reaching the second floor. Adam went to the top and into the bathroom, stared into the mirror, saw the pink, wrinkled flesh on Joey's neck was an open wound and running with red in a sluggish flow.
From downstairs he heard Milo Dengler calling the others in from outside through the kitchen window. Stay outside, he thought. Stay outside and be safe. Run. He tried to push his thoughts outward toward his sister, Take the others and run!, then he remembered this was all past. Nothing he saw was real, just memories the house dredged up.
The ghost-Dengler came back up the stairs, followed by the three other children, wondering what their father wanted with them upstairs. Did he have presents for them?
No, Adam wanted to tell them.
He stood by helpless, bleeding, while the scene played out again before him. The wood, his father's desperate blows, the blood, the screams of terror from his brothers and sister, the hitching sobs from his father when it was done.
From the corner of his eye, he caught motion, and he looked and saw himself stumbling from the room, dazed, dizzy, shaking his head, wondering what was going on.
His father hears movement, he looks up from his wet hands, and he acts before he can think. The board swings around, cracks Adam in the jaw. He flies to the side, hits the wall, then looks over and sees his brothers and sister lying dead. He screams, then lunges forward. His father swings the board again, Adam tries to duck out of the way, the board misses, but a nail poking from the end catches the flesh below his chin, at the spot where his jaw meets his neck, and tears him open. Adam goes down, gurgling and sputtering blood. He dies within a minute.
And that's all Adam saw the first time.
The next few minutes are new to him.
Milo Dengler brings clothes from the childrens' rooms, dresses them, and takes them into the corner bedroom, Adam's room. He lines them up against the wall, sitting with their backs pressed against the wallpaper.
He kneels before them and whispers, "Forgive me," over and over, panting between words.
"Forgive me--(pant, pant)--forgive me--(pant, pant)--forgive me."
While he pleads, his hands work a rope into a noose. When he's finished, he secures the noose to the top rail, slips it over his neck, climbs over, lowers himself so his face is even with the banister, then he drops. The fall isn't far enough to snap his neck, but the rope tightens around his throat and Adam can tell he wants to struggle, but as tears fall down his red, puffed face, he keeps his fingers clenched, one hand holding the other so he can't fight.
When the ghost-image dies, Adam stares at it, wondering.
It's still there. It hasn't vanished. In fact, it seems to have gained solidity.
Then the eyes snap open and move sideways to Adam. The mouth opens in a grin Adam can't discern between malicious and gleeful.
"Let us go," Adam says. The words barely make a sound in the silence.
The ghost stops grinning and mouths the word, "No."
Jack tried to use his mind to make the stop light turn green, but the damned thing seemed stuck on red as car after car after car passed him. He turned his attention toward the opposite green light, trying to will it yellow, but nothing happened. He closed his eyes, banged his forehead on the steering wheel, and yelled, "Let's go!"
When he looked up, he faced a green light.
He took off, squealing the tires, and leaving the driver behind him wondering what was with the crazy guy in front of him.
He'd made the drive from Charley's to his house over a dozen times, but couldn't remember it ever having taken so cocksucking long. It wasn't even that far. Hell, nothing in Angel Hill was far; the town wasn't that big.
Ahead he saw Roland Street and he knew he was close.
A truck pulled out in front of him and Jack slammed on the brakes. He skidded to a stop less than a foot from the truck. The driver flipped him off, yelled something, and then pulled away.
Jack's heart thudded. He looked over his shoulder and saw the stop sign he'd almost ran.
I have to pay attention, he told himself. If not for myself, then for Joey and Liz. Get home, but do it in one piece.
Adam moved away from the staring ghost that hung in front of him. He climbed to the third floor, then set the toys on the top step. The doll, the truck, the plastic ball. Then he stood back, turned toward his father again and asked once more, "Let us go."
His father didn't answer and Adam took that as a no.
He sighed. He looked at the toys and saw what looked like steam rising from them. Milo Dengler saw it wafting up and his face twisted, questioning.
He seemed to get an idea what might be happening and he opened his mouth. His voice came out dead and cracked, like an old record that's been played too many times. When he moved, his old skin broke like distressed paper.
"You belong here."
"No," Adam said. "You decided that. Why?"
While Adam talked, the steam from the toys rose, took shape, gained substance. His brothers and his sister stood at the top of the stairs, looking over the rail at their father.
Milo looked at his son, then over his shoulder and he saw the others.
He looked back at Adam, then he vanished.
Jack was out of the car almost before the engine stopped running. He leapt up the steps from the sidewalk, and was at the porch in almost four strides. He bounded up to the door and tried to go through, but it was locked. He fumbled with the keys, knowing which was the right one, but somehow unable to find the bastard. Finally another key fell to the side and revealed the front door key. He jammed it home, turned, and pushed. The door banged open, and then Jack noticed the broken glass. He could have stepped through at any time. He wondered for a second why the glass was broken, and if it was all connected to the third floor and whatever was happening up there.
He had to find Joey.
He flew down the stairs, ducked into Joey's room. It was empty. The house had an almost unreal quality, something he couldn't place, something foggy and dreamlike. There was a ringing, high-pitched whine in the air.
"Joe?" he called.
In the bathroom. Nothing. In their bedroom. Nothing.
"Joe?"
Under the bed? No. He turned, saw smoke, ran for the living room.
Liz beat at flames that sprang from the floor and couch, coughing smoke and fighting the sting in her eyes.
Not a dream quality, Jack thought. Not foggy unreality, but totally real danger.
"What the hell is happening?" he yelled.
"I was asleep," she said over the smoke detector. "I had a cigarette. I guess it fell and caught the carpet."
You stupid bitch! Jack wanted to yell, but he had more important things to worry about right now.
"Where's Joey?"
Liz stopped batting at the flames and looked up at him. Her face was dumb and numb. "I don't know," she said. "I couldn't find him either. I went outside to look for him, but he's not out there. I came back in to look upstairs, but I saw the fire."
Jack turned back and ran for the stairs. Liz dropped the cushion she'd been using to beat at the flames, and took off after him.
Adam stood in the third floor's main room, a circle of ghosts accompanying, his brothers and sister, surrounding their father who'd reappeared semi-solid from the wall, stumbling and dead.
They caught him between them. He stood in the middle, looking from one to the next, first furious, but slowly calming, and finally looking at them pleadingly.
"Let us go," Adam said. Joey's
shirt was soaked and stained, deep red. Blood flowed in a regular stream from his neck, but he seemed neither bothered nor weakened.
His father looked over. "No," he said. "You all belong with your father. We didn't let anything split us up when she died; we won't let anything split us up now."
"Let us go," Adam repeated.
Then his father's calm face went back to angry and he sneered, "You can't save yourself."
"Let us go," Adam said for the last time.
"Everyone will suffer now!" Milo Dengler roared as he lunged for Adam.
His hands found the bleeding throat and inertia carried them both into the wall. Adam banged his head and reeled from the shock. He noticed a high ringing sound, wondered what it was, then his attention was brought back to the stinking, rotted, green thing in front of him.
It smiled, showing dead, grey teeth. Its eyes were mad yellow orbs. The breath it blew into Adam's face when it spoke made his stomach churn, like breathing old diapers and rotten fruit.
"Please," Adam said.
"No," Dengler yelled, then yanked Adam's arm, swinging him around and tossing him across the room. He flew through his sister, hit the opposite wall, and stumbled around.
He realized suddenly that he didn’t know how to end this. There'd been no plan, just a wish. Since the death, they'd been trapped here, invisible in the house, but present, roaming, floating, haunting. Their father had been stronger and his hold unbreakable. But Adam was physical now and that surely had to count against the wraith.
He looked around and saw, for just a flash, his brothers and sister dead again as they'd been that day, bloody on the floor, and when he blinked it changed and their spirits stood again in the center of the room, their eyes big and begging, looking at their father.
"You can't go," he said. Adam saw his anger had once again washed away. The look he showed now was one Adam had seen countless times in his original twelve years, a father's love. "I didn't mean to hurt any of you," Dengler said. "I was trying to spare you."
"Then let us go," the girl said.
"I can't."
"Why?"
"I can't be alone. And if you go, I can't follow."
Adam took a step forward, calmly. There came a pounding from the roof--Liz and Jack would have recognized it, as would the exterminator Carl and Charley Clark--heavy, frantic, and Dengler glanced up for a second. Adam used that glance and lunged at the man, pinning his arms back and doing what he could to hold him in place.
He looked over his shoulder at the other three and said, “Hurry.”
Jack and Liz bounded up the stairs, yelling for "Joey!"
On the second floor, they searched the rooms, hoping to find him, hoping he wasn't upstairs. The rooms were empty. They ran up the last flight and found Joey--no, this wasn't Joey.
Jack stared, wondering what had happened in the forty-five minutes he'd been gone. His son was gone. No, he could see bits of Joey in there, but it looked as if someone had done a bad job erasing Joey and then drawing this new person on top of him.
His chest thumped, his stomach sank. His throat had acquired a curious new lump.
How did this happen? How did I not see it?
He looked at Liz who was watching, in shock.
Joey stood hunched and pressing something into the wall. They had to stare at it for a second before they realized it was a man, struggling against the boy, but having a hard time of it.
“Oh,” Liz said and Jack followed her eyes.
They saw three others, two boys and a girl--Liz recognized them--climbing the walls like spiders with their hands and feet. They stopped every few steps and looked back at Joey and the old man. Joey’s face was strained. He was getting weak, they could see it in him.
The children scurried up the walls and crawled along the ceiling.
Where are they going? Liz wondered.
She saw where they were headed and heard the pounding coming from the roof again. She thought, “So simple. All they have to do is get out.”
They were headed for the trapdoor, which led, not only to the crawlspace, but up to the roof as well.
"What's happening?" Jack asked.
Liz said, "They want out."
Jack's head pounded and he had to stop and think--he was forgetting. What was it? Then the drilling, shrieking sound woke him up and he remembered.
"Liz, the fire."
"Shit!" she yelled, and took off down the stairs. She got to the top of the last flight before seeing how far it had spread in such a short time. They'd only been upstairs just over a minute--maybe--and already it had grown down the hall. Flames licked upward, threatening to catch Liz if she came down any further.
The phone was down there; there was no way to call for the fire department. The most she could hope for was to get Joey out of here and hope one of the neighbors called. If not, they could call as soon as they were out.
She ran back up and told Jack, "We've got to get him and get out."
"What?"
"The fire," she said. "It's covered the first floor and it's coming up the stairs. We have to get Joey and get out before it blocks the door."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Jack looked at his son, struggling to hold the big man in place.
"Joe, we have to get out of here," he called.
Joey either hadn’t heard him--which Jack didn’t think likely, he was ten feet away--or he wasn’t listening. Jack didn't know exactly what was happening, but whatever it was didn't lessen the urgency to beat the fire to the front door. Once that was blocked, so was their only exit.
The man shoved Joey off him, into the rail where he almost went over the side. Jack lunged to catch him, but Joey got his balance and held himself up.
Before anyone could stop him, the man ran to the wall below the crawlspace and snatched the children from it, tossing them to the floor again. One dodged him, but couldn’t lift the trapdoor out of the way.
Something crashed downstairs and Liz took off to see what it was. Jack hesitated a moment, not wanting to leave Joey, then followed anyway. He had to know what was happening down there, how much time they had, whether anything was blocking the door besides the fire.
They got halfway down the flight leading to the front door when they saw how far the fire had reached. On the bottom landing, looking through the flames, Jack could see patches of unscorched wall, but the flames were closing in on those, too.
"How?" he asked. “How does a fire spread this quickly?”
"Maybe the house is doing it," Liz said. "Maybe whatever's going on up there with Joey is screwing with things in the house and it's trying to get rid of it all."
"Houses don't have wills," Jack said. "It's just a house. Despite anything inside it, it's just a house."
The flames took over the first flight of stairs. They retreated up the second flight to the second floor, then saw the fire was moving to the ceiling. In the case of the stairs, it was burning the underside of the flight leading to the third floor landing.
"Shit," Liz said.
"Go call the fire department," Jack said.
"On what?"
"Across the street. Hurry! Go!"
He gave her a shove toward the stairs and she finally got moving, dashing down the flight, close to the wall, away from the fire. At the door, Jack saw her stop, wondering how the glass got broken, then he yelled down, "Just go!" and she went, out the door and out of sight.
Jack leapt up the third flight. Halfway, the entire thing collapsed under him. He fell onto the bottom flight, knocked his head against the charred wood, and was out.
The heat awakened him and he couldn't have been out for more than a few seconds. But that was enough time to be pinned under more falling burning wood. He pulled himself up and hauled his weight to the landing. He glanced out the door and saw Liz across the street, banging on a door.
She fell asleep, he thought. She was smoking and she fell asleep. All this from a cigarette?
; The frame above him cracked and creaked. He had a split-decision to make. Out the door or risk going up again. The decision was made before it had fully formed. Joey was upstairs.
Jack got to his feet and hopped to the second floor. He must have knocked his knee in the fall, too. Standing on it hurt and it wouldn't bend very well. How swollen would he be all over by the time he and Joey got out of here?
A run of four or five stairs were missing from the third flight, leaving a hole Jack didn't think he could bridge with his sore leg, never mind the flames dancing up through it.
But he'd have to try.
Looking up, he heard a voice cry, "Don't leave me alone!"
What was going on up there?
The front door was nearly blocked now, but he would have to chance it anyway.
The smoke in the house was horrible now, stinging his eyes, filling his lungs. It made forms in the room, swirling ethereal shapes. One looked like people, a boy and a girl, arm in arm. Parts of the smoke evaporated and the boy and girl changed to look like skeletal, rotten figures, still arm in arm.
What in the hell had happened in this house?
There you go again, he told himself. Wasting time trying to figuring it all out. Just don't fucking worry about it and get your son!
That's what he had to do.
He moved back a little, flexed his leg. The pain in his knee shot up his back, but he flexed it a few more times anyway, trying to work it out. He took the best, widest stride toward the stairs he could, up the few that remained, and leapt, reaching with his arms straight, his hands open, his fingers searching for purchase, through the flames.
His hands closed, one on a step, the other on the rail. His chest rested on a step. He wrenched himself up, straining from the struggle, sweating from the fire, fighting against the burning in his chest.
He got himself up enough to lessen the pain and finally wriggled himself to his feet. On the landing, the wood cracked. He rushed a prayer through his head, Please, God, keep the house together long enough, and went up the last flight, limping.
The Third Floor Page 24
