The Women in the Walls

by Amy Lukavics

  “Of course it’s not yours,” my aunt says, her voice overly warm. “It’s mine.”

  THE WALLET DIDN’T belong to Margaret. My cousin never coped the way I did, never counted hidden scars over and over again until the concept of numbers faded away. Even in the awful stone tunnel, the realization warms me, a tiny pardon after a long line of fuck-ups.

  “But why was it in Margaret’s closet?” I ask, wanting all the proof in the world that the scalpel wasn’t Margaret’s.

  “I hid it in there, along with some other things,” Penelope says. “I don’t use it in the same way you do, of course.” She makes a tsk tsk tsk sound with her tongue, like I’m being scolded for stealing a cookie before dinnertime. “I use it for much more practical things.”

  She takes the scalpel out of the wallet now, flashes the blade at Vanessa and me. “And I could tell you all about those things, if you’d just come with me now.”

  She’s insane, I realize, and the anger starts to bubble away uncontrollably inside. “You want to talk about faith?” I say, taking just one step forward, and Vanessa reaches out for my arm to stop me from going farther. “Do you realize how much faith I put in you, how many times I’ve had to give you the benefit of the doubt? In the end, it was for nothing!”

  Penelope’s eyes narrow just a bit. I step back and start making my way toward the other tunnel entrances, Vanessa close behind. “Lucy,” my aunt calls. “Come back here right now.”

  “No,” comes my reply. As we make our way through the dark tunnel, I turn back every few seconds with the flashlight to make sure she isn’t following us. When we finally step into the open stone room below the house, Nancy Shaw is standing there, shivering and alone.

  “Thank God it’s you,” she gushes at the sight of our faces. “I saw your light coming closer, and I thought maybe Clara had somehow gotten ahead of me...”

  “Stay away from us,” Vanessa says right away. “We’re leaving on our own. If you want to hash things out with Penelope, she’s in the middle tunnel. Have a ball.” She pulls my sleeve toward the tunnel on the end and we inch away from the woman in the blood-splattered sequined dress.

  “My sisters are all dead,” Nancy weeps, reaching out for us. “Please, please don’t leave me, take me with you, we’ll all escape together. I can pay you any amount of money that you desire. We’ve accumulated a massive amount over the decades.”

  So that’s where all the money came from. They already had it all saved up, ready to throw around for whatever reason they wanted. No wonder Gregory Shaw settled for Nancy over Penelope. The woman was filthy rich.

  “No, thanks,” I say, removing the knife from the pocket of my dress and pointing it at Nancy. “Stay away from us so I don’t have to use this, please.”

  Vanessa suddenly stops dead, causing me to bump into her from behind. “Why did you stop?” I ask hurriedly, keeping my eye on Nancy.

  “Because there’s something standing in the doorway,” comes the horrified reply.

  “Excuse me,” Clara’s voice says from the darkness in front of the last tunnel. Vanessa shines the light on her—no monster appendages in sight. She looks like a regular woman wearing old-fashioned clothes. “I was just enjoying sitting in here, listening to sweet Nancy shiver in fear as she lives out the last few moments of her pitiful little life.”

  “No,” Nancy cries, backing into the stone wall where the ladder is attached, leading to the house above. “Stay away from me. Haven’t you done enough?”

  “Enough?” Clara lets out a genuine laugh, long and rolling and filled with glee. “You want to cry uncle after seeing a few of your friends get their faces torn off? Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. Who do you think I am?”

  Nancy Shaw puts her hands out in front of her—she must have lost her knife somewhere along the way.

  “I bet you wish you had this, don’t you?” Clara asks, producing the knife from her dress. The blade is identical to the one I’m holding myself. “Don’t worry, sister dear.” She says the word with disgust. “I wouldn’t dream of killing you any other way than how you killed me.”

  And with that, Clara steps forward and plunges the knife into Nancy’s neck. Almost as quickly, she removes it and sinks it in again, this time in the arm, then she moves to the chest, over and over and over again. “How does it feel?” Clara growls, the jovial expression gone, her eyes shining as she continues to stab Nancy. “How does it feel, you miserable bitch?”

  Nancy makes a few gurgling sounds, fear evident in her widened eyes. “Pleeth,” she manages, choking on her own blood. “No m-m-m...”

  “No more?” Clara asks, cackling, but this time there is no joy in her laugh. “Oh, Nancy baby, we’re only just getting started!”

  And with that, Clara lets out a guttural scream as she quickens the pace of the stabs. She goes at Nancy’s body again and again, harder each time, the insect-like clickings coming from beneath her skirt once again. Soon, Clara’s screams are anything but human. She pounds away at the bloody mound of flesh and hair wrapped in green and red sequins, until the body starts to break apart.

  I look to Vanessa and see that she’s hiding her face. “We’re going to die,” she whimpers, then starts reciting some prayer that I don’t recognize; Catholic, maybe.

  She doesn’t see the shape of Clara’s body change as the monster inside comes out, an ever-transforming form of pure terror and insanity; doesn’t see Nancy’s skull give in to the force of the appendages, collapsing in on itself like a hard candy with a creamy center.

  When it’s over, the appendages tuck themselves back in and Clara looks human again, except now her face is smeared with fresh blood.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper for a bit there, girls,” she says, taking a forceful deep breath and brushing a curl of dark hair off her forehead. “That one was a little personal for me.”

  “Let us go,” Vanessa weeps, still covering her face. I can’t look away from the pile that used to be Nancy, steaming in the cold, the bloody sequins glittering away.

  “I almost forgot,” Clara says, turning back toward the pile. One quilled black appendage slithers out once again, to scoop up Nancy Shaw and shove what’s left of her into a small opening between the stones that make up the wall. “Now we’re even.”

  “Revenge has been had at last!” comes Penelope’s voice from behind us. Vanessa screams and jumps aside, and I step over to her, shining the light back to the third tunnel. My aunt sits crouched in the opening, her expression completely mad. “Now we can start our new lives.”

  “New lives?” I ask hesitantly, waiting for Clara to move away from the opening of the tunnel that leads out so we can bolt through. I doubt the monster will let us out, but we have to try. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s been a change in plans,” Clara says, looking down at Penelope with a sort of disgust on her face, like there’s a stinking dog sitting on her brand-new carpet. “You can leave, servant.”

  “But... What?” Penelope asks, devastation painting her previously gleeful face. “No, no, no, you said that if I showed my dedication, if I helped you get revenge...”

  “What I said,” Clara interrupts, her upper lip curling into a snarl, “was that I would make you mine if you were able to do as you were told.”

  “I have!” Penelope screams, stomping her foot like an upset child. “I’ve done everything you asked, haven’t I?”

  “No,” Clara says. “You couldn’t handle yourself when you saw what else lies in these tunnels, the other lurkers with powers as wondrous as mine. You lost your mind. Look at you now, crouching there in the dark like some sort of rabid animal. You’re weak.”

  “I am not weak!” Penelope wails, collapsing at Clara’s feet and grabbing on to her dress with both hands. “I even brought you my own niece, the one you said you couldn’t crack yourself. I brought her
here just for you!”

  My stomach does a flop, threatening to empty its contents. Penelope dragged me down here as a trap.

  “And look at her,” Clara says, looking at me with...pride? “Everyone I’ve ever encountered bent to my will and suggestion without a second thought, but not Lucy. She is strong. Stronger than you.”

  Penelope looks at me with pure hatred, and I try to remember gardening with her when I was young, laughing over tomatoes and cucumbers while Margaret scowled in the background. I have wasted my entire life looking up to Penelope, wishing she was my mother, and looking down on Margaret for disrespecting her. But my cousin was right—Penelope is no mother at all.

  “What are you talking about?” I say, and Clara steps away from the mouth of the exit tunnel to look into my face close-up.

  “I mean, I choose you,” Clara answers, her eyes soft, her tone affectionate. “What is a Mother without a Daughter to teach everything she knows?”

  “I’m your daughter!” Penelope rages, crawling toward me with a strangled cry. I scream and step back, raise the blade at her to no avail, but Clara steps between us.

  “You are not.” The Mother’s warmth ceases as she looks down at my aunt. “You’re so pathetic, you’d do anything I said. Anything.”

  “I’ve done things for you!” Penelope tries again, standing up before Clara. “I dug up your old students from the cemetery, I pulled their teeth out, I swallowed them just to prove my dedication!” She moves forward, like she’s going to try to hug the creature in the black dress, but Clara puts her hand up and says firmly, “Stop.”

  Penelope stops.

  “Open your mouth wide,” Clara says, and Penelope complies immediately, almost to the point where I wonder if she has any real control at all.

  “Now spit them forward,” Clara continues, her smile widening wickedly like it did before she attacked the club wives. “Your dedication means nothing to me.”

  Penelope leans forward and vomits, massively. At first I think it’s just regular vomit, but almost immediately I hear the sound of teeth hitting the stone floor, like a bowl of beads that has been overturned. I watch my aunt retch as the teeth come out in thick waves, swimming in green bile, flooding over the stone floor, making scratching noises as they slide aside to make room for more.

  When she’s finished, my aunt gasps for breath, tears streaming from her eyes, her nose running.

  “I think I’d like you to keep going,” Clara whispers, and Penelope’s eyes widen. “Give me all you’ve got.”

  At first, nothing. But then a gurgling sound comes from deep within Penelope’s throat. Her eyes widen in disbelief, and then pain, and blood begins to dribble from her lips.

  “What’s happening?” I cry out, as something thick and pink pushes through Penelope’s lips. She leans down, gagging and moaning, until the thing slithers out like a very long snake, piling on the stone floor in swirling coils over the teeth.

  Her stomach.

  But she’s not done. More organs push themselves out of my aunt, spewing forth from her mouth before splattering onto the floor, and I can hardly hear the sound of my own thoughts over Vanessa’s screams. I vaguely process that she’s taken off through the exit tunnel, without the flashlight, without me. Clara does nothing to stop her.

  Good, I think, listening to the sound of her footsteps fade away into the darkness. At least she got away.

  When my aunt has finished throwing up her guts, she crumples to the floor, dead.

  “She wasn’t what I needed in a daughter,” Clara says, locking eyes with me, holding out her hand in the cold stone room of blood and death. “Her strength was superficial. But something tells me you’re different. Something tells me you’ll last forever and ever.”

  “No,” I manage, realizing what it is that Clara is telling me. She lowers her hand back down when I don’t take it.

  “Yes.” The monster is grinning at me. “You’ll do it or I’ll make those scars you’ve carved into your body look like butterfly kisses.”

  “Please...” I fall against the stone wall, my feet so cold I can’t feel them anymore. “You can’t make me do this.”

  “But I need new worshippers now, Lucy,” Clara says. “All of mine have turned up dead, fancy that. And I know the perfect person to bring the newcomers in, dazzle them with this beautiful estate, tempt them with promises only I can keep...”

  I scream out in agony, which only makes her smile widen. All of the things that drove me to hurt myself, all the pressures and expectations that made me miserable—I’m never going to escape them. I’m going to live them forever. An Acosta must never lack control. She must keep her back straight, and her clothes ironed, and her expression placid. She must refuse to be seen unless her hair and makeup have been set. She wears her armor like scales on a snake: patterned, impervious, perfect. She understands that smiling is tactical, that words are for getting things that you want, that tears have no use except to expose disgusting, snotty shortcomings.

  I will never escape.

  “If you run, I will find you,” Clara says and steps past me to enter the tunnel that Penelope lured me and Vanessa into minutes ago. “We’re linked for eternity now, you and I.”

  I step away from the woman in the black Victorian dress, weeping, and make my way toward the ladder that will lead back up to the house, to my new life. By the time I reach it, I’ve grown silent, stoic.

  “You’re so much stronger than you think,” Clara’s voice calls after me once I’ve started climbing, the sound of her appendages clicking excitedly on the stone below. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough. You’re going to do a wonderful job, Lucy. You’re going to make your new Mother very proud.”

  Only time will tell, I think numbly as I climb rung after rung, the light from the attic barely visible above me. But time is all I have now.

  Time and this house, which I’ll never leave again.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from DAUGHTERS UNTO DEVILS by Amy Lukavics

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, thank you:

  To all of my readers. Your emails and letters and Tweets have a magical way of bringing the biggest smile to my face! I am endlessly grateful for all of you.

  To my agent, Joanna Volpe, and to everybody at New Leaf. The amount of hard work you guys do on a daily basis blows my mind to smithereens. I cannot wait to see what other sorts of adventures await us in the future!

  To my endlessly supportive editor, T.S. Ferguson. Horror-koalas for life! Also to Siena Konscol, my above-and-beyond publicist, who is made entirely of awesomesauce. And to the entire team at Harlequin TEEN for helping to make my dreams come true. I am such a lucky author to have all of you behind me.

  To my wonderful UK team: Rachel Mann of Simon & Schuster UK, and James Wills of Waston, Little. Thank you for being so enthusiastic and welcoming!

  To Gena Showalter and Kate Smith, who provided me with infinite seasoned-author wisdom, happy tears and seriously good times on our adventure across the country together. I love you girls, truly.

  To my YA Highway meese—you are all the best.

  To Roxie, my sweet and amazing sister-friend.

  To Chelsea, who has been by my side since kindergarten. We all float down here, Chels. (In extension, thank you to Alexa and Cassy, who provided me with the best girls’ nights ever when writing this book was quite literally driving me insane.) Love you all.

  To Edmund, my love and my favorite human. And to Lily and Jude, who make my heart overflow on a daily basis.

  If you loved THE WOMEN IN THE WALLS, be sure to check out another great supernatural read by author Amy Lukavics—DAUGHTERS UNTO DEVILS!

  God bless the little children

  When sixteen-year-old Amanda Verner’s family decides to m
ove from their small mountain cabin to the vast prairie, she hopes it is her chance for a fresh start. She can leave behind the memory of the past winter—of her sickly ma giving birth to a baby sister who cries endlessly; of the terrifying visions she saw as her sanity began to slip, the victim of cabin fever; and most of all, the memories of the boy she has been secretly meeting with as a distraction from her pain. The boy whose baby she now carries.

  When the Verners arrive at their new home, a large cabin abandoned by its previous owners, they discover the inside covered in blood. And as the days pass, it is obvious to Amanda that something isn’t right on the prairie. She’s heard stories of lands being tainted by evil, of men losing their minds and killing their families, and there is something strange about the doctor and his son who live in the woods on the edge of the prairie. But with the guilt and shame of her sins weighing on her, Amanda can’t be sure if the true evil lies in the land, or deep within her soul.

  Read it now!

  DAUGHTERS UNTO DEVILS

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  Daughters unto Devils

  by Amy Lukavics

  The first time I lay with the post boy was on a Sunday, and I broke three commandments to do it. Honor thy father and thy mother, thou shalt not lie, and remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Why couldn’t I stop counting all of my sins? It was as if I was craving the wrath that was to follow them, challenging it, if only to make certain that I was, indeed, alive.

  There used to be a time that I would have feared the consequences of acting out in such a way against the Lord, but not anymore, not after last winter, not after being trapped in the cabin for months and losing my mind and seeing the devil in the woods. Clearly, the Lord had forgotten all about me, and therefore I would no longer be following his rules.