by Dan Poblocki
Dash scrambled to his feet, still clutching the bolt cutter he’d taken from the barn’s loft.
“You almost impaled me with that!” Poppy shouted at him.
“We were trying to find you!” he answered. “You left us alone in that room with those strange kids.”
Only then did he seem to notice Connie standing with them, panting, panicked. He raised an eyebrow in recognition. Strange how it seemed nothing could surprise him anymore.
Connie waved them down the hall a few more steps.
“The house shook,” said Azumi, following. “And then the music box flew off the table. The lid slammed shut and the tune stopped playing, and then—”
“The candles blew out,” said Dash. “Everyone was shouting, knocking chairs over, bumping into one another as they tried to run.”
“The house found a way to stop the music,” said Poppy. “Maybe it was the only thing protecting us.”
“The house?” Connie asked them, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”
“We have to get out of here,” Azumi said.
“And go where?” asked Dash. “We’re literally standing inside the monster.”
“The monster?” Tears streaked Connie’s cheeks. She turned to Poppy. “I don’t know what to do. Help me!”
Poppy’s face grew serious. “We’re taking you with us. What’s the quickest way out of the house?”
Connie took a deep breath and then nodded at the closest door. “Through here.”
The four of them ran, the floor trembling, the walls rattling. Frederick Caldwell’s paintings fell from their hooks, as if chasing them down the hall.
The faster the group sprinted, the louder the commotion grew behind them. Azumi was afraid to look back. It sounded like something was tearing the house apart, piece by piece, and devouring it.
Connie brought them around another bend in the corridor, but they met a wall instead of an exit. A dead end. They turned back and then pressed themselves against one another, as if ready to fight whatever was chasing them.
The shaking in the hall grew stronger, so strong that Azumi’s vision began to vibrate. It was worse than any earthquake she’d experienced on the West Coast or while in Japan. Everything blurred.
Then something even stranger happened. The ceiling lifted away. The floorboards parted and broke. The walls splintered and flew off into whirling shadows. Connie was screaming, as if trying to wake herself from a nightmare, and Poppy clung to her.
Azumi felt a pang of jealousy, wishing for her sister’s touch.
Darkness rushed forward, embracing them and bursting through their bodies, pushing apart their cells, disintegrating them from the inside out.
DASH AND DYLAN are hiding in a corner of the Hollywood studio, away from the glare of the hot set lights. The cast and crew mill about, ignoring them. The brothers play a game, tossing Skittles at each other, only they’re laughing so hard that they miss most of them.
Chewing on a candy, Dylan says, “Everyone’s looking at us like we have two heads.”
“It’s all your imagination,” says Dash, rolling his eyes. “Stop being weird.”
Dylan stops smiling. He leans close. “You don’t really think I’m weird, do you, little brother?”
Dash feels his face heat up. He hates it when Dylan calls him that. But Dylan won’t cut it out. Ever. “Well, yeah,” says Dash. “You’re weirder than me, for sure.”
Dylan’s eyes grow dark. “You’d never leave me alone here, would you?”
Dash shakes his head, confused. “What are you talking about?” Something in his hand feels suddenly heavy. He glances down and sees that he’s clutching a metal tool with sharp blades at the tip. He looks up to find his brother standing only inches away from him now, eyes glaring—or pleading—suddenly watery. “Okay, okay, geez … I’ll never leave you alone! Not here. Not anywhere.”
Dylan grins, and Dash feels chills tickle his lower back. “Promise,” Dylan says.
The set has changed around them. It no longer looks like a living room in the suburbs, but instead, like a dusty shed.
How did we get here? Dash wonders.
The lights blink out, and the set is thrown into darkness.
Never leave …
“Promise!” But Dylan no longer looks like Dylan. He looks like a clown, with a white plastic face, a red gash of a frown, and two black pits for eyes.
Before Dash can answer, Dylan has wrapped his fingers around Dash’s throat. He’s squeezing. Squeezing. Dash’s eyes water. He can’t catch his breath or move his hands. Something is trying to pull him to the ground.
“Promise!” the clown hisses again.
But Dash can’t—
“Dash!” someone shouts in his ear. “The bolt cutter!”
And Dash swings his hands upward, feeling the hard connection as the bolt cutter smashes into Dylan’s chest. He tumbles backward, groaning in shock.
Air rushes into Dash’s lungs, and he collapses against the door of the burned-out car. Poppy and Azumi appear at his side. And reality crashes in around him.
* * *
Azumi didn’t have more than a second after being torn from the vision before she saw that the Specials had arrived. She was leaning over Dash when Matilda, Irving, and Dylan came back.
Poppy rolled to the floor, slipping away from Matilda’s outstretched arms. Azumi ducked around the side of the car to avoid Irving. But Dylan tackled Dash. The boys flailed in the dirt and the mud.
Azumi called out, “Dylan, leave him alone!” Irving wheeled around the car after her. She shifted her weight to avoid him and immediately lost sight of the twins. “Poppy, help him!”
From the other side of the car, Poppy cried out in frustration. Matilda was crouching, about to leap toward her. At the last second, Poppy raised her foot and steadied her leg, and the sole of her sneaker smashed into Matilda’s chest. Kicking out, Poppy knocked the girl to the ground. Without thinking, she turned over and then scrambled toward the bolt cutter, which Dash had dropped. The boys continued to struggle, Dash groaning under the weight of his twin. Poppy swung the heavy tool at Dylan. It almost hurt to listen as the bladed tip swiped at Dylan’s shoulder. Distracted, Dylan turned to her and snarled.
A weight dropped onto Poppy’s back. Matilda yanked at her hair and pulled her head backward. The cat mask stared down at Poppy, only inches away. She could feel Matilda’s breath on her forehead, puffing through the small slit in the plastic. She swung out her arms, trying to find the bolt cutter, but it had fallen somewhere out of reach.
Matilda jerked Poppy’s head so hard, Poppy heard a crack. Pain shot down her spine and panic flooded her veins. It was the first time that Poppy feared that Matilda no longer only wished to scare her … or even hurt her. The girl was actually trying to kill her—to pop her skull off her neck, like a piece of fruit from a tree branch …
“Help me!” Poppy screamed.
Dash heard her cry out but he couldn’t reach her, not with Dylan clinging to his side. Poppy’s swing of the bolt cutter had knocked Dylan askew, and Dash had turned over and crawled toward the car. Despite the flat tire and rotted carriage, there were still several inches of space beneath it.
With another flash from the sky outside, Dash could see that the bolt cutter was only about a foot away. He grabbed it and then scrambled forward. Dylan lost his grip as Dash forced himself under the car. Pressed to the sour-smelling dirt, he felt a little safer. If he didn’t catch his breath soon, he wouldn’t be able to go on.
Under the car, he began to approach Poppy and Matilda from a different angle. Poppy cried out as Matilda pulled her head back again.
Dylan reached toward Dash, swinging his arm back and forth, but Dash darted out of the way. “Azumi!” he called out. “Do something!”
Dash heard footfalls to his left. They were headed around the front of the car, toward where Matilda was gripping Poppy.
But another pair of feet followed close behind. These were link
ed by a short length of rusted chain. Irving!
Dash used the last of his strength to push himself forward. He shoved the bolt cutter out from under the car, the tip of it catching the chain, and Irving fell forward, slamming to the ground.
The bear mask turned to look at him, snarling deep and low. Dash was paralyzed with fear. He could hear Dylan scurrying toward him from the back of the car. If Irving came at him from the front, there would be no escape. Irving’s chain rang out as he tried to shake the bolt cutter away.
Azumi stood frozen as Poppy squealed in agony.
An idea struck Dash like a blow to the temple. He wiggled forward quickly and then grasped both handles of the tool. Irving’s bear mask seemed to smirk before its plastic mouth opened wide, rank breath pouring out of a deep hole.
Dash squeezed the bolt cutter shut, the blades closing on the rusted links of Irving’s chain. Before Dash could blink, the chain snapped.
The bear’s jaws closed, and a gasp came from inside the mask. Seconds later, a long, thin crack appeared in the center of the bear’s head. The crack spread, crumbling faster and faster, as the mask fell apart.
Matilda and Dylan screamed as if in pain.
Glancing back, Dash watched Dylan pull himself out from under the car. Matilda fell off Poppy and scrambled away from her, focused on Irving. Poppy clutched at her neck. “You okay?” Azumi asked.
Poppy groaned. “Just keep her away from me …” Azumi rushed over, helping her sit up, watching Matilda and Dylan in case they came at them again.
Dash stared at the boy who’d been chained up like a circus animal for decades. His brown eyes were barely visible, but Dash could see tears glistening. Irving reached toward Dash, and Dash allowed the boy to take his hands and pull him from the wreck’s undercarriage.
Crouching beside him, Dash managed to ask, “Are you … you?”
Irving touched his own face, then smiled and nodded.
“I didn’t take off your mask,” said Dash. “How—” But before Dash could finish, Irving began to fade, his skin growing translucent.
“You gave me what I needed,” said Irving, his voice soft, as if coming from a distant room, “what Cyrus took from me … my freedom … Thank you …”
Then he too was gone. Just like Randolph and Esme and Aloysius. All that was left were the links that had enclosed his ankles. He’d never wear them again.
A scuffling sound made Dash stiffen.
Matilda and Dylan were standing side by side, several feet from where Azumi sat with Poppy, the expressions on their masks even more exaggerated than before, eyebrows tilted downward, their smiles full of teeth.
“Over here,” Dash whispered to the two girls. “Hurry.”
Poppy held her neck tenderly. Azumi slid backward along the ground, wrapping an arm around Poppy’s waist, pulling her along. But for every move the girls made, Matilda and Dylan took a threatening step forward.
POPPY AND AZUMI edged around to the front of the car, where Dash had managed to stand up, Matilda and Dylan on their heels.
The air crackled with static. Dash felt the hairs on his arms rise, and it wasn’t from goose bumps this time. “Get down!” he whispered, pushing the girls to the ground as a pinkish-white light filled the shed.
The explosion was so deafening, it erased their screams.
It rang in Dash’s eardrums as he looked up to see a new hole in the ceiling. Bits of wood rained down from the spot where lightning had struck. A small chunk smacked him in the forehead, but he barely noticed. Blue light was flickering nearby, and a crackling hum filled the space.
Poppy gasped as she pushed herself up, and Azumi pointed past Dash’s shoulder. He turned and saw a group of children surrounding Matilda and Dylan, holding hands, enclosing the two in what looked like a game of ring-around-the-rosy. But these weren’t ordinary children. They appeared to be made of electricity, their bodies pulsing with light, strings of sparks snapping between each of them like a Tesla coil.
Azumi stammered, “Who— Who are they?”
In the center of the circle, Matilda and Dylan broke apart and ran at the spectral children, trying to smash through the barricade, but when they approached the edge, the static snapped at them, flinging them backward. The children stepped forward, shrinking the circle.
“Whoever they are,” said Dash, “they’re helping us.”
Azumi stood frozen. She knew it was Dylan who’d just flown backward, but all she could see was Marcus arcing through the air, over and over and over. She’d trusted the thing that looked like Moriko. Her fault!
“It’s them,” said Poppy, breathless. “Look!”
Then Dash could see their details. Of the ten, half wore blindfolds and the old-fashioned clothes he’d seen during the vision of the Larkspur séance. He recognized the others as the kids from the Polaroid in the loft. They were helping.
Matilda and Dylan yowled like trapped animals.
Suddenly, all the electric children turned to look at Dash, Azumi, and Poppy. They appeared terrified but hopeful—and then their bodies began to dim. Who knew how much longer they could keep it up?
Dash realized what they wanted. “They’re giving us a chance,” he said. “Run!”
Grabbing the lantern, he chased Azumi and Poppy toward the open door. He expected it to slam closed, but then the three were outside, the rain drenching them again, and Dash paused and looked back. The circle of blue light had shrunk further. Strings of electricity licked at the two at the center, and Matilda and Dylan shrieked in anger and pain. Dash could almost feel the buzzing in his own skin, burning hot. Like the lamp that had electrocuted Dylan back in the dressing room.
Your fault!
He shook his head, trying to contain a flood of tears.
His brother called out to him from within the spectral prison, his voice pleading, desperate. “Don’t leave me here!”
Promise, Dash …
PROMISE!
“That’s not your brother talking,” said Poppy, slipping her hand into his own. “Come on. We don’t have much time.” And she yanked him away from the doorway.
THE THREE RAN across the meadow. With every step, every jounce, every leap through the tall, wet grass, Poppy’s neck and spine prickled with sharp pain, and she grew more and more aware of how close Matilda had come to seriously hurting her.
Beside her, Azumi muttered to herself. And Dash … Dash was bawling. He was trying to keep quiet, but Poppy could hear him, even though the wind whipped at them and the trees creaked and cracked in the forest to their right.
Poppy focused on the ground just ahead. She knew that the house was still up the hill to the left. They were keeping their distance.
“This is it!” Azumi shrieked when they stumbled out of the tall grass and onto the gravel of the driveway. “Our way out!”
“Don’t jinx this,” said Dash, his voice ragged.
Poppy grabbed her friends and hugged them close. “We did it!” she yelled, not caring who or what heard her. She wanted to throw her joy into the house’s face … if the house had a face.
Larkspur was a place of pain. Of death.
It was the beginning of every bad thing that had ever happened to her—the reason her mother had left, the reason the girls at the group home called her crazy, the reason she’d always felt so isolated and alone.
Her own face burned as she thought about how she’d abandoned Connie in the house as the darkness had swallowed them up. Connie had never made it out—not in the vision, and not during the fire that would devour the nursery a month after the séance.
She knew she couldn’t change the past, and yet …
If Poppy hadn’t opened the door to the wrecked car, she never would have met her cousin. If she had ignored the sound, if she had been a little less brave, maybe the house would never have found her and sent its invitation.
Did I put myself on Larkspur’s radar? Poppy wondered.
Eventually, the rain stopped and the wind died down. T
he farther they walked from the house on the hill, the better Poppy felt. And by the time she crossed the line of trees with Azumi and Dash back into the forest toward Hardscrabble Road, Poppy felt resigned. Someday, maybe Poppy could even forget about what had happened here. She’d lose memories about the house and the letter from Delphinia, and maybe—hopefully?—eventually her own mother. Maybe Connie would be kind enough to stop appearing in the mirrors.
What a dream to be able to finally move on—to build a life from what was coming rather than whatever she’d always carried with her.
“It’s strange,” whispered Dash, ducking under a low-hanging branch.
“What’s strange?” asked Azumi, following him farther along the driveway, into the dripping darkness of the woods.
“Look around. Larkspur is letting us leave. After everything we’ve been through. After all the fighting. We’re just walking out.”
“The friendlier ghosts are protecting us,” said Poppy, thinking of her cousin and the kids in the loft and the blindfolded wards of the veiled spirit medium. “We still have people on our side.”
“Dead people, you mean,” said Azumi.
“Better than no one at all,” Poppy said, surprised at her sudden anger. “They’ve given up a lot to help us leave.”
“But we haven’t left yet.”
Poppy rolled her eyes, heaved a breath, and kept walking.
EVEN THOUGH AZUMI walked between Poppy and Dash, far from the branches at the edges of the driveway, she felt more terrified than ever. Being back in the woods near the gate should have made her relieved. They were close to the exit of these wretched grounds, and they were only getting closer. To safety, to her parents, to home.
But the voices in her head were growing louder, more persistent. And what if they followed her past Larkspur’s gate?
Leave the path … Get out … Run …
Run? But to where?
What if she made it all the way back to Washington, only to find herself sleepwalking again—still haunted by the forest where Moriko had disappeared? Could she ever tell her parents what had happened to her here? Would they believe her? Could Azumi believe herself anymore? What if she was broken now, just like Cyrus’s Specials? What could she do to release herself, like they’d done for the ghosts of Larkspur?
