“Where did everyone go when they left?”
Opening the door, Aidan solemnly answers, “They joined the other side of the rift.”
His words echo through the empty house. Or maybe it just feels that way and they’re actually echoing through my head.
CHAPTER NINE
Home Sweet Home
I didn’t think any house could be creepier than our house in Ridgemont back when Anna and the demon took up residence there, but this place takes the cake. And I know takes the cake sounds like something someone about three times my age would say, but if the expression fits, wear it, right?
Unlike most of the other buildings in Llevar la Luz I’ve seen so far, the house is mostly made of wood rather than stucco. (I don’t know what to call this place—a campus? A compound? A complex?) The wood creaks as I step over the threshold, a haunting sort of hello. Directly across from the front door is an enormous staircase, so wide that a dozen people could walk up or down side by side. It’s so damp in here that the wood used to build this house still smells alive—it’s like stepping into a forest instead of out of one. Maybe there’s something to that. I can’t imagine just how many spirits have passed through these walls over the years, seeking out the nearest, strongest luiseach. Maybe all that activity has kept the wood in the walls vibrant, alive in a way.
I run my hands along the wall in search of a light switch, hit some peeling wallpaper, and get a paper cut on my fingertip.
“Ouch!” I cry and suck on the cut.
“Careful,” Aidan warns. “This place isn’t exactly in the best condition.”
That’s an understatement. I finally find a light switch and flip it, but nothing happens. Keeping close to the wall, I look for another switch, heading deeper into the house, and flip it too. Nothing.
Finally I crash into what sounds like a ball of glass shards. I look down and see the remains of an enormous crystal chandelier. Where it must’ve once hung from the ceiling there are now wires hanging down, like another set of vines to match the ones outside.
This must have been the living room. Do mansions have living rooms? Maybe they called it something else. I wrack my brain for the right words from all the old novels I love reading over and over again. The sitting room. The drawing room. Even in the darkness I can see the furniture has been covered in white sheets, like someone dressed it up as ghosts for Halloween and then never undressed it.
A setting perfectly fit for the ghost I see next. At first I think it’s a demon, covered in red and black peeling skin. I duck behind one of the sheet-covered couches. But then I realize it’s a woman, her skin badly burned. Way to be a good luiseach, Sunshine. Her name was Marcy, and she was killed in an industrial accident only a few hours ago. She was working at a chemical plant, fell into a concentrated vat of paint remover, and passed away before they were able to pull her out. Even after her death, her skin continued to bubble and sizzle.
It’s simultaneously terrifying and sad to see her badly burned and peeling skin. I want Aidan to notice her and help her, but he doesn’t. Instead I get colder as she gets nearer. I close my eyes, knowing she’ll appear behind the couch beside me at any moment. I’m being a wimp. This woman may look terrifying, but she needs my help.
I open my eyes, and there she is standing before me, her former appearance almost entirely dissolved in harsh chemical burns. I can’t make out her eyes as I reach out and touch her to help her move on. An amazing ball of light appears, and an overwhelming sense of peace washes over me, so much stronger than anything I’ve experienced before. I stand in silence for a moment as this woman’s spirit dissolves into the air.
I jump at the sound of Aidan dropping my duffle bag at the foot of the stairs. I turn around and make my way back toward the front door.
“I never go in there.” Aidan nods in the direction of the room I just left. Yeah, I noticed, I think to myself. If Aidan saw the spirit, he’s not letting on.
“Looks like no one ever does. Not that I could see much,” I add quickly. “Do any of the lights work?” I’m starting to understand that this is how luiseach lives are. One moment you’re helping a spirit, the next you’re talking about what’s for dinner. Or, in this case, what lights work.
“There’s a generator out back. But it’s not big enough to supply the whole house with power.” That’s not surprising—this house is enormous. “Most of the rooms on the second floor have electricity.” He nods at the stairs.
I guess if you can only have power in part of the house, you’d want it to be upstairs. That’s where the bedrooms usually are, where you go when it’s dark.
Or, apparently, just where I’ll be going when it’s dark, as Aidan adds, “The second floor is all yours.”
“I have the whole floor to myself?” That kind of sounds like a line out of one of those old books. The poor orphan girl taken to the mysterious mansion that she explores until she uncovers all of its secrets. Like Mary in The Secret Garden or Catherine in Northanger Abbey. Except I’m not an orphan. Right now I’m actually less of an orphan than I’ve ever been. And I have ghosts.
“My room is here on the first floor, off the kitchen.” Aidan nods toward the darkness behind the stairs. “Technically speaking, that’s the servants’ quarters, but I find that it’s the most efficient place to sleep. We haven’t had servants here for nearly a century. It went out of fashion, you know.”
I certainly don’t know anything about the fashion of having servants. Besides, I’m too distracted by the fact that Aidan just said nearly a century, like it wasn’t even all that long of a time. Just how old is he exactly? Victoria was sixty-seven years old and looked at least half that age—and she’d been Aidan’s student.
“There are another couple of bedrooms right beside my own, but I thought you’d want more privacy than that.” He sounds almost shy, like the needs of a teenage girl are a total mystery to him. He doesn’t offer to carry my bag upstairs. Maybe he wants me to know the second floor is mine and mine alone, a totally private sanctuary. Maybe he got the generator for me too.
For the second time today I’m tempted to hug him, but I stop myself, rubbing sweaty palms together instead. The constant chill that permeated the space just outside the house—the presence of spirits—doesn’t seem to reach the air inside the mansion. But I actually miss the chill. We’ve only been inside a few minutes, and I’m already sweating (not that I want to be visited by another spirit to cool down). My clothes are sticking to my skin, and I yank at the collar of my T-shirt, feeling wrinkled and wrung out. The exhaustion from all the hours we spent traveling is finally kicking in.
Aidan removes his suit jacket and folds it over one arm. His collar is still sharply folded around his neck, but even his perfect and straight dark hair looks a little bit wilted. Maybe he’s tired too. “I’m sure you’d like to go upstairs and get settled. Get some rest after our travels.”
Gingerly I step onto the first stair. This definitely qualifies as a grand staircase, like maybe once upon a time Aidan and his wife gave grand parties here and used the stairs to make a magnificent entrance. Each step is covered in what at one time must have been colorful Mexican tile, but the paint has long since faded, and half of them are cracked.
“Aidan?” I say softly, but when I turn around, he’s already gone. I can hear his footsteps as he walks away to someplace behind the stairs in the opposite direction of the room with the furniture covered in sheets.
I grab my duffle bag, swing my backpack onto my shoulders, and start climbing. At the top of the stairs I drop my bags with a dull thud. The house groans in response, as though I hurt it somehow. It’s nearly pitch dark up here, and I run my hands along the wall until I hit a light switch.
Thankfully this one turns on, though the tiny, dirty bulbs screwed into the chandelier above my head don’t exactly give off what you could call bright light. Now I can see there’s a long hall in front of me, dotted with big doors directly across from one another, three on each side, wit
h an enormous bay window at the end. There’s so much space between each door I can tell the rooms behind them must be huge. I take the knife out of my bag and slip it in my back pocket.
When I open the door closest to me, on the right, I’m hit by a hot, stale breeze, like the house is letting out a breath it had been holding in as long as the door was shut. I cough as dust collides with my face, and I run my fingers along the wall until I find another light switch. Some weak yellow light blinks down from the candle-shaped fixtures screwed into the walls, and I notice a few cockroaches scrambling for cover. Yuck. (At least they’re not spiders, though.)
There are two enormous chairs framing a fireplace—who was the architect who thought a fireplace was necessary here? Wood-paneled walls are lined with packed bookshelves, lilac-colored velvet drapes cover the large windows, and the floor is covered in a matted cream-colored carpet. It looks more like a room you’d find in an English country manor rather than a house in the middle of a jungle. It would be the perfect Jane Austen fantasy if it weren’t for the bugs crawling about, vines growing over the windows, and the humidity so powerful that the peeling lavender wallpaper looks like it’s sweating.
When I close the door, the house inhales again. I spin around like I expect to find a giant standing behind me, taking enormous labored breaths, but there’s no one there.
I open the next right-hand door, and inside is a bedroom. A big wooden bed covered in a peach blanket sits smack in the center of the room. I step inside and bounce onto the bed, giving it a try, feeling a little bit like Goldilocks testing out the three bears’ beds. It’s so covered in dust, it makes me sneeze.
Back to the hallway, and on to the next door: another exhalation, another bedroom. And another bed so covered in a dusty blanket—bright blue and silky this time—that I sneeze when I sit on it. But the lamp on the nightstand works and there are no visible bugs. Score one for the second bedroom.
I cross to the other side of the hall, opening the door closest to the bay window. The light switch in this room not only works; it reveals an elaborate crystal chandelier hanging down from the center of the ceiling that actually floods the room with bright white light.
The four-poster bed in the center of the room is so big that it could easily accommodate a family of five.
My breaths come quickly as I realize that this must have been my birth parents’ room. I run my fingers along the back of a silky green chair at the foot of the bed. There is a fancy desk with a mirror behind it on the wall across from the door. No, not a desk—a vanity. Where women sit and put on their makeup. Where Aidan’s wife sat to put on her makeup.
The wooden surface of the vanity is so smooth that it shines even beneath a layer of dust. There is a heavy brush she must have left behind; I bend down and see a few strands of brown hair still tangled in its thick bristles. I open the top drawer, and the strong scent of perfume fills the moist air. I sniff, trying to identify it—lavender, I think. With something else mixed in, something spicy to keep it from smelling too delicate. The drawer creaks when I push it closed, the scent fading until it’s all but vanished.
Slowly and carefully I back out into the hallway, eager to leave this room exactly how I found it. Exactly how Aidan must have left it.
The next room, I’m relieved to discover, is a bathroom, complete with working lights and running hot and cold water.
The carpet behind the last door—first on the left at the top of the stairs—is so plush that I have to push extra hard to get the door to open. The curtains in this room are pulled firmly shut so the room is even darker than the rest of the house. I finger the wall just beside the door until I find the light switch, but the light won’t turn on. I reach into my pocket. My fingers brush against the knife as I pull my phone out to use as a flashlight. For a split second I wonder which of the items in my pocket would be most useful.
Don’t be ridiculous, Sunshine. You’d feel it if there were spirits close by. Your heart rate would accelerate; your temperature would plummet.
Wait. It’s cool in here. Not, like, spirit-touching-me ice-cold, but a pleasant cool breeze circles the room, like this one part of the house has AC.
I choose my phone and flash a tiny beam of light around the room.
It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust.
And then I gasp.
It’s a nursery. Everything in here is white. I mean, it’s grayish now, thanks to the dust, but it was all white once, so bright that it must have been cheerful. There’s a crib in one corner and a dresser across from it. I open the dresser drawers, and inside are tiny little clothes, so small they look like they were made for a doll instead of a person. There’s a white stuffed animal on the changing table, an owl that looks almost exactly like Dr. Hoo, identical to the toy I saw at Victoria’s house, the one she said was Anna’s favorite.
The stuffed bird’s lifeless plastic eyes stare at me, practically glowing in the light. I take a step back, like I think this bird might take flight just like Dr. Hoo did one terrifying night. But the owl stays lifelessly still, and after a few moments I point the flashlight in another direction.
Every detail in this room was attended to: there are soft patches over the furniture’s corners to keep a toddling baby from getting hurt. There are scented sachets in the drawers beneath the changing table to keep the air smelling fresh. There are tiny pink rosebuds on the otherwise white sheets on the crib, as though whoever decorated the room knew the baby was going to be a girl.
Which I was.
The breeze lifts my long hair off my shoulders. I point the light up, looking for the AC vents, for a ceiling fan, for any logical explanation. But there is nothing. No thermostat on the wall, no intricately carved vents by the ceiling. Even the windows aren’t open, and when I try to open them, I discover that vines have pretty much sealed them shut.
This room has a breeze all its own. Like whoever filled it with all of this furniture wanted it to be as comfortable as possible.
I back out of the room. When I turn around, the door slams shut behind me all on its own with a bang so loud that I jump in surprise.
I regain my footing and stand in the hallway, panting as though I’d been running, staring at the door that just slammed shut behind me. I feel the need to put more distance between myself and the nursery.
I drag my bags into the second bedroom, across and down the hall. I manage to open one of the windows just a crack. I lean against the window frame and breathe in the outside air deeply. Not that it offers any respite from the heat. Not like the air in the nursery.
I shake my head. Someone made up that room carefully, attentively, lovingly. Someone—Aidan? his wife? both of them together?—was excited to have me, wanted everything to be absolutely perfect for the little girl about to be born.
How did they go from preparing that perfect room to abandoning me at a Texas hospital?
Aidan must have known I’d see the nursery when he sent me up here. Was he trying to tell me something? Did he want me to know there was a time when he’d had every intention of raising me, caring for me, loving me?
I shake my head and back away from the window. The bedroom I’ve chosen is decorated in bright colors. Instead of a plush carpet at my feet, there is the same blue, yellow, and white tile from the hall, though the colors are faded with age just like they are everywhere else. It’s nothing like my room in Ridgemont, with its thick carpet and floral wallpaper, the pink so bright that it seems like decades wouldn’t be enough to make the color fade.
I grab my phone and dial Nolan’s number, anxious to tell him every last detail of this place. But I freeze before I hit send.
The expression on his face when I told him what I told him before I left Ridgemont blossoms in my mind’s eye. Maybe if I just apologized—No. I bite my lip. Any apology I could offer would be hollow, pointless, empty. I can’t take back what I said. Because it was the truth.
I glance at the phone. Looks like there isn’t any service in here anyh
ow. I fall back on the bed, grabbing one of the pillows to press into my face, smothering a miserable groan. The pillow’s so covered in dust that it makes me sneeze.
I roll over, and the knife beneath me slides from one side of my pocket to the other, like it wants to remind me that it’s in there. I can’t help but wonder: When will I need it next?
A Dead End?
That woman brought me to a rain-saturated town in the northwestern corner of the United States. She claimed this is where the girl lived. She told me her name: Sunshine Griffith, and I struggled to hide my smile. The girl’s light was so bright that even the human who named her could sense it.
But we were too late. Aidan had already come and gone, taking the girl with him. Of course, I know exactly where he was headed when he left, but I can’t go there. Not anymore. None of my people can get there. When we left, we also gave up the ability to step over its borders, wide as they stretch. Even that woman says she can’t go there now.
Which means I have no more use for her. Although her birthright as a luiseach protected her from being permanently killed at the hands of a demon, she no longer has the power to see spirits and help them move on. Perhaps she’ll try to live out her days as a human, though even she must sense the darkness gathering in the corners of the world. Sometimes I envy humans and their ignorance. They’ll never have to do what I have to.
Even Aidan wasn’t selfless enough to go through with it.
But the woman begs me not to leave her behind. She pleads for a place at my side. I tell her I have no reason to keep her—after all, the only information she offered me was a dead end.
The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl) Page 6
