There was nothing on my neck. Nothing at all. No old bandage, no scabs, not even a scar.
“Felice,” Dagen spoke my name again, but he said nothing else.
Mostly because everyone around me had suddenly found themselves frozen in place. I realized this because as I surveyed the guys, I saw they didn’t breathe, nor did they blink. They didn’t move to turn to me, didn’t shift their weight on their feet. Everything around me turned eerily silent, and my breath caught in the back of my throat.
The words my doppelganger had spoken to me before my dream crumbled around me filled my head, and I winced at how loud they seemed. Find yourself in the darkness. Whatever that meant.
A meow cut through the air, and I spun. Past Dagen’s frozen body, I spotted Bram Jr., holding onto Midnight. The cat looked like he was tired of struggling to break free of Bram’s iron-clad arms, merely huffing and giving up. Bram, though, looked downright devilish. His eyes were a pure black, just as my doppelganger’s had been.
Bram said nothing, turning on his heel and walking away, heading down the hall where I knew Lucien’s office was. I followed him—because what else was I supposed to do? Past the closed-off Desire Room, down the long, seemingly unending hallway until Bram stopped before the door to the basement.
His arms finally released Midnight, and the cat darted away, leaping down the stairs without a sound. Bram’s black, soulless eyes found me, and he said nothing as he disappeared into the basement after Midnight.
Did find myself in the darkness mean to find myself in the basement, someplace I shouldn’t be, yet again? Sure seemed like it.
I would talk to the guys, but seeing as how they were currently frozen still in time—yet another new thing Grimmstead hadn’t shown me before—that wasn’t possible. It was up to me to make this decision, and as I stared into the darkness, past the open door to the basement, I couldn’t help but wonder what the right decision was.
To go down, or dutifully ignore black-eyed Bram?
In the end, I went.
There were no other options for me. Of course I would go. My curiosity had always gotten the best of me before; why change it now? Maybe I would regret stepping foot into this basement, following the possessed kid version of the psycho that dwelled inside Koda’s head—his brother—but right now regret was the last thing on my mind. I needed the truth.
I needed some answers here. Answers came few and far between in Grimmstead, which made their appearance that much more important.
My feet took me down the steps, and I walked with a measured slowness, the air around me instantly cooling the moment I entered the dark, dank basement. Bram had picked up a lantern, lighting it as he stared at me with eyes just a bit too innocent. I knew that he might look like a child, but inside, he was no such thing. He probably wasn’t even a young Bram.
He was, I realized with horror in my heart, Grimmstead personified. All the children were. This whole thing—Grimmstead was merely playing with our heads.
Bram said nothing, turning to head deeper into the basement, the lantern’s light moving with him as he went. I waited a moment before trailing after him, nausea rising in my gut. Getting sick was the last thing I wanted to do, but it seemed to be the only thing my body desired. Something was terribly wrong here, and I knew, almost with a sense of foreboding, that I wasn’t going to like what I was about to see.
As we walked through the basement, we passed the old pictures leaning against the wall. One of them, I knew, was of Victor, an old-fashioned portrait painted in his exact likeness. It was not where we would stop, though; I had the feeling I knew where we were going, too. The crack. The, in Victor’s words, Hellmouth.
The Hellmouth. Still not something I was used to thinking.
The moment we rounded the corner that would lead us to the crack, another sound, other than the soft pitter-patter of our footsteps on the dirt below, came into my head. Thump, thump, thump. The noise Dagen was haunted with, the noise that never stopped and sometimes seemed to become louder and grow of its own accord.
Why did I hear the sound when I ventured into the basement, and why did it grow louder—so loud I could feel it in my bones, shaking me to my core? It wasn’t right. It was Dagen’s weakness, not mine.
As Bram and I ventured into the deepest recesses of the basement, the crack now in sight and emanating a low, dull red, I spotted the other children. They were…tearing down a wall. Stone by stone, their hands and fingertips bloody from the struggle of tearing the wall apart. Five feet from the crack, they had the wall halfway down. I had no idea what they were doing, but the children paid no attention to me; though I did notice their eyes were just as black and evil as Bram’s.
The thumping grew louder as I watched the children continue to tear the wall down. They tossed the stone bricks aside, the heavy things landing on the dirt near my feet.
But, wait. They weren’t tearing down the wall; another wall sat behind it, two feet back, like a small area had been enclosed, and it was that small area they worked to reveal to me.
My heart was in my throat, and I felt a ticklish sensation on my head. I reached up and rubbed my forehead, finding a fly had landed there. A fly. Until recently, I’d never seen a single fly in this place.
Was it changing? Was Grimmstead itself growing weaker? Maybe everything I’d heard in my dream was wrong—maybe we could beat this thing.
“Sometimes,” a whispered voice spoke in my ear, not coming from any of the children, “the truth hurts more than a lie.” As the voice said that, the children stopped what they were doing, their spines snapping straight one by one as they turned to look at me, black eyes wide and mouths ajar.
I had to take a step back, moving away from the half-torn down wall, stopping only when my back collided with the chains on the wall. The children—including Bram, who’d set down the lantern to join his fellow creepy kids—corralled me there, their expressions a thing of nightmares.
Nightmares. If I ever got out of Grimmstead, I would have nightmares for the rest of my life. It didn’t take a psychic to figure that one out. There were just certain things people shouldn’t see…
…such as a dark, gooey liquid leaking from the corner of the children’s eyes.
And their mouths.
And their ears.
Every orifice, really. Even their broken, bleeding fingernails.
A foul odor filled the air, and I gagged, moving to hold a hand over my mouth as I willed for all of the kids to disappear. With the dull red glow from the crack and the orange light from the lantern, I knew whatever was coming from them wasn’t blood. It was too black, too thick. Almost like slime.
I really wanted to vomit, and I closed my eyes, unable to watch the children hoard around me, not wanting to see their horrific faces inching closer and blocking out everything else. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t handle it.
“Felice,” a worried voice broke into my head, but I refused to open my eyes.
That foul smell still sat in the air, like someone had left meat to rot. I still heard that thumping sound, too. God, how did Dagen deal with it constantly? No wonder he was so lost in his own head half the time, forgetting to take care of himself—
Hands touched me, my arms, fingers curling around my forearms as the voice spoke again, “How did you—”
Wait a darn second. That voice…that voice was Dagen.
I was cautious in opening my eyes, meeting the dark stare behind the glasses. Thankfully, Dagen’s eyes were normal. Dark brown irises surrounded by white—though the whites were bloodshot. No fully-black eyes to be seen.
And no children anywhere near me.
Dagen and I were alone in this basement, but as I stared past him, to the wall opposite us, I saw the wall the kids had torn down still laid in rubble.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter. I need to talk to you,” Dagen hurriedly said.
My nose wrinkled, and I stared hard at the torn-down wall across from us. The crack in the floor sat
between us, but the lantern Bram had brought still glowed, its light dancing shadows across the broken wall. “Do you smell that?” I asked.
“I…” Dagen’s voice trailed off, and I pushed past him, though he was loathed to release me.
“Do you hear that?” As I spoke the question, my mind focused on the thump, thump, thump. What a silly thing to ask Dagen, though. Of course he heard it. That was his thing—but if it was his thing, why the heck did I now hear it, too?
I neared the broken wall, having walked around the crack, but Dagen’s hand found my wrist and tugged me toward him. For someone who looked to have no muscles whatsoever, Dagen sure could be strong when he wanted to be.
“Felice, I’ve been trying to talk to you,” he whispered, desperation in his eyes.
I knew that, and for the longest time I’d been too preoccupied with other things to pay attention. Call me terrible, but it was what it was. Right now was no different. Whatever small crevice was hidden behind that wall called out to me, though that smell and that noise made me want to hightail it out of here and never come back.
You’d think I would’ve learned by now to avoid the basement at all costs; nothing good ever seemed to happen down here.
“Please,” Dagen spoke, slowly releasing me. The moment his hand let go of me, he recoiled, his face twisting in pain. Both hands immediately went to his ears, and he struggled to stay upright; the sound must’ve been really loud to him, for it soon brought him to his knees.
I should touch him. I should relieve him of that sound and bring him out of the basement, but right now, I had to look behind that wall.
With the smell making me want to vomit and that sound echoing in the back of my brain—nowhere near as loudly as it must sound to Dagen though, for he couldn’t even move from his position on his knees—I stepped closer, carefully moving around the stones on the ground to peer over the partial wall.
Almost instantly a wall of flies buzzed out, hitting me in the face with their erratic, crazy flying. Luckily I had a hand over my mouth and nose, so none were able to get inside. I swung my free hand through the air, trying to disperse them—there were so many I couldn’t even see anything other than their small black bodies for a few moments. Once the flies scattered, once I could see down into the crevice and what was hidden there, everything around me faded away.
And then I realized what my doppelganger had meant by find myself in the darkness.
The world around me began to spin, faster and faster. The nausea in my gut hardened into shock, and I couldn’t even think of throwing up. After everything I’d seen, everything Grimmstead had shown me, I never thought…never imagined it would show me this.
Me. Myself.
The flies came from me. The thumping sound that had haunted Dagen since pretty much forever…came from me?
“I tried to tell you,” Dagen muttered, his voice strained. “I tried—”
I stood there, staring down at my own crumpled body. My eyes were dried and open, my hair dirty and stringy. My knees were drawn to my chest, and my arms were crossed over my legs. A big, gaping slash sat on one of my wrists, the wound dried a dark maroon. Flesh sunken in, cheeks hollow, I looked as bad as a corpse could possibly look.
Yeah, a corpse. Because I was dead.
I screamed.
Chapter Nine – Lucien
The strange thing was, I could’ve sworn Felice was here with us, along with Dagen, but after I blinked, I saw neither of them. The only ones in the dining hall were Victor, Payne, Koda, and Ian. Ian looked like he couldn’t care less, drinking even though it was quite early in the day. The others, however, noticed her absence.
Victor’s hazel gaze searched the room. “She was here a moment ago, was she not?”
“She was,” Payne said, dropping his arms to his sides as he sniffed the air. “I smelled her.”
“That’s not weird at all,” Ian quipped, taking a small sip from his glass. Whiskey, by the look of it. He winced as the liquid traveled down his throat. His blonde hair stuck every which way, his blue eyes unfocused. His white shirt was wrinkled over his chest, and he looked as if he was trying to drown his problems away. Typical Ian bullshit.
Koda moved away from the window, tilting his head as he listened to Bram speak. “Bram says the house is toying with us.”
As he spoke, I felt my chest rumble. Deep down, I could feel it, too. This place toyed with us on a daily basis, so that was nothing new, but if its focus was now on Felice—it was something I would fight against until I could not draw another breath. If that meant I would die for her, well…I guessed I would die.
Felice Fairday was the only person I would ever die for.
Victor had said he wanted to find a way for Felice to get out of here, and as much as I was loathed to trust anything that snake said, let alone agree with him, I did just that, especially now, feeling so uneasy. If I had to work with him to get her out of here, to keep her safe, I would.
Even if it meant I’d never see her again.
There was that room, but now that I’d had her, felt her hot skin flushed against mine, it would not be the same. A replica of her, as perfect as it was, was just that: an imitation. Not the real thing. The room would never be the same, no matter how much time passed.
I was just about to ask about the children, but a loud sound underneath the floor stopped me. My eyes dropped to the carpet beneath the dining table. What in Grimmstead was that sound? Was that Felice?
“That was a scream,” Payne said, his black eyes darting to me. He was still as pale as ever, his hair as white as it always was, but he looked much healthier since he started, to use his own word for it, feeding.
Feeding on Felice, which enraged me to no end, especially since Felice was more than happy to go along with it, to either hurt herself or let him do the hurting. Neither of which I was particularly thrilled about. I wanted to tuck Felice someplace safe and never let another soul hurt her.
Alas, keeping her locked in my bedroom was not something she would agree to.
“A scream?” Victor repeated, meeting my eyes. “Felice’s undoubtedly.”
“It sounded like it came from below us,” I spoke, swearing in my head. If it came from below, it meant Felice was in the basement, somewhere I had warned her time and time again not to go to, not without me with her. Feeding her curiosity all this time had only led her to become bull-headed and rash.
Maybe tying her up in my bedroom would be her punishment for this.
“The basement,” Koda whispered, and together we started to leave the dining hall.
All of us but Ian, who raised his glass and muttered, “You guys got this. I’ll stay here and hold down the fort.” After toasting our departure, he swallowed another sip from his glass, grimacing.
I would deal with him later. Right now I had to make sure Felice was okay.
If she wasn’t, what would I do? What could I do? As much as I was a part of this house, I was also a part of Victor. This house toyed with Victor too; none of us were beyond its control. None of us could ever hope to stand above or on even ground with the evil inhabiting this place.
Victor, Koda, Payne and I traveled through the front hall, soon enough landing ourselves at the basement’s wide-open door. Funny, because I sure as fuck never left it open. It had a habit of calling people down, though, even when the door should be shut and locked. Victor was the first down, followed shortly by Payne. I was about to head down when I realized Koda had stopped. I glared at him.
“Bram really doesn’t want us to go down there,” Koda whispered, his green eyes alive with memories, probably of being trapped and chained down there, locked away in his own mind while Bram had control.
I had no time to argue with him, so I said nothing, only giving him a frown as I headed down into the blackness. By the time my feet were flat on the basement floor, Victor had found a lantern and lit it, its dull orange hue lighting the way. I pushed past Payne, moving to stand beside him.
I
only threw a quick glance at him, but I saw something in his eyes that told me the truth, something I didn’t want to face: Victor Grimmstead cared about Felice as much as I did. Who the fuck knew, maybe me loving her stemmed from his feelings for her—and if that was the case, then demanding Felice to stay away from him was a pointless endeavor. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, she was just as connected to him as she was to me, regardless of my feelings for the man himself.
I hated him, I did, but my feelings for most of the souls in this place bordered on either hatred or annoyance, maybe even mild contempt, so that didn’t say much. Victor thought he was above everyone else, better than everyone else, and I probably got those superior notions from him.
Never had I hated sharing blood with someone more.
But we walked further into the basement together, and when we reached its deepest parts, we saw a few very strange things.
The first was Dagen, who had himself backed into the corner, ten feet away from the crack on the floor, his hands on the sides of his head, blocking his ears. He was hunched down, practically rocking on his knees, muttering to himself about how badly he’d messed up. Payne went for him, kneeling down before him, trying to calm him down.
Another strange thing was the fact that one of the basement walls was half-torn down, revealing it had been built out recently—which was doubly odd, for I did not recall ever doing such a thing. Did the others come into the basement when I was unaware? They all knew it was off-limits.
Dagen clearly did, though perhaps he’d followed Felice down here. Felice, who was nowhere in sight.
And, lastly, the third in the trifecta of strangeness was what I saw when I moved closer to the broken wall. The air around here was rank with something—odd, for Grimmstead, for smells were not usually its thing. After all, Payne’s body had been headless for quite a while, and his body never once stunk or started to decay. Not like the body I currently stared at.
Felice.
A broken, dead Felice.
“Fuck,” I whispered, my heart immediately feeling too heavy in my chest.
Grimmstead Academy: Defiant Rebellion Page 9
