EERIE
Page 5
Grant pushed a few loose strands of hair behind her ear.
“What is it, Paigy?” he whispered. “What’s doing this to you? Is it a client?”
She shook her head. “It’s in my bedroom upstairs. Under the bed.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know. Something that shouldn’t be.”
Grant noted a sickening chill plunge down his spine, prompted by a realization he’d been fighting against all his life: his sister was crazy.
He glanced down at the mattress poking out from underneath the couch.
“You’ve been sleeping down here, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re afraid to go upstairs.”
She nodded into the couch.
Grant looked up at his friend.
Don said, “Paige, I just want to make sure I understand exactly what you’re saying. Something under your bed is keeping you from leaving the house.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know what it is?”
She shook her head.
“Are you talking about a flesh-and-blood person?” Grant asked.
“I told you. I don’t know.”
Don said, “Sometimes, we sink down to these bad places in our lives and we lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s—”
“I know how fucked-up this sounds, okay?”
“Do you want my help, Paige?”
“That’s the only reason you’re still in my house.”
Don said, “Then come with me.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs.”
“No.”
“We’re going to walk into your bedroom—”
“I can’t—”
“—and I’m going to show you there’s nothing in there that has an ounce of power over you. Then we’re going to do whatever it takes to get you better.”
Paige sat up. She was trembling. “You don’t understand—we can’t go in there together.”
“Then I’ll go by myself.”
Paige struggled to her feet. She said, “You don’t have my permission to go upstairs,” but the edge in her voice was ebbing.
Don said, “I fully respect how real this feels to you. But I’m going to go up there, have a look, come back down, and tell you that everything’s okay. That there’s nothing in your room. That, as real as this may feel, it’s in your mind.”
All the fight was leaving her.
She looked scattered and helpless.
Don crossed the living room, which had fallen into near-darkness now that the fire was dying.
He stopped at the bottom of the staircase.
“Which room, Paige?”
“Please don’t.”
“Which room?”
“Turn right at the top of the stairs, round the corner, and go down to the end of the hall. My bedroom is the door at the end.”
“Grant, would you come with me?”
Grant followed Don.
The staircase lifted out of the foyer into darkness.
“She’s cracked,” Grant whispered as they climbed.
Each step creaked like the hull of an old ship.
“She doesn’t look well, and this paranoid delusion about something keeping her in the house is disturbing.”
“So what do I do?”
“Consider an involuntary commitment.”
“Seriously?”
“I can help you with the paperwork.”
“Great. Maybe she can room with Dad.”
The meager light that warmed the foyer fell away behind them.
They climbed the last few steps into complete darkness and stopped, waiting for their eyes to adjust.
Grant looked over to where Don stood, but could make out nothing of his shape.
“Let’s find a light switch,” Don said.
Grant heard him shuffle over to the wall and begin feeling his way along it. Grant followed suit, groping across wallpaper but his fingers only grazed a few picture frames. He continued down the hall and then around a corner, both hands guiding him along like a caver without a light. At last, he barked his shin against the leg of a table, rattling its contents.
“You okay?” Don called from the other side.
“Yeah.”
Grant’s fingers moved across the surface of the table until they came to what felt like the base of a lamp.
He followed it up, found the switch.
Weak yellow light filled the hallway, barely enough to reach the far end.
The ceiling was high and the walls so close together it almost looked like an optical illusion. Grant was struck with a fleeting imbalance, like standing in a funhouse, the proportions all wrong.
The carpeting was thick, burgundy, and old.
The wallpaper peeled in places, the Plaster of Paris underneath far more appealing than the maudlin floral print. Along the opposite wall, a cast-iron radiator belched out waves of heat that did little against the chill. Grant had fumbled down the hallway farther than he realized. The bedroom door loomed straight ahead, its thick frame detailed with scrollwork that matched the wainscoting.
It sounded like Paige had begun to cry down on the first floor.
Johnny Cash punctuated the moment with a muffled rendition of “Ring of Fire.”
Grant’s heart jolted.
He turned to find Don staring down at the wailing cell phone in his hand.
“It’s just Rachel,” Don said.
“I think Paige is crying. I’m going to head back down.”
“Sounds good. Let me deal with this call, and then I’ll handle things up here.”
Grant walked quickly back toward the staircase, secretly glad to be leaving that drafty hallway.
Chapter 10
Paige was curled up on the couch, and as soon as she saw him, she turned away and wiped the mascara stains from her cheeks.
Grant sat down on the hardwood floor at eye level with his sister.
Laid his hand carefully on her shoulder.
“I don’t know how I got to this point,” she said. “You ever feel that way?”
“Absolutely. I’ve had my share of spinouts. All that matters is you’re moving forward. Things are going to get better.”
“I sound like a crazy person.”
“You should’ve seen me a few years back.”
She wiped her cheeks again and rolled over to face him.
“But did you ever feel like you didn’t know what was real?”
He shook his head.
“It sucks.”
“You and I have never been crybabies about anything, but we haven’t exactly lived the nuclear family dream.”
“So?”
“So cut yourself a little slack, all right?”
“I don’t want to be crazy.”
In their entire lives, Grant couldn’t think of anything his sister had said to him—even during her drugged-out ravings—that hit him so hard. It was a killshot, and he could feel his heart breaking as she stared at him. Yet another moment of Paige in agony, and not a damn thing he could do to make it better.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“I’m trying.”
“Will you let me help you get help?”
For a long time, she didn’t say anything. Just stared at him as her eyes glistened with a reinforcement of tears.
At last she said, “I will, Grant.”
He leaned in, kissed her cheek.
The room had grown dark and cold.
All that remained of the fire was a single log with glowing ember veins.
“Is there more wood?” he asked.
“There’s a wrap in the pantry.”
Grant went to the kitchen and dug three logs out of the bundle. He carried them into the living room and dragged away the screen. The bed of coals put out the faintest purple glow.
He arranged the logs on the grate, blew the embers back to life.
The new wood caught easily.
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Grant turned, letting the heat lap at his back as he watched the firelight play across Paige’s face. She looked beyond tired. Like she could sleep for months.
What was taking Don so long? Had he found drugs?
“Remember when we squatted in that abandoned house for a few weeks?” he said. “No electricity. Just a fireplace.”
“Yeah. We burned wooden crates that you found behind a grocery store.”
“Things have been worse than this, Paige.”
“But I don’t look back on that and call it a low point.”
“Seriously?”
“Those were the moments when I knew we’d be okay. Life could get shitty but we were in it together.”
“We’re in this together too.”
Grant heard footsteps on the second floor.
Finally—Don on his way down.
The footfalls accelerated.
Was he running?
Grant instinctively looked up at the ceiling as if he could see through it.
Something crashed to the floor.
A door closed hard enough to shake the walls.
Grant looked at Paige.
She’d sat up, arms crossed over her chest and her face screwed up like she was going to vomit.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Don’t go up there. Don’t leave me.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Grant crossed to the foot of the stairs and jogged up as his sister called after him.
At the top, he rounded the corner.
Stopped.
“Don? Everything okay?”
The table had been knocked over and the lamp lay on its side, bulb still intact, casting an uneasy triangle of light across the ancient carpeting.
Stepping over the debris, he moved quickly down the hall, the darkness growing as he strayed from the lamp.
The door to Paige’s bedroom was still closed.
He stopped in front of it.
Tried the knob.
It wouldn’t turn.
He pounded on the door.
“Don? You okay?”
Nothing.
Grant reared back, on the brink of digging his shoulder into the door, when the bright chinkle of breaking glass stopped him.
The sound had come from another hallway.
He rushed through in near-darkness, and only as he approached a door at the end did he notice the faintest thread of light along the bottom of its frame.
He burst through into a sparse bedroom. The duvet was pristine and the air musty and redolent of a rarely-used guestroom.
“Don?”
A splash of light spilled onto the hardwood floor through a cracked door in the far wall.
Four steps and he was standing in front of it.
Grant pushed the door open all the way with the tip of his boot.
The mirror was shattered, a web of fractures expanding out from the center.
Shards of crimson glass lay in the sink.
Don sat on the floor facing the doorway, his legs spread out, back against the clawfoot bathtub.
He was staring at Grant and holding a piece of the mirror to his own throat.
“Don? What are you doing?”
Don’s eyes looked so strange—roiling with an incomprehensible intensity.
“Don.”
Don spoke softly, “All your life you believe certain things about the world, only to learn how wrong you were.”
“You went into Paige’s room?”
Don nodded slowly. “I looked under the bed.” He shut his eyes fiercely for a second and tears slipped down the sides of his face. “And now it’s in my head, Grant.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can feel it pushing me to … do things.”
“What things?”
Don shook his head.
“Put that piece of glass down,” Grant said.
“You don’t understand.”
“I know who you are, Don. I know your kindness. Your strength. I know that you couldn’t walk into a room, see something, and decide to hurt yourself. You’re stronger than this.”
“You believe that, Grant? Really?”
“With all my heart.”
“You don’t know anything. Don’t ever go in there.”
Grant edged toward him. “Don—”
“Promise me.”
“I promise. Now give me the—”
Tension flashed across Don’s face—a burst of sudden resolve—and then he pulled the glass through his neck.
It was like a velvet curtain falling out of his throat, streams and tributaries branching down his plaid button-up and flooding out onto the checkerboard tile.
“No!”
Grant rushed toward him and ripped the triangle of glass out of Don’s hand. He knelt beside him and held his palm across his friend’s throat, trying to stem the tide, but the cut was too deep, too wide, and smiling from ear to ear.
Don’s eyes were still open but settling more and more with every passing second into a permanent vacancy. His chest barely rising and falling.
“Oh God, Don. Oh, God.”
The man’s right leg twitched.
The quantity of blood inching toward Grant was tremendous.
Don’s jaw worked up and down, but no sound issued except for a soft gurgle in his windpipe.
The change in Don’s eyes was both infinitesimal and epic.
His body sagged to the side, his chest fell, and never rose again.
“Don? Don?”
There was so much blood, and he was gone.
Grant sat down on the toilet.
He put his head in his hands and tried to think, but there was too much competition—too many questions, too much fear and sadness, and a part of him still not fully committed to believing that any of this was actually happening.
Grant shut his eyes.
Walking blindly into murder scenes was a part of his job description, and emotional survival depended upon his ability to detach, no matter how horrific the carnage.
But there was no detaching from this. From what his friend had just done to himself.
Grant stood, and as he left the bathroom, he heard Paige calling up to him from the first floor.
He walked out into the dark hallway, his boots tracking blood across the floor.
Paige’s bedroom door was still closed. Not even a scintilla of light sneaking out from beneath it. Nothing to suggest that a man had just killed himself after leaving that room.
There’s something deeply wrong with this brownstone. On some level, he’d known it the moment he set foot inside, but the knowledge was crushing him now, a wellspring of fear expanding inside of him accompanied by a burning, physical need to leave this place, to get outside. Now.
Grant walked past Paige’s room without breaking stride, turned the corner, descended the stairs.
“Where’s your friend?” Paige asked as he emerged from the bottom of the staircase into the living room. She was still sitting on the couch, her legs drawn into her chest, arms wrapped around her knees.
“We’re leaving,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Get your stuff.”
“Where’s Don?”
“Upstairs.”
“What happ— Oh my God, your hands.”
He’d been in too much of a state of shock to notice—they were covered in blood.
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
Paige didn’t move.
He pulled his North Face off the coat rack and shot his arms through the sleeves.
“Paige. Get up. We’re leaving.”
“What happened to your friend?”
“It doesn’t—”
“Is he dead?”
Grant hesitated, gave a short nod, tears misting in the corners of his eyes.
Paige brought her hand to her mouth.
“We’re not staying here,” Grant said.
“I can’t leave.”
G
rant crossed to where she sat and grabbed her arm, jerking her up from the couch onto her feet and propelling her through the living room toward the front door.
“Stop! You don’t understand!”
“You’re right. I don’t understand the mindfuck I just witnessed upstairs.”
Grant opened the door and pushed her out onto the front porch.
The temperature had dropped and the steady pinpricks of rain had given way to a rare Seattle torrential.
Paige threw her weight into him, trying to claw her way back inside.
“I can’t be out here!” she screamed.
Grant pulled the door shut and held Paige so tightly by her arms that his knuckles blanched.
“We’re going to walk to my car, get inside, and drive away from this house. While we’re doing that, I’m going to call the station and tell them there’s a dead man in your bathroom. And do you know what you’re going to do while all that’s happening?”
The way she stared at him, her eyes glazing, made him wonder if she was comprehending a word.
He went on, “You’re going to sit there quietly and let me handle this.”
Paige dropped her head.
“All right,” she said.
Grant let go of her and started down the steps.
Halfway to the bottom, he heard a shuffle behind him, swung around to see Paige dashing toward the front door.
He went after her.
Paige grabbed the doorknob as he hooked his arm around her waist.
She bucked against him, jutting the back of her head into his face.
His nose and eyes burned and he tasted blood on the back of his tongue.
For a second he stood there dazed, arm encircling her midsection as she tried to wrench herself loose. He bent down, hoisted her up and over his shoulder.
She felt impossibly light.
“Stop!” she screamed, pounding her fists against his back.
Grant carried her down the steps and onto the hexagonal flagstones that comprised the walkway.
With each step, Paige’s thrashing became more violent.
A throb of pain bubbled up behind his eyes, a pressure more intense than the deepest water he’d ever experienced.
Grant stopped, the pain so sudden and vibrant it wiped his focus.
He was completely disoriented, a dull mud unfolding over his brain.
He looked around, standing in the rain with Paige’s now-limp body slung over his shoulder.
Grant took another step forward.
The pressure in his head intensified, like someone turning a crank.