But maybe Nellie didn’t think the girls could understand what was underneath her words, because she tried to speak to them. She tried to whisper to them, so that the adults couldn’t hear. She was—though they didn’t know this word—trying to seduce them, to get them on her side.
And it scared them. But being scared made them angry, so they pushed back.
Only a little at first, but then, soon, as hard as they could. Harder than they’d ever dared to push. Harder than they even thought they could push. It was like pushing against a wall made of fire, and at first the wall pushed back, but Ruth and Rose held hands and reminded each other that they loved each other and they loved their mother and they loved their father and they loved Aunt Emily and they loved Uncle Billy, and they pushed and they—
And then Nellie was gone.
One moment there was a wall of fire, and then nothing.
Ruth rubbed at her nose. There was a slight trickle of blood. She looked at Rose. Rose had a headache. They were tired. But they were okay, and Nellie was gone.
For now.
The girls suddenly realized that the adults had gone quiet. Shawn was staring at them.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“We told Nellie to go away. We don’t like Nellie. She’s lying.”
Aunt Emily looked scared. “I could feel them doing it. It felt like, I don’t know, static electricity.”
The girls didn’t say anything.
Shawn seemed to be thinking. Finally, after a few seconds, he said, “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
Rose squinted at him, bit her lip. Why was he lying? “No it’s not.”
He looked taken aback. “What?”
“Don’t lie to us. Nellie’s a liar. You don’t need to lie, too. You don’t think it’s going to be okay, do you?”
“No. No. I’m sorry. I don’t,” he said. “Can you tell me, how did you get her to leave?”
The girls spoke as one. They tried not to, because they knew it made adults feel uncomfortable, but sometimes it happened. “We pushed her away.”
Shawn glanced at Beth and Rothko and then back to the twins. “Is she still in the building?”
“Downstairs.”
“Is she coming back?”
“Of course.”
“Can you make Nellie do what you want? Could you make Nellie leave the building entirely? Or just open the doors?”
They shook their heads. Rusty was curled up at their feet, oblivious to everything, sleeping. He was tired from running around outside in the snow. They were tired, too.
“Oh.” Shawn exhaled, a balloon out of air. “Okay.”
The grown-ups huddled close to one another, talking once again, their voices a quiet murmur that drifted over Ruth and Rose as they sat on the couch. The two girls snuggled together and closed their eyes. There wasn’t anything they could do anymore. All that was left was to sit and wait.
FORTY-ONE
* * *
REBOOT
Shawn didn’t have the energy to tell Rothko that he was wasting his time with his cell phone. Like everything else, of course, Nellie had control over the cell tower. Rothko might as well have been speaking into a brick. They’d been up in the Nest for fifteen minutes now, maybe a little longer. Long enough for him and Emily to tell Rothko and Beth the basics, for them to get furious, and then scared, and then angry again, and finally, resigned to their fear. It was long enough for Ruth and Rose to do whatever it was that had chased Nelly out of the room.
He wanted to ask the twins to try again, to see if they could chase her out of the building, but they’d said they were done, and they looked it. They were sitting quietly. Their eyes were closed, but he thought they were still awake.
What had he done? What had he gotten them all into? Ruth and Rose were only seven, and Beth and Rothko were only names to him, people he’d heard about from Emily when they were dating, but had never met. In some ways, he felt like he knew them, from all the times Emily had talked about her sister and Rothko back in those glorious months when he and Emily were in love, before Billy went and . . .
No. He had to be honest about it. He had to stop blaming Billy. He had made his own choices. He’d burned plenty of bridges on his own. Burned other things, too.
He looked at his hands, almost expecting to see blood on them.
Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone? What was it that made him come back here? What kind of sick hold did this place have on him? The first time he’d left, an orphan, he’d sworn he’d never come back, but he had. Twice. He’d come back here twice, and both times it had ended in disaster.
Emily and Beth and Rothko were at the table. He was sitting alone on a stool at the counter.
Outside, the skies had lost all restraint. Snow came down in heavy, blowing blankets. There was no hope of seeing the Saint Lawrence, no hope of seeing anything outside the windows. Even if they could get outside, there was nowhere for them to go. Without a plow, the roads were probably already impassable. They were trapped in a box.
Like Wendy.
Poor, poor Wendy.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He wanted to throw it against the wall, to smash it, to burn it, but in the end, he just put it down on the counter.
Why? Why? After the fire, when he went to live with Aunt Bev, he’d promised himself that he’d never come back to Eagle Mansion again, never let that foul, hulking building shadow over him. He should have made Aunt Bev sell the land, or, when Aunt Bev died, he should have sold it himself. But no, he couldn’t do that. By the time Aunt Bev died, he was Shawn Eagle, and Shawn Eagle could do anything. What hubris! What pride! How could he have thought he would ever be able to build over the evil of this place? Evil had a pernicious ability to grow again and again, a dangerous flower that always bloomed. Nothing good had ever happened in Eagle Mansion. Only bad things happened here. Except for the fire. The fire was a good thing.
Wasn’t it?
He closed his eyes. He could smell the sulfur of the match.
He’d hidden for hours from his father’s drunken yells, and finally, deprived of the opportunity of beating his son, Simon Eagle had turned on his wife.
He should have let his father catch him, Shawn thought. Maybe then it would have been enough.
No. He knew that wasn’t true. For nearly two years his father had been dry, and that very last night, when he’d come home drunk for the first time in a long time, carrying more beer so now that he’d started drinking he wouldn’t have to stop, Shawn had understood that he’d been right to shake off his mother’s reassurances and to fear his father’s continued presence. It was always going to come to this, Shawn had thought. Always.
He’d hidden in the cellar. His father didn’t look there, aware that Shawn was afraid of what lay beneath Eagle Mansion. But he was more afraid of his father. He stayed hidden, in the dirt and the dark, listening to the sound of his father’s knuckles hitting flesh, his mother screaming. And, after a while, his mother stopped screaming, but there was still the sound of his father beating on her.
He was too afraid to move. Too afraid to help his mother.
A coward.
He let her take the beating that should have been his.
He stayed hidden until things had gone quiet, until he was absolutely sure his father had drunk himself into a blackout. When he’d come out, the very first hints of light were coming through the windows.
His mother was on the floor, next to the bed. He put his hand on her back. She was cold. Even at twelve, he knew. This wasn’t his mother anymore. It was just a body. A bloody pile of bones and flesh in his mother’s clothes.
He was as quiet as he could be, pulling the container of kerosene out and pouring it around the bed, on the bed, making sure not to spill it on his father until he was ready to light the match. He was so quiet. So careful. And then, when he was ready, in one quick motion, he dumped the rest of the kerosene on his father’s sleeping body, struck the mat
ch, dropped it on the bed, and ran.
He squeezed his eyes closed even more tightly. God. He was crying. But that had been a good fire. It had been a cleansing fire.
He should never have come back here.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
He should have left the mansion and all the outbuildings to rot. Let the trees grow, the grasses and brush spread over everything. He should have left Eagle Mansion and all the land to go to seed. Left it to memories.
He heard Emily gasp.
Shawn opened his eyes and saw Billy standing in the entrance of the living area, at the top of the stairs, grinning like a ghoul. He was sweating, his hair matted down, and he was swaying a little, but that wasn’t what caused the gasp. It was the blood. Billy’s shirt was soaked in blood, his pants covered, too. Billy had wrapped layers and layers of gauze around his left hand, but that gauze was drenched and leaking, the blood falling to the floor in a steady drip, drip, drip.
Billy held up his hand. “I couldn’t get it out. There are wires everywhere.”
Shawn stood up. “What did you do?”
Billy let his hand drop. “What did I do? That’s rich, Shawn, coming from you.” In his good hand he was holding a bottle—booze, Shawn realized—and he lifted it up and took a straight shot.
“Oh my god, baby. Oh, Billy.” Emily grabbed a dish towel and started wrapping it around Billy’s hand. She looked around wildly. “Nellie! Nellie! Please, Nellie. We need to get him to a hospital.”
Shawn was incredulous. “You’re drunk?”
Emily turned fiercely on him, but before she could say anything, Billy was laughing.
“My god, Shawn. That’s what you care about?” He looked at Emily, who was cradling his bandaged hand against her chest, trying to raise it to stop the bleeding. “I’m sorry,” Billy said. “I am. I’m sorry that I’m drinking. I’m sorry for everything. I messed up. We messed up. Shawn and me. We shouldn’t have . . .” He stopped, his face crumbling from laughing to crying. “You deserved better, Emily.” He reared back and then flung the bottle against the wall. Beth screamed, and the twins pulled closer together.
“Forget this,” Shawn said. “Forget all of this.”
He grabbed the stool and carried it with him to the top of the stairs and then down the stairs. At the landing on the third floor, the frosted glass doors that gave the Nest privacy from the rest of the mansion were closed.
“Open the doors, Nellie! Open the doors!”
They didn’t move, and he swung the stool as hard as he could. He thought, just for an instant, that it would shatter the glass, that he’d be able to walk down the stairs to the entrance of Eagle Mansion, break through those doors, too, and leave, but the stool just bounced off the glass without leaving a mark.
He swung again, and then kept swinging, over and over again, like he was chopping firewood.
Like he was swinging a maul.
He didn’t know how long he had been smashing the stool against the glass, but by the time he stopped, his muscles were sore, his hands were raw, and he was out of breath. There was a smudge on the glass, a few chips, like a pebble makes on a windshield, but that was all.
He turned, and behind him, on the stairs, Rothko, Emily, and Beth were spread out and watching, and even Billy, whose face had turned pale—the ghoulish grin now a look that appeared more cognizant of what was facing them—was standing there.
“I’m sorry,” Shawn said. “I just thought, you know, if we could get down from here, there might be a way out of here that isn’t controlled by Nellie. We could go from the main hall to the dining room and then the kitchen. There aren’t any doors for her to close, and then there are stairs down into the cellar. We could go through the cellar and get out through one of the outbuildings, maybe. It’s a maze, but maybe.”
“The cellar.” Billy nodded, and then he turned even paler. He sat down hard and suddenly on the steps. He still had the dish towel wrapped around the outside of the gauze, and for now, the blood seemed to have stopped dripping.
“The cellar. We just have to get through these doors.” He started to laugh again. “Except, we can’t get through these doors. She’ll never let us out.”
Beth was two steps above Emily, and she reached out and touched her sister. “I don’t understand. If this is all about Emily, why can’t she just make Nellie open the doors? Wouldn’t that be the solution?”
Billy’s head hung down, and his voice was quiet enough that Shawn had to struggle to hear. “There’s no solution.”
Shawn saw Emily glance at Billy and then at him, and then she turned and walked back up the stairs.
He picked up the stool and held it up, ready to swing it again, but then he put it back down. It was pointless.
FORTY-TWO
* * *
ERASURE
Ruth and Rose were sleeping on the couch when she came back into the living area. Emily grabbed one of the serrated paring knives from the kitchen and then headed back to the stairs. Shawn was sitting on the stool now. Billy on the stairs. Her sister and brother-in-law huddled together.
“Beth, Rothko, do me a favor and go back upstairs and get the girls. They’re sleeping, and if you can’t wake them, you’ll have to carry them. Make sure Rusty comes, too. I’m getting us out of here. Right now. Hustle.”
Beth looked at her, scared at seeing the serrated knife in her right hand, but she listened to her sister and turned to go get the girls. Rothko hesitated, but he followed his wife.
“Emily.” Billy reached up with his good hand and touched her hip. “What are you doing?” He was slurring his words, and for a moment she felt a surge of anger that he’d been drinking, but then she realized it wasn’t the booze: it was the blood. He needed to get to a doctor. There wasn’t time to waste.
“I’m going to see how much Nellie wants to make you happy. If I’m what matters, well, I’m going to force Nellie’s hand. You said, as long as I’m here, there’s no solution.” She went and sat down on the bottom step. “I’m going to make Nellie decide how important it is to make at least one of you happy. This is going to suck, so do me a favor, move quickly.”
She didn’t wait for Billy to respond or for Shawn to figure out what she was about to do. She just did it.
One deep, slashing movement, elbow to wrist.
FORTY-THREE
* * *
CUTTING THE KNOT
Billy could feel himself drifting away. He was trying to speak to Emily, to get her to understand that it wasn’t just Nellie anymore, that Nellie was Nellie but something more. There was Emily, but there was also . . . It was too complicated. He was so tired. He wanted to just lie down and sleep.
When she slashed her arm open, he tried to go to her, but he couldn’t rise.
Shawn went to her, though. Of course he did.
That asshole. He’d been right. It had always been about this. It had always been about Emily. He should have known when he first stood in Shawn’s palatial office—his temporary office while his new empire was built—that it was never just about Nellie. It was always about getting Emily back.
That first impulse, to smash Shawn’s face in. He should have done it.
Shawn stripped off his hoodie and tried to wrap it around Emily’s arm.
“No,” she said. She was gasping and clearly in pain, the knife still in her good hand, but her cut arm was down at her side, the blood flowing freely. “Don’t you see? If this is all about me, if I’m the ghost in the machine, I have to force her to choose.”
Shawn reached for her bleeding arm again, but she menaced him with the knife.
“Jesus, Emily.”
“I’m serious, Shawn. Let’s see what she does.”
Behind him, Billy heard footsteps and then Beth. “Oh my god! Emily.”
“Stop.” Billy was surprised to hear his own voice. It sounded faint, distant to him. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. “Just stop. She’s right. You get it, don’t you, Shawn? Here you and I are, thi
nking we’re so smart, thinking that we can play god with Nellie, so patronizing when we try to explain to Emily what we’re doing. It’s more complicated than that. Right? Isn’t that what I always say to you?” He nodded at his wife, trying to smile and struggling, trying not to cry, and struggling. She nodded back, and he knew he was losing at least one of those struggles.
“It isn’t more complicated than that.” He looked at Shawn now. “Not even a little bit. It’s deadly simple. Can’t you understand? We’re in this mess because we created a monster in our own image. Nellie’s just doing what we want by keeping us locked up in here. She’s decided that by keeping us in here, neither of us can lose Emily.”
He realized he was shouting now, but he couldn’t help himself. “One or zero, right? One or zero? If we leave, Emily has to choose you or me. Emily is trapped in here now because Nellie doesn’t want to let her make the choice, but Emily’s turned it around. Nellie has to make the choice now. If Nellie doesn’t let us out of here, Emily dies, and then we’re both going to lose her. Nobody wins.”
Shawn shook his head. “Nellie wins,” he said. “Maybe in the pure world, where it’s just Nellie as we created her, but can’t you see that it’s more than that? Nellie doesn’t care about making us happy anymore. You say nobody wins, but Nellie wins. In every version of this, Nellie wins. This isn’t about Emily. This isn’t about you and me. It’s about me, about my family, about the history and the blood and . . .”
Billy was so tired. Tired of all of it. “You think everything’s about you, Shawn, don’t you?” He looked over at his wife. Her head was hanging down now. She looked frightened.
Billy was frightened, too. The blood had soaked through the towel on his hand now, and he could feel it dripping through, on his leg, making a puddle on the floor. How much blood had he lost?
How much blood had Emily lost?
Beth and Rothko were each carrying one of the girls. Each girl had her head on either her mother’s or father’s shoulder, arms wrapped around a neck, legs wrapped around a waist. Rusty skulked behind them. One of the girls—Ruth, Billy thought—raised her head.
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