by Lisa Unger
“Free?”
“Free from fear, from darkness.”
“You’ve seen him again,” guessed Ian.
She nodded, her eyes filling. He took her hand.
“Me too. Let’s go,” he said. “I feel like the only way out might be through.”
She nodded, gave him a weak smile. “That’s what I tell my patients.”
They climbed the creaking stairs and went inside.
9.
Young Matthew shouldn’t have gone back to Havenwood. After the cop, the talk with Grandpa Merle, everything that he’d learned, any smart kid would have stayed far away.
But he did go back.
He dug through the detritus of his dad’s childhood closet. It was filled with junk, ratty sports equipment, an old box of faded baseball cards, team jerseys, a suit. He’d even unearthed once, way in the back, a cracked old bong and a couple of Playboy magazines that must have escaped Penny’s notice. Among the board games, he found what he was looking for, the dusty old Ouija board. He took the flashlight from the drawer in the bedside table. When he heard the old man start to snore, he crept down the hall, down the stairs, and slipped out the back door in the kitchen.
The moon was high and full, lighting his way. He wasn’t afraid; he’d made the journey many times before, long before what Mason had thought was his big reveal. This was Matthew’s property, after all, his family’s land—but maybe in some sense it was Mason’s too. Or had been. Matthew made this trip through the woods to visit the Dark Man, who told him things and showed him things—like a corrupting older sibling who took you to scary movies, or gave you your first cigarette.
It seemed to Matthew that he’d never not known the Dark Man. He’d always been there.
Matthew entered unafraid through the front door of Havenwood, using the flashlight to shine the way down the hall, through the wreck of an institutional kitchen and then down the stairs to the basement.
“Are you here?” he called.
With the lighter in his pocket, he started lighting the candles.
But Havenwood was quiet, just the wind blowing through open doors and cracked windows, making the candlelight flicker. He set up the board. He wanted to talk to the Dark Man.
No one but the Dark Man knew that Matthew had been there the night Mason had followed Amelia. Matthew had heard Amelia’s wish. He, like Mason, had been hiding in the shadows away from the others. And that wasn’t even the first time he had watched a gathering like that, kids yelling their stupid hopes and dreams into the musty air.
Matthew’s parents had dropped him off early that year; they’d been having problems, trying to work it out, needed some space. Matthew finished up his school year remotely at Merle House, doing the work his teachers assigned, sending in papers via email, taking tests with Penny as proctor. Matthew had been there at Merle House for a long time before he’d let anyone know.
Matthew waited in the woods for Amelia to head home that night after she made her wish. He waited because the Dark Man asked him to. And when she came out of Havenwood alone, without her creepy new boyfriend, Matthew followed.
He hadn’t forgotten any of this; it just lived in the same place where nightmares lived. When he was away from Merle House, he was awake. When he was here, he disappeared into its dream.
Nothing happened that final night as he waited.
The Dark Man never came. Matthew felt abandoned. And after a while, he returned to Merle House feeling like he’d lost something that he wouldn’t get back.
Now, Matthew followed Samantha as she moved frantically through the building, down the same hallway he’d walked as a kid, through the same ruined kitchen, the big empty assembly room.
“Why is this place even here?” asked Samantha in distress. “Why wasn’t it torn down?”
“It should have been,” he said.
Samantha froze, looked around, above, down. “I hear her. Do you hear her calling us?”
Matthew strained, but he heard only the clumsy passage of the others, their voices talking.
“I don’t hear anything.”
She ran distressed hands through her wild, dark hair. “Oh my God. Where is she?”
“Jewel,” Matthew called, using his sternest voice. “This isn’t cool. Come out right now. It’s time to go home.”
When he looked at his wife again, she was staring at him in a way that was unfamiliar. He’d never seen her look at him that way before.
“This is your fault,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.
There it was. The anger, the recrimination she’d been bottling up. He’d known it was there, bubbling beneath her steady exterior. It took this extreme moment to bring it to the surface.
“Sam,” he said, lifting his palms.
“I followed you that night,” she said, moving in close. “I’m not proud of it. But I did.”
“What night?” he asked, his stomach bottoming out.
“The night I told the police you were with me. The night Sylvia disappeared. I have that tracking app on my phone? You were with her. With Sylvia.”
He stood frozen, the memories he’d buried deep rushing back, all of them. His mind reeled with the implications.
“I saw you,” she hissed, moving still closer to him until she was just an inch away. “I saw what you did.”
A denial rose in his throat, but it stuck there. He didn’t have a voice as a thick fog descended around him.
10.
In the game, in Red World, you had to be careful whom you trusted. Sometimes the people in the game were your friends, and sometimes they were running a hidden agenda, only revealed when they stabbed—or shot—you in the back. There could be only one winner. And eventually all alliances had to fall away. Jewel had gotten a kind of sixth sense about it after a while. And she was starting to think that maybe Amelia wasn’t as nice as she pretended to be, that she wasn’t exactly a friend.
The fog around them was growing thicker; it was soporific, making her breathing thick, her head foggy with fatigue. And somewhere she heard voices. Once she thought she heard her parents. But the longer and farther she and Amelia walked, the fainter those voices grew.
This place, whatever it was, sort of seemed like the game, a kind of hyperreality, or like the dreams she’d had when she was a kid, those twisting, epic journeys from which it was nearly impossible to wake.
Amelia was just ahead of her as they walked down a hallway that never ended. Sometimes, through the open doors, she saw eyes watching. In the game, she’d kick open the doors and point her gun inside, obliterate whatever lurked there. But she didn’t have any weapons here. Just her instincts.
“Amelia.”
The other girl stopped and turned to look at Jewel. Her eyes were galaxies again, a swirling, starry darkness that hypnotized if you stared too long.
“Where are you taking me?” Jewel managed to make her voice strong like her mom had taught her. No is not a question. Speak your truth loud.
The therapist she’d seen, the one who’d taught her how to control or force herself awake from her dreams, was a nice old man with an eternal sweater-vest and round glasses. He explained that since she had created the dream, she could control it.
You just have to be very strong with your dream self, with the dream. Very firm. It will feel hard to control, but you can do it. It was a small piece of information, maybe obvious to someone older. But it had helped her then.
“I’m leaving,” said Jewel, summoning her strength. “I want to go home now.”
“So do I,” Amelia said, a bit of an edge to her tone. “I want to go home too.”
Knowledge was power; that was something Jewel’s dad always told her.
“I met your sister,” said Jewel. “She’s still looking for you. She never gave up on you.”
Sometimes in the game, if you had something—bandages or an energy bar—that another player needed, you could turn an enemy into an ally.
“I think she’s here now,”
Jewel said. It was true, even though she wasn’t sure how she knew that. “Looking for you.”
“My sister is dead,” said Amelia, tears streaming now.
“Who told you that?” Jewel asked, making her voice soft.
“The Dark Man,” the other girl whispered.
“You said everyone here was a liar,” Jewel reminded her. “He’s the biggest liar of all.”
Amelia looked around, frightened. “Don’t say that.”
“Your sister, Avery, she’s alive. And I can take you to her.”
Sometimes in Red World, you had to pretend to know the way even when you didn’t. Sometimes people followed you just because they weren’t sure which way to go themselves. The game. Her dreams. They were similar. Sometimes you had to take control, or it controlled you.
“The Dark Man said he liked me better when I was young,” said Amelia. “He said I’m used up now.”
Amelia glitched, and she was only bones and rotting flesh; then she was young and beautiful again. Jewel’s heart thumped, but she kept her voice calm. If you freaked out, in the game, in the dream—maybe even in life—you were dead.
“But you,” Amelia said. “You’re fressshh.” The word came out like a hiss, and Jewel felt the cold wash of fear.
She channeled her mom, always calm, always knowing the right thing. “That doesn’t sound like something a friend would say.”
There it was again. The faint sound of her name on the air.
It was her mom, she realized with a little lift of her heart; her mom was close by and calling her.
Jewel reached for Amelia’s hand. “Let’s go home.”
Amelia hesitated a second, then put her hand in Jewel’s, and it was so cold. But Jewel held on tight, and they started to run in the direction of her mother’s voice as the fog around them got thicker and thicker. There was a door, a big glass door at the end of the hallway, and outside the sun shone bright, and green trees waved. How had she not seen that before? She ran for it with all her strength.
But then Amelia’s hand slipped from hers, and Jewel stopped, turned around.
“No!” she screamed.
The Dark Man stood behind Amelia, wrapping her up in his arms and bringing his teeth to her neck. But the door was like a vacuum, a sucking vortex, pulling her away. And Amelia got smaller and smaller, her paleness sinking into the black.
“Amelia!” she called.
But then Jewel was falling and falling into nothing.
11.
Using his flashlight, Ian led Claire and Avery into the basement. When they got down the creaking old staircase, which felt as if it would surely collapse at any moment, it was as if they’d stepped back in time.
Since the last time Ian had been here, he’d grown up, gone off to college, started his ghost-hunting business, met the woman of his dreams, lost her to a heart condition they didn’t even know she had. And now he was back in a place where time had stood completely still. Same graffitied walls, same chalk drawing on the floor. Avery set about lighting the hundreds of candles, and the room filled with a flickering glow.
“It was so long ago,” said Claire. “But somehow I feel like I never left this place.”
“We carried something with us,” he said. “Like a toxin we inhaled that’s been working its way through our systems.”
“Yes,” answered Claire with a whisper. “Like a slow-acting poison.”
“Time to purge,” said Avery.
She’d come to stand in the circle. In the candlelight she looked frighteningly severe, eyes hollowed, tall and casting an enormous shadow. What was she going to do?
“I didn’t get my invitation to this party.”
Ian and Claire spun to see Mason on the stairs. He’d aged terribly—thin and sickly pale, hair thinning, eyes rimmed with fatigue. He looked at least ten years older than Ian knew him to be.
“You guys were always trying to get rid of me,” he said, coming the rest of the way down and standing before them.
“Mason,” said Ian. “Long time no see, buddy.”
Mason gave him a nod.
“You didn’t really like me, but you were always nice to me, both of you,” Mason went on. “I really appreciated that. I work with kids now, so I know how mature you have to be to do that—hang around with a broken kid like me.”
Claire reached out her hand and he took it. “How are you, Mason?”
“If I were doing well, I probably wouldn’t be here,” he said with a mirthless chuckle. His gaze moved to Avery, a frown furrowing his brow. “I’m guessing that’s true for all of us.”
Ian found himself nodding.
“What are you doing, Avery?” Mason asked.
“What I’ve wanted to do all along,” she said, her voice thick. “I’m going to ask the Dark Man for what I want. Now that we’re all here in this place, the time, the energy is right. Like a séance.”
Mason smiled wanly and shook his head. “You don’t need to do that. We don’t need a séance. All the answers are right here. They’ve always been here.”
Both Ian and Claire looked at their old friend, then back at each other. What did he mean?
“Dark Man,” Avery said anyway, her voice deep and resonant. It seemed to ring off the stone walls, and Claire released a little gasp. “I want to know what happened to my sister, Amelia.”
They all stood frozen, Claire weaving her fingers through Ian’s and squeezing hard. The silence swelled; Ian could hear Claire’s labored breathing. The moment expanded, swallowing sound and time. But then it passed. Nothing happened.
“There’s no Dark Man,” said Mason, the candlelight playing on his face. “Not the way you think.”
They jumped as a loud crash rang out above them; then a piercing scream filled the air. A stiff, cold wind flew down the stairs, blowing out all the candles, leaving them all in pitch darkness, frozen into petrified silence.
Ian felt the warmth of Claire’s body as she seemed to sag against him, then fell to the floor.
12.
There’s no Dark Man,” said Mason, the candlelight playing on his face. “Not the way you think.”
But Claire barely heard him, enveloped as she was in the swirling fog, the basement around her disappearing.
Then Claire found herself in the comfortable chair in her office. Outside a light snow had started to fall, but inside, it was warm. She kept the place more like a cozy sitting room so that her patients could relax. More than one had commented on how much they liked the space. The lighting was a soft rose; the couch a lush chenille with velvety throw pillows. She never put any scent into the air—no perfume for her or essential oils in an infuser. Scent could be powerfully evocative and distracting. She tried to keep the space as neutrally comforting as possible. She, too, felt very relaxed here, in control, present.
He lay on her couch, one leg over the other, but considerately keeping his shoes dangling off the end. His arms were folded primly on his belly. He was at ease, staring up at the ceiling with a slight smile.
“Doctor, are you ready to begin?” Claire asked.
“Please call me Archie,” he said easily. His voice was sandpaper, rough and raspy.
“Since my accident, I’ve been doing some research. I’ve figured out a few things,” she said, looking at her notes.
“Oh?”
“Winston Grann,” she said. “He was related to the Granns and the Brandts that have served Merle House and at one time owned the land it’s on. Is that right?”
“Very good, Claire,” he said. “You always were such a smart girl.”
“And you are Dr. Archibald Arkmann, born 1890, died by suicide in 1947.”
He pulled his face into an expression of mock sadness. “Too young, don’t you think? I should have had more time.”
She took a breath to center herself. Outside the wind picked up and snow tapped against the glass. “You hurt and murdered more than twenty children at Havenwood. No one is sure how many,” she said. “You were
a very bad man.”
He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Now, Claire, that’s a matter of opinion. It’s not like you to be judgmental. Those children. They were bad seeds, would have gone on to do unimaginable damage. I liberated them from themselves.”
Claire had researched Havenwood extensively. The stories of torture, neglect, horrific treatments, brutal punishments were the stuff of nightmares. When confronted, Arkmann said, “In some, the darkness is too profound. No light can ever shine bright enough to show the way to wellness.”
“Did you possess Winston Grann? Others before him?”
“Possess? That’s a silly idea for a medical professional. Certainly not scientific.”
She chose not to say anything. You couldn’t argue with certain types of disturbed individuals; they just dug in or raged or went blank.
“Yes and no,” he said after a moment. “The ground must be fertile when the seed is planted. Now, Winston Grann—he was a very bad man. Outrageously dark appetites.”
The criminals she’d interviewed all claimed to have a demon within, voices that told them what to do, voices that made threats and promises, told lies. The clinical diagnosis might be schizophrenia, or borderline personality with psychotic features. But it was also true that many of them came from trauma, abuse, had the genetic code for violence, or a history of mental illness. Not one of them was just a normal man, fine one day, then possessed to do evil things the next. So she took Dr. Arkmann’s point.
She waited a beat, let the words float. Then, “What do you want, Dr. Arkmann?”
“I want what everybody wants,” he said. “To be understood. To be seen. To be known.”
“Why are you chasing me?” she asked.
“I’m not, Claire,” he said gently. “The real question is: Why are you chasing me?”
She felt a rush of defensiveness, was about to protest, but he went on.
“All your research. All those damaged, deranged men. You peered inside their heads, looking for reasons, trying to understand why they did the things they did. But, really, you were just looking for me, calling me. You kept searching, peering into all those broken psyches. You wanted to know if the bogeyman was real. Or if you were the crazy one.”
