The answer was no, for the record. If you were reading this with the intention of conquering a haunted house imprisoning a monster, you should enter with the knowledge that the beast inside never sleeps, and you will face it whether you want to or not.
“Let’s just go in,” one of the children decided.
The doorknob began to turn, hope building up from the pit of my stomach to my chest. I smiled, momentarily forgetting that the House on North Lane was an efficient jailor, and its prisoners could never leave.
Deafening thunder crashed the moment the door creaked open, three children in raincoats peering inside with their small bodies huddled together.
I cared little for them, my attention drifting to the haunting mist and torrential rain behind them. I could almost taste the freedom that awaited me.
I made it no more than three steps before tendrils of white mist snaked around my ankles and wrists, lifting me into the air only to slam me back down with a ruthless snap.
The children screamed, staggering backwards into the rain, eyes bulging and skin as white as the blanket of mist chasing them away.
I thought their fear was my doing. But as I rose on unsteady feet, sharp pain tearing down my spine, I realised the children hadn’t seen me at all. Their eyes, instead, had found the mirror. The very one that had cursed me all those years ago, its golden frame now spattered with blood.
Nausea wreaked havoc in my stomach as I watched my face contort into the snarling demon lurking inside of me.
It laughed as blood spilled from the mirror, surging like an open wound, a red bath flooding the entryway.
My fist met the mirror with a shattering crack, the demon’s low, guttural laughter only increasing in volume. Each shard of glass grinned up at me, the devil multiplying as droplets of blood fell from my knuckles and into the pool at my feet.
In the cold darkness, I turned my back to the mirror and limped toward the living room, massaging my bruised knuckles and lower back interchangeably.
A photograph lay abandoned on the floor, edges charred where flames licked at the corners before dying out. It was taken on my fifth birthday, my mother hugging me to her chest, both of us grinning from ear to ear. My father stood beside us, Auden in his arms, their smiles nearly identical.
Crouching down to pick it up, a stray tear escaped my blinking eyelids, the taste of salt on my tongue as I memorised the happiness pouring from our smiling faces. Happiness I would never see again.
I choked on a sob, biting down on my bruised knuckles.
Where had it all gone so wrong?
The House on North Lane, once a symbol of love and family and freedom, now stood as a haunting reminder of the fractured life I once knew.
I would never leave this prison. I was rooted in the very heart of North Lane, the House, the Ghost and the Devil my jailors.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I met the Devil on a Sunday morning.
He was kneeling by the altar, head bowed, hands clasped together in prayer. Flames crawled toward his bare feet, his white suit unblemished while the smoke swallowed everything around us.
Come, Augustus.
I stepped forward, weary. The Devil had only ever worn my face or a veil of darkness, but this version was uncloaked, his features that of a man instead of a distorted boy.
“Is this Hell?” I asked.
What gave it away?
I kneeled beside him, knees pressed against the polished marble floor. Flames danced all around us, an invisible barrier shielding me from its heat.
“The fire.”
The fire,the Devil chuckled.
“Is that the wrong answer?” I asked, risking a glance at the strange figure beside me. His face was hidden beneath a curtainof brown curls, the small curve of his lips the only feature I could make out through the smoke.
No, but it amuses me.
