Almost.
“What, you don’t like this now?”I thought with a full-on internal smirk, feeling a sudden burst of energy that had nothing to do with the parasite and everything to do with me. It was powerful—dangerous. It was almost fun.
Then I turned to Max, and the hope in his eyes cut through me again.
“I’ll be in touch in, like, a day. Two, tops. You’ve got my number if anything happens, but otherwise I should have something for you super fast. I won’t cash the check until?—”
Max waved that off with a curt hand-slash. “Cash the check. I don’t care about the money.”
I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be okay, Max.”
He stepped back, as if suddenly realizing that he was showing his hand too much. He glanced toward the empty paddock behind the house and shook his head. The breeze caught hiscurling black hair, tousling it. “From your lips to God’s ears.” He sighed.
Laughter welled up within me, low and sneering.You wish.
Still, something seemed a little off with the creature inside me. It didn’t like Max, but it did like this house and whatever was inside the house. It was excited, and angry, and maybe angry that it was excited, and all those feelings were spinning around inside of me, giving me strength and draining me at the same time. It was a thing apart from me, but it was also me, I thought. For all that I’d worked with Mordechai all these years, I didn’t really know what it meant to feel like this. I didn’t want to know.
I was terrified that I knew.
I made it home in three hours flat. Despite my urge to see the place, my desire to help, I was glad to put Max’s ever-so-extremely haunted house behind me. Everything was okay at home—Steve was gone, but he’d left a note saying he’d be out of the house for the night. Probably clubbing or hanging around one of the bars he’d picked up coasters from. It was his thing lately. Either way, I had his number if I wanted to reach him.
I didn’t. Everything was quiet. I needed quiet.
It stayed that way for about another six hours.
Chapter
Fifteen
Ishould have known what was happening because I was hot—too hot. Middle-of-the-summer, high-noon hot. Even though the fans were on and the windows wide open, I could hear the blast of the whirling metal laboring in the humid air. But I flung off the sheets and fell onto the floor, streaming with sweat. The nightmare had been real, immediate, and so in my face that I scrabbled across the floor like some sort of crab creature, yanking open the door so I could spill into the hallway.
It was about thirty degrees cooler in the corridor.
I sagged against the wall in the darkness, feeling like I’d been hit by a bus. Everything everywhere hurt, my skin scraped raw, my joints overstretched. And there was a strange smell I couldn’t quite identify, but was all around me.
The entire rest of the house was stone silent. There was no sound from the neighbors, no sirens blaring outside, nothing that would have woken me up other than?—
A shrill tweeting noise sounded from back inside my room, and I lurched around, staring wildly, trying to make sense of it.
My phone. It was my phone.
Mordechai.I thought the name before I remembered that it wouldn’t be Rabbi Mordechai, couldn’t be him. Ever again. Awave of loneliness so intense it bordered on nausea swept over me as I crept back into my room, flipping on the light. The phone lay on the tan carpet, and the walls smelled like fresh paint.
No, not paint, I realized, finally recognizing the difference. It was the smell of markers. Sharpie markers.
I blinked and stared, bleary-eyed, but there was nothing on the walls.
My phone chirped again.
I reached out and that’s when I saw my arm, really saw it, my arm and my T-shirt, my shorts and?—
Oh,shit.I lunged forward and hauled the phone up, then race-crawled out of the room again, barely stopping myself before I crashed into the wall. Scrabbling around, I flipped on the hallway light. I cast a long glance down the corridor and saw the first Sharpie, lying on the ground with its cap next to it, like an errant child let out to play.
My phone sounded and I swiped it on, hitting the message app.
It’s started again.Max’s text read.What should I do? The horses are the worst.
Beneath his words sat three rounded squares, arrows in their centers. Video clips. The first showed an empty field. The second had caught an image of Max’s mother, Judith. The third showed Sam.
