No one is out there.
But the emptiness feels distorted, as if something has pulled out of the wallpaper to watch them and now crouches just out of sight around the doorframe.
“I spy,” Jude says, “something that goes scritch,scratch.”
scritch
scratch
Elodie starts, shrinking back against the pillows as her heart surgesinto a too-fast gallop.What the actualhell?She stares at the door, willing it to swing wider as Bren waltzes in with an amicable explanation about working upstairs after all.
“Bren?” She raises her voice slightly. “Are you out there?”
“Is not Bren.” Jude sounds pitying at her ignorance. “It’s thehouse. The one in the walls is trying to get out.”
“Jude, that’s enough. You’re being creepy and it’s not fun.” She wants to flatten her hand over his mouth so he stops speaking, but he still seems unconcerned as he clatters tiny cups against tiny saucers.
What one in the walls?she wants to scream, but she can’t give in to this sick little game he’s playing with her.
The door moves an inch. Stops.
Nothing comes in.
“Bren?” A crack fissures her voice.
Stop it, stop being ridiculous, stop letting yourself be unnerved by a child’s fucked-up little game—
The door moves again, another inch.
Her eyes dart to the door again and her breath catches as darkness closes long, elegant fingers around the edge of the wood. Shadows run in rivulets from the tips of sharpened nails as they stretch longer and longer. This is the kind of dark that wakes up, that suffocates.
She catches Jude’s wrist and pulls him to her, but he immediately starts whining before he lunges backward and shouts, “Thump, thump!”
BANG
BANG
Elodie jerks so hard she smashes the back of her head against the dark wood headboard, her cry disheveled, her breathing too fast, her fear flexing fingers round her throat, because there’s something there, there is somethingwrong with this house—
The door flies open.
Elodie screams before clapping her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob.
Embarrassment flares across her cheeks in a dizzying wave and she has to close her eyes, if only for a moment, to reorientate herself.
Bren’s hand is on the doorknob, his head poking into the room as he flashes a hopeful, eager smile. His once-white T-shirt is flecked with old paint and sawdust, his hair is in the tufty, sweaty curls that make him look so winsome.
It’s just Bren.
The sounds, Bren.
The door moving, Bren.
The thing in the house, only Bren.
Why would she think otherwise? He’s literally been working on the house all weekend, though casually rebuffing her offers to assist, because she is now banned from touching his precious walls with her destructive hands.
“Hey,” Bren says. “Are we having a tea party in here?”
