“Kate? Is everything okay?”
“Fine.” The word came out too fast, too breathless. “Everything’s fine. I just wanted to check on him.”
Timmy looked up at me with a smile. “Mommy! Look what we builded!”
“Built,” I corrected automatically, crossing the room to kneel beside him. “It’s beautiful, baby.”
“It’s a castle. For the dinosaurs.”
“Of course it is.”
I pulled him into my arms, hugging him tighter than I should have, breathing in the little-boy smell of him—grass and sunshine and the grape juice he’d had at snack time. He tolerated it for about three seconds before squirming.
“Mommy, you’re squishing me!”
“Sorry.” I let him go, then watched him turn back to his blocks like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t been drawing pictures of the monster in our basement. Like he hadn’t been hearing it knock.
I stayed there for a long moment, crouched on the playroom floor, the drawing crumpled in my fist. My son was fine. Happy. Building castles for dinosaurs with his best friend.
And somewhere beneath us, the thing behind the red door was getting stronger.
The knocking man was happy.
I smoothed out the drawing, looked at those careful crayon eyes one more time, and tried very hard not to scream.
23
ALLIE
The house felt wrong without Stuart in it. He was my father as much as Daddy was. More in some ways. While Daddy was off being dead, Stuart had been the one who’d shown up for school plays and argued with me about curfews and suffered through my most obnoxious teenage years.
And now he was on a plane to Rome, and the house felt emptier. Quieter. Like someone had turned down the volume on everything.
I found Jared in the common room, sprawled on one of the old leather couches with a book he wasn’t reading. Zane sat in the window seat on the far side of the room, as far from everyone else as he could get without actually leaving. He had a book too. Neither of them was turning pages.
“Hey,” Jared said, looking up as I dropped onto the couch beside him. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.” He just looked at me. “Okay, I’m not fine. Stuart just left for Rome, Trevor is dead, there’s a literal doorway to hell in our basement, and—” I stopped. Swallowed. “And I threw astuffed penguin at my best friend’s head and told her to get out of my room.”
“The penguin thing does seem like a low point.”
“It was Mr. Penguin. She gave him to me.” I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Outside, the sky was the color of old dishwater. It had been gray for days now, like even the weather knew something terrible was coming.
Zane hadn’t moved from the window seat. He was watching us, I realized. Not in a creepy way—more like a kid at a new school, trying to figure out where he fit. Or if he fit at all.
The door creaked open, and Mindy stood in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed, her shoulders hunched like she was bracing for a blow. She looked like she’d been crying for hours. She looked the way I felt. “Can I come in?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Part of me wanted to say no. Part of me was still angry—at the things she’d said, at the way she’d looked at me like I was something to be afraid of.
But a bigger part of me was just tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of being scared. Tired of everything. “Yeah,” I said. “Come in.” She crossed the room slowly, like she was approaching a wild animal, then stopped a few feet away from the couch, her hands twisting together. “I’m sorry,” she said, apparently not caring that Jared and Zane were there, both with their heads down as if they were trying to be invisible.
“About what I said,” Mindy added. “I didn’t mean it. Not really. I was scared, and I let the fear make me stupid, and I’m sorry.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve known Jared for years,” Mindy continued, glancing at him. “I never once thought of him—you—as a monster. And your dad is literally one of the best people I’ve ever met, even witheverything he’s been through. I know that. I know the demon stuff doesn’t make you evil. I just?—”
She hiccupped, tears spilling over. “I read about Samarek. About what he’s done. The experiments, the manipulations, the way he twists people. And I got so scared that I forgot who my friends actually are.”
