Then, oh, the sound he made in response. It was almost a moan of terror.
And his voice when he spoke again was a haunted whisper.
“Holy shit, why would you say something like that to me?”
“I dunno, Seth. Maybe because you’re my mortal enemy. And also because you broke into my house in the middle of the night. Oh, and finally there’s the fact that a man with the ability to shear through a metal padlock with his supernatural strength shouldn’t be fucking afraid of evil dolls.”
“But Iamafraid. Because you dragged me to that movie where they do all that weird stuff I’ve never been able to forget.”
She thought of it then.
Not just the movie itself, but how it had felt to do things like that with him. Both of them scrunched together in the falling-apart seats of the theatre, popcorn usually forgotten by halfway through. The smell of the aftershave he’d pinched from his dad because he figured it made him seem older than eleven. Those plaid shirts he’d always worn, soft as butter against her cheek.
And sometimes, just sometimes, his hand tight around her own. That little sense that maybe, just maybe, he liked her inthatway.
Though of course she had neverwantedhim to. And she certainly didn’t now.
So she shook herself. She shed that sudden bloom of warmth. Then made herself as snarky and cold as he now required. “I see.So it’s my fault that you’re about to feel them touching your face with their tiny porcelain hands. And biting you with their tiny porcelain teeth. And licking you with their weird porcelain—”
“Cassie, stop, please. Just let me out.”
“I told you, you’re gonna need more than begging.”
He let out a desperate sound. And she could hear him shuffling around down there. Almost like he was pacing. Or running a frantic hand through his hair. Before he seemed to gather himself together. “Okay, okay. How about if I prove that I’m human again?”
“And how are you gonna do that? Pass me a recent DNA test?”
“My phone still has some battery. I could FaceTime you.”
“There’s no signal in here, Seth. Probably because it actually is haunted.”
Another pause, filled with what she suspected was him checking up on what she had said. It certainly sounded like tapping on a screen at any rate. And then there was a huff of frustration, and some further rustling, and what might have been anahakind of sound, before finally, finally, a very breathless Seth gasped out, “I saw a Polaroid camera down here. I think it still works.”
“Well, that’s great, but I don’t know what good it’s gonna do you.”
“Because I could take a snap and slip it to you.”
And okay, she had to concede. That was a good plan.
“Fine. Go ahead,” she said.
Then she heard him thump down, down into that dark space. The one which could actually hold all kinds of horrors now, in a way it hadn’t been able to the night before. Back then it had been spooky, sure. But just a basement. Now it was potentially something else.
Like a portal to another world.
And even though she didn’t like him, it bothered her. She didn’t enjoy hearing him thumping and rustling and wrestling with whatever was down there. Twice he made a sound so stricken she almost called out to ask if he was okay, and only managed to stop herself when she remembered she was not supposed to be concerned about him.
And even then she held her breath.
And she continued to, on and off, until a picture slid through the crack between the trapdoor and the hole it filled, and skittered across the floor. At which point, she tensed up for a whole different reason. Because he’d promised and he’d said and he’d sounded startlingly sincere. But what if it was all a ruse? What if he’d taken a picture of something horrible, as a prank?
It could be, she thought, as she reached for the face-down Polaroid.
Then she turned it over, whip quick, and there it was.
His perfectly normal face, pushed into the goofiest, broadest grin she’d ever seen him make. It was so goofy and broad, in fact, that she could see both of his crooked, too-big-for-his-mouth incisors. The ones he’d never been able to wholly fix with the braces. The ones that had made him stop smiling sometime after he’d gotten the braces taken off, in case smiling gave away that he wasn’t really cool.
But apparently, he didn’t care about giving that away now. He’d even given her a thumbs-up in the picture. As if for this brief moment, her trusting him mattered more.
