Phobic (13 page)

The sky had a red tint that matched the leaves. I heard someone whimpering, and I kicked through my leaf pile with a scabby knee and rounded to the sound, only to find Todd behind a prickly bush, crying.

“You okay?” I called, peering around the pokey branches.

Todd’s head snapped up. A smear of freckles dotted across his nose, and coils of black hair toppled into his eyes.

“What do you want?” he asked, scuffing a hand across the tears on his cheeks.

I pressed myself against the rough brick and sank to the dirt beside him. I didn’t say a word.

Todd sniffed. “Pace sucks,” he blurted.

“Your brother?”

“My parents just love him.
Pace, have a new shirt. Pace, stay up past nine. Pace, wipe our butts.
So what if I’m not as old as he is? I should still get to go to Disneyland with our cousins.”

He kicked the bush, sending a sprinkling of berries around us. I flicked a stray leaf off my thigh.

“Come here,” I said after thinking it over for a few seconds. I took his hand and dragged him out from the bush.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere just for you. It’s not Disneyland, but I still think it’s fun.”

I led him through the catacombs of flowers and past the skeletal white gazebo. I drew back a drapery of vines that clung to my house, to reveal a solid chunk of gray siding.

“But—”

“Watch this,” I said. A small square of wood switched back under my grip, like the metal slide cover of a key slot. The opening displayed a flat latch. At my grip, a doorway of siding cleft open with a low whine.

“Wicked!” Todd said with a bright grin on his tearstained, freckled cheeks.

Cool air teased my skin, and I took Todd’s hand again. The wooden walkway was cramped and cold, bare of anything but concrete under our feet. I shut the door and left us in blackness, except for the slivers of light peeking through the old servants’ entrance a few feet away.

“This is how servants would get right into our kitchen,” I told him. “Or so my Dad says. But it’s our space now. Friend space.” I captured Todd’s toothy smile with my own. “Now you have something Pace never will.”

Todd’s grin widened directly across from me, since back then we were the same height. He squeezed my hand, and my nine-year-old tummy curled.

We sat in that dark space between outside and inside. It was almost like we suspended reality. For those few minutes,
we
had control. But the real kicker for me was when he asked The Question:

“Do you miss your mom?”

I stared at my knees and the rhinestones on my shoes. I knew then that he knew the truth about her. He knew, and he was still in a secret passageway, alone with me. Something unbreakable strung between his soul and mine that day. I rested my head on his shoulders and put my arm around him, and we both grieved through our different tragedies.

The sun bounces off the glass from the windows of my house now. The same change I felt at school earlier prods me. I won’t hide. Not this time. I steal a glance to the street behind me before making my way to my front door.

“I’m done being scared,” I say once I’m inside. “Not knowing what’s going on.” To the chandelier dangling above the entryway; to the stairs branching off the side; to the whole place. “Do you hear me? I’m
done
!”

A heavy slam comes from the library. The same fear I felt as a child rushes back, but I shove the mass down in my chest. There’s a reason this is all happening, and the inexplicable feeling that the answers are hidden behind that door in the library won’t shake.

“No more fear,” I say to myself, marching straight through the glass double doors.

Two levels of floor-to-ceiling books rise on either side of me, surrounding dark leather chairs on the rug in the center of the room. A single volume lies on the floor just behind one of the chairs, and I get the image of a drowned body, floating facedown in the water. Chunks rise in my throat, but I force each step until the hardback and I are inches away from each other.

A shudder pours through, ruffling the books in a room-length wave of air. Spines shake on the shelves, sounding like a stampede of hooves as the wind whooshes its way along each wall in circular fashion, juddering the books as it passes, leaving silence in its place. It happens in an instant.

I can’t run. I won’t run.

“What are you hiding?” I ask the walls. “
What are you hiding
?”

My eyes throb, and I can practically see my father towering over me.
Under no circumstances is this door to be opened, do you understand? Never open that door. Even
I
never open this one.

I cross the rug in three steps and reach for the brass knob. My hand feels like it has a fifty-pound weight attached to it, but I push against the resistance. The doorknob rattles, and I double over with a gasp, but manage to turn it.

The door opens, ripping at me, a human-sized waxing strip all over my body, snagging every hair follicle. I keel over, screeching from the sensation that isn’t quite painful, just incessant. Something collides with my frame and it hums from the reverberation.

“Piper,” says a girl’s soft voice, making my bones jump in my skin. I whirl around, glance leaping from books to chairs, to the window, and back to the open door.

I steel myself enough to look. Steps climb, boxed in and blocked at the top by a wooden ceiling. A low laugh rides on the air, and then a gust knocks into me like a glacial current. The cold flurry fills me with needles. It pricks from the inside before sending me flat on my back. I hit the floor.

The impact makes me shriek like I’m being attacked from behind. My muscles constrict all over, my fingers grapple the wood beneath me on either side. I press my head—my whole body—harder to the wood, never wanting to move, to breathe. The humming sensations won’t stop.

“Joel!” I shout, though I know my brother isn’t even here. I stare at the second level of shelved books, sitting there with their secrets. And I appeal to the house.

“Help me!” I order, though I’m not sure how it can.

My gut settles, and I get the feeling.
Close it. The door.

Stomach in a tight wad, I roll and rise to my hands and knees. Something doesn’t want me nearing that knob. The air has congealed, and I have to slog through it. Skin crawling the entire time with icy prickles, I push through the pressure. I raise a trembling hand, slam the door shut and sink to the rug.

Though the door is closed, the image burns my mind. A staircase. Leading nowhere.

The strength leaves my body, and I sag to the floor once more.

I blink a few more times, trying to focus. A chandelier dangles above me, each of its crystals pointing down like sparkling daggers. The rich smell of leather is strong from the armchair beside my head.

My limbs quiver like taut strings recently plucked, and I cling to the chair, pulling myself up. The library appears undisturbed, as if nothing happened. I wait for the velvet curtains to sway, for the walls to creak, but only stillness answers. The house knows what I did—it has to know. So why the silence?

And the door…The thought alone conducts tiny jolts through me like corn kernels popping under my skin. The carved, circular designs on it stare back at me like weird, sideways eyes.

I have to force my brain to focus. Thoughts whirr and spin—no, it’s more like they’re bickering in my head, trying to chisel an opening out of my skull from the inside.

What was with the door? I should never have opened it. I should have listened to my dad. I wipe my palms on my jeans and stagger to my feet. I need to talk to someone. It’s time to find Todd.

I hurry back to school in time for the final bell to ring. My heart nearly bursts from my chest at the sight of him coming out of his English class. He swaggers, his hair slightly poofy and curling past his ears and down his forehead. His warm eyes light when they see me, and the sight zings my insides.

“Hey, Pipes, where did you disappear to earlier? I looked for you at lunch.”

I snatch his wrist and drag him through the throng of students and into the cubby-like opening beside the stairs leading up to the wrestling mats above the gym.

“You okay?” he asks with concern.

I pace the small space. My fingers weave and bend the others. I wipe them on my jeans.

“I set out to prove something, Todd,” I start, because I don’t know what else to say. “Only now I think I’ve made things worse. I need help.”

Todd puts his steady hands on my shoulders to hold me in place. I wring my hands while sweat clams in my palms. “Hold up. What’s going on?”

“You want answers? My house is alive,” I say, glancing around to make sure it’s just the two of us. I look up to the high ceiling, half expecting to hear my house complain from blocks away, or for lightning to strike in the middle of my school. To my relief, nothing happens.

“Uh—okay. Alive, as in…?”

I stare at the stripped metal peeking out through the stair rail’s white paint.

“As in it was built in the 1800s but there’s never once been any repair work done. I mean,
ever
. And it still looks brand new. The sinks, the floors, the stained glass windows above the doors—all original from when it was first built. Nothing has ever been replaced.”

Todd bites his bottom lip and meets my gaze. “How can you know that, if it’s so old?”

“Because I’ve seen it! I’ve seen it heal itself. One time I slammed the door open too hard, and the knob chunked into the wall. Seconds later, the wall was whole again.”

He’s going to think I’m cracked. But I have to talk to someone, and my mouth is too open to shut it now.

“Alive.” He repeats the word like it’s a confession.

I clench. Is he…is he buying it?

I take the opening he gives me. “Alive as in I can talk to it and it will creak back to me. Alive as in it cleans itself—”

“It’s not a cat, Piper.”

“—and it has all the original furniture that it started with. Pictures, knickknacks, everything.”
Alive, as in it attacked you last night
.

I wait. For him to tell me I’m silly or stupid. But instead he leans near me. I sense his heat, and a prickly zipper cinches up my insides.

“Is this about your mom?”

I step back. “What?”

“I heard what’s been going around. Did you—have you visited her or anything?”

I wonder if that’s how he thinks word got out. I shake my head, although tightness thickens in my throat. “You know my dad forbade it a long time ago. Just like he forbade me to open that door.” After a pause, I wail, “Todd, what have I done?”

“What do you mean
what have you done
?”

I meet his earnest expression. I don’t see how I can tell him when he doesn’t believe me about my house. I have no printed data for him to analyze, no textbook to confirm the facts.

Silence hangs between us. Agonizing, hair-tearing silence.

Todd shuffles to the gym door. The empty bleachers gape at me, but I keep my gaze on his back. He rests a hand on the long silver latch and speaks over his shoulder. “You better go get your clarinet. We’re gonna be late.”

That’s it?

I clamber to his side and search his burnished eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”

Please believe me. Please, Todd.
Please.
After begging for the truth, he
has
to.

He turns away with a sigh. “I’ll meet you at my truck.”