Amity (16 page)

TEN YEARS EARLIER

DAY 11

THE DREAM IS ALWAYS THE SAME NOW
.

Always a nightmare.

And always the same.

Each night, Jules comes to me, her hair a bloody, blazing halo, flaming nuclear in the dark. She holds one finger to her lips and with the other, she points.

She shows—she
knows
—what needs to be done.

It’s our father
, she says.

He’s the source of the danger in the house, in my blood. He’s the reason for what I am, for what I’ve always been.
He
is the evil.

He must be destroyed.

I sit up straight.
“Destroyed?”

But now that she’s said the word out loud, I know she’s right. I know it’s the only choice, the way to free us all.

Also—and most important, I think—

I know it’s what Amity wants.

Jules lowers herself onto the bed, the sheets leaking dark, clotted blood around her outline. She kisses me firm, her mouth against mine, her lips cold and slick.
You can possess it
, she says.
You can
be
the rage. Free us
.

You can own Amity, even as she owns you
.

She guides me to my bedroom window. The moon glows through the splintered frames of the panes, lighting the Concord River.

I gag. The river runs red again, like it always does in these dreams—these
visions
, are what I think they are, really. It churns, dotted with gleaming stone chips that I think are bones, remains, decaying, diseased bodies, poisoning the water and the earth Amity was built on. The surface of the river bubbles, and my father’s face appears in profile, damaged. Fractured. Ravaged.

In the dream, I know I’m the reason why.

I turn to Jules.

“I
will
.” I swear it to her.

In the dream, Jules’s body is whisper thin, traces of starlight peeking through her nightclothes. Her toes and lips are tinged blue-gray, and when she moves through the dream halls of the house, her feet don’t touch the floor.

Jules guides us down the hallways, her eyes empty as she hovers at the cellar door. She holds a finger to her lips again, quiet again, as solid wood swings open, and we go down.

We’re in the cellar then, but
past
the cellar, and deeper, sucked into the belly of Amity. We’re on the other side of that stone wall, we’ve finally passed right through those enormous, round stones. Hunched in a hideaway, tucked up and sealed off, the earth-lined walls reek of vile, buried things. And even though I’ve never been here in my waking life, I recognize the space right away. I’d always recognize it, I think. It calls to me.

This is the red room.

Amity unrolls a reel of images to me, a bloody movie of her secret history:

A shriveled old man in a tall feather headdress. His face is lined with dark, oily war paint
. He holds his arm up, shakes a stick at me.

I blink.

Not a stick
, Jules says, her breath sticky and too sweet against my cheek.

I look again.

A human bone
.

Bone. Crusted over with crumbling dirt that, I know by the tingle in the soles of my feet, lies right under me, right underneath the red room.

I reach to touch the bone, want to feel its muddy surface with my own fingers, and the image vanishes like a soap bubble.

This was a burial ground, I know. It was where the witches hid, and where the crazies were locked away. It was lots of things, and Amity shows me them all. But the truth is, this space—it’s more than any of those stories. It’s the rotted, black heart of Amity herself. I can feel that truth buzzing in my ears, ringing in my blood. The heart, the power of the red room—it was here before any of those specific moments, and it’s been here ever since.

The red room will
always
be here. And right now it’s here for
me
. Me and Amity, that is.

The movie unwinds:
These are the faces—the souls—that Amity’s claimed
.

Their eyes droop. Their mouths gape. And somehow, I know them all. Witches, yeah. And inmates, sickos beyond help, tossed underground like garbage, chained up in this hidden cave to rot, if they were lucky.

Used for … other things, if they weren’t.

The red room housed witches, yeah. And also sickos, crazies, and criminals … 
And also others
, I think, watching a stray feather float past. Jules catches it in her palm, closes her fingers around it, and smiles at me.

They could channel the elements
, Jules says.
They were here, even before Amity, and they claimed this land as their own
.

And when they died, their magic poisoned the ground below, right to its core
.

“The red room.” It’s the core. And it was meant for me. I was meant to be here. I was meant to be with Amity.

In the dream, in this room, my father’s true,
real
face appears. His eyes are blank, his skull fractured, crumbling away. Here, I can see, very clear—he’s a demon. And he’s filled with rage.

Jules floats up and out, beyond the house again. She rushes me outside, down the slope of our backyard. Her feet leave no marks in the damp grass as she delivers me to the boathouse.

The boathouse
. There are things for me here, by the river. Things for here, where everything rotted and black washes to shore.
Real
things, even in this dreamscape. Gifts, from Amity.

A shotgun. An ax. A shovel.

Jules tells me—
Amity
tells me—I’ll know exactly how to use them. I
will
use them. I have to.

And I
want
to.

In the dream, I see: my father is a demon. Boiling with anger. Shriveled as that old, poisoned shaman. It’s the truth. But.

In the dream, I see:
me
. Amity. The red room, and all of its energy, rooted and reaching out. To me.

I have Amity. I
am
Amity.

And I know, completely, the truth that’s always been, that’s always
there
, sticking to me like a shadow:

The dream, the real, and the
real
-Real? There isn’t any difference between those things. Not for me.

Amity has power. Dad is a demon. Jules must be saved. Those are truths, always, wherever I am.

And there’s another truth, too, that I always carry with me:

Wherever I am?

I’m a demon, too
.

NOW

THE DREAM IS ALWAYS THE SAME NOW
.

Always a nightmare.

Each night, after I close my eyes, horror overtakes me. It wants me.
Amity
wants me. And each night, when I close my eyes, she overtakes me like a gale force, showing me just exactly what she is.

In the dream, I am poised at the dock, the boathouse door banging a steady pulse. A thick, red haze coats the landscape, colors the Concord River a bloody rush.

I shudder, take a breath.

And dive.

Underwater, I open my eyes slowly to discover I’m not alone. The Concord is littered with bloated, pale bodies. They reach for me, these underwater phantoms, wrapping spongy, shriveled hands around me, pulling me beneath,

down, down, down,

and through, into the heart of Amity.

In the dream, a door swings open, revealing:

A secret space, not seen in my waking days. A shadowed, earth-lined room, shallow and dark as a coffin. Hard-packed walls laced with glowing, bone-white patterns that dance, hissing, whispering, singing to me. Showing me in flickering,
flowing images, the true, wrenching history of Amity, of her poison, of her power.

This room was once a safe house
, the specters murmur.
Once, it was a haven for conjurers, sorcerers, and other spirits, masters of the occult
.

Once
.

Waterlogged fingertips brush at my ankles. I choke back a shriek and slap at my skin, my groping hands finding nothing but the pinpoint pricks of my own gooseflesh.

Once, too, it was a madhouse, an asylum for the diseased, the decaying. The ruined
.

Do these voices surround me? Or are they whistling from within my own thorny, unreliable mind?

Somehow I know the answer is: both.

They were locked beneath the floorboards, behind the stone walls of Amity’s cavernous cellar. They were forgotten … or worse
.

A feather materializes, drifting slowly from the ceiling—
through the ceiling, how can that be?
—tousled by a breeze that doesn’t reach my body, doesn’t touch my skin. I open my hand to it and it settles, weightless, on my palm. Instantly, it melts away.

It leaves behind a watery, rust-colored stain that speaks to me of aged bloodstains and other dangerous things.

(she was shot in the head)

I wipe my hand against my hip and the voices return, somehow inside and outside my head in the same instant.

Once, this land, Amity’s earthly terrain
—
once, it was a burial ground, where native spirits spoiled, sour souls seeped earthward, silent and potent, filled with unrest
.

Beneath the house’s baseboards, skeletal remains rattle, clatter, roll. I recognize them—they’re the sounds I hear in my bedroom, in the early witching hours, and they are the figures that reveal themselves to me each night in my dreams. They slither from the walls of the

(red room?)

—yes, this room, the red room, the underground lair, creeping toward me, reeking of rot and filth.

The image from the mirror, the fractured girl, steps forward, emerges like a ghoulish beacon from the haze.

This is what he did to me
, she says, her ruined skull glistening in the flickering light.

He’ll do it to you
.

I close my eyes, shrink in, contract, my heartbeat straining in my throat.

I blink, and I am back in the boathouse, a growing sense of dread creeping up my spine. Outside, creatures howl, mournful, louder than any known being.

The girl from the mirror is still here, suspended before me. Silently, she lifts a pale, translucent arm. She holds one index finger to her lips, and with the other, she points.

The boathouse is littered with boxes, with cases, with caddies and bins and baskets and buckets that rise, bursting through the floorboards, scattering clods of earth in their wake. They unclamp, slide open. She shows me:

A shotgun. An ax. A shovel.

The outline, the photo negative image of my brother—

of Luke—

his eyes alight, his lips drawn back. His head down, but still defiant.

She shows me:

Another outline, another image in negative tones.

A figure in profile—

ragged and ruined, jagged, fractured.

And dream or waking day,

within my mind or from deep beneath Amity:

The profile, I know, is my own.

BEFORE