Amity (22 page)

The banging of the shotgun
.

The shrieking, the shouts and screams
.

Angry, gnarled phantom fingers, grabbing and prying at my flesh
.

The room flickered like a projection in the midst of readjustment. I could sense the shift in the atmosphere, the charging of particles. I could see, quite clearly, a hazy crimson curtain pass over the underground space, could make out the glimmer of a scarlet glow from beneath a crack in the wall, where stone met earthen floor.

“There.”

The phantom voice was ragged. My heart rattled against my ribs. From under the wall’s crack, the fault line, a slip, a scrap of paper peeked out at me. I moved toward it, tugged at it, tried to pry it free. The stone above it jiggled, showering a small dust storm down.

I leaned forward and sneezed, pulling the stone loose. Through the gaping space it left behind, I saw the corner of … 
something
. Some kind of folder? A binder, three-ring style?

“Yes.” Yes
, the voice was saying;
yes
, there was something there; and,
yes
, I was meant to find it. To unearth it. With only the slightest hesitation, I set about loosening the stones on either side of the fresh opening, sifting, raking at the dirt with my fingers until the object was clear to me.

It
was
a binder. Overstuffed, caked with dirt and moldy stains.

“This is where it begins. This is where it happens. This is where it always
will
happen.”

Always
, I thought, my gorge rising.

I fished the binder out.

IT SEEMED LIKE A SCRAPBOOK
, filthy white plastic, cracked at the corners and covered in mud. It reeked of decay, of the particular dead-body rot I’d come to know from my dreams.

Opening the book sent a frisson through me, an electrical charge that I felt in a tight band across my forehead. It was filled with irregular bunches of papers, some yellowed with age, some crisp, folded-over, choice phrases traced in alarmred, accusing underline. Hole-punched newspaper articles, blurred and worn and fraying, and other clips, photo album pages with clear laminate skins curling up at the edges.

Memigassett
, I read.
Burial rituals. Nexus of power
.

It was documentation, I realized, of all I’d seen in my waking dreams.

But where had it come from?

(the red room)

The thought was there, then gone again. But, yes, that was what lay beyond the stone barriers of Amity’s basement. The red room. That was what I had seen, at night, time and time again.

“Yes.”

Still the voice remained disembodied, though I felt breath
against my shoulder, sensed the ruffle of air, of an arm’s reach around and past me.

The scrapbook pages ruffled—on their own?

No, not on their own, Gwen
, I knew.
You are not alone in Amity
.

A headline, bold and dark as a gunshot:
THE CONCORD RUNS RED AGAIN: FAMILY SLAUGHTERED AT AMITY
.

The date was ten years past. There was a picture, too. Blurry and unreliable, but chilling nonetheless.

It was a photograph of a boy just about Luke’s age. It
wasn’t
Luke—
that
I could see,
that
my poisoned, addled mind knew incontrovertibly—but this boy’s eyes held the same dead, flat haunting look that my brother’s had of late.

(this is where it always happens)

There was a sticky note superimposed toward the bottom of the clip. I recognized the handwriting, identified the green, rounded script as Aunt Ro’s.
Curse?
she’d written.
Ten-year cycle?

Land = danger?

Had she brought this information with her on her visit? She must have. How it had ended up in this scrapbook, hidden
inside
the red room, I couldn’t say for certain.

But I thought it had to do with Luke.

“Yes.”

Another breath, another sigh, another turn of the page. More pleading missives from Ro addressed to my mother but never delivered, clearly. And over that, something else, something that sent shock waves through my bones, that made my toes tighten and flex.

Heavy, dark, angry scrawls, the impression of the pen nearly bursting through the paper.

NSIZEGW
. The lettering peaked into jagged points, accusing arrows.

The handwriting was Luke’s. But a mad Luke, a Luke not in his right mind.

“Eyes
,
”
I heard. “
It means
eyes.”

Eyes
, yes: below the lettering, Luke had sketched a side view of Amity herself, her winking side windows peering out, searching, surveying the landscape … like eyes.

And beneath that:
3:14
.

IT WAS THE FRANTIC SHRIEK OF THE TEAKETTLE
that pulled me back to the present, startling me from the siren-lit shadows of the cellar. Without thinking, I dropped the scrapbook

(where did it come from?)

and rushed upstairs.

It took me a full moment, a complete breath in and out again, to realize the kitchen floor was wet.

Wet and warm, a puddle pooling out from the center of the room where Luke stood, a stream spouting from the mouth of the silenced kettle he now held in his hands. It splashed at the tops of his feet, flushing the skin a raw, protesting red.

I screamed.

Immediately, my mother appeared. “Luke!” She wrestled the kettle from him on impulse, then realized how utterly white-hot it was. She dropped it to the floor with a loud clang, shrieking herself.

“I’ll get something,” I said, shock giving way to action. I raced to the freezer to pull out something, anything at all.

Luke seemed numb as Mom walked him to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair for him to sit on, and another on which she propped his scalded legs. He blinked as I draped a bag of frozen peas across one, and a supermarket-sticky
broccoli blend on the other, but didn’t say anything.

And he didn’t seem to feel any pain.

“What were you doing, Luke? What happened?” Mom asked, her voice uneven. I imagined my own history of skittish, unexplainable behavior had increased her sensitivity. But she didn’t expect this sort of thing from Luke, obviously.

The only sound in the room was the intermittent pulse of the last remaining drops from the kettle, and my own confused, labored breathing. Finally, Luke tilted his head. He bent forward, retrieving the bag of broccoli from his leg and examining it with curiosity. Where the bag had been, his skin was raw, pink, and puffy.

His gaze skated over me, past me, and beyond, not taking me in—not taking
anything
in. “I really should go. Too much to do. Shovel’s in the boathouse.”

Mom’s mouth dropped open. I frowned.

(where did the scrapbook come from?)

(shovel’s in the boathouse)

(this is where it happens, Gwen)

He stood, letting the frozen vegetables splat wetly against the floor.

He left the room without another word.

MY MOTHER DIDN’T MEET MY EYES
as she rose and replaced the vegetables in the freezer. I wondered if she, too, had been disturbed in her sleep by visions or unsolicited visits from the shadows and ciphers that clung to Amity’s dank, rotted corners.

I wondered what she would say if I showed her the scrapbook I’d found.

Or the passage to the red room.

I wondered, but knew better than to ask.

Instead, I called Aunt Ro.

TEN YEARS EARLIER

DAY 17

BY MY THIRD WEEK IN AMITY, MY DREAMS WERE ALL REGULAR ENOUGH
that they didn’t feel so much like dreams anymore. They were more like some kind of streaky, heavy trip, one that lasts way too long.

They were actually sort of fun.

I learned to expect them. And from there it got so I was like maybe even
craving
them. Like whatever was happening in the dreams, whatever energy I was pulling from the house, I mean, it was building me up.

Something was happening to me in those dreams. Something powerful. Powerful, and dangerous.

Amity was showing me—she was
telling
me—because she was trying to rile me up, like. Showing me, like I say, my father’s true nature.

My father’s true nature, and my own.

SO IT WAS NIGHT—THE
DEAD
Of NIGHT, LIKE THEY SAY—AND JULES WAS THERE, BUT NOT THERE
.

This was the not-real Jules, but she was still almost
more
real to me than life awake. I sensed her, strong like a hurricane even, before I actually saw her.

It was the goddamn banging sound that woke me again—the boathouse door slamming away.

I turned toward my nightstand.
3:14
.

Always 3:14. It was like a regular wake-up call.

Or, I guess, the call to my real-reality, I mean. It was getting harder—like even harder than usual—to tell the difference. The more time I spent at Amity,
in
Amity, the more it all ran together.

And the more it ran together, the less I minded.

I got up, moved toward the window, pressing my hand flat against the window and looked outside. From the river, this hazy mist drifted up. It made me think of smoke signals, like you’d read about in old Indian legends, you know?

Maybe someone was trying to send me a message.

The idea made me smile. And then the mist was moving, just wiggling its way along to the house. All crooked, like a beckoning finger.

It was
creeping
.

Toward
me
.

I felt the weight of Jules right behind me. “The mist,” I said. “It looks like a message.”

It is
. Jules’s voice was thick.
Are you afraid?

“No.”

Good
, she said.
Then let’s go
.

I have something to show you
.

I BLINKED
, or maybe, like, looked away, just for a second, I mean, and then we were on the other side of that stone wall.

The red room. Being inside it was like coming home.

The proportions of the room were jerky and confusing; from one angle it was low and narrow, like a crawl space, but if I just turned an inch or two, the ceiling stretched, towering over me.

I reached out with both arms, brushing my fingertips along the walls. My nails caught on little trace markings, cave drawings or something, like a kind of proof, real primitive, that this place was really here. That
I
was here, in one reality or another.

The dirt was cold and crumbly underneath my bare feet. I flexed my toes, thinking about worms, you know, and other things that lived in the ground. I knew there were bones, bodies, lurking down there. Rolling around underneath me.

Waiting for me to find them.

This is where they were buried, Con
, Jules said,
Here
.

It was like a curtain parted, right in front of me, so I could see exactly what she meant, what she—and the mist, and Amity, herself, what all of them—were trying to tell me:

Torn-up death shrouds, strings of chipped shells. Iron clamps, all rusted up and crusted over. I could
smell
it: disease, death. Older than anything. Older than forever.

This is where the massacre rained down
.

Jules’s image floated next to me, sort of transparent. Her mouth didn’t open when she spoke, but I heard her perfect inside my head just the same.

This is where they hid for safety
—

—Seeking out respite
.

—Seeking out revenge
.

You see?

I did.

I saw my father, and I saw myself, my hands slick, sticky, and stinking that bright, coppery blood smell. I knew right away that the blood on my hands was my father’s, not my own.

Jules pointed.

I saw:

The shovel. My shovel.

Dig
. Jules was speaking for Amity now.

And I was acting for all of us.

Dig
, she said again.
There’s something buried here for you
.

I GASPED, HACKED, AND SPUTTERED
, and I was in my bedroom again, suddenly. I was bolt upright in bed, the sheets a sweaty mess at my ankles, the banging of the boathouse door sounding more like gunshots than ever.