Return to the Dark House (16 page)

“He’s still alive,” she says, nodding to her box of buried treasure.

“Right, because dead boys don’t write letters. The whole transparency thing makes it nearly impossible. It gives new meaning to the expression ‘can’t get a
grip.’”

“I’m
serious
,” she scolds me. “It sounds like the others are alive too—or at least some of them.”

“How do you know that these letters are really from Parker? That this isn’t someone’s warped idea of fun?”

“Just look,” she says, handing me another letter.

I look up from the letter. “The boy has a way with words, doesn’t he? But can he also make a decent breakfast?”

“He’s being told what to write,” she says, ignoring my attempt at humor.

“Not everything. Plus, it sounds as if he started writing to you on his own—like it was his idea to begin with.”

“I’ve been writing to him too.” Her face turns pink, seemingly in love with the idea that they’re both on the same letter-writing wavelength (despite the fact that people
are missing—ahem,
assumed dead
—and that we’re standing in the middle of nowhere).

She spends the next several minutes poring over more letters—until I can’t take it any longer and have to ask the obvious. “So, what
is
all of this? What does it
mean?”

“It means, this is it. The real deal. I’m going to find the others.”

“Like,
now
?” I ask, the light finally dawning—the remote location, Ivy’s sense of urgency, the freaky phone call she talked about last night.

“Now,” she says, her eyes completely focused, blink-less, as if there isn’t a doubt in her mind.

“Ivy?”
I shout. “I mean, holy freaking freaksterville. This is crazy.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Crazy is not taking this opportunity. Crazy is blowing it by telling too many people. Crazy is knowing that a killer is after me and doing nothing
about it.”

“Crazy is
this
,” I snap.

She goes to open another letter, but I stop her before she can, snatching the entire stack, and thus revealing the hidden jewel.

A handheld tape player sits at the bottom of the box. “Jackpot!” I declare, picking it up. I push
EJECT
to pop out the audiocassette. Scribbled across the
front are the words
PLAY ME
.

Ivy takes the tape and studies the label, looking at it from different angles, as if it’s an alien object dropped down from outer space. After a few moments, she puts it back in and pushes
PLAY
. The tape is staticky at first, adding to the whole creepy vibe.

“Hello, Princess,” a voice seeps out, cutting through the static and making the surreal
real.
“I hope this finds you well. If you’ve come this far, I’ll
assume you’ll travel a little farther. Do you see the path that cuts through the woods, not far from where you’re sitting?”

“Right there.” Ivy points.

“Take it,” he says.

“Wait, how does he know that we’re sitting?” She looks all around.

“It’s a tape,” I remind her. “He’s assuming that you’re sitting. I wouldn’t overanalyze it.”

“When you come to a swamp area,” the male voice continues, “the path will fork. Go to the right.”

I grab the recorder and push
PAUSE
. “We seriously need to think things through, because let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that you continue to
indulge this psychopath by playing his twisted game. Then what?”

Ivy responds by taking the recorder back. She gets up and begins down the path, leaving me in the proverbial dust.

“Um,
hello
?” I call out. “You’re not bailing on me, are you? Particularly after I followed you here and hiked around a lake, sans boat, sacrificing my brand-new
pair of Uggs.”

Ivy turns to face me again, gazing down at my sacrificial boots. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m coming with you,” I say, before I can think twice about it.

“Excuse me?” she asks, as if I’m speaking in secret code again.

I stare out into the woods, flashing back to that day at the Dark House, scurrying past Natalie’s room, and then climbing out a window and fleeing into the woods without ever looking
back.

“Taylor?”

“Who else is going to tip you off to all the standard cliché horror gimmicks? I’ll be able to smell the evil clowns and menacing elves from a mile away.”

Ivy studies my face in anticipation, as if a giant anaconda might come bursting out of my mouth. “Are you sure?”

I nod, unsure, and she comes and wraps her arms around me. Her body quivers like the leaves on the trees all around us. And suddenly it seems so obvious—why the killer chose her in the
first place.

“You’re, like, the quintessential scream queen,” I tell her, taking a step back. “The girl who fights for the good of others, despite the consequences; whose bravery
trumps her fears.”

“Bravery or stupidity?”

“I’m not like that,” I tell her. “That’s the difference between you and me.”

“Except you
are
like that,” she argues. “I mean, you’re here, aren’t you?”

I shake my head, fairly confident that while she’s the heroine, I’m the character who thinks she’s smarter than everyone else but actually gets slaughtered en route to
escape.

Somehow despite knowing that, I follow her down the path.

T
AYLOR AND
I
TAKE THE
path that cuts through the woods, walking for what feels like miles. I know she doesn’t want to be
here. And part of me wants to tell her to go, but I hold that part in, grateful to have her with me.

“Hey, aren’t we looking for that?” She points to a swamp.

I nod and push
PLAY
.

“Once you find the swamp,” the voice says, “it’ll just be a little bit farther.”

I push
PAUSE
again, my mind reeling with questions. How long will it take for someone to find my car behind the chocolate factory? At what point will my family contact
Candy and figure out that I lied? How long after that will the police go into my e-mail to put all the pieces together?

“Ivy?” Taylor’s several steps in front of me now. “We’re going the right way, aren’t we?”

I wonder where she’s parked—if it’s in a spot that has cell reception, if someone will be able to trace her phone’s whereabouts.

“Are you still with me?” she asks.

I nod and push
PLAY
again.

“I’m really excited to see you, Princess.” His voice is soft and deep; the words come out slowly. “Very soon now. Just keep on walking.”

The path narrows. There are tall, vine-like bushes on both sides of us. The tops of them form a ceiling above our heads, and we have to keep ducked.

“What’s he saying now?” Taylor asks.

The path winds left and right, forming a maze. Branches stick out in my path, pulling at my hair, scraping against my cheeks. I try to keep up, but Taylor quickens her pace, hell-bent on getting
to the end.

“Just a little bit farther,” the voice reminds us, as if talking in real time.

Several yards in front of me, Taylor lifts a branch and peeks outward. “Holy shitster!” she declares, cupping her hand over her mouth.

“What is it?” My heart sinks.

She waves me over, still keeping her eyes locked on whatever’s out there, beyond these shrubs.

I move slowly, my heart pounding.

“Are you there yet, Princess?” The soft purr of his voice sends shivers all over my skin.

I join Taylor, by her side, and gaze upward. A huge, Gothic-looking building sits in the distance behind an iron gate. With multiple pointed roofs and a cobblestone courtyard in the center,
overgrown ivy crawls up the sides of the building, twists around the front pillars, and clogs up a chimney. “What is this place?” The windows have been boarded up, but both the gate and
entrance doors are wide open. “Someone wants us to go inside.”

“Of course they do,” Taylor says. “Come right in, step right up, and you too can drop off the face of the Earth, just like your fellow contestants.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” I tell her. “I’ll understand if you don’t.”

Taylor nods, perhaps considering her options.

I try to stay focused, wondering what this building once was. A rich person’s home? A castle? There isn’t any graffiti or tagging, so either no one knows the building’s here,
or nobody comes out this far.

“It must be ancient,” she says, pointing toward the entrance. There are gargoyles over the door, looking down at the front steps. There’s also a garden gazebo and what appears
to be a chapel attached to one side of the building. “Maybe it was once a convent or monastery,” she guesses.

The building itself sits in the middle of a sprawling field, with woods just behind it. There’s a dirt path that branches out from what was probably once a driveway, but there are no roads
that lead here.

“Welcome,” the voice says on the audiotape, making me jump.

“Kill that thing, will you?” Taylor snaps.

I click it off and reach into my bag. I wrap my hand around the knife, reminding myself of my mission. I’m here to save Parker. I’m going to find the others.

“Now what?” Taylor asks, as if this is just some random stop on an errand list.

“Now we go in.”

“For reals?” Her teeth are clenched. She’s itching her palm.

“I mean it,” I tell her. “You can turn back. I won’t be upset.”

“Will you turn back with me?”

“I can’t.” I shake my head.

“Then how can
I
?” She takes a deep breath and starts toward the building.

I
T
’
S JUST AFTER TWO IN
the afternoon, but the sky is gray and the clouds hang low, making it feel much later. We move
across the courtyard, passing by a huge water fountain with a basin that looks like an ice cream dish—rounded bottom, tulip top. Behind it, there’s a sculpture of a curly-haired boy
with a wide-open mouth. His blank eyes angle toward the ominous sky. This whole scene flashes me back to my Gothic horror days—when I was in love with anything Stoker-ish.

I reach out to take Ivy’s hand, but she’s got it stuffed in her bag. Her inky-dark hair blows back from her face, accentuating her pale (ghostly) skin and rose-colored lips; she
reminds me a little of Allison Hayes from
The Undead
.

As we move up the front staircase, there’s a tugging sensation inside my gut—one that tells me I should go back. I mean, seriously? The spooky house, the creepy gargoyles, the iron
fencing, and the fact that we’re in the middle of nowhere without cell phones…“This whole scene has got classic horror doom written all over it.”

Ivy remains mute. She hasn’t spoken in the last several minutes, and it’s starting to freak me out.

The front doors appear to tower over us by at least three feet. Ivy stops a few steps behind me, her eyes hyper-focused, as if they could burn the place down with a single blink.

“Okay, this whole Carrie White routine has got to stop,” I tell her. “Say something. I need to know that you haven’t been body-snatched.”

Finally she takes my hand, and together we inch through the entrance doors. There are hundreds of tiny candles scattered about the lobby area—on the floor, lining the walls.

“Someone’s here,” I say, stating the obvious.

She takes another step; a broken floor tile crunches beneath her shoe. The ceiling is broken too. There’s a hole overhead, where there might’ve once been a chandelier. Mangled wires
hang down from it.