Sinister Entity (35 page)

He sat up quickly, despite his mental and physical fatigue, because there was screaming coming from downstairs, followed by loud banging. The room was pitch-black and the hallway light had been turned off. His body protested as he forced himself to stand up, and he had to lunge and grab the door handle to keep from falling.

Cries of desperation rang throughout the house. He fumbled to the stairs as fast as he could.
 

Jessica was in the midst of telling Greg and Rita that they should remain in the house, together in the same room, once she and Eddie left when she felt a cold jab at the base of her spine. The jolt of pain was like being stabbed with an icicle. The sudden, shocked expression on Greg’s, Rita’s and Ricky’s faces told her they had felt it, too.
 

Jessica looked up and scanned the room. “It’s here.”

Greg pulled Rita’s and Ricky’s hands into his own. They jumped when they heard Eddie shouting.
 

“What’s going on?” Greg said.
 

“I don’t know,” she replied. Then it hit her. “Selena!”

As she ran to the bathroom, all of the lights in the house were extinguished. Two quick steps in the dark brought her crashing headlong over a kitchen chair. She spilled onto her stomach, her breath knocked out of her. Struggling for air, she brought herself to her knees. Greg brushed past her as he charged the bathroom door. They heard Selena shout, “No!” and nothing more.
 

“Selena, unlock the door!” Greg demanded, on the verge of panic.
 

Even though she was woozy, Jessica joined him at the door.
 

“Selena, are you all right?” she said. Her lungs ached from the effort.
 

The sounds of a struggle were their only reply.
 

Greg pounded on the door with his fists. He and Jessica both knew there was no way Selena could let them in.
 

“Hold on,” she said to him, taking a step back. She raised her leg and kicked as hard as she could at the door, right near the handle. Her leg jarred painfully into her hip. It felt as if the door had been reinforced with steel. She tried again, gaining nothing more than a sore leg.
 

Greg joined her, throwing his body into the door. The wood didn’t so much as creak.
 

“What the hell? The door is hollow. It should break just by blowing on it,” Greg said, breathless. “Selena, we’re coming!”

Jessica picked up her pace, interspersing her kicks with his body blows, and she would keep it up until her leg fell off. She knew with sickening dread what Selena was going through on the other side, and she would do everything she could to stop it.
 

“Let’s try it at the same time,” she said.
 

Deep down, she doubted they could break it if they had a steel battering ram. It wasn’t the door that was keeping them out. It was the EB. Fighting the metaphysical with the physical was like bringing a water pistol to a duel, but it was all she had.
 

A muffled cry escaped from Selena.
 

Don’t you dare touch her,
she thought with panicked desperation.
 

Jessica reared back, then let loose with a war cry.
 

Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Eddie motioned for Rita and Ricky to stay where they were on the couch. A dull sliver of moonlight parted the curtains, haloing their terrified faces. He tried his best not to show the fatigue that ran through his body like white water rapids. As he turned the corner of the kitchen, he saw Greg nursing his shoulder while Jessica repeatedly rammed her body against the bathroom door.
 

“What’s going on?”

His voice startled them both. Greg brushed past him without saying a word.
 

“Selena’s locked inside and the EB’s in with her. It’s doing something to make the door unbreakable.”

She gave the doorknob a vicious kick that should have sent it spiraling into the air. In reality, nothing happened to it at all.
 

He stopped her from making another attempt by grabbing her shoulders. “You have to get out of here.”
 

He couldn’t make out her expression in the weak light, but he could feel her studying him, sense the desperation that had overtaken her reluctance to give way to calm rationalization. Then she drew in a sharp breath, and he felt her shoulders relax.
 

“Crap, I’m making it worse, aren’t I?”

“I think so. I need you to
—
”

Greg came running back, snapping on a flashlight. The sharp beam of light made Eddie and Jessica throw up their hands to protect their eyes. He was also holding a hammer and pry bar in his other hand.
 

“I need one of you to hold the flashlight while I try to…to…”

The light wavered to their left and began to tremble. When Eddie and Jessica turned, they saw Selena approaching from the closed corridor.
 

Except, it wasn’t Selena at all.
 

The doppelganger’s cold, fathomless eyes looked through them, to the depths of their souls or the vastness of the infinity that lay beyond life. It stopped just short of touching Jessica, then turned to the door.
 

Its appearance stunned them all into paralysis. Jessica didn’t dare to come any closer to it, lest she chase it away again. Eddie held his breath.
 

Slowly, it brought its arm up and placed its hand flat against the door. There was a sudden change in the ambience of the entire house. It was as if it had been electrified with a wild, untamable current that set invisible fires in the ozone, raising the hairs on their bodies and pricking their skin like a tattoo artist’s needle. Now, with the appearance of the doppelganger, that surge of unchecked energy had been cut off, the breaker closed, the source of the surge contained, though still a danger.
 

There was a loud
thump
, as if something heavy had landed on the floor in the bathroom, followed by a piercing wail that sounded like a silent scream finally set free.
 

When they heard Selena’s scream, Greg dropped the flashlight. He bent down to snatch it back up. When he shined it back near the door, his daughter’s spirit double was gone.
 

Chapter Forty-Nine

Selena had resigned herself to endure whatever horrors the invisible entity had planned for her. She felt it envelop her body, could see the depression of fat, strong fingers on her skin as it kneaded and pinched her arms, thighs, belly and breasts. An uncomfortable, barbed heat pressed between her legs, seeking entry to the one place she feared the most. When she tried to close her legs, pain shot through her hips as they were forced apart.
 

She was still sitting on the toilet, exposed, helpless, gagging from the effort of trying to draw a solid breath. Her shirt had been ripped down the middle and she was forced to watch the inexorable progress of the ghost as it worked its way down her chest, focusing all of its attention below.
 

Her father and Jessica yelled and pounded against the door and she couldn’t understand why it hadn’t smashed to splinters. Hot tears ran down her face and she desperately wanted to beg aloud for her parents to save her.
 

She stiffened even more when she felt a gush of hot breath blow against her inner thighs.
 

Please, God, no, no, no, don’t let this happen to me! Help me, God, please!
 

Her legs were pulled farther apart, bending up toward her chest. She struggled to break its grip, rocking from side to side, frantic to stop the growing heat between her legs before it entered her, where she was sure she would burn to death from the inside out.
 

The toilet seat slipped, snapping off the bolts that held it in place, and she fell sideways onto the floor. For an instant, she was free. She screamed so hard, she thought for sure she had severed her vocal cords. When she tried to pull herself up using the side of the tub, the ghost pounced on her, driving her to the cold tile floor. It pressed hard on her face, grinding her cheek until she tasted blood as her teeth shredded the tender flesh within.
 

Her eyes were blinded by a fresh wave of tears, but not enough to block the vision of a pair of luminous legs standing before her. For a moment, she thought her father and Jessica had broken through. Her terror escalated when she saw the door behind the legs very much intact. Straining against the pressure on her head, she managed to look upward, settling on her own face staring back at her with an expression of unbridled anger.
 

In that moment, she knew its ire wasn’t directed at her. It was as if she had entered the soul of her mirror image. For the first time, she was grateful to see her double walker. It wasn’t here to scare her. It had never intended to do that. Selena had just never known how to process the experiences.
 

“Help…me,” she pleaded with her double walker.
 

It reached into the space around her, stopping inches from her back. She felt relief from the malicious weight that had pinned her to the floor.
 

There was a flash of light, white and hot as if it had come from the quick snapping on and off of an aerial spotlight. Both the ghost and the double walker disappeared in the brief flicker between dark and light, and dark again.
 

She scrambled to a sitting position, drawing her legs close to her and sobbing.
 

The door split in half as her father drove the pry bar down its center. He pushed through the shattered remains of the door and rushed to her.
 

“Daddy!”
 

She held out her arms to him and he gathered her up like he used to do when she was just a small girl. Her mother and Ricky were waiting right outside the door. There was a lot of commotion as he carried her into the living room. Her sobs made it hard for her to talk or even swallow and her mother, to her credit, kept a brave face and did her best to calm her down. Even her little brother kept his cool, running to get her a glass of water and a blanket.
 

“We have to get out of here, now!” her father snapped.
 

Eddie tried to talk low, but she heard him say, “If you do, it will just follow you. We have a perfect window to get it now.”

The rest was lost to her as she fought to regain her composure, but every time she tried, she felt the cold, determined hands roughly fondle her body, and all was lost.
 

Jessica knew she had to get away from the Leighs as fast and far as she could, but first she and Eddie had to talk Greg down, convince him that his running was not the answer.
 

They went into the yard, where the cooling night air sent a shiver across her shoulders.
 

Eddie said, “I know where he is.”

“He? What do you mean he?” Greg said, his patience visibly short.
 

“The man who’s doing this to your family…to Selena. I made a solid connection with him upstairs.”

Greg walked away a few steps, then came back sharply, stopping close to Eddie’s face. “Then tell me where he is. I’ll kill the mother fucker.”

Jessica stepped forward, trying to wedge herself between them. “Greg, the man he’s talking about is dead already.”

Eddie added, “We need to find his body.”

Greg swayed, looking like a man just coming out of a dream after a late night sleepwalk. “Find his body?”

“I’m going to stay with you while Jessica goes out to find it,” Eddie said. “His body isn’t buried. I could feel it above ground, for lack of a better term.”

“No offense, Jessica, but it sounds a little crazy, sending a kid like you out to find some dead body,” Greg said. She knew he also wanted to add that she was a girl, and a young one at that. She didn’t blame him for feeling that way, and she didn’t want to tell him why she had to be the one to get away from his family.
 

“Don’t worry about that. Look, I’m sure what just happened weakened it, but that will only last so long. We have to move, now,” she said.
 

Greg pulled at his hair. “Jesus fucking Christ. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Then lose it later. Right now, your daughter needs you.”

Her sharp words stunned him, and he fixed her with a dubious stare before grunting and heading back into the house.
 

“Harsh,” Eddie said.
 

“We don’t have time to be nice. You said you know where he is. Tell me. I’ll find him.”

As they walked to the front yard and her Jeep, Eddie described the house.

“It’s a split level house with dark blue shingles. There’s a red brick chimney on the right side and an attached garage with a solid white door on the left. The Thunderbird’s in the garage, if you want to check that first to make sure you have the right house. I’ve seen a lot of split level houses in this neighborhood, and in the dark, it’s going to make it even harder to discern one from the other.”