“I think I’ll keep my distance anyway.”
Even if we didn’t find a single vengeance spirit within these walls, this place was filled with ghosts—remnants of the terrible things that must’ve happened here. Things I could see as clearly as the broken windows outside.
Jared opened the next pantry door and I tensed, expecting to see the face of another lost child. This one was stacked floor to the ceiling with vacuum-sealed pallets. Jared bent down and wiped the dust off the thick plastic. I read the labels underneath and gagged.
Dog food—cans and cans of it—towering to the ceiling. Enough to feed fifty dogs.
Or fifty children.
Jared kicked the stack. “My dad used to say the evil we enact on each other is uglier than anything spirits and demons can do to us.” He picked up a dented can of dog food and chucked it against the wall, brown slop splattering across the wallpaper. “I never believed him until now.”
Static crackled over Jared’s radio. “It’s Priest. You guys okay?”
“We’re good,” he said. “Find anything up there?”
“Not yet. Check with you in twenty.”
Jared shoved the radio in his back pocket. “Let’s see if there’s anything in the basement.”
I couldn’t get out of the kitchen fast enough. The residue clung to my skin like the filth coating the windows. We needed to find the next piece of the Shift and get out of this house.
The basement door was hidden under the staircase, secured by two heavy dead bolts at the top, far above the reach of a child.
I couldn’t imagine the terror of being locked in a basement. My pulse raced as Jared unlocked the door. The splintered wooden stairs disappeared into a sea of black.
He used his flashlight to navigate the cracks in the steps. “Stay close.”
“No problem.” I had no intention of getting lost down there.
At the base of the staircase, it was impossible to see more than a few feet. I grabbed Jared’s hand without thinking, terrified that we might get separated.
A corridor stretched beyond us, but it looked more like a tunnel. “I think it leads to another room.”
Jared shined the light along the walls, and I shuddered. Drawings covered the lower sections—childish depictions of rectangular houses with triangle roofs, and stick-figure families that morphed into more sinister images. Children crying as monsters towered over them, with gnashing teeth and razor-sharp claws.
The corridor opened up into an enormous room. The temperature dropped, and cold air crawled over my skin. I squeezed Jared’s hand tighter, my pride back at the top of the stairs along with my courage.
A bare bulb flickered at the opposite end of the room, revealing the truth about this place in weak bursts. They stood in two rows at the ends of the aluminum beds that were outfitted with thin mattresses and frayed canvas straps:
Children—at least twenty of them.
Ranging from four or five years old to nine or ten, they were sickly and gaunt, in matching pairs of stained long underwear. With their hair buzzed to less than an inch, it was hard to distinguish the boys from the girls. Their eyes reflected the light when it hit them, like they were still among the living.
But something was wrong with their faces.
The muscles were frozen, contorted in unnatural expressions and exaggerated smiles. Only their eyes moved, conveying the emotions their faces couldn’t.
“Turn around slowly.” Jared kept his voice low. “We’re going back the way we came.”
“No, we aren’t.”
I pointed at two children standing behind me. They watched us curiously, their faces as mangled as the others’. They held hands, the taller one clutching the younger child’s protectively. Steel gray eyes and innocent blue ones gazed back at us.
Jared pulled me closer.
The taller child lifted a thin arm, a plastic IV port taped inside the crook of his bony elbow. He pointed at the other end of the room, where the remaining children were lined up.
“What do they want?”
Jared pulled my hand behind his back and drew me closer. “Something happened here. I think they need us to bear witness so they can rest.”
The child was still pointing.
“Should we do what he wants?”
“Spirits of children are unpredictable, but I don’t think we have a choice. There are too many of them. If they get agitated…”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
Turning my back on those children-that-weren’t-children was terrifying. I kept thinking about the girl in the yellow dress at Lilburn, who had looked so innocent right before she tried to kill us.