“Julia, get the hell outta there!”
Julia screamed my name, and her screaming pierced into my ears like a dagger. Only once before had I heard her scream like this—when the smoke alarm in Huckleberry Wall had started wailing, fifteen years prior, and back then I’d been there for her, back then I could save her, but this time I was here, this time I was too late. This time I was too late.
“Get out of there, now! Julia! Julia! Oh god, Julia, run, go downstairs, get away from them, go now now now!”
Too late, you realized that there was silence. The line dead. So I call back—straight to voicemail. One more time. Twice. Three times. Come on, come on, come on, maybe we were calling each other at the same time, okay, Julia, you call . . . But the seconds ticked by and Julia didn’t call.
Her phone dead. Gone. Destroyed.
There are people here . . .
Oh fuck, if it were the echoes if they were in the house if they were active then their behavior had changed then they could feel the Maudit and that meant that Nick was there too, Nick was there, only it wasn’t Nick anymore, it was the Maudit, his becoming had been completed.
And me honking, swerving, tailgating, splash and a fan of road salt splattered my windshield. Taillights finally flashing, the plow stopped. I flung the car door open, jumped out of the Focus, fucking freezing, the wind and zip immediate face-plant, eating snow, I gasped for breath and was running again before I’d even properly gotten up.
“Mon gars, relax,” the guy screamed out of the plow, me hanging on his door. “What’s the matter?”
“Faster! We need to go faster! It’s started! Please step on it!”
“I’m going as fast as I can!” He looked at me and shouted, “For someone about to become a happy father, you look pretty rattled. Is everything all right?”
“Step on it!” I yelled, already on my way to the Focus.
Crawling those last five miles to Grimentz, excruciatingly slow behind the snowplow—they were the darkest moments of my life. My panic was complete. My very own sister. Julia Avery, Manhattan’s finest. If anything were to happen to her, her blood would be on my hands. I’d been blinded by Nick, still was, by what I didn’t believe he could be capable of. And in the meantime, reality had caught up with me. From, like, everywhere. How could I have been so fucking stupid?
Zoom out: a scream in a car, a whirling snowstorm, a frozen valley, an electrically charged blanket of clouds, and a trillion cold, dead stars in a universe where none of the above had even the slightest significance.
4
Thirty minutes later, I flew into Hill House for the last time in my life. The house or me—one of us was going to kick the bucket. And don’t pretend like you’re sorry about it. I was a total failure who didn’t deserve anyone’s pity, and these types of mountain cabins, let’s face it, they’re just a pile of kindling waiting to be set ablaze.
Story of my life.
Every path to your destiny goes in circles.
Every path to hell leads up some mountain.
Fast-forward to the dude in the snowplow who wished you lotsa baby luck. Did I want him to hang on for a while, just in case? No, it had already gone down, a doctor from Grimentz had come by and bye, I was now going inside to take the little critter into my arms. Fast-forward to the orange flashing lights I saw disappearing in the direction of the valley as me and my blurred vision ran the last coupla yards to the chalet. Fast-forward to snow-covered mountain slopes coming at you from all sides and mocking you with whispering voices: Julia, Julia, whispering in the wind, We have Julia, me screaming “Julia!” and those whispering voices, Julia, the mountains got Julia . . .
No rental in the vicinity of the chalet, but that made no diff to the adrenaline shock waves surging through your constricted veins. Nick was here, the mountains were here—but where was Julia?
The front door was open a crack. In the snow a trail, almost wiped clean by the wind, so clean you couldn’t tell whether it led to or from the chalet. Julia would never have left the front door open. She’d closed the shutters and Fort Knoxed the entire house before going to sleep. Felt safer, she’d said. But there were things here bolts weren’t going to keep out
(there are people here . . . )
things that left no tracks in the snow
(the whole room is full of people . . . )
but lured you into the night with their dead cries.
Fast-forward to the porch, to me screaming “Julia!” To the hallway: darkness.
The cold from the mountains had descended on the house.
Fast-forward to me screaming, “Julia!” Screaming, “Julia, where are you!”
The door swung shut behind me. And holy—Total darkness. No, not total after all. A vague light coming down the stairwell. Screaming Julia’s name, up the steep staircase in one, two, three leaps.
What you didn’t see in the attic: people. What you didn’t see: Julia. I yanked the covers off the bed. Julia’s iPhone, dead. A wet spot on the mattress. Fear sweat. Peed bed. Me desperate, not knowing what to do, me screaming, “Julia!” Screaming, “Julia!”
Even though there weren’t any people anymore in Hill House’s attic, something had remained. It is said that bad things leave an imprint in the fabric of reality. That strong emotions from the past have echoes that resonate in the here and now. Same thing here. Whatever had happened after the line went dead, it had cut the house open like a poached hare’s belly. Through that gash, through that gaping wound, the crushed souls of the Maudit were peering out over their shoulders, and you could still hear their dying screams trembling in the air’s molecules.
Cuz they would have screamed in the end. Oh yeah. They had screamed when they were warming themselves with Julia’s life, and that could only mean that Julia had gone out, into the storm.
To become one of them.
The trail in the snow, that was Julia. Not Nick. Julia, she’d left the door to the house open cuz she’d fallen prey to the Sirens’ call. My li’l sister, she’d followed in Cécile’s tracks. Into the mountains.
After all my efforts, after all my good intentions, I was still too late.
Story of my fucking life.
Whimpering, I stormed down the stairs, hoping against hope that Julia would still be down there; whimpering through the hallway, with both hands I wrenched open the living room door and—
It wasn’t dizziness that got ahold of me there. Wasn’t dizziness that caused the seething darkness to suddenly come to life, my surroundings to float, and the whole concept of a floor to fall away from under my feet.