They didn’t look up. He pulled on the sash with every bit of strength he had, but it wouldn’t budge. “Help!” he screamed again, pounding with bloody fists on the glass.
Gavin looked around for something to break the window. A lamp lay on the floor, as still and lifeless as any other lamp. He reached for it and slammed the base into the glass. It shattered, and the House shook, agonizing and desperate screams sounding from somewhere deep inside it. He kicked at the broken shards, ignoring the way they tore at his pant legs. This was his last hope. He climbed to the ledge and looked back behind him. Darkness swirled there, pulsing. He held his breath and jumped.
? ? ?
When Gavin opened his eyes again, he wasn’t outside.
He tried to feel whatever was in front of him but couldn’t. Pain shot through the right half of his body, and he realized that something was holding his arms to his sides, wrapping around his chest and waist and all the way down to his feet. It was a crushing pressure that made it hard for him to breathe. Every centimeter of skin ached, throbbing and bruised. He could feel the solid weight of a wall at his back, but darkness swallowed everything. He saw only black, and the weight of it surrounded him, somehow both close and deep.
There were no more voices, only his own ragged breaths as he struggled to find enough air. He would have cried out, screamed, but something covered his mouth, pressing dusty and dank against his tongue. A cloth. A gag. The yard was huge and the fence seemed to insulate the house from even the closest neighbor. Nobody would be able to hear him scream anyway.
He could smell dirt again. He wasn’t sure why, but the phrase “fresh grave” drifted through his head. He wondered where the smell came from, whether House had managed to tear itself open like a wound from the top of the roof straight down to the dirt beneath it. It smelled like rotten meat and worms, and he gagged, struggling to breathe in through his mouth again.
Gavin longed for the oblivion of only a year ago. He wanted his room and his warm bed. But more than that, he wanted Delilah. He wanted her safe. Gavin knew now that even if he somehow managed to get out, he would never escape. Whatever kindness had lived here and watched over him was gone, and only a monster was left in its place. It would follow him here or down the street, or down a hundred streets. It would hunt him down until he was brought back, and then he would be here, forever. Maybe House didn’t know that he wouldn’t stay the same, that if it killed him he wouldn’t be baby Gavin again, or even the Gavin with the ice-cream cone that hung in the upstairs hall. Those Gavins were as good as dead too.
As if House could read his thoughts, he felt something slither around him, tightening. “Shhh,” it hissed. “Shhh.”
Finally, for a minute—only a minute—because he was mourning and terrified and blind in the blackness, Gavin let himself cry. House hadn’t killed him yet. It was waiting. And if they knew each other as well as he thought they did, he knew exactly what it was waiting for.
Delilah would be waiting at the bank at eleven just like they’d planned, and she would know he wasn’t coming. House knew that. And then she’d come looking for him, hoping to save him. House knew that, too.
It hadn’t killed him yet because now he was the bait.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Her
Once she reached the porch, Delilah realized there were about a million things she hadn’t considered until she stood here, in almost total blackness. Namely, would the front door even be unlocked? Or would she need to break through a window? She eyed the ax in her hand with a mixture of relief and dread. Were the windows even made of glass, or were they some poltergeist-filled medium that wouldn’t crack or snap or shatter?
A sound built from behind the heavy wood door, a deep groan, like wind coming up from underground, rattling the frame of the house, vibrating through the shingles outside, the shuttered windows. It knew she was here. She closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath.