The house could build whatever illusions it wanted, but Gavin hadn’t moved.
The floor shook beneath her feet when she turned and faced the wall, the air growing violently frigid as walls seemed to close in on her.
“Go,” the house hissed. “Go.”
“It’s not real,” she gasped, reaching in her pocket for her flashlight. “He’s right there, this whole time. It’s not real, Delilah. It’s not real.”
When the blood failed to divert her attention, a trickle of insects teased at the edge of her boots and streamed from the baseboards up under her jeans, along her skin, inner thighs to hips. She could feel them swarming up her torso, pushing her back and away from the wall that separated her from Gavin.
“It’s not real!” she screamed, pointing the flashlight at the wall ahead of her to gauge where she needed to bury her ax. The entire expanse was blank, starkly white. She shoved the flashlight back in her pocket and hefted the ax. Paintings rattled and flew at her from behind, cracking into her legs, her back, and barely missing her ducked head before falling dully to the floor.
Delilah could feel the spirits, the poltergeists—the terrors, whatever they were—swarming her, trying to find purchase on her clothing, her flesh. It felt like flashes of heat and cold, ineffectual fingertips tugging at her, and for the first time since she entered the house, Delilah was triumphant: They were weak, physically. If they remained in the house, they would have to collapse the structure to hurt her, and they’d hurt Gavin at the same time. But without the solid shape of the house, they were nothing but a haunting.
“Gavin, back up!” she cried. “I’m coming through for you!”
A muffled cry came in response, and Delilah’s hatred for the house doubled, tripled, grew so enormous it became a hot, violent thing in her blood. He was gagged in there; muted and trapped by something he’d believed all his life had loved him.
“You monster.” She pulled the ax back and swung as hard as she could, straight at the wall.
The house screamed, a thousand voices, as if in pain and wild anger, and wind whipped so violently down the hall that Delilah nearly fell over, but she widened her stance and narrowed her focus, hissing through her teeth as she swung again, wrenching her shoulder painfully as the blade cracked into plaster and wood. Blood poured from the walls and something thicker—an illusion of organs, of hearts and intestines slopped onto the floor.
With a strangled cry, Delilah jumped back and gave herself three seconds to get over it.
It wasn’t real.
The insects crawled up her neck, over her face, but she closed her mouth and inhaled through her nose—it’s not real; it’s not real—and took a savage, determined chop at the wall.
Swinging the ax was so different from carrying it. It was top heavy and imbalanced with the enormous blade at the top, but the momentum she got with every slice chipped into the structure bit by bit until a stream of warm air blew into the freezing hallway.
Gavin’s face appeared at the gash, his mouth tied and covered with fabric, and the part of his face visible was covered in dust and dried blood, cheeks, nose, and chin scraped in a hundred tiny places, but when his wild, terrified eyes met hers, Delilah choked out a sob, desperate to get to him.
“Back up, Gav. I’m almost there. Hold on. I’m coming. I’m coming.”
He nodded, eyes pleading, and disappeared from her sight.
The gash in the wall grew with every swing until Delilah’s arms felt like they might fall off and the space was just large enough for her to shove her way in—around stabbing boards and scraps of carpet wrapping around her legs, her feet, her arms. She tumbled in, headfirst, and landed on top of him.