Delilah waited, head still fuzzy with sleep, straining to hear any movement, wondering if perhaps Gavin had returned home while she slept.
A shiver moved up Delilah’s spine as she continued to listen, her eyes wide and trained, unblinking, on the shadows around the large bed. She thought about the claw-footed table in the hall, the curtains that had closed so forcefully the first time she’d come to the house. She wondered what other kinds of things existed here, and what exactly happened inside these walls while Gavin was away.
The rational side of Delilah’s brain chastised her, reminding her that she had a tendency toward the dramatic and insisting that if she intended to be a part of Gavin’s life she would need to learn to deal with things and not let her imagination run wild at every creaking floorboard or bump in the walls. The house was alive after all; it was only natural that there would be the occasional sound or two.
Delilah peered through the dark and up to the fluffy clouds painted onto the blue ceiling. They floated peacefully across the plaster sky, and she tried to relax, to block out the steady thumping that continued from somewhere below.
The moon rose above the large tree just outside Gavin’s window, its light breaking through the narrow gap in the curtains to stretch across the floor. The clouds were easier to make out now, the shapes mimicking small objects tucked into the fairy-tale sky: a teddy bear, a sailboat bobbing along the choppy waves. But with the added light came the realization that something had changed. The blue sky had turned stormy and dark, and menacing clouds began to roll across an increasingly turbulent sea.
Delilah shrank down into the blankets as she watched the scene above her, how the storm seemed to swallow up the imaginary sailboat, along with whatever calm she had managed to regain. Sweat made her clothes cling to her skin as her gaze traveled down the walls, over paintings and drawings that seemed to stop moving as soon as she looked at them.
Though Delilah could only imagine having slept for a few short minutes, the candle had practically burned itself out. It had been yellow—she was sure of it—but now bloodred wax slid down over the candleholder in smooth rivulets. The flame had dimmed, flickering slowly in the still air, and out of the corner of her eye she could see something moving along the wall.
Delilah strained to make out the shape.
The faint pattern inside the wallpaper seemed to stir, the edges becoming blurry before sharpening again. She blinked several times, certain she had to be seeing something that wasn’t there. The pattern looked like spiders. Only a few at first, but then more and more, so many that the wall seemed to undulate with them. Their legs were thick, covered in coarse hairs, and their bodies were so plump and round that it turned her stomach with an instinctive panic.
“It’s not real,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight and hoping she could wake from whatever nightmare she was having. A flash tore through the room, and Delilah gasped, blinking up to where lightning streaked across the ceiling.
“It’s not real.”
Delilah’s heart raced, the sound of her own pulse roaring in her ears. She tried to push up from the bed, but her limbs seemed locked in place, her mind unable to fire the impulse needed to move.
Spindly legs carried hundreds of black bodies skittering across the wall, so many that she could hear them. They moved in waves, scattering this way and that, finally arranging themselves into what appeared to be words.
BUT
HE’S
OURS