This is not okay, she thought. Even if it was a nice house, a house that is alive is not okay. This isn’t the same as Nonna’s dementia. She closed her eyes hard, squeezing them so tight she saw prisms of light. How was she seeing this only now? She’d wanted so much for the world to be wild and scary and unknown, but this kind of wild, scary, and unknown was not okay.
She texted Dhaval. Are you awake?
Her phone vibrated in her hand a moment later. I am now because my phone buzzed right near my head.
Sorry.
It’s fine. What’s up?
Delilah stared at her phone and then just dialed him, needing to hear a human voice that was familiar and didn’t sound drunk or slightly. . . possessed. Dhaval picked up after barely a full ring. “Princess Delilah, it’s sleepy time.”
“I’m sorry. I’m having a really weird night.”
She heard him rustle on the other end, as if sitting up in bed, and his groggy voice answered. “Okay. Tell me everything.”
“Dhaval, have you ever noticed anything weird in this town?”
There was a moment of silence in which she could practically feel Dhaval’s blank stare. “Are you serious right now? Everything’s weird about Morton. It’s like walking into the town in Edward Scissorhands.”
“Okay, I mean things that feel like a haunting but aren’t?”
“Someone needs to take your Netflix away.”
“This isn’t from a movie. This is from real life. I worry that things in this town are. . . possessed.”
“I should record this conversation and play it for you tomorrow. You’ll be mortified,” he said. “Morton is weird, yes. But it’s like too many people who are too much alike and who never speak to anyone from outside this town and never go anywhere, ever. ”
“I’m serious,” she said, feeling her throat tightening in the unfamiliar rising of tears. It was too much to take in. The tree in the park, and—worse—the way Gavin seemed completely unsurprised. And now her father’s strange behavior downstairs, like something was speaking for him. She felt like the house was infecting everything and everyone around her. “I’m really freaking out.”
The line rang with silence for several beats before he said, “Come over.”
? ? ?
Delilah hopped over cracks in the sidewalk and skirted every line in the pavement. The shadows of streetlights bent and arched over the path ahead, and she could feel their posts twisting behind her, their lamps turning to watch her like heads on long, curved necks. She was imagining it—she had to be; she was just spooked—but it was all she could do to not cry out and scream Dhaval’s name the four blocks to his house from hers. The dim shade from trees and houses, cars and mailboxes seemed to cling to her own slight shadow until it was enormous in her peripheral vision, looming down the sidewalk beside her. She felt like she was dragging a black hole down the street.
Daytime sounds were absent, and in their place was only the odd buzzing of electrical wires, the occasional barking of a dog that seemed to grow farther and farther away, as if civilization were slowly ebbing away from her. Finally, Delilah gave in to her instinct to run and sprinted the remaining two blocks to Dhaval’s house, feet slapping the pavement, arms pumping, and her heart pounding, a tight wail trapped high in her throat.
She hurled herself up the three steps to his porch, throwing politeness into the wind and banging as hard as she could on the door, looking behind her over her shoulder. She swore the branches of every tree leaned toward her; the sidewalk seemed to ripple in her wake.
But it wasn’t Dhaval who answered the door. It was his mother, Vani, in a deep green robe and holding the door open wide.
“Slow down,” she whispered, pulling Delilah inside and shutting the door behind her with a quiet click. She reached to press her warm palms against Delilah’s cheeks. “Slow down, jaanu. You look frazzled.”
“I am,” Delilah said, gulping in a huge breath of air and glancing shakily over at Dhaval as he appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
But Vani shook her head. “Mmm. That isn’t the right word. I mean sizzled,” she whispered, looking at every inch of Delilah’s face. “Like you’ve been burned with electricity. You’re scorched from the inside out.”