Along the hall, in Nori’s bedroom, something is stirring in the darkness.
I assume that she’s having a nightmare.
Though an infrequent occurrence, it has been known to happen, and I can always sense it. I lift my head from my pillow, holding my breath, and wait.
It’s a muffled noise. A shuffling almost, punctuated with a little bump! here and there.
It is cold.
I don’t want to get out of bed to check.
Instead, I wait.
As I suspected it would, the noise dies down, and the house is filled with absence.
About an hour later, it’s the silence itself that wakes me. It’s a heavy silence, and I startle so intensely that light spots of adrenaline prickle across my vision.
A terrible, horrible dread creeps up my legs and I suddenly regret not going to check on Nori sooner. It takes a moment for the paralysis to pass, but when it does, I hurry down the hall, ignoring the old paintings of madmen leering at me from the walls.
I stop just inside Nori’s doorway.
I’m still.
I swallow.
Waiting.
Creep closer.
The sudden—and certain—sense that Nori will not merely be sleeping, but… something far, far worse, had come over me intensely upon waking. And now… it’s all I can do to breathe.
The room is too still.
I stumble forward and lay a gentle hand on Nori’s small head, and am racked with silent and intense sobbing—the kind of sobbing that jerks the soul from the deepest reaches of the body—when I find that the forehead is warm.
I was so sure.
So absolutely sure…
That I would find Nori in the bed, dead and cold.
The sobs pass after long, agonizing minutes, but the dread doesn’t diminish.
It grows. And grows.
Until I am staring into the corners of the black room, waiting for some horror to rise up and engulf us whole.
And Nori sleeps on.
Cath has stopped screaming at night. And that is even worse.
I think the silence could deafen me.
There is no sound. None.
I go to the stairs that lead to the attic, making sure I keep to the middle of the hall—far enough away from the shadowy wallpaper. And then I make sure I am a pace or two away from the first step. I look up—so much darkness. But awareness, too.
“Cath?” I call in a half whisper. I don’t know why, since Nori will sleep through thunder.
Creeeeeeak.
“Aunt?”
Creeeeeeeeak.
Silence.
“Tell me about him,” I say, because I know she is right there, at the top of the stairs, two paces back like me, and waiting. “Tell me about the Creeper Man. Tell me now.”
Aunt Cath walks. Creak. Creak. Creak. Cath sits down. A rocking chair. Creeeeak, creak. Creeeak, creak. Rocking back and forth. Freaking creepy. I look right, down the third-floor hall, and convince myself that the door to the husk room is not open. That there is not someone standing at the end of it.
“The Creeper Man, Aunt.”
“He’s already here.” Her voices floats down the stairs like a moth, echoing and faint. She is at the back of the room.
“What does he want? Why has he come? Is he real? Or am I just as mad as you?”
Back and forth, back and forth. Creaking.
“He’s here because of you.”
“How? Why? Speak clearly!”
“He enjoys your fear. You deserve it.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“But you deserve it all the same. Heart of stone, just like I told you before.”
I could scream. “What did I ever do to you? What did I ever do to deserve this?”
“You’re mad, my girl. The mad are always punished. Some of us even deserve it.”
“Nori doesn’t deserve this.”
The creaking stops. Heavy footsteps across the floorboards. A sudden, leering white face out of the shadows, shaggy wheat-colored hair, wild around her face.
Cathy’s eyes are wild for a moment, staring at me, but then they focus, unglazed, and she looks… sane. “Keep her away from him, Silla. He will hurt you through her. Protect her.”
I blink and I shake my head, and this is all too hard. Crazy one moment, now lucid and terrified? I’m only seventeen. “I don’t know how.”
“You just have to reset. It will get worse before it gets better, my girl.”
I slump against the banister. “I don’t understand. I’m so tired.”
Cath is fading away again, her last look one of pity. Sympathy. Understanding.
“The mad always are,” she says.
WITHOUT WARNING
The hole grows larger without warning and without much sound.
I heard it in the night. S s s s p l i n t e r i n g.
Falling inward.
It should now be as big as the length of her spine. Silla will be sure, very soon, that the hole is definitely closer to sentient than not.
In the morning, I hear her put more chairs around the hole. Silly child. As if that could stop this!
BOOK 4:
Meat Prison
DON’T STOP NOW, IF YOU REALLY SEEK
SILLA’S TRUTHS, WHICH MAY BE BLEAK
BUT IF YOU FEAR THE CREEPER MAN’S GLANCE
BEST GO NOW; THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.
17
no. no, no, no