Maisie said it. Then everyone else said it at the same time. All of them, speaking in a perfect chorus.
“I don’t know what that means,” cried Dana.
Maisie raised her arms out to her sides the way she had in the locker room. Instantly, bright red blood began to flow from her head, side, wrists, and ankles.
“He will rise,” she said, speaking solo this time. “He will rise and the world will fall.”
“Who?”
“They think they control him,” said Maisie.
“He thinks he controls himself,” said Connie.
“There is a darkness greater even than the angel,” said Jeffrey.
“And it will consume him even as he consumes the world,” said Chuck.
Their voices were those of teenagers, but their words and phrasing were not. It was like some perverse litany in a nightmare church.
Then Connie pointed to Dana. “He is coming for you, Dana.”
Dana stumbled backward and nearly fell. “W-what?”
“He is coming for you,” said Todd, “and we will make you his.”
“His voice,” said Jennifer.
“His accomplice,” said Jeffrey.
“His apostle,” said all of them.
Dana looked around for a way out, but the door seemed to have melted out of sight, becoming nothing more than a door-shaped smear on the wall. The window was fading, too, but there was still some light spilling in from the streetlamp.
“He will take others,” said Connie.
“The boy will die soon,” said Chuck.
“The girl will die first,” said Jeffrey.
“Then you will join us in the world of shadows,” said all the ghosts at once.
There was a narrow opening between Connie and Chuck, and she broke and ran for it, determined to fling herself through the living room window. She dived and crashed through in a spray of glass, but the sound of it breaking was not like glass at all. It broke with a sound like dozens of wind chimes—bars and bells and hollow bamboo—all jangling as if blown by a gust of cold wind. Dana tucked and rolled as she hit the porch, but then she felt her body suddenly lift and fly out over the rail as if someone had caught her and flung her away. She landed in the grass, thumping down with a teeth-rattling jolt, rolling, tumbling, and finally coming to rest in a sprawl of pain and fireworks.
She groaned and tried to get up, needing to run away from this place.
But her body felt broken, and Dana collapsed to the ground.
The front door was a door again.
The window was unbroken.
The night seemed to stop holding its breath. Crickets began chirping—tentatively, carefully—and in the trees there were the scuffle of bird feet and the soft caw of a nervous crow.
She sat up very, very slowly and looked at her arms and legs, expecting them to be slashed to ribbons from the window glass.
Nothing. There was no blood, no pain. Nothing. Her clothes were not torn or bloody. There was nothing wrong. Her mind felt like a fragile teapot on the edge of a table that crashed and shattered.
Then she saw the stick she had planned to use as a weapon against Angelo. A twenty-inch piece of green wood, thick at one end and thin at the other, standing against one of the slats of the porch rail. Her backpack sat next to it, all the snaps snapped and zippers zipped.
Who had put that stuff there?
Dana said, “What?”
But the night held its secrets and did not answer. She looked once more at the house. The house number was clear: 313, and this was Sandpiper Lane.
Who lived here?
Was this Maisie’s house?
Dana picked up the stick and turned in a full circle. The yard was empty, the street was empty. She snatched up the pack, shrugged into it, took a firm grip on her stick, and ran all the way home. When she got there, she went upstairs and locked herself in her room.
CHAPTER 69
Scully Residence
7:37 P.M.
When someone knocked on her door, Dana did not answer. Not at first. She sat on the corner of her bed farthest from the door, a letter opener clutched in her fist, knees drawn up. She’d been that way for the last half hour.
Another knock.
And then, “Hey, let me in.”
Melissa.
Dana got up very slowly and crept across the room. There was a quarter-inch gap on the hinge side of the door from where it had been hung wrong, and she peered through it, saw red hair, and leaned her head against the frame for a moment, exhaling a ball of pent-up air. Then she put the letter opener down, opened the door, and pulled Melissa into the room.
“Ow! What’s with you?” cried Melissa, pulling her arm free and rubbing it. “I’ve barely seen you for two days and now you all but rip my arm out of its socket. What gives?”
Dana closed and locked the door, then wedged a chair under the doorknob. Melissa watched this and then studied Dana. A deep frown of concern etched itself onto Melissa’s face.
“Okay,” she said, “what happened? What’s going on?”
“Too much,” said Dana, and retreated to her corner of the bed.