The Dead House

“Why?”


Cornered, I got up off the green sofa and walked away. I don’t know if I intended to leave. “I just don’t want to, okay?”

“You wrote this. All of this. The writing—it must have taken days.”

“I didn’t write it.” I needed to make her understand, and being evasive wasn’t going to help, Dee. “Yes, it’s my handwriting, but I didn’t write it.”

“I believe you.” She said it so simply, and I got a small glance of the Naida Carly loved so much. I think I loved her too, a little, then. Just for her faith.

“I think… I think something else did.” She choked the words out. She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face. She looked tired. Had she slept? “That house you keep dreaming about? The, what was it, the Dead House?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know that in dream psychology a house represents the self? Your own mind?”

“Oh, hello, Dr. Lansing. You look different today. Get a ridiculous perm, by any chance?”

Naida managed a smile. “It’s simple fact. I think the Dead House is your mind. I think you were right when you said Carly was stuck in one of the rooms… with something. I think she was still in there, with you—only trapped. Unable to come out. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think she’s gone.”

Icy terror flooded my veins, and I wanted to make her stop, but I couldn’t. “I think I saw her, though—the last time I was in the house. She was standing at the end of a long corridor, but then in the blink of an eye, the house had bent itself around her and she was gone.”

“You sure it was her?”

I wasn’t, Dee. Not at all.

“In the last dream,” I whispered, “the house felt really empty. Not quite empty, but empty of her. So… no. But if she’s not in the house, where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere beyond you. I always told Carly that you two were something—something special. It was something I sensed, rather than knew. But I could tell that it put you in danger.”

“You always spoke about dual souls,” I said, remembering the countless times I had put her down.

Two souls in one body, blah blah.

Naida nodded. “I think there’s a kind of doorway to that other place inside you. Like a portal. The door that the Olen used to steal her away. It’s the same door he used to enter you in the first place. I think all those times you heard—what did you call it, your Voice?”

“Aka Manah.”

“Aye, every time you heard him coming closer, he was entering you. Finding that door.”

“Wait, so my Aka Manah is the Olen you keep talking about? They’re the same?”

“I think so, yes.”

“But I heard Aka Manah before the Halloween party.”

“I think the Halloween party—the Olen board… I think it just made it worse. I sensed that you were already in danger before that. But anyway, it doesn’t matter now. The thing is… I think…” Her voice trailed off.

She stood up and paced the room.

“You look like you have to tell me I have terminal cancer.”

Naida stopped, pressed her lips together, then continued. “I think you’re possessed.”

I remembered the girl from the Mala nightclub, how she writhed and shrieked and scratched that man’s face. I couldn’t be… possessed. Not like that. Not like her.

“Somehow,” Naida continued, oblivious to my screaming thoughts, “I think… I think Carly opened the doorway. I don’t know if she knew she was doing it, but I think she did it all the same.”

“Carly? Why do you think she did it?”

“Well… did you?”

“No,” I snapped, irritation bubbling up inside me. “But maybe you did with that stupid Olen board of yours at Halloween. Or with your little Mala group last year, I don’t know!”

Naida stared at me for a moment, and I thought she looked a little pale.

“I’m not accusing her, Kait. I’m just trying to find answers.” She took a breath. “It just seems likely that a door like that could only be opened from within. Anyway, it doesn’t change the fact that I think something’s in there with you.”

“Possessed. Possessed like needing an exorcist, or like that crazy girl at the club? Possessed like, like—” I could feel myself panicking.

“It’s okay, sugar. All I mean is… If I’m right, then I can’t do this ritual alone. You have to help me. You have to take me into yourself. Let me into that Dead House of yours. We have to find that door, the door Carly was taken out of. And then”—she paused, swallowed—“then we have to go through it.”

12 pm

I slept a little, I think. I’m not sure anymore.

Possessed.

I am possessed.