The Dead House

“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered, heading down the ground-level corridor.

Dee, we looked. The house was just playing with us. The corridor elongated, bent, and twisted until we were walking in circles. We passed an empty picture frame on the left wall, broken down the middle, and later, the same frame was on the right wall. Then it was under our feet and we were walking along the walls themselves.

The clouds broke open with a roar, and rain spat down on and around us, hot, then cold, then sticky, then slimy.

We trudged through it all, and only ended up back where we started.

“I suppose this is the part where the walls start raining blood?” Naida said drily.

I walked over to the wall and placed my hand upon it. Where I touched, the wall was dry. The floor beneath our feet grew soft, like wet earth, and we began to sink into the wood.

THE HOUSE IS MINE.

I gasped, and stared at Naida. “Did you hear it?”

Her lips tightened, and I thought I saw a flash of anger in her eyes. Maybe she was about to say something. Maybe I was about to say something. Maybe I was going to make a suggestion. Maybe I was going to suggest we leave, quit, give up.

That’s when I saw the dead girl, up on the banister behind Naida—she was pointing at us with her mouth wide open, her teeth cracked and jagged. She was all silent screams. And where she pointed, behind me, I felt the House shift. I saw Naida react to whatever was behind me… I saw her mouth open in horror… I saw the snake reflected in her eyes. I turned. Out of the sinking wooden floor reared a giant snake—the green viper—mouth open, ready to strike down on me. I couldn’t move, I was stuck in the quickwood of the floor. But then I felt movement. Naida, running, right at the snake, directly in the path of its yawning mouth. Naida, running to put herself in front of me. Directly in the path of those brilliant white teeth.



Naida Camera Footage

Tuesday, 25 January 2005, 12:25 AM

Basement



The camera clicks on at the same moment that Kaitlyn reaches forward with her right hand across the bowl that is now charred and smoking, her terrible cry—“Naida!”—ringing through the room. The others jolt into awareness and look around with foggy expressions.

Naida sits with her mouth frozen open, her eyes huge in her face. Her eyes rotate towards Kaitlyn, and her expression is one of grief and horror.

“Kaitie,” she whispers, before her expression hardens and she reaches for the knife beside Ari’s bowler hat, grips her tongue between her left fingers, and with a violent, sickening motion, saws off her tongue.

She flings it across the room, where it lands with a soft slap, and then she falls to the floor, twitching.

Chaos erupts.

Scott is the first to reach her, pulling her into his arms. “Call an ambulance!” Spurts of blood jump from her mouth, and she gurgles.

Ari stares at her, seemingly unable to move. Brett grabs his own hair and yells, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” It is John, standing guard by the door, who runs up the stairs.

“What should I do?” Scott yells. “What the fuck should I do?”

Ari blinks, shuts his mouth, and hurries over to them.

“Flip her over,” he instructs. “She’s choking on her blood.”

Scott turns the seizing Naida over, and the blood pumps from her mouth in spurts.

Ari grabs the cloth that lies near the chicken cage. “Shove this in her mouth. Hard!”

“She’s bleeding to death!” Kaitlyn cries. She stands near the armoire, arms folded over her chest. She looks more like Carly than ever. “She saved me… she saved me…”

John returns. “They’re coming. They said to stuff her mouth with cotton, but I couldn’t find any.”

“Help me get her up the stairs,” Ari says, starting to haul Naida up.

“Don’t move her!” John yells.

Scott, crying, begins to help Ari lift her, then pauses, looking at John.

“We can’t have them down here,” Ari says firmly. “Now, help me.”

John swears, then runs forward, lifting Naida into his arms. He runs up the stairs with her, and Scott follows.

Ari turns to Kaitlyn. “I’m sorry,” he says, and then he shoves her backwards three sharp times. “You can’t be seen!”

“Ari—”

With a final shove, she falls back against the armoire. Ari pulls open the door and pushes her inside.

“Stay there,” he snaps, then slams the door and locks it.

He runs out of the room, leaving behind a noisy wardrobe, rocking back and forth, shaking as Kaitlyn screams.

[END OF CLIP]





I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

—Edgar Allan Poe





Because I could not stop for Death—

He kindly stopped for me—

The Carriage held but just Ourselves—

And Immortality.

—Emily Dickinson





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