“Perry,” she said, paused at the sill, “this doesn’t make sense. You should go next. I’ll find Dex.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t your battle mom. You shouldn’t have even been here in the first place.”
Her eyes grew frenzied. “And yet I came,” she hissed, holding on to my shoulders. “I did come here because I felt I needed to. Why was that? Why did I need to come here, what did I need to find, to see?”
“Maybe you needed to see that you’re just like me,” I said, full of hope and doubt at the same time. “Maybe you needed to see that you’re not alone.” She breathed out heavily and I continued. “Maybe you just missed your mother and wanted to see a part of her life.”
She put her hand on my cheek. “I am sorry,” she said. “I’ll never doubt you again.”
I debated whether this was the time to bring up the whole switching pills thing but decided against it. There was too much going on as it was. I didn’t even know why a demon would bother knocking but it was obviously waiting for me.
A loud, guttural cry interrupted our moment. It seemed to come from within the house, within the walls. The door to the hallway flew open and I saw the silhouette of a beast standing on two legs, the same beast we saw in the hotel. It cried again, a horrible scream that smelled like death and brought slivers into your ears.
“Go!” I screamed at my mother, practically pushing her out of the window. She fumbled for a moment and I thought she was going to fall but the ladder began to swing with her weight. There was a second of uncertainty and then I heard her land on the bricks below and Ada’s hushed cries.
The window shut behind her with a deafening clatter and I felt like my last tie with the real world had been severed.
Now I was facing a beast, a blackened shape of evil with eyes that glinted white. I could feel the frustration coming off of him, knowing it was all for me. Something had happened. I had ruined something.
That was good, at least. I smiled at the beast.
I expected the monster to start charging toward me. I expected to have to fight and to have to die.
But that didn’t happen. The beast remained in the doorway, its head coaxed to the side as if it were listening.
Then it screamed again, this one worse than the first. It ran off down the hall, turning into a pool of liquid smoke that slinked through the air, leaving hate behind.
I stood there, afraid to move, unsure of what to do. Then I turned around and frantically tried the window. It was sealed shut, like it had been glued and the glass had been replaced with black ooze. I couldn’t see my mother and Ada and couldn’t hear them either. They were out there, hopefully going for help, hopefully making it out into the city of New York.
And I was in here. So was Dex. So was Maximus.
So was Little Michael. So was a beast.
And I had a feeling, a million other horrible things.
I took in a deep breath, wishing I knew what was going on, what I was fighting, wishing I had some mode of defense. But I had nothing.
Well, almost nothing.
Once my heart rate slowed down enough for me to catch my breath, I closed my eyes and started to yell for help inside my head, all while trying to prevent my thoughts by being read by anyone else.
I yelled for Maximus. I yelled for Dex like I’d never yelled before.
And hoped they could hear me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dex
I woke up to a pounding at the door. It sounded like at any minute, some giant sledgehammer was going smash through it, followed by the face of Jack Nicholson saying, “Here’s Johnny!”
But that didn’t happen. The pounding continued, as did a familiar voice.
“Declan, let me in!”
It was rough, ragged, slurring. It was my mother.
I opened my eyes and saw nothing but blackness at first. After a second, they adjusted to the light coming from a nightlight in the corner of the room.
Holy McFuck, I was back inside my childhood bedroom. I was under the covers, my favorite flannel blankie that still smelled like the lemon detergent that Pippa used to use, my legs hanging off the bed.
I slowly eased myself up, wondering why my head was pounding. How did I end up here?
Images of the day came piling into my brain all at once. Perry, Ada, Maximus, Perry’s mom, dad. Daniel had left us. The rest of us went to the house. We went inside and everything changed. Everything was black and patchy. My memories and thoughts didn’t seem like my own.
And yet now I was here, tripping balls, because how the hell do you end up in the past. Because I was in the same bed I slept in as a child, my collection of cassette tapes were still in the corner, my fencing sword and nun-chucks displayed on the wall, and my mother, my drunken mom, she was pounding at the door, wanting to come in, wanting to terrorize me.
I had no reason to be afraid of her anymore. I was a grown man. I’d overcome my delinquent childhood.
But I was alive and she was dead. So there was that.
There was always that.
“Declan, open this door or I will cut you,” she said. I’d forgotten how literal she was when she was drunk.
“Fuck the fuck off!” I yelled at her.
There was a pause, maybe she was in shock that her young son had used such profanity. Then it started again. The pounding. Her slurring. The doorknob rattled.
This was a house of horror, one created especially for me. But I wasn’t the only one in the house, I knew that. The last thing I remembered was running up the stairs, sure that Michael was there, hiding, and that I needed to see him. I had left Perry and everyone else down below, hopefully where it was safer and there wasn’t some annoying dead French woman trying to speak drunk to them.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I needed to go back downstairs. I needed to get everyone out of this house. I didn’t even know what I had been thinking when I brought everyone here – clearly my thoughts had been compromised.
Then I remembered Perry’s neck, the way her tender skin had submitted under my hands.
It wasn’t just my thoughts. Everything about me had been compromised.
I got up and started for the door, prepared to see my mother again in her most violent form. The last time I had seen her had been in a dream and it went well. She had been sober, coherent, even loving. It would be a shame to fuck that all up again.