What was too late?
She gave a shake of her head. “He shouldn’t be with me. Not now. Too young. My baby is too young for this.”
Was she talking about Michael? Mrs. Foray was making no sense but at the same time, I didn’t think she was drunk. She was sober, albeit dead.
“What is this place?” I finally managed to whisper.
“This is Hell,” she said harshly. “My boys grew up in hell. They died here too.”
My eyes bugged out. “Died?”
The light in the bathroom went out. Darkness descended upon us.
“Mrs. Foray,” I cried out, gingerly reaching forward to touch where her hands and face should have been.
There was nothing.
“Michael?” I asked over my shoulder, scooching further back and trying to feel where he was. There was only carpet and empty space.
I was alone. The world was silent.
Almost.
A familiar scratching sound came from behind me, like something was brushing up against the wooden slats under the bed. It sounded like long, spindly legs, crawling my way.
The image of a cat-sized spider flashed through my brain.
I wasn’t wasting any time. I quickly pulled myself out from under the bed and stood up, trying to find the door out through the darkness.
Perry! Dex!
The sound was faint, so faint I thought I was imagining it.
But it repeated once more. Maximus’s voice, softer than the air and only inside my head. He was out there. But if he was calling for Dex, it meant he wasn’t with him.
My heart felt like a block of ice. That sense of loss I had experience earlier came back, tugging me down. I was afraid to know what it meant. Way too afraid.
Where are you?! I yelled. Maximus? I’m upstairs in a bedroom, where are you?
But there was no reply. And the thing under the bed was starting to growl.
I stumbled forward, feeling for the door in the dark. I smacked right into it, stifling a cry, and quickly found the knob. I was certain it wouldn’t turn, but it did and I yanked it open.
The hallway was dim except for orange light that flickered in from one of the open doors. Heart in my throat, I walked forward down the hall. I peered in the first door that had been Michael’s room. It was blackened inside, shaped like a cave. Fire danced in the distance. The dimensions of the house were gone.
Feeling eyes staring at me from the long, cold tunnel, I kept walking.
The next door was open a crack. A trail of blood led out from it, the red barely legible in the spotty light. I pushed the door open and peered inside. It was another kid’s room, Dex’s I assumed.
In the faint glow of his nightlight, I could make out a wide stain of blood in the middle of the room. Immediately I knew it was from Dex. I just knew.
I whirled around the room, searching under the bed, in the closet. There was nothing and like the other rooms, no way out through the window.
I wanted to tell myself not to panic, not to think the worst, not to lose it but I couldn’t. The only thing I could do was follow the trail of blood out of the room.
I followed it down the stairs, my footsteps quickening, past the living room where the Christmas lights were all off and the music was gone. The room was empty though and I grabbed one of the black candles that were still burning on the mantel. I continued to follow the blood, past the painting that was back to being Renoir again. I followed it past the kitchen, which was still set for three, past numerous close doors and all the way to a narrow door at the end of the hall that was shut with a look of finality.
Trying the knob and finding resistance, I felt horror take over me. This was panic. This was desperation and it had its claws in me. I put down the candle and threw myself against the door again and again, crying out from the pain, crying out Dex’s name. The blood had gone under the door and I knew it was him, I knew it was him.
I let out another yelp and did my best kick-down of the door as I could, conjuring up what little martial arts skills I had left. I had a brief flashback of being in my uncle’s lighthouse in Oregon, the night I first met Dex. It was so long ago. Why couldn’t I have held onto that moment for longer? Why does life move along so fast and lead us to places like this one?
The door gave way with a splintered groan and I burst through it, nearly falling down a row of narrow cement stairs. They disappeared into the blackness. I picked up the candle and let it light the way. Surprisingly it burned bright and I was able to walk down, down, down. It felt like I was going stories and stories beneath the earth, the air growing colder, thicker.
Finally my feet hit the solid ground and I found myself in a large room. Bare walls, their bottom halves scorched black, no windows, no furniture, nothing except a trail of blood leading to the center of the room.
The blood led to Dex, lying lifeless on the floor, a sword sticking straight out of his throat.
I gasped, my chest squeezing into oblivion, and dropped the candle but it did not go out. It burned so I could continue to see him.
I ran over to him, my limbs, my lungs, my heart shaking from the horror of what I was seeing.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
It was.
I dropped to the cold earth, my hands hovering above him, unsure of what to do, what to touch, how to help. I didn’t think I could speak but I screamed “Dex!” It ripped out of me, echoing off the walls.
Dex was lying there, eyes open to the ceiling but there was no life in them and there was no ceiling, just black sky that bared down on us. My hands found courage and my fingers felt along his chest, demanding a heartbeat.
He was still. His heart was silent.
I couldn’t breathe. There was no air in the room, I had no lungs left. I was just a fist inside me, tightening and tightening. Even the tears were held back in my eyes, frozen in shock, unable to fall.
This couldn’t be.
And it was.
I shook my head, my vision going dark and then light again. “Dex,” I cried out pitifully. I touched his soft hair, his face, his beautiful brows and the way they curved over his eyes, the shiny glint of his ring. His dark brown eyes that I willed to blink, willed to look at me, but they didn’t. They were empty and he was dead beneath them.
I closed my own, trying to concentrate, to turn back time and make this all go away. But when I opened them again, I saw the same thing, my eyes focusing on the blood that had pooled out of his throat.
My heart launched itself in my chest and suddenly I was gasping for air, trying to breathe, trying to live and why, why it was all so pointless. I didn’t want to live, I couldn’t live without him. I couldn’t, I couldn’t.
I cried out, a long ragged sob that bordered on a scream. I slammed my fists into the ground, then curled my fingers around Dex’s shirt and held onto him like I could bring him back to life that way. I held so tight, so damn tight, as the waves of sorrow plowed through me, twisting my heart and soul into knots that could never be undone.
The pain was real, physical, tearing me apart, splitting me down the middle until everything inside me was falling out.
I put my head on his chest, wishing so hard to hear his heartbeat. I wished for him to sit up and look at me one last time. I wanted to hear him call me Kiddo, I wanted to feel his hands on my skin, his lips on my face.
For everything that had happened, everything, I did not go into the day thinking he would die. I did not even know it was a possibility. We had gone through so fucking much together, cheated death a million times, dying wasn’t a possibility.