Perry! Dex was bellowing but I could barely hear him above my own cries that seemed to drown the whole room. The spider was too heavy, too strong, its legs vying for violent purchase on my torso. With each stab of its legs, I felt blood being drawn and my body growing weaker.
Just as the pincers snapped an inch from my face, old blood and gore being spat onto my cheek, there was a flurry of movement and the spider suddenly stiffened, letting out a horrible human-like scream.
The weight was lifted from my stomach and Dex was standing over me, the sword in his hand. He took one glance at me to make sure I was all right then went back to the spider, who had been stabbed right through the middle. With skill I didn’t know he possessed, Dex expertly sliced and diced it into many pieces.
“Arachnophobia, my ass,” he said, spitting on the body parts and we were both stunned at the fact that the words came out of his mouth. He anxiously felt along his throat again and when he took his hand away, it was no longer covered in blood. He was literally healing before our eyes, much more rapid than he ever had before. I guess going back into the Veil and coming out again only helped in this case.
He helped me to my feet, holding my arm tight. He put both hands on either side of my face and stared at me with feverish intensity, his eyes sparking.
“We’re going to make it out of here,” he said, urgency in his voice. “We’re going to go back to our lives. We’re going to get married and live a long and happy life. Do you believe me?”
I nodded, my throat feeling thick with shock and sadness. “I believe you.”
“I love you.” He closed his eyes and ran his thumb over my lips, his breath deepening. “I love you, beyond death.” His words reminded me of my dreams.
He kissed me quickly on the lips and then, with a final, brutally forlorn glance at his friend, he took my hand and pulled me up the stairs into the rest of the house.
We went up them as fast as we could but the moment we hit the hallway, everything started to change. The air was full of smoke, smelling of charred wood and burnt hair. The kitchen was on fire, flames shooting out of the room and into the hall.
A crackle came from behind us and when we turned around to look down the stairs, we saw flames starting to spread where we just were. The house was burning itself and while it felt right for Maximus’s body to be laid to rest in such a way, it also meant we would be next if we didn’t get out of there. Fire was starting to come up the stairs.
“Come on,” Dex yelled over the growing roar and we started running down the hallway toward the front door. We were almost there when the Christmas tree in the living room keeled over, shooting wild flames into the space in front of us. Dex grabbed me and rotated me away from the flame, using his body as a shield to make sure his back got the brunt of it.
He let out an agonizing cry as the flames licked him but in moments I had my hand on the door knob and it was turning. Together we burst out of the house and into the dark of night. We stumbled down the stairs, running out into the street, Dex ripping off his burning shirt and throwing it to the ground.
We collapsed on the opposite sidewalk and turned around to watch the house go up in flames. People were already coming out of their houses to look, the flames now bursting through the first floor window, black smoke billowing into the sky.
No one was paying us any attention, not yet. We couldn’t press our luck – I knew how this would look to a passerby.
I quickly got to my feet and Dex followed. I ran my fingers over his side and back, inspecting him for burns but what redness there was, was vanishing by the second, turning a rosy shade of pink, then disappearing. His throat seemed to be almost fully healed, like he’d never been stabbed at all, like he’d never died.
But we knew the truth. That would be something neither of us would ever forget.
“Let’s go,” he whispered to me and I nodded. We slowly walked down the street, as if we had come to the house because we smelled something burning. While sirens went off in the distance, he was just another New Yorker, shirtless because of the early summer heat and I was his hipster girlfriend in artfully dirty clothes. Luckily, my body didn’t seem to have any of my wounds from the Veil anymore either.
We walked calmly around the corner, then as soon as there was no one around, we both started running.
We ran all the way back to the hotel. I tried to call my mom along the way but I didn’t have my iPhone anymore. Hopefully this was the last time I’d lose a phone to something supernatural. I was getting really sick of giving Apple my money. They needed some sort of ghost warranty on it.
The thought nearly made me smile. But for the giddy joy that came from being alive, that came from skirting death, that came from being reunited with the only person who ever made me feel like it was okay to be Perry Palomino, there was still loss. Maximus had gone up with the house and that was going to haunt the both of us for a very long time.
It seemed like it took forever, but finally the lights of Broadway and the rush of cars appeared at the end of the street, the light at the end of a tunnel of brownstones. The hotel loomed a block away and when we got close, I could see Ada pacing outside the building, talking to someone on her cell.
When she saw us, she burst into tears and started running for us. She went right into my arms and Dex held onto both of us. I didn’t think I had any more tears left in me but I did. I’d never been so happy to see her before.
Seconds later, my mom and dad were coming out of the building and the crying happened all over again.
When we were finally done, Ada looked at us and asked, “Where is Maximus?”
I couldn’t even say the words. To say them would make it real, would mean he was truly gone. I just couldn’t.
I glanced at Dex and the devastated expression on his face told Ada everything that she needed to know. She put her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide.
“Oh no. Oh no. What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “Please, don’t tell me…”
I looked over at my parents. While my mother looked just as shocked as Ada did, my father was watching us with one finely-tuned suspicious eye. I had to wonder what he knew. What had my mother and sister told him? What could he possibly believe?
But before I could say anything, he cleared his throat and said, “I think we all need to have a good long talk. I need to hear this story from you both, not just them,” he said, jerking his head to Ada and his wife. “And then we’ll see what our next steps are.”
A fire truck roared down Broadway, bathing our faces in red light. Dex reached for my hand and squeezed it. Small comfort, but it was there. I was going to need it. For this and for everything we still had to go through.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We all gathered in our hotel room. For the briefest, strangest moment, I thought we should ask Maximus if he wanted to join us. The realization that he couldn’t made me break down in tears again.
Dex wasn’t doing much better but he put his arm around me and took the reins, trying to explain to my father exactly what happened, from the start. Of course, my dad didn’t understand and didn’t want to. He kept interjecting the story with exasperated exhales and rolls of the eyes and the occasional, “Please, be serious now.”
I thought my mom would have backpedaled and retreated to her old ways. I thought she would have ignored everything that had happened. I thought she would have sided with my dad because that’s what she’s always done, for as long as I could remember.
But she didn’t. She even told my father to be quiet and just listen and when Dex looked to me, her and Ada for approval on the story, she was nodding in agreement. I had to say, I was proud of her. I would have never thought this would happen.
“And you said the house burned down?” my father asked incredulously when Dex started to wrap things up. Dex did have the insight to leave out the part of him dying and me having to go into the Thin Veil to get him. It wouldn’t matter to him, in the end. Everything was so unbelievable as it was.
Sirens wailed in the background, as if on cue. I jerked my head in their direction. “Or it’s currently burning down.”
My father sighed and put his head in his hands and slowly rocked back and forth in his seat. “You could be held for arson charges,” he mumbled.
“We didn’t do anything!” I spat out defensively.
“You broke into a house.”
“It was abandoned, Daniel,” my mother said, her tone just as harsh as his. Ada raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“Abandoned or not,” he looked to Dex sharply, “and from the way you described it, it didn’t sound abandoned at all, you can’t just trespass. If you they find any hint that you were there.”
“They won’t,” I told him.
“And how do you know that? You may have dropped some little clue. The NYPD are pretty smart, they can piece it together just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
I sighed. I didn’t know how I knew, I guess because I wasn’t even sure how much of that house was real. I was certain that if we looked into records of it, we’d find it totally empty and unlived in. The furniture, the Christmas tree, the appliances – those only existed to us, in whatever little hell we stumbled upon. Just like the lighthouse burned down on Uncle Al’s property, this place would do the same and there wouldn’t be a trace of anything.
“I just know,” I told him with finality.
“And your friend, your damn friend,” he swore, suddenly getting to his feet. “You left him there?”
“The fire got him,” I said, also glad that Dex skirted the cat-sized spider thing. “We couldn’t…” And I couldn’t finish the sentence.
My father walked over to the window, staring out at the cityscape. “No. No, I can’t believe any of this. Maximus is going to walk in through that door at any moment.”
“No!” Dex cried out, his voice rough and impassioned. “He won’t.” His eyes began to well up and he looked away. My heart kept breaking again and again. I held on to him tight. My anchor I almost lost. My anchor in this storm.
“Honey, please,” my mom said, getting up and going to my father.
“No, no, no,” he said, stepping away from her touch and keeping his gaze focused on anywhere but the people in this room. “You’ve all gone mad. You’ve been drugged. LSD. That’s all there is to it. You all had a bad trip and in a few days you’re going to realize that. This trip has gone to shit. We need to get out of here immediately.”
I couldn’t argue with the last part and I knew there was no point in arguing the rest. My dad, always staunchly religious, stubborn to a fault, used to dealing with faculty and theology students, he would never ever see it our way. His beliefs only stretched so far.
He wasn’t like us and he never would be.