Oh my God.
He jumped out of his chair, overwhelmed by the need to get to his kid. But a sense of vertigo rocked him where he stood. He caught himself against his desk, his hands skittering across its top. News articles scattered with a soft flutter of moth’s wings. Photographs spilled out of the old yellowed envelope and scattered across the floor like a clumsy magician’s deck of cards. Lucas stared at the mess at his feet—the entire basis of his future fanned out before him on a stretch of grimy old carpet—and lowered himself to the floor. He plucked pictures off the rug, jammed them upside down and backward into the envelope again.
And then, somewhere in the house, two doors slammed one after the other—bam, BAM—like gunshots going off in some random corner, in some random room.
The envelope fell from his trembling hands, pictures spilling out once more.
He shot up, tried to regain his balance, stood stick-straight without taking a single step as his head spun. He would have run, would have launched himself up the stairs to make sure Jeanie was all right, but the duo of jarring slams was accompanied by voices . . . multiple voices. The girls he swore he had heard laughing from the shadows of the kitchen were back, now joined by the low murmur of men.
Lucas’s heart felt like a helium balloon, bumping up against his tonsils. Adrenaline spiked his blood, intensifying his queasiness. His vision blurred—no, wait. It wasn’t his eyesight. The walls were buzzing like tuning forks.
What the fuck is happening?
He turned around, shot a look at his corkboard.
If it’s still there, he thought, then I’m still here.
The corkboard was exactly where it should have been, but the voices didn’t cease.
Lucas dared to move away from his desk and toward the door, shocked by the weight of his legs. Walking felt like wading through a vat of something thick, viscous. It was as though time had slowed, but his thoughts continued to roll out as fast as ever.
It felt like hours before he finally reached the door. It took another day to press his ear to the wood and listen—a pointless childhood reflex, because by the time he reached his destination, the voices were so loud they were booming in his ears.
He hesitated, afraid to see what was beyond the door. Because what if his doubts about Echo were right? What if, like an idiot, he had invited her into his home and she in turn had let the people from the orchard into his living room? Someone was out there other than Echo and Jeanie. There was no room for doubt.
Lucas squeezed the doorknob in the palm of his hand, willing it to open without having to turn it himself. A burst of laughter rumbled through the walls, as if someone was amused by his wishful thinking, of his wanting to take action without moving his feet.
He yanked the door open wide, ready to scream at whoever was out there, prepared to demand they explain themselves before he called the cops.
What the fuck are you doing in my house?!
Your house? Oh no, Lucas, that’s where you’re very much mistaken.
The chorus of voices stopped—a party disturbed by an uninvited guest.
The room was dark, just as he’d left it. Upstairs, the hallway light was on, but from where he stood, he could see Jeanie’s door was shut. It had slammed shut minutes—or had it been hours?—before. Virginia’s name ran across his tongue. He sucked in air, ready to yell up to her, to make sure she was all right. But his eyes adjusted to the dark faster than he could form the three syllables that made up her proper name. His shout was stillborn. Silent.
Because what was happening was impossible.
It was impossible.
The living room wasn’t theirs.
In the moonlight, he could make out furniture he’d never seen before.
The flat screen was gone, replaced by an old boxed-in RCA monitor.
The overstuffed leather sofa was now a stiff-backed brown-and-orange plaid pullout.
Macramé hung where family photographs should have been.
He stepped out of his study and into a house that didn’t exist, nearly stumbled when his feet caught on the thick shag that hadn’t been there before. The air smelled of patchouli and weed and melted wax and the faint scent of pine.
And there, in a particularly dark corner, was a figure standing statuesque. A tall, gaunt man with skin pale enough to shine through the shadows. A man with wavy dark hair. Piercing eyes. A disarming smile that slowly curled up at the corners.
Up.
Up into a wide, nefarious grin.
Lucas stumbled backward, nearly falling into his study before slamming the door.
It’s him.
His pulse vibrated the plates of his skull.
It’s fucking him.
Every second that passed was one closer to the insane realization he already knew.
“How?” he whispered, but he knew that, too. It hadn’t been a trick or a ploy or a schizophrenic delusion.
One hundred and fifty miles away, Jeffrey Halcomb’s corpse was cooling on a gurney. But here in Pier Pointe, despite the impossibility, he was alive and well. He had found his way back to the coast. He had returned to the house he had been pulled from, had returned to the house where . . .
Lucas’s gaze jumped back to the corkboard, all those faces staring out at him, smiling wider than he remembered, grinning at him, as though they’d been waiting for this very moment of epiphany.