One house left, p.4
One House Left, page 4
Hazel checks her phone, then slides it back in her pocket.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You can call him if you want.”
She nods and leaves without another word. Whatever she has left, she’s saving for him.
I listen for a while, then drift into a daydream that eventually morphs into sleep, images of Max blunting the claws of nightmares that, tonight at least, keep their distance.
When he was twelve, his sleep became a trap.
On the worst nights, something vast pressed against him as he whimpered in the darkness; an unbearable weight crushing his chest.
He knew, if he could call for help, that it would leave him. But all his words were broken, coming out in garbled groans that made the shape push even harder.
His limbs tensed as he fought back, every muscle in his body trying to shatter the sleep enveloping him like plastic wrap.
The groans stirred and swirled, the sound becoming a tornado that spun faster and faster until, finally, it burst out in a scream.
Sometimes, his parents were there when he awoke, stroking his wet forehead, soothing him with their whispers.
Sometimes, he was alone in the dark, relief followed by dread as he realized he wasn’t awake at all.
He had to scream even harder to break out of those—so loud that he was sure his throat would bleed and his voice would be slashed into tiny pieces.
His biggest fear, even in the moments of relief when he finally fought himself awake, was that, one day, he would never escape. That he would be lost in a never-ending cycle of terror and fake solace, like a kidnap victim running, running, running, before being dragged back to hell.
13
On Friday evening, I quickly eat dinner, forcing a few mouthfuls of Mom’s lasagna past the anxiety lodged in my throat. Then I say, “I’m going out. I won’t be long.”
Mom squints as she asks, “Where, exactly?”
“Nowhere … exactly. Just … wherever I end up. Is that okay?”
She shakes her head as Dad pats me on the shoulder and says, “You should explore, Nate. It will be nice to know what this place has to offer.”
Most people know those things before they move to a new town.
Mom glances at the dimming light outside. “Don’t be late. And next time, more notice would be nice.”
“More notice to go for a walk?”
Her face hardens as she says, “Yes.”
“Sure.” I kiss her cheek to appease her, then step into the brisk evening air.
She’s fine to let Rowan go to his boxing club tonight and every night, because she thinks he can take care of himself.
But I know how to look after myself too. That’s why I’m not actually meeting Max, Seb, and Tyler.
I check Max’s directions on my phone, then walk slowly past our neighbors’ houses.
People around here don’t pull their curtains when the sun goes down—not right away, at least. They’re not afraid of being seen, because they don’t think anyone’s watching.
When we first moved in, I checked every window in our house, seeing what nighttime looks like in our latest new beginning. And this one is particularly quiet. There’s no one hanging out on the corners; there are no joggers or dog walkers or late-night deliveries.
That’s why it’s only me walking to the end of the road and taking a left, down the hill toward the local store, then across the park where one rusty swing creaks in the wind.
I join another street, the houses set back from the road and their front gardens screaming Look at me!
This must be the nice part of town, and I wonder why. Is that a reaction to something, too? The same way the streets around Murder Road held a constant, unspoken beauty pageant?
The curtains of these houses are closed, the cars in the driveways freshly washed. But it isn’t a big street. It ends as quickly as it begins, spitting me into the shadow of another building, a broken clock set in a brickwork arch and large windows made up of tiny frosted squares.
I walk over to the door and check the bulletin board, the fading announcements of years-old events held captive behind its glass.
This is a school no one goes to anymore. An elementary by the size of it—the opposite to Montgomery-Oakes High’s space-station shine.
I walk for a few more minutes, until the houses disappear and fields stretch out on either side of a narrow lane. Then I keep walking until I see it—the middle of nowhere.
A dirt road snakes off to the left, hardened tire tracks crumbling underfoot. I listen for the sound of engines; then, when I’m sure no one’s coming, I turn on my phone light, tread quickly through the patterns, and step away from the clearing.
As I back into the undergrowth, branches scratch my neck and dry leaves tickle my ankles.
When I’m settled, I check my cell. I’m thirteen minutes early.
Eventually, a car creeps up the road, its headlights painting a yellow fuzz over the black. Then the lights vanish and their glow slowly fades from my vision.
The passenger window opens and Seb peers out. “Nate?” he hisses. “Are you there?”
My breath sneaks out in wisps that merge with the gloom. That’s the only clue that I’m here, but no one is looking that closely.
The driver’s door opens and Max steps out. “Nate? We’re ready if you are.”
She tilts her head toward the star-speckled sky, as if she’s sniffing me out. Then she shakes her head and says, “He choked.”
“Maybe he’s late,” Tyler says, joining her in the clearing.
“I don’t think so. If he was coming, he’d be here already.”
She knows me. Or at least, she knows some of me. Maybe I am that easy to read, because I’ve never been late for anything.
I’m here for me, not for them. I was tricked into saying yes in the Hell Hole. If Tyler hadn’t caught me that day, I’d still be watching Max from a distance, so I’ve come to see if I can trust my new “friends.” And what better way to do that than to watch them in the dark?
“Okay,” Seb says. “Let’s get started.”
Tyler and Max get back in the car and close their doors. Then nothing happens for a long time. Eleven minutes, to be exact.
That’s how long they said it needed to be completely silent—before they draw the faces.
On cue, I watch breath-clouds fill the windows, then lines quickly drawn—circles not quite complete, two eyes, one mouth.
I imagine them whispering the words they said in the Hell Hole—I see the Face in the Glass—and then a pair of real eyes look at me through the window and it feels like Max is staring into my soul.
My back stiffens and my legs almost give way but I steady myself. It’s not me she’s looking for. It’s whatever she thinks will come when you do this stupid ritual.
Other people might be nervous that it’s true. They might be more worried about what’s behind them than what they can see. But there’s no monster, no man, no myth lurking in the shadows at my back. There’s nothing and no one ready to tap on Max’s windshield and beg to be let in.
There’s just me, quickly realizing that their invitation was harmless. They really do want me to join their urban-legend-worshipping club. They just want another person’s breath for their windows, another finger to draw the faces a bit quicker, another whisper for their words.
Max’s face pulls back from the glass and I wonder what they are saying. Are they disappointed? Or relieved?
How many times have they done this? Trying different stories they’ve heard, attempting to find some truth in the biggest lies?
One of the back doors opens and Tyler steps out just as Max yells, “What are you doing?”
“It didn’t work!” he shouts back. “It never works.”
While his first sentence soared toward the trees, his second falls at his feet. That’s where he looks as Seb tentatively steps out, eyes darting and fingers twitching.
“It could still happen,” he says. “We should get back in and lock the doors … just in case.”
“Come on then!” Tyler yells. “If you’re out there, what are you waiting for?”
Goose bumps surge over my skin as I wait for him to call my name. How does he know I’m here? But it’s not me he’s looking for.
“We drew your face! We called your name!”
Max’s door opens and she strides over to Tyler, clamping her hand over his mouth.
She whispers something and Tyler stiffens. Then the three of them edge back to the car, their doors slowly clicking shut, and I hear it.
Ready or not. Whatever you do.
I push my palms against my skull, softly pleading for the song to fade. And it does, instantly—the forest wiped clean of the words like a shaken Etch A Sketch.
Did Max hear it, too? Is that why they retreated? Or are they still more fearful of a make-believe man than a bona fide nightmare?
I’m suddenly aware of the woods encasing us, the countless spaces for bad things to hide. But the only sounds now are the thick branches creaking in the wind and the hoot of the owls whose eyes glisten in the moonlight.
The doors open again and all three of them clamber out.
“I’m sorry,” Max says, and Tyler shrugs.
“No, you’re not.”
“I said I am, so…”
“You’re the pessimist. I’m the optimist. Don’t go changing now.”
Tyler holds the back of his head in his hands and slowly paces the clearing. Then he runs between the trees, disappearing for a few seconds each time, before bounding out somewhere totally different and making his friends jump.
“Quit it,” Seb says, although, in the moments when Tyler vanishes, his eyes search the shadows for every possible exit.
“The Face in the Glass is pissed now,” Tyler mutters from the gloom, and I creep back, worried he’s going to walk right into me.
He’s masking his disappointment by playing the fool. I can see that, even from here. But I can’t help smiling as Tyler grabs Seb from behind, then darts over to Max and says, “Too bad Nate couldn’t come.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she replies.
“I told you so?”
“Why do you still have to say it?”
“Because I like being right,” Tyler yells, as he jumps on a felled tree and scrambles from one end to the other. “Come on, Seb. Climb with me.”
His friend reluctantly steps forward, then clambers awkwardly up and shimmies over to Tyler.
“It’s better just the three of us, anyway,” Tyler says.
I like the look on Max’s face—the one that says he’s wrong. Maybe I’ll never actually be friends with these people, but it’s nice knowing I could be.
That may be enough. If I let it. I could know that good, albeit slightly odd, teenagers would be happy to hang out with me.
Some people don’t even get that.
I can’t leave my hiding place now. The first thing they will do is shit themselves and the second thing they’ll do is hate me, because how do I explain that I was watching them?
How do I say I wanted to see behind the act?
The song stirs again and I clench my fists until it fades. Then I watch Max throw her head back and laugh, so loud and so long that nothing else matters.
What are the chances that I would walk headfirst into a group obsessed with urban legends? Is this one last sick joke from the universe? And what if, despite everything, I try to let them in?
14
I could see part of Murder Road from my old bedroom window, and for a long time, that was as close as I got.
Sometimes kids on our street would stand on the crossroads and dare one another to place a foot onto Cherry Tree Lane. But mostly we watched the people going in and out of their houses, their cars edging past us as we gawked, and wondered why they didn’t look permanently terrified.
“People pretend all sorts of things,” Rowan told me once. “Those are pretending to be happy.”
Our street was called Pennyforth Avenue. No nasty nickname. No sordid history. Just a boring road in the shadow of a cursed one. But that song. It haunted me then and it haunts me now.
Kids chanted it while they skipped on the chalk-dusted sidewalks. It replaced the counting of hide-and-seek. It slipped into the wandering minds of strangers as they hummed.
If there was ever a breeze in Belleview, the Hiding Boy’s song would drift along on it. And now, somehow, it had found me in the woods as I watched Max.
“Where have you been?” Mom asks as I open the front door.
“The middle of nowhere.”
She leans in until her breath burns my neck. “Don’t be snarky with me.”
She steps back as the top stair creaks and Dad comes down in his bathrobe.
“Hey. See anything interesting?”
“No.”
He walks straight past us and I watch the fridge light wash over him in the darkened kitchen.
He takes a handful of something back to their bedroom, Mom keeping her eyes down until he’s gone.
“Be careful,” she whispers. “Until we get our bearings … you have no idea what’s out there.”
I nod, picturing Max laughing at Tyler’s jokes, and Seb’s face right before his friend jumped out at him.
At first glance, there’s nothing out there. Nothing harmful, anyway. Just someone who I’m desperate to find out all I can about, despite everything inside me screaming no.
15
When I open my locker on Monday morning, a sheet of paper flutters out to fall at my feet.
Faceup, in red writing, it says: You can’t run forever!
I stamp my sneaker over it, quickly checking whether anyone else has noticed. But my classmates are caught up in their own mundane moments. Even if they weren’t, I’m the last person they pay attention to.
Pretending to tie my lace, I snatch it from the immaculate tiled floor. Montgomery-Oakes High doesn’t do litter, so if I let it, this would stand out like a corpse in a kindergarten classroom.
I scrunch my eyes closed, then slowly prize them open, but it’s still there—the four words that prove someone knows exactly what is coming for us.
Anxiety twists my stomach like fists wringing out a washcloth; then I see her, and it’s almost enough to force my terror aside.
Max marches toward me from the opposite end of the corridor and I swear I can feel the ground move.
“Where were you?” she asks, her eyebrows creased and her hands fidgeting in her pockets.
“What?”
“Friday night. You stood us up.”
I push the note to the back of my locker and slam the door.
The sound makes Max step back, while the kids closest to us glance over then turn away.
I look for a guilty face in the crowd, someone lurking in plain sight. If I know anything about people who want to get a scare out of you, they love to watch.
“Is everything all right?” Max asks.
Far from it.
“Sure. Did it work? The Face in the Glass?”
She chews her bottom lip, then shakes her head. “Tyler isn’t happy.”
“What about you?”
“For me, it’s more about disproving. The world is too gullible, if you ask me. Tyler’s convinced that, one day, we’ll open the Hellmouth or something.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
Max grins. “That depends how quickly we close it.”
I edge away from my locker, distancing myself from the warning inside.
Without her, that’s all I have here—anonymous messages, expanding fears, and tiny spaces in classrooms and crowds that I slip in and out of just to get through the day.
“Did you leave a note for me?”
“Pardon?”
“A note,” I repeat. “In my locker.”
I search Max’s narrowing eyes for guilt, but all I see is confusion.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “Did you get something? Was it a love letter?”
She smirks, her lips folding together when she notices the blush creeping up my neck.
“Forget about it,” I mumble. “It was nothing.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“I said, it’s fine.”
Sympathy washes over Max’s face, but I wish it wouldn’t. That’s worse than the other thing, because I don’t want her to feel sorry for me. Girls don’t feel sorry for the boys they like. And those boys don’t burn from the inside out at the slightest mention of love.
“I should go,” I say. “I’m sorry for standing you up.”
“Why did you?”
For a split second I want to tell her I was there, but I know how that would sound.
Better to walk away with that question unanswered than to always be remembered as a weirdo.
“Good luck opening the Hellmouth … or not opening it.”
Max nods, like she knows that’s the best she’s going to get.
When she leaves, I quickly open my locker and stuff the note in my bag. Then I go to the bathroom, lock myself in the farthest stall, and stare at the words.
You can’t run forever!
A whistle echoes off the tiled walls and I hold my breath. I should be in class now, but I’m not ready for that yet. I need to study the writing a little more. I need to search my memory for any suspicious faces in a sea of strangers.
I wait for the flush of a toilet or the splash of a tap. But there’s nothing except the low groan of a few stragglers followed by the distant yell of an impatient teacher.
When I am sure I’m alone, I turn the note over. There are no imprints of other things, no finger marks, nothing except a clean white sheet on one side and four neat words on the other.
“I can,” I whisper, and the whistle comes again.
I snatch my words back, pressing the paper against my chest.
Who is in here with me? Someone else ditching class? Or something worse?
You don’t call out. You never ask, “Who’s there?” You stay silent and still … for as long as it takes.
Eventually, the assholes who lurk in high school restrooms to torment the kid who thinks this is a safe space get bored of playing. Eventually.
