Page 61

60

The Light Reveals What We Don’t (Want to) See

Owen didn’t want to talk, and Nick didn’t seem inclined to push. Instead, they walked into the next room—a child’s bedroom with many empty beds, all of them spattered with blood—and he pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to sort through what had just happened. Marsha wasn’t real. Her knife wasn’t real. But then she spoke. With not just her voice but—

The house’s voice .

It’s talking to me .

Why now?

Because he saw through the illusion. Saw through to something else—some truth he hadn’t yet grasped. To Nick, he started to say, “That was my father’s voice there. At the end. I don’t know how—”

But Nick barely seemed to be listening to him. He seemed off, like the experience with the dead girl, Marsha, had done something to him. Nick was not one for being quiet.

“I’m hungry,” Nick said. His voice cold and flat.

“What?”

“I’m hungry, Nailbiter. I need food. Let’s find food.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Owen realized that he was hungry, too. How long had it been since they’d eaten? Did that matter? They didn’t have any more food on them, but cycling rooms seemed to work well enough in getting them to find food. “We’ll find some food, then figure out…what comes next.”

It took them four cycles (first three rooms: a long hallway with something moving behind the fleur-de-lis wallpaper; a dusty old study with walls of books, one of which Owen just knew was bound in human skin, and he had no idea how he knew this; and a basement room where the water heater was hissing and clanking, something dripping from the corroded underneath, something red and rusty, and once more Owen knew something, and that something was there’s a body in the water heater )—and then they had it. A walk-in pantry.

At least, that’s what Owen thought it was. Hard to tell—the bare bulb at the top was dim, slick with what might’ve been grease, and flickering.

Still. Had to give it a shot.

So, in they went. The shelves that lined each wall on both sides were metal, but covered in what looked to be a white enamel. And those white wire shelves were lined with boxes, cans, bags. Owen pulled them out one by one, squinting through the half dark to try to make them out.

One box was the size for cereal, and rattled accordingly.

He said as much to Nick, who grunted.

“What’s up with you?” Owen asked him.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“Leave it, Zuikas.”

“I don’t wanna leave it. Here—maybe it’s like those stupid candy bar commercials. The Snickers ones. You need something to eat.”

He popped the top of the cereal box, ripping it open, finding the bag inside closed. Tearing that, he reached his hand in and ate a fistful of stale cereal. He handed another box to Nick, who held it, but didn’t open it.

So Owen kept looking, even as he downed another mouthful of what tasted like store-brand Cap’n Crunch. It tore at the roof of his mouth. It felt weirdly good, that pain. Like it helped to break the circuit of his looping thoughts, the ones that kept replaying his father’s voice in his head, wish you were never born, wish you were never born, wishyouwereneverborn, neverborn, neverborn, and flashing up images of his father deliquescing there in his bed, the cancer pulping him like a juiced fruit, next to the bed that little blue suede bag…

That’s when his foot hit something. A dull crunch that gave way. Like a pillow or couch stuffed with driveway gravel. Kkkrrrch . He squinted in the dim, erratic light. It was a bag of something. Dog food, by the look of it. Two bags, actually. “I don’t think you want to eat—”

Dog food, he was about to say.

But something between the two bags—there, on the floor—glinted.

Something metal. Squarish.

Owen stooped to pick it up and—

It was a lighter. A metal lighter.

He picked it up. It felt cold in his hand, and a chill grappled up his arm, all the way to his neck, where the hairs rose like the restless dead.

Idly, his heart in his throat, he flicked the lighter open and sparked it.

Fire danced in the dark. Owen tilted the lighter just so—and the flame illuminated the side of the lighter, where it showed the Jack Kenny whiskey logo. He ran his thumb along the underside of the lighter, praying he didn’t feel what he was about to feel: four letters etched into the metal there.

N I C K.

It’s like the penknife, he knew. Just another trick. An illusion. It was never here. This isn’t really in my hand, and the fire isn’t even burning .

But he could see Nick staring at it. Transfixed.

“Nick,” Owen said, cautiously. “I found something.”

“Yeah. Yeah you did.”

Nick’s eyes were wide, unblinking.

And in them, Owen thought he saw something. No—not just one something, but many somethings, little flashes, pulses, images in the dark of his pupil.

Paisley wallpaper in one eye.

A doorknob in the other, tarnished brass.

The horizontal slats of a heating vent.

The black hole of a garbage disposal.

And then they were both, for a moment, the same image:

Each pupil a hole, and in each hole a set of steps. Staircases in the deep dark of his gaze. Starecases, Owen thought, madly.

Owen said the thing he didn’t want to say out loud:

“You’ve been here before.”

Nick sniffed, coughed a little to clear his throat, as if the truth was stuffed down in there deep, had to be jostled free. “Just let it in, Nailbiter. Open the door and let the house in. The house always wins, Zuikas. The house always wins.”

Owen’s head spun with questions. None of them good. None of them with answers he wanted to hear. Still. You have to say the words.

“You knew what this place was.”

“I did.”

“And yet—”

“And yet.”

Deep breath. “Did you…find Matty?”

“You don’t care.”

“I care, Nick. I care, don’t say that. Did you find Matty?”

“Fuck off, fuck you.”

“ Did you find Matty? ”

A sharp, cold laugh from Nick, one ruined by the sound of the threat of tears.

Nick was right up on him now. The light from the Zippo casting his face in a hellish glow. “I found the truth, is what I found. I found the body. Matty’s dead, kid. I wish this place would’ve killed me, too, but it won’t let me die. It emptied me out. Filled me up. Painted me the black of fire-char, the red of blood. This is home for me, now. I’m home. I’m home.”

“Nick, I—I don’t understand—”

“You will,” Nick said, his voice now the same throaty, buzzing chorus as Marshie’s. “You will, when you’re all alone. Which is what you deserve, as you well know, Nailbiter.”

“Nick—”

“I’m going to leave now. You’re on your own.”

Nick backed toward the door.

“Wait,” Owen said, reaching out and grabbing at Nick’s elbow—

Nick shoved him backward.

And that’s when Owen hit him. At the end of his fist rode a world of resentment, weariness, and above all else, anger. Anger at himself, at this place, at Matty for climbing those stairs, at Lore for abandoning him, at Hamish for changing, and at Nick for leading them to this house.

Nick’s head rocked back, the nose popping—

Owen opened his mouth to speak—just one phrase, only part of which he got out: “The Coven—”

But Nick was fast to counter. He launched himself at Owen, slamming his forehead again and again into Owen’s skull—it felt like taking a hit from a sledgehammer. Stars went supernova behind Owen’s eyes as the lighter went out, falling from his other hand. He staggered backward, his feet slipping on loose cereal. Pain fired up his spine like a signal flare as he fell hard on his tailbone. Blood slicked his tongue. The half darkness returned as the lighter bounced away—he cried out, tried to call to Nick, but it was too late. Nick went through the door, closing it behind him.