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Not Dead Yet

The hit was hard. Nick was out. But he was still alive, at least.

If they had killed him…

If he had killed them …

Lore couldn’t bear to think about it.

They dragged Nick into the crawlspace.

—

And it was like, whoof, the air of their anger was sucked out of the room. Melted away, a sandcastle under a single wave. They all cooled their heels now in the crawlspace, and Hamish shook his head and said he was sorry. “I just got so mad. I was so mad at everything and everyone. I want to say, you know, that it was strategic, that I was hitting him because I thought he’d go for the knife or because I thought he was tricking us, but that wasn’t it, man, that wasn’t it at all. I hit him because I wanted to hurt him. For the way he hurt us. Shit .”

Owen told them he had wanted to kill them both, too.

Lore just nodded, staring at the wall.

Above their heads, Christmas lights, red and green, twinkled.

At their feet, Nick lay, his body in a tangle. Still breathing. Moaning.

What they’d find when he awoke, Lore did not know. But first, she had something she had to ask Owen, didn’t she?

—

“Why did you say that?” Lore asked Owen after having pulled him off to the side, leaving Hamish to watch over a slumped-over Nick, his hands and ankles bound with electrical tape.

“What?”

“To Nick. You said Matty wasn’t dead.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“You know that? You’re sure of it?” She wanted to grab him and shake the answer out of him. But suddenly everything felt so precarious, so delicate, that she instead just stood there, quietly quaking.

“No. I’m not sure. I just—” He hesitated. “The house got in me. It’s been getting into us all lately but before? When I hurt myself, it…it really got in me, Lore. I don’t even know where I ended and its walls and hallways began. And there was this moment when I understood the house. Where I knew what the door I was about to open would show me. Almost like I could feel it, or like I could control what came next. And somewhere in there I just felt like…Matty wasn’t here. That it hadn’t killed him. It showed Nick what it wanted to show Nick to break him. I think…Matty got out.”

Hope, cruel hope, hope so bright it blinded her, burst forth in her chest. It felt dizzying. She felt buoyant and sick. “If he got out—”

“It doesn’t mean he got out the right way, Lore. This place will let you out if you serve it. We saw that with Nick. It…could be that way with Matty, too.”

That hope went supernova. Bursting so bright it burned the universe, flaming out into a dark, dead lump. Of course. Of course it meant Matty might not be Matty anymore. He might just be…like Nick. Like the house. A monster carrying its pain into the world and using it to make more pain.

“Maybe we can find him. And save him.”

“First we have to help Nick.”

The cooling lump of hope in her heart forced her to ask the question: “Can we? Help him, I mean. You were out there on the edge, Owen. So close to falling over it. We got you here in time but Nick—it’s been in him for, shit, we don’t even know how long. Months? Years? When did he find a staircase? When did he go up it, take the place into his head and bring it back out? He’s with the house, ” she said, gesturing to Nick. “He is in the house and the house is in him. He is its agent . Poisoned by it for so long it’s hard to know where the poison ends and where Nick begins.” She crossed her arms. “How do we fix that?”

“I think you’re going to have to table your discussion,” Hamish called to them. “Because somebody’s waking up.”