The Spite House(30)

Jane had broken his grip as he tried to drag her out of the house. “I can’t leave me behind,” she screamed, scratching and punching him. “It has me and won’t give me back. I can’t leave without getting me back!”

She had run upstairs, and the days of hardly sleeping or eating had left Max so weak he could only crawl after her. He almost didn’t do that. He almost left her. By the time he got to Jane in the floating hallway, where it was so cold he felt like he’d been buried naked in snow, she was unconscious on the floor. He gathered her up and managed to carry her downstairs despite feeling like he could hardly carry his own weight. As he got through the front door and brought her to the car, he heard someone who sounded like Jane screaming from inside the house. But he had her in his arms, where she was dead quiet, so it couldn’t have been her, even though it sounded like her, even though in his soul he knew it had to be her and that if he went back he’d find the part of her that she’d gone back for. The part she said the house had taken. Screaming for help while he pretended not to hear it.





CHAPTER 12



Eric



Eric found himself on an unknown dirt road, struggling to make sense of two competing memories. The last thing he remembered was checking in on Stacy and Dess before going upstairs to go to sleep in the master bedroom of the spite house. But he also had a memory that couldn’t be his. The memory of a battlefield filled with a mind-altering quantity of violence. It couldn’t have been from a movie he’d seen or book he’d read, because the unspeakable smell of it still lingered with him. Burning, rancid, metallic, and vulgar, it was a merciless and unshakable smell. The noise of it all, too, was fixed in his mind as though he had lived it. So he must have been there. But he had never been to war, or been in the service. Hell, Eric had never been in a fistfight. But when he looked down he saw that he wore boots and pants caked in mud, and a darkened khaki service coat.

He noticed that his hands were not his; they were white.

This was a dream, then. He shut his eyes for a moment, then checked his clothes and hands again when he reopened them. Nothing had changed. The road ahead looked the same, tree-lined. The clouds in the sky hadn’t darkened or departed.

He shut his eyes once again, and this time he saw the memory of combat that part of him had tried to stave off. A field that warfare had turned into a deforested bog. Sucking mud where he’d gotten his feet stuck and been hit with something, where he’d glimpsed his insides spilling out below his waist, his lower half absent. He heard the deafening storm of exploding mortar shells. There had been an alarming absence of pain. He should have been in a world of agony. His legs were gone, his guts sliding out. Why hadn’t he felt any of that?

Against his will, he recalled those final moments as he fought for each breath and held on for as long as he could before he fell deep into blackness and infinite coldness. He’d been in that void for an unknown time, the only thing keeping him partially afloat being his desire to go home. There was an unfathomable multitude with him. More than it was possible to estimate, much less count. Several worlds’ worth of people, it seemed. Many, like him, stayed afloat because they wanted to get back to something, return to a place or work left unfinished, loved ones left unprotected. He sensed almost all of them succumbing to acceptance, though. Gradually, they sank to the bottom of this void. There were very few like him, exceptions who refused to sink deeper, refused to believe this was the end. Some loved their lives too much to surrender them, but most who had the strength and will to fight did so for the same core reason. Less for want of living than the hatred of dying. Hatred of losing. Of allowing others to take what was theirs.

After some time, the soldier rose higher, and the darkness faded. And now, eyes open again, he walked. Whoever he was—for Eric was not himself here—he walked like he could outpace his past.

He passed a wooden signpost that displayed the name of a French village not far ahead. Once he got there, he’d have to find someone who would pardon his meager French and who spoke enough English to help him. I am an American. Private Pete Masson of the 144th Ambulance Company. Is there an army post nearby?

He found people who understood him and were willing to help in the tiny commune of Montfaucon. The looks they gave him when he explained who he was prompted him to ask something else. “What month is it?”

Ao?t.

August? The last he remembered it had been September. “What is the year?”

Dix-neuf cent dix-neuf.

1919.

He had lost almost an entire year. How? Where had he been in this time?

It doesn’t matter. Get home.

But they must have reported him missing by now. He’d have to explain where he’d been. What if they thought he had deserted? What if they somehow thought he had died?

Stop it. Why would they think that? Of course I didn’t die. I’m here, I couldn’t have died. I’m getting home. I’ve got to get back. I’ve got to—



* * *



“—get back.”

Was that a woman’s voice that had awakened him? Where the hell was he now? Why was everything so dark?

Eric grabbed the sheets on the bed. An array of emotions invaded him. A cocktail of grief and fear and anger. He reached for the lamp beside the bed and found the switch to turn it on. Even with the room lit, he struggled to believe he was back in the house, back in his own body, not trapped in another man’s life in the past. Something still didn’t seem right. The bedroom curtains were open. Hadn’t he closed them before going to bed? He must have. He never liked sleeping in a room with an uncovered window. Still, the day had been busy between deliveries and getting settled in and simply remembering to feed himself and the girls. He could have forgotten to close the curtains.