The Spite House(65)

CHAPTER 31



Stacy



“Run” means run and hide.

Dad and Dess worried that she might not appreciate the importance of the “drills” they ran with her. In empty parks, in shopping centers near closing time, in multilevel parking structures, even at a local carnival once, when there were hardly any people there, they practiced what Dad described as “hide-and-seek, but serious.”

“If I say run, it means run and hide until one of us comes to get you,” Dad said. “If you hear us calling for you, you come right out. I’ll only ever say run if it’s really serious. Something very bad has to happen for me to tell you this, and I might not have time to say all of this to you then. That’s why it’s so important for you to take this seriously, okay?”

There were things about this she didn’t understand. What kind of “very bad” thing could happen? For any other emergency, Dess and her dad wanted her by their side. Even going about everyday activities, one of them always remained nearby and would check on her if she stayed too quiet for too long, even when she was in the same room with them. Almost like she might disappear if they didn’t look at her or speak to her often enough.

What she did understand was that the drills were very important to Dad, and to Dess, too, so she listened.

As soon as she’d heard Lafonda shout, “Run,” Stacy dumped the book out of her lap, hopped down from the chair, and ran for the nearest door. Had she been facing the hallway door, or if it were closer, that’s where she’d have gone, but her practice, the drills she’d treated so seriously, taught her to go for what was closest and not to turn back or even look behind her unless she absolutely had to.

The nearest of the three doors she faced was to her right, between a pair of tall bookcases. The door, too, was tall and she worried when she pulled the latch down that the door would be too heavy for her to open. Instead it pushed open almost on its own as soon as the latch bolt released. She slipped through and shut it behind her.

She was in an antechamber that had a fireplace, a large round table, and several chairs along the walls beneath multiple massive paintings and portraits. The size of the Houghton Manor, a source of wonder less than a minute earlier, made her dizzy. The antechamber’s ceiling, as it was in every other room, was too high. The floor tiles were too wide and too long, and there were too many of them. The people in the portraits were too big to fit more than half their bodies within the frames that surrounded them, and if they could have pulled themselves free from their canvases they would have emerged as giants.

Stacy wanted to crawl up to the base of the big round table and pretend it was a good hiding space. Knowing that this was a bad idea, she next wanted to drop to the floor and cry. That was before the voices of the people she could not see returned.

Keep running.

Keep going.

Get away.

Don’t get caught.

Trust us.

Run, girl. Run!

She ran across the antechamber, away from the voices as much as whatever Miss Lafonda told her to run from. But the voices followed. At the other end of the antechamber she pushed open a door and stepped into a bedroom.

The storage bench at the foot of the bed made her freeze. The gray rectangular box was just big enough for her to fit inside, and its lid was open.

You can hide there, one of the voices told her. She shut her eyes tight and held Miss Happy tighter and shook her head hard at this. Behind her eyelids she could see something that felt like a memory but that couldn’t be a memory, because she was sure it hadn’t happened to her. She was lying down inside something soft but small, like a tiny bed with walls around it. Her eyes were closed but she sensed her surroundings in her mind.

She saw Mom and Dad approaching her. Dad held Miss Happy then, in this fake memory, and he started to give her doll to her but then pulled it back and whispered, “No, no, no.” He and Mom then kissed Stacy on the forehead and walked away, and she’d felt sad because they were sad, and she’d wanted to get away from that feeling.

She opened her eyes to escape this vision, then turned away from the storage bench. In the far corner of the room, near the door that led to the hallway, she saw a tall, linen-lined wicker basket and ran to it. This was a better place to hide. It wouldn’t be as dark on the inside as the bench. There was no chance that its top would lock or be too heavy for her to open once it was in place. She would not feel trapped inside.

Stacy climbed into the basket and sat down, hunching over as she set the lid in place. Through the walls of the room she thought she heard someone call her name. The people she couldn’t see never called her by name. This was someone who was really there. When she heard them again she knew that it was Miss Eunice.

Had Dad and Dess asked Miss Eunice and Miss Lafonda to practice emergencies with her? If so, why didn’t they let her know? It confused and frustrated her, having to wonder whether these other grown-ups had permission from her dad to run their own “drills.” Without knowing that, she couldn’t even know if this was a real emergency, or a made-up one. It did not help that the people she couldn’t see were still talking to her.

Stay where you are.

Don’t listen to her.

Don’t trust her.

Don’t help her.

They did not like Miss Eunice. They said the word “her” like they wanted to spit it out of their mouths, and it almost made Stacy feel sick to hear it. She knew that she needed to listen to what Miss Eunice was saying, however, so she made herself focus on doing that.