The Spite House(77)
Emily stepped forward and said, “We all know you’re concerned, Mr. Ross. I can’t begin to imagine. But are you sure that’s the safest thing to do?”
“No. The only thing I’m sure of is that my daughter needs me.”
Emily nodded and said, “Won’t argue that. I got a gun in my car if you want it.”
Eric considered the offer. “If I had ever fired one before, I’d take you up on that, Millie. Can’t afford to fuck that up on my first try, here, though.” He looked at Dess and said, “I’ll be back with her.”
“I know you will,” she said.
From one of the master bedroom windows of the Masson House, a shaded figure watched Eric approach. Eric felt something different in the coldness of its gaze this time. It was far less hostile and more concerned. Possibly afraid.
The front door opened as he reached for the knob. A little white girl in an outdated dress stood just inside. A younger boy stood beside her. Both smiled. Eric paused briefly, then went in as the children turned and ran from him, fading fast with each step until only their laughter remained.
Eric didn’t register the door shutting behind him. He stood still and listened. When the children’s laughter dissipated, he heard a man’s muffled voice coming from upstairs.
CHAPTER 35
Max and Jane
Earlier that day, two hours before sunrise, Maxwell Renner woke up in his small, spartan apartment in East Texas to see his wife standing above him in bed. This alarmed him, because he hadn’t told her to get up, and Jane Renner wouldn’t do anything without him telling her to.
Jane’s mouth was pulled into a tight grimace, like she was smiling through an electrocution. Her eyes bulged, her fists were clenched. Max pushed himself back against the headboard, his heart beating faster than ever before.
Of course she came to life again now. After he once again tried to get her to kill herself. Not after any of his better days, when he made sure she ate well, read to her, tried to play cards with her, cleaned up after her. No, it had to be now, when she had cause to kill him.
Tiny, astonished breaths slipped out of his mouth, each meant to hold words—questions, reassurances—and instead carrying clicks from his tongue and throat.
“Finnnnd me,” Jane said through her clenched teeth. Her voice, unused for months, strained under the stress.
“What?” Max said.
“Come back,” she said, then dropped onto him, hands at his face like she meant to snatch off someone’s mask.
“Jane, stop! I’m sorry!”
“I caaannnnn come back,” she said, ignoring his apology. “The chilllldrennnn told me it’s reeealll.” Then she poured her thoughts and emotions into his mind, and he took it all in. He had no choice. She gave him all of her agony and loneliness and confusion and desperation, but more than that, the revelation that she was not beyond hope. There was a way back.
He saw flashes of images and faces, heard the dead and the living who’d been inside the house recently. More than any others, he saw the face of a little girl, and understood she was the one who could help him to help Jane. Then the nightmares would stop, and his burden would be lifted.
“Eunice hasssss the girl,” Jane said, her voice fading, her face beginning to relax, placidity coming over her. “Eunice has her,” she said, softer this time, like she was talking in her sleep.
So the old woman had this little girl. Sure she did. Eunice was scared and selfish and conniving enough to let people go into that house without really warning them. Not just saying that it was haunted, but that it was hungry. Max wouldn’t put it past her to use someone’s kid to get what she wanted.
He held Jane’s limp body close, rocked back and forth, and cried. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it, babe. I’ll go. I’ll go. I’ll go.”
He repeated this like an incantation until it chased away the part of him that begged him not to return to Degener. That told him how foolish he was to linger in Texas so long, pretending he would someday summon the courage to drive to the Masson House to save his wife. Who was he kidding? He didn’t even have the guts to go public with what happened. He never wrote about it online under a username, scared that it would put him on the spite house’s radar. That it would find him. Take him, too.
Now he was going to go back? No, he’d be better off going to the closet, getting the gun, and shooting Jane now, so he could be done with this and go on with his life.
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to do that. He loved her. More than that, he owed her.
“I’ll go,” Max said. “I will go.” An hour later he was on the road, with Jane in the backseat and his gun in the glove compartment.
* * *
The last purely lucid observation Jane Renner made—before the spite house tore her soul from her body—was that she understood why Eunice Houghton preferred handwritten journals. It was easier to track the degradation of a person’s sanity through their handwriting than through the words they wrote. What she’d written in her journal was alarming, but how she’d written it was worse.
“Something here,” in large, jagged letters on one page.
“Has taken part of,” slightly smaller on the next page.
“ME,” in capital letters on the third page, “and won’t give it back” scribbled across the fourth.