The Spite House(87)

You know you won’t find them. But they might find you.

Peter searched the house for Eleanor, retracing what he’d done to look for Owen. He shouted loud enough to drown out the voice of the house, loud enough to be heard by the children in the orphanage’s playground, and by the Sisters supervising them, although they could not make out what he was saying. He went on like this for hours, until he ripped his voice to pieces and his legs and lungs burned from climbing the stairs.

Exhausted, Peter collapsed to the floor of his bedroom. With his ear to the floorboards, he heard something downstairs. Eleanor and Owen were laughing. Were they toying with him all this time? Was this some devious game?

Their laughter came up the stairs. It echoed strangely, alternating between sounding closer and farther away. When it came to the bedroom door he found the strength to get up.

When he opened the door the laughter stopped. He should have at least heard or seen the children running down the stairs. He did not. The worst of it was that this did not surprise him.

He retreated to the far corner of the room on the other side of his bed, as far from the door as he could get, and sat on the floor. His sanity would not begin to stitch itself back together until the next morning. Until then, he repeated the only words that could give him any solace, and that kept the voice of the house at bay. The lie that was most important to him at the moment. “I never hurt them. I never hurt them.”





CHAPTER 40



Dess



Something in the house held the front door shut. Dess handed Stacy off to Lafonda shortly after the door swung closed. Now she felt the doorknob resisting when she tried to turn it.

“It won’t open,” she said. She slammed her shoulder into the door twice. “It won’t open! Help me! We have to get him out!”

Millie joined her first, then Dana. Together they pushed against the creaking door. Behind them, Lafonda stayed with Stacy while Eunice surveyed everything from near the cars.

The door buckled, then flexed outward as something on the other side slammed into it, staggering Dess, Millie, and Dana. As Dess moved toward it again, the knob turned and the door eased open.

Dess saw her father facedown and was fortunate to have only an instant more to wonder what she and Stacy would do if he was dead. When Eric stirred and tried to get up, she hurried to his side. He grabbed her arm as if it were a rope keeping him from a steep fall. She did not mind the pain. His eyes were wide and she knew that in his mind he’d been gone for far longer than the handful of seconds she’d spent trying to get to him.

He tried to speak. His mouth fell open and a choking noise came up from his throat. Dess put her hands to the side of his face. She stared a measure of peace into him and said, “Dad, it’s all right. You’re back. This is real. I’m really here, you’re really here, Stacy’s outside and we’re all going to be all right. We just have to leave. You ready? Can you stand?”

He nodded and she helped him up. Dana let him lean on her as they walked out. Millie stayed at the door, her back against it and feet planted hard, pinning it to the wall in case it tried to swing shut on them. She let the others leave first, then followed. The door did not close behind them.

Gathered near the cars, Dess and Stacy hugged their father while the others huddled around them. “What about the Renners?” Eunice said. “Are they still in there?”

Eric shook his head. “Gone.” He sounded parched, but Dess noticed that he didn’t look as distressed as he had just seconds earlier. He almost looked aloof, like he’d taken a strong anxiety pill that just kicked in.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Eunice said.

“Like that story you told me about the man who came back to the house in the sixties. Clyde. It’s the same for the Renners. The house has them. They’re in there, but they’re gone.”

There were follow-up questions in Eunice’s eyes—in everyone’s, Dess saw—but they all spared him immediate questioning.

“All right, I’ll have the sheriff bring some people by to search, just to be sure,” Eunice said. “We’ll talk more about it later. For now, I think we could all use some rest. You’re all welcome to come back to the mansion.”

At this Stacy let out an uncharacteristic, scared whine and held her father even tighter.

“Yeah, nah, how about Millie’s?” Dess said, looking at the woman whom she felt an outsized trust in. She’d been ready to go into the house guns blazing to save Stacy. Dess would always be grateful for that. “No fresh, bad memories tied to your place yet.”

“Good point,” Millie said. “Everyone who wants to come is invited. My bar’s stocked up for anyone who needs a drink. Lord knows I do.”

They piled into the cars they’d arrived in, leaving the Renners’ car behind. Soon the Masson House and land were silent, still, and not at all empty.





CHAPTER 41



Eric



“Well,” Millie Steen said, “apparently ghosts and shit are a real thing.”

This broke an extended silence and got a polite laugh out of Eric, and brought a smirk to Dana’s face. Eunice remained quiet.

Eric knew he should be more anxious than he was. The girls were asleep in Millie’s spare bedroom. He stayed with them and watched over them until he was sure they were out, which didn’t take too long. Exhaustion weighed on all of them more than their lingering fears that this ordeal somehow wasn’t over. Once they went to sleep, Eric asked Lafonda to look in on them while he stepped away. He needed to finalize things with Eunice.