All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(116)

Another step down. I flexed my stiff fingers around the knife’s handle. Another step. No, the Miller’s house wouldn’t have cockroaches, or mouse traps, or exposed, rusty drains. They’d have an enormous leather sofa, the kind you could swim in, and they’d have a big screen TV, and they’d have—I took another step down—they’d have a rumpus room. I swallowed a nervous laugh. Jesus Christ, where was Jake? Where was Temple Mae? Where was River? In the rumpus room, right. Check the rumpus room. Jesus Christ, where were they? If they were ok, if they were all ok, I wouldn’t make fun. I wouldn’t make fun of the couch or the TV or the paint that Mrs. Miller had picked because it was the color all the moms were picking right now. I wouldn’t, God, that was a promise, I’d just smile and nod and I’d let Jake give me a tap or two in the jaw, just let them be ok.

And still the steps took my weight quietly, with no squeaking or shifting or groaning. More of the basement was coming into sight: I’d been right about the leather sofa, I’d been right about the big screen TV, big enough that I could have walked through the frame and only had to duck my head a little. I’d been right about the taupe and tan and about the rag rug. But I hadn’t been right about all of it. I hadn’t been right about the rumpus room. I hadn’t guessed about the spray of blood that arced along the wall, and I hadn’t guessed that it would the way water looked when it was pumped through an old sprinkler: that perfect arc.

One breath in. One breath out. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I grabbed the banister, and then the moment passed and my head was clear. Blood. That blood belonged to someone, Temple Mae or Jake, and that blood meant one of them was hurt, maybe both of them, maybe dead.

Suddenly, the truth seemed so transparent, so clear, the way it had when I’d fallen in the trainyard. That hidden part of me, it wasn’t a door. It was an eye. And I knew how to open my eyes—that was baby stuff, everybody knew that—so I opened this one.

The world didn’t seem to change at first. There were no shimmers of color or light, no suddenly revealed dimensions or lurking, psychic horrors. Just that ocean of leather, just the black TV and my black reflection moving across it, just the blood on the wall. But the world did seem . . . textured. Yes, that was close to the right word. It was like putting something that seemed smooth, say, a piece of steel, under a microscope and suddenly realizing that it wasn’t smooth at all, that it was all whorls and folds and threads, and if your hands were small enough, you might be able to grab one of those threads, maybe give it a yank. It was like I’d never seen the world before, not really, and it seemed perfectly right. I wondered, in a distant corner of my head, if this is what it felt like to put on glasses for the first time, this sudden clarity, the realization that there was more, that there had always been more, and now it could be seen.

Blood led into the hallway at the back. I followed it, walking clear of the stains that matted the carpet. There were three doors, and the trail of blood ran straight to the door at the end of the hallway. They were there. That room. I rotated my wrist, flexed my fingers, found the center of the knife’s weight.

The howling started. Close, very close, and coming closer. It would be here soon, that beast, or whatever it was that River could summon. But if I hurried, I might have a chance. I opened the door.

It was a large bedroom, painted lilac and decorated with cherry-wood furniture and a huge vase of silk hibiscus flowers and a painting of an old Japanese man who was naked and sitting cross-legged under a tree, shame and caution be damned. Temple Mae lay on the floor, her head turned to the side, revealing a long, bloody laceration on her scalp. Her eyes were closed, and her face was pale, and there was so much blood. Head wounds always bleed, I told myself. They bleed like you wouldn’t believe. But there was so much blood.

Jake knelt next to her. He was crying—not hard, but his eyes were red and wet—and shaking. One of his arms hung at his side, and the bump along his forearm showed where bone had fractured and shifted. Standing over him, with a hand tangled in Jake’s hair and forcing the boy’s head back, stood River Lang.

I struck first, without thinking about it. My third eye—the door—was open, and I reached for River. But the attack dropped away into nothing. I couldn’t reach him. There was no bridge, no psychic connection. Maybe Emmett was right, and maybe that was just because of the walls I’d put up. I tried again, and again, I couldn’t reach him. I would have to touch him in order to try to stop him. Or I’d have to use the knife.

It was strange, facing him again. I’d really only seen him once, that night at Bighorn Burger, and I had been so upset that night that I hadn’t paid close attention. His loose, blond curls were clipped back, exposing the firm lines of his face and jaw. It was hard, now, to see what I’d seen that night. I’d thought he was attractive, and in truth, he was a good-looking man. But those eyes, how had I ever mistaken those eyes. They were blue, blue-white, and I thought of the ice in the arctic, the ice that closed over salt waters, and of how that ice held everything down, choking the last gasping breaths out of anyone foolish enough to trust its surface. They were just eyes, of course. But I thought of the ice anyway.

“That’s my jacket,” he said.

“Please let them go.”

River smirked. “You said please. You know what he says? He says you’re rude.”

“Please. Neither of them deserve this.”