17 & Gone(6)

“Yeah, but you ran across the road.

We saw you—”

She was a tiny girl, with warm brown skin and warm brown hair, and she seemed harmless enough, she seemed genuinely concerned, but I couldn’t listen to her anymore. What caught my attention was the movement out the window: not the flurries of snow but the flash of red. A gloveless hand on the glass that left streaks of mud in its wake.

She’d left my van and come close to the school, even though she couldn’t get inside. There she was, a girl dressed for summer, though all around her was a white stretch of December snow. Her face was clouded with dirt, her long hair woven with brambles, with sticks and leaves and other indecipherable things gummed up and glimmering through the glass. The expression on her face—that haunted look in her eyes—made it seem like she’d seen things I hadn’t, things not many of us had. Bad things.

The hand to the glass, the gesture, palm out, five fingers spread, insinuated so much to me: I should say nothing about her if asked, not to this random freshman and not to anyone. And it said she wanted something from me, needed it, and that I was the only one who could give it to her.

Help. Abby Sinclair needed my help.

“What’re you looking at?” the freshman asked. She followed my gaze to the window and when she said, “Oh . . .” my heart seized, and I wanted to block her view with my body. But then she added, “Gross. Someone’s got to clean that window—so dirty.” She looked back at me and shrugged.

She wasn’t able to see Abby, but she could see what Abby had left behind: the handprints, if not the hand that made them.

— 4 — THAT night I had the dream.

In it was a house. I could try to explain it like it’s an actual place that could be found on some street somewhere. Narrow and made of brick.

Abandoned. Four floors rising up to disappear into shadow-smogged sky.

The broken iron gate. The cracked and collapsing set of stairs leading up to the dark front door.

Even though the dream starts with me standing out on the street, I know it’s not a street I could find anywhere in the waking world. There’s no town or city beyond this place. The sidewalk begins and ends in a prickling patch of darkness. I can only go inside the house.

And I always go in.

That first night, I was at the door in no time. Though the windows were covered in boards, and though a shroud of silence enveloped the building, curling out from the cracks and gaps in the brick, gagging me with it, I lifted my hand to try the bell. It was grown through with rot, so when I pressed the doorbell my finger sunk into something soft and wet, as if plunging into an open, oozing wound.

I pulled my hand away, then tried the door itself. It gave. One push, a few steps in, and there I was standing in darkness. I didn’t realize I was in the foyer, beneath the dangling skeleton of a once-grand chandelier. I didn’t know what was above me, or beside me, or shuffling down near my feet.

But I could smell something: the distinct scent of smoke. It tickled my throat, made my eyes water. Coming from close or far away, I couldn’t tell.

The hush of it was simply in the air, like a hot breath exhaled.

I should have been afraid, want to race out of there, even if I met my end where the sidewalk did. But I stayed put.

It may have been dark, too dark to see my own hand before my face; and it may have been quiet, so quiet someone could have been hidden in the shadows observing my every move; but I felt the need to stay.

Soon I’d come to know the space of this dream like I know the house I live in with my mom, the carriage house we rent from the Burkes who live on the other side of the hedge, that little house with its unnecessary closets and stacked cupboards, its creaky steps and crooked doors. But on this night, my first night visiting, I didn’t know what I’d find in this place. Or who.

When the smoke thickened, the oppressively hot air filling my lungs, I began to think I was in danger. That I could die. But no, actually. The dream wasn’t that.

Soon I’d know this dream wasn’t about anyone dying—it was about living on, forever. The house was a place where you could be remembered, even visited. A home for you when you lost your own. If you ran away. If you got taken. If you steered your bike down the wrong dark road.

All the girls ended up here.

When I’d visit on other nights, I’d come to notice the patterns decorating the wallpaper in all the rooms, the prickly vines of climbing, choking ivy.

I’d see the gaps in the patterns, the blackened gashes where the rot had licked the walls away.

I’d know the layout of the rooms, even the upstairs, once I got the courage to climb the staircase without fearing it would turn to dust under my weight.

There were many bedrooms, all down the hallways; enough rooms to make me wonder how many people had once lived here, how many people could fit here now.

I’d see the other girls there, each of them bound to this place. But that was later.

This was the first night. And the first night I ever had this dream—after I found the flyer with Abby’s face on it— it was Abby I was looking for.

I could sense her, a shrinking, quiet presence breathing from some pocket of darkness. The scent was the same from the van. But stronger, closer. She moved and the floorboards creaked; that’s how I knew she carried weight here. She was substantial here. Here, she was real.

I took a step toward the noise. “Abby?