Lineage(131)

An abyss sat just in front of the house. The churning water groped continuously at the few feet of ground that remained before the foundation, but everything beyond that dropped away and made him feel as if he were leaning over the balcony of a high building. The water went down into an utter blackness that looked complete. The sight was better suited to a plunging ocean trench than a freshwater lake, but what he saw was undeniable. The gazebo was completely gone, although Lance spotted a few boards floating in the undulating currents. The rest of the bay was also being consumed, its rocky border crumbling away beneath the insistence of the clawing liquid. There were shapes in the water too. Dark and indistinct, but they were moving incongruently with the throes of the storm.

A loud thud issued from behind him and broke the trance he had succumbed to. He turned his head just in time to see Erwin stoop down to retrieve the fallen knife. The ghost turned toward him, its features no longer split in half, its skull whole once again.

“Better than that. You’ll have to do better than that,” Erwin said, as he stalked toward the alcove.

Lance sprinted away from the desk, toward the stairs, and looked up. Mary stood on the landing, her hands clenched around the railing. Her eyes were saucers in the faint light.

“My room! Go!” He yelled, pointing as he leapt up the stairs.

She turned and began to run toward the open door when the house shifted violently toward the lake, the eastern edge dropping almost a foot. Mary fell to her side and hit the railing hard enough to crack the log runners loose from their anchors. The entire house groaned like something alive, and Lance felt himself trying to lean forward and fight the gravity that coaxed his body backward. But he lost and toppled down the stairs.

The stairs bit into him as he bounced down their treads, his head cracking off one, and then another, while he rolled toward the bottom. The last riser jammed into his side and he heard the audible snap as a rib sheared off inside him. Lance coughed out a pitiful scream and tried to draw a breath that tasted like pennies. His legs were splayed out on the floor beneath him, and when he tried to move them, they slid only a few inches.

Erwin had maintained his balance and was undisturbed by the now-angled floor that he walked on. His eyes burned into Lance’s as the knives rose once more.

The house rocked again, even more forcefully than before, but the ghost’s footing remained solid. Lance turned and pulled himself up the first step, the pain in his broken rib close to unbearable. He managed to get a leg below him to support his weight, and then the other. With a burst of adrenaline, he hobbled as fast as he could up the stairs, which were becoming even more difficult to climb with the house at its current angle.

“You can’t outrun fate, boy.” The ghost’s voice came from everywhere at once, and Lance feared that any moment he would feel the cold bite of steel from behind.

“Lance! Hurry!” Mary screamed from the doorway to his bedroom.

The pitched landing was only a few steps away and Lance flung himself onto it, and watched Erwin stab the tread where he had been a second before. The knife splintered the wood with the unnatural strength behind it, and Erwin yanked it back with a short jerk of his arm. Lance stood and remained upright, and staggered into Mary’s arms.

“Look!” she yelled, pointing at the dropping end of the house.

Water had begun creeping into the living room, as the storm pulsed against the bay windows, the lake lapping just outside. There was a resounding crack as they watched the waves burst into the living room in a cascade of glass. Lance had only a moment before Mary hauled him inside the room and slammed the door shut, but in that brief instant he saw the water run against the angle of the floor, toward the stairs, and begin to climb them.

“We have to get out,” Lance moaned through the pain that racked nearly every inch of his body.

Mary fumbled with the lock on the door, then turned and slung Lance’s left arm over her shoulders to help support his sagging form. He looked up at the window, bejeweled with raindrops, that now exposed a swath of black-and-gray sky instead of trees and a view of the drive.

The door shook behind them, as it was struck hard from the other side.

“Out the window,” Lance said.

Everything in his vision had become dull gray and his legs threatened to collapse. He saw his hands grip the window frame and then flip the latches. Mary helped him pull the window open as the house shifted sickeningly again, but this time it failed to stop. The dizzying sense of somersaulting backward consumed Lance, and he cried out as he held on to the window ledge with his mangled hand and held on to Mary’s arm with the other. Mary screamed as the angle became worse. Furniture slid across the room and banged into the far wall, and a picture exploded in a shower of glass near Lance’s feet. The house tipped until it became a surety that it would topple completely over. Lance felt as if they were balanced upon a razor-thin edge and even the slightest movement would send them into the awaiting water.