The Unseen

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Laurel gasped for breath, for consciousness.

Am I alive?

Her mouth was dry, her ears ringing, her body shaking with adrenaline….

The house was preternaturally still.

Laurel felt her arms shaking now; her hands were still braced so hard against the walls that her whole body ached. She opened her eyes… lowered her hands from the walls, and took a jerking step from her alcove.

Every framed painting on the wall in the entry was sideways or otherwise torqued. The entry hall was empty below her. There was no sound, no sound…

Fear flooded through her and she stumbled down the remaining stairs, across the entry hall to the archway of the great room.

She burst into the room and stared around her…

… at total chaos, everything overturned, paintings ripped and mangled on the walls, as if a tornado had hit. The piano was upended and mashed up against a wall, on its side. Anton was nowhere to be seen. Only the long table was still in its place, with Katrina, Brendan, and Tyler slumped in their chairs around it, all three of them slack-jawed and staring. Laurel took a staggering step, felt a chill of horror, recognizing the vacuous looks of the catatonic schizophrenic.

The room was completely silent—and live. The feeling of being watched was paralyzing.

Laurel bolted forward—and almost fell over Dr. Anton, slumped on the floor against the wall with legs sprawled out in front of him, head lolling on his neck… vacant-eyed and drooling.

She found her voice and screamed, “Brendan! Tyler! Katrina!”

The three slumped shapes at the table were still. Not a blink, not a twitch of a muscle in response. Lightning cracked in the sky outside the house, illuminating the room in blue white light. The trees lashed in a frenzy of wind.

Laurel ran to the table, leaned over, and slapped Brendan hard across the face, and then again. “Do you see me? Answer me!” she shouted. No response. She took his shoulders and shook him.

“Brendan, I need you to hear me.” He slumped to the side of the chair, his head lolling against the chair back, his eyes were all black, staring blindly at the ceiling.

Laurel turned to Katrina and shook her, shook her hard, until her teeth clacked in her head with a sickening crunch. The girl was as limp as a doll, frighteningly light.

Laurel heard a rustle of movement and froze. She turned… looked toward the side of the room. A clipboard that had fallen from the table started to tremble, then abruptly slid a few inches across the floor. Laurel started back.

All around the room objects began to shift and move around her, slightly, slyly. A pencil started to roll across the room in teasing slow motion. On the mantelpiece, a china cupid that had somehow remained intact suddenly exploded.

Laurel spun toward it… and saw that the pool of water had begun to seep from the floor again, growing. She felt an unbearable sense of something gathering.

Get out. Get out now.

She whirled back to the table and lunged across it to grab Tyler’s wrists.

His eyes rolled with a blankness that dropped her heart to her stomach.

Laurel held his wrists, digging her fingers into his flesh, and looked into those eerie eyes. “Tyler, you need to come back to me now. Can you hear me?”

The rasping voice that came back to her inside her head was nothing human. Of course I can hear you. I am in you. You belong to me.

“I’m not talking to you,” she said vehemently. Her eyes fell on the scattered Zener cards on the tabletop, and suddenly, instinctively, she switched to the inner voice she had used with the blue-eyed boy in her dream.

Tyler. I need you to hear me now. I need you to come out. Wherever you are, follow my voice.

She shut her eyes tight against the shifting movements of the room, shut her mind against the sly creeping sounds… and imagined the white room—the room they had shared during their test run. She forced herself to breathe, to let go… and saw herself in the room. When she opened her eyes, she was alone in the white room with Tyler. He sat at the table, slumped slackly in his seat. Laurel pulled out the chair in front of her and sat before him, across the table. He was still, limp, unfocused.

Tyler. I’m here. I’m here.

She stared into his eyes and saw nothing.

Tyler, listen to me. Hear me. Follow my voice. Come toward my voice. Come out.

She thought she saw something in his face, saw a flicker, or maybe it was an illusion, but she jolted with hope. She leaned toward him urgently.

Tyler, look at me. Look at me. See me.

She reached out and grabbed his hands, squeezing hard. Tyler. Come out of there. Now.

All at once the young man in front of her gasped, a long, shuddering breath as if he’d just surfaced from deep water. He panted raggedly.

The white room faded around them as Laurel shot to her feet, moved around the table, and knelt beside Tyler, reaching up to stroke his face. “Breathe. Breathe. Tyler, are you there? Can you answer me?”

He answered thickly, but it was his own voice. “God.” He looked around them wildly. A painting shifted on the wall. The piano suddenly fell forward onto its legs without a sound and slid several feet across the floor, then stopped, hovering…

A low, deep groan shuddered through the foundation of the house… the floor beneath Laurel’s knees slithered like a serpent.

Now what she saw in Tyler’s eyes was pure terror.

“Oh God,” he managed. His teeth were chattering so hard he could barely get the words out. “Where is it? Where’d it go?”

“Talk to me. Talk to me,” she commanded, digging her fingernails into his forearms.

“Jesus.” His voice was weak, and thick, but his eyes were lucid. He looked across the table at Katrina, then at Brendan, slumped lifeless and staring at the table with those black, vacant eyes. “What are we going to do?”

Laurel stood. “We’re going to get out of here,” she said grimly, and hoped that he believed her. “Can you move? Can you stand?”

He leaned his arm over the back of the chair and shoved himself up to standing. He promptly doubled over and retched, dry heaves.

She caught him and held him as he heaved. “I know…. I know.” Her eyes were scanning the room even as she comforted him. On the back wall, a window cracked, a long, slow split. “But Tyler, we have to go. We have to go now, before…” She did not know how to express the unformed horror she felt. She looked to Brendan and Katrina. “We have to get them, and we have to get out.”

“There are no doors,” he said, looking honestly bewildered.

“Yes, there are. Come on, Tyler. Take Katrina. Pick her up if you can. Drag her if you have to. Grab her and run,” she commanded.

Tyler seized Katrina’s arms and pulled the girl’s limp body from her chair. Laurel had to not look at the idiot look on Brendan’s face as she reached for his arm. He felt like a snake in her grasp, but she held his slick skin firmly, slipped her arms under his armpits, and yanked him up from the chair.

She glanced back at Anton, sprawled against the wall, slack jaw dropped open, then turned back to Tyler.

“Go!”

They both heaved forward and half-ran, stumbling, half-dragging Katrina and Brendan through the archway, into the entry hall.

Laurel dropped Brendan’s limp and heavy body to the floor and lunged for the front door, twisting the doorknob. It was locked and solid, would not budge even a fraction of an inch as she pulled and shoved at it. Around them, she could hear the house breathing, that rasping, live breath. Tyler barked behind her: “Out of the way!”

She turned to see Tyler had dropped Katrina, who lay crumpled on the floor. He grabbed an end table and lifted it. Laurel pulled Brendan’s dead weight aside and Tyler hoisted the end table and ran at the long vertical window set beside the door with an inarticulate cry. The table smashed through the glass.

He hit again and again, breaking the remaining glass out. Behind them from the great room came a cackling of voices, whispering, and ranting, a frenzied cacophony.

“Get out!” Laurel said through chattering teeth. “I’ll hand her through.”

With Tyler outside and Laurel inside, they carried/passed Katrina through the broken-out window. Laurel’s mind was screaming at her.

What if they don’t recover?

And then,

What if we don’t get out?

The house began a long, slow rumble again, and the rapping began to shake the walls, rolling through the house in waves.

Tyler lunged back in through the window, and together they muscled Brendan toward the window frame, straining with his weight.

The voices in the great room jabbered, louder and louder, and a man’s voice began to shriek, raw, horrible screams. Laurel cried out and shoved Brendan through the window. As Tyler pulled him through, Laurel squeezed through the window herself, feeling the remaining jagged glass rip her skin, feeling blood seep from her face and arms and legs.

Outside the rain was pouring down, splashing on the porch and path. Wind lashed the trees above them, whipping water against them. The wet was the most welcome thing Laurel had ever felt; she turned her face up to be drenched. Lightning branched through the sky.

Unbelievably, their cars were still lined up in the slate-pebbled drive, and Laurel felt for a moment as if she were in a painting, in a dream.

Then she dropped to the porch beside Katrina, pulled the girl’s soaked and prone body into her arms. “Do you have car keys?” she shouted at Tyler over the thunder. Tyler shoved his hand into a jean pocket and a look of salvation lit his face as he pulled out the keys.

“Let’s fucking go.” He zapped the doors unlocked.

Katrina was shivering, convulsing in Laurel’s arms. The girl’s eyes suddenly flew open.

“Run,” Katrina whispered. “Run run run run run…”

A wave of terror crashed over Laurel and she hauled Katrina up to standing, ran with her for the car. The sky opened and hail began to pelt down in marble-sized chunks, bouncing whitely off the car.

Laurel pushed Katrina into the backseat of the Maserati and ran back to help Tyler, who was stooping to pick Brendan up by his armpits. Together they dragged him across the gravel to hoist him into the car, both of them straining to lift him, straining not to listen as the house loomed and shrieked and raged behind them. And as lightning cracked across the sky, Tyler gunned the engine of the Maserati and drove like the wind.