So why was I there?
I racked my brain, surprised at how sluggish it was, how slow the other memories came to me. My life before I was here.
Perry.
My chest clenched at the thought of her and then the novelty of where I was vanished in an instant.
I had been at Perry’s parents’ house in Portland, editing the video we shot at the sanatorium. Perry had decided to go for a walk. Her parents were out somewhere. Her sister, Ada, was downstairs doing some annoying workout video by that angry chick who yells at everyone.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I heard a knock at the door. I remember I was staring at an image of Perry on the computer screen, her face beautiful even in the grainy green light of the night vision. For some reason the sight of her, combined with the knock at the door, brought this whisk to my gut, turned me inside out.
Without thinking, I had got up and looked out the window. There was no car outside except for my Highlander, something that inexplicably made the feeling worsen. I opened the door and poked my head out into the hall and heard a voice that made my spine stiffen.
A voice that should never brought such fear into me.
Yet it did. And before I knew what I was doing, I was walking down the stairs, feeling almost pulled toward my brother.
I had told Ada to run, to get Perry, to get out of there. But that was all I could do.
I don’t remember the rest. I have no fucking clue how I ended up in New York, in my old house, if it was even in this plane of existence.
And – shit your pants scarier than all of that – I had no idea where Perry was and if she was okay. Because, god help me, if Michael had done something to her, I had no problem getting blood on my hands.
At that thought, I went for the door and cautiously opened it. Now that my brain was in high gear, all my senses were following suit. I refused to submit to fear.
The hallway looked different, was different. Though my bedroom had remained trapped in the past, a clean, pleasant version of all my years in the house combined, the hallway that led to the other bedrooms and bathrooms was blackened, as if there were a fire recently that scorched the walls and tinged the dingy carpet.
But on closer inspection, the walls weren’t charred. They were coated with a black substance that oozed and wriggled on the wall. I had a feeling if I looked even closer than that I’d see creatures in it moving, as if it were a wall of pulsing insects.
Luckily the light in the hallway, coming in only from the foyer’s wide windows at the end, didn’t allow for much detail. I stepped out and was met with a wash of frigid air that cut deep, momentarily stealing my breath.
The hall resounded with a creak and I slowly turned my head to see the door to Michael’s room swinging open. Purplish smoke followed, wafting out, then disappearing.
Wanting to leave but knowing I couldn’t without answers, I turned and went toward it. The carpet was wet under my feet, sticking to the bottoms of my boots, smelling like an old drunk: mold and alcohol.
At his door, I stopped and peered inside. Michael’s room didn’t look anything like mine, or like his back in the day. I mean, he was an annoying, straight-laced kid but there wasn’t anything about him as a child that made me think he was Damian from The Omen. But now, now was a different story.
Here, his room was a black cave, the doorway framed by hanging stalactites that looked as heavy and dense as iron. Inside, the cave looked like it went on forever, a tunnel of cold, dripping walls that led to a dancing flame, as if there were a fire at the end, raging far away.
“Declan,” my brother said, his voice impossibly low, almost guttural. He was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing.
“Where’s Perry?” I asked. I’d hoped I’d come across as commanding but it felt like I wasn’t speaking over a whisper.
He looked up and I was struck by how much he looked like my mother. Our mother. But it was hard to think that way, to think we both came from her, because he lacked something that I had, or at least I hoped I had. His eyes were dark pools that had no depth, no sign that the man had any empathy at all – or that he was even a man.
I thought back to my mother, the last time I had a vision of her, before she stopped haunting me. What had she said about him? What was it that I didn’t understand?
Michael laughed, empty and cold. “You ask where Perry is? Not where you are, how you got here, what is going to happen to you. But you ask where she is.”
I feigned strength. “Where is Perry?” I repeated.
He cocked his head, like a bird. Like a raptor. “She’s fine.”
“Where is she?”
“Here, of course,” he said. “Manhattan. She’s come looking for you.”