BY MY THIRD WEEK IN AMITY, MY DREAMS WERE ALL REGULAR ENOUGH that they didn’t feel so much like dreams anymore. They were more like some kind of streaky, heavy trip, one that lasts way too long.
They were actually sort of fun.
I learned to expect them. And from there it got so I was like maybe even craving them. Like whatever was happening in the dreams, whatever energy I was pulling from the house, I mean, it was building me up.
Something was happening to me in those dreams. Something powerful. Powerful, and dangerous.
Amity was showing me—she was telling me—because she was trying to rile me up, like. Showing me, like I say, my father’s true nature.
My father’s true nature, and my own.
SO IT WAS NIGHT—THE DEAD Of NIGHT, LIKE THEY SAY—AND JULES WAS THERE, BUT NOT THERE.
This was the not-real Jules, but she was still almost more real to me than life awake. I sensed her, strong like a hurricane even, before I actually saw her.
It was the goddamn banging sound that woke me again—the boathouse door slamming away.
I turned toward my nightstand. 3:14.
Always 3:14. It was like a regular wake-up call.
Or, I guess, the call to my real-reality, I mean. It was getting harder—like even harder than usual—to tell the difference. The more time I spent at Amity, in Amity, the more it all ran together.
And the more it ran together, the less I minded.
I got up, moved toward the window, pressing my hand flat against the window and looked outside. From the river, this hazy mist drifted up. It made me think of smoke signals, like you’d read about in old Indian legends, you know?
Maybe someone was trying to send me a message.
The idea made me smile. And then the mist was moving, just wiggling its way along to the house. All crooked, like a beckoning finger.
It was creeping.
I felt the weight of Jules right behind me. “The mist,” I said. “It looks like a message.”
It is. Jules’s voice was thick. Are you afraid?
“No.”
Good, she said. Then let’s go.
I have something to show you.
I BLINKED, or maybe, like, looked away, just for a second, I mean, and then we were on the other side of that stone wall.
The red room. Being inside it was like coming home.
The proportions of the room were jerky and confusing; from one angle it was low and narrow, like a crawl space, but if I just turned an inch or two, the ceiling stretched, towering over me.
I reached out with both arms, brushing my fingertips along the walls. My nails caught on little trace markings, cave drawings or something, like a kind of proof, real primitive, that this place was really here. That I was here, in one reality or another.
The dirt was cold and crumbly underneath my bare feet. I flexed my toes, thinking about worms, you know, and other things that lived in the ground. I knew there were bones, bodies, lurking down there. Rolling around underneath me.
Waiting for me to find them.
This is where they were buried, Con, Jules said, Here.
It was like a curtain parted, right in front of me, so I could see exactly what she meant, what she—and the mist, and Amity, herself, what all of them—were trying to tell me:
Torn-up death shrouds, strings of chipped shells. Iron clamps, all rusted up and crusted over. I could smell it: disease, death. Older than anything. Older than forever.
This is where the massacre rained down.
Jules’s image floated next to me, sort of transparent. Her mouth didn’t open when she spoke, but I heard her perfect inside my head just the same.
This is where they hid for safety—
—Seeking out respite.
—Seeking out revenge.
You see?
I did.
I saw my father, and I saw myself, my hands slick, sticky, and stinking that bright, coppery blood smell. I knew right away that the blood on my hands was my father’s, not my own.
Jules pointed.
I saw:
The shovel. My shovel.
Dig. Jules was speaking for Amity now.
And I was acting for all of us.
Dig, she said again. There’s something buried here for you.
I GASPED, HACKED, AND SPUTTERED, and I was in my bedroom again, suddenly. I was bolt upright in bed, the sheets a sweaty mess at my ankles, the banging of the boathouse door sounding more like gunshots than ever.
I blinked and turned to the clock.
3:14.
Of course.
With one last angry crash, the banging outside stopped. I flinched, then laughed at myself in the darkness.
You imagined it all, Connor.
You’re losing it now. Just completely letting go, giving in to the voices in your head.
Digging something up in the red room? A crawl space between the walls? That’s not reality. You’re hallucinating. And that’s what crazy people do.
Monsters.
It was what the counselors would’ve said. But it was still damn near impossible to convince myself.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to convince myself.
But if I’d been inside the red room, if I’d used the shovel, then … where was whatever I dug up? I was alone, in my bedroom, just a normal guy in the normal, real world.
The reality and the waking dreams, they were bleeding together so much lately. It was confusing me, making me feel all blurry. Making me feel like I needed to do something strong, something powerful, just to snap myself back into place.
I reached to pull the sheets back up over myself.
My hands touched something cold and firm. Something metal.
I froze.
It was a shotgun.
In my bed. Next to me.
It was a shotgun, caked in dirt.
A crawl space between the walls. Digging something up. Something that Amity wanted for me to have.
It was crazy thinking, okay, yeah. It didn’t make sense.
But the gun was here. Cold, solid steel against my palm.
I wrapped one finger around the trigger.
And smiled.