Ellie
Ellie stared down at the copy of the Mansion’s blueprints Dom had taken from his back pocket and unfolded on the sheet-covered table. She’d known Commander’s Mansion was an impressive piece of architecture before but had no idea how impressive it truly was.
“The passage behind the bookcase in the office runs down into the bedroom here.” Dom pointed to a room on the second floor.
“That’s how I got down to the second floor after scratching up the windows without you seeing me,” Marti explained. “And that bedroom is connected to this other one, the one you guys came in by the balcony. It was easy to set everything up and go from one place to the other. We have something similar in mind for the next—”
Marti kept speaking, but it might as well have been Greek. Some unseen force, strong as a herd of elephants, slammed into Ellie like a heavyweight punch to her kidney. After that, an iron fist wrapped around her throat, stealing away her breath as she gasped. White-hot streaks of panic shot through her. Was she dying?
She had to say something, do something, anything. But she couldn’t speak or wave or even move. She’d somehow been locked into herself. Instead, she threw her head back—or rather, something threw it back for her—and screamed.
It was like no sound she’d ever made before. Once, when she was younger, her knees slipped off the monkey bars during recess, and she’d dropped like dead weight, breaking her wrist in two places. She’d screamed loudly then, with every shred of hurt and fury she could muster, a quick shout of pain followed by a river of tears. But this… This was different. This was a true banshee cry. A cringe-inducing, blood-curdling shriek of sheer, unbridled terror.
The horror of a grown woman, unleashed and funneled through a young girl.
The screaming seemed to last for long, excruciating minutes, if not hours. Maybe even days. When it finally ended, she collapsed, dropping to the floor like a pile of jelly.
Lord and Father above, protect us. He returns! Dearest Almighty, what has the boy done?
She heard the Lady’s thoughts even before she opened her eyes. When she finally did pry one eyelid open, Marti was crouching over her, looking down with the same face her teacher had worn when she fell off those monkey bars. There was a good measure of genuine concern there, but also a pair of pragmatic eyes asking both What’s broken? and, at the same time, How broken is it?
“Are you okay, sweetie?”
“I’m… I’m fine. My head hurts a little. I think I hit it on the floor. What happened? Did I pass out?”
“Ellie!” Crossing the room at a full sprint, Shane skidded to a stop beside her and dropped down on his haunches. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine.” Sitting up, she looked around. Everything seemed the same. What had the Lady meant by “He returns” and why the sudden fear? Surely it didn’t mean that—
“Do you, uh, normally have seizures or whatever, girlie?” Blake looked alarmed. “You don’t have epidermy, do you?”
Dom smacked Blake in the chest. “It’s epilepsy, you idiot. And you don’t point-blank ask somebody that. Do you not have any tact?”
“Hey, shut up,” the other man replied. “I only wanted to make sure that we aren’t in for more—”
“I’m not epileptic,” Ellie cut in. “And, no, that’s never happened before.”
“What was it?” Shane asked. “You screamed your head off there for a second.”
She shot a pointed look at him. “Yeah, I wonder what happened too.”
He cringed, clearly reading her silent message.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I was, um…” Her eyes moved across the foyer as she tried to come up with something to explain it that wasn’t too much like the truth.
As usual, Shane came to her rescue. “If you were going to let out a steam scream, you should’ve waited for me. I’d have joined it.”
“Steam scream?” Marti raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, you know—you get all worked up about something, or you’re feeling a bunch of pressure about homework or your stupid parents or tests or whatever, so you let out this huge, monstrous shout to get rid of it. To blow off the steam. I mean, usually you go outside first, but I can see why you did it in here, El. Did it help?”
Steam scream? How did he manage to come up with these things so fast?
Ellie got back to her feet. “No, not really. I hit my head pretty bad, I think.”
“How’d you do that? You must have gotten some kind of weird dizziness when you threw your head back to scream and lost your balance.”
She nodded, agreeing with his smooth explanation.
“O-kay,” Blake said, drawing out the second part of the word. “But you’re all right? We can get back to it now?”
“Yeah, sure,” she replied. “But, you know, I don’t think we need to go over the plans after all. We’re wasting time, and maybe it would be better as a surprise.”
Dom and Blake turned to one another and shrugged. The shorter man began folding up the blueprints lying on the table.
“Cool,” Blake said. “Let’s do the second floor now. We’ll start with the Library and go from there.”
Shane flicked on his LED. “Lead on, Blake.”
Ellie exhaled slowly, forcing herself to calm down, glad that Shane was taking the lead. Regardless of what she’d said, she wasn’t even in the same zip code as fine. Her heart was banging away in her chest five times faster than normal, at least. Her hands shook with a small tremor, not violently, but enough that anyone taking a good look would notice. That episode, whatever it had been, had really taken its toll. The urge to curl up and take a nap was almost overwhelming.
It had to have been the Lady, but what had happened to make her lose it like that? And where had she gone? She hadn’t made so much as a peep since Ellie opened her eyes. Whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good.
“Don’t you still have to go out to the van?” Ellie asked Shane.
“Oh. Uh, no. I found what I was looking for in my bag.”
Ellie cocked her head at him. He hadn’t taken the figurine out to the van?
He started to say something, likely to explain why he hadn’t followed through with their plan. With everyone else around, though, the best he could do was give her a grim look in return. The tightness around his eyes and mouth told her everything she needed. Whatever he’d done was related to the Lady freaking out. She’d bet her allowance on it.
Blake gave Shane the once-over again. “Hey, don’t suppose you remembered that jerky, Shay-man?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. When I heard the screaming, I dropped everything and came running. Do you want me to go back and get it?”
“Nah, I guess not,” the older guy replied, his voice dropping to show more than a subtle hint of disappointment. “Maybe later. We don’t have to go far for the Library. It’s right there.” He pointed at another set of double doors—a closed pair—on the same side of the foyer as the Parlor, farther toward the back in the house.
Ellie, willing her hands to act normal and hoping her heart would soon follow suit, clicked her own headlamp back on. Shane gave her a half nod. Time to find out what was going to happen next.
Dom grabbed one of the heavy-duty portable lights from the van. “Portable,” though, in this case, was something of a stretch. He half-carried, half-dragged the cumbersome piece of equipment out into the foyer, trailing an electric cord that ran back to the generator chugging away in the Parlor. He scooted it over to the unopened doors and looked at the others. “Everyone ready?”
Without waiting for a reply, he pushed the double doors inward, revealing another dark room. The air inside was flat and musty, smelling of old paper and leather with a hint of smoke. The wood smoke seemed out of place to Ellie, but the other odors distinctly brought to mind the hours and hours she’d spent in the local library, hunting for books and then later reading them. Libraries, it seemed, were kind of universal.
Dom wrestled the light through the doorway and set it down, making a bright pocket that chased the darkness back against the walls and corners of the room. The Library itself was more than twice the size of the Parlor; although it was just as wide from the doors to the opposite wall, it was much longer running front to back. And where the Parlor was sparse in the way of furniture, the Library was crowded with it. Cloth-covered chairs and couches filled the room in clusters, often surrounding a short coffee table or sitting alongside a small end table. A pair of fireplaces stood opposite each other, one at the front of the room and another at the rear, both black from use but clean of any ash. It had been a long, long time since they’d given off any warmth.
The books, though, were the real focus of the room. Bookcases lined every two-story-tall wall from floor to ceiling, and each was filled to capacity. The only spaces not covered by books were a pair of openings for windows high above them on the long side wall. A set of ladders, each attached to tracks on either wall, could be moved from side to side to provide access to the highest shelves.
“Whoa,” Ellie said, whistling, “I could spend entire weeks in here.”
This was once my most favored room in the whole house.
Ellie gasped and stumbled on her own foot. Sometimes the Lady’s voice still took her by surprise.
As he did with much of this house, he loathed this room. Filled with so many books no one would ever read. Called it a waste of both space and money. Truly, though, he hated it because it stood as a symbol of my love for reading. Ladies didn’t need to be able to read, he would growl. We were to spend our days gossiping over fashion with the other town ladies, I suppose, while sipping tea and nibbling on cakes. And, of course, making sure the staff didn’t get into any trouble. Reading led to thought, and that, he simply could not tolerate.
Not that I paid him any mind about that. Being stuck with him was awful enough—divorce was certainly not an option for a woman whose father’s financial strength and political power were an ocean away—so I was not about to be stuck without my beloved fictional characters too.
“It’s a beautiful room.”
Not half so beautiful as it can be with the sun rising through the windows. They catch the morning light such that they can fill one’s heart with hope, even when there is little to be hopeful for. I forever took heart in those moments. Fitting, as it was such a moment when I found what I needed to put a stop to his monstrous plan.
Ellie didn’t have the first clue about what to say to that, but then, she couldn’t have a conversation with the Lady at that moment, anyway. Not with everyone else in the room. It was a shame, too, because all of a sudden, Ellie had a ton of questions.
Those questions would have to be answered, the first chance she had.
“So, what do we do?” she asked.
“Take the covers off the furniture first,” Blake said, “and check out how everything looks underneath. Let’s see what we have to work with.”
The others went to work immediately, whisking unwieldy white sheets from couches and tables with enthusiasm, filling the air with whirlwinds of dust that tickled her nose and the back of her throat. Ellie walked over to the sheet nearest her, which seemed to cover a square end table at the arm of a two-person couch that faced the fireplace at the front of the room. She picked at the heavy, dusty cloth, but frowned instead of ripping it away.
The commotion of uncovering everything felt wrong, somehow. How long had this library been untouched, left to while away the months and years peacefully? And yet in a handful of fleeting moments, all those years of serenity were wasted. It made her wonder if they would have been better off leaving Commander’s Mansion to itself.
“Come on, El. Let’s see what’s under there,” Shane said from beside an upright chair with pine-green upholstery that puffed like a makeup poof when he slapped it. The dust covers might have done some good, but somehow during the decades, the dust had worked its way into everything anyway.
Shrugging, she tugged the cloth up off the waist-high table, hand over hand. With a final flourish, Ellie whipped the dust cover over her shoulder, revealing the table’s well-polished swirling wood grain and making something clang behind her. She spun to find an ornate lantern hanging from a small hook attached to the wall of shelves. Vines of shiny metal leaves covered it, twisting together at the top to resemble the canopy of a tree that had weathered the years remarkably well.
She’d never seen anything like it. “Shane, look at this.”
“What is that?” he asked, approaching her.
“It’s a hand lantern, I think.”
“I wonder if it still works.”
She pulled it from the hook and gave it a slight shake. Liquid sloshed around inside. “Sounds like there’s still stuff in it. Oil, I guess? Is that what they would have burned?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Dom joined them. “If it’s got oil in it, it should still work. You guys want to give it a try?”
“Oh, yeah, that’d be way cool,” Shane blurted out.
Ellie nodded in agreement.
“What are you guys doing?” Marti sent them a cool look and a raised eyebrow from the other side of the room, where she was looking at books on one of the high bookcases.
Dom took the heat for them. “We’re going to see if we can light up this lantern. Thought it’d be cool to carry around the house.”
“You guys put that down right now. In about five minutes, I’m going to be standing on one of those sliding ladders trying to make ghastly shapes dance in the moon’s light so you can all pretend to be freaked out. The last thing I need is an oil fire burning in a piece of equipment that hasn’t been used in a century or more. No, thank you. Dom, put that lighter away.”
He frowned, disposable lighter already in hand. Both kids’ faces dropped as well, crestfallen they couldn’t even try it out.
Dom set the lantern back down on the table. “Oh well, she does have a point. We probably should be pretty careful with this stuff. Especially with the stunts we’re going to try.”
Blake whistled from near the other fireplace and waved. “Dude, check this out.”
Dom hurried away without looking back.
Shane grabbed her arm. “Come on. Let’s go see what he found.”
Ellie glanced back down at the lantern. How was there oil in it, anyway? Shouldn’t it have evaporated a century ago?
She turned, about to walk away, when a flash caught her eye. It wasn’t even a flash, really—more like a glint, like the reflection of light off something shiny. The lantern? Except it was definitely more like a shadow. Some kind of dark, fluid movement she’d half-glimpsed.
“Did you see that?”
Shane frowned. “Maybe. I was going to pretend I didn’t, but if you did…”
“Like something moved, and you saw it out of the corner of your eye?”
“Like when you see you a fly in your room in the summertime.”
“Right. Yeah, like that.”
“Oh, man. I guess I did, then.”
“Shane, I don’t like this.”
He has returned! So strong, even newly reborn! Too strong!
Ellie’s hands flew to her ears, clapping over them as if they could somehow keep her from hearing the Lady’s shouts.
Shane gave her a puzzled look but then turned at the sound of someone yelping in surprise.
In the center of the room, Marti held her arms and hands over her own head, but for protection rather than to block out sound. Books were launching themselves from their shelves, shooting, one after another, across the room at her. They thumped and thudded against Marti’s arms and shoulders, hips and legs, with a flurry of pages flapping in the air.
Marti shrieked a second time as Blake reached her, trying to swat the books away with his hands. He cried out in pain, though, as the heavy, leather-bound projectiles crashed into his fingers and wrists, unaffected by his flailing.
Shouting, “Aha!” Marti snatched a silver tray from a nearby coffee table and began batting down the hardcover missiles as they flew toward them.
“What the—” Dom cut himself short, and his jaw fell open as his eyes ventured from Marti and Blake over to where Ellie and Shane were standing near the lantern.
Getting nothing else from the Lady, Ellie dropped her hands. Her ears, no longer covered, filled with a familiar crackle. Her back warmed as shadows moved, formed from some new source of light behind her and Shane. The black, fluid shapes danced on the furniture and floor in front of them.
They turned toward the fireplace and came face-to-flame with a huge fire roaring in the hearth beside them. It leapt at them with hungry, savage tendrils of red-orange heat. The lantern, too, had somehow been lit, and a pale yellowish light poured from it, casting more flickering shadows on the couch and table nearby. But these weren’t typical, static spots of black and gray. Instead, they slithered and slid, shifted and rolled. As if the shadows themselves were alive.
Even worse, they were reaching out. Toward Ellie and Shane.
Ellie huffed as Shane grasped her by the upper arm again and tugged. They backpedaled together, falling back toward the middle of the room where flying books were still being deflected by Marti and her silver tray while Blake rubbed his hands and huddled behind her.
With each backward step the kids took, the blaze in the fireplace grew taller, stretching up to the six-foot archway at the top of the hearth and somehow outward, too, threatening to engulf the furniture nearby. The blaze roared like a jet engine, making it nearly impossible to hear anything else.
“Holy mother!” Dom grabbed them both as they backed into him. He twisted them around, putting himself between them and the fire that suddenly raged in unbound fury at the front of the room. In the fireplace at the far side of the room, a second fire shot up with the same intensity as the first, groping for something nearby to help it spread. Every flicker of flame made a desperate lunge to escape the confines of the brick hearth.
You must flee!
As Ellie heard that thought, Blake shouted, “Run!”
Marti batted away a thick tome of something very old and very heavy. It dented the platter with a sharp clang, folding it at an angle. With a curse, she tossed it to the ground and shoved Blake in the direction of the door, following after him. Still partially stunned from the flying-book assault, he stumbled but recovered quickly.
Dom, following Marti’s lead, shoved Ellie toward the double doors to the foyer. She, too, nearly tripped with her first step, but Shane was right beside her, having gotten a push of his own. He snatched her hand as she flailed for something to hold to.
Catching it, she righted herself, and together they sprinted for the doors, leaving the tempest of swirling books and flames behind them.