Last night’s visit to my Dead House
Jeanie was sleeping next to me when I fell into the Dead House.
Not like Kaitie’s Dead House, which moved and changed to trick her away from Carly. Mine was cold, unmoving, and utterly dead.
It was even colder this time, and I had the sense that the thing inside me was getting comfortable, turning up the air-con for the long haul.
But, of course, that isn’t the truth, is it? Because it needs someone who will speak the word, or write it, at least, and let him out. Give him form. If I were to write it, or if I could speak it, how would it happen? Would I die? Would something rise out of me? Or… would I suddenly be the demon, fully and complete? The perfect vessel. Almost perfect.
But my will hasn’t been worn down yet, and I laugh because it knows it.
It’s desperate. The increasing pains in my head tell me so. My dizziness, my nausea, my dreams—they all tell me that the bastard is getting bored. Fed up.
He wants out.
I was facing a long hallway, all gray, somber stone. I had no intention of moving, playing into whatever game the thing had in mind.
But then I saw Jeanie.
Just a flash of her. A sliver of her panicked face and a whip of her hair as she turned down the corridor at the far end. Jeanie was in my Dead House!
I reached out a hand, wanting to stop her. I called her name, but of course it was just a groan.
I rushed forward; I had to get her out of there. I had no idea how she’d found her way in, but it’s been said that a love between two people can make it happen if they sleep at the same time. That, and a ritual like the one I performed at school. But no one has done anything remotely close to that.
Jeanie was lying beside me in the waking world, I remembered that. Had she slipped in during a moment of weakness? Or did the demon reach out to her?
Sneaky bastard.
I rounded the corner just in time to see her enter one of the rooms.
I raced on, hesitating at the open door, unable to see past a misty disturbance like early-morning fog rising just past the door frame.
I took a breath, closed my eyes, and stepped inside.
The only thing in the room was the serpent. A tiny green viper coiled in the far-left corner of the room.
A trick. Another game.
I had fallen right into it.
Except…
Jeanie was there. Looking around, her lips curled above her teeth in distaste.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, looking around. She saw me then, and her face opened. “Naida?”
The serpent, which before had been only a small green thing in the corner of the room, began to rise up, to grow taller, wider—impossibly tall behind Jeanie, just like—
I can’t write it…
I couldn’t move. Everything from before came crashing back, hitting me like a thousand wasp stings and a million explosions of prickly light. I kept thinking, No. No, no, no, this is not happening again. I was right back in Kaitlyn’s Dead House, watching as the serpent rose behind her, watching as the fangs glinted in the unnatural half-light, dripping with venom and the word, which I took inside of me to save her. And when the fangs hit me, and the venom entered my mind, I knew that burning, acidic word—
it screams inside me all the time.
—I was suddenly back in the basement, the word was coming, and I did the only thing I could—
Jeanie had no idea. No idea what was happening behind her; she stared at me as one confounded in a dream state. The only thing I could do was stare as it prepared to lunge down on her. It opened its mouth, baring fangs and staring with eyes that seemed to mock me. Seemed to say, Good-bye, my girrrrrrrl.
It struck at the same moment my mind screamed her name.
JEANIE!
The house shook and rumbled, shaking us to the side as though it were a giant beast that had a tummyache and needed to expel us.
I took Jeanie’s hand, pulled her away from the serpent, thought: Never again! And ran from the room.
I don’t know how we got out, but in that moment, I was in my bed, panting for breath, and Jeanie was beside me. Underneath the covers her hand was clasped in mine.
“Naida,” she whimpered in a tiny voice, and then she said no more.
Naida Camera Footage
Ritual Caves
June 2005
Naida sits on one of the fallen rocks in the cave where her cleansing took place; her grandmother sits beside her. They are the only two in the cave, lit by fire torches held in place by wall sconces bolted to the stone.
Naida looks at her grandmother before writing a note on her notepad and handing it over. Her grandmother takes it, reads it, and then smiles.
“I understand you well enough without these papers you leave around, Dasha. You are the daughter of my daughter.” She takes Naida’s hands. “Heart of my heart and blood of my blood. I know you miss your friend. To lose someone so young is… a crime. It is nature’s cruel side.”
Naida nods.
“This will be difficult.”
Naida nods again.
“I hate to do this to you, Dasha. But you have grown wise with Mala, and of everything I might have tried, this is the only thing that may work.”
Naida smiles, nods, holds up her hands.
Seanmhair takes them back in her own. “Since you have been honest with me and come to me with this, I am going to be honest with you.”
Naida frowns, shaking her head.
“But first,” Seanmhair says, turning toward the screen, “you must turn that thing off.”
Naida frowns deeper, and as though we as the audience are feeling with her, a sense of deepening darkness comes over them both. Naida stands, glancing back several times at her grandmother, and comes over to switch off her camera.
[End of Clip]
[Clip resumes]
Naida has been crying.
There is no way of knowing how much time has passed, only that she and her grandmother are still in the cave, and the torches are still burning. Seanmhair sits as straight as she had been sitting in the previous clip, but Naida seems bowed under some invisible weight. She almost stumbles back to the rock, collapsing onto it, and then falling forward into her grandmother’s lap.
Seanmhair strokes her hair, talking in the Gaelic of the island, nonsense cooing until Naida sits up once again, her head still bowed, shoulders slumped.
“You are strong,” Seanmhair whispers. “Blood of my blood. You are strong.”
Naida nods, but her jaws are clenching and unclenching in a rhythmical fashion. She reaches into the bag at her feet and pulls free a small knife in the style used for paring. The blade is only two inches long, curving downward into a sharp point. She clenches it in her right fist.
“Kirret will explain it to Scott, hen. If you do this, it will work. But only if you’ve committed to it completely. Leave everything else out there.”
Naida clenches her jaw tight and doesn’t let go.
Seanmhair stands up, kisses Naida on the head, and then leaves the cave, taking one of the two torches with her, leaving Naida in a darker light. Naida stares at the knife and then lets it drop to the floor, putting both hands instead over her eyes. Her shoulders heave with silent sobs.
[End of Clip]
Naida Camera Footage
Ritual Caves
Date and time not noted
The angle has changed, but Naida is still in the white dress she was wearing in the previous clip. She is holding the camera very close to her face, breathing heavily. She has been perspiring; beads of sweat sit scattered on her forehead, and her hair is damp, sticking to her face. She is breathing heavily, fogging up the lens. The camera shakes as she puts it down somewhere not too far away, and then she gets back to doing whatever it is she was doing.
Her heavy breathing and perspiring continue as she works, and it is only when she wipes the sweat from her cheek that we see the blood all over her hands. She glances at the camera with grim determination and continues to cut symbols into her skin.