CHAPTER 60

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I waited impatiently for Nisa to join me in the main hall. Stevie and Amanda had wandered off, still arguing about the noises upstairs. I’d nabbed my copy of the script from where I’d left it in the living room earlier. I opened it to where we’d stopped, right before Elizabeth first unintentionally summons the demonic Tomasin.

Oh, grant me power for good or ill!

Show me how to avenge myself upon these men,

Teach me to invite rage into my body

And let it burst from this ruined house of bone…

So, so good! I thought, exhaling. I couldn’t even remember typing those lines; it had been like when I first wrote down Macy-Lee’s story: like someone whispered to me as I slept, and I merely transcribed the words once I woke.

Out of nowhere, more words crashed into my mind now, so quickly that I couldn’t make sense of them—but that would come later, I told myself, jubilant, after the others went to sleep. I envisioned myself staying up through the night, writing and rewriting, emailing the new pages to Nisa and Amanda and Stevie, their delight when they read what I’d done.

But for now, we needed to sit down again, scripts in hand, and resume where we’d left off. We were creating an enchantment here, we’d all felt it. Yet every time I regained my balance, ready to jump back into the play, something knocked me down again.

Almost literally—those explosions, or whatever they were, felt like a car had crashed into the house. Was it structurally unsound? Was that the big takeaway from Evadne’s alarm?

Ainsley’s done nothing to maintain it… She plays with fire, every time she lets someone in there… Didn’t Ainsley tell you what happened in the nursery?

I walked to the front door. Rain streaked the windowpanes and veranda, but the wall felt solid. I knocked on it, heard a reassuring thunk. Stomped once on the floor, hard. It, too, seemed solid enough.

Leave, Evadne had said bluntly. Go while it’s still light.

Yet where would we go? Giorgio and Theresa were an hour and a half away, and I couldn’t bear the thought of what they’d say if we showed up. Some bad shit has gone down at Hill House over the years. They’d make a meal of this whole experience, my pathetic attempt to bring my career back from the dead. They’d never let me forget about it.

Really, Nisa and Stevie had just been ghost hunting, I thought, and my fear finally gave way to annoyance. Stevie had his microphone and recorder with him. He might even have played those sounds to scare Nisa. Though he hadn’t looked like he was having fun. He’d looked scared shitless. They both had.

I needed to break the spell, find a room that was neutral and press the reset button. I recalled seeing a small parlor on the first floor, perfect for another read-through—Ainsley had blown past it when she gave Nisa and me our first tour.

It took me a few minutes to locate it, stumbling down one dim passage after another, into yet another narrow corridor. I ran my hands across the wall until I found a light switch. A ragged line of small, flame-shaped bulbs came to life, each set high up in a sconce. Old incandescent bulbs, not more than fifteen watts, and most had burned out.

I switched on my phone. For some reason the battery was low, even though I’d just charged it that morning. I swore under my breath, wishing I’d gotten a flashlight from the kitchen.

I kept going. The feeble lights made the darkness seem like something tangible. I remembered Stevie’s fingers on my neck the day before, playing with my hair. But Stevie had denied doing that. “Maybe it was Nisa? I didn’t touch your hair.”

The passage was freezing, a penetrating cold like nothing I’d felt before. It’s because there’s never been any sunlight here, I thought. No sun, no windows, no central heating…

I considered turning back. But when I looked over my shoulder, the dark tunnel behind me seemed endless. The flame-shaped bulbs flickered like real flames. I became aware of a roaring sound, low yet insistent; like a bonfire when someone tosses a Christmas tree on it.

The wind, I realized. The storm that Melissa had warned us about was gathering force. Even this deep within Hill House, I could hear it.

I jumped as one of the remaining bulbs went out with a pop. I spun around and lost my bearings. Was I going the right way? What was the right way?

“Hey,” I called out. “Nisa? Stevie?”

Silence.

Pop. Another bulb died. I yelled again, louder, the sound swallowed by the darkness.

Pop.

I ran a hand across my eyes, desperately looking for the outlines of a door or opening somewhere. I saw nothing. Darkness swaddled me, soft and somehow greasy, seeping into my nose and throat until I choked, filling my ears like warm oil. The light dissolved. I dissolved, feeling myself floating apart, face and limbs and vertebrae liquefying, to be absorbed like a stain by the walls around me.

“Holly?” Nisa’s voice echoed from far away. “Holly! Where are you?”

I tried to reply. Fleshy fingers thrust into my mouth, and I gagged. Nisa called out again and this time I grunted a reply. “Here.”

Through the darkness I glimpsed a door, only inches away. I fell on it, twisted the knob, and almost tumbled inside.

Here it was, the small parlor. I stood, breathing heavily, and felt my horror recede. The parlor had no overhead light, but two old-fashioned lamps with beaded shades sat on side tables, and I switched them on immediately. Even then, the light didn’t do much to brighten the space, which I could cross in six steps.

But there was a fireplace with a tile surround, and beside it a large basket of firewood, a brass bucket of kindling and old newspapers, with a box of matches. I felt inside the fireplace for the damper and opened it, settling back on my haunches to build a fire. Crumpled newspaper, splinters of wood, a few birch logs. I lit the match and within minutes had a blaze going.

“Holly!” Nisa practically leapt through the doorway, followed by Stevie and Amanda. “Where were you?”

I settled onto the floor in front of the fireplace, nearly overwhelmed by exhaustion. “I got lost. But this was where I wanted to be, so…”

I sighed in relief at having escaped the passage, also to see I’d managed to hang on to my script pages. I held them up, determined. “You guys ready?”

The others nodded. Nisa claimed a posh-looking leather armchair, leaving Stevie and Amanda the other two. These sported worn purple upholstery, shiny with age. I stayed where I was on the floor, holding my hands up to the flames. They didn’t generate much heat—I could feel the draft as warmer air got sucked up the flue—but the blaze made me feel pleasantly muzzy, as though I’d just awakened from a long nap.

“Let’s all move in here,” said Nisa, pulling the armchair closer to me.

Stevie exhaled loudly, extending his long legs until they reached the fireplace tiles. He seemed tired, as though, like me, he was grateful to have found a refuge. But Amanda perched on the edge of her chair, looking wary, and my fleeting sense of relief crumbled. For a minute or so we sat in silence, watching the fire, until Nisa swiveled in her armchair. “Can we please talk about how messed up this place is? I feel like we’re suppressing it, or ignoring it.”

She raised a warning hand when I tried to break in. “No, Holly. This isn’t helping us. I’ll start.”

I sighed, and set the script on the small table beside me. I had to choose my battles: I’d let everyone air their concerns. Then I’d reassure them, tell them how far we’d already come, in such a short time. We needed to get back to work. “Yeah. You’re right. Go ahead.”

Nisa recounted what had happened upstairs—the inexplicable booms, the penetrating cold in the nursery doorway. Amanda listened, brow furrowed. Now and then she seemed on the verge of sharing something, but mostly she remained quiet.

“There was also this strange carving in the hall,” Nisa said. “I saw it when we were walking toward the nursery, but when I tried to show it to Stevie, he couldn’t see it. When we came back down, the carving wasn’t there.”

Amanda turned to her, speaking at last. “What was it a carving of?”

“A woman running through the forest. Like she was being hunted…”

At first we all spoke in turn, but soon everyone started interrupting each other with conflicting accounts of what they’d seen or heard or been told by someone else. I chimed in about the voices I’d heard in the night, the smothering weight on my chest, the foul odors.

Yet I held back from mentioning whatever had toyed with my hair yesterday, that gentle pressure on my neck, words I couldn’t quite hear. Everything else could be explained, kind of—bad dreams, creaky old house, overactive imaginations—but I felt a strong reluctance to admit to anything that might be construed as assuredly inexplicable.

As I listened to the others, I could tell they were doing the same thing. Hiding something. Making excuses, looking for a reasonable explanation for what they did decide to share. Even Nisa had her own answers—the lighting here is terrible, my eyes were tired.

I looked closer: Amanda continued to watch us all warily. Suspiciously, even.

As for Nisa—her face and body were almost as familiar to me as my own. Curled in her comfortable leather chair, she still radiated that catlike self-possession, yet I saw how her eyes shifted. She listened intently to whatever was said, including—especially—by me, and calibrated her reactions accordingly. Nisa could never admit to being wrong. It was a central fact of how she moved through the world.

Stevie had leaned forward, knees drawn up so he could clasp them with his big hands. Unlike the rest of us, he’d said little. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. I pulled my attention back to the room as Amanda was asking, “Was there anything else you two saw upstairs?”

Nisa and Stevie exchanged a glance. “Just some mothballs in a linen closet,” he said finally.

Stevie’s face was as transparent as a glass of water: a single drop of doubt or fear or desire or joy, no matter how small, colored it for all to see. He was lying.

But I was growing impatient to resume rehearsal, so I didn’t prod him. He did have his own theory once we came back around to the black hare.

“That fireplace is huge. It might have been hiding where we couldn’t see it, and run out once we got the fire going.”

This seemed vaguely plausible, and everyone nodded, comforted. The only other thing we had all witnessed together was the sounds in the nursery. But there was a nor’easter heading our way, after all.

Stevie still had his mic and recorder clipped to his belt, and he fidgeted with them nervously. He didn’t look shifty or furtive, but increasingly disturbed. The firelight played over his delicate features so that he seemed to age even as I watched him, from his still-handsome youth to a very old man sinking into despair.

“Maybe we should just leave,” said Nisa, seeming the least convinced. “Before the storm hits. I’m getting creeped out.”

“No!” I protested. “We only got here yesterday. We’ve barely started on the play.”

“I think leaving would be premature,” agreed Amanda, and I shot her a look of gratitude.

“We could rehearse in the city.” Nisa toyed with her hair, thinking. “Regroup. I can probably find a space we could use on the weekends—”

“There’s no reason to leave,” I said, fighting to remain calm. Even if I sucked up the lost rent, I knew that, once we were back in the city, the stale rhythm of our ordinary lives would resume. “You all heard how beautifully that went this morning, right? When we read in the living room? It gave me goose bumps—all of you…”

I turned to point to each of them. “Amanda, that bit when you cover your eye and deliver the line about looking daggers—only it’s your good eye, not your blind eye—it made my hair stand on end. And Stevie’s line about unappeased hunger and swallowing the night? And Nisa—I swear to god, babe, if your music doesn’t get an Obie nomination, I’ll take out a full-page ad somewhere. This play is going to be extraordinary. It already is extraordinary. Don’t you feel it?”

I rattled my sheaf of pages. “I have all these notes for tomorrow, but let’s do another run-through now. We’ll all feel better. It’s so cozy with the fire.”

“Is it?” Nisa stretched like a cat, then stared at the ceiling, its plaster medallions blackened by cobwebs.

“We could run our lines anywhere,” Amanda said evenly. “The kitchen. Even my room, it’s quite pleasant.”

“Wait!” We all jumped as Stevie hopped up from his chair. “Hang on, I’ll be right back—”

He raced from the parlor. Nisa avoided my eyes, but Amanda leaned over and touched my knee.

“It will all be fine, Holly. There’s nothing wrong with this place. I mean, there might be plenty wrong with it,” she corrected herself. “Like the color schemes and the fact that no one has consulted an interior designer since 1901. But it’s just an ugly old house. We should keep working.”

Nisa didn’t bother to hide her scowl as Amanda went on. “Do you know why certain houses make people feel uneasy?”

Nisa rolled her eyes and cut in. “Because they’re obviously haunted?”

“No. It’s because we can’t tell whether they’re actually a threat. I heard it on a podcast. If you were to open the door to Hill House and see a dead body, or a collapsed ceiling, you’d refuse to enter. But nothing here is obviously wrong. It’s just all slightly wrong. Which makes it harder for us to know if it’s safe.” She settled back into her chair, pleased with herself.

“What about a rabbit coming down the chimney?”

“That is a very good question, Nisa. Holly, what did Evadne say?”

I hesitated, wary of upsetting the fragile balance I was desperately trying to maintain. “She’s seen a black hare. She thinks it might be someone’s pet that got loose. Maybe that boy this morning was looking for it, Nis?”

Nisa seemed to consider this, even as her fingers tugged, again and again, at her close-cropped curls. Amanda, however, was staring at me keenly.

She knows I’m lying, I thought. God damn it, she knows.