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Because this is real, Moore thought. This is not a delusion. This is not coincidence. Even Adudel knew there was something real at Kill Creek. And now it’s after us.
From a rooftop above them, a flock of pigeons scattered, black bodies disappearing into a sky bruised by dusk. They could flee, they could fly far, far away, but they could never escape.
The house was before them, crouching low in the overgrown yard. The tallgrass appeared healthier than ever. Thick and vibrant. But their eyes were drawn to the beech tree, the hanging tree, whose twisted branches had been devoid of life last autumn. In the months since, it had experienced a disturbing resurgence. Vibrant strings of green leaves draped its body like living jewelry. Thick vines snaked up its gnarled trunk, wrapping tightly to its splitting bark, holding it together, keeping it whole. A few leaves fluttered free in the light breeze, but the rest stuck tight, the long strands of
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Sam stared at the chunk of brick, afraid. It was as if they had just sucker punched a bully, the red shard of brick like a drop of blood against the wood floor. If the house wasn’t awake before, it is now.
DANIEL COULD STILL hear the hammering echoing through the upper half of the house, a mean, destructive clatter that seemed to chip away at his very skull, an invisible spike attempting to break through to his brain.
But the house had, hadn’t it? This goddamn abomination of a house had become alive out of sheer will. It had twisted itself into their lives from miles away, like an invisible vine creeping across the country, into their houses, into their families, into their minds.
Around him, the house’s wooden joints began to creak, as if the building were being gently rocked on its foundation by the almost undetectable sway of a minor earthquake. It lasted only a few seconds, then the movement ceased, order restored. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, the house quiet around him. The wind picked up outside, whistling through a crack in a wall.
THE LIGHT WAS gone in an instant. One moment, the warm afternoon sunshine threw a mosaic of colors on the lower half of the staircase; then it vanished, a gloom overtaking the steps.
The missing brick left a gaping hole at the center of the wall, black like a necrotic wound. From this, there came a sudden sucking sound as air was drawn sharply through the gap and into the secret room. A whistling rose to their ears, the air rushing faster and faster. They could feel it passing by them, pulled down the hallway and up the staircase to disappear through that small brick-sized space.
The noises leapt from room to room, first confined to the bedroom at the end of the hall, then relocating instantly to the door nearest the main staircase. The voices alternated at random, hitting each room like the off-key bars of a broken xylophone.
THE CHORUS OF whispers rolled across the first floor like fog, billowing up in the corners of the foyer before folding back in the opposite direction.
THE RAINDROPS HIT the dry, thirsty earth but it refused them, their liquid bodies, like tears from the sky, rolling aimlessly across the brittle surface of the creek bed. It was not long before the individual droplets found each other and merged, first creating snakelike rivulets of rain that coursed from bank to bank, then joining into a single sheet of water, its level rising with every inch that fell.
The furry green vines that draped the countryside like exposed muscle began to awaken at the soothing touch of the cool rain. Their movement was subtle, the constrictions slow like the stirrings of an animal roused from hibernation. As the creek bed filled with rainwater, the vines wriggled beneath the surface, leafy worms digging in the dirt. Still the ground did not drink. Kill Creek, with the exception of a few stagnant puddles, began to flow once more.
