Unbreakable (20 page)

Jared stalked toward the orphanage’s cracked concrete steps.

“Come on. Let’s go,” Lukas said.

I waited until Jared was out of earshot. “I’m going with Jared this time. He can’t go in there when he’s angry, or he’ll be distracted. That’s dangerous.”

Lukas’ face fell, but he forced a smile anyway and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Jared waited at the front door with Priest and Alara. The rotted wood didn’t offer much resistance, and he forced it open easily.

“Catch you later,” Priest called as he climbed the staircase with Lukas and Alara.

The first floor was dark, with patches of light slipping through the scum-covered windows. A moth-eaten yellow sofa surrounded by empty beer cans and cigarette butts was all that was left of the living room. A rat scurried across the floor and I jumped, bumping into Jared.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

He switched on a flashlight, and I followed him to the kitchen.

A small window over the stained white sink was coated in a decade’s worth of grease and provided the only natural light. Linoleum squares peeled up from the floor like the curling edges of burnt paper. The pattern of decay led to the pantry door. It was slightly ajar, ruined and warped like everything else in this place. I nudged it with my boot.

The door creaked open.

I froze. “Jared—”

A little girl sat on the floor in a filthy brown nightgown, hugging her knees to her chest. Huge, tormented brown eyes stared past me as if I wasn’t there. She rocked herself gently, her frail body lost in the folds of fabric. Unlike the full body apparitions I’d encountered, she was hazy and faded.

I backed up slowly.

The child didn’t look away from a spot somewhere beyond me.

Jared caught my elbow. “She’s a residual spirit, energy left behind after the person moves on. She can’t hurt you.”

“I think I’ll keep my distance anyway.”

Even if we didn’t find a single vengeance spirit within these walls, this place was filled with ghosts—remnants of the terrible things that must’ve happened here. Things I could see as clearly as the broken windows outside.

Jared opened the next pantry door and I tensed, expecting to see the face of another lost child. This one was stacked floor to ceiling with vacuum-sealed pallets. Jared bent down and wiped the dust off the thick plastic. I read the labels underneath and gagged.

Dog food—cans and cans of it—towering to the ceiling. Enough to feed fifty dogs.

Or fifty children.

Jared kicked the stack. “My dad used to say the evil we enact on each other is worse than anything spirits and demons can do to us.” He picked up a dented can of dog food and chucked it against the wall, brown slop splattering across the wallpaper. “I never believed him until now.”

Static crackled over Jared’s radio. “It’s Priest. You guys okay?”

“We’re good,” he said. “Find anything up there?”

“Not yet. Check with you in twenty.”

Jared shoved the radio in his back pocket. “Let’s see if there’s anything in the basement.”

I couldn’t get out of the kitchen fast enough. The residue of despair clung to my skin like the filth coating the windows. We needed to find the next piece of the Shift and get out of this house.

The basement door was tucked under the staircase, secured by two heavy dead bolts at the top, far above the reach of a child.

I couldn’t imagine the terror of being locked in a basement. My pulse raced as Jared unlocked the door. The splintered wooden stairs disappeared into a sea of black.

He used his flashlight to navigate the cracks in the steps. “Stay close.”

“Not a problem.” I had no intention of getting lost down there.

At the base of the staircase, it was impossible to see more than a few feet. I grabbed Jared’s hand without thinking, terrified we might get separated.

A corridor stretched beyond us, but it looked more like a tunnel. “I think it leads to another room.”

Jared shined the light along the walls, and I shuddered. Drawings covered the lower sections—childish depictions of rectangular houses with triangle roofs, and stick-figure families that morphed into more sinister images. Children crying as monsters towered over them, with gnashing teeth and razor-sharp claws.

When the corridor opened up into an enormous room, the temperature dropped, and cold air crawled over my skin. I squeezed Jared’s hand tighter, my pride back at the top of the stairs along with my courage.

A bare bulb flickered at the opposite end of the room, revealing the truth about this place in weak bursts. They stood in two rows at the ends of the aluminum beds that were outfitted with thin mattresses and frayed canvas straps:

Children. At least twenty of them.

Ranging from four or five years old to nine or ten, they were all sickly and gaunt, in matching pairs of stained long underwear. With their hair buzzed to less than an inch, it was hard to distinguish the boys from the girls. Their eyes reflected the light when it hit them, as though they were still among the living.

But something was wrong with their faces.

The muscles were frozen, contorted in unnatural expressions and exaggerated smiles. Only their eyes moved, conveying the emotions their faces couldn’t.

“Turn around slowly.” Jared kept his voice low. “We’re going back the way we came.”

“No, we aren’t.”

I glanced at two children standing behind me. They watched us curiously, their faces as mangled as the others’. They held hands, the taller one clutching the younger child’s protectively. Steel gray eyes and innocent blue ones gazed back at us.

Jared pulled me closer.

The taller child lifted a thin arm. A plastic IV port was taped inside the crook of his bony elbow. He pointed at the other end of the room, where the remaining children were lined up.

“What do they want?”

Jared pulled my hand behind his back and drew me closer. “Something happened here. I think they need us to bear witness so they can rest.”

The child was still pointing.

“Should we do what he wants?”

“Spirits of children are unpredictable, but I don’t think we have a choice. There are too many of them. If they get agitated…”

I nodded. “Let’s go.”

Turning my back on those children-that-weren’t-children was terrifying. I kept thinking about the girl in the yellow dress at Lilburn, who had looked so innocent right before she tried to kill us.

We walked closer as the flickering bulb bathed the room in pale light. An IV pole was positioned at the head of each dented bed frame, the canvas straps pulled tight across the stripped mattresses, as if they were still restraining bodies beneath them.

Yellowed newspaper clippings were taped to the walls. I scanned the chilling headlines:
Seven Children Die in West Virginia Group Home, Siblings Acquitted for Poisoning
Their Parents After Years of Abuse, Nurse in Harken Fired for Administering Lethal Dose of Medication.

I couldn’t stand to read any more.

I looked back at the rows of hopeful eyes. Without a word, each child extended an arm. A piece of tape secured an IV port inside every elbow. One of the frailer children handed me an amber bottle with block lettering typed on the yellow label:
STRYCHNINE
.

Jared rubbed his free hand over his face. “Strychnine causes muscular damage—” As he spoke the words, their eyes widened. “They were poisoned.”

Bile rose in the back of my throat. “And those people got away with it.”

“No,” Jared said, his eyes full of anger. “My dad used to say the evidence of evil can be hidden, but it always leaves a stain. We’ll tell someone what happened here.”

The older child behind me walked toward the other children, beckoning us to follow.

We reached the last bed.

The wall behind it was cracked, like someone had tried to break through. A hole about the size of a small doorway revealed the wooden framework within the wall, and the brick behind it. Whoever started the hole had never finished it.

I heard a sound. It started out faint and intensified. “Is that—?”

“Scratching.”

It was coming from inside the wall.

The kids around us scattered, cowering behind the aluminum frames of their beds. A figure emerged from the hole.

A boy.

He was older than the rest of the children—maybe thirteen or fourteen. It was hard to tell, but he was much taller than the others, with sharper features and vacant eyes. A sledgehammer rested against his shoulder.

He stepped closer, his clothes coated with dust and debris from the crumbling bits of concrete. “I tried to find a way out, I swear. But the brick was too thick.” The boy’s voice wavered, a crazed look in his bloodshot eyes. “Now I’m the only one left.”

Did he think he was still alive?

“Father will be angry if he finds out you were down here. He’ll punish me.” The spirit paced back and forth in front of us, muttering to himself.

“He’s gone,” Jared said. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

The spirit’s eyes narrowed. “Strangers lie. If I watch over what’s his, he’ll come back for me. He promised.”

The boy had to be referring to the other children. Was he responsible for keeping them down here until his deranged father killed them?

Jared raised the semiautomatic paintball gun, shoving
me behind him. The spirit vanished as the paintball cases exploded against the wall, brown holy water running down it in streaks.

An arm swung around my neck from behind. The point of something thin and sharp pressed against the skin below my ear.

A needle.

Every breath brought the point closer, and I imagined it puncturing my skin and filling my body with the poison that probably killed every child in this room.

Jared tossed the gun. It spun over the footprints on the concrete floor. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll do whatever you want.”

The spirit’s hand moved as he spoke and the needle threatened to puncture my skin. “I have to protect it. Then I’ll be free.”

“I can get you out of here,” Jared pleaded.

“It’s too late for that,” the boy whispered in my ear, the warmth of breath absent. He pushed me forward without compromising his grip. “Move.”

Jared backed up slowly without taking his eyes off me.

The spirit tightened his arm around my neck and nodded from Jared to the crumbling hole in the wall. “Get inside.”

Jared stepped into the hole without hesitating, a doorway leading nowhere. I waited, praying I wouldn’t feel the prick of the needle on my skin.

A second passed, then another.

One hard shove and I stumbled into the crude opening. Jared pulled me toward him. We were trapped in a cage of wooden framework no bigger than a phone booth, with nothing but solid brick behind it.

Jared locked his arms around my waist. “You’re okay.”

I looked up at him in time to see his expression change from relief to terror. He spun me around so that my back was against the brick wall. Now I was facing the hole. Jared’s body wedged between the vicious spirit and me.

“What are you—” I gasped as a board smacked against the opening, and nails pounded into the wood. “He’s closing the hole.”

My throat closed along with it. The darkness, the memory, the terror closed in on me. Dizziness tugged at my equilibrium.

Another board hit the wall.

“No!” I threw my hands against it, pushing with all my strength. The wood vibrated each time the hammer hit a nail. Jared turned around so we were both facing the slices of the room that were still visible.

I couldn’t see the spirits of the other children anymore, only glimpses of the bare bulb and the head of the hammer.

Jared pounded his fists on the slats of wood, but they didn’t give. “The nails shouldn’t be this strong.”

The sledgehammer hit another nail.

The sound reminded me of the bolts hitting the floor of the warehouse when they had unscrewed themselves from the window. It had been impossible for Lukas and Jared to hold them in place.

Was the boy’s spirit strengthening these nails the same way?

Another board slapped against the opening, eclipsing the last sliver of light. The hammer hit the wood over and over. I counted every nail.

Twenty-seven.

That was the count when the last one plunged into the wood, trapping us inside.

H
e shut us in. He shut us in. He shut us in.

I heard myself screaming, but the only words I could make out were the ones in my head.

I was back inside my mother’s closet again, helpless and terrified—the memories battering me one after another. Darkness pressing in from all sides, heavy and suffocating. My ragged breathing. The smell of mothballs and cedar. Smooth wood under my hands as I ran them over the walls.

Now I was trapped again.

I clawed at the wood, splinters digging underneath my fingernails and shredding my skin. Ignoring the pain, I pounded and prayed for one of the boards to break. Though I could barely see him, I felt Jared’s hands scratching and banging alongside mine.

“How are we going to get out?” My voice echoed back at me.

“The nails are too strong. He must be holding them in place.”

Jared stopped fighting and turned to face me. He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me against him. “It’s gonna be okay.” He tried to sound convincing, but our bodies were too close to lie. His heart was pounding even harder than mine.

My head rested against Jared’s chest, and I listened to the sound of his breathing. It was too fast, like his heartbeat.

He leaned down, his mouth on my ear. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. I’ll get us out of this. I promise.”

I took a deep breath, my face still buried in his shirt. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

He took my face in his hands and raised my chin with his thumb. “I want you to know I’d never do that.”

I nodded, too frightened to know anything.

“Give me your radio,” he said. “I dropped mine fighting with the dead kid.”

I dug it out of my pocket and slid it between us. Jared rested his arms around my neck, toying with the dials. He pressed the button over and over, repeating the same thing. “Lukas? Priest? Alara? Anyone there?”