Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light (8 page)

CHAPTER SIX

I sped the Highlander down the I-5 like a
demon in the night. Perhaps that was a bad analogy, but I felt
almost supernatural as I managed to clock record speeds while
somehow avoiding every single speed trap there was out there. I was
motherfucking Batman and timing seemed to be on my side—I just
hoped it would be as kind to Perry.

I texted Ada as I drove, letting her know I
was on my way and urging her to keep things as secret as possible.
I was pretty sure that their parents wouldn’t be too happy to have
me in their house and would probably throw me out on my ass,
especially when I decided to quiz them on my dear old Pippa. And
Max, well, I had a bad feeling about him. I didn’t understand how
it was even possible that the giant ginger king was there, in
Portland, in their house, meddling in what used to be my affairs.
After everything that he and I had been through, this just reeked
of sabotage.

It was raining steadily and dark as fuck
outside when I turned the car onto Perry’s street. As much as I
tried to tell myself that everything would be fine and that the
plan would work, I was a nervous pervous. I was not only afraid of
what was happening to Perry, afraid that I might fail in saving
her, but I was afraid of her in general. Not of the thing that had
apparently taken over her, but of her. Of what she’d think of me.
Of the way she’d look at me.

Christ, I was in over my head and my head
was over my heels. I was just a fucking tumbleweed in love with a
constant breeze at my back. I slammed the car into park a few
houses up from hers, and wished I had a whole packet of Nicorette
that I could jam into my mouth.

Alas, I didn’t. So I settled for one—bite,
bite, chew, then sent one last text to Ada and waited for five
painful, agonizing minutes before I saw her lithe little form
running down the street through the rain. She jumped in the
passenger seat and slammed the door, her white blonde hair going
all Debbie Harry on her.

“Hey,” I told her, twisting in my seat to
get a better look at her. Maybe I should have been afraid of Ada
instead of Perry. Though she was just fifteen, Ada looked years
older at that moment, dark circles under her eyes, which were wide
and flashing like blue hazard lights. She looked jacked up, angry
and scared all rolled into one emo bundle. “Thanks for—”

Smack.

It wasn’t as hard as Rebecca’s slap and from
the surprised look on Ada’s face, I could tell it was the first
time she hit someone and meant it, but damn. The Palominos had some
serious anger management issues. Or Dex Foray issues. Potatoes,
po
tat
oes.

I stretched out my jaw and shot her a wary
look. “Well, I suppose I deserved that.”

“I thought about it and decided you’re still
an asshole,” she snarled. Then smiled politely. “But thank you for
coming.”

Oh man, what did I get myself into? Nope,
didn’t matter. I’d walk over hot coals and a million teenage slaps
if it meant getting to Perry.

“You’re probably going to get it worse from
my dad,” she went on. Okay, make that a million teenage slaps and a
punch from an angry Italian.

“Let’s try and prevent that from happening.
Anyway, can you sneak me into her room?”

She shook her head. “Maximus is in there,
thinking he’s taking care of her. He’s such a tool.”

I ground my teeth together, not appreciating
the mental image of Perry strapped to a bed with Max taking “care”
of her.

“Well, the flannel-coated pussy stealer
won’t be taking care of her for much longer,” I said, unbuckling my
seatbelt. She looked at me blankly. Perhaps she didn’t appreciate
her sister being referred to as “pussy.” I cleared my throat. “I
meant flannel-coated…ginger douche.”

She dipped her chin and said dryly, “Dude,
the term is douchecanoe.”

She flung her door open and we ran down the
street in the pouring rain. The Palominos’ large house loomed at
the end of their driveway, the lights from the windows looking more
like reptilian eyes than anything else. Warm and cozy? Nuh-uh. I
could already tell that something was terribly wrong and I felt it
in every part of my body. Evil? Yeah, I could believe evil lived in
that house.

A movement at Perry’s window caught my
eye—the silhouette of
he-who-shall-not-be-named-except-in-insults-I-found-fitting. My
fists clenched and I breathed out slowly through my nose. So many
things were rushing through me—conflicting, dangerous feelings, it
was no wonder Ada looked so torn and cracked out. My head and heart
were already being done in and I hadn’t even been in the house
yet.

We paused on the steps, Ada holding her
finger to her mouth, as if I needed to be quiet. Maybe I was
breathing through my nose rather loudly.

“Just stay behind me,” she whispered. “I
think my parents are in their room.”

I nodded and she pushed the door open. I was
immediately met with this…darkness. A malevolence, like a cancer in
the air, that rushed through me, making me feel sick all over.

Ada gave me a look like she understood
exactly what I was going through and I followed her in, walking as
quietly as possible. I shrugged off my wet jacket, a droplet of
water running down my neck.

It was strangely still inside, like some
unseen life force inside had paused the second I walked in. It’s
hard to explain, but since I was grasping for the impossible
anyway, it was almost like there was a fuck-you-up energy in the
house that was waiting in a hidden corner somewhere, ready to
pounce.

“You feel it too?” she asked quietly, as we
walked up the stairs, my eyes searching the dark hallway that led
to even darker rooms.

I nodded. “Is it always like this?”

She shook her head. “I can feel it, all the
time. But it’s never been so calm like this. It’s freaking me the
fuck out.”

“Like it knows I’m here.”

We exchanged a worried glance and continued
up the stairs, the blood pounding more loudly in my head the closer
I got to the top.

Once there, I could see Perry’s room at the
end, the door slightly ajar. I could hear his stupid drawl but
couldn’t make out what he was saying. We walked to the door and Ada
slowly pushed it open, casting me a furtive glance before doing so.
As if she was trying to prepare me.

Maximus was standing in front of Perry,
looking down at her. I couldn’t really see her body, but I could
tell she was lying on the bed, immobile. A rope was wrapped around
one leg and down around the bed post. I focused on her foot, her
little toes, the fact that she was held down. I couldn’t even move.
I could only listen as he went on, not noticing either me or Ada in
the doorway.

“Just get through tonight,” he said in an
overly cloying voice. “Things will turn around tomorrow.”

“And what will you do when the men in the
white coats take me away?” Perry answered. I hadn’t heard her voice
in so fucking long. I almost collapsed right there and then, her
presence rolling through me, wanting to bring me to my knees like
she had before. “What will you say then? Will you still ask me if
I’m scared?”

She sounded so small, so afraid. It speared
me.

“Wherever you end up, Perry, it’ll be for
the best,” Maximus said. I couldn’t believe his fucking audacity.
“They’ll make you new again. The doctors will help you. They’ll
treat you. You’ll be given medicine and it’ll fix you. Those mental
institutions have a bad rap, you know that. But they do more good
than harm, especially for people like you. It may be scary at
first, but you’ll be fixed. You’ll be as good as new.”

I couldn’t let this happen. He was full of
absolute shit. What the fuck did he know about being diagnosed with
a mental disorder? Nothing.
Nothing.

But I did.

I cleared my throat, the anger boiling up.
“Are you sure about that,
Max
?”

Maximus flinched, startled, and whipped his
head toward me. His jaw came unhinged, his face pale with
disbelief. That’s right, you red nutsack. Guess who’s here? Your
worst nightmare.

Ada brushed past me and walked around the
foot of the bed, her eyes on Perry, trying to give her fair warning
for my appearance.

“What in God’s name are
you
doing
here?” he exclaimed, blinking hard as if I were an apparition. He’d
be so lucky. A ghost wouldn’t kick his fucking ass the way I
could.

But I couldn’t concentrate on him. He was
only part of the problem. I was here because of Perry, and as he
moved over, straightening up to look at me dead on, he revealed
Perry on the bed behind him.

And my whole world stopped.

It barely even looked like her. I mean, it
was
her. Her beautiful, petite face that was so easy to cup
in my hands, her long black hair cloaking her like a shield. Her
breasts as they filled out her sweater, somehow even bigger than
before. But her eyes didn’t look the same, her expression was
shocked, just as shocked as I was, but something didn’t match
up.

It didn’t matter though. Nothing mattered at
that moment except for the fact that the love of my life was in
emotional and physical pain, strapped to her own bed, very much
like the animal that Ada had said she was. A million things passed
between us—love, anger, regret, sorrow. They flew faster than
anyone could see, in a language all our own, between my dark eyes
and her dark eyes. No, that was it. Her eyes. They weren’t her
eyes. They belonged to someone else. My god, what the fuck was
going on here? What happened to her?

I snapped. I charged right up to the first
person I could blame.

“What the fuck is this?” I yelled in
Maximus’s face, throwing my arms around. “What are you doing to
her?”

“What the fuck is this? What the fuck are
you? Why are you here? You shouldn’t be here!” the Douchefucker
yelled back, not backing down, as if he had the right to be mad and
not me.

“You should thank your freckled ass that I’m
here,” I sniped, coming closer. Did he think I was afraid of him,
because I was about to show him how a
real
mentally deranged
person behaved.

“Guys!” Ada yelled. She then looked at Perry
nervously. “It’s okay, I invited him.”

“Why would you do a stupid thing like that?”
Maximus said to her. Oh, I was so damn close to feeding him his own
dick.

“Stupid?” Ada cried out, her hair flying.
“I’m not going to sit back and let you tie
my
sister to her
own bed, pretend you know what the hell is going on with her, and
then cart her off to a hospital tomorrow when we all know she’s
probably not going to be coming back!”

As nice as it was to see Little Fifteen
acting so supportive of her sister—especially when I knew how
strained their relationship could be at times—she wasn’t my
concern. Perry was watching everyone, her eyes darting between the
three of us until they rolled back in her head and it slumped into
the pillow. She started to twitch. Oh Jesus.

I took a few steps closer, wanting to touch
her, to hold her. This couldn’t be possession. This had to be
something else. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“I’d stay away if I were you, son,” Maximus
said, putting his arm out to stop me.

Son? I bit down on my lip to keep from
saying something I really wanted to say and threw his arm off of
me. I went over to her and crouched down so that I was at her
level. Her head rolled back and forth, as if she was arguing with
herself inside.

“She’s not well,” I said stupidly. Did she
even
really
know I was here?

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Maximus.

Her eyes opened for a second, looking at me
blankly. Just as I thought, they weren’t hers. They were brown.
“Did you notice her eyes are a different color?” I asked Maximus,
practically seething at his ignorance.

He snorted. “What are you talking about? No
they aren’t, they’re just dilated.”

I shook my head, fighting my anger. “Dilated
but the color around them is brown now. Perry’s eyes have always
been blue. Like the ocean on an overcast day.”

Ada gasped. “Dex is right.”

Of course I was fucking right. And I wasn’t
about to stand here and take this. I reached for the ropes,
starting to untie them, wincing at how raw her delicate skin was. I
swallowed hard, trying to keep focused and calm, to hold my
emotions at bay. I had to get through this, for both of us.

“Dex, don’t do that,” Maximus warned. “She’s
tied up for a reason, not for sport.”

“She’s not a fucking animal,” I grunted,
ignoring him.

Suddenly, Perry raised her head. “I wouldn’t
do that if I were you,” she said in a quiet voice.

I looked at her just as the last knot came
undone and our eyes met. I looked deep into her strange new soul.
She had to know I was here to help her, not to harm her. I was
trying to
save
her. “It’s me, Perry. It’s Dex.”

She smiled at me. It was chilling.

“
Precisely
.” A depraved, gravelly
voice came out from her raised lips. Not her voice. Not even a
human one.

Before I could even process what was
happening, she lunged forward out of the ropes and grabbed me by my
shirt. Her hands almost burned into me and the smell of sulfur
momentarily filled my nose before she flung me across the room. One
minute I was at the bed, the next I was thrown, landing on the
ground, pain shooting up from my shoulder.

Ada was at my side but it didn’t matter
because Perry, that thing that was inside her, broke free out of
the rest of the ropes like Bruce Banner on crystal meth. She
leaped, fucking
leaped
, in the air and tackled me back to
the ground. I saw nails coming after my eyes and shut them hard
before she could get at them. She scratched at them anyway, the
skin growing wet with my blood, before she went after my throat,
wrapping her burning fingers around it.