The little girl smiled so sweetly, and opened her arms as though Jillian were going to lift her into an embrace. Jillian reached for her, and then touched . . .
And she knows. At last, she understands so much. She can feel the power in this house, in these monsters. She sees in her mind a room filled with little girls, with memories made manifest, kept like wheat harvested for a long winter. The women take only a few memories at a time; they can digest only so much at once, and gluttony is a waste. So they take their time and they search for girls whose memories of innocence shine like a beacon. There are blemishes, of course, but that is why they are careful in their choices.
They take only the choicest girls and slowly, over months, sometimes even years, they strip away the joyous memories, the pure moments, leaving only sadness behind. They relish each taste, even as the girls—these essences given form by the power in the house—are whittled to nothing. Some memories escape their grasp, precious smells, blissful sounds, and others that linger in the ether, separate from the manifestations of the girls. Some of them even drift beyond the walls of the house, dissipating somewhere out in the solid world.
This is how Scooter slipped away. Part of her began to drift and she followed it. After that, they searched for her, nearly caught her so many times, but she eluded them, just out of reach. And, after all, they had enough sustenance stored for many years to come. They could retrieve her at their leisure.
Sometimes she would appear to them. Whisper to them that she would not leave without them, that she would bring help to free them all. And sometimes she would cry because they were trapped there. If she strayed too far from the house she would begin to dissipate, the power that held her memories together giving way and her essence evaporating.
She would have to wait, she said. And be clever.
Little Jillian Lopresti knows all of this. Some she's learned firsthand, and some the other girls have told her.
Mostly she is scared. The hollow women frighten her, and so does Scooter, always begging them to try to slip away. Jillian doesn't dare. The hollow women are terrible, but to be nothing, to simply cease to exist, is worse. She's too frightened to try to leave.
And as her sweetest memories are torn from her, consumed by the twisted husks of her captors, she only cries harder.
Jillian fell on the stairs. The impact jarred her, but she understood it all immediately. The wraith, the essence of her, was within her again. Her face flushed with relief and gratitude and tears of happiness welled in her eyes.
“You're all right, sweetie,” she whispered to the girl she'd once been, to the part of her she'd been missing. “I'm all right.”
There came a hiss from behind her.
Jillian spun around, grabbing the railing and launching to her feet. There were seven of them now, coming up the stairs at her, hunger and hatred in their eyes.
“No
way,
” she said. “Not again. I know what you are, now. I can feel what you took, inside me now, and this time, I'll fight you for every moment.”
“Michael?”
A tremulous voice came up from the foyer, a little-girl voice.
Jillian glanced down to see that Scooter had shaken off her fear. Her adult self, her husk, was throttling Michael, and now her essence rushed across the room toward them. Susan was much further gone than she had been, she had been completely altered, but Jillian wondered if they could be rejoined.
The hollow women on the stairs saw Scooter as well. The one that had escaped them. In that moment, Jillian was forgotten. As that phantom girl rushed toward Michael and the obscenity her body had become, the hideous things lunged down the stairs and across the foyer at her.
“No! Scooter, run away!” Jillian shouted.
Too late. They were upon her then. Hungry, ravenous mouths open wide, they reached long fingers toward her.
Jillian wanted to help her, but now that the creatures had been drawn away from her and she was free to move, Michael was her first concern. She rushed down the stairs. On the floor, hate filled the eyes of the thing that had been Susan Barnes. As Michael started to cough, his gaze clearing, it struck him hard in the face. Blood sprayed from his nose. Once more he tried to fend her off, his hands flailing but touching nothing but air.
Michael,
Jillian's mind screamed.
Her memories of life with Michael had been the bridge for her, had given her the way to connect to the memories that had been stolen. Jillian loved him, and that was the key. Love was always naïve and innocent, in its way. They'd tried to steal that as well, but they couldn't take it. Only poison it for a time.
Jillian dropped into a crouch at the bottom of the stairs. Her fingers wrapped around the crowbar Michael had dropped. She lifted the crowbar, racing toward Michael and the thing that had been Susan Barnes. Curses and threats rose in the back of her mind, but she could not find the voice to speak them. Jillian grabbed the faded blond hair of the husk and yanked her head back. It tore out in patches, leaving only bloodless scalp behind.
The husk turned toward her and Jillian swung the crowbar. The metal cracked Susan Barnes's face as though it were made of porcelain, knocking her sideways off of Michael. The thing sprawled on the dusty wooden floor.
Jillian spun around, ready to fight as other husks rushed toward her and her husband. “Back off!” she screamed.
Six of them formed a loose circle around her and Michael. In the parlor and up the stairs, others shifted in the shadows as if holding their breath, waiting to see what would happen. They all hesitated now. The one on the floor, the one that had been Susan Barnes, twitched but did not rise. A kind of silver mist began to seep from the cracks in her face. The others shrank away from her.
A dozen feet away, across the huge foyer, the spectral apparition of the little girl, the core of the Barnes woman, began to scream. A trio of the husks had gathered around her. One of them had her by the hair and throat, holding her still while the other two thrust their hands into the wraith's chest, tearing bits and pieces out of her that looked to Jillian like nothing so much as cotton candy.
“Leave her alone!” Jillian shouted. She waved the crowbar at the husks nearer to her, and they flinched but did not back away. The three that were savaging the little girl's spirit reacted not at all.
On the ground, Michael moaned. Jillian looked down even as he sat up and grabbed hold of her leg. His eyes were wide with anguish.
“Jilly,” he rasped. “We have to do something. I promised I'd find her. I can't let them . . .”
Frantic, she looked at Scooter and saw that the husks were eating what they stole from her, slipping long skeletal fingers into their misshapen mouths, bits of the girl's essence wriggling in their grasp.
Scooter was fading. Even her screams were diminishing. In the moonshine she seemed barely a trick of the light.
“Jillian, we've got to—”
Michael started toward the husks that were tearing Scooter apart. The other creatures opened those hideous mouths again and shifted to block their path. Her husband moved to attack them. Jillian grabbed his arm. She had an idea.
“Have I ever been to Mexico?” she asked him, desperate, that one confusing memory now seeming out of place in her mind.
“What?” He didn't tear his eyes away from Scooter and the husks. “No. What the hell—”
“No,” Jillian repeated. “No, I haven't.”
But I remember it.
Of all those stray memories in the air, she had snatched up one that wasn't hers. Not eaten it like the husks, but summoned it into her conscious mind to replace some of what they had stolen from her.
And there were others. She looked up and saw them flitting around the foyer, drifting toward the cracked windows and into the dusty corners. A little girl playing with toy horses on a grassy hill. Another kissing a second-grade boy in the schoolyard. Someone named Lizzie dancing on stage, her parents beaming up at her from the first row. Christina helping her dad at the grill during a cookout at the beach.
Jillian could smell sausages grilling. Could hear the music that made Lizzie's feet want to dance. Could smell the grass beneath those horses and feel the dream of one little girl to someday have a real horse to ride. All those memories . . . every one of them another moment's survival for the husks.
But not if Jillian got to them first.
“What the hell are you doing?” Michael asked.
She clutched the crowbar in her right hand and with her left she snatched memories out of the air. The husks had cried out before when she had done this, and now it happened again. With every memory she grasped, every image that came flooding into her mind, they twitched, opening their mouths in a wide, silent chorus of screams.
It enraged them. Maybe even hurt them.
Jillian liked that.
“The girl, Jilly! The girl!”
Michael was pulling away from her. The husks flinched with every memory she stole from their possession, but still they shuffled into his path, stooped over, their long fingers rising into claws. Jillian screamed at him to stop, to stay away from them, but even she could see that Scooter would not last much longer.
The husks latched on to Michael. One of them plunged its fingers into the back of his skull. Furiously he lashed out and his fist connected. A shout of satisfaction burst from his throat and he gripped a second husk by the throat and tossed her aside.
“Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!” he shouted to her.
“Wait!” Jillian called.
Michael tried to turn toward her but could not spare her a glance. Jillian plucked one more memory from the ether—nine-year-old Jennie crying while her brother packed for college—and ran to him. She grabbed Michael's wrist and thrust the crowbar into his hand.
He smiled.
And started for the tattered soul of a lost girl.
E
VERY BREATH WAS LIKE SWALLOWING
ground glass. Michael could still feel Susan’s hands on his throat, strangling him. Could still hear the crack as Jilly shattered her face with the crowbar.
But Jilly was fighting. Doing something Michael didn't understand.
Mexico? What the hell was that about?
But it didn't matter.
All that mattered was that it seemed to force them to lose their focus, to distract them. Which meant Michael could fight them.
The moonlight lit the eerie tableau within the foyer, gleaming on the cracks in the windows. Dust swirled and eddied. The house seemed to shake with fury and grief in equal measure. And anticipation as well. The shadows rippled with the presence of other husks. Two of them stared at Jillian and snatched at the air like children, but they seemed bereft, lost.
The thing that had been Susan Barnes lay twitching on the floor, face splintered like a ceramic carnival mask. But the eyes were still alive, and they watched him. Her son Tom lay unconscious nearby. Between Michael and Scooter's remaining essence were seven ugly, twisted, hollow women.
Michael waded through them, ignoring their filthy, penetrating touch. One of the creatures pushed its fingers into Michael's face and he grabbed its wrist and swung the crowbar down, shattering its arm. Just before the impact, the thing recoiled, not from fear of his weapon but from the shock of contact with his mind. He had been tainted by them. Maybe whatever chaotic power was in them had poisoned him, but if they tried to violate his mind and memories now, they would begin to lose their own.
Hands clutched at him, fingers clawed at his clothing. Michael took one of the things and hurled it across the room to crash into the banister. He brought the crowbar down on the head of the next and when it crumbled to the ground he kicked it in the face. Like Susan's, the skin cracked. Shards of it fell away.
There was only blackness beneath. An endless void.
Michael tore his gaze away. He did not want to see, did not dare to look too deeply. Instead he drove through the other two in his way, thrashing at them to get to the three who still tore at Scooter, ripping ribbons of pink cotton from inside her. The ghost who was not a ghost turned her eyes to him, and in her gaze he saw that she was more lost than ever.
“No,” he whispered.
Come find me,
she had said. Michael had promised he would, and now he had, and this was where it had led. There was almost nothing left of her.
He clutched the crowbar like a spear in both hands and drove it through the back of the nearest woman's skull. It fell to the floorboards, gray mist spilling out of the hole in its head. The two others left off their attack on Scooter at last. The wisp of her drifted like a plume of cigarette smoke.
One of the hollow women pushed her entire hand into Michael's chest. He froze, throwing his head back in pain as the intrusion seemed to seize his heart.
“You're killing us,”
his voice said. His mouth. His lips. But not his words.
Michael snarled, fighting the pain. The husk had already started to wither from the contact, but he forced himself to raise the crowbar again. Before he could use it Jillian flew past him, driving the hollow woman down to the floor, her fist rising and falling. Michael heard small bones pop as Jillian struck the hard, twisted features again and again.
“We're doing our best,” she said grimly. “We're doing our best.” Her voice was distorted. Not really her voice at all, but the voices of half a dozen different women or more. And when she looked up at Michael her eyes were wild, shifting colors in a kaleidoscope, brown one moment and blue the next, hazel somewhere in between.
The two remaining creatures fled into the shadows, sifting themselves into the darkness so that in seconds it was as though they had never been there at all. But they were not alone. Michael had seen many more of the figures before, watching from the shadowy corners, shifting in the darkness, waiting for the outcome.
For a taste, perhaps.
“It's not over,” he said, turning to Jillian.