“Hello? Hello? Are you there?” Sam’s voice sounds tinny when she puts her ear to the phone. “Julia?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” Somehow, she manages to make her voice sound calm. Hollow, dead, but calm. Sam won’t notice a thing.
She looks up and gets the greatest shock yet.
The woman with the bulging, staring eyes is now standing next to the stairwell, right in front of her. The fat man in the grubby shirt is standing at the top of the steps, looking at Julia, and a third, gaunt face has appeared behind him.
In the split second her glance had strayed to her iPhone screen, the people had moved, and she hadn’t even noticed.
Now they’re standing still again.
Two bleeps sound in her ear and Julia has to bite her tongue to keep from screaming. She falters backwards through the vestibule, not letting the people out of her sight.
“Julia? Jules!”
“Sorry, I . . . I dropped you. Keep talking. I’m here.”
Yes, she’s here, but then she understands the mistake she has made: she’s back in bed and can’t see the people in the stairwell anymore. That means they’ll move again. That means they’ll come closer. But nothing in this world can make her go back there. At this moment of utter desperation, Julia needs the warmth and safety of her bed, because that’s where all bad dreams come to an end.
“Anyway, so when I finally got to the valley, what I was afraid of actually happened: the road to Grimentz was closed. All the way from the highway. I thought of risking it anyway, but you know how narrow that road is and how deep the drop. It would be total suicide to . . .”
Julia really needs to pee. She pulls up the covers and presses her thighs together. She doesn’t know what to do, can’t get her thoughts straight.
Why doesn’t she say anything to Sam? But she knows the answer: if she tells Sam, it will be a confirmation. Then there will be no ignoring the fact that there really are people standing in the stairwell, and she can’t deal with that reality.
Sam babbles on, but his words barely register: “. . . until the snowplow came. I hadda scream to be heard above the storm, but I managed to get across that I had to get to Grimentz. The driver said I was crazy, that I had to find a place to stay down there, and then I hadda think something up, so I said my girlfriend was up there and about to have her baby any minute. That the contractions had already started and everything. So the driver stares at me, and then he says it’s actually convenient for someone to drive the salt into the road. But he said I had to go slow, real slow, or the little critter will be semi-orphaned before even being born.” He chuckles. “I think the main reason he let me trail him was cuz I spoke French. Otherwise . . .”
Two more bleeps, and then it suddenly comes to her: her phone is almost empty. Julia looks at the screen. The battery is red and there’s a notification saying: Less than 10% charged.
And that was some time ago.
Julia leans over to the bedside table and the socket underneath it and breaks out in a cold sweat. She had started to charge the iPhone tonight in the strip next to the couch, but when Sam called at 10:30, she unplugged it. She forgot to plug it back in.
Her phone is almost empty and the charger is downstairs.
When she sits up, she catches a glimpse of something that makes all her muscles melt.
In the vestibule’s shadows. A black shadow, darker than the rest, just behind the wall. One hand. One eye. Peeking.
The eye is staring at her.
Julia feels her urine trailing down her thighs.
“. . . so we go up at a snail’s pace. Seriously, it’s hellacious. I think the road behind us snowed up again right away. Some of the time I can’t even see the plow’s taillights through the windshield and I’m only ten yards behind him. I was really lucky. He wasn’t supposed to go any further than Vissoie tonight, but—You still there, Jules?”
She, stock-still, in a warm, wet spot on the mattress.
The woman, stock-still, hiding behind the wall.
A staring contest. Don’t look away, or you lose. But Julia is afraid of something much worse.
Something dawns on her. “Did you get to the valley yet?” There’s a sharp edge to her voice that could be mistaken for surprise, but to the discerning listener it’s obviously hysteria.
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Please get here quickly,” she whispers, and she starts to cry. Her whole body jerks, but her whimpers are silent and Sam can’t hear them.
“I’m doing the best I can, sis, but I can’t go faster than the snowplow. Eight or nine miles to go, I think. Half an hour, forty minutes tops.”
Oh god. She wipes the tears from her eyes. They’ve blurred her vision and to wipe them away she has to close her eyes. When she opens them, she sees the people have come closer.
The woman is in front, clear away from the wall now. Behind her, to the side, the fat man in the grubby shirt. His hands dangle motionlessly next to his flabby body. Behind him, three more men in grimy clothes.
Half an hour. Sam will never make it in time.
As if to confirm it, her iPhone bleeps again.
“I tried calling Nick,” Sam says. His voice has become softer, and in the background she can hear the constant swishing of the windshield wipers. “His phone is still off.” Silence. “I’m scared, Jules.”
Don’t cry.
Don’t look away.
Without averting her gaze from the people for even a second, Julia pulls up her legs and, with a grimace, pushes down her soaking wet panties. At least she doesn’t have to pee anymore. She slides to the other side of the bed, searches between the covers for Sam’s much-too-large sweatpants, which she’d kicked off when she went to sleep, and pulls them back on.
There are more people now.
Many more.
They’ve spread out across the attic.
Julia starts hyperventilating. She can’t get any air. Tears spring to her eyes, her vision becomes cloudy. Eleven, twelve dark monoliths, as motionless as salt pillars, fade out of view at the foot of her bed. When she can focus again and the figures solidify into recognizable shapes, they are even closer. With a silent, choked scream, Julia scrambles backwards, against the oaken headboard. It feels like her hair’s being tugged, her eyes almost pop out.
They’re all staring at her.
How much closer are you going to let them get? her mind screams. How much closer before you know what to do?
The pale woman in black is now standing at the foot of the bed. She is big and formless, wearing an old-fashioned dark skirt and an equally old-fashioned woolen cardigan, which give her the appearance of a schoolmistress from a hundred years ago. But that’s not what scares Julia the most. It’s what she sees in the woman’s face. Julia is looking at a face that’s completely detached from the landmarks in her existence. Inside it there are no memories, there is no contemplation.
Only anguish.
Anger.
Aberration.
Sam is saying something.
With halting, raspy spasms, she finally manages to suck in some air. “W-wh-what?”
“Julia, what’s going on? Are you crying?”