This is it.
Delilah drew strength from every heroine she’d ever worshipped: Buffy standing with a fist curled around a stake. Michonne wielding her gleaming katana. Kirsty Cotton against Pinhead, Ginny versus Jason. Clarice Starling as she faced Hannibal Lecter, Alice Johnson versus Freddy Krueger—twice.
This house expects you to fail.
But the knowledge that Gavin would have answered the door if he were able, that he wasn’t able and was trapped in here—alive, please let him be alive—propelled her forward. She lifted her hand to the knob, biting back a terrified cry and jumping away as something pressed out from the wood grain of the door, impressions of screaming beasts with horrible tortured faces, teeth dripping blood and claws that could slice her in half. They took their shape in the wood, swirling in front of her and pressing and retreating, reaching for her, and all at once Delilah had a sickening thought: What if one of them breaks free?
From the sidewalk, Vani yelled, “You must go in, Delilah!”
She looked over her shoulder to see Dhaval and Vani sprint from the car and around the side of the house. With a deep, shaking breath, Delilah quickly reached through the gnashing demons, crying out when one slashed at her forearm. Teeth sank into her flesh, and she smacked at it with her free hand, grabbing the knob.
The door shook against her, but the knob turned easily and she stumbled inside, falling onto the wooden floor as the door slammed shut behind her. With a tight popping in her ears, all outdoor sound evaporated—sealing her in—and as she looked up at the decrepit house in front of her, she wondered in a fevered heartbeat if the opposite was true: Would anyone outside be able to hear her scream?
The house looked abandoned: The furniture was crumbling, the walls were sagging and water-stained. Cobwebs hung in thick, dusty tendrils from the ceilings and in every corner. Piles of charred wood tumbled from the fireplace, ash littering the floor like dirty snow. Whatever had kept this place looking new and cared for had vacated the downstairs entirely. Delilah had a flashing fantasy that she was in the wrong house. That Gavin had simply moved down the road, and the past four months in this monster had been nothing but a figment of her wild imagination.
But a droning creak from the floorboards overhead told her that everything was above her, lying in wait upstairs.
With Gavin.
Delilah shook from the cold. The cold bothered her more than the creaking, because at least the creaking came from some distance. The cold wasn’t natural; it drifted down from the ceiling, frosty and thick, and spread all along her skin, icy fingers slipping under the collar of her shirt, sliding its hands down over her breasts, her ribs. She crossed her arms over her chest, gripping her elbows so tight she could feel the knobby, rigid shape of her bones. She called out in a shaking voice, “Gavin?”
The creaking stopped, and silence hollowed out her thoughts. So strange, she thought, that silence can feel so enormous, so consuming.
In this sort of moment Delilah had always assumed she would be either brave or mute with terror, but she felt neither of those extremes. She was alert in her fear and listening more intently than she ever had before for any single human sound.
But the next sound that came wasn’t human at all. It was a mad little growl that slid from beneath an unknown doorway to her left and felt cold when it reached her. Cold and broken and evil.
The sound of wood cracking, of plaster splitting, echoed in its wake.
Delilah swallowed a surge of panic, her heart throbbing, and pushed off the banister to keep moving. Her momentum propelled her toward the stairs, and she fought the terror of the emptiness, how no furniture was visible, as if it had all gathered in one room to ambush her.