Two more chapters for this book, and then the series will be done.
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The room was dark and stale, and suddenly all the noise that had filled the entire attic stopped. I couldn't even hear anyone on the other side of the door and I turned towards it. One thing Eddie didn't grant me was vision in the dark, so instead I had to use my hands to find a hollow point and rest my ear against it. I searched for the door handle but only found the hole where it used to be. I gulped as the room became colder and rested against the door with my eyes shut until I heard something in the corner of the room.
I turned, unable to see anyway, and stared into the black.
The fear subsided slowly, because I realized just then that I had nothing else to lose. I was probably already a goner and whatever waited for me in here could possibly kill me. I had to not care. I had to keep my head level.
The movement of a limb dragging against the floor startled me but I maintained my composure. I gulped the fear down. Patting on the ground made me freeze, as the hands and feet moved closer towards me and finally stopped right in front of me. I felt someone there, only inches away from my face. I couldn't feel them physically but it was the same feeling as when someone was chasing me. I knew they were there even if I couldn't see them.
A bang from the other side of the room made me jump once again but I tried not to move forward. I had no idea who or what was in front of me. Slowly, I began to slip against the wall and shut my eyes.
The orange glow from a light turning on made me freeze. My heart raced and slowly I began to open my eyes. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw no one was in front of me, and instead the blackened room before me was only two feet wide. It smelled faintly of stale smoke and I quickly looked around, only to snap my eyes shut when I saw what was in the corner.
"Gregory..." I said under my breath, recognizing the forms of the small bodies. "Oh my god..."
"It's okay."
I turned and suddenly the room had grown three times the size. A small window was at the top of the slant ceiling letting in sunlight. Blood was smeared on the walls and Gregory stood in the middle of the room, looking just like he did in the flashbacks. Alive and well. I began to step forward and looked around the room at the different symbols.
"My Mom did this." He said as I moved more into the room.
"What is it?"
"A spell."
I turned to him in confusion. "Black magic...I know she practiced...is that what her book was?"
"She knew all of them." He said. "She would say them under her breath."
"What does this one mean?"
His mouth went to an upward slant and he looked down at the floor. "My Mom wasn't a bad person."
"I know she wasn't." I got down at my knees so we were eye level. He stood two feet away from me in his nice dress with his hands by his side. "She was sick."
He shrugged. "Yeah, but she wouldn't of been if she never met him."
"Eddie?" I asked. "Did he get her doing magic?"
He shook his head no. "No, she did herself. Eddie told her he was magic. Then he did things to her."
I felt my stomach drop. "Like what?"
"Experiments." He said very quietly as if someone was listening. "He did them to her."
I shut my eyes. Things were piecing together more quickly. I saw Catherine, young and beautiful talking to Eddie in the hallway. His tone was charming and he spoke of helping the boys in the house. She was obviously impressed. I saw the desperation in her eyes, something she probably picked up from losing her husband, Gregory's father. He moved a stray piece of hair from her face and her cheeks flushed pink. She smiled wide and looked down to the ground so he wouldn't see. A flash of evil took over his face.
I looked at Gregory and his eyes looked back at mine, darker rimmed and serious.
"After the fire I knew everything." I whispered. "He's the one that took my Mom away. He did something to mess her up and then didn't do anything to stop it from getting worse."
"He didn't really love her."
"He loved her when she was crazy."
I swallowed back the disgust and shook my head. "When did the magic start?" I looked up and around the room.
"When she started getting sick. She said she had to get help. She went and saw a witch."
"Where?"
He shrugged. "Salem." He said. "The woman gave her the book and told her to write down things. She gave her a book about magic. Good magic. But my Mom said it wasn't enough. It wasn't helping her. She went back and talked to people until someone gave her what she wanted."
"The book she had?"
"She started to learn Latin...and wrote down whatever she thought she could use from the book. Eddie found it and took it. He wanted to learn too."
"He does it too?"
Gregory shook his head. "No, he didn't understand it. Whatever he did to my Mom made her understand better. He fell in love with the fact that he created something that could learn all that evil so quickly."
I imagined a messy Catherine standing in Eddie's office doorway. She had a scab under one eye and scratches on her face. Her hair was matted and Eddie pushed a stray piece away once again. He smiled and a flash of evil crossed her face.
"She loved him back?" I asked.
"Not by the end." He said. "By the end she hated him but it was too late. She already cast the spell."
"So when he killed himself..."
"He wasn't really going to be dead and he knew that." He said. "He set it up so Natalie found him. He knew she would do something she wasn't supposed to."
"Your Mom put the spell on herself?"
He shook his head. "She didn't want to." He said. "I know that now..."
"Did you speak to her?" I asked him. "She didn't seem all there."
His eyes looked down towards the floor, looking far away. "Only in pieces. But I can see things like you can. I can see everything that happened." He looked up at the symbols. "She did this for a reason."
"Why?"
He pointed towards the door and it opened, and the four frantic boys were rushed into the room.
Nathaniel. Timothy. Robert. Gregory.
It faded to dark and the room was encased in nighttime. Gregory looked up at his Mom and pleaded she let him out but she just touched his forehead and lightly pushed him back into the room. She knocked off the door handle and slammed the door, all while looking directly at Gregory's eyes. Gregory screamed and knocked on the door before turning around to face the other boys.
They stood in a semi-circle, completely still, staring at Gregory. I saw his chest go up and down as he breathed and he looked up at the symbols in the room with tears filling his eyes. The boys stayed completely still and he started to calm down slowly. He carefully walked towards one of them and reached out but he, Robert, didn't move. His eyes trailed Gregory as he walked around, towards their backs. He stopped and stared at them. The boys couldn't move.
He looked up at the symbols again and gulped. "Mom, this isn't funny!" He yelled out of frustration and started knocking frantically on the door. He gave up and broke down into tears, his fists dragging against the door as he sunk to the ground. His body hit the door with a small thud and he brought his knees to his chest, double checking on his roommates before digging his eyes into his knees.
Smoke began to flow in from under the door and Gregory stood up, his feet overcome by the gray mass. The boys still stood still, their eyes unaffected. Gregory started to panic and sweat, but there was no way for him to get out. It wasn't until the opposite side of the room had engulfed in flames did he truly react. He screamed and started with the door again as the boys began to move towards the fire. He panicked, pulling each of them back and throwing them into the corner of the room. They stood still and watched the flames with no expression.
Gregory walked towards the flames to observe the room and stopped in his tracks when he had made a realization. He walked forward and put his hand out, close to the fire. His eyes grew wide and he took a couple of steps back, staring at the rapid orange glow that began to encase the entire room. He was still scared, the tears running down his face as he backed up against the door and looked to his roommates. They continued to stare at the flames and soon Gregory was coughing from the smoke.
Within thirty seconds, Gregory slowly slid to the floor unconscious. The glow took over the rest of the room and everything was gone.
The sunlight took over and I looked at Gregory. We were both sitting on the floor now.
"Eddie did something to them. The same thing he did to my Mom. He wanted them to learn what she learned."
"He wanted them to know black magic?" I asked. "Why?"
He shrugged. "He really believed my Mom's spells worked. He wanted to create something invincible. That's why he was kicked out of the military. He did experiments on soldiers that weren't going to make it to see if he could reverse it."
I watched him carefully. The scared eight year old I had first met wasn't there anymore. He had finally learned the truth and now he sounded educated, older than his ending age. His real age was showing.
"She threw us in here because she thought we all needed to die." He said. "She protected me. Now I know it was her."
"Why did you think you couldn't feel the fire?" I asked him.
He looked to me and stood up, then turned around. I gasped when I saw the small bald spot in his head where something had been inserted. The black hold stared back at me. "It's healing. He tried to do it to me too but I got away."
"When did he –"
"I never told anyone." He said. "It was right after Charlie died and I went looking for him. He did this to me but I escaped. I think my Mom knew. Because the next night she set the fire."
All this time I was convinced Catherine had just taken a turn for the worse. I had no context and now I learned that she had protected her son from the man that took that pretty smile away from her. She used the black magic to take matters into her own hands and in the end, Eddie was still controlling her and Gregory.
"Do you know what these symbols mean?" He asked me, looking up at the ceiling.
"Protection?"
He nodded. "Do you know what else?"
I shook my head. "No."
"They're to keep the evil from leaving and entering." His eyes slowly drifted to the corner of the room. I looked to see the grayish figures of the three other boys standing upright in the same fashion they were the night of the fire. "Mom knew Eddie was here. They were already turning to his side. She locked them in here and locked him out."
"And you?"
"She wasn't sure if I was okay or not." He said. "So I had to die." He stood up and started into the middle of the room again, turning slowly back towards me.
I stared into the corner at the three boys. Their eyes were vacant from the lobotomy. "How come they never found you four?"
He pointed to one symbol on the wall. "That kept them out."
"How?"
"It created a wall." He said. "The one you saw when I turned the light on. The black one. It's not real. No one can see past it."
"Not even me? Or you? We're on the other side..."
He shook his head. "It's a spell. The wall went up after the fire. So no one would find them."
"You..."
"Sacrifice." He cut me off. "I'd still be stuck in this house anyway."
I imagined the black wall I had seen, thought about how it couldn't have been real. The face of evil I felt before my face. It was the wall. I felt the wall staring back at me, all the evil and darkness that had been used to make it was staring at me. The bangs and thumps of Catherine warning us. She wanted me to see behind the wall. She wanted Gregory to show me everything.
I saw the wall in my head. I saw the wall. The hallway. The blinking lights. The wall.
"The wall." I said aloud. "The wall..." My voice cracked and I felt my body relax.
I flashed back walking up to that wall for the first time. It felt strange to me. I remember waking up when I had a concussion to find myself facing it. All those times staring. The lone lamp blinking above it. The sensation I used to get standing next to it. It was just so empty.
"The wall!" I stood up. "Gregory..."
Catherine dropped the book as she walked along towards the stairs, her face vacant as she walked, her limbs dragging along against the wood. The book lay there in the middle of the hallway. The workers tore down the building, and a wall protected it. It was still there.
"Catherine wants me to stop her. Even if she doesn't remember." I said. "She wants me to stop him!"
Gregory smiled at me. "I only found all this out...since she came back...I wish I would have known sooner."
"Gregory...you've done so much..." I leaned down and put my hands on his shoulders. "I'm going to stop all of this. Just like a promised. I wouldn't have been able to do any of it without you."
He smiled up proudly at me.
"What's going to happen to you?"
He shrugged. "I don't know." He said. "I'm just tired. I don't care what happens as long as I can rest."
I dropped to my knees and opened my arms up. He came into them and I gave him a meaningful hug. "I will stop all of them. You don't have to wait much longer."
"You're going to live." He said as I stood up and backed up from him. "You might not feel like you're going to but you will. No matter what Eddie does. He can't see in here. He can't hear us. I'll let you out of the room and I'll try to distract him the best I can."
"Thank you Gregory." I said. "For everything."
"Thank you." He said. "You're the first one that's ever really cared."
I shut my eyes and went to speak, but when I opened them again I was back where I was, staring at the blackened wall ahead of me and it was cold again. I looked over at the burned, ashed skeletons and quickly averted my eyes. The door slowly opened, the gasps and yelps of my friends relieved me. I stepped into the doorway and watched their expressions. Roxas's face went from scared to a mixture of relief and disbelief. I stepped out of the room and the door slowly shut behind me. It took him only a second to come towards me and wrap his arms around me.
"How the hell...did you get in there?" Sticks asked. "Dammit Lights where have you been?!" He yelled out of frustration.
I held onto Roxas as tightly as I could. "Busy. I need to get downstairs."
"Good luck with that." He said. "The door slammed shut. Can't get out."
"Yes we can." I let go of Roxas and looked at the door. It opened automatically. They looked at me as if I had done it, but there was no time to explain. I raced down the stairs into the dark hallway and the lights turned on. Whether it was Catherine or Gregory, someone knew what I was about to do was going to end it all.
I looked around quickly, unsure of what I could use. I dipped into Scar's room and looked around for something I could use. I grabbed a metal bat from the corner of his room and headed back into the hallway as the others came down. I could hear Blue and Semi arguing about coming up there.
"What does he think he's doing?" The Captain asked.
I swung the bat and cracked a part of the wall, and everyone stepped back. Claudette yelled out and Sticks protectively put his arms in front of everyone as they backed up. I swung a second time and created a hole. The lights flickered but I kept going, smashing the wall down enough so I could look inside.
"Give me your flashlight." I told Sticks and he handed it over with a questioning look on his face.
I stuck it into the hole. And there it was, covered in ash and dust, sitting there staring up at me. I was finally going to end it all.
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Update will be next week.