Page 98 of Play Nice

I crawled toward the stairs, feeling the grainy salt in the thick carpet. A mess.

“Alex,” Roy said. Urgent. “Alex, come back!”

There was a distinct line of salt on the top step. My wrist slid right through it.

“Alex!”

The front door swung open. And shut. Open and shut.

The laughter came. The demonic laughter.

I didn’t fall down the stairs. I was pulled.

I was being dragged out of my own house.

MY HOUSE SKIN MINE

Or so I thought. Until I hit the landing and the door slammed shut. My head collided with the brick floor, and the world went black. And just as I came to, I saw it. Eyes watching me from the dark of the downstairs hall. Pale and cloudy with vertical red slits for pupils.

By the time everything came back into focus, it was gone.

The ringing in my ears wasn’t the bells. The bells were quiet.

Everything was quiet.

Except for the laughing.

And then Jed.

There are no words to describe the sounds he made. Sounds of absolute anguish. The chaos emanating from the worst pain imaginable. Sounds of hopelessness. Of the kind of harm that can never be undone.

As I ascended each step, my vision blurring, my body aching, I knew whatever waited for me at the top of the stairs wasn’t as terrible as the thing lurking at the bottom.

My eyes found my daughters, the three of them standing out on the deck, the sliding glass doors wide open. Elle looked at me, her expression full of contempt rather than fear, and she pulled the door shut. She’d never open it again, not for me.

That’s when I turned to Jed and saw what was happening to him. He was struggling to remove his headphones. Whenever he pulled them away from his ears, they would snap back onto his head, like magnets. Or maybe his fingers were slipping because of all the blood. It was pouring out of his ears.

Father Bernard stood rigid, clutching his Bible to his chest.

Ruth opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. She was facing forward, but her gaze was all over the place, her eyes rolling around inside her head.

Roy crossed himself repeatedly.

Something compelled me to do the same.

Then I made toward Jed, readying myself to help him. But he’d done it. He’d finally gotten the headphones off.

His ears were charred and blistered, spewing crimson everywhere. His blond hair was soaked with blood.

He took a wobbling step back and then fell to the floor with a thud.

Elle and Dee screamed so loud, I thought they’d shatter the glass.

Cici, unaffected, gave me that same smug look she had when she first came in. The raised eyebrows. Told you so.

“I’m calling nine-one-one,” I said, heading toward the kitchen for the phone.

Roy caught me by the arm. “Wait. This is what it wants.”