Page 102 of Some Kind of Haunted

I tug the necklace up to get it off me, but it seems to tangle on itself—like it doesn’t want to let go.

In ordinary circumstances, the very notion of a creepy necklace fighting to stay on my neck would lead to me freaking out, but not tonight. Tonight I don’t have time for a tiny memento’s disturbing shit when there’s a whole demon tower right in front of me.

“I don’t want to wear this,” I mutter. I yank on the chain. Once, then again and again.

It doesn’t budge. But the stones in my pockets seem heavier, then. I concentrate on them. On Amelia, who brought me back here early, at an impossible price. On my mother, who told Jack I was coming. On all the history I’ve studied, all the history of this place that’s inside me, bones and blood.

This time when I pull, it snaps.

I can feel a stinging, burning sensation at the back of my neck that suggests it left marks, but I don’t care. I grimace down at the locket, then toss it.

And if I hear a scraping, keening sound, well. I have bigger problems.

Because I need to follow Harrison into the thick, dark belly of this beast that’s haunted me my whole life, no big deal.

My body doesn’t want to listen to my mind on this, but eventually, I push myself forward. I climb up the concrete dais, one resistant step at a time. I ease my way toward that door that I never would have thought was there—not that I’ve come anywhere near this thing in the light of day—and find I’m holding my breath.

That dark maw is no less opaque when I’m a whole lot closer to it. I can’t see anything through that doorway. I reach for my phone to throw a little light on this, only to remember that I don’t have it. It’s in a tagged bag of my personal effects that I left on the floor of our rental car.

Besides, the service in Midas sucks anyway, so the urge I would have to call someone while using the flashlight app would be denied anyway.

I accept that I am going to have to put my body into all that horrible darkness the way I accept all the shitty things that I’ve had to do in my life, also in the dark. Walk out of terrifying neighborhoods. Piece together nights I can’t remember and pretend that I was so drunk, such a partier. Go to sleep without ever knowing where I’ll wake up or what state I’ll be in.

What’s one more nightmare next to all that?

I step forward.

Into the dark. Into the clock tower.

I’m shaking, I’m nauseated, I’m not sure my knees are going to hold me—but I do it.

“Harrison?” I manage to croak. “Jack? Logan?”

There’s nothing but black. And a dark kind of silence that feels heavy on my ears.

Until I hear it, coming from everywhere all at once.

The slurping.

I make an involuntary noise that sounds like what it is, pure fear. It echoes in this cold, empty chamber with undulating shadows and heavy, damp air. But then it isn’t empty anymore. There’s a sudden light, but it’s not a relief, because I can’t tell where it’s coming from. It feels wrong.

And what it’s lighting up is Harrison.

Harrison, who doesn’t look particularly gnarled and decrepit now.

He grins at me. Grins.

And there’s something horrible in that grin. A viscous black that reminds me of the first night Nora drove us through Midas.

But his laugh is worse. And when he speaks, that’s the worst part yet.

“You’re so predictable, my girl.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I can’t manage a word, a sound. I feel like my feet are stuck to the concrete below me, like I’m rooted into this tower and lost in all the blackness that presses in on me.

His voice is mocking. Mean.