Page 64 of Dead Vengeance

Actually, failure or not, I’m absolutely not enough of a moron to go stepping outside salt circles to go wandering around weird and dark haunted houses by myself. So… I guess I’ll just sit here. Alone. On Archer’s bed.

And wait.

And wait…

Maybe I’ll lie down. Is that bad? I could be here for a while. Who knows what he’s doing. I haven’t heard a sound in like ten minutes.

Maybe he’s forgotten I’m here? Maybe I should call him?

I take my phone out, considering the idea, but it’s flat. Which is weird because I charged it overnight. It’s old and a bit shit, but it should last longer than this…

Maybe Archer has a charger by his bed.

I roll over and drop off the bed onto the floor to search down the side of the bedside table, where I guess it might have fallen since it’s not on top.

And there’s nothing. Just a perfectly dust-free rug in this perfectly decorated, perfectly nice room. Not even the smallest dust bunny under this bed. Not a thing in the dark but…

A small sparkle catches my eye, so I lean closer, trying to make out what it could be. It’s orange and flickering and…

It should not be this dark under the bed…

The realisation hits me with the heavy and sure weight of a gravestone. Just as it does, all the light around me fades. The room turns black. It’s just me. Nothing but me and this orange flickering glow that grows brighter and brighter.

I want to run. Every muscle in me is screaming, ‘Go now, get out of here.’ But the light, it’s… entrancing. It’s mesmerising.

Until it begins to fill out.

Until the glow illuminates into white all around it. Skeletal white, creeping closer beneath the bed, bare teeth and the two holes of a nasal cavity. Then, out of the corner of my eye, an inch away from me, that skeleton hand.

I reel back, hurling myself as far away from the thing as I can. My back smashes into the wall. Not Archer’s wall. A new wall. Some black and moss-covered stone wall, and I’m not in Archer’s bedroom anymore.

I thought it couldn’t find me here.

“Get away from me,” I whisper, my voice harsh and shallow.

But it comes anyway, the tik-tak of its bony fingers on the floor like needles down my spine.

My fingers scrape something hard and sharp—a stick or a branch. I flinch away, dust and dirt and what feels like dried leaves crumbling beneath my touch.

“Liam,” the thing hisses at me.

“Why the fuck do you know my name?” I shout at it.

But I’m not staying to find out. Archer said it’s the exact same space no matter how real any illusion looks. No matter whether that stick just cut me or that stone scraped my back. I’m still in Archer’s bedroom. “I’m in Archer’s bedroom,” I repeat aloud, doing my best to make it seem true.

The thing shifts forward, those blazing eyes intent on me as it crawls from beneath the bed, every movement out of place, even in this awful hallucination. “Liam…”

“Fuck!” My back slides along the wall when I stumble, and it’s cold, damp. The smell, it’s musty, like a crypt. Some unused place, deep underground.

I just need to move forward.

The bed is still there, that luxurious floral linen so out of place in this new space. Everything else is gone—ahead of me, some long and endless corridor. But I know the door is there. Or it was there. Somewhere in the middle of it. If only I’d counted the steps, but why the fuck would I count the steps? I thought I was safe. Archer said I was safe.

I walk. I walk straight forward, but even as I do, I’m too well aware I must be leaving the salt circle.

It’s not a ghost. Archer says this thing isn’t a ghost, and I believe him because I never heard of a ghost that could do this. Salt makes no difference to it. But god, what other ghosts might be in this house? Worse ghosts than Simon? Than this thing, even?

“Liam…” comes the voice behind me, harsh and insistent and close. So close I can’t stand to look.