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“Well, guess what, Paul? I have three mates I’d do anything for, and you have a fiancé who clearly has no idea how big of a loser you really are. I’m going to enjoy letting her know.”
I get up and leave the cabin. The illusion breaks the second I open the door.
I’m inside the haunted house in Midnight Valley.
My ex-boyfriend’s ghost is gone when I turn around.
That’s okay. I can handle that asshole.
I know exactly what to do.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Silas
IfeellikeI’mbeing pranked. I can see the man who looks like me inside the room when I open the door, but the room completely changes when I step into it. Sara and her father disappear, and the room turns into an empty one that I recognize from my childhood.
My aunt’s study. I know certain types of ghosts can create realistic illusions, but I don’t understand why this room is different when I walk inside, unless I’ve been teleported to another part of the house. Whoever’s doing this probably doesn’t want two mediums to pool their abilities.
I sigh, ready to step back outside the room and wait for Sara to come out to tell her.
I turn and the door closes. I go for the handle, but it locks just as I’m turning it.
“Shit.”
Seems like precise work for a poltergeist. They’re usually a bit more chaotic.
“Who’s out there?” I call out, putting a command behind it.
No one answers, but I hear the clicking of heels moving down the hallway.
Could have been the necromancer, I guess.
If this is her doing, she’ll be trying to keep control of the details.
I turn and look around. The room still looks like it belongs in my aunt’s house.
My aunt comes through a door that isn’t there and stuffs a pile of paper into one of the dresser drawers. She leaves without speaking to me, without noticing me.
A little kid steps into the room next. Ten, no eleven, years old. He’s looking over his shoulder.
He’s not allowed in this room, but there was a man at the door yesterday and he heard his name mentioned before his aunt slammed the door. He knows she took something from him and shoved it in here. He wants to know what it was.
“Apollo be damned,” I whisper, remembering that day.
My aunt swoops in and stops me after I get the drawer opened and see a stack of letters addressed to me that are marked ‘return to sender’. I watch this happen, and then she drags eleven-year-old me out of the room.
I go over to the dresser and open it. I lift one of the letters out.
The desire to know what’s written is almost too strong to bear.
I see my father’s name and address on the back, and I drop it back into the drawer.
This room was designed to force my guard down. To entice me to do nothing while the necromancer gets what she wants. The demonic spirits can create illusions based on what their victims want most or are most afraid of, drawing from something that’s going on in their lives and staging a scene that allows the spirit to drain their lifeforce and leave behind a body separated from the thing that makes it whole, the ghost inside the machine.
The memory starts over, and I turn away.
I need to leave this room.
