Which was, you know, pretty much f**king impossible. But there you had it.
I lay back on the bed for a few drawn-out moments, blinking first at the ceiling at the stick-on stars that I had affixed on it back when I was a little shit. My eyes slowly trailed down the walls, pausing on the Alice in Chains and Nirvana posters and cut-outs from Spin and Rolling Stone magazine I had placed haphazardly on the greying wallpaper. I bet if I peeled back the corners, I would see the Blu-tack I used to put them up. God forbid I put a pin or thumbtack into the wall without my father slaughtering me.
Suddenly memories flooded my mind and I could barely contain them, feeling like a thirsty alcoholic with an undersized bladder. Holy shit. This wasn’t some crazy f**king dream. I really was here, in my old room. Everything was the same, everything except me. I was Dex Foray, not Declan O’Shea, yet the essence of who I was clung to the carpet like mildew, just as the fear used to.
But there was nothing to fear now, was there?
I slowly sat up and stared at my feet, at the toes of my boots, tapping them together loudly. The sound was hollow, peculiar. It didn’t quite feel real. But this was real. Right? Every breath I took in made me second guess it, every breath I exhaled told me the truth.
I reached up and pinched the tip of my ear. It hurt like hell. It had healed since it had been sliced off in New Orleans, but it was currently the most sensitive part of my body (other than my dick, but that seemed unnecessarily cruel). Anyway, point is, I was alive and well and this was no nightmare manifested of unresolved issues from my childhood. This was real.
I was motherfucking Dr. Who.
Outside the window, the light was starting to fade. I eased myself out of bed and looked out of it. The view was the same as I had remembered. The neighbor was so close, you could touch their brick wall– well, I couldn’t because I was never tall enough, but my friend Joey once did. He nearly fell out the window and crashed into the garbage cans below, which would have really ruined his drumming skills. After that, I made a rope ladder for emergencies.
Craning my neck, I could see the street out front. 78th or 88th or 98th, I couldn’t remember. It was framed by leafy trees and busy with passerbys going about their business. The Upper West Side. A place completely and totally removed from my life and everything that I was.
So why was I there?
I racked my brain, surprised at how sluggish it was, how slow the other memories came to me. My life before I was here.
Perry.
My chest clenched at the thought of her and then the novelty of where I was vanished in an instant.
I had been at Perry’s parents’ house in Portland, editing the video we shot at the sanatorium. Perry had decided to go for a walk. Her parents were out somewhere. Her sister, Ada, was downstairs doing some annoying workout video by that angry chick who yells at everyone.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I heard a knock at the door. I remember I was staring at an image of Perry on the computer screen, her face beautiful even in the grainy green light of the night vision. For some reason the sight of her, combined with the knock at the door, brought this whisk to my gut, turned me inside out.
Without thinking, I had got up and looked out the window. There was no car outside except for my Highlander, something that inexplicably made the feeling worsen. I opened the door and poked my head out into the hall and heard a voice that made my spine stiffen.
A voice that should never brought such fear into me.
Yet it did. And before I knew what I was doing, I was walking down the stairs, feeling almost pulled toward my brother.
I had told Ada to run, to get Perry, to get out of there. But that was all I could do.
I don’t remember the rest. I have no f**king clue how I ended up in New York, in my old house, if it was even in this plane of existence.
And – shit your pants scarier than all of that – I had no idea where Perry was and if she was okay. Because, god help me, if Michael had done something to her, I had no problem getting blood on my hands.
At that thought, I went for the door and cautiously opened it. Now that my brain was in high gear, all my senses were following suit. I refused to submit to fear.
The hallway looked different, was different. Though my bedroom had remained trapped in the past, a clean, pleasant version of all my years in the house combined, the hallway that led to the other bedrooms and bathrooms was blackened, as if there were a fire recently that scorched the walls and tinged the dingy carpet.
But on closer inspection, the walls weren’t charred. They were coated with a black substance that oozed and wriggled on the wall. I had a feeling if I looked even closer than that I’d see creatures in it moving, as if it were a wall of pulsing insects.
Luckily the light in the hallway, coming in only from the foyer’s wide windows at the end, didn’t allow for much detail. I stepped out and was met with a wash of frigid air that cut deep, momentarily stealing my breath.
The hall resounded with a creak and I slowly turned my head to see the door to Michael’s room swinging open. Purplish smoke followed, wafting out, then disappearing.
Wanting to leave but knowing I couldn’t without answers, I turned and went toward it. The carpet was wet under my feet, sticking to the bottoms of my boots, smelling like an old drunk: mold and alcohol.
At his door, I stopped and peered inside. Michael’s room didn’t look anything like mine, or like his back in the day. I mean, he was an annoying, straight-laced kid but there wasn’t anything about him as a child that made me think he was Damian from The Omen. But now, now was a different story.
Here, his room was a black cave, the doorway framed by hanging stalactites that looked as heavy and dense as iron. Inside, the cave looked like it went on forever, a tunnel of cold, dripping walls that led to a dancing flame, as if there were a fire at the end, raging far away.
“Declan,” my brother said, his voice impossibly low, almost guttural. He was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing.
“Where’s Perry?” I asked. I’d hoped I’d come across as commanding but it felt like I wasn’t speaking over a whisper.
He looked up and I was struck by how much he looked like my mother. Our mother. But it was hard to think that way, to think we both came from her, because he lacked something that I had, or at least I hoped I had. His eyes were dark pools that had no depth, no sign that the man had any empathy at all – or that he was even a man.
I thought back to my mother, the last time I had a vision of her, before she stopped haunting me. What had she said about him? What was it that I didn’t understand?