Harmony House - Nic Sheff Page 0,11
do you think about living in a haunted house?” he asks—the question startling me a little.
“A haunted house?” I say. “What do you mean?”
He laughs. “You didn’t know it was haunted?”
I try to laugh, too, but it doesn’t come out right.
“Uh, no,” I say, sounding as casual as I can. “I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “No one in town will go up there.”
“What was Harmony House?” I ask. “Do you know? Before it was a hotel?”
I drag on my cigarette and exhale and listen to the night noises from the forest around us.
“There are a lot of different stories. Some say the family that built it, their daughter, who was like our age, actually . . . she committed suicide in the house.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah. Then I heard it was like a home for unwed mothers—run by the Catholic church. Supposedly there’s a graveyard out back with all the dead babies and mothers who died in childbirth.”
“Jesus.”
“I’ve never seen it, though.”
“You looked?”
He smiles.
“Sure, yeah. When I was a kid, me ’n my friends would come ’round here on dares and stuff. It wasn’t a hotel then—just a big . . . you know . . . abandoned house.”
He stares off for a moment before adding quickly, “But we never found anything. No graves. No ghosts.”
“Great,” I say. “You really know how to welcome a girl to the neighborhood.”
He laughs.
We’ve reached the wrought iron gate now and I turn to say good-bye to him.
“Aw, come on,” he says. “I’ll walk you a little farther. Your dad won’t find out.”
“No, I can’t. Seriously.”
I step in front of him, kind of, to block his path, but he keeps on walking around me, through the gate, looking around and saying, “Wow, I haven’t been up here in a long time.”
“Look,” I tell him. “I really have to go.”
He smiles. The trees along the driveway cast his face in shadows.
“Which room are you staying in?” he asks. “I could come climb up and see you later?”
“Uh, yeah, not gonna happen,” I say.
He laughs.
“I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, too.”
“Don’t you like me?”
“I just met you.”
“We could have some fun,” he says.
He leans in close to me in the dim light, like he’s trying to kiss me and for the first time I realize that he must actually be kind of drunk, or something, because his breath smells like some kind of hard alcohol. I take a step back.
“Come on, man, be cool,” I say.
His look isn’t really the nicest look I’ve ever seen.
In fact, it’s a look that makes me chilled all over.
“Anyway, I gotta go,” I say again.
I turn and start to run off down the trail.
But then he catches me by the wrist and pulls me back toward him. A sick feeling forms at the base of my stomach. My heart races. I contemplate kicking him in the balls but hesitate for some reason.
“You don’t go until I tell you to go,” he says.
His eyes are wide and crazy-looking in the darkness. I pivot and swing my boot up with all the force I can gather under it, connecting with the side of his leg so he doubles over and yells, “You bitch!” but then is up fast and running after me as I sprint down the driveway.
We round the bend, him close up behind me, when I give a little shriek and stop because a new boy has just stepped out onto the road. Me and Alex must see him at the same time, because we both stop running and I can feel his hot breath on me and my heart really does feel like it’s about to crawl up out of my throat and go running off screaming into the woods.
The new boy steps past me, wordlessly, and punches Alex straight in the face—sending blood shooting out of both nostrils and making him sit down hard on the cracked concrete.
“Leave, now,” I hear the new boy say and I turn to see Alex push himself up and go running off down the driveway.
The new boy comes over to me, a little out of breath.
“Hey,” he says. “You all right?”
I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “No, I’m not.”
I blink my eyes and try to focus on him. He’s heavily built with big, broad features and dark skin.
“But thank you.”
He nods slowly and then I notice the red kind-of rugby shirt with a white stripe he’s wearing.
“Hey, were you in the woods back here earlier?” I ask.
He laughs.
“Yeah, there’s a path that goes through there from the