feet crunch on the stone pathway as we walk toward my future. Or my doom. It’s too soon and I’m too fucked-up to know which one yet.
“Welcome to your new home, Claws.” Antony gestures to the front door like he’s a real estate agent on a property reality TV show. He picks up one of the decorative rocks and lobs it at the window beside the door. The rock bounces off and knocks over a cactus, but there’s not a single scratch on the glass.
“Ballistic glass.” Antony steps in close to inspect the window. “And this door is bulletproof. Whoever built this house was expecting trouble.”
That makes it the perfect place to hide.
If we can get in.
Antony has a gun tucked into his belt, and I consider the possibility of using it – multiple shots fired at the same location will eventually break ballistic glass. But he doesn’t have a silencer and we don’t need to announce ourselves to the neighborhood by opening fire. We circle the property to look for another entry point, stomping through the gardens and doing battle with the evil-looking cacti. The spiky bastards emerge victorious – by the time Antony yells in triumph from somewhere up ahead of me, my pajama leg is bristled like a porcupine.
“Look at this.” Antony stands in front of the pool, pointing to a box on the wall of the house, beside the outdoor fireplace. It’s filled with logs. “Pull those out while I search for a hammer.”
I do as I’m told, only dimly registering the splinters that puncture my fingers as I toss the wood into the garden. My leg itches from where the cacti got me, but I fancy I can still taste the graveyard in my mouth, and that’s all I can think about.
My pajamas are covered in sweat and sawdust by the time I’m done, but I empty the box. At the rear is another door – I realize this must open inside the house, so the family can stoke an indoor fireplace using the same wood supply. Clever thinking, Antony.
I push on the door, but it’s stuck fast.
“Step aside.” Antony strides across the garden toward me, carrying a sledgehammer over his shoulder. I tug off my pajama pants and sit on the edge of the swimming pool, dangling my legs into the cool water while he swings at the inner door. I think about the newspaper article he showed me in the car on the way here – about the family who used to live here, about the girl who looks just like me who disappeared without a trace – and his plan to use that to our advantage. Any other day I’d have punched Antony for being a crazy mofo. But he has grave dirt under his nails. My grave dirt. Crazy has gone out the fucking window.
I was buried alive along with my daddy, who didn’t survive. My mother was sliced up in our home, her head nearly severed from her body.
Nothing seems crazy after that.
Antony calls me over. I peer into the dark void of the hole he’s made in the wood. Antony steps back. “Ladies first.”
It can’t be this easy. “How come no alarms have gone off?”
“The family has been missing for at least six weeks. I’m guessing they stopped paying their bills. There’s only one way to find out.”
I step through the hole. This room isn’t lit like some of the others. I can’t see a thing except for the shaft of pale moonlight across the floor, but the place has a feeling of oppressive gloom. I turn to help Antony through the gap. He fishes his phone from his pocket and turns on the flashlight, handing it to me so I can shine it around the space.
We stand in a grand living room. Dust dances in the beam of the flashlight as we move through the space. Everything seems eerie without the presence of people – the weird hip furniture takes on the shape of sinister, half-human forms.
A home without occupants is like a husk – a body without a soul. Although it’s hard to imagine this house feeling like a home to anyone. It looks more like a modern art museum.
The living room leads into a bar area and a formal dining room that seats twenty. The table looks like the kind you see in medieval artworks where everyone’s gnawing on wild-boar legs and someone’s getting their head chopped off because they slurped their soup the wrong way.