Chapter 12
"Are you sure they're actors?" I ask Tate as we try to weave our way through the dark labyrinth that is this haunted house. We've been trailed by a ragtag group of bloody teenagers since we stepped foot in the house. They don't speak, and they don't reach out for us like the other actors in the house have. They simply follow at a constant distance, eerily quiet, and watching. Not even their footsteps made any noise on the insanely creaky floorboards.
"Yeah, of course they are, Callie," Tate answers, but he seems a little uneasy. He keeps tugging at my hand, like he's trying to get me to walk faster. Every time I've asked, he's said he was fine, so I guess there's nothing else to do but to trust him.
Tate doesn't let go of my hand even when it is quite sweaty in his. Usually, Tate's hands are cold enough that this kind of thing doesn't happen, but I can feel the wetness between them. Even when I shift my hand around, he doesn't dislodge his fingers from mine. This house seems like it's never going to end. I'm honestly not even paying attention to any of the other actors in the house who are jumping from behind walls and paintings and even tickling our legs with hands outreached from the floor. All I can do is keep looking back at the group of kids trailing us.
And then Tate starts tearing through the house, ignoring all the arrows that are supposed to guide us through. He pulls me along, pushing people out of our way. I manage to apologize to some of them, but no one is really mad, they're all just laughing at the scared boy. The kids, they're running too, but they don't push anyone, they just sidestep them. "Tate!" I yell at him, but he doesn't seem to notice until suddenly we are outside in the cool night air and we can hear the screaming and sound effects coming from inside the house.
"What the hell was that about?" I kind of asked-yelled at him because his reaction didn't make any sense at all. He insisted they were actors. But in the pale moonlight, I can see just how scared he really is. His curls are sticking to his forehead and there's something wild in his dark eyes. I realize this is the first time I've ever seen Tate scared, let alone completely frightened.
"We should get out of here, Callie," he says, taking my hand in a rough way that I'm not entirely sure I'm okay with. Tate jerks me along back to my car and immediately locks the doors as soon as we're inside of it. He's just started the engine when we hear a voice say, "You really think that's going to help, Langdon?"
The kids from the house are crowded into my backseat. I can't help it, I scream out of shock and more than a little bit of terror. Tate still seems scared and nervous, but his voice comes out calm and even.
"Leave her alone, okay? Whatever you want with me, we can have it out later. Just let me get her home and I'll come to you guys." This seems to take all of them by surprise, especially a boy wearing a bloodied letterman's jacket.
"This is different than the last one. Whatever. Take your freaky little girlfriend home. We'll be waiting for you, now unlock the car." To my relief, Tate hits the button to unlock the doors and the kids go tumbling out of my car. Even though the blood, which I hope more than anything is fake, looked new and wet, there isn't any trace of it on the back seats.
I look over at Tate, not quite sure how to ask him what the hell is going on here. He doesn't wait for me to ask, though.
"I'm sorry, Callie, I really didn't think they would follow us here." He still looks scared, but he also looks deeply sad. Tate reaches over and takes my hand. "Are those kids from your school?" I ask. I don't know a lot about Tate's high school, because he never talks about it.
"Yeah, they are. They're really messed up kids. They've done this before, but listen, I'm going to take you home and I'll deal with them, okay? There's no reason to drag you into something like this. I'll head over to your house as soon as it's all over."
I nod, because there really aren't any other options here. Tate says he can handle it, and even though the whole thing has left me really freaked out, Tate has never given me a reason not to believe that he can handle something. So I nod and let him hold my hand and we start to drive home.
Despite the nervous look in his eyes, Tate attempts to sing along to a super old Mariah Carrey song on the radio to make me laugh. He smiles wide and nudges me when his voice cracks horribly over the high notes. My heart is still pounding, but the sight of Tate's dimples and the sound of his voice make me smile a little regardless. He really is a great guy, trying to calm me down despite all of this.
Once we get back to my house, Tate walks me up to the front door. Under the hazy glow of the porch light, Tate pulls me in close to him and rests his head on top of mine. He's usually so calm, I can never even hear his heartbeat, but right now it's pounding against my ear.
"I'm sorry about this, Callie," he says, and I can feel his lips brush against my hair.
"It's okay, Tate," I promise and pull back a bit so I can see his face. "That was an adventure for sure. One day we'll laugh about it." I try to smile at him, but it's weak and falters and I can feel tears sting my eyes.
"Hey now," he says, wiping at my cheeks and kissing me. "It was just a prank. Everything will be okay. I'm going to go handle it. Why don't you go on inside and try to relax?"
"No, you're right," I say and manage an actual smile. "Good luck. Call me or come over once you're done."
Violet is sitting on the staircase, reading a very old copy of The Brothers Grimm fairytales when Callie walks into the house. The rest of her family is gone, invited to an impromptu party being held by one of Rhett's friend's parents. When Violet saw the Richards family dressing up and writing a note to leave for Callie, she couldn't believe her luck.
"Hayden," Violet calls. Callie is reading the note and turning on lights. Violet hadn't wanted to ask Hayden and Dallas for help, but they were sociopaths and she wasn't confident in her ability to get through to Callie without some theatrics.
"Will this do?" Hayden asked, showing of her death wounds. "Dallas is just as gory. I figure we show up, get her scared, and then you can step in. Do you have the article of Lover Boy?"
Violet holds up a photocopy of the newspaper article that outlined Tate's school massacre and subsequent death. Earlier in the day, she had headed out to the library and spent hours going through microfiche files to find it. After convincing the librarian she needed a copy for a school project, she'd slipped home before Tate had even realized she'd left. Then all she had to do was make some promise she wouldn't keep to talk to her father about Hayden to get the help she needed.
"Excellent. Who knew you had this kind of manipulative plan in that innocent little head of yours? I think I'm rubbing off on you." Violet rolls her eyes, but doesn't say any of the things she wants to. She needs Hayden for this.
"Just get to work," she says.
At nearly midnight, the doorbell rings. There had been a few trick-or-treaters earlier in the night, but mostly I had stayed curled up on the couch by the phone, waiting for either my parents or Tate to call. Since it's so late, I figure it's probably pranksters of some sort. Constance had told me earlier in the week that kids really liked to target the house. So when I get up to open the door, I make sure the baseball bat that Dad likes to leave there is in its place.
I have to step on tiptoe to see through the peephole in the door. I remember the realtor telling Mom and Dad it was the original door to the house, refinished and refortified. When I peer through it, I don't see anybody standing on the porch, so I decide it must be a game of ding-dong-ditch and walk back to the couch.
Not even five minutes later, the doorbell is ringing again. I guess I should have been more scared than I was, but knowing Nora and Beau are in the house has always made me feel safer rather than in danger. I go again to the door, and even though I still don't see anyone or anything outside of it, I open it up a crack.
"Is anyone out there?" Nobody answers. It doesn't seem like anybody is even awake in the neighborhood. Even next door, all of the Langdon's lights are off. I look around carefully one last time before carefully shutting the door and locking it.
"Oh, honey, locking that door isn't ever gonna keep you safe," somebody says behind me. I turn around so quickly that I make myself dizzy, but I raise the baseball bat anyway. I realize the girl who spoke is the same one from that dream so long ago. I look around, expecting to see the other ghoulish figures from the dream, but we are alone in the room.
The girl looks like she's in college, and she's bruised all over. There's a thin trail of blood streaking down her lips from her nose. Her heavy eyeliner is smeared all around her eyes.
"Hayden," she says and I dumbly take her offered hand. "I live here, too."
"No you don't. I have no idea who you are!" I try to take my hand back, but she's surprisingly strong. She pulls me in toward herself.
"Oh, but you do know me," she says quietly, and her breath reeks of death. "You've seen me in your dream. You've seen all of us in your dream. There's much more here than your precious Nora, Callie. So very much more."
"You see some of us every day," says a man's voice. I look up, and he's standing precariously on the bannister of the stairs. "Moira? She'll never be an old lady. She's actually quite the hot little piece of ass, but she won't give many of us the time of day. This is what she looked like when she died."
He jumps from the stairs, far too gracefully and easily to be normal, and presents me with a newspaper obituary. In black and aged yellow, there is a beautiful young woman who does resemble Moira in a way. Her name is printed clearly beside her picture. The obituary goes on to say she was murdered, in this house, by an intruder. Her body was never found. It also says she was employed by Constance Langdon, as her maid.
"I don't know you who are, but you could have easily made this yourselves. You should really leave, before I call the cops. But this is a great prank. Bravo." I say, trying to sound as brave as I can despite my pounding heart.
"It's not a prank," says a third, much quieter voice. "It's an awakening."
Violet Harmon herself steps out of the shadows, and she too is holding a clipping from a newspaper. "Moira's dead. She's buried with Hayden in the backyard, under the gazebo. I don't know where Dallas's body is, but he's dead too. Tate killed him. Tate killed a lot of people," she says, handing the newspaper clipping to me. "If you look in the crawlspace, you'll find my body."
I skim through the clipping, but none of it makes sense. It says Tate Langdon clear as day, and there is his photo, but it's all wrong. Tate is seventeen now, he wasn't seventeen in the nineties. He's in high school right now. It says he killed kids at school, shot them in the library.
"No, this is a prank, you're all so wrong. This is entirely demented, pretending to be a girl who's missing. You need help."
Violet shakes her head and hands me another clipping. More obituaries, all in a row. "I'll bet you saw them tonight, didn't you?"
All of those kids from the haunted house are there, looking happy and healthy and not covered in blood. They are listed as 'victims of Tate Langdon'. At the very end is an obituary for Tate himself, listing a confrontation with a SWAT team as his cause of death.
"Callie!" I hear, and see Tate coming into the living room through the kitchen. In one second, he is the Tate I know, blond and healthy, wearing a light blue hoodie. In another, his hair is wild, his face paler than ever, and his black sweater is riddled with bullet holes and soaked through with blood.
"Stay away from her! All of you go away! Oh shit, dammit… Callie!"
This is the last thing I hear before everything becomes so unfocused and hazy and finally black.