Dead!
Over the course of the day, Wendy spent most of her time in our room while Matt and I took over for her in playing with the kids. I taught Mary how to braid hair and Billy how to steal Wendy's food when she wasn't looking at lunch. I drew the line at tag in the house, but we did end up playing hide and seek The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe style, due to the enormity of the house. Thanks to C.S. Lewis, I found an empty old wardrobe and almost entirely shut the door, like how Lucy and Edmund had taught me to do. When Wendy joined in, she was it.
I hummed calmly to myself in the wardrobe, half-hoping that my Romeo would arrive, so I could thank him for this morning. The other half was praying that Romeo would have forgotten the really ugly side of my personality. The first half was the one that was right.
It wasn't as though he had materialized out of thin air, which he had, but rather that he'd been there the whole time and I just hadn't paid enough attention to him. His cool hand brushed my cheek softly, and I coughed.
"You're ill, Juliet. You shouldn't be playing children's games while you're ill."
"Matt's ill. Matt has cancer. Matt's a lot more ill than I am," I protested, leaning against his chest as his arm slipped around me. Every detail was so normal, so human. His thumb stroked the skin of my arm, and I shivered. He hesitated, so I pressed my cheek into his shirt collar.
"Juliet, please," he begged, starting to push me to a considerable distance away from him. "You don't want to be involved with someone like me. I'm not human anymore. I wish I could have gone on. I don't want you to be involved with the things I've seen, what I've known. I cannot give you what others can." Jonah's words dug into my skin like knives, but his being about me was strong and comforting.
"May I ask...how you died?" I whispered, curling my knees up to my chest and fighting to keep the air in my chest. Jonah's eyes met mine, and they were big and blue and sad.
"It isn't a good tale, Juliet, it's horrible." I stared expectantly at him, hoping I could brave it. He sighed.
"We were doing a seance. Ramsey and four others and I. As Ramsey had intensified my powers, the spirits possessed me. It was painful and...it killed them. It destroyed them all. Ramsey was the closest to living. He told me to get out, that the others would be after me next. All the dead souls that he had desecrated. All the nonliving that he had stolen and profaned. That their anger would be directed at me now. And so it was. Chaos reigned upon the house, this house, and I tried to flee. I found no other escape but the dumbwaiter. I tried to exit through the crematory, but they shut it and began the fire. I burned to death. They remain in this house, unable to flee just as I was. They are still angry. I have tried over the years, but I have not yet been able to free them.
"They want your friend Matt. They want him, because he is weak, as I was. They believe I bound them here, that he and I are the same. I believe...that he and I are the same. Trapped by a force stronger and crueler than ourselves." He looked away from me, running his fingers along the wall of the wardrobe. An alerted expression took upon his face and he shifted forward, like a leopard into a hunting position. "The boy. The child, Billy. I must go."
He disappeared in a cold flash, and I was alone.
Moments later, I heard a faint scream, a continuous scream from Billy somewhere else in the house, where Jonah had gone to protect him from them–the others. I broke out of the wardrobe, fighting against the heavy coats to the entrance. It was coming from that piece of the hall at the end, near where the dumbwaiter was. I stumbled out of the wardrobe and to the dumbwaiter, where Billy was shouting.
"Billy?" I called, as he beat his fists against the doors. "Billy, stop banging! We'll get you out, okay?" I pried the dumbwaiter open, with Wendy on my heels, and Billy fell out, breathing heavily. He fumbled for my arms as reassurance, and his eyes were filled with fear. He was mumbling incoherently, and I rubbed his shoulders. "Sh, hey, it's okay, now, alright, Billy? It'll be alright–"
Another scream, one of a female form; Mary now. Wendy beat me up the stairs, as well as Matt, and Billy was following us. Mary was sunken by her leg into the floor of the attic. Wendy tried to keep her calm, and Matt dug her up out of the rotten floor. When he dug up a variety of papers and one dusty box, a sick feeling rushed up from the pits of my stomach and I collapsed on the rotten floor.