14.3

 

Roisin let him guide her upstairs, every step feeling like her insides were being pulled out through her shoulder. She’d never given birth and never intended to, since she’d learned the root cause of pregnancy, but if it was anything like this, she’d quite honestly worship any woman who went through it voluntarily. At the top of the stairs, not daring to look back in case her intestine were spooling out like fishing line, she automatically stepped toward the living room. The pain pulsed harder with each step, as though resisting the movement, pulling her back toward the hallway.

Steve noticed. “It’s attached to the threshold.”

Roisin frowned. “Why?”

“Because that’s where it entered,” Steve said. “And where it wants to stay.”

Roisin felt a chill crawl up her spine. “Why the threshold?”

Steve hesitated, looking back down the stairs toward the door, then said, quietly, “Because thresholds are the junctions between worlds, and junctions are where things can pass between them. It doesn’t want you to go any further into the house because the further in you go, the weaker it will become.”

Roisin swallowed. “Why? What is it doing?”

“I told you already. It’s consuming you. The part of you that makes you ‘you,’ anyway. Your soul, if you like. Your essence. Your spirit.”

“How long have I got before it finishes me?”

Steve waved away the question. “Oh, ages yet. A person’s spirit is huge, compared to their physical shell, like a blue whale compared to a shrimp. I’m not worried about you yet, I’m more concerned about where it came from and how to get rid of it before it damages the house.”

“The house? Really? That’s what you’re concerned with. I’m having my innards pulled out through my neck and you’re worried about the house?”

“Yes. I told you. The house is a null space. If that thing pulls enough energy out of you it can use it to form a portal between this world and its own, at which point this house will light up like a…” He struggled to find an analogy, his right hand flapping the air like it was attached to a bird’s wing. “Like a lighthouse,” he finished with a deflated look. He looked down the stairs again and froze.

Roisin followed his gaze. The darkness near the door had thickened. Not visibly. Not in any way she could point to, but she could feel it as the difference between a single strand of spider web and an abandoned greenhouse in her adopted grandfather’s back garden, five years after he’d been in a care home with no-one to look after it. It was almost like looking into a dark speck and slowly realising that the speck was a pupil in an eye in the face of God. It was a tangible presence with a weight she could feel with her mind.

Steve whispered, “Don’t move.”

Roisin didn’t.

The pain from her shoulder pulsed once, twice, then steadied — as though responding to something in the dark.

Steve put his hands on her cheeks and gently turned her head away from the front door and toward himself. The glasses he was wearing were at the perfect angle to reflect the naked bulb from the light over the stairs, and she got the impression that his eyes were incandescent pools of fire, a concept only destroyed when he looked down at her from the stair two above her own, at which point she could only see his pupils, dilated to the size of teacups at a Greek wedding.

“You have less spirit than anyone I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “Even my mom had more than you and she was on her deathbed.” He bit his lip, looking past her down the stairs. His voice was low, steady, controlled. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Roisin was unable to stop the panic from sounding in her voice and could have kicked herself for the moments delay it made in whatever errand he had that was so urgent.

He gave her a terse nod. “You’ll be okay. Just stay there.” And he turned and left, heading up the next stairs to his room. Maybe he had a crucifix up there, or did that only work against vampires?

A pressure from her shoulder gave her a nudge forward. If she hadn’t been gripping the banister rail she would have lost her footing and slipped. She didn’t want to contemplate what would happen if she fell back down the stairs. She glanced over her shoulder.

The darkness didn’t move but the air shifted, pulling once more at her shoulder. Oddly, an image came to mind: watching the dentist draw away the nerve from her tooth during a root canal operation. Of course she’d watched.

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