David Nickle - The 'Geisters

She lay on the narrow ledge of the sofa cushions. She’d thought to jam a corner pillow between her neck and the sharp edge of the sofa’s arm. She stretched as she slept though, and the pillow slid out, so that her neck cricked against the arm as though it were broken.

Ann worried about that, as she observed herself. She was outside her body; as far as she could tell, she was observing from a vantage point near the living room’s ceiling. The dying might see themselves this way: extended from their bodies, their own ’geist, while their heart slowed and stopped and their brain began to starve, and vanish.

Had the Insect done this, as she lay down—reached down and turned her head, just so—and cracked her neck? She could not believe that were so.

And sure enough, it was not. Ann soon observed herself turn, draw her knees up tighter to herself, and twist her head into a more comfortable position.

So Ann was not dead.

But she thought about what Lisa Dumont had told her, and Susan too: that the Insect would devour her. Was this a place she sat now, on the precipice of the Insect’s throat?

Ann worried about Philip, too. He sat alone in his wheelchair by the curtain, head bent to one side. Was he asleep? Ann didn’t think so, but of course you couldn’t tell with Philip. She didn’t like that he was alone. Since the accident, Philip always had an attendant near; the Hollingsworth Centre made sure of that. If he were to aspirate, there would be no one to help him. He could choke to death. They really did need to get out of here. But of course in order for that to happen, Ann needed to wake up. And that didn’t appear to be happening any time soon.

After a time, the door opened. Charlie Sunderland stepped in. He had changed clothes—he was wearing what looked like a long, purple bathrobe, the same shade as the bruises on his face.

He looked out the door and held up a finger to someone. Ann found herself curious about who that might be, and her curiosity brought her lower, so she could see.

It was Ian Rickhardt, also wearing a bathrobe. He lingered between doorway and curtain, hands jammed deep in the pockets.

Sunderland crossed the floor to the kitchen, eyeing both lolling Philip and sleeping Ann. He opened the refrigerator, and bent down to look in. He was counting the beer bottles. He wanted to see how many of them Ann had drunk. She could not read his reaction to the evidence that she had had none of them.

Ian stepped into the room now. He was followed by others, one or two of whom Ann recognized: the thin man from the hotel bathroom; the smaller one, who’d been in the kitchen scenario; the man from the Gremlin, maybe—she hadn’t seen much of him, but a thick salt-and-pepper moustache made it likely. There were—Ann counted—five others, all wearing those bathrobes. They were made of something like silk, and quilted with a diamond-shaped pattern.

Sunderland was kneeling beside Ann.

Ian stepped around and looked down at her. “Is she done?”

Sunderland looked up at him and smiled tightly.

“ Whatever walks in Hill House, walks alone ,” he said, and Ian chuckled nervously. “Yeah. I’d feel better if we could have talked a bit before this. Reaffirm it. But it looks as though everything’s all right. Like a bee to honey, here she is.”

“Pat yourself on the back,” said Ian drily.

The other men spread across the room, hands spread delicately at their sides, as though they were trying to keep their balance on a world with strange gravity. They looked around, as though seeking something out in the corners and the shadows. None of them looked to Ann where she watched from the ceiling.

Ian turned to Philip. “How you holding up?”

Philip swung his head up and made a noise at Ian. Ann understood it to mean “Ready.”

Sunderland went to Philip’s side. He put a hand on his forehead, as though feeling for fever. “You’ve been very brave.”

Philip made another noise. This one Ann couldn’t translate. Sunderland seemed to understand it, though. He turned to Ian.

“Philip is ready to join the circle,” he said. “Could you get his robes?”

Ian snapped his fingers, and one of the men—a taller one, with feathered blond hair, brought a folded bathrobe. Sunderland took the robe and in series of quick, professional moves, wrapped it around Philip and threaded his arms through the sleeves.

Ann drifted lower, as her curiosity about Philip grew, so that she was able to look directly into his eyes over Sunderland’s shoulder. They were damp—from exhaustion, from tears… who knew?

Ann wanted to think there were tears there. She looked for some sense that Philip wanted—needed—to be rescued from this perversion.

Don’t let him make you take your clothes off , Philip had told her, the first time they went into Charlie Sunderland’s office.

He had been afraid of Sunderland, then. He had not wanted to talk to Sunderland at all, about the things that he had seen, in his room. Now… now, he was throwing in with them—letting Sunderland put clothes on him.

“ They’re rapists. ”

Ann didn’t precisely speak the words—whatever force it was that had drawn her from her slumbering body, also robbed her of lips, a tongue. But she still had voice, and she could hear it.

So, it seemed, could Philip. He twisted his lips back from his teeth, and swallowed hard, and said, “Nyuh.”

“ No .”

Ann spun in the air, searching vainly for the source of the voice.

“ They’re not rapists. They are worshippers .”

The Insect. It was the Insect.

“ They know better, after what we’ve shown them. They remember Michael Voors. They remember John Hirsch. Peter. They know what we are. They know we’re not their plaything anymore. See how they come before us? ”

Ann turned and looked down. The men were forming a circle— a circle that encompassed Ann’s sleeping body, and included Philip.

Why was he including himself in this thing? The Insect had destroyed him… taken his limbs, his voice… his parents and his girlfriend. Why would he worship?

Why would you worship that thing? Ann called to Philip, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t answer.

“ He abandoned me. He knows better now too. ”

Ann felt the voice at her shoulder. She turned to it, with great effort. And for the first time, she saw the Insect, hanging above her, long hair dangling over mandibles and great, multifaceted eyes gleaming like giant blackberries.

Ann looked into that eye—and instinctively, the way another person might throw up their hands to ward off an attack or crouch down to protect their vitals, Ann tried to visualize the descending rainbow: Red, and Yellow…

“ No. You should know better than that too. ” And over her, the Insect’s mandibles extended—and took hold of Ann’s limbs—and drew her in.

She vanished utterly, but only for an instant.

She felt herself returning to her body, breath returning to her lungs, and her eyelids flickering open—and watching the men in their circle sway, in some fetish-court perversion of religious ceremony. Her mouth was filled with stale bile, the peach-fuzz sour of unbrushed teeth. She started to get up—as though she could physically flee what was happening to her; as though it were all but done.

She fell back, pushed as if by an invisible hand. Her eyes fluttered shut again, and she was in darkness—a freezing, numbing pool.

Little Lisa Dumont was right. The Insect was devouring her. It had been, for all her life, in slow, measured bites. It might have stopped, as she grew into herself. But the work of Charlie Sunderland had made sure that didn’t happen. It had kept the Insect cocooned, let it grow on its own, even as it sucked the life—the soul—out of Ann.