Alexandra Sokoloff - The Unseen

Tyler, look at me. Look at me. See me .

She reached out and grabbed his hands, squeezing hard. Tyler. Come out of there. Now .

All at once the young man in front of her gasped, a long, shuddering breath as if he’d just surfaced from deep water. He panted raggedly.

The white room faded around them as Laurel shot to her feet, moved around the table, and knelt beside Tyler, reaching up to stroke his face. “Breathe. Breathe. Tyler, are you there? Can you answer me?”

He answered thickly, but it was his own voice. “God.” He looked around them wildly. A painting shifted on the wall. The piano suddenly fell forward onto its legs without a sound and slid several feet across the floor, then stopped, hovering…

A low, deep groan shuddered through the foundation of the house… the floor beneath Laurel’s knees slithered like a serpent.

Now what she saw in Tyler’s eyes was pure terror.

“Oh God,” he managed. His teeth were chattering so hard he could barely get the words out. “Where is it? Where’d it go?”

“Talk to me. Talk to me,” she commanded, digging her fingernails into his forearms.

“Jesus.” His voice was weak, and thick, but his eyes were lucid. He looked across the table at Katrina, then at Brendan, slumped lifeless and staring at the table with those black, vacant eyes. “What are we going to do?”

Laurel stood. “We’re going to get out of here,” she said grimly, and hoped that he believed her. “Can you move? Can you stand?”

He leaned his arm over the back of the chair and shoved himself up to standing. He promptly doubled over and retched, dry heaves.

She caught him and held him as he heaved. “I know…. I know.” Her eyes were scanning the room even as she comforted him. On the back wall, a window cracked, a long, slow split. “But Tyler, we have to go. We have to go now, before…” She did not know how to express the unformed horror she felt. She looked to Brendan and Katrina. “We have to get them, and we have to get out.”

“There are no doors,” he said, looking honestly bewildered.

“Yes, there are. Come on, Tyler. Take Katrina. Pick her up if you can. Drag her if you have to. Grab her and run,” she commanded.

Tyler seized Katrina’s arms and pulled the girl’s limp body from her chair. Laurel had to not look at the idiot look on Brendan’s face as she reached for his arm. He felt like a snake in her grasp, but she held his slick skin firmly, slipped her arms under his armpits, and yanked him up from the chair.

She glanced back at Anton, sprawled against the wall, slack jaw dropped open, then turned back to Tyler.

“Go!”

They both heaved forward and half-ran, stumbling, half-dragging Katrina and Brendan through the archway, into the entry hall.

Laurel dropped Brendan’s limp and heavy body to the floor and lunged for the front door, twisting the doorknob. It was locked and solid, would not budge even a fraction of an inch as she pulled and shoved at it. Around them, she could hear the house breathing, that rasping, live breath. Tyler barked behind her: “Out of the way!”

She turned to see Tyler had dropped Katrina, who lay crumpled on the floor. He grabbed an end table and lifted it. Laurel pulled Brendan’s dead weight aside and Tyler hoisted the end table and ran at the long vertical window set beside the door with an inarticulate cry. The table smashed through the glass.

He hit again and again, breaking the remaining glass out. Behind them from the great room came a cackling of voices, whispering, and ranting, a frenzied cacophony.

“Get out!” Laurel said through chattering teeth. “I’ll hand her through.”

With Tyler outside and Laurel inside, they carried/passed Katrina through the broken-out window. Laurel’s mind was screaming at her.

What if they don’t recover?

And then,

What if we don’t get out?

The house began a long, slow rumble again, and the rapping began to shake the walls, rolling through the house in waves.

Tyler lunged back in through the window, and together they muscled Brendan toward the window frame, straining with his weight.

The voices in the great room jabbered, louder and louder, and a man’s voice began to shriek, raw, horrible screams. Laurel cried out and shoved Brendan through the window. As Tyler pulled him through, Laurel squeezed through the window herself, feeling the remaining jagged glass rip her skin, feeling blood seep from her face and arms and legs.

Outside the rain was pouring down, splashing on the porch and path. Wind lashed the trees above them, whipping water against them. The wet was the most welcome thing Laurel had ever felt; she turned her face up to be drenched. Lightning branched through the sky.

Unbelievably, their cars were still lined up in the slate-pebbled drive, and Laurel felt for a moment as if she were in a painting, in a dream.

Then she dropped to the porch beside Katrina, pulled the girl’s soaked and prone body into her arms. “Do you have car keys?” she shouted at Tyler over the thunder. Tyler shoved his hand into a jean pocket and a look of salvation lit his face as he pulled out the keys.

“Let’s fucking go.” He zapped the doors unlocked.

Katrina was shivering, convulsing in Laurel’s arms. The girl’s eyes suddenly flew open.

“Run,” Katrina whispered. “Run run run run run…”

A wave of terror crashed over Laurel and she hauled Katrina up to standing, ran with her for the car. The sky opened and hail began to pelt down in marble-sized chunks, bouncing whitely off the car.

Laurel pushed Katrina into the backseat of the Maserati and ran back to help Tyler, who was stooping to pick Brendan up by his armpits. Together they dragged him across the gravel to hoist him into the car, both of them straining to lift him, straining not to listen as the house loomed and shrieked and raged behind them. And as lightning cracked across the sky, Tyler gunned the engine of the Maserati and drove like the wind.

The hospital was small and pretty—if a hospital could be called pretty—with light, airy open spaces, and arches, and views of rolling hills and fields out the windows.

Laurel knew the views well. She had been there for nearly a week.

The intake doctor in the emergency room, Madsen, had been suspicious but competent. He started Brendan and Katrina and Tyler on IV fluids, and stood with Laurel to take their reports. Katrina was still conscious; Brendan was not.

Laurel and Tyler recounted as little as possible: a break-in at the house they were renting while the two of them had been out, returning to find the house ravaged and Katrina and Brendan in the condition they were in, no idea what happened to them, leaving the house with them, frightened out of their wits. Dr. Madsen listened and watched them and wrote, without speaking.

Then Brendan, Katrina and Tyler were taken on gurneys into the hospital, and Laurel sat down to wait.

Brendan came out of his catatonia on the fourth day. Laurel was not sure how, but when Dr. Madsen was taking Brendan’s intake report, Laurel had said on impulse, “There’s a history of schizophrenia in the family.” Her heart beat faster at the chance she was taking, and the doctor looked at her sharply, but after a moment said, “Interesting,” and made a note on Brendan’s chart.

They let her see him on the sixth day. She had not left the hospital for any of that time.

He was pale and thin, tubes snaking from his arms, but his eyes were clear as he looked at her from the hospital bed, and the range of emotions on his face was painful to see. His voice rasped as he said, immediately:

“Tyler… Katrina…”