Abandon

FORTY-SIX

E

mmett’s plunge had effectively destroyed the central staircase, so Lawrence and Abigail worked their way back toward the kitchen to the west-wing stairwell.

They climbed to the third floor and stood for a second time in that bullet-shredded corridor, Abigail feeling trapped in some kind of repetitive fever dream, coming back again and again to this nightmare world.

Their headlamps passed over the doors, the wood-paneled walls, the mounds of snow where the ceiling had failed.

Lawrence limped a few steps into the corridor, stood there listening.

They proceeded on, over the pockmarked wood where Isaiah had fired up at them through the ceiling, skirting that hole where Abigail had punched through and nearly fallen to her death.

They reached what was left of the central staircase.

“I don’t hear a thing,” Abigail whispered.

“Me, neither. Look at that.” He pointed to where several dozen brass shell casings had rolled against the wall. “What was he shooting at?”

They walked on, their headlamps aimed toward the end of the east-wing corridor, an occasional snowflake drifting down through the ceiling, a speck of bright white in their light beams.

“Maybe he did jump,” Lawrence whispered. “Got fueled up on vodka and freaked out when he heard something. Emerald House shifts constantly. It’s full of noises. Or it could’ve just been an animal. Another coyote.”

“Should we go back, then?” Abigail said.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good—” Lawrence took a sharp breath.

“What?” Abigail whispered. “You’re scaring me, Lawrence.”

“Something just stepped out from one of the rooms at the end of the corridor.”

She clutched her father’s arm. “Where’d it go?”

“Toward the sitting room, I think. It was just a shadow, and it moved so fast.”

“Okay, let’s not do this, all right? This is stupid. Like in horror movies when people walk into haunted houses by themselves for no good reason. I wanna go—”

“This isn’t like that, Abby. Come on. We have to see.”

“No.”

“Then go back down to the foyer and wait with June, but I’m not leaving until I—”

She tightened her grip on his arm, said, “I’m not going anywhere in this place alone.”

“Then I guess you’re coming with me.”

Lawrence continued slowly down the corridor, Abigail clinging to her father like she was eight years old again.

They came at last to a decimated sitting area at the corridor’s end, heard nothing but the wind moaning outside in low, dissonant tones like some demonic choir. Snow billowed in through the window frames, having already buried the bookshelves and even drifted into the fireplace.

As Abigail swept her headlamp over the ravaged furniture, the listing chandelier began to tinkle.

Lawrence was already turning to go back, but before following him, she shone her headlamp into the far left corner.

“Jesus Christ!”

“What?”

“Lawrence!”

A man crouched behind a rat-eaten divan, his knees drawn into his chest, rocking slowly back and forth and shivering with cold.

“Are you with them?” he whispered, and Abigail felt so completely paralyzed that her knees gave out and she sank onto the floor, trembling with pure fear, adrenaline raging, heart red-lining, even before she saw Stu’s machine gun in his hand.