The strange gray light. My eyes flash wide. I’m inside the house.

My brain shakes itself off like a dog ditching water and a million questions fly from its fur. How long have I been unconscious? What room am I in? How do I get out? And of course, the all important: Did those assholes leave me here?

My last question is answered quickly by Mike’s voice.

“See, I told you I didn’t kill him.” He taps his finger against the glass and I twist toward the window to stare up at his grinning idiot face. He says something stupid about how I’m a dead man and that this is what happens to guys who mess with his property. That’s when I hear Carmel shouting that she’s going to call the cops, asking in a panicked voice if I’ve at least woken up yet.

“Carmel!” I shout, struggling up onto my knee. “I’m okay.”

“Cas,” she shouts back. “These jerks— I didn’t know, I swear.”

I believe her. I rub the back of my head. My fingers come away with a little bit of blood. Actually, it’s a lot of blood, but I’m not worried, because head wounds leak like water from a faucet even when the injury is barely more than a paper cut. I put my hand back on the floor to push myself up and the blood mixes the dust into a gritty reddish paste.

It’s too soon to get up. My head is swimmy. I need to lie back down. The room is starting to move on its own.

“Jesus, look at him. He’s down again. We should probably get him out of there, man. He could have a concussion or something.”

“I hit him with a board; of course he’s got a concussion. Don’t be an idiot.”

Look who’s talking, I would like to say. All of this feels very surreal, very disconnected. It’s almost like a dream.

“Let’s just leave him. He’ll find his own way back.”

“Dude, we can’t. Look at his head; it’s bleeding all over the place.”

As Mike and Chase argue back and forth over whether to babysit me or let me die, I feel myself slipping back down into darkness. I think this might actually be it. I’ve actually been murdered by the living—pretty unthinkable.

But then I hear Chase’s voice go up about five or so octaves. “Jesus! Jesus!”

“What?” Mike shouts, his voice irritated and panicky at the same time.

“The stairs! Look at the fucking stairs!”

I force my eyes open and will my head to lift up an inch or two. At first I don’t see anything extraordinary about the stairs. They’re a bit narrow, and the banister has been broken in no less than three places. But then I look up farther.

It’s her. She’s flickering in and out like an image on a computer screen, some dark specter trying to fight her way out of the video and into reality. When her hand grips the rail she becomes corporeal, and it whines and creaks beneath the pressure.

I shake my head softly, still disoriented. I know who she is, I know her name, but I can’t think of why I’m here. It occurs to me suddenly that I’m trapped. I don’t know what to do. I can hear the repeated panicked prayers of Chase and Mike as they argue about whether or not to run or try to get me out of the house somehow.

Anna is descending upon me, coming down the stairs without taking any strides. Her feet drag horribly along like she can’t use them at all. Dark, purplish veins cut through her pale white skin. Her hair is shadow-less black, and it moves through the air as though suspended in water, snaking out behind and drifting like reeds. It’s the only thing about her that looks alive.

She doesn’t wear her death wounds like other ghosts do. They say her throat was cut, and this girl’s throat is long and white. But there is the dress. It’s wet, and red, and constantly moving. It drips onto the ground.

I don’t realize that I’ve scooted back against the wall until I feel the cold pressure against my back and shoulder. I can’t take my eyes off her eyes. They’re like oil drops. It’s impossible to tell where she’s looking, but I’m not foolish enough to hope that she can’t or hasn’t seen me. She is terrible. Not grotesque, but otherworldly.

My heart is pounding in my chest, and the ache in my head is unbearable. It tells me to lie down. It tells me that I can’t get out. I don’t have the strength to fight. Anna is going to kill me, and I’m surprised to find that I would rather it be one like her, in her dress made of blood. I would rather succumb to whatever hell she has in mind for me than give up quietly in a hospital somewhere because someone hit me in the head with a piece of plank board.

She’s coming closer. My eyes are drifting shut, but I can hear her movements whisper through the air. I can hear each fat drop of blood strike the floor.

I open my eyes. She’s standing above me, the goddess of death, black lips and cold hands.

“Anna.” My mouth curls into a weak smile.

She looks down at me, a pathetic thing shoved up against her wall. Her brow creases as she floats. And then she jerks her gaze away toward the window above my head. Before I can move, her arms shoot forward and break through the glass. I hear Mike or Chase or both of them screaming almost in my ear. Farther away, I hear Carmel.

Anna has pulled Mike through the window and into the house. He’s screaming and bawling like a caught animal, twisting in her grip and trying to keep from looking at her face. His struggles don’t seem to bother her. Her arms are as immobile as marble.

“Let me go,” he stammers. “Let me go, man, it was just a joke! It was just a joke!”

She sets him on his feet. He’s bleeding from cuts on his face and hands. He takes one step backward. Anna bares her teeth. I hear my voice coming from somewhere else, telling her to stop or just screaming, and Mike doesn’t have any time to scream before she thrusts her hands into his chest, tearing through skin and muscle. She pushes her arms out to the sides, like she’s forcing her way through a closing door, and Mike Andover is torn in half. Both halves fall to their knees, jerking and skittering like insect parts.

Chase’s screams are coming from farther away. A car starts up. I’m scrambling away from the mess that used to be Mike, trying not to look at the half of his body that is still connected to his head. I don’t want to know if he’s still alive. I don’t want to know that he’s watching the other half of him twitch.

Anna is looking down at the corpse calmly. She looks at me for a long moment before turning her attention back to Mike. When the door bursts open she doesn’t seem to notice, and then I’m being dragged by my shoulders from behind, pulled out of the house and away from the blood, my legs thumping down the front porch steps. When whoever it is lets go of me, they drop me too suddenly on my head, and I don’t see anything anymore.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Hey. Hey, man, are you waking up?”

I know that voice. I don’t like that voice. I crack my eyes open, and there’s his face, hovering over me.

“You had us worried there for a while. We probably shouldn’t have let you sleep so long. We probably should have taken you to a hospital, but we couldn’t really think of anything to say.”

“I’m fine, Thomas.” I reach up and rub my eyes, then gather my will and sit up, knowing that my world is about to swim and slosh hard enough that I might throw up. Somehow, I manage to swing my legs down to rest on the floor. “What happened?”

“You tell me.” He lights a cigarette. I wish he’d put it out. Beneath his scraggly hair and glasses he looks like a twelve-year-old who swiped a pack from his mother’s purse. “What were you doing in the Korlov house?”

“What were you doing following me?” I return, accepting the glass of water he holds out.

“What I said I was going to do,” he replies. “Only I never figured you’d need so much help. Nobody fucking goes into her house.” His blue eyes peer at me like I’m some kind of novelty idiot.