Secret Worlds (12 page)

And it wasn’t as though I was the jealous girlfriend type. In all honesty, I didn’t even consider myself to be Abram’s girlfriend. I was his—well, I had no idea what I was. But I didn’t suspect he was marching into the woods to be with another woman. He struck me as too old school for that sort of thing.

I wasn’t sure what I thought was going on. The only thing clear was that weird things had been going on with me since I returned to New Haven, and these woods (and this man) were pieces to a puzzle I needed to solve.

As leaves crunched underfoot, a shiver ran up my spine. The last time I had been here, I was running for my life. It was one of the worst moments of my existence, and the thought that Abram—this man who I had just given myself to—might have something to do with it, sickened me to the core.

No, I was being ridiculous. He was just going for a walk.

A sunset walk through the middle of a tract of woods that had seen the murder of at least one woman. Yeah, that made sense.

Still, there had to be a reason for this, and it couldn’t have had anything to do with the myriad of crazy theories running through my mind.

It’s just … there was so much about Abram I still didn’t know. So much that still didn’t make sense. Where did he live? Where did he go at night? Why didn’t I ever see him at the club (or anywhere, for that matter) after the sun went down? That wasn’t even the whole of it. I’d had so many questions since meeting him, that I couldn’t even remember them all—but I knew there was more than just this.

Abram marched quickly through the forest, the sort of speed one only takes when he or she knows exactly where they’re going and just how to get there.

My stomach was in knots, and my poor yo-yo of a heart was racing again. Whatever was going on, one thing was for sure: New Haven was no longer the sleepy town I remembered from my childhood.

My phone buzzed, and I hit the ground.

Goddamn it!

Served me right for not having sense enough to turn the ringer off. Just my luck. When I was stranded in the middle of the night, I couldn’t have made a call to save my life. But now that I was being (sorta) stealthy, my ringer was blowing up like Lady Gaga at a nightclub. If Abram saw me here, following him, how would I even explain myself?

Hey there. Was just taking a stroll through the place where I almost got killed. Funny seeing you here.

I huddled behind the stump of a nearby tree, hoping that if I was still and quiet enough, he would assume the ringer had just been the wind. If he had heard it at all, that was.

Why should I have to explain myself to him anyway?
He
should be the one explaining himself to
me
!

And yet I kept myself hidden, unable to overcome the guilty feeling I had over not trusting him. It made no sense for me to feel this way, and yet, there it was.

Pulling the phone from my purse, I lowered the ringer down to silent, noticing a text from Dalton had been the source of the disturbance.

Hey. I’m at the diner. Ordering you juice and eggs Benedict. I know how u like breakfast 4 dinner. How long r u gonna be?

Oh, great. I was supposed to meet him to break things off, and here I was standing him up to prance through the woods after the guy I was leaving him for.

It was like I was inadvertently training for the bitch Olympics.

I considered texting him back, telling him to wait there, or ever just telling him it was over like this. But just because I seemed to be in training didn’t mean I wanted to take the gold. So, shooting him a quick, 
Sorry. Something came up, 
I slid the phone back into my purse.

Slowly, I peeked from behind the stump. Not only was Abram not marching back toward me, but it seemed he didn’t hear anything at all.  Because he was nowhere to be seen.

But how could that be? This particular stretch of woods was flat and expansive. It would have taken him at least five minutes to make it out of my line of sight, and it hadn’t been near that long.

I stood, brushing leaves and twigs from my dress, cursed my current trend of ruining all my designer things, and took a long look around. Where the hell was this guy? I had never seen him run and, given the sexual encounter I had with him earlier, he didn’t seem like the type to do anything in a rush.

I clutched my purse and thought about turning around. But I knew that was no good. If I didn’t get to the bottom of this, I would never have a clear head around Abram again. I would ruin this relationship before it even started.

Well, Char, there’s only one thing to do
.

I didn’t know everything that was going on—in fact, the only pieces I 
did 
have about what was happening didn’t make sense when I tried to put them together—but I did know it had something to do with that old house, and I was pretty sure I could find my way back to it.

So long as Abram wasn’t there, I could make peace with the idea he didn’t have anything to do with this—that whatever he was doing in these woods was as innocent as I hoped it was. And peace, it seemed, was in short supply these days.

***

The mile up the road out of New Haven seemed shorter when full of anxiety instead of fear, but the trek through the woods was as unenjoyable as ever. Considering I had never been a nature lover—heels and hills don’t mix—I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the trip, regardless how much shorter it was this time. But something about that house seemed to draw me to it, as if a piece of myself was waking up and guiding through this place where all the trees and paths looked the same.

I barely had to think as I moved toward my destination, which was good considering my mind had basically melted into paste by this point.

The house came into view. First that awful peak, jutting out from the tree line. Next, I saw the top floor, with the beckoning light still burning in the window.

It had taken me nearly an hour the other night to get away from this place, and I was a bit stunned to realize how close to the road it actually was. Maybe being disoriented from the attack had slowed my escape.

As I drew nearer, the chipped paint and quaint structure exposed beneath the waning sunlight made the old house look less monstrous and more lonely. Or, as lonely as a house could look anyway.

Here was this house, sitting untouched and outpaced by the rest of the world. It was sort of sad. But, more than that, it was almost beautiful. Or at least it would have been if this hadn’t been the location where I’d nearly been eaten alive by a pair of quarreling monsters.

I stepped closer to the house, pursing my lips at the already repaired window. For a house that looked as though it hadn’t been touched in fifty years, it sure had an efficient handyman.

I pushed all of that out of my mind. At this point, I didn’t care about solving this mystery. The only thing that mattered was ruling out Abram as a participant in it.

Inching forward, I bit my lip as the door revealed itself to me. He wasn’t going to be here. He was a good man—a bit of a dick, sure, but not the sort to lie, not about something like this. He was old fashioned in a way I couldn’t really describe. He was untouched by time, sort of like this house. Sort of like—

Sort of like the kind of man I would find standing in the threshold of the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. Apparently.

My heart sank at the sight of him.
No, Abram. Please, no
. However small it was, this man who I had just slept with had a part in all of this.

His dark eyes scanned the periphery of the woods and, for an instant, I thought he was looking for me. Maybe he
had
heard my ringer go off. Maybe he had sprinted away from me quickly enough for me to lose sight of him.

He turned and walked into the house. The door slammed shut behind him, and I was alone, gasping in shock and slumping against a nearby tree.

Shock soured in my stomach, turning to hurt and finally to anger. He had lied to me. It must have been Abram himself who found me in the house that night. Of course, that would have also meant he’d fought back those monsters and saved me. But if that was the case, why didn’t he just tell me? Why did he let me limp back to town with cuts, bruises, and a mind so rocked with questions that it barely functioned?

I wanted answers. Abram
owed
me those answers. And, by God, I was going to get them. But I couldn’t just barge in there. He had lied to me at least once. I would have to be sneaky about this and gather some clues, or else he might hide more from me before I ever had the chance to find out. But I also couldn’t wait for him to leave. It was getting late and, if I didn’t show up soon, Lulu would worry.

Going missing twice inside of a week was the last thing my extremely pregnant and hyper-worrisome best friend needed.

I was going to have to go inside now. I would have to sneak around without Abram knowing I was in there. It was a terrible plan, and yet, it was all I had without the risk of losing this opportunity forever.

Ducking low, I scampered across the field toward the front door. My feet fell lightly onto the porch and, quietly as possible, I turned the knob.

I had no idea what I was going to do if Abram had locked it behind him. Or if he was standing right on the other side of the door. I had never been the sort who thought things through. But the house was in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn’t likely he was expecting company, or that he had come all the way out here to sit the living room.

Luckily for me, the door sprang open. After slipping inside, I crouched down and looked around cautiously, praying Abram wasn’t standing there watching me. But the living room was as empty today as it had been the other night, though the quickly setting sun tinted the entire room orange and red.

I listened for sounds, trying to gauge where Abram might be. Suddenly, heavy footsteps stomped from a back room. Crap. They were headed this way. I sprang to my feet, bolted toward the steps, and pushed up them, hoping to get out of sight before he found me.

I shuddered as my feet fell across the staircase. The last time I had been on them, I had been tumbling down like a discarded sequin on a McCartney original. Shaking my head, I moved into the upstairs hallway just before Abram crossed into the living room.

Pressed against the wall, I found myself guarded in shadow. The sun would be down soon, and getting home from here would prove troublesome. But I needed answers. And right now was the only time I could get them.

Sorry, Lulu
.

Abram stopped in the living room, and I shivered, thinking he would move up the stairs. I darted farther into the hallway. Remembering the layout from the last time I was here, I knew there were only two rooms at the end of the hall. One of them was the room I had almost died in and the other had been locked the last time I was here.

Now, with little bit of daylight remaining, I could actually
see
the door. And when I did, I nearly choked on air. The door was stamped with a similar crescent moon symbol to the mysterious room inside The Castle.

Realization slammed into me with a sickening thud. How could I have forgotten the way the doorknob had burned me that night?
Of course
Abram had something to do with all this. I was just the idiot girl who needed a damn symbol to spell it out for me. But that still didn’t explain what was going on. I needed to hide before Abram came upstairs. I needed to find answers before he found me.

I moved toward the marked door, knowing it would probably be locked but also knowing I would regret it forever if I didn’t at least check. Suddenly, a strange noise poured from the other side. It was a song; someone was singing one word.

My name.

A repressed memory from earlier in the night tried to push its way through. The room in the hall at The Castle … I couldn’t quite grasp the picture, though. It was like a lost dream. I tried to retrieve more from my mind, but footsteps bounding up the stairs interrupted my efforts.

Abram would be here in mere seconds, and unless I found someplace to hide, he would know I had followed him.

The crescent moon symbol began to glow, and I jerked back just in time for the previously locked door to fly open. A whoosh of cinnamon-scented air burst from the open space, almost knocking me down.

I slid into the room quickly and, without touching it, the door closed behind me.

Okay, so, that’s not a good sign.

A loud crashing and then a sound like glass shattering stole my attention before I was able to take the room in. A picture had fallen off a nearby counter. When I looked down at it, my heart skidded to a stop.

The old photograph lay face up under shards of broken frame. Two men stood by a lake, smiling for the camera and showing off their latest catch: a huge catfish.

I recognized both of the men instantly. I had seen one of them in my dreams almost every night since I was a child. When I was little, it seemed I would never stop seeing his face, watching him walk away from me night after night. It was my father and, beside him, untouched by time or trend, stood Abram.

“He looks exactly the same,” I muttered, mouth agape. “How is that … that’s not possible.”

“Miss,” a tired voice croaked, breaking me from my concentration and startling the hell out of me. “Are you here to help me?”

I spun around, the picture and frame slipping from my hand to crash to floor once again. A woman sat on the floor in the fetal position. She was pale and disheveled. Her face was gaunt, and she seemed as though she hadn’t slept in weeks. She looked up at me expectantly. When she shuffled, I realized both her hands and feet were fastened with chains connected to the wall.

I recognized her, too. With sickening clarity, I realized where I had seen this face before. It had shone, bright and smiling, from the missing poster I had seen when I first returned to town.

This was the missing girl. She was being kept here, in a house that Abram had something to do with.

This—the missing woman, the mutilated bodies, the strange creatures that chased me to 
this 
house—was all connected.