Kaitlyn looks around, her expression difficult to read. “It’s not that bad, really.”

“You’re sleeping on a moist mattress on the floor of a basement.”

“It’s okay. The mattress is good.”

“God’s sake, DH, you know what I mean. You’re going to catch your death.”

It is true that Kaitlyn looks drawn and pale.

She nods. “Yeah. It’s not forever, though. Just until Lansing and the cops stop focusing on the school. Stop looking for me.”

“They say you had something to do with a girl going missing.”

“It’s a lie. I was passed out when she decided to walk home. Naida was with me the whole time. So how could I have done anything to her?”

“This is… this is messed up, Kaitie. Maybe… maybe you should—”

Her body tenses. “What? Go back to Claydon?”

John looks at her, mute.

“Are you… are you joking?” She jumps to her feet. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Calm down.”

“No! No, I won’t calm down! You’re telling me I should go back to a nuthouse! You told me I didn’t belong there—on the phone, you told me! You were lying?”

Kaitlyn’s words become shrill, yet there is something more, because suddenly she turns away and half-collapses against the wall, her palms pressed against the dark surface to keep herself erect as she gasps for breath.

John hurries to her side and pulls her into a tight embrace, but she begins to gasp deeply and scream with every exhale.

“Shh, Kaitie, it’s okay. Shh…”

Kaitlyn’s screams turn into cries and then her cries become sobs.

“I’m sorry,” John says. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. Shit.”

Kaitlyn’s arms fall to her side, and she seems calm. “I have to go,” she says, her voice empty. “Let me go.”

John releases her and steps back. “I’m sorry, Kait.”

She doesn’t look at him. “I have to go now.”

John steps aside and she stalks past him like a zombie. He stands staring after her for a few seconds, then he turns and punches the wall.

“Damn it!”

[END OF CLIP]

87 14 days until the incident

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Wednesday, 19 January 2005, 11:12 pm

Basement

Naida’s bind no longer holds.

The Dead House is upon me once again.

It’s

A

Trickster.

It’s a thief.

Thought I saw Carly. Just for a second. She was standing at the end of a long hall. Could I put my joy into words, even though it lasted only a moment? Probably not. But it doesn’t matter, because when I ran forward, the house bent around her and she was gone. I could hear the walls laughing at me.

Strange.

Stranger still, when I opened my eyes, I could still feel the house. Feel its solidity, feel its putrescence, feel its floors, walls, and roof. Smell the decay of it. I could feel the awareness of it, the hunger. Until I realized that it wasn’t the Dead House I was feeling at all.

It’s the school.

88 23 days after the incident

Extract from the statement of Annabeth Lansing

Friday, 25 February 2005

Patients do construct mental settings that can help them escape their reality. When those settings become more real than reality, or bleed into reality, we have psychosis. Thoughts and emotions become so warped and impaired that external reality can no longer be accessed. It is a discontinuation in the belief of the person’s own reality. That is psychosis.

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Monday, 24 January 2005, 2:52 am

Attic

So here I am. Naida said she wanted to talk to me. That it was important to do it up here, and she was right. I finally understand. I think I do. I recorded the conversation like I did before, so take it in, Dee. I could use your opinion.

“This isn’t Carly’s handwriting,” Naida said. She was standing at the farthest wall, right by that big stain, her hand on the wood.

“You don’t know that—”

“I know my best friend’s handwriting, Kaitlyn.” She turned to look at me, and I couldn’t decide whether to slap her or run from her. Before I could decide, she whispered, “Write something for me.”

“This is stupid.”

She stepped towards me, holding out a marker. “Write for me. Here, on the wall.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Cornered, I got up off the green sofa and walked away. I don’t know if I intended to leave. “I just don’t want to, okay?”

“You wrote this. All of this. The writing—it must have taken days.”

“I didn’t write it.” I needed to make her understand, and being evasive wasn’t going to help, Dee. “Yes, it’s my handwriting, but I didn’t write it.”

“I believe you.” She said it so simply, and I got a small glance of the Naida Carly loved so much. I think I loved her too, a little, then. Just for her faith.

“I think… I think something else did.” She choked the words out. She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face. She looked tired. Had she slept? “That house you keep dreaming about? The, what was it, the Dead House?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know that in dream psychology a house represents the self? Your own mind?”

“Oh, hello, Dr. Lansing. You look different today. Get a ridiculous perm, by any chance?”

Naida managed a smile. “It’s simple fact. I think the Dead House is your mind. I think you were right when you said Carly was stuck in one of the rooms… with something. I think she was still in there, with you—only trapped. Unable to come out. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think she’s gone.”

Icy terror flooded my veins, and I wanted to make her stop, but I couldn’t. “I think I saw her, though—the last time I was in the house. She was standing at the end of a long corridor, but then in the blink of an eye, the house had bent itself around her and she was gone.”

“You sure it was her?”

I wasn’t, Dee. Not at all.

“In the last dream,” I whispered, “the house felt really empty. Not quite empty, but empty of her. So… no. But if she’s not in the house, where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere beyond you. I always told Carly that you two were something—something special. It was something I sensed, rather than knew. But I could tell that it put you in danger.”

“You always spoke about dual souls,” I said, remembering the countless times I had put her down.

Two souls in one body, blah blah.

Naida nodded. “I think there’s a kind of doorway to that other place inside you. Like a portal. The door that the Olen used to steal her away. It’s the same door he used to enter you in the first place. I think all those times you heard—what did you call it, your Voice?”

“Aka Manah.”

“Aye, every time you heard him coming closer, he was entering you. Finding that door.”

“Wait, so my Aka Manah is the Olen you keep talking about? They’re the same?”

“I think so, yes.”

“But I heard Aka Manah before the Halloween party.”

“I think the Halloween party—the Olen board… I think it just made it worse. I sensed that you were already in danger before that. But anyway, it doesn’t matter now. The thing is… I think…” Her voice trailed off.