Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Five

If you had asked me what I’d be doing with my day, taking an impromptu bus trip with a ghul who I was still fairly certain was a murderer to a nameless spot in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t have been my first guess. Taking the IW would have been faster, but I didn’t dare risk it. Not when Grandpa Teddy and Cousin Gumdrop were on the lookout for me. And let me tell you, riding in a cramped Greyhound with three quarters of a horse stuck to me was…well, it was definitely an experience. My N.O.S.E. let me hide my unfortunate choice of backside from the other passengers, but please don’t ask how I managed to go the whole trip without it bumping into anyone.

Please don’t ask.

Now we were standing at the edge of a forest about a million or twenty miles from civilization. The road we had taken to get here was old and barely used, but the dirt path leading into the woods seemed downright ancient. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, but it was still bright out. Even so, the forest seemed to grow unnaturally dark just a little ways in.

On the bright side, I only had a couple more hours before I got my own butt back!

“Con and I have known each other almost our entire lives,” Paura explained, leading the way into the woods. I gave Ethan and Jade a nervous look—an emotion they both mirrored perfectly—and then followed. “We grew up in the same colony. About two or three dozen ghuls living together in secret, doing whatever we could to keep the others alive. We were only kids when the ghul hunters found us, and…” Her voice trailed off.

Despite myself, I frowned. I admit, I wasn’t feeling overly fond of ghuls right then, but what I’d told Ethan before still held true: nobody deserved to die just because of how they were born.

“As far as I know, Con and I are the only survivors,” she went on as we followed the path even deeper into the woods. “For a few years, it was just me and him…until we got separated. Then it was just me.”

“How did that happen?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“He went out to scavenge food one day in the Quallog dimension and never came back. I assumed the same people who wiped out our colony had finally caught up to him.” She gave me a side eye. “Until about a year or so ago, I never would have guessed he’d been adopted into a family of klaons.”

“How did you find out in the first place?” Ethan asked.

Paura stopped in her tracks, and I looked at her in confusion. There was a sort of…wistfulness in her eyes. I followed her gaze, and up ahead I spotted our destination. An old warehouse, right smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The front had been done up with planks of rotten wood to make it look like a decrepit Victorian mansion. At first, I thought it was some abandoned hobo’s shack, but it was clearly too big for that. A whole clan of hobos? Above the front door, a faded and termite-eaten sign hung at a crazy slant.

Midnight Mansion: Where Your Worst Dreams Come True!

“It was here,” Paura finally said softly, almost nostalgically. “I was an actor here one October. It’s a ghul’s dream job, you know? Every customer is a walking meal, so it’s like a buffet that pays you to come eat there.”

I perked up a little. Just my luck. I finally found someone who knew how to make a decent food-related analogy, and they turned out to be a brother-framing probably-murderer.

“There I was, scaring and feeding and feeling more at home than I had in years,” she went on, “and then he just walks right around the corner.”

“Just like that?” I asked skeptically. “Seems a little convenient.”

Paura shook her head. “Why? You think he was the only ghul I saw that year? A place like this was a freaking magnet to things like us. The only thing that surprised me was that it was him.”

Slowly, almost reverently, she began to make her way toward the old spookhouse. I followed, and couldn’t help but cock my head in confusion when a strange scent reached my nose. I recognized it immediately: laughter. But it was different than any laughter I had ever smelled before. Like it was…tinged…with something else.

“It’s fear,” Paura said, noticing the look on my face. “Fear and laughter mixed together. Even though this place is closed for the off season, traces of the emotions it brought out in people are still everywhere.”

Slowly, I nodded. “I didn’t think you could mix them together like that.”

“There aren’t many places where you’ll find it,” she agreed. “It’s a weird combination, and you need just the right environment to create it.”

We came to the front door, and my stomach did a somersault when I saw that it was ajar. Paura reached out and pushed, and it swung open with an ominous creak. Inside, the light—which was already dim underneath the trees—quickly faded to pitch blackness.

He is in there, I realized. I don’t know what it was that suddenly made me so certain of that, but I knew it was true. Somewhere inside those dark hallways, my poor, falsely accused brother was hiding for his life.

“You and Con,” Ethan said hesitantly. “Were you two…you know, together?”

Paura looked nervously at him, then at me, and nodded. My mouth fell open. Con had gone and gotten a girlfriend, and he hadn’t told me?

“We bought this place,” Paura whispered. “Con and I.”

“Why?” I snapped, still a little offended. “So you could turn it into a little love shack?”

She whipped her head around to glare at me. “We had plans. He was going to drop out of college, and we were going to turn this place into the biggest haunted attraction in the world. It would be open year round, we'd have all the fear we could eat, and Con wouldn’t have to take those damn pills you forced down his throat anymore.”

I bristled at that. “I never forced him to do anything! Con loves being a klaon!”

Paura gave me a flat look.

“He does!” I insisted.

“Anyway,” Paura said sharply, “this semester was supposed to be his last before he quit school. Then the two of us were going to live here together and start fixing the place up. But then he…” She shook her head in confusion. “One day he just disappeared. He didn’t leave a note, he didn’t answer any of my calls. I had no idea where he’d gone until a few days later, when I saw a murder report that showed all the signs of a ghul attack—in his hometown.”

I took a step forward. “Con didn’t—”

“I don’t know why he went home, and I don’t know why he suddenly started killing people,” Paura cut me off angrily. “But I intend to help him. Are you going to help him too, or would you rather keep telling everyone he’s innocent when you already know they won’t listen?”

I hesitated, but then shut my mouth. I wanted to believe Con was innocent more than anything else in the world. But with all the evidence that kept piling up against him, I didn’t know if…well…

Did it make me a bad sister if I was starting to believe it?

“I wanted to get here before the sun went down,” Paura said, glancing up at the sky. What little we could see of the sun was barely a sliver on top of the horizon. “That way we’d have a chance to talk to him while he couldn’t use his powers.”

“We don’t have to worry about that,” I said, peering into the darkness. “Powers or not, Con would never hurt me.”

“That isn’t…” Paura stopped and sighed. “I wish I could agree with you, but I have no idea what Con is capable of anymore.”

Taking a step forward, I ducked my head and went inside. The air in here was dusty, and behind the fear-laughter (flaughter?) scent was the smell of cheap lumber and old spray paint. From what little I could see, the hallway was decorated to match the outside of the building, an ancient mansion whose only occupants were the evil things that lurked in closets and beneath beds. The ceiling was just high enough for me to stand up without banging my head.

“Henry,” Ethan whispered, coming in after me, “I know you want to save Con and all, but what do we do if he doesn’t cooperate?”

“Just let me do the talking,” I said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

I ignored him and went a few steps further down the corridor. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I yelled, “Con! Can you hear me? It’s Henry!”

With a loud, echoing SNAP, the lights sprang to life, and I jumped. Whirling around, I saw Paura still standing at the entrance, her hand on a light switch. Seeing me glaring at her, she rolled her eyes.

“Henry?” came a faint voice.

I spun again to look deeper into the house. “Con!”

“How did you find me?”

I took a few steps, stopping when the hallway turned sharply to the right, but he wasn’t there.

“Paura brought us,” I shouted. “We’re here to help, so come out where we can see you, okay?”

“Paura’s here?” Con asked, his voice rising a bit with alarm.

“Yes,” I said, “so please, just—”

“You need to leave, Henry,” his faint, echoey voice cut me off. I looked around, but still couldn’t see him anywhere. It was like his voice was coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, “It’s not safe to be around me anymore.”

A chill went down my spine. “We can work this out, Con. Please, just stop hiding!”

“It’s over, Henry. I’m sorry.”

“Con, talk to us,” Paura said, coming to stand beside me. “What happened? Why did you kill those—”

“No!” I interrupted her. “Tell her you didn’t kill them!”

Silence.

“Con?” I asked.

“I…” Con’s voice whispered in shame. “I did. I killed them.”

My heart dropped into my stomach, and I backed away in horror. I was so shocked that, for a moment, I forgot how to use my horse legs, and I tripped over my own hooves and collapsed painfully onto the dusty floor.

“No!” I yelled, shaking my head wildly. “You’re lying, Con! My brother would never hurt anyone!”

“I’m not the klaon you thought was your brother.” Con’s voice was heavy with pain and regret, but he sounded like he’d made his mind up. “I never was.”

“Henry,” Ethan whispered while I got back to my hooves. “We’ve got less than two minutes before the sun goes down!”

“At least talk to us, okay?” said Paura. “What happened that made you do this?”

“It was…He said that I…” Con’s voice faded away. “No. I can’t tell you. You have to get out of here, Paura. Now.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself!” Paura argued.

“Go! And take Henry with you! If you don’t…”

“What?” I asked, reaching instinctively for Splatsy and hating myself for it.

“If you don’t…I’ll kill all of you.”

Paura went pale, which was a weird sight considering how pale she already was.

“Listen to me,” Paura pleaded. “You’re being hunted down! I know a place we can go where they’ll never find us, but you have to—”

Con laughed, his voice cold and derisive. “There’s nowhere we can hide from that red haired freak! And if she sees you with me, she’ll kill you too, Paura.”

“He’s right about that much,” I muttered. “Cousin Gumdrop wouldn’t hesitate to kill you both if she thought she could get away with it.”

“Only if she can catch us,” Paura said grimly.

“She can.”

Paura glanced at me, but didn’t reply. I wasn’t just saying that to be stubborn. I knew what Cousin Gumdrop was capable of, and it was only a matter of time before she tracked Con here. Whatever we were going to do, we had to do it today.

“Conrad Metus Rider,” I said in my best Mom voice, “we aren’t going anywhere, so you just get your pasty white butt down here this instant!”

Con sighed—and then the door slammed shut. The lights dimmed, not going out but casting the hallway to shadow anyway.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” he said. “Why couldn’t you just leave?”

Slow, ominous organ music began to play. I could hear other noises coming from deeper in the house. Ghostly moans, rattling chains, high pitched screams…

“Henry, what’s going on?” Ethan demanded, pulling out his spellhammer.

“The sun went down,” I answered.

“So what?”

“He got his powers back,” said Paura, “and now he’s going to kill us.”