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You’re halfway through your geometry homework when you realize your friend is here.
Not one of your friends from school. You don’t really have any of those, and even if you did, you wouldn’t invite them here. You’re already the girl from the weird haunted mansion at the top of the hill, you don’t also need to be the girl from the weird haunted mansion on the top of the hill that is full of dead animals. What the rest humanity doesn’t see can’t hurt them.
No, it’s your other friend. The oddly-shaped, sort of default-looking one. They come around sometimes, and it’s always fine. You’re not supposed to let strangers into the house, but walls don’t really seem to prevent them from showing up, and neither do any of Jude’s “early-warning systems”. And they don’t feel like a stranger, as silly as that sounds.
Your friend tells you that they have something really cool that they want to show you.
“Okay..?”
Oh, they don’t have it with them, you’ll have to go somewhere. It shouldn’t take very long, and you’ll be totally safe. In fact, since they’re a master of both time and space, it doesn’t really have to take any time at all. If you want, they could get you back before you left.
Well, that definitely sounds better than geometry.
“Did you bring a car?” You didn’t hear one come up the hill. “We’re too far away to walk anywhere. Can you even drive?”
Your friend says they prefer cars that drive themselves. They take your arm.
ZAP
The living room crackles out of existence in a burst of green lighting, and when it comes back for a moment you think you haven’t left, just moved to another part of the house. Possibly one that you haven’t ever been in before. There’s the same sort of dead animals mounted on the walls, the same indescribable artwork, the same dark, heavy furniture. But no—this room is narrow and tall. So tall, in fact, that looking up you can’t even see the ceiling, just a staircase spiraling away into the gloom. Your house has some very silly elements to it, but nothing like an endless staircase.
“Where are we?”
Your friend opens their mouth—or whatever they have that passes for a mouth—but before they can respond--
A hand reaches out of thin air in a crackle of energy. It grabs on to your friend and gives them a yank. Weird. In the messed-up green light its skin looks almost purple.
Your friend vanishes and you are alone once again. Like you always are, at the end of the day.
Or maybe…not entirely alone. Is that…music? You decide not to worry about where you are or how in the world you’re going to get home, and start to climb the stairs.
Heck! This sure is a lot of stairs. You thought your house was full of stairs. You’ll never grump about having to get something out of the attic again. Every so often you pass a window and catch a snatch of lush green and perfect blue. Wherever you are, it’s a long way from Hauntswitch.
The music gets louder as you climb higher, and you realize that it isn’t music after all, but someone singing to themselves, loud and unrestrained, as if they’re sure they won’t be overheard. The air gets heavier as you climb and the temperature rises. You reach the top of the spiral, and it’s so green that for a moment you think that you’ve come out on the roof. Then you catch sight of the prismatic glittering above you and realize that the ceiling is made of glass.
There is a greenhouse at Harley House, on the very edge of the property, but no one has used it in years. There’s just a bunch of spiders in there. You don’t care for spiders .
The singing breaks off for a moment. You wait for it to resume before creeping along through a bed of purple and gold flowers. You don’t know much about horticulture, but you’re pretty sure there aren’t any flowers that look like this. At least not normal ones.
There, a girl halfway down a row of tall, swaying sunflowers. She’s in a brown skirt and blue t-shirt, long hair braided back out of her face, round glasses sliding down her nose. Her song is still going, although there don’t seem to be any words to it. Just a slow murmur, meaningless but pretty, bouncing back down at her from the domed ceiling.
You want to get closer, but there's no real angle to come at her where she won't see you. You don't think she looks dangerous, but there is still something deep and terrified inside of you when you look at her. She...she looks like your mother. Is this...
No, that's not right. She doesn't look like your mother.
She looks like you.
You smack your elbow into a hanging basket full of begonias and yelp. The girl's singing breaks off and her dark head goes up. Her sheers rise in front of her like a weapon that she knows how to use.
"Bec, is that you? What are you doing, silly puppy? Bec?" You race back behind the line of hedges, holding your breath and as light on your feet as you know how to be. "Is anyone there?"
You race back down the stairs, heart somehow simultaneously pounding against your ribs and up in your throat at the same time. There's no way that this girl could look like you, who is she? Where does she come from, where ARE you? Why did your friend bring you here?
The sunlight dies as you retreat further down the stairs. You aren’t sure if night is falling, a storm is rolling in, or some other darkness is descending on you, a symptom of your racing pulse. You barely feel the floor beneath you as you descend; it seems to fly up to meet you faster than it should.
You run through an open door and let out a shriek as you come a couple inches from slamming into a statue.
No, not a statue.
This time the ground does come up fast to meet you. Your legs simply collapse. It’s just reflex that lets you catch yourself onto the marble. Are you even awake?
Thunder rolls across the distance. You hear the rain. Everything is muggy with heat, but the floor is cold.
Time passes. So does the storm. Light and darkness seem to fade in and out, with absolutely no regard to the cycle of night and day. You have no idea how long you kneel on the stone floor of this infinite, lonely tower.
Footsteps echo, and you brace yourself for the sight of the strange girl, but instead you see the gleaming white of your friend. They’re back.
“Did you know about this?” Funny. You don’t sound upset at all.
Your friend tells you, yes. They did know.
“Is this—.” Your voice doesn’t tremble. “Is this why he hasn’t come home?” You’ve been staring at the man stuffed on the wooden mount for so long that he no longer looks like a person. Just a collection of legs and arms.
Your friend shakes their head. This is the future.
“Then why did you bring me here?”
They shrug, looking as uncomfortable as a stick figure can. They tell you it seemed like a good idea at the time. They tend to just do things, and those things tend to work themselves out.
Heat rises in your throat. “You wanted to just abandon me here?”
That hadn’t been their plan! They meant to stay with you, to introduce you to a friend, but they’d been hauled away by a busybody who looked poorly on this current situation. Although, if she’d really had a problem with it, she could have stopped it from happening without much trouble.
They are making even less sense than usual. You can’t really bring yourself to care.
He doesn’t deserve this, is a phrase that floats in and out of your mind, swirling around and around like fetid water down a drain. But you don’t know if that’s even true. You don’t know anything about him. You grew up in Jake Harley’s house, full of Jake Harley’s things, and you resented him viciously. You can’t even conjure up much surprise to find he has an entire other house, full of other things. Even an entire separate daughter. Is there another boy, too? Another Roxy to take care of them? She’d been calling someone’s name when she heard you.
You could go up and talk to her. She’s probably your sister, after all. She’s probably as lonely as you are, despite her flowers and her echoing tower.
You stand and brush off your knees, before turning to your friend. “Take me home.”