Page 71 of Beneath the Poet's House

Saoirse scans the area before the vertical alcove that culminates in a free fall. A thick sheet of wood siding leans against the already-nailed-in portion of the wall. She jumps over a beam to an actual floorboard, the one where her trusty flashlight still provides them the only light in the chamber. Careful not to kick the flashlight, she positions herself on the board and looks over to the slab.

“I was the one haunting you,” Emmit says, the words slurring together.

Saoirse jerks at the sound of his voice, almost slipping off the floorboard. “What?”

“The preshents—presencein your house you thought was Sarah. I was the one watching while you wrote your stupid poetry. While you pretended to have something worthwhile to say. I read your words while you slept. They were amateurish. Cliché. That’s why this didn’t work. Why the residual haunting fell apart. I was a worthy successor to Poe, but your derivativeness couldn’t hold a candle to Whitman.”

His mouth tries to jump into its half smile, but the muscles spasm. He huffs out a little laugh, as if she only needs to wait and she’ll get what’s coming to her. “Your so-called poetry was garbage.”

Saoirse moves to the sheet of wood, lifts it from the wall, and fits its edge into a groove along the ground. She slides it toward the opposite sheet, six feet across, stopping before she completely closes off the space. Emmit sees it then. What he hadn’t seen before. That she can board him up in the wall of this chamber. That, with a few quick motions, he’ll be trapped inside the bowels of the Shunned House with no one to hear him scream. If the fast-acting insulin coursing through his veins will even allow him to issue anything approaching a scream.

“Andyoumade a grave misjudgment in the way you believed Jonathan’s death changed me,” Saoirse says. “I’m not different becauseof what Jonathan’s death did to me.” She makes sure Emmit’s eyes are focused, makes sure he’s seeing her when she says, “I’m different because ofwhat I did to cause Jonathan’s death.”

She slides the board farther into place while Emmit gasps. She hears his nails scrape along the wall as he searches for something to grip, something to pull or throw open.

“Pleash, Seerrshh-ahh, don’t do this. I’m shorry. I’m shor—sorry for all of it.”

Listen to him,Jonathan screams.Do you want to end up with another voice clamoring at you from inside your head? Do not do this.

Saoirse drops her hands from the wall. Her heart gallops. “You know,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that causes Emmit to quiet, “I think the most poetical topic of all has got to be when the sociopathic, narcissistic, pompous man’s plan to cause the death of a woman—beautiful or otherwise—is thwarted, when his plan against that woman becomes his very undoing.”

She raises her hands, clasps the wood panel, and slides it another two inches to the right. Before she fits it firmly in place, she peers through the three-inch gap one final time. A wave of lightheadedness assails her, but not before she swears she sees Jonathan in the corner beside Emmit. Jonathan the way he looked the last time she saw him alive, crumpled against his desk. Emmit’s skin is just as pale, and in addition to the trembling of his lips—no more self-aware, charming half smile—there’s a look of bewilderment on his face. Sarah Whitman’s accomplishments were never supposed to outshine—or outlast—Poe’s.

“One more thing,” Saoirse says. “Go fuck yourself. Both of you.”

Emmit’s panicked keening starts as Saoirse slides the board into place. She listens until the keening stops. She listens until his breathing slows. When several minutes pass without a sound, she picks up the flashlight and aims it at the tunnel that will take her to the main basement of the Shunned House. She follows the beam of light without looking back.

Without regret.

Chapter 48

Making her way out of the long-abandoned chamber takes more effort than Saoirse anticipated. Another tunnel separates the wall behind which Emmit remains—alone and silent—and the alcove he’d once plunged into, and by the time she reaches the recessed area, she is drenched with sweat, jittery from adrenal fatigue, and breathing in shallow, painful gasps.

She lowers herself onto the lip of mottled wood, pausing for a moment as another bout of lightheadedness hits.So close,she thinks automatically.Can’t give up now.She places the flashlight beside her and rolls onto her stomach, legs dangling in the blackness. Her toes are still three feet from the ground; the jump will jolt her, and she readies herself for it. Before she can slide off the edge, she hears something from the direction of the tunnel, a shuffling and the panting of breath.

Saoirse freezes, then walks her fingers toward the flashlight, spinning its beam partway back toward the tunnel, illuminating its circular new-moon entrance by degrees. Why hadn’t she kept the syringe? Maybe she could have used the needle as a weapon. Her breath is ragged, eyes wide as her pupils try to take in enough light to discern movement, to see the figure emerging from the tunnel before he sees her.

The soft pant of breath comes again, and the scrape of limbs against gravel. She walks her fingers back to the flashlight, this time curling them around the metal, turning the flashlight into a club. She ignores the erratic staccato of her heart. She holds her breath.

The strip of white floats into view, a ghostly hem swishing to the beat of footsteps, or else to unspoken rhymes in a poet’s head. Saoirse stifles a gasp, accidentally jerking the flashlight. The beam bounces, elongating her view, turning the strip of white into an entire dress, hands extending from lace shirtsleeves, feet from ghostly hem, pale head and neck, spiral curls from a sheer, ruched bonnet.

“Sarah,” Saoirse whispers, and the flashlight jerks. The specter—or vision ... hallucination ... whatever it is—disappears. No, not disappears. Changes. The strip of white compresses. The orientation shifts, from portrait to landscape.

The creature’s head lowers over the white strip of fur on its chest as it steps into the widest crease of light, snout to the ground, tail held straight out behind it and eyes glowing. It raises its head to look at her, unblinking. For just a moment, its mouth opens, teeth bared in fear or warning or exhaustion. Saoirse readies herself for the animal’s scream, but it doesn’t come.

“I kept my promise,” Saoirse whispers. “I’m almost out. I’m going to get help.”

But the fox no longer looks distressed. Perhaps it has found its own way out, dug free from its own grave, found a path to the light. Perhaps it comes and goes as it pleases. The fox holds her gaze another moment, then turns and trots back the way it came. Saoirse looks to see if the creature turns into the Divine Poet yet again, but the change doesn’t come. Maybe it had never occurred at all.

As if freed from some lingering spell, Saoirse pushes past her sluggishness and exhaustion, grabs the flashlight, and drops to the floor of the alcove. She crosses the space and finds the collapsed boards Emmit fell through the night they broke into the Shunned House. A coffin, she sees now. Empty, mercifully, but definitely a coffin. She steps onto its moldering sides and grips the floor above her, then shimmies up and out of the alcove. The dust and dankness of the Shunned House basement coalesce in the flashlight beam, and it’s the most beautiful thing she’sever seen. Gathering all her strength, all her longing to breathe fresh air and see sunlight, Saoirse runs.

The stairs leading out of the basement come into view less than a minute later, and in her relief, she doesn’t notice, at first, what Emmit’s done. It’s only when she reaches the base and prepares to climb out from this endless hell that she sees. The stairs are demolished, treads and stringers reduced to shards of wood and dust. It is the unclimbable staircase from her dream. A trail of breadcrumbs scattered to the wind. A sledgehammer lies a few feet away. Emmit must have worried Saoirse would find her way back to the Shunned House, and placed one final barrier between her and escape.

Saoirse’s heart stutters. Her breath deserts her.I’ll climb the debris,she thinks. I won’t let him keep me here.But she can see—even through her panic—that what remains of the staircase falls far short of the threshold between basement and house. She can climb it, but it won’t help her reach her destination. Her vision darkens. Her breath becomes an ocean, a tsunami, in her ears.

But something’s cutting through that ocean. A gentler crest, a familiar one, spoken with force but also with kindness.

“Saoirse! We’re here! Oh my god, are you okay? Can you climb? If you can, we can grab your hand!”

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