Page 20 of Haunted Heart
The ground is covered in coals with skeletal remains half buried in them.
“Fucking Hell,” I mutter under my breath.
“That’s where we are,” Julia says, floating on the other side of him, scowling down at the scene.
Jonas finally gets to his feet…and immediately starts for the ravine again.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I catch him, but he’s not really here.
“Jonas, look at me.” He doesn’t respond to his name and I finally give up, slapping him. “Jonas!”
But his gaze is fixed on the burning bodies at the bottom of the slope and he licks his lips.
“His Hell is a stronger pull than you are right now,” Julia says.
“Okay, so what do we do?”
“We should get him someplace he can’t see this anymore. That should help. If it doesn’t… We can take him back to the house and shove him through—which will take time—or… we can find a place to restrain him until we can come back. That might work.”
“Why does he want to go down there so badly?”
She glances down again. “He doesn’t see what you see.”
“What on Earth could make him want to go there?”
“Hell is not on Earth. He sees dozens of beautiful, naked people beckoning to him.” She looks at me askance. “He’s here because he’s lusty—because he lusted for you—his Hell tried to draw him in with desires he hasn’t yet fulfilled.”
That makes me pause. “Am I down there?”
“Yes. You and several others.”
“Gross.”
She shrugs. “It’s Hell.”
She tries to help me with him, but her hands pass straight through him. Offering an apologetic smile, she says, “He might be able to see me here, but it looks like I can’t interact with him directly any more than I could in the living world.”
If I can get him into the corn maze, that will break his line of sight.
“Do you think the scarecrow stake in the middle of the cornfield will hold him? If we can’t get him to come back with us?”
“I don’t know. This wasn’t here when I was alive. Would it hold him in the living world?”
“It’s meant to stop kids from knocking it down. And the scarecrow is held up with chains. I can use those to keep him there.”
“It might.”
Mightis the best I can hope for right now.
I have to drag him, bodily, away. Even once he’s broken sight of the embers and skeletal remains below, he struggles to get back to it.
But the further we get, the less he fights me.
“The corn should help calm him down, right?” I ask,hoping.
“It should act like a buffer.” Julia floats behind me, dark eyes scanning in every direction.
When I drag him into the maze, following a path I memorized long ago, hedoessettle.
