LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: The Key

Jamie's face burns itself into my mind as it gets farther and farther away. It's pale, so very pale. Her mouth opens as she screams. But I don't want to think about that. I want to remember the times when Jamie would reach over and brush the bangs out of my face. I want to be in that memory. I want to be back in the movie theater, back in that night when just about everything was perfect, well, everything except for those creepy-ass dolls.

But I'm not in the theater. I'm not in Grief's Dawn. I'm at 210 Carver Street, getting ready to die. The walls all around me look like they're made of glass. What used to be blazing hot flames is now spiralling fingers of glass. They wrap around the beams and look like thick, whitish-blue spiderwebs. I feel like I'm caught in a giant snow globe, the kind that you shake to make little flakes of fake white snow flutter up and down.

I'm falling and screaming. Screaming and yelling and then—

Who's laughing? I think that's me. The Glass Man won't win. He won't. I didn't find his goddamn key. Belle Lake will come into things sooner or later and stomp him into paste.

In mid-laugh, I slam into the floor below. Something stabs through my hip (feels like a sharp piece of metal, but I don't know), and then I keep right on falling through the wood. It's been weakened by the fire and is now covered in jagged lumps of glass.

I keep falling as the house crumbles around me.

All of a sudden, good old gravity introduces me to the bottom floor, making us both get real up close and personal with each other. When I finally hit the ground, my whole body feels like it's in pieces. There's something real hard under me ... can't be carpet ... feels like concrete—hard and unforgiving concrete.

A garage? Is that where I am? But I'm not in the basement. Something about that makes me feel better.

My head ... it feels like it's one of those jack-o-lanterns that people smash against the pavement after Halloween. Have you ever seen them with their hulls split open in wet chunks while what's left of the inside drips out?

But the dream ... I'm not asleep. I'm not ... But I can still see it all in my mind ... The faceless girl sits in the grass. Yeah, tell me something I don't know. I've seen this before. If I'm gonna die, let me see something that'll stick with me, something ...

It's been so long since I've seen her. Something's in her lap. A box. It's not made of wood. No, this thing is made of thick pieces of skin stitched together with cord.

Pain. So much pain. Run, Jamie. Please, be hauling ass out of here.

The skin box in the faceless girl's hands keeps twitching. It convulses and spasms. Thick, oily puddles of blood leak out from the skin and smear across the faceless girl's clothes.

I can't go near it.

I want to grab the faceless girl and just run. But I can't. It's in there. I know it. The key that I'm looking for. Is this from those damn wendigo digging around in my head?

All of a sudden there's a face hovering above mine. It's the Glass Man. He's got Jamie with him. She's pinned between two Stone Hounds. Son of a bitch. I try to get up, but my legs won't work. Oh man ... no ... I can't feel them ... Pain is better than the numbness. The pain lets me know that I'm still here, but the numbness makes me feel like I'm slowly being erased.

The Glass Man kneels down beside me, mumbling something about anointing me or some shit like that. I want to curl up my fist and drive it right down his throat. I try, but I can't feel jack-shit past my shoulder. Hell, I could be a floating head for all I can tell.