Who are these people, really? Louis and Jonah – who are they? For the first time since we arrived in this house, I am disturbed by the lack of photos on the walls, the lack of framed certificates, words to live by, the lack of life.
The girl in the chest freezer is naked and emaciated, Louis tells me. Sunken cheeks, ribs poking through. Fingers like claws. She looks both old and young, at once a child and a grandmother. Louis finds it impossible to guess her age, though he immediately thinks of the words anorexic and teenager. She is concealed beneath melting blocks of ice.
Today marks the third week since I left the hospital. How long has she been in that freezer?
Who hid her there?
We puzzle over the detail of the fallen dresser cabinet. Someone went to the basement, toppled the cabinet over, and left how?
Louis says there is a large window over the freezer, large enough for an adult to crawl through. The glass panes have been painted over with brown paint. It’s locked from the outside and leads into the backyard. All right: so someone came from outside, toppled the cabinet over, and went back out the window? Clearly the cabinet was pushed to discourage people inside the house from exploring the basement.
"Is that why they were driving so fast?" I say. I remember us in the SUV. I remember the sedan with Louis and Jonah (though we didn't know their names then) zooming out of a street and appearing in front of us, suddenly in the way, suddenly giving us a way out of our old life.
They were driving fast because they were escaping the scene of a crime, a scene we have now inherited.
"We need to get out of here," I say.
End of Excerpt
© Eliza Victoria
YOU ARE READING
Dwellers
FantasyRule No. 1: You don’t kill the body you inhabit. Rule No. 2: You should never again mention your previous name. Rule No. 3: You don’t ever talk about your previous life. Ever. Two young men with the power to take over another body inhabit the bodies...
