“Oi!”
Oliver shouted at her from the bottom of the stairs. He was panting. So was Maeve. Both of them out of shape and exhausted from carrying the body that short a distance.
“Get over here and lend us a hand,” he said. Maeve used her dirty sleeve to wipe the sweat from her face.
“I thought I should get the fire restarted. It’s going to be dark soon.”
“This takes precedence, don’t you think?”
“So is being able to see. Or do you want to be wandering around in the dark with a killer?”
“All right. Go on then. Fix the fire. We’ll wait.” He folded his arms. Maeve, who looked like she was barely aware of what was going on, mirrored his gesture unconsciously.
“We shouldn’t delay,” Ellie said. “You start taking the body up while I get the fire going and—”
“We stick together.”
“I won’t be long.”
Oliver crossed the room and grabbed Ellie by the arm. She shouted, but he didn’t let go as he dragged her over to the body. She felt the diary shift, slipping from her waistband. Before she could yank her arm free, Oliver let go of her with a shove.
“We stick together, princess. Now grab him in the middle, and help us carry him upstairs so we can get started on your plan.”
Maeve had already taken up the feet again, following Oliver’s commands without question, like one of the little dogs she so loved. Oliver lifted him up underneath the shoulders. They waited for Ellie. She glared at them both, then crouched down, the diary stiff against her back, and placed her arms underneath him. They immediately became cold and sticky as Caskie’s still-drying blood adhered to her, like she’d laid her arms across wet paint.
On the count of three they lifted. Though Ellie used weights at the gym, her arms trembled from the effort. They moved slowly, one step at a time, Oliver at the head leading the pace. Maeve stumbled more than once, falling to her knees on the steps, dropping Caskie’s feet. Each time she dropped him, more of the weight fell to Ellie. She gritted her teeth. Sweat beaded on her forehead, but she was unable to wipe it away. With every slow step, the diary shifted again. She could feel it working free from her waistband, but she couldn’t stop to fix it. Oliver wouldn’t stop staring at her.
He walked backward up the steps so that he could maintain a better grip on Caskie, but by walking backward, he could also watch her.
Princess, he’d said.
He knew how much she hated that word. She wasn’t a princess. Princesses didn’t have to work. Princesses didn’t have to fight. Princesses didn’t have to carry corpses. Princesses were saved.
The next time she looked up, she thought they were finally at the top, but they had four more steps to go. Her arms shook, her lungs burned. Sweat dripped from her armpits down along her sides. Oliver reached the top step first. As soon as Ellie got there, she let go, even though Maeve hadn’t reached the top yet. The sudden loss of support caused Maeve to stumble and drop Caskie’s feet.
Ellie staggered back, her muscles weak from the effort, and stared at the bloodstains on her arms. When Caskie died, she had only got a small stain on her hand. Now his blood was all over her forearms up to her elbows. Without a word, she started away from the group, but Oliver grabbed her before she could get too far.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
“I told you we stick together.”
“I need to change my shirt.”
“Not now you don’t.”
Though her arms were tired, so were Oliver’s, and this time she was able to pull herself away.
“You don’t get to decide when I want to go to my room. You don’t get to decide when I get to change.”
“It’s for your own good.”
Ellie stared. Then she laughed. It was high and bitter, and it felt good and she couldn’t stop.
“You’re joking,” she said between laughs. “My own good? My own good?” she repeated. “Since when is anything you do for my own good? Is it when you convinced me to try marijuana and I got so paranoid I cried all night because I thought there was a man hiding in the toilet? Or when you convinced me that cheating on my exams would be the best way to fix my grades? Or how about when you raped me, Oliver? Was that for my own good, too?”
He stepped back. Stunned. The word shocked him just as it shocked her. It tasted like fire on her tongue. She said it again.
“Go on. Say it. Rape. Not ‘took advantage of.’ Not ‘I was pissed, too.’ Call a spade a spade. I was passed out. You carried me to your bed and you raped me while I was unconscious. Say it, Oliver. Say it!”
She wasn’t laughing now.
His expression was unreadable, but he was on the verge of something. The verge of finally confessing what he had done. Of apologizing and begging forgiveness. Or the verge of doubling down and smacking the word out of her mouth. She was prepared for either.
A thud sounded above.
They fell silent.
There came another. Maeve crouched as if the ceiling would cave in.
Fast footsteps sped away above their heads.
Oliver turned to run. But then a door slammed open behind them. A door at the end of the abandoned east wing. They grabbed their phones and cast circular pockets of light down the dark hall. It mirrored the one that housed their guest rooms but looked occupied by ghosts, the furniture pressed against the walls covered in white dust sheets, the shaking lights seeming to give them movement.
Oliver hesitated. With no further sound from the footsteps, he yanked the rope from the wall and headed for the open door. Ellie followed, turning when she heard someone behind her, but it was only Maeve hurrying to catch up.
The hallway ended in a wall. A dead end. And no windows meant no light, until Oliver shone the light from his phone into the open room.
A bare mattress lay on the floor. Light blue curtains made from old bedsheets covered the window. Posters of Pamela Anderson and Glimpse ’91 and random NME covers were taped to the walls. A business ethics textbook on the floor bore the smiling penis Oliver had been prone to drawing on everything at the time. And, stuck in the book, a blue envelope with Oliver’s name typed on the front. He unfolded the unsealed flap and read the note inside. The note fell from Oliver’s shaking hand. Ellie caught it before it hit the floor.
There once was a cad name Ollie,
Who fucked up his life, by golly.
He thought he had won
When he decided to run
But turns out his thoughts were all folly.
She was about to comment on it when the footsteps again raced across the floor above. Oliver shoved Ellie out of the way and ran after them. Ellie lost her balance. Her shoulder caught the edge of the doorframe. She couldn’t grab the wall in time and tumbled to the floor. Maeve stood over her, staring like a dumb cow, like she wasn’t even sure where she was. She made no offer to help. With a growl, Ellie grabbed the doorframe and hoisted herself up, then ran after Oliver.
She caught up to him on the floor above just as he was about to run down the east wing. Anticipating his movement, she started after him, but he jerked to a stop and she ran into the back of him, falling again, this time into the hard corner of a sideboard. She looked up in time to glimpse a brown blur shoot around the corner of the hall.
“Did you see that? What the fuck was that? Was that her? Was she crawling like in the fucking Exorcist?” Oliver ranted, hands clasped behind his head. He turned back and forth as if expecting more things to start leaping out of the walls.