Grant set the phone on the table and looked at Sophie, a knot tightening deep in his gut.
He turned the phone lengthwise, revived the touchscreen.
The video was cued.
Eleven minutes, forty-one seconds.
# # #
For a second, Paige’s face fills the lens.
She pulls back, walks out of frame.
The view is level.
It shows a bedroom from a wide angle, three or four feet up off the floor.
Left-hand side of the frame: floor to ceiling drapes hide a window.
Right-hand side: double doors, presently closed, open into a closet.
The bed is centered almost perfectly in the shot.
Four posts reach for the ceiling.
The headboard is hidden behind a rampart of pillows.
Paige and Steve Vincent walk into frame, Paige holding his hand and guiding him toward the bed.
At least a dozen candles populate each bedside table, but still the light is poor and the picture grainy.
Paige unties the cloth belt and lets her kimono slide down her shoulders into a pool of silk around her feet.
Grant said, “How am I supposed to watch this?”
Sophie said, “Suck it up, you big baby.”
“That’s my sister.”
Grant looked at his sister.
Paige was staring hard into the table like it was a visual sanctuary.
In that moment, he felt the strangest mix of anger and compassion toward her.
A conflicting yet simultaneous desire to hold her, to love her, to hurt her.
Vincent begins to moan.
Grant glanced down at the phone.
Took his eyes a moment to piece together what he saw.
The man is on his back, spread-eagle, with Paige between his legs, her head bobbing up and down.
Grant shut his eyes, and Paige must have caught a waft of the heat coming off him, because she said, “What did you think happened up in that room?”
“One thing to know. Another to see.”
“Disapproval noted.”
He forced himself to look back at the screen.
Vincent on top now. Missionary. Riding hard.
Sophie said, “Oh my God.”
Grant’s eyes cut to the closet doors, but he couldn’t see that anything had changed.
“What? I don’t see it.”
She touched the screen.
At first, Grant didn’t think it was real.
A trick of light and shadow perhaps.
A byproduct of the grainy picture.
The shadow keeps lengthening, a long, thin arm stretching out from the darkness under Paige’s bed.
Vincent humps away unawares.
Faster and faster.
Getting loud.
He yells as he comes, an unmistakable component of rage in his voice that drowns out Paige.
And then ...
One minute, the man is on top of her, pounding away.
The next, Paige lies alone and motionless on the sheets as the last vestige of Vincent—his foot—slides under the bed.
For thirty seconds, the room is still.
Grant looked at Sophie, and then Paige.
“Did that just happen?”
“Yes,” Sophie said.
“How is that—”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at Paige. She finally met his eyes. He said, “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“This isn’t lightbulbs exploding or some unidentified illness. Something just dragged that man under your bed.”
“I saw it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know!”
“It’s in your room. Under your bed.”
“Grant.” Sophie nudged him and pointed at the screen.
A hand reaches out.
Then a head emerges.
Vincent wriggles out from under the bed and struggles slowly onto his feet.
For what seems ages, he stands motionless on the floor beside the bed, naked save for his dress socks, arms hanging straight down his sides, fingers twitching. The picture quality is too poor to see his eyes with any clarity, but they resemble gaping black holes on a blank white face that has been purged of any expression.
Slowly, and with great care, he begins to pick up his clothes which lie scattered across the floor.
He sits down on the end of the bed.
Pulls on his boxer shorts. His pants.
Then he’s standing directly in front of the phone, pot belly taking up most of the frame.
Vincent leaves the room.
There is Paige, still motionless on the bed, and nothing else.
Finally, she sits up and looks around, bewildered.
Paige climbs down off the bed and walks over to the camera.
The picture swings up toward the ceiling.
The video ends.
“You okay, Paige?” he asked.
She gave a short, unconvincing nod, said, “A shame nobody from the church even bothered to call us back.”
He powered off his sister’s phone and looked at Sophie.
“What do you think?”
“I think I don’t want to be inside this house anymore.”
“Believe me now?”
“Believe what?”
“That something beyond our understanding is happening here.”
“Yeah, and I want to leave, Grant. Does that strike you as a crazy request after what we just watched?”
“No, but—”
“But you don’t trust me.”
“I feel better with you here right now.”
“And I just told you I don’t want to be here. So are you going to continue to hold me against my will?”
Chapter 29
Paige blew out the candles and cleared the table while Grant moved Sophie into the living room. It was Friday night, and outside the street was busy with traffic heading downtown for the evening.
In an hour, Queen Anne would become a ghost town.
“It’s getting cold in here,” Sophie said, rubbing her shoulder with her free hand. “I can see my breath.”
Grant exhaled and squinted into the air in front of him. “No you can’t.”
“It’s still cold.” She was right about that. The temperature was dropping fast. “Guess you haven’t seen any of the weather reports.”
“No, why?”
“First night below freezing.”
“Awesome.”
Through the window, the outline of a house appeared in soft, white Christmas lights. It was already mid-December, but the season had yet to see its first truly cold night. Terrible weather in return for a mild climate and a month of perfect summer—that was the Seattle contract. Wasn’t for everyone, but Grant grooved on it. The cloudy skies jived with his ascetic inner-monk.
He surveyed the living room, eyes coming to rest on a mission-style rolling chair parked in front of a writing desk beside the fireplace. He pulled Sophie toward it, and then dragged the chair out and spun it around to face them.
Grant fished the key from his pocket and unlocked the bracelet around his wrist while keeping Sophie’s from popping open.