Free Passenger by Andrew Smith

had been dragged.
    “Hello?”
    A curled brass light fixture, like a finger, a meat hook, dangled against the wall from its wires; the oak wainscoting had been pried away, the ragged splinters piled into a forbidding X where they crossed in front of the open doorway.
    Shhhhhh …
    Something was upstairs.
    Maybe I was crazy.
    Maybe I just needed sleep, but my heart shot up into my throat and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like I didn’t want to, because I was afraid I’d make too much noise. And I cursed myself for having shouted my entry calls in the first place.
    I was hot and cold at the same time, felt that feverish sickness of sweat on the back of my neck.
    Quietly, I placed the bundled things I’d stolen from Quinn down on the floor, next to my feet.
    I pushed the front doors shut behind me.
    Shhhhhh …
    I put my foot on the first stair.
    How nice. Jack wants to go back to his old room.
    Maybe he’ll find something there to play with.
    The stairs compressed under my feet, moaning. I walked along the wall. I was afraid they’d collapse in a rotten heap below me.
    I was afraid.
    This is stupid , I thought. There’s nothing here.
    It was my house.
    But it wasn’t my house.
    At the top of the stairs, I glanced down the hallway. There was the bathroom, two guest rooms. One of them we called “Conner’s room,” because he was the only guest who ever slept in it. The light came in through the open doors from gaping window frames that spilled grayness across the floor of dust around me.
    More signs that things—someone, maybe—had been dragged in the hallway, leaving nervous train tracks cleared through the dust on the floor.
    *   *   *
    At the opposite end of the hall, behind me, is Jack’s room.
    The door is shut.
    A dim line, a crack of light.
    I wait, listen.
    A creak in the floor; I feel the vibration in the soles of my feet like I’m standing on an anthill. There is someone in my room; I am certain of it.
    I think about the lens.
    Jack always thinks about the lens.
    I take it from my pocket and hold it just so it catches the little thing that squirms beneath the door.
    Jack’s door.
    And for a moment, there is something in the lens, and it is gone again.
    We have come to the right place.
    Aching, I wrestle the knife from its sheath, pass it over to my left hand.
    Nobody’s allowed in my room when I’m not here.
    It isn’t my room.
    And here I am.
    I push the door open and stand back.
    Welcome home, Jack.
    Tap.
    Tap.
    Tap.
    *   *   *
    “Seth?” I whispered.
    Nothing.
    I was afraid to step foot inside my own room.
    It’s not your room.
    The wind made a hoosh through the window.
    I put one foot inside.
    The door slammed open by itself. It crashed into the wall and made an angry dent in the boards. I didn’t touch it. I could hear the screws in the hinges ripping at the wood.
    Hoosh.
    I held the fragment of the Marbury lens in front of me, like it was some kind of shield, and I swung it across my path, trying to see if it would pick up anything there in my room.
    “Seth?” My voice was barely a breath.
    I went inside.
    “Can you help me?”
    The door slammed shut.
    Outside, rain began to fall.
    As ridiculous as it all was, my room was still my room.
    There was my bed. The sheets were missing, and one of the legs from the frame had collapsed, so the corner sagged down into the inch-thick dust on the floor. And there was dried blood at the foot end of the mattress.
    Jack’s blood.
    From your ankle.
    Remember that, Jack? How Freddie Horvath pinned your ankle to the bed frame using those sharp nylon bands?
    The mirror had been shattered. There was one triangular piece jutting up from the bottom, and I could see my hand in it.
    My hand was bleeding again, shaking, holding the lens.
    Rain.
    Sweat.
    Lightning, and an explosion of thunder that nearly knocked me backwards.
    I sat on the bed—my bed—and looked into the piece of mirror.
    I put the lens back into my pocket; slid the knife