Page 53 of A Heart So Haunted
I thought back to the dreams I’d had. How eerie the memories had manifested, realistic but not quite right.
I looked to the monster. The man.
“You’re Haddy,” I breathed. I thought of every night I’d heard the boy crying. Like it was on loop. Was it because he was stuck here?
Or was he trapped on purpose?
My skin grew clammy.
He paused in the middle of the landing before dropping into a crouch, like a gargoyle guarding a home. The wound in his chest—what if it was on loop, too, unable to heal?
“HadrianBelfaunte,” he corrected. “No one calls me Haddy anymore.”
Chapter Eleven
Hadrian.
Haddy.
My mind reeled. As soon as I touched the child’s sleeve when I’d first found the door, the monster had come forward. He’d protected the child, stepping between him and myself.
I struggled for words, swimming in something far heavier than surprise. Guilt? Sorrow? Pity? For myself, or for Hadrian?
No: kinship. Ever so small, no larger than a flutter against the back of my ribcage. I knew nothing of his story, how he came to live in this place, who he was. But I’d seen the rawest part of his life—as he’d said, a memory—just as he’d seen part of mine.
I pressed my finger to my temple, blinking against the onslaught of thoughts. If he was here, just like I was, did that mean he’d existed somewhere else before? Did that make him a real person? What if Aunt Cadencehadknown about him? What did that make her?
Hadrian’s lips twitched, as if he could sense the shift in tides. “Ah, ah, none of that, now.”
“He—that man—was your father?” I was still reeling.
“No father to me,” he snipped. His teeth glinted in the low light. My instincts urged me to step back. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have matters to attend to that require little company.”
I watched him, paying attention to the tension in his shoulders, the slight curl to his clawed fingers into the floorboards. He slunk to the steps like a cat hunting a canary.
What was so important for him to do in the house alone? Either he was lying about needing to be alone, or he was lying to get rid of me. My money was on the latter.
My hands wrung. “Wait. Don’t go yet. I just—I’m—Are you trapped here?”
A chuff, but he did pause. “No business of yours. I’m afraid you are only a waste of my time, dearest.”
“My name is Landry, not dearest.” I chewed the inside of my cheek. Then, under my breath, added, “But you seem to know that already.”
He tapped a claw to his chin. “Ah, yes.Landry,” he murmured. He started down the steps without a backward glance. “Names grow more and more adventurous these days. I heard that one through the walls and thought I’d lost my hearing for a moment.”
I couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or a snide remark. I started after him.
“AndHadrianisn’t?” I fired back, just as spicy. What he’d said finally sunk in. “Are you saying you can hear everything that goes on in the house, outside of here?”
I could only imagine how we would look to a bystander: me, a woman, trailing after a demon-like beast as he crawled down the steps on all fours. Still, all I could picture was human Hadrian hovering over me, with a throat that swallowed and heart covered by skin and bone.
A man, not a beast. Only a beast when his inner child began to cry, on the hour, every night.
“Sometimes the house is kind to me,” was all Hadrian said.
My hand trailed along the railing as I followed. “What does that mean?”
He grunted, his only answer. We passed the second floor. I stole a peek into what should have been my bedroom. The door hung slightly ajar, the room filled with a charred canopy bed, shredded black curtains from the lick of flame, and a heaping layer of dust to match.
