“Yuck.”
“I know. But it was actually pretty smart, too, because most people didn’t care to look too hard at what went on in a nudist resort. And what he was really interested in was the fissure.”
“The fissure?” He almost asked her how she knew about the fissure, but common sense kicked in at the last moment. She was obviously pretty familiar with it, since she was currently in it.
“Yeah. I don’t know how he found it, but he did. And he built the resort on top of it to hide it while he built this place on the other side. I think he envisioned it as some kind of palace.”
“Where did he get the money for something like this?”
“Conned people out of it, mostly. But he didn’t build the whole thing. He only started it. Then, at some point, it just kind of…finished itself.”
“Wait…how does that work?”
“Like I said, I can’t explain all of it. The place has a mind of its own. You saw how it is. It takes you places you aren’t going. Doors that should go one place spit you out somewhere else. It’ll make you crazy if you’re not careful.”
“Did it make Altrusk crazy?”
“Oh yeah. Totally bugshit.”
Eric chuckled.
“The house is built right into the fissure somehow. It takes on some of its properties. That’s why it warps space and stuff. But it’s a lot more than that. Something about the world on the other side of the fissure… It’s a bad place. It distorts things. And it distorted the hell out of Altrusk. Like, at some point, he just decided he wasn’t going to furnish the house. He lived here for years without any furniture. He slept on the floor. He ate at the kitchen counters.”
“At least he kept towels in his bathroom,” Eric recalled.
“Some of the bathrooms.”
“What happened to him?”
“Eventually, the house just swallowed him. He stopped being Isaac Altrusk—or whoever he really was—at all. Now he’s just Altrusk.”
“And that was him making all that noise out there?”
“Uh huh.”
“And what would happen to me if he caught me?”
There was no humor in her expression when she replied, “You’d be swallowed too.”
“Good to know. Let’s put that on the list of things we don’t want to happen. So is there a way out?”
Isabelle smiled up at him. “I think I can open the door for you. But it’ll be dangerous. Altrusk won’t want you to leave. And he knows you’re here, so he’ll be looking for you.”
“I see.”
“You might as well sit down. He’s going to need a little while to calm down. He’s got the house all coiled up right now. If we’re going to get to the door, we’ll need it to not be so jumpy.”
Add that to his growing list of things he never thought anyone would ever say to him.
He did as she said and sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, facing her.
Isabelle smiled at him.
Eric removed the cell phone from his pocket and saw without any surprise whatsoever that he still had no signal. Even if he wasn’t way off the path and deep inside a freaky alternate reality house with an attitude, he was sure he wouldn’t have a decent signal inside these concrete walls.
He glanced up at his young companion, suddenly concerned. “You said Altrusk was a pedophile?”
“He was a little too into little girls, yeah.”
“He didn’t… I mean you weren’t one of his...?”
“Oh. No. So yuck. He never touched me. Not sure if he ever actually touched any of them really, he was never that brave. He just...leered, mostly.” She shuddered at the memory. “And then after he changed…well, I don’t think he cared much about sex at all after that.”
“That’s good. But how did you get here, then?”
“My parents were members of his club. We vacationed at Gold Sunshine. A lot.”
“So you were one of the…?”
“Nudies. Yeah.”
“Oh. Sorry. I just didn’t know.”
“Yeah. It’s weird. When we wear clothes, nobody can tell the difference.”
Eric laughed, but he couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. “I guess so. I just never knew a naturist before.”
“We did own clothes. It was kind of an optional thing.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You didn’t. I totally understand. I mean it was my parents’ choice, not mine. I didn’t even know it wasn’t something everybody did until I was about seven or eight.”
Now another thought occurred to Eric. “Wait… I thought the resort’s been closed the past forty years.”
“Thirty-six years, actually.”
Eric stared at her, astounded by what she was suggesting.
Isabelle lifted her hands in a mock expression of shock and said, “Surprise!”
“You’ve been here for thirty-six years?”
“Yep.”
“So you’re… What? A ghost?”
“Not exactly. I don’t think I’m actually dead. I’m just…different now.”
Eric sat there. It was difficult to imagine. “How did it happen?”
“I went nosing around where I shouldn’t’ve. Found my way into the kitchen stairway. Altrusk always said it was his personal wine cellar. Off limits. But there wasn’t any wine down there. I wandered out into the yard here, same way you did. It was all a big, incredible adventure until I found a way inside. Then I got real scared real fast. It was crazy terrifying. I don’t even remember most of it. I just remember screaming.”
Eric felt a shiver creep through him.
“Then I was just here.”
“And you’re aware of how much time has passed?”
“Yeah, that’s weird too. I’m aware of time. But I don’t actually feel time. It doesn’t have any effect on me anymore.”
“Weird.”
“I know, right? I think I’m only aware of time because I still have a connection to my family. I can constantly feel my parents. I can get into their thoughts from here. I can see how time passes through them. I understand how the world has changed through them.” She paused for a moment and stared down at the floor, her pretty smile gone. “I was with them when I first disappeared, when they went through all that hell, but they don’t know it. They’re still alive today. They still think about me every day.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She made herself smile again and gave him a little shrug.
Suddenly, Eric recalled his conversation with Taylor. He said something bad happened at the resort, something that closed it down. He said he didn’t recall what really happened, suggesting that there were multiple stories, but apparently it was that a thirteen-year-old girl went missing.
He looked down at his phone, considered it. Then he lifted it and snapped the girl’s picture. He wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted the picture. Maybe there was something he could do for her. Assuming he actually survived this house of horrors.
“Are there others like you trapped here?”
“Yeah. But they won’t come out. They’re too afraid of Altrusk. Some of them are afraid of you, too.”
“Me?”
“People just don’t come here. Ever. This place doesn’t even exist to people. So you must be a bad thing.”
“I see. But what makes you different from them?”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s just that I refuse to give up. Like I said, I can still feel my parents out there. I have to keep thinking there’s got to be a way back to them. Over the years I learned some things about the house.”
“But you never found a way out?”
She hesitated. “I might have found one way. But I’m too afraid to try it. There’s a room hidden somewhere in the house. You couldn’t get to it. You have to be…like me. There’s a doorway there. It doesn’t go anywhere else in the house. I’m sure of that. But I don’t know where it goes. Every time I’ve tried it… It hurts. It’s like an electric current. It cuts into me, makes me pull back. I can’t stand to go in. And I don’t have the courage to force myself to go through because I’m not even sure it’s really a way out. It might actually kill me, instead. And I just can’t do that to my parents.”