Possess by Gretchen McNeil Page A

light in the hall was on, but there was no one there. Huh?
    She crept out of the living room, expecting at any moment for Jason or Freddy to come at her with an array of cutlery that would make an Iron Chef drool.
    The footsteps continued up the stairs; she could hear each step straining under the weight of an invisible body.
    Hear, but not see. What the hell was going on?
    A door slammed from upstairs. Then the silence of the house was pierced by the terrified screams of Danny and Manny Ferguson.
    Poker in hand, Bridget sprinted up the stairs to the twins’ room. She had no idea what was up there with them, only that she had to get the boys out of house. They were her responsibility.
    She reached the top of the stairs: Their bedroom door was closed. Bridget dropped the poker and gripped the handle with both hands, but it wouldn’t turn.
    “Mommy! Mommy!”
    Bridget pounded on the door. “Guys, it’s me. Open up!”
    All she got was more screaming.
    “Danny, listen to me,” she pleaded to the more levelheaded of the six-year-olds. “Open the door.”
    The door flew open so violently that it knocked her across the hall. Her skull smacked into the wall, and as she crumpled to her knees, Bridget caught sight of the twins through the open door, huddled together on the floor in the corner of their room.
    “Guys, run!” she yelled. Too late. A cacophony of slamming doors filled the hallway, and Bridget froze in horror: Every door in the house was opening and closing by
itself.
    They needed to get the hell out of there. Like, now.
    Bridget scrambled to her feet, waited for the door to swing open, then sprinted into the twins’ bedroom. She grabbed one of the boys with each hand and hauled them up, ready to make a beeline out of the house. Whatever was in there with them wouldn’t be scared off by a babysitter wielding a poker, that was for damn sure.
    The bedroom door slammed shut before she could drag the hysterical twins out of the room. As quickly as it had started, the banging doors stopped and the house fell silent.
    Then the closet door slowly creaked open.
    Bridget turned. An imposing black mass filled the entire closet from floor to ceiling. It seemed to be made of shadows and darkness, sucking light, energy, and hope right out of the room. It seethed, growing larger and smaller as if taking deep breaths, yet it made no sound.
    Sweet cartwheeling Jesus! This couldn’t be happening. She backed up to the wall, keeping the twins behind her. She had to protect them as if they were her own brothers. As if they were Sammy.
    The mass glided forward, blocking the door, and Bridget could sense its hate. Dark, focused hatred. As it came toward her, the room began to pitch, and Bridget was swamped with an overwhelming sense of dizziness. She staggered and placed a hand on the wall to steady herself.
    That was when she heard them.
    “There’s no escape from us. No escape. We own it. We own this place. We were summoned and we won’t go back.”
    “Back?” Bridget asked without thinking.
    She felt a collective gasp, a hundred people inhaling at once.
    “She hears us.”
    “No, she doesn’t. She cannot.”
    “She does. Look at her.”
    “Impossible! The Master protects us. They cannot hear us unless we take their voice.”
    “I . . .” Holy crap, what the hell were these things? “I can hear you.”
    This time the voices in the wall shrieked like they’d just been set on fire.
    “ No, no, no, no, no, no! ” they all screamed at once. Then gibberish filled her ears as the voices broke into a language she didn’t understand. The black mass wavered.
    It had to be a hallucination. Maybe they all had food poisoning? Food poisoning from pepperoni pizza. Sure, why not? It was the only way this made sense.
    Bridget took her hand off the wall to brush a strand of hair from her face. As soon as her palm left the rough, stuccoed surface, the voices stopped. She held her hand an inch from the wall and could hear them