The *** House

It only took about ten more minutes for Hayden to appear, livid. She stormed into the room and, despite how thin and weak she appeared, threw me from Tate's arms and onto the hardwood floor. I let her do it. I didn't care.

Tate stepped between the two of us, gripping Hayden by the shoulders and shaking her roughly. "It wasn't her! Let it go!"

"So she can just come and attack me whenever the hell she wants, but I'm not allowed to do the same? I have never met a bigger pansy than you. Let me kill her!" she screeched, her voice like razorblades along my ear canals.

"No!" Tate yelled.

"Let her do whatever she wants," I said, sounding firmer than I thought I could have right then. I was still just a heap on the floor. "It won't change anything. I'll still be here when she's done."

Tate wasn't listening to me. He threatened Hayden's safety until she stalked back to the basement, vowing revenge.

"You can't be by her side forever!" her voice echoed up from the stairwell.

Tate knelt by my side and tried to help me up. I obliged, putting in a minimalistic effort to right myself. I was just so lost.

"You should have let her hit me. At the very least, it might have satiated her for a little while. I don't know why I did it, Tate. Just because I don't like her, that doesn't mean that I wanted to kill her."

"I'll never let her hurt you."

I shook my head. "It won't be just her, you know. If this is still happening, I'm going to make a lot more enemies."

"It won't be all that different from how things are now, you know."

I bit my lip, staring down at my hands. They were still covered in blood. Tate noticed, and he wrapped his hands around mine, his long fingers hiding the unsightly mess. I drew in a shaky breath. "I'm going to get cleaned up," I said. "And then I'm going to go and talk to Ben. I need help."

"I can help you," Tate insisted. I didn't look at him, but I could feel the intensity of his eyes on me.

I pulled away and took to the stairs, darting quickly into the second floor bathroom. I felt like Lady Macbeth for a moment as I attempted to scrub all of the filth from my hands. Why was it so hard to get off? I felt tainted; I would never be truly clean again. I couldn't possibly have been this sick in life. Even if I occasionally got violent, I had never actually tried to kill anyone before. Maybe my dark side knew that Hayden was already dead, and it didn't matter if I diced her up into tiny pieces. It still didn't make me feel any better.

I knocked lightly on the door to the master bedroom, and was surprised when Violet pulled it open. She gave me a knowing, disappointed smile. I swallowed, even though my throat was almost painfully dry.

"I heard all the yelling," Violet explained. "I knew you would show up here sooner or later."

I glanced back over my shoulder, wondering if Tate had followed me up the stairs. It wouldn't have surprised me if he did. "Can I come in and talk to you guys?"

She nodded and stepped back, giving me ample room to move past her. When the door was closed, I sighed aloud. Ben was sitting on a chair in the corner, and Vivien was pacing across the floor with her baby in her arms. The child was fussy, occasionally emitting a small whine from within the bundle of blankets in her arms.

"What happened, Ainsley?" Ben asked, sounding reassuring and confused all at the same time. "You were doing so well."

"I have no idea," I muttered blankly. "Hayden pissed me off last night when we were scaring away that family, and then I thought I was dreaming but it turned out to be real. I saw it all this time. I can't get the images out of my head. It was freeing and horrifying all at the same time. I can't live like this. I can't."

"You're going to be okay. You just have to really make a conscious effort to avoid the basement. If you stay away from the people that set you off, you'll avoid having these outbursts," Ben instructed.

"I can't spend forever in only two rooms of this house," I argued. "It's not logical. One day, the wrong person is inevitably going to cross my path."

"But if it only happens on rare occasions, it won't seem so bad."

"If it happens at all, it's too often for me. I need it to stop." I turned back to Violet with a pleading stare. "I need to find a way to cross over."

The room went silent. It seemed that even the infant had an objection to my request. After a moment, Vivien let out a tiny, disbelieving laugh.

"It's been attempted a million times, Ainsley. Nobody here can cross over. There is something here, in this house, that refuses to let us go."

"I understand that," I said carefully. "But I'm going to give it all I have."

Ben stood up. His facial expression was one of torment. "I want you to be able to do that," he spoke deliberately. "But you need to consider what that means. Tate will still be here. He's been doing well lately, but he'll be destroyed if you leave this house. Right now, you're all he has. And as much as I hate the idea of letting him have something that makes him happy, it makes the rest of us a lot safer."

"Tate will be fine," I replied. "He may say that he's in love with me, but I know that he still loves Violet. As long as you guys are still here, he won't cause any trouble. We all know that I'm just a replacement. It won't make a difference if I leave."

The silence settled in again. They knew that I was right. I was a distraction for Tate. I was pretty certain that I would hurt myself by leaving far more than I could hurt him. And I had long ago admitted to myself that I was in love with him purely for the sake of convenience. We were in a relationship simply because we were both there. We were in the same place, and we shared a few personal issues.

"We need to talk to Constance," Violet said definitively. "She can bring Billie Dean over, and we'll figure something out. But last time she tried to help me exorcise spirits, it didn't help. But that was years ago. Maybe she knows something new. If there's a way to set you free, she'll find it."

"So how do we get Constance to come and talk to us? We have no phones or anything," I pointed out.

"We have to wait for her to come to us," Ben returned to his seat in the armchair. "It shouldn't take too long. She's kind of overdue for a visit. The trouble is that she usually just sneaks down into the basement to see Travis. You'll have to catch her upstairs. We just can't risk you going down there right now."

A few minutes later, I rushed back downstairs. I felt like I should warn Tate about my plans, but something made me hold my tongue. If he knew, he was going to try and talk me out of it. And if I was going to be gone soon, I wanted the last of our time together to be pleasant. I didn't want to feel like I was letting him down. I entered the study and found him staring out the window, toward the street outside. He didn't look my way as I walked in, but he began speaking in an acknowledgment of my presence.

"Did I tell you that my sister Addie was dead for over a year before I found out about it?" he asked, gazing vacantly at a passing car. "My mother told Violet that I would react badly if I knew. Eventually, after Violet left me, I started to notice that Addie wasn't coming around anymore. Even when I first confronted Constance, she denied it. It wasn't until I showed up at her house on Halloween to look for her that Constance finally admitted it."

I stayed frozen in the doorway. "And then what happened?"

He shrugged. "She'd been dead for over a year; what could I do? I came back here and told Beau. I didn't leave the house again until I went with you this year. My point here is that, just because people think that I won't react well to bad news, it doesn't mean that I won't find out. I knew that Addie had to die one day. It's pretty much the only thing that you can count on in life, isn't it? People die. But the fact that we're here," he looked over at me sharply, "should be a blessing as much as it is a curse. We have the chance to live forever."

My heart dropped into the bottom of my stomach. He had been listening to everything that the Harmons and I had said. He knew my plans. "People aren't meant to live forever," I told him. "That's just not how it works."

He turned to face me fully, and I saw nothing but sadness in his eyes. "Please don't do this."

"I don't feel like I have much of a choice."

"There's always a choice. You can stay with me. You're not just a replacement. I really love you, Ainsley."

I looked away, unable to handle the pain in his face. "If you were still with Violet, you wouldn't have looked twice at me."

"Why are you dwelling on what might have been? That doesn't matter. It should just be about what is. You and I are here right now; isn't that what counts? Who cares if you flip your lid every now and again? Can't you see that that is exactly why we're perfect together? If anyone in the world can understand you, it's me."

I wasn't in the mood to argue. Though I wanted to tell him that my problem was absolutely nothing like his, I kept my thoughts hidden. It would do me no good to alienate myself from him now. "If you had the chance to, wouldn't you leave? You could stop being haunted by the fact that Violet doesn't want you anymore. You would never have to see Constance again. You could just let go of everything."

"If you're implying that I should let go of you, I'm not ready to do that. We have forever to figure things out. It doesn't have to end like this. Just stay, Ainsley. I'm begging you."

I stared at him for a long moment. "I need to know that there is a finite way out of here. Even if I never choose to use it, I need to know that it exists."

Tate approached me quickly and reached out. He took my hands and forced me to look into his eyes. "If you find what you're looking for, I need you to promise me that you won't leave without talking to me first. I can't stand the idea that I might wake up one day and be all alone again."

I squeezed his hands in the kindest manner that I could manage. "I promise, Tate. I won't cross over without giving you notice first."

He didn't appear to be completely convinced. I was actually being genuine, but I knew that my track record didn't give me much credibility. Especially now, when I'd claimed I was going to see Ben for help and instead I went to find a way to end it all. I wasn't very trustworthy in his eyes at that moment. Maybe he really did love me more than I gave him credit for. And if he did, maybe I was truly the villain here. I was selfish, but I had thought before that I was justified in it. As I looked into his hopeful eyes, I felt something stir inside of me.

For a moment, I believed him. I knew that he was right when he said that he would be the only person who would ever understand me. The idea that we might actually be perfect together both frightened me and comforted me. We could be monsters together. However utterly, ridiculously unromantic that notion sounded, it was kind of a nice thought.

"Is everything going to change now?" I asked, holding onto his hands a little tighter. For some reason I just didn't want to let go.

"Nothing ever has to change."

There was a finality in his tone that told me everything that his words didn't. He thought I was never going to find a way to die. He thought that I would be his, just like this, forever.

And maybe he was right. But I had to try and find out for myself.