Burn the Negative by Josh Winning

Author:Josh Winning [Winning, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Beverly, are you okay?” Laura asked.

They were back in the Volvo, Laura at the wheel, no clue where she was driving. She wanted to put as much distance between them and the guesthouse as possible. Find space to process what had happened after they burned the film. She still felt dizzy; untethered somehow. The most basic rules of reality had been distorted. The set had turned upside down.

And Madeleine was dead.

She had another body on her conscience.

A third person who would be alive if it weren’t for her.

As they’d gotten into the car, she had made an anonymous call to emergency services, just in case a medic could save her, but in her heart Laura knew. Another victim of the guesthouse. The memory of Madeleine’s puffy face and discolored skin made Laura’s stomach contract and she fought to swallow a wave of bile.

Beverly slumped in the back, looking only half awake. She didn’t answer Laura’s question.

“Pill, are you all right?” Amy asked beside her, and Laura saw that her hands were shaking at the wheel. Her knees felt bruised and her shoulder ached from hitting the wall. She couldn’t think about any of that, though. She had to keep it together.

“I’m fine.”

“Want me to drive?”

“I’ve got it.” She shifted to look in the rearview mirror. “Beverly?”

“Did you feel it?” Beverly’s voice was hoarse.

“Feel what?” Amy said.

“The shift.”

“Here we go again,” Amy said, but her voice lacked power. She looked beaten up, too, even though she’d been spared the funfair aspects of the guesthouse. Laura supposed seeing a dead body did that to a person.

Beverly’s gaze darkened. “Don’t joke about things you don’t understand.”

“Why? Because I’ll ask questions you can’t answer?”

Laura wished she’d stop, but Amy hadn’t seen Beverly strung up by her neck. She hadn’t seen the world turn upside down, even though she’d been in the set with them. Why?

“I felt it,” Laura said.

“It’s so angry. Pure rage,” Beverly said.

Laura sensed Amy tensing but said nothing.

“Did you see who attacked you?” she asked.

Beverly shook her head.

“We made it worse.” The look of desolation in her eyes chilled Laura to the marrow. She got the feeling Beverly was trying to rewrite the past in the same way Laura had. But if Laura had learned anything, it was that the past was unchanging. All you could do was get as far away from it as time and space allowed.

“That poor girl,” Amy said. “Madeleine. We killed her.”

“It wasn’t us, it was . . .” Laura trailed off.

“It was the house? The Needle Man? Laura, come on.”

“Something was in there with us,” Beverly said, which shut them both up.

Amy was right, though. Madeleine had died because of them—because Laura forced her to help. She felt unwell at the thought. For years, she had told herself she wasn’t responsible for the Guesthouse deaths, but this was different.

“That guard saw all four of us together,” Amy said, “which means the police will have added us to their manhunt. If they hadn’t already, after looking at Kyle’s surveillance footage.

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