(16) Roundabout

(16) Roundabout

     Ash crashed through the living room door but there was no one there. He only looked confused for a second as he caught sight of Lou’s foot as it went through the door headed upstairs. Ash took off after him and as he started up, he could hear Lou ahead of him saying something about a heart. Ash was able to catch sight of him again just past the second-floor landing.

Lou was practically running up the stairs. Surprising since to know him, would be to believe he didn’t have any of that kind of gumption in him. He wasn’t slowing down at the landings. He seemed to have been given a map of exactly which doors led to more stairs up. He just kept a steady chugging pace and Ash was having to really hoof it to keep up.

This was certainly a baffling new development in Lou’s personality. Ash had seen what he needed to at Lou’s panicked face when he was chosen. He saw it again at Lou’s dissociation walking into the house.

But he was showing a whole different side now. At least his spirit was. His body looked like it was ready to give out at any second. But he had been called to some action that no one else heard, and he wasn’t slowing down. Ash’s face kept switching between envy and hate as he watched Lou. At every new staircase the scale tipped towards hatred.

He tried asking Lou what he was doing. Demanding that he slow down, or at least talk to him. But Lou was undeterred. Stairs and stairs and stairs, mumbling something about a heart. There was even a moment where Ash tried to hear whatever it was. Find some hidden rhythm in the stairs. A low vibration. But nothing.

Riley had been undoubtedly right to stop at four floors. Ash had started complaining out loud at ten. And still Lou went. From what Ash could tell at his brisk pace, all of the floors were different just like the earlier ones. He may have been in good enough physical shape for these sorts of antics, but that didn’t mean he was emotionally prepared to deal with any of it.

Between breaths Ash gasped out, “Ok, buddy. I am done.”

He looked back down the staircase. Whether he was worried about the others, or just didn’t want to think about walking back down all those stairs. He shook his head.

“We are way past quirky here.”

Ash took the stairs two at a time, and got in front of Lou. He grabbed him by the shoulders. As kindly as possible, but without leaving him any room to escape, he held Lou against the wall.

“You get one chance. Tell me what we are doing.”

Just like every other time, Lou looked innocently at Ash and answered, “We are going to find the heart.”

Ash let out a low growl, then got control. “Yeah. That’s what you said. Whose heart?”

Lou answered gently like a grade school teacher. “The house’s heart, of course. Can’t you hear it?”

The hair on the back of Ash’s neck stood up. His face said that he without question he did not hear any house’s heart. But something about Lou’s gentle, almost condescending tone seemed to distress him.

Ash’s brain clacked along, like a train trying to gain momentum. “You think you can hear the house’s heart?”

Lou had run out of new information. He repeated, “Can’t you hear the house’s heart?” While trying to break free from Ash’s grip.

And unfortunately for Ash, Lou was sweaty and determined. His tight grip turned against him, and with all the force that he had been using to hold Lou into place Ash crashed into a nearby doorway onto his shoulder with a yell. And with that his sympathy for Lou had run out of supply.

Ash reached out with his good arm and snatched Lou’s ankle as he took off up the stairs and Lou pitched forward, falling down. Ash was prepared for Lou to be knocked out from the fall. All the easier to carry him back down the stairs. But no such luck, Lou was mostly unharmed, just a bloody nose. Lou jumped directly back into trying to get back up the stairs.

“Damn it.”

Lou was already back one-twoing the stairs like a marathon hurdler, nose still pouring blood. Ash popped up and shook himself off with a determined face. He held his busted shoulder close, and managed to get ahead of Lou again.

Ash told him very seriously, “I’m sorry about this man.”

Ash dropped his good shoulder down into a sled push, and started hauling Lou down the stairs at whatever cost.