by Carrie King
Maybe, she should have done more to help him after Jeremy's death, maybe she should have spoken to him about it more… but he had seemed to be coping relatively well, while she had only focused on holding in her grief around him. Now she held in her growing fear that something was wrong with him. She couldn't let him see her in such a vulnerable state. She had to maintain her calm for his sake.
With a sigh, she rose from the bed, then leaned down to gently kiss his forehead. "Sweet dreams, honey."
Shaking off her misgivings and even the question of such a thing as ghosts, she returned to her room. All was as she had left it earlier that day. Muttering softly, she scolded herself for even contemplating such a crazy idea. There was no such thing as ghosts.
Finally, lying under the covers and staring up at the ceiling for what seemed like forever, she felt her eyelids growing heavy. She focused her thoughts on Jeremy. On the memory of his face when he had first laid eyes on his son, eyebrows raised in wonder, mouth slightly open and smiling, his gaze riveted in adoration at the small infant he had cradled so close to his chest.
As Diane hovered on the edge of relaxed slumber, the image in her head transformed. Instead of her husband's visage, she saw another figure, this one taller, broader, and darker. Loose strands of black hair draped around his face, though the bulk of it was drawn into a queue at the nape of his neck. He had prominent cheekbones and a strong jawline, slightly darkened with a day's growth of beard. Dark eyes were glowering at something in the distance.
Diane woke up as early morning sunlight filtered its way into her room, casting a beam of light dancing with dust motes at the base of her bed. Not feeling at all rested, she wished she could stay there for a while yet. Her dreams had been odd and confusing, flashing from one scene to another; images of Jeremy, the visage of that darker man, memories of the police informing her of her husband's accident, their arrival here at Greyfield Manor. It was all a mish-mash of shapes, faces and scenes.
She sighed and sat up, not surprised to feel a headache blossom behind her eyes. Great. Just what she needed. She had decided last night that they would leave today, but maybe, depending on how things went this morning, they could stay a bit longer. Grant’s behavior yesterday afternoon had certainly left her feeling unsettled, but maybe it was just a phase. She had mood swings, so why couldn't he? One minute she felt like she could deal with her grief, and the next, she found herself wallowing in the pits of despair. How could she expect someone as young as Grant to be able to control his emotions?
Quickly, she rose from the bed and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, tugging on her tennis shoes sans socks before stepping out of her room and crossing the hall to peek in on Grant. The night before she had left the door slightly ajar, so she could hear him if he woke up, but he slept peacefully. Now he lay, back turned toward her, huddled under the blankets. Maybe, she would let him sleep while she prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and jam.
With a sigh, combing her hair back with her fingers, she started down the steps. Something cold struck her back. Pitched forward, she missed a step. Choking back a cry of alarm, she snatched at the handrail, but her fingers just brushed the wood. Toppling and tumbling, she landed hard on her left shoulder on the edge of a stair. Pain jolted through her. Stars flash in her vision as down and down she went, headfirst, too startled to scream. Reaching out for the wall, she tried to halt her fall. Grabbing the railing, to brace her weight against the stairs, but there was no stopping her momentum.
Dimly, over the ringing in her ears, she thought she heard the sound of a woman's laughter from above. The landing stopped her tumble and she came to a halt in a heap of pain. Gasping for breath, she lay on her back, face up, her head turned toward the next short section of stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, standing in the foyer, was a woman. But she wasn't really a woman, merely a reflection of one, like an … an apparition. Diane saw her as clear as day, but she was translucent. The wood paneling of the foyer was visible through her. She wore a high necked, tightfitting gown with long sleeves. Long curly hair was bundled up atop her head. Her arms were akimbo, and she was laughing.
Diane let out a gasp and blinked. She was gone. With a soft groan, she lifted a hand to her now pounding head and took several deep breaths. She moved slowly, testing. Hoping she hadn't broken anything. Though painful she was able to move but what had happened.
The remembrance of a cold touch on her back came to mind but she pushed it away. It was just a draught, this was an old house. She can’t have been paying attention. Looking down she noticed her feet sprawled out in front of her, one of her shoelaces was untied.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," she muttered. With a sigh, she slowly pushed herself to a seated position and, slowly bending her knee, tied the shoelace. Despite several bumps and sore spots that were certainly apt to bruise in the next few hours, she was relieved that she hadn't broken anything. Lucky. She couldn't imagine what would've happened if she'd been knocked unconscious, or worse yet, managed to break her neck. What would've happened to Grant?
Using the wall and the railing for balance, she slowly rose to her feet, inwardly bemoaning her own carelessness. She glanced up toward the top of the stairs, relieved that her tumble downward hadn't woken her son.
Holding tightly to the railing, she slowly made her way down the remainder of the stairs and hobbled toward the kitchen. Upon entering, she caught a whiff of odor—an acrid, faint, and recognizable odor. It smelled like a dead rat. Great, just what she needed.
Stepping carefully over the coloring book Grant had left on the kitchen floor the evening before, and his crayons still scattered around it. Focused on finding the source of the stink, she searched the cupboards but didn't see any carcass. She looked behind the refrigerator but didn't see anything there, either. Finally, she gave up and opened the back door to air out the kitchen. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps the bump on her head and her tumble down the stairs had merely made her imagine a stench.
The kitchen door slammed shut with a resounding thud. She spun toward it, heart pounding, and then shook her head at her own foolishness. It was just an early morning breeze.
Another noise. She turned to the table. Her heart leaped into her throat when she saw the chairs standing on the kitchen table, precariously balanced one atop the other. She clapped a hand to her mouth to prevent the scream building in her throat. Eyes wide, one hand clenched at her side, the other clutching a handful of her shirt front, she stared at the chairs until another sound from behind her caused her to reluctantly peer over her shoulder. One of the kitchen drawers under the counter slowly slid outward.
All by itself.
And then, to her horror, she saw a knife appear above the drawer, hovering in mid-air. She blinked. The knife was aimed at her. Stifling another scream, she turned and darted through the kitchen door into the hallway just as the tip of the knife embedded itself into the door jamb beside her head.
Chapter 61
She had barely taken three strides down the hallway before a resounding crash boomed overhead, literally shaking the windows in the house. Thunder! Where had that come from? It had been sunny when she woke?
She heard Grant’s startled cry from upstairs.
"Mummy! Mummy!"
"I'm coming, Grant!" she called, rounding the bottom of the stairs and racing upward, her heart keeping pace with her steps. What was going on here?
"It's just thunder, honey," she called out again as she rounded the forty-five-degree corner in the stairs and continued up the rest of the way.
She resolved that they would leave. Now. A flash of light lit the upstairs hallway as she reached the top of the stairs, followed seconds later by another thunderous boom. She stepped over the threshold into Grant's room and saw him sitting up in bed, back ramrod straight, face turned toward the window.
"It's just a thunderstorm, honey," she said, reaching for him. She gasped when she saw his face; eyes wide with panic, pupils dilated, hi
s face extremely pale. He pointed to the window.
Diane glanced at the window but saw nothing but the rain pattering against it. "What is it?"
"The lady was out there," he cried, his voice shaking as his mother reached for him.
Diane sat on the bed and cuddled her son in her embrace, cradling his head against her shoulder. She felt his breath against her neck as she sought to comfort him. "It's just a storm, honey," she said. "Just the storm."
After several moments, she moved to stand, but Grant clung to her. To her surprise, he wrapped his legs around her waist, his arms clinging tightly around her neck. She held him close with her left arm. She had never known him to be so frightened. Of anything.
"It's all right, Grant," she soothed, brushing back his hair with her free hand. "Would you like to go home?"
He didn't answer, but she felt his nod against the side of her neck. She continued to murmur comforting sounds as she carried him into her room. She would call the taxi and have him pick them up as soon as possible. She wasn't going to put her son through this. He'd been through enough.
Sat down on her bed, one arm still cradling Grant while she bent down for her purse lying on the floor in front of the bedside table. She dug around for a moment before her fingers found her phone. She lifted it, fumbling for a moment, then turned it on. One look at the screen had her heart sinking.
She muttered under her breath. She hadn't used the phone since they'd gotten here, so why was the battery nearly dead? She shook her head, then dialed the number for the taxi, which she had added to her contact list after they'd arrived. Nothing happened. No dial tone, nothing.
She frowned, glanced down at the phone screen again, and then noticed that she barely had one bar. Shaking her head, she closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the ceiling. Of all the times for this to happen! Maybe she would get better reception downstairs.
"Come on, Grant, let's go downstairs. I'm not getting any reception up here."
With Grant still latched tightly to her, she held him close, slid the phone into her back pocket, and then headed out of the room. She took the stairs very carefully, tightly grasping the banister rail with one hand as she headed down. She wasn't about to take another tumble. At the bottom of the steps, she turned toward the kitchen, then changed her mind. No, she wasn't going in there.
Stepping into the front sitting room she tried the phone again. Still no signal. She glanced down at her son, now looking up at her.
"I think the storm is interfering with reception, Grant. We'll just have to wait it out, okay?"
He grew fidgety and started to push against her, so she let him stand on the floor.
"It's all right, Mummy. I'm okay."
That was a quick change in attitude, she thought, watching as he headed for the doorway. Alarm once again triggered a reaction and she followed. "Where are you going?"
"I left my crayons and coloring book in the kitchen last night," he said. He quickly padded down the hallway toward the kitchen.
"Wait, Grant, I don't want you going…"
With another muttered curse under her breath, Diane quickly followed her son. He disappeared through the doorway and her heart pounded, waiting for his reaction to seeing the chairs tilted precariously on top of the kitchen table. None was forthcoming. She paused in the kitchen doorway, eyes wide, frowning with confusion.
The chairs were on the floor, exactly where they were supposed to be. Grant was sitting in one now, opening his coloring book and flipping to a fresh page, his crayons lined up neatly on the table beside him.
She had only been a couple of seconds behind Grant. No way could he have picked up the coloring book and the crayons and arranged them in their orderly color spectrum as quickly as he had. He glanced at her over his shoulder.
"I like the way you arranged my crayons, Mummy," he smiled, feet swinging back and forth under the chair. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," she stammered, warily casting her gaze about the kitchen. Everything was where it was supposed to be, the cupboards shut, the knife drawer closed. Without turning her head, she looked to the door jamb to her right. No knife. No gash in the wood.
Oh God, was she the one losing her mind?
Chapter 62
"You're not going to do anything? You’re just going to let them go?"
Angus watched the little boy at the table, then turned to gaze at the boy’s mother, casting wary glances around the kitchen. He felt odd, every part of him feeling … he didn't know the word. It felt like every part of him pulsed. He often felt this way when it stormed, as if the energy of the storm made him stronger and prompted him to think more clearly.
Two more. Just two more souls and he would be free, as promised by the Soul Taker, but he didn't trust that evil entity any more than he trusted Beatrice. Besides, if that little boy were truly a descendant, he wouldn't … couldn't harm him.
"You're spineless," Beatrice sneered. "Just like you were in life. Avoiding confrontations, building this house so far away from other people … you just can't…"
"Enough!" Angus snapped, his anger building.
She laughed, a low, breathy chuckle that, before she had betrayed him, had awakened his desire for her. No longer. That chuckle did nothing now but grate on his nerves. He couldn't escape her. He remained trapped within his property boundaries. He had tested those boundaries on numerous occasions and found that he couldn't pass beyond his property line.
Beatrice could, it was something which she mercilessly taunted him about. She could leave… but she chose to stay. To torment him, to seek her own twisted sense of revenge for his killing her, as she had very well deserved.
Just as the Soul Taker wanted it. Angus could not leave until their so-called contracts were fulfilled. And Beatrice? She had no interest in penance or feeding the Soul Taker. No, she lingered only to torture him. It was the only thing from which she gained the slightest bit of pleasure and satisfaction.
"Do you really think that boy is your brother's descendant?"
He turned toward Beatrice with a frown. "And what difference would that make to you?"
She tapped a finely manicured nail against her lower lip, eyebrow raised in contemplation as she eyed the boy.
"You will not touch him," he ordered before turning back toward the mother. "Or her."
"We'll see about that."
She disappeared. The storm overhead affected Angus deeply, prompting a surge of roiling emotions, the increasing rumble of thunder and the bright flashes of lightning prompting him to literally feel and absorb its power. As usually happened when such storms passed overhead, he felt a nearly unquenchable desire to destroy, to lash out, and to release his torment and ever-growing frustration onto the environment around him.
At such times, he often descended into the tunnel and paced its length over, and over, and over again, pausing each time in front of the small dirt chamber door behind which he had murdered his spiteful, adulterous wife. The tunnel, where countless others had been taken by his hand, was the one place he could go that Beatrice dared not venture.
Another crash of thunder reverberated through the house. Unable to stop himself, he thrust out his chest, threw back his head, and let loose with an anguished roar.
Diane startled at the crash of thunder overhead, so loud that she cringed and hunched her head down into her shoulders. That clap had sounded like a gunshot in her ears.
Grant dropped his crayon.
At that moment, every door in the house slammed shut with a loud bang. The kitchen door leading into the hallway also slammed shut, so hard that a splinter of wood flew from the door jamb.
Grant yelped and bolted out of his chair toward Diane, clinging to her leg as she tried to comfort him.
"It's all right, Grant," she said, trying to calm the trembling in her own voice. "I must've left a window or two open last evening and the draft has gotten trapped inside the house." She tousled his hair. “Shall we go see which ones? We should close them before
the rain gets in the house and ruins any of this wonderful wallpaper.”
She could tell Grant wasn't especially enthusiastic, but at the rate he gripped her leg, she doubted if he would let her go anywhere without him.
The two of them roamed through the house, first downstairs, and then upstairs. Flashes of lightning seemed to erupt from the very ground, the rumbles of thunder louder and nearly continuous now, the echoing booms reverberating over the sea and spreading inland.
In a matter of a few minutes, the moderate rain turned into a downright cloudburst. Diane tried to still her fear, her increasing unease, and her concerns about the house as they ventured from room to room making sure the windows were closed.
In Grant's room, she saw a half-open window. She frowned. It hadn't been open earlier, had it? Grant had claimed to see the image of a woman in that window, but it had been closed, hadn't it? Now she couldn't be sure.
"There it is," Diane said, striving for a tone of amusement as she rounded the bed and pushed down on the window sash, swollen now with the humidity. It took a great deal of force, but with a loud screech, she managed to close the window. She turned around to face her son, standing at the bottom of the bed, staring at her.
"Well, it looks like we'll be staying for a little while after all. Are you all right?"
He said nothing but continued to stare, his pupils once again dilated, his face pale. "Grant?"
He didn't respond, but began to teeter. Afraid he was going to fall down, she swooped him up onto her hip, brushing the hair back from his forehead. He seemed not to notice, his eyes wide and unblinking. Her heart pounded and her stomach churned.
"Grant?"
No answer.
"Grant, answer me!"
Still no response. Another bright flash of light, followed seconds later by an incredibly loud crash of thunder, prompted her to cry out in surprise. Grant didn't even blink. She didn't know what to do with no cell phone service. They needed help, but she couldn't take him out into the storm. She would just have to wait until the storm passed, but how long would it last?
