Lisa gathered her grandmother into her arms and let her cry on her shoulder, weeping for lost childhood and lost innocence, and for a mother she had never really known.
Somewhere in the distance she could hear another voice weeping, too.
Then Carrie began to scream.
Chapter Eleven
Dr. Miles Steps In
Dr. Miles bolted out of her bed. Lisa came scrambling after her, tripping on her nightgown and lurching to her feet again. They shot down the hall and burst through the door of the room that Lisa and Carrie shared.
Carrie sat upright in bed, her face distorted with terror. Her hair was soaking wet.
“Mommy!” she was screaming. “Mommy, help me!”
Lisa threw her arms around her sister. “Carrie,” she crooned. “Carrie, it’s all right. It’s me, Lisa.”
Carrie continued to scream, until Dr. Miles reached forward and gave her a solid slap across the face. Carrie gasped, but suddenly her eyes seemed to focus. “Gramma!” she cried, throwing herself forward and flinging her arms around her grandmother’s neck. She began sobbing on the old woman’s shoulder, much as Dr. Miles herself had been sobbing on Lisa’s shoulder just moments before.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” whispered Dr. Miles. “We’re here with you. Lisa and I are here.”
Slowly Carrie’s sobs began to subside. She pulled away from her grandmother and looked at Lisa. “You weren’t here,” she said accusingly.
“I was with Gramma,” said Lisa, swamped by guilt. “We were talking.”
Carrie rubbed her nose on her arm. “I’m sorry,” she snuffled. “I just had such an awful nightmare.”
The moonlight spilling through the window made puddles on the floor and across the bed. Carrie sat in a pool of it, drenched by the light—and by something else.
The rank smell of pond water filled Lisa’s nostrils as Carrie took her hand. “I was drowning,” she whispered. “I was drowning and I couldn’t breathe.” She shuddered. “The fish were poking at my eyes. I screamed for Mommy, but she didn’t come. I screamed and screamed, but he wouldn’t let me up.” She started to cry again.
Looking over Carrie’s shoulder, Lisa caught her grandmother’s eye. “What do you mean, he wouldn’t let you up?”
Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know! I was drowning. He wouldn’t let me up.” Her sobbing was softer now. The tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. “It was awful. Lisa, I’m scared.”
Lisa enfolded her sister in her arms. Carrie lay against her, shivering occasionally, sniffing, and crying. After a time she was silent. Her body relaxed, and she began to sleep again.
Dr. Miles pulled a chair beside the bed and sat holding her younger granddaughter’s hand.
When the dawn light came spilling over the windowsill, she was still there.
At nine o’clock that morning Alice Miles marched Lisa and Carrie out of the house and into the village to the library, where they proceeded to take out as many books on spirits, ghosts, and haunted houses as the bemused librarian would allow.
“The only way to fight something is to understand it,” pronounced Dr. Miles as she led the girls back to the house. “I spent too much time denying what was happening because it didn’t fit my version of reality. My mistake, and a big one. Now I’ve accepted it, with humble apologies to you, Lisa. So. It’s time we did something.”
“Why don’t we just get out?” asked Lisa.
Dr. Miles looked as if the idea had never occurred to her. She faltered for a moment. “Is that what you want?” she asked at last.
Lisa looked at Carrie. Carrie looked at her grandmother. “Are we in danger?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. That’s why we went to the library this morning.” She patted the pile of books she carried. “I’m still a novice when it comes to ghosts and hauntings. Let’s find out.”
The phone was ringing when they entered the house.
Lisa rushed to pick it up.
“Whew!” said Brian. “I was just getting ready to head over and see if you were all right.” He paused. “Are you?”
Lisa glanced at her grandmother. “I guess so,” she said softly.
“Anything happen last night?”
“It was a little rough. They were up and at it again.”
“They?”
“Yeah. There are three that I’m sure of. Possibly four in all.”
“Lisa, are you serious?”
“Dead serious.” She grimaced. “Sorry. Bad choice of words. I got the whole story from Gramma last night. It’s pretty wild. She told Carrie this morning. It really shook her up.”
“Can I come over?”
“Let me check with my grandmother.”
A moment later she picked up the phone again and said, “Gramma says come on over. We’re doing ghost research and we need all hands on deck.”
Dr. Miles, Carrie, and Lisa were sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by books when Brian arrived. He took a seat across from Dr. Miles. He didn’t pick up book, however. Instead he looked at Dr. Miles and said flatly, “You’ve got to get out of here.”
“Young man, I don’t ‘got’ to do anything!”
Lisa had to give Brian credit. He was standing up to her grandmother’s steely glare better than most students had ever been able to. “Then stay,” said Brian. “That’s your choice. But send Lisa and Carrie someplace else, for their sakes.”
Lisa caught her breath. She could see he had scored with that shot.
Dr. Miles hesitated. “I have led a rich life,” she said at last. “It has been remarkably interesting and full of surprises. The primary reason is the fact that I have never run away from anything I didn’t understand. I don’t think it does any good—and I don’t want to train my granddaughters to be that way.” She paused. “Now, do you want to help? Or would you rather head out?”
Brian and Dr. Miles locked eyes. Their gazes held for what seemed an eternity. Finally Brian broke the contact.
He looked hopelessly at Lisa.
Then he reached forward and took a book.
At noon Lisa left the table and began to put together some lunch—chicken sandwiches made with leftovers from the previous night’s meal. The other three stayed at their seats, absorbed in their reading. Occasionally one of them would mark a page with a paper clip from the box Dr. Miles had set in the center of the table, or make a note with the pencils that Carrie had gathered for all of them.
Lisa smiled. The pile of books beside her grandmother had shifted from her left side to her right. She was moving through them at a remarkable pace. Lisa wished she could read like that. She looked fondly at Brian and Carrie. It was almost laughable. How many people would head for the library when faced with a problem like this?
“Well,” said Dr. Miles, slamming shut the fifth book she had completed that morning, “I don’t think we have anything to worry about!”
Brian looked up. “Weird as it is, I think you may be right. As near as I can make out, what you’ve got here are a bunch of restless spirits; scary as hell if you’re not used to this kind of thing—”
“And who is?” interjected Carrie.
“But not really dangerous,” continued Brian, as if he had not been interrupted.
“That’s what I think, too,” said Dr. Miles. “It’s classic stuff: Tragic deaths and unresolved conflicts. So they stay here in the house where they died, rather than moving on to the next world where they belong. They haven’t been able to let go—”
“Well, whatever it’s about, it’s weird to be haunted by your own great-grandmother,” interrupted Carrie. She made an exaggerated shiver.
“How would you like to be me?” snapped Dr. Miles. “Imagine being haunted by your own mother!”
“What about the night she chased me?” asked Lisa, coming over to the table with a platter of sandwiches. “That didn’t seem so harmless.”
“Did she hurt you?” asked Dr. Miles.
“No. But she tried t
o slap me!”
“And you didn’t feel it. See, they can’t really touch you. As for the slap, I think it was actually intended for me. There are some interesting parallels here. As a matter of fact, I think what really stirred them up was having Carrie in the house.”
“Me?”
“Well, certainly. It was the death of the original Carrie that started everything. The spirits haven’t been all that active. Otherwise this house would have a bigger reputation than it does. But it makes sense that when another young girl named Carrie moved in—a girl who, you might as well know, closely resembles the first Carrie—it would upset them. Add to that the fact that the two of you are about as far apart in age as Carrie and I were, and it’s easy to see why my mother would be confusing our Carrie with the first Carrie, and you with me, Lisa. I suspect she has never gotten over her anger with me for living when Carrie died. So it wasn’t you she was after at all. But she doesn’t recognize me as her daughter, because I’m too old. She’s trapped in the past, has no sense of how much time has gone by since that tragedy.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” said Lisa. “But what about the messages?”
“Well, the first one must have been from your great-grandmother,” said Brian. “‘Welcome home’—it makes a lot of sense if she thought Carrie had come back. But what about the night I was here? That one said ‘Danger!’”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Dr. Miles. “Believe me, it’s been preying on my mind. I’ve come up with a couple of possibilities. The one that seems to make the most sense is that it’s from Ellen McCormack. She, too, is looking at Carrie as the original. She’s trying to warn her away. Past, present, and future are jumbled together in their minds. She sees Carrie alive now, but she’s afraid for what has already happened to her. That’s the reason for the message Lisa got last night.”
“I think I’ve got it!” said Brian. “I’ve been trying to figure out the first seance we did together. It seemed like such a mix of things—cupboard doors slamming, that woman crying and screaming, the candle flying through the air. You remember the message I got….”
“I remember,” said Carrie. “I remember!”
Lisa put her hands on Carrie’s shoulders.
“Go on,” said Dr. Miles.
Brian looked around the table. “The slamming doors were caused by Myra Halston. Why? Because Ellen McCormack had beaten her to the punch. Instead of a message of welcome, Ellen was going to give us a message of warning. That infuriated Dr. Miles’s mother, who wanted Carrie to stay. So she tried to interrupt the message.”
“That’s it!” cried Dr. Miles. “Ellen is warning us away because she’s afraid for Carrie. My mother is welcoming us here because she’s glad to have Carrie back. And both of them have our Carrie confused with the original.”
“I feel like a Ping-Pong ball,” said Carrie.
“So what do we do now?” asked Lisa.
“You’ve solved the mystery,” said Brian. “Get out!”
“We’ve solved the mystery,” said Dr. Miles. “But we haven’t solved the problem. There’s work to be done here!”
Lisa looked worried. “Gramma, what are you talking about?”
Dr. Miles looked grim. “I intend to have a little chat with my mother.”
Lisa put down her cards with a sigh. That was her third foolish bid in ten minutes. She could tell that Brian, playing as her partner, was getting frustrated. But she just couldn’t concentrate. How he was able to keep his mind on the game was more than she could understand.
The clock struck eleven.
“I suppose unless we stir them up ourselves, nothing will happen till after midnight,” said Dr. Miles.
“I don’t think we should try to rouse them,” said Carrie, throwing the ace of hearts into the center of the table. “They’re doing just fine on their own.”
“So are you!” said Brian. He scowled as he tossed down the king she had forced. “I didn’t know I was going to be playing with a bridge shark tonight.”
Carrie laughed. “I told you I would make a better partner than Lisa. Cards and romance don’t mix.”
“The same goes for smart mouths,” said Dr. Miles as she trumped in and took the trick.
Lisa tried to relax. She couldn’t tell if the others were enjoying the game as much as they seemed to be, or if they were simply better at pretending than she was.
She was glad Brian was still here. He had had to leave to help his father for a while that afternoon, but had come back for supper, with permission from his mother to stay late.
An odd tension seemed to fill the air. They were all afraid, yet at the same time confident that they were not really in danger. Lisa looked at her grandmother and marveled at how calm she seemed. How was it possible, when she was planning to confront her own mother’s ghost in another hour?
But her unflappable nature was what had earned her the nickname The Great Stone Face to begin with. Lisa envied her grandmother’s calm and courage, and wondered if she would ever be like that.
She smiled to herself. She had to admit that part of her was looking forward to whatever was going to happen. She had a feeling that in a confrontation between her grandmother and a ghost, the ghost wouldn’t stand a chance.
So why was she, Lisa, so nervous? It wasn’t just fear. She had had a strange feeling all night long, a restless itchiness, almost like having a spot that needed scratching, not on her skin, but on her soul.
“Forget it, Burton,” she ordered herself. “Concentrate on the game.”
They were seated at the card table in the living room. behind Brian, facing her, was the big grandfather clock that marked the hours for them. She almost wished it weren’t there. It left her acutely aware of the passage of time. Or the lack of it. The hands seemed to have stopped. She was amazed when the quarter hour finally struck. An exchange of nervous glances passed around the table. But the game continued.
At eleven-thirty it began to fall apart, with all of them making more senseless plays than logical ones.
At eleven-forty-five Alice Miles threw down her cards and said, “This is nonsense. Let’s just wait for midnight.”
The three young people nodded in agreement, and all eyes focused on the clock as the hands crawled slowly, inexorably, toward the witching hour. Outside the wind was rising. Lisa could see the full moon through the picture window.
Brian drummed his fingers nervously on the table. Dr. Miles reached out to stop him.
The clock began to chime midnight.
Dr. Miles turned off the lamp.
Lisa felt her skin begin to crawl. Something was wrong; very wrong. She had known it all along. Things weren’t as simple as everyone had thought. There was more to this than…
She lost her train of thought. The clock was still chiming. She looked around the table, catching the eyes of each of the others, who were doing the same thing.
The chimes stopped.
Nothing had happened.
For a long time no one spoke. When Carrie did start to say something, Dr. Miles reached out and put a hand on her arm, cautioning her to remain quiet.
The silence continued.
“Maybe they’re waiting for us,” said Brian at last.
“Shhh.”
Lisa felt small droplets of sweat began to form under her arms, along her shoulders, behind her neck. The waiting was driving her mad. “Come on!” she wanted to shout. “If you’re going to come, get it over with!”
Nothing.
The clock struck the quarter hour.
“Mother always was late,” said Dr. Miles. She turned on the lamp. “Perhaps we had better try the writing. I can’t wait much longer. And I certainly can’t go through another night like this one!”
Lisa sighed. So her grandmother was human! That seemed like a relief in itself. “I’ll get the paper,” she said. Normally Carrie would have leaped up to do it, but Lisa knew her sister had no intention of separating herself from the group now, whether th
e lights were on or off.
She headed for the kitchen, where they had left the pencils and paper they were using earlier that day. As soon as she entered the kitchen, she felt her skin begin to crawl again.
Suddenly she clutched the sides of her head. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. Trembling violently, she staggered and fell against the counter.
A moment later, Lisa stood and shook herself.
Her face grim and intent, she opened one of the kitchen drawers and began searching for what she needed.
Chapter Twelve
Possession
“Here we go,” said Lisa brightly as she reentered the living room a few minutes later. She was carrying several pencils in her left hand. She was also clutching a large blue notebook against her chest.
Her right hand was hidden beneath the notebook.
A strange light glowed in her eyes—a light that grew brighter as she drew near the table.
“Dear God!” cried Brian suddenly. Lunging against the table, he pushed Carrie and her chair over sideways. At the same moment Lisa uttered a bloodcurdling scream and swung the butcher knife she was clutching downward in a vicious arc.
Alice Miles cried out in terror. The butcher knife, which had been intended for Carrie, quivered in the tabletop. The savage strength of the blow had thrust it through the cards, the cloth, and the table itself.
As Lisa tried to wrench the knife free, Brian grabbed her by the hair, spun her around, and slapped her face. “Stop it!” he roared.
“Gramma!” screamed Carrie. “Gramma, make her stop!”
Lisa was hissing and spitting, scratching at Brian like a rabid cat. “Let me go!” she screamed as she raked her fingers down his cheek, leaving four bloody welts.
Brian slapped her again. “Get out of there!” he shouted. “You get out of Lisa’s body!”
Lisa’s eyes were rolling wildly.
Brian pinned her arms to her sides and shook her savagely. “Get out! Get out!”
She tried to bite him, spittle flying from the corners of her mouth.
“Make it stop!” cried Carrie, clinging to her grandmother. “Gramma, make it stop!”
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