Close to Home

by Lisa Jackson

  Gracie’s attention had already returned to the journal.

  Sarah took the stairs two at a time and didn’t pause on the second landing. She headed straight to Theresa’s room; despite that tinge of trepidation that always touched her when she was near her older sister’s part of the house, she flung open the door.

  Sure enough, the Madonna statue was on the floor, having somehow fallen off the mantel and rolled to the window, where cold air seeped into the room. “What is this?” Sarah said aloud, and before she picked up the ceramic idol, she did a slow spin around the room. “Are you here?” she demanded in a low voice. “Angelique? We know what happened to you, so please, just . . . go. Cross over. Do whatever you need to find peace.”

  She sounded like a crazy person, and catching her reflection in the cracked mirror over the fireplace, she thought she looked like one too.

  In an instant, she felt the temperature in the room drop.

  Sarah froze, and the spit dried in her mouth.

  Oh, Jesus . . .

  Goose bumps broke out on her flesh. Murmured voices seemed to swirl around her, whispering in quick, short sentences she couldn’t understand. No. The sound was just a breeze seeping in through the window that wouldn’t close, or rushing past in choppy, noisy gusts from within the chimney’s flue.

  Right?

  It’s all in my mind, This is just nuts . . .

  The air seemed to swirl around her.

  What the hell?

  She remembered her mother telling her that she should never enter this room, that it was still Theresa’s, and that these things all belonged to her. Don’t you ever go inside, Sarah, don’t you touch any of Theresa’s belongings, You’ve done enough damage as it is, I won’t have you harming her things,

  What damage?

  Why did her mother seem to blame her for something she couldn’t remember? Turning, Sarah stared at the statue. What had Mother said recently, when Sarah and her daughters had visited Arlene at Pleasant Pines?

  “Don’t you know that the Madonna is the key to your salvation? The Holy Mother? She’s the key! Are you a heathen?”

  It had sounded like incoherent babbling at the time, her mother’s dementia and deep faith ruling her tongue, but now the little figurine of Mary was so close, staring at her, smirking at her. The statuette seemed to mock her somehow.

  Without another thought, Sarah spun and grabbed the figurine, her finger curling around the cold ceramic as if she were clutching the tiny religious icon for . . . for what? Strength? Guidance? Peace? A renewed faith?

  Or answers?

  “What is it?” she demanded, talking to the ceramic doll as if it could hear, as if it would actually talk to her. “If you’re the key, then . . .” She caught a glimpse of herself again in the mirror, a raving lunatic talking to an inanimate statuette.

  “Oh for the love of God!” she cried and hurled the figurine at the mirror, at the lunatic of a woman she’d suddenly become.

  Crash!

  Reflective glass shattered, cracking into a thousand shards, jagged pieces flying through the air.

  Instinctively she turned, arms up, protecting her face and head. Splintered shards rained over her, tiny pieces catching in her hair, slicing her arms, littering onto the floor.

  Sarah was shaking, taking in one breath after another, trying to pull herself together. What had she been thinking? What the hell had she done?

  The room went eerily quiet, only her own ragged breathing and the frantic beating of her heart disturbing the silence. Slowly she turned, glass clinking as it fell from her shoulders.

  There on the mantel, in front of what remained of the mirror, the tiny statue stood.

  Sarah’s heart nearly stopped. No way could the figurine have survived unmarred, balanced on its base, staring serenely at her, saintly smile in place.

  Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh God!

  Sarah’s heart clutched.

  What was this? What was this?

  The statue should have hit the mirror and shattered, or bounced back onto the floor, gravity pulling it downward to smash against the floorboards, but no, it stood motionless on the mantel.

  Swallowing back her terror, her breathing coming in short, sharp breaths, Sarah stumbled back a step. Again, the now-familiar noise, the whispers were hissing and whirling around her. Words barely intelligible . . . “daughter . . . baby . . . mama . . . no . . . no! . . . father . . . don’t . . . kill.”

  “Who are you?” she whispered, her heart thudding, the room feeling as if it were closing in on her. Cold. Tight. The atmosphere thick. “What do you want from me?” Her breath fogged as she started to back up toward the door, her shoe crunching on the glass, her gaze fixed on that small painted figurine.

  “I’m not leaving,” she whispered, while inside she wanted to run like hell. “We’re staying.” She sounded like a fool! “So . . . so you can damned well deal with it.”

  At that moment the statuette seemed to shiver, teetering a bit on the edge of the mantel, then jerkily tumbled, end over end, almost in slow motion, and hit the floor with the same loud thud she’d heard earlier.

  Sarah gasped, watching as it rolled to a stop. Craaack. With a sound as dry as a demon’s hiss, the ceramic Madonna slowly split apart, separating into perfect halves.

  Terror sizzled down Sarah’s spine as the front side of the little woman rolled away from the back piece, turning over and over, crunching over glass to end faceup, eyes open wide, peaceful expression intact, not one chip evident.

  Sarah backed away. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. This was all part of a weird dream, a strange hallucination. It had to be.

  Her gaze swept to the back half of the figurine, which hadn’t rolled at all, but had landed, painted side down, near the window. Cavity exposed, that perfect half of the Virgin’s replica lay motionless.

  Within the hollow figurine, nestled upon a bed of cotton batting, rested an ancient-looking key. Tarnished, obviously crafted in an earlier century, the key glinted even though the light in the room was faint.

  In an instant, Sarah remembered the keys glinting as they’d swung from Jade’s fingers, the image that had bothered her.

  Heart pounding, perspiration suddenly beading over her face, she forced herself not to flee down the stairs, grab her kid, and jump into her SUV to drive as far away as was possible. Instead, she inched closer to the broken statuette.

  Nothing happened.

  No angry, shrieking apparition sprang up at her.

  Her throat as dry as sand, she plucked the key from its nest and quickly stepped backward toward the door.

  Heavy and inscribed, and icy to the touch, the key was one she’d never seen before. Squinting, she made out the tiny names etched into the metal:

  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  The first books in the New Testament.

  With her next breath, Sarah knew which door this key would open.

  She stood in silence, terrified to the very pit of her soul.

  CHAPTER 34

  Driving home, with the radio blasting a tortured love song by Adele, Jade thought for a second about Cody, then reminded herself how over it was. She should be concentrating on Liam Longstreet. He’d been nice to her even as she’d been nasty to him. True, he kept lousy company with Miles Prentice and Mary-Alice Eklund, but maybe she could trust him . . . even that Sam in Algebra. Whereas Liam was serious, Sam could be funny, in a geeky kind of way.

  So what?

  Right now both of them beat Cody Russell hands down.

  She squinted and turned on her brights. Didn’t help. The fog was getting soupy, but she wasn’t far from home. She only hoped she would recognize the turnoff.

  She had to be close. Yeah, she thought she’d passed the mailbox for the Walsh property that their mom had pointed out when they’d first arrived. It seemed like a lifetime ago, now that she knew Clint Walsh was her father. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “Conflicted” seemed to be the word
of the day when it came to warring emotions, so, yeah, conflicted would work. She certainly wasn’t doing handsprings over the knowledge, but she didn’t hate the idea. Yet. Time would tell how he dealt, or didn’t deal, with her.

  She’d have some say in the matter because it wasn’t like she was a kid, for crying out loud. And Walsh better respect her relationship with her adoptive dad. If he didn’t? Too bad. For a large part of her life Noel McAdams had been the only father she’d ever known. She was pretty sure he would be cool with the fact that she now knew her biological father, or at least be able to deal with it. After all, he had bailed on the family, hadn’t he? Even if Mom, with all her craziness, had driven him away, he hadn’t bartered for his children to come and live with him.

  It said a lot.

  So now, everything depended on Walsh, whether he was big enough to accept the fact that Jade had another father who, if not bound by blood, was by years. Glancing at her rearview, she noticed a set of headlights approaching fast, like the glowing eyes of some big beast appearing out of the mist.

  Her cell phone chirped, indicating a text had come in, and she was distracted, her attention drawn to the cup holder in her car’s console, where the phone was resting.

  Without a thought, she caught a glimpse of the screen and noted that Cody had texted her. The heat of satisfaction stole through her heart.

  “About time,” she said, reminding herself that she was over him. She peered through the windshield, searching for the entrance to the lane. Wasn’t it around here? Slowing a bit, she searched the area with her eyes, but her mind was half on Cody’s text. What had he written? Was he sorry? Or was it worse? Maybe he wanted to break up with her.

  Her fingers itched to grab the phone.

  He doesn’t love you, he doesn’t, It’s over!

  Determined not to think about him, she forced her fingers to curl over the steering wheel as she tried to find the turnoff. He’s not worth it, Jade, You know it, Really, you’ve always known it, That’s why you’ve been so insecure, Setting her jaw, she tried like crazy not to pick up the phone, but she just couldn’t help herself as her curiosity got the better of her. She reached for it, clicking on the text, and—

  Bam!

  The whole car shook.

  Her phone flew out of her hand and hit the windshield.

  Her body started forward, stopped only by the sudden hard jerk of her seat belt.

  What the hell?

  Automatically, she hit the brakes and glanced into her rearview, where those massive headlights loomed. The idiot behind her had rear-ended her! “Son of a bitch,” she said, shaken and instantly furious. Cody was forgotten. Swearing, she managed to get the car under control and ease it to the side of the road, her tires sliding a little in the gravel. For the love of God, the Honda hadn’t been out of the shop for an hour and now . . . now it was wrecked, compliments of this stupid driver!

  What kind of idiot follows so closely in the fog?

  She glanced at the vehicle that was pulling over, fog surrounding the large truck. At least the guy behind the wheel of the pickup had the decency to pull over behind her, but it was small comfort.

  This was not what she needed right now! He’d probably ruined her bumper! Maybe popped the damned trunk and creased the entire back of her car. Asshole!

  Flinging open her door, she was ready to read the jerk the riot act. He climbed out of the cab of the truck, his face still obscured in the night. “Are you blind, or something?” Jade demanded. “Didn’t you see that I was slowing down?”

  He didn’t answer, just walked to the front of the rig, its engine thrumming, smoky tendrils of fog wisping over the headlights.

  “Did you hear me?” She began closing the gap between them before her white-hot anger started to shred a bit and she felt the first tremor of fear. Hadn’t her mother mentioned several ways human predators caught their prey? One was the lost-puppy scam, another asking for directions they didn’t need, a third intentionally rear-ending a victim to get her to leave her car. And now there were girls missing in Stewart’s Crossing.

  She slowed. “You . . . you’ve got insurance?” she asked and wished to high heaven that she’d brought her cell with her. “What is this?”

  “The best day of your life.” And then he raised his hand, and she saw the gun, a sleek pistol, backlit by his headlights.

  Oh, shit! No way was she going to let this happen. She turned on her heel and scrambled for her car, where the door was still open, the interior light blazing, a warning bell rhythmically beating.

  She’d taken one step when he attacked, his heavy body colliding with hers, the two of them landing facedown on the pavement. Her chin hit the asphalt first and split, blood pouring from the wound. Still, she squirmed and wriggled, fighting him, trying to buck him off, but his weight pinned her against the pavement, and he didn’t bother intimidating her with his gun, just pulled one arm behind her back, then the other, and cuffed her wrists.

  She screamed, as loud as she could while kicking and fighting. But he jerked her to her feet and pressed his pistol against her temple. “Let’s go,” he said, and still she fought, letting out a shriek that she hoped someone would hear.

  “You little bitch.” He jerked her toward the car, and she kicked, landing the toe of her boot hard against his shin. With a wrench of her arm, he dropped her to her knees and leveled the gun at her temple.

  “You won’t kill me,” she said with false bravado.

  “You’re right.” His eyes gleamed through the fog. “But I’ll hurt you, Jade,” he said with a heart-stopping depravity she believed, pulling her face close to his, so close that his nose nearly touched hers. “And I’ll hurt you in ways that you’ll carry with you to the grave,” he promised.

  Before she could respond, he whipped out a gag, tied the rubberized piece of cloth so tightly over her mouth that she nearly threw up. Then he picked her up as easily as if she weighed nothing, and slammed her into the backseat of his truck.

  A few seconds later, he was behind the wheel, pressing down on the accelerator. The truck peeled out, spraying gravel as he passed her disabled car and sped into the coming night.

  “Let’s go!” Sarah said as she flew down the stairs. She found Gracie in the living room, phone to her ear; Xena was resting on an open sleeping bag near the fire.

  “Go where?” Gracie asked, but Sarah was too freaked out to explain. Had she really been in the presence of a ghost or some kind of unseen being who could move figurines and cause the temperature in the room to suddenly go cold?

  “Out.” Sarah grabbed her kid’s arm and tugged, pulling Gracie to her feet. “Bring the phone.”

  “Mom! Stop! You’re acting crazy!” Gracie declared. “Scottie, I’ll call you back,” she said into the phone as Sarah, her breathing still coming in short bursts, tried to calm herself. As Gracie pocketed her phone and her fear lessened, Sarah said, “I think . . . I think . . . oh, God, it’s impossible . . . to explain.”

  “Try.” Gracie was immobile, gazing at Sarah hard as she picked up on her panic. Then, “You saw her, didn’t you? Angelique?”

  “No, no, I didn’t see anything.” And that stopped her short. While Gracie “saw” the ghost of Angelique Le Duc, Sarah had not. And the ghost she had seen when she was young wasn’t the same woman Gracie had shown her in the pictures. She glanced anxiously at the stairs. “Didn’t you hear the mirror crash?” Oh, God, had she imagined it all? But, no, she was holding the key, the cold metal still clutched in her hand.

  “I heard something,” Gracie said slowly, “but I was talking to Scottie, and I thought you knocked over a vase or something.”

  “It was a little more than a vase,” Sarah said, looking around for the dog, panic still swelling inside her. “Xena! Come!”

  “Wait, Mom,” Gracie pleaded. They were standing between the pillars guarding the living room. “Are you scared?”

  “Petrified! Come on.” Tugging on her daughter’s arm, she started for t
he kitchen.

  “She’s not going to hurt you.” Gracie was keeping up with her but wasn’t moving as fast as she needed to.

  “Angelique?” Sarah asked with a gasp, the sense of urgency to get away from the house overwhelming. “How do you know?”

  “That’s not how it works,” she said simply, as if everyone understood the rules that governed relations between this world and the next.

  “So, now you know how the ghost thing works? After I found you shivering on the stairs the other night?”

  “I didn’t get it then,” Gracie said.

  “But you do now? Well, I don’t.” They reached the kitchen, and Sarah quickly searched through the drawers for a flashlight, patting her pocket to make certain she had her phone, wishing for the first time in her life that she owned a gun. She settled for a jackknife that was in the same drawer where she finally found a flashlight.

  “If she was going to hurt us, wouldn’t she have done it by now? We’ve been living here for long enough that if she wanted to levitate a knife and slit our throats, or electrocute us while we were showering, or put some of that old rat poison in our drinks, she would have, don’t you think?”

  “Knives? Rat poison? Electrocution?” Sarah shook her head and took a deep breath. Seeing how her own panic could infect her child, she tried like hell to be rational. “I don’t really know how it works, but see this?” She held up the key. “It was hidden in a statue upstairs, the little Madonna . . . And somehow that inanimate figurine just, all by itself, mind you, hurtled off the mantel and split open. Perfectly. Down the middle, as if sliced by an unseen . . .” Oh, sweet Jesus, she sounded like a raving madwoman. “Come on.” She headed out of the kitchen.

  “She wanted you to find it!” Gracie said, following Sarah down the hallway to the foyer. “Don’t you see?”

  No, Sarah didn’t see. She didn’t see at all.

  “So what’s it open?” Gracie asked. “The key.”

  “My guess?” Sarah said, her pulse still throbbing in her temples. “Angelique Le Duc’s tomb.”