Unbound Spirits

by Christine Pope

  Besides, he knew he’d screwed up.

  And he was getting very, very tired of having to hide the truth from everyone.

  “If I tell you, it can only be between us,” he said, wondering if he was making the biggest mistake of his life. “You can’t say anything to your sisters, you can’t say anything to anyone filming at the B&B or post it on Facebook or whatever. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said, the flip tone gone from her voice, as if she realized this was something far bigger than a simple lover’s quarrel. “I know how to keep a secret. It’s only…I could tell how upset Audrey was, and it wasn’t just about whatever is going on inside her house.”

  Michael pulled in a breath. He hadn’t willingly offered this information to anyone — not even to Audrey — and for a moment, he wondered whether he had the courage to tell Rosemary the truth, even though he’d promised her he would.

  “You know how her parents were killed in the Waikiki Massacre?” he asked.

  Rosemary nodded, although her expression was somewhat puzzled. Tone guarded, she said, “Yes.”

  “The gunman was named Philip Stanek. My real name is Michael Stanek.”

  Realization spread across Rosemary’s delicate features. “Oh, my God.”

  “Exactly,” Michael said, his voice grim. “My big brother. No one in the family knew what he was up to. He’d said he was going to Hawaii for a few weeks with some friends from college, and none of us thought there was anything strange about that, since he’d been working and saving up. My parents got a postcard…everything seemed just fine with him. And then…we saw it on the news.”

  Rosemary’s blue eyes looked as big as saucers. “Damn.”

  “Basically, yes.” Michael paused for a moment, wondering how much more he should say. There were things he’d wanted to tell Audrey about his brother and hadn’t had the chance. Better to wait until he saw her again, could speak to her. Rosemary had already heard far more than anyone else he knew. “Anyway, I changed my name, moved out of state to go to college. I did everything I could to hide my connection to Philip, and of course my parents helped in every way they could. They didn’t want that stigma following me for the rest of my life.”

  He stopped there, mostly because talking about his family was painful. Neither of his parents had been able to deal with what their son had done. His father started drinking heavily, although he did a good job of hiding his addiction from his family and his coworkers. A heart attack took him just days before his sixty-fifth birthday, and Michael knew that booze had been the culprit, even though the death certificate only said he had died of natural causes. His mother retreated into Xanax and sleeping pills and basically fried her brain. She was now in an assisted-living facility in Florida. Michael paid her bills, but he knew he used the distance between her current home and his house in Pasadena as an excuse to stay away.

  And his sister Anna had also changed her name, gone to college in upstate Washington, married a Canadian guy she’d met in between semesters. Now she lived in Vancouver…or at least, Michael assumed she was still there. They hadn’t spoken in almost three years.

  “But Audrey found out,” Rosemary said softly.

  “Yes,” he replied, doing his best to tear his thoughts away from the ruin of his family. “She found a book at my house that had my real name written in it. ‘Stanek’ isn’t a very common name, and she knew that Philip’s younger brother was named Michael. She confronted me, and I told her the truth.”

  “No wonder she was so angry.” Rosemary hesitated, as if she knew that what she wanted to say might offend him, then went ahead and commented, “You should have told her before you slept with her.”

  How Rosemary knew that he and Audrey had had sex, Michael had no idea. Her psychic abilities again, or just the insight to know that Audrey wouldn’t have been nearly so upset if she hadn’t been intimate with him?

  “I wanted to tell her,” he said. In a way, it was good that he had to concentrate on Tucson’s unfamiliar streets, because then he didn’t have to look over at the woman who sat in the passenger seat. “I was going to, after we were done shooting. It’s just…life sort of intervened.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “She was going to back out of the show, but Colin threatened to sue her,” Michael went on. That sounded so ugly when spoken out loud, but he figured Rosemary might as well know the worst about the situation. “That was the only reason she came here. It’s all my fault.”

  “Yes, it is,” Rosemary said, her tone frank. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was thinking in the back of my mind that if she was here and we were working together, I’d at least have the chance to talk to her, to try to explain.” Once again, worry and guilt knotted his gut. This was all his fault, just as he’d said. “Only I never got that chance. Our demon disguised as Jeffrey Whitcomb took care of that.”

  “We’ll fix it,” Rosemary told him. She seemed less irritated now that he’d admitted to making such a hash of things. In fact, she even smiled slightly. “We have the clues we need to track her down. It’s just a matter of time.”

  He wanted to believe her. He had to, because he already had far too much on his conscience. He couldn’t let anything else happen to Audrey.

  They’d reached the driveway that led into the B&B’s parking lot. Michael pulled in, noting that Susan’s Subaru Outback was parked there now, although Colin’s van appeared to be MIA. Maybe he and Daniela had decided to make a night of it, which didn’t seem like that wise an idea if they were going to be filming the next day. Then again, possibly Colin had decided that he could cut loose a little bit, since Audrey was missing and the most they’d be able to do was shoot some exteriors and Michael’s intro.

  Anyway, it wasn’t really his problem. He parked the Grand Cherokee and got out, while Rosemary did the same on her side of the vehicle. They met at the back, and he opened the cargo area and pulled out her rolling suitcase as she grabbed her duffle.

  “Here we are,” he said unnecessarily. “I’ll show you the room where you’ll be staying. It’s just off the courtyard.”

  “Okay,” Rosemary replied, looking around with some interest even though there wasn’t that much to be seen in the darkness.

  He began to lead her along the path, but she stopped quite suddenly, her gaze moving toward the storage shed a few yards from where they stood.

  “Something’s there,” she said.

  Michael knew that all too well. Still, when he looked at the spot that seemed to have her transfixed, he couldn’t see anything. “What is it?”

  “A presence….” The words trailed off, and she shook her head. “I don’t know. I could feel it, but now it seems to be gone.”

  “Well, there’s a reason why we chose this spot for our second episode,” he told her as they resumed walking along the path. “The place is definitely haunted by something — I saw it as I was out here earlier this evening.”

  “An apparition?” She sounded far more eager than frightened.

  “Yes. Fairly standard sort of blob of foggy light. It disappeared, though. I was planning to take a look in the storage shed tomorrow to see what’s there.”

  Rosemary sent him a sideways look. “What about Audrey?”

  “That’s what we’re doing tonight. Unless you wanted to go straight to bed.”

  That comment made her huff out a breath of contempt. “Before midnight? Hardly.”

  Exactly what he wanted to hear. Every second that passed was one where Audrey was alone, certainly frightened and possibly in pain.

  His resolve would keep him going. “Let’s put your things in your room, and then we’ll get started.”

  Chapter 6

  Had her silent plea worked? She had no way of knowing, but Audrey felt a little better now that she at least had tried.

  All was still in the house, except for the faint tick-tick of the clock on the mantel and every once in a while a strange, ke
ening sound that she guessed must be the wind whistling through the pines. For a moment, she thought to go to the window and look outside, but since the property didn’t appear to have any exterior lights — or at least any lights that were turned on — she doubted she’d be able to see anything.

  She unfolded her legs, which felt a little stiff after sitting in that not-quite lotus position for more than twenty minutes, and leaned against the headboard. In that moment, she realized how utterly bone-tired she was. It had been a long and terrible day, but she wasn’t sure she could allow herself to sleep. Not with that thing downstairs, possibly waiting for that moment of vulnerability.

  The problem was, she didn’t see what she could do to keep herself awake. She didn’t know what had happened to her purse while she was out cold; evidently, the Whitcomb-demon had spirited it away someplace, since it wasn’t anywhere in this room. They were so far out in the middle of nowhere that Audrey doubted her phone would have even gotten a signal, but she at least could have played games or read on her Kindle app to keep herself awake.

  Well, one thing she could do was use some of the supplies she’d found in the bathroom. The lobster bisque had left a bad taste in her mouth…or maybe that was just the taste of frustration. Either way, she could get down off this bed, walk in there, get herself prepped for the night.

  Brushing her teeth and using the facial wipes to get the minimal makeup she wore off her face took a little over three minutes. But it did help to get up from the bed, to walk around a bit. She still felt dead tired, but her eyelids weren’t quite as droopy.

  Should she try to reach out to Michael again? After all, she had no idea whether her first attempt had even been successful. Something in her mind told her no, that she’d done what she could and it was up to him to take the next step.

  All right. She went to the closet and got down the spare blanket she’d found, then laid it across the foot of the bed in case she gave up and decided she needed to sleep, despite the inherent dangers of being out cold with a demon roaming around the house. Although if he was roaming, he was being very quiet about it. Old houses like this, no matter how well-maintained, always managed to creak somewhere. She’d heard a few odd noises coming from the roof, but nothing from the hallway outside her door.

  Maybe he’d left her here while he attended to business elsewhere. That would be the ultimate irony, wouldn’t it — that she’d been left unguarded this whole time?

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite brave enough to leave her room and venture downstairs to check.

  After pacing the room for about fifteen minutes, Audrey realized there was no way she could keep this up all night. Eventually, she’d drop where she stood. So she shrugged out of her leather jacket and hung it on one of the bedposts, then turned back the covers and climbed in.

  She was definitely leaving all the lights on, though.

  The funny thing was, once she’d lain down and resigned herself to sleep, she found she couldn’t. Her eyes shut, but they flared open at every sound, every howl of the wind, every time the clock on the mantel made a tick that wasn’t quite in time with the others.

  Well, at least she was lying down, and comfortable. The room felt a little chilly now that she’d taken off her jacket, but Audrey reached down to the foot of the bed and retrieved the blanket she’d placed there, then spread it out over herself. At least this place had some kind of central heat, although the air temperature was colder than she would have liked it, probably somewhere in the low sixties.

  But yes, with the blanket covering her, that was better. She could close her eyes and pretend she was at the bed-and-breakfast in Tucson, that Michael was in the room next to hers, there in case she needed him for anything. She wouldn’t even bother to act as though she wasn’t speaking to him, because she knew she’d already forgiven him.

  The light outside her closed eyelids grew dimmer and dimmer. And just like that, she was asleep.

  She walked in her dreams, on a low, rounded hill covered in dry grass. In the dream, it was as if she was both inside herself and observing from outside, as though watching a movie. The wind was brisk and pulled at her hair, and clouds scudded across a lowering sky. Strangely, though, she wasn’t cold…or at least, her dream-self couldn’t feel the cold.

  Somehow, she knew she wasn’t alone. She turned and saw a tall man walking up the hill toward her. The same breeze that tugged her hair played with the hem of his long coat, making it blow in black tails behind him.

  As soon as he drew closer, Audrey knew who was standing there. Jeffrey Whitcomb, in the same clothes he’d worn when he appeared in the backyard of Michael’s house, rather than the modern business suit he’d had on when he kidnapped her from the airport parking lot in Tucson.

  For some reason, she wasn’t afraid. The man who faced her now was not the Whitcomb-demon, although she couldn’t have said how she immediately knew the difference.

  “Can you help me?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “I don’t think I’m in a position to help anyone,” she said.

  “You might be surprised.” He was quiet for a moment, during which she studied his face, his expression. This man looked older than the possessed version of himself, as if the demon that now inhabited his body wanted to present a younger, more vigorous face to the world. His dark eyes were sad, filled with deep melancholy.

  “Can you tell me why you did it?”

  Whitcomb didn’t ask Audrey to explain what she meant. He studied her for a moment before replying, “I wanted everything I didn’t have. I was born a poor man and didn’t want to die that way. I had some early success, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. So I…took a shortcut.”

  “Summoning demons is a shortcut?” she asked. Her dream-self looked skeptical and crossed her arms.

  “You always think you’re going to stay in control, that you’ll be able to manage the situation. At first, that was the case. My investments yielded profits beyond my wildest dreams. I married a beautiful woman. But….”

  “But it didn’t last.”

  “No. I started to hear strange voices in my sleep, in my dreams. There were days when I couldn’t recall whether I was awake or asleep, when something else was guiding my actions, speaking with my voice. That was when I realized it had all gone horribly wrong.”

  “Why didn’t you try to send them back, like Michael and I did? Or reach out to a priest for an exorcism?”

  “Because the demon already controlled me to the point where I no longer had enough free will to take the necessary action to save myself. It was as though my body had become a prison, and I was locked away in a forgotten cell, ignored while something else lived my life.”

  Audrey couldn’t help shivering. She remembered how the demon had boasted of putting Whitcomb’s face on his son’s body, forcing Henry to endure years in a sanitarium while his possessed father was free to roam the world in his child’s form. Watching the anguish in the dream-Whitcomb’s face, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, even though she knew he’d brought all this on himself.

  “But you can free me,” he went on. “You know how, don’t you?”

  His expression was pleading, but she could only shake her head. “No, I really don’t.”

  “Kill the body, and the demon will have no place to live.”

  She stared at him. “Why not exorcise the demon from your body?”

  “Because if you kill my body, the demon will die with it. If you only banish him, he will find some way to come back. He’s wily like that. He is older than time, and his name is — ”

  A hand clamped down on her throat. She gasped, eyelids flying open, and stared up into the face of the Whitcomb-demon, whose black eyes glittered down at her.

  “Now, now, Audrey,” he said. “Hasn’t anyone told you to be careful about the company you keep?”

  Michael and Rosemary sat at the small table in his room, his laptop positioned betwe
en the two of them so they could both get a good view of the screen. For the last twenty minutes, they’d been surfing through sites dedicated to old houses, trying to find one that closely matched what he’d seen in the vision Audrey had sent him. So far, they’d seen one or two that were similar in architecture, but both were located in towns, not built up on a mountainside somewhere.

  “What about searching in county assessors’ websites?” Rosemary suggested after she took a sip of water. “Wouldn’t there be a record of Whitcomb owning property in Colorado?”

  “Maybe,” Michael said. “Although I think he probably would have done what he could to keep his name hidden…using a trust or something like that.”

  “Oh, right,” Rosemary replied. Disappointment was clear on her face. “I’m not used to all the maneuvering rich people do to hide their money and assets.”

  Once upon a time, Michael hadn’t been, either. But after spending ten years making sure no one would have an easy time figuring out who he was, he knew a good many of the tricks. Not all of them, of course, because although his books and DVDs and speaking fees all added up to a comfortable income, he wasn’t exactly at the level where he needed to create a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands or something.

  “It’s all right,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the scruff on his chin, considering the problem. Of course, there was always the chance that the house Whitcomb was currently holed up in had never been photographed, but there had to be a record somewhere. “Maybe we’re going at this the wrong way.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Michael leaned forward and opened another tab in his browser. “Maybe what we need to do is look for former mining towns that were prosperous enough to support the construction of that kind of mansion. Then we can poke around in those records and see if we can narrow things down.”