“The mirror,” she said. It was something she’d known all along, something the dream had shown her symbolically.
“Exactly,” Sidney said. He told her about his deafness in the drawing room.
“The voice called me ‘listener’ and said something I think is important. The voice said, ‘help us find the way.’ She said the way, as though there is one.”
“There’s always a way, Sidney,” she said. “You know that.”
“Yeah, I know, but it sounded like she meant a physical way of release.”
Leah pondered that thought. She knew in her heart and soul that the so-called ‘gateway to Hell’ was the mirror; she knew what she had to do. She looked around the walls at the stones and noticed that the pinkish auras had all but vanished. She was sure that the auras had been among the ghostly messages they’d been receiving all night. Now, they were gone, as though the message had been delivered.
Sidney handed her another drawing from the black book.
“I found this one, long after finding the others.”
She looked at this picture, done in pencil, and shifted her eyes to where Sidney pointed to the top of the page. She noticed what appeared to be a cloud with strange, horrid faces hovering inside of it. Suddenly, Tahoe was at her side.
“That’s what we’re up against,” he said.
“The legion,” she said. Her eyes were unflinching as she stared at the aging, penciled artwork that possessed a somewhat talented sophistication, both chilling and disturbing.
“Yes,” Tahoe said. “They claim they are many, yet so are we, child.”
“That’s right,” Susan said. Leah looked to Susan, who sat alongside Paul on top of one of the many the crates still stored in the basement. Leah watched her father take another puff from his inhaler. She felt the weight of tension build on her shoulders, just watching him. Between his history of panic attacks and persistent asthma, her father was teetering on the brink. She could see it.
“Paul, I would advise against consistent use of the inhaler,” Susan said. “Remember to take deep breaths and clear your mind.”
Leah felt a deep admiration for Susan right now. Not only was she overseeing her, but tending to her father as well, and documenting everything that occurred tonight for the society’s records. They couldn’t have asked for a better head of the society.
In addition to the lighting equipment, they’d also set up the EVP monitors, the same type used upstairs. For awhile, no stray sounds were amplified in the basement. Only the infrequent humming of the amplifiers set the acoustic background, and Leah often wondered about that. Was it a natural occurrence with the amplifiers, or was it something else? But she was not the listener, Sidney was.
Until now, there had been inactivity, and then all ears caught a fast, fleeting voice...
“Eternity...”
The voice was a sharpened whisper that dragged the word out, as if it was only two syllables. The whisper echoed about the stones, and the standing members of the team stirred as the voice seemed to move among them as it spoke.
“It’s what they seek,” Tahoe said. “Those whose lives were cut short in this house, they seek eternity!” His voice rose upward in a shout that Leah knew was directed toward demons that were watching and waiting. It was a fact that went unspoken between them.
Tahoe turned and walked in the opposite direction toward what looked like a small alcove.
“This is where the altar was placed,” he said.
Leah stood at his side, staring at the space where the rituals had taken place, where Angus Marlowe had murdered several women in occult crazed, ritualistic sacrifices, right where she and Tahoe now stood. The police had confiscated the altar as evidence in the investigation, but her mind was beginning to formulate its presence in the spot where it had been years ago. She recalled seeing what had once been in the alcove; she’d thought it was a table. Paul said that he’d never really noticed it.
She stepped closer, and then it came over her, a flash of white light again, this time replaced by the rust-colored aura she’d seen before. Everything around her was bathed in the same hue, and through it, she could see the past unfolding before her. The aura was flashing, showcasing the scene depicted by her third eye like an old-fashioned picture show.
She saw the altar, long and black, and a naked woman struggling just above it, a noose affixed around her neck. Her feet grazed the top of the altar as she wriggled to maintain footing. The man before the altar had long hair that hung to his shoulders. His piercing eyes stared straight into hers, as though he’d caught a glimpse of her through decades of time. He was dressed in black garb with his arms stretched outward at the sides.
Leah’s third eye watched as a scene from the past played out only for her; it was the hellish repetition of a haunted history as it happened again and again. The man threw his head back and shouted, calling out in a voice she couldn’t hear, and he raised his arms upward, though not to Heaven. And then, she saw the flames from the pyres behind the altar shoot upward as if ignited by some magic word or unseen presence.
The woman’s arms were moving furiously behind her back as they’d been tied there. Leah glimpsed a look in the woman’s eye, some glint of hope in the midst of her fitful predicament. Her mouth was gagged and Leah could only watch as the gag moved inward and outward over her mouth with each quick breath. After all, this event had happened on this night, forty-five years ago. It was a moment gone, but occurring over and over again in another realm.
The woman was careful not to show her struggling wrists behind her. Why? Was she about to break free of the binds? Then, Leah watched as the man who was Angus Marlowe closed his eyes and went into some deep, hypnotic trance. His cohort moved into position, closer to the edge of the altar. He was going to tip it over! That is how they would sacrifice her. She would lose her footing and hang from the noose.
Leah thought of her mother. Now, her third eye beheld two interchanging visions: the scene before her, and the vision of her mother swaying from the noose. The two hangings would coincide in her mind, but then something happened.
She watched as the woman broke free of the binds behind her, and in the flash of seconds, unfastened the noose around her neck and leaped from the altar, escaping the fast, reaching grasp of Marlowe’s accomplice; he’d been too slow. The woman ran through the basement, but beyond the third eye of Leah Leeds, five people watched as the seer turned, her eyes following a vision they did not share.
The stones that Cory, Brett, and Dylan had pulled away were not in her vision. Obviously, the limestone wall that had hidden the secret passageway had been erected afterward. Leah could see the hidden doorway they’d just discovered, slightly open, and she shook herself to make sure she was still seeing, still within the vision. The rust colored aura that never left her sight told her that she was. Now, she watched as Sheila Barton fled through the doorway.
The ghostly presences of the two men chased after her, and Leah turned her head upward as she began seeing different images. She became oblivious to the voices of the others and their surrounding stream of words that sought to placate her...
“Leah...” Susan.
“Leah, sweetie, what are you seeing?” Sidney.
“Let her finish.” Dylan.
She saw Sheila Barton running through the passageway they’d just explored, her mouth moving, crying out as she’d managed to remove the gag that stifled her. She clutched her naked body as she ran. Sheila was fast, but lost, as she ran this way and that, her eyes searching the underground maze for an exit. The two men were chasing her through the unlit passageway, and the three of them stumbled around in utter darkness.
There was another flash of white light in her mind, and now she saw a circular opening, a tunnel of some sort. The woman came upon it and scurried to climb through it. The men were behind her, after her. The next thing she saw was the woman climbing out of a pipe. She was free, somewhere in a wooded area. And then the men crawled through the
same pipe.
She saw a chase in the woods. Large hands grabbed the woman from behind. She saw the features of her face strained in sheer terror. The hands closed around her throat, subduing, choking, and wringing. Which one of them was it? She saw Marlowe’s face again, his head thrown back in evil exaltation, an inner source of accomplishment like ecstasy on his face. But the hands had belonged to his cohort, his accomplice, his executioner.
They’d stashed the dead body in the woods because time was short as the rising sun lingered close beyond the horizon. They would come back another night to retrieve the body, but they would never get that chance. She saw police in the woods as the scene faded.
The vision was slipping away, being replaced by another.
It was another time, a few years later. She could see the grays that began to streak Marlowe’s hair. He was alone with the mirror, here in the basement. This time, he was not calling out to some sinister force that listened, but to the mirror. It was the same mirror that would possess her mother years later, and it appeared the same in its younger existence as it had when she was a child.
Then, she watched as the glass began to shimmer, and Angus Marlowe bowed down before it, paying homage. The glass had transformed into a rippling of waves, and a source of bright light behind it caused the shimmering. It looked to her like searchlights rolling across a vast and swelling ocean. Then, there was only space within the frame; the glass was no more.
The sound of her own heart pounding in her ears was the only thing she could hear as she watched what happened next. A mist or cloud seeped its way out of the mirror, rolling, surging, and moving with an invisible calculation. Inside it she saw the faces, ghastly and deformed countenances writhing in their cohesion, projecting outward from the cloud and trying to pierce it, as though it were a bubble. It was exactly what Marlowe had depicted in the drawing Sidney had just shown her.
The cloud seemed to evaporate and become absorbed within the confines of the house, and as it did, Leah saw that the mirror had resumed its original appearance. Glass fit the frame once again, as though it had never been missing, solid as though it had never been distorted. Whatever Marlowe had done had let the legion through into this realm, into this house.
She watched as Marlowe’s eyes darted around in confusion. She looked closer and realized that in the vision, the house was shaking, much like it had earlier. She could see the structure trembling and the look of astonishment on Marlowe’s face. Now, she wondered if his actions in this past moment had been intentional. Either way, she might never know.
The visions were gone. Now, only the lighting in the basement met her eyes as the rust colored aura vanished. She turned to see the five faces watching her, waiting for her to respond.
She felt around in the front pocket of her jeans and ran her fingers over something in the shape of a cross. Of course, she thought, the cross Hollywood had given her. She dug her fingers into her pocket and pulled it out. She it let hang from its gold chain, and then she placed it around her neck.
“Did you see it?” Her question was to Tahoe, who had stood alongside her the whole time.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It was not my vision to see, but yours. I’ve already seen what I need to know concerning this house.”
The sounds of scraping, shuffling feet came closer. It was Brett and Cory returning through the hidden doorway.
“Thirty-five minutes,” Susan said, checking her watch that she’d synchronized.
“We found a tunnel,” Brett said. “It leads to some kind of old pipe out in the woods.”
“Yes, I know,” Leah said. “I saw it all.”
Leah described everything she’d seen in the visions. Brett and Cory matched her description of the tunnel, and the pipe, as they told of their journey. Then, Leah continued.
“I think Marlowe’s allowing the legion to come through and into this house may have been unintentional. I’m not so sure he realized what he’d done. That explains the hidden picture in the book; he depicted what had happened. I think it’s possible that he knew something about the mirror and began experimenting with it. It may have sucked him in, just like it did to my mother.”
“That is the danger that comes with provoking the unknown,” Tahoe said. “Intentional or not, now it must be undone.”
Leah turned to all of them.
“It’s time,” she said. “I want to see the mirror. For the first time in my life, I have to gaze into that mirror. It’s now or never. It’s time to go upstairs.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Since you both were outside, what’s the story on the weather?”
Susan was the first to ask this of Brett and Cory once they’d all finished the climb up the winding stairs, leaving the equipment in the basement behind for now.
“The wind has died down a little,” Brett said. “The snow seems to have tapered off, but it was hard to tell out in the woods.”
“Well, it looks like the snow amassed well above both of your knees,” Sidney said, pointing out both Brett and Cory’s jeans, which were wet above the knee.
“Yeah,” Cory said, “but it may not be that high on the roadways.”
“Either way,” Dylan said. “It’s time to get another check on this storm.”
Brett tuned in, once again, with the portable TV to the storm-watch channel. It was now reported that ten inches of snow had fallen across Green Valley and that road crews had set out to clear roads, highways, and bridges. Eyes glanced at each other, displaying silent apprehension.
“Let’s just hope this storm has taken a long enough break for us to get out of here.”
Leah hadn’t been paying attention to Dylan’s comment; she’d walked over to the grandfather clock and began staring at it, listening to its immortal ticking and watching as the second hand seemed to move somewhat faster than normal, as though time was running out. She felt Sidney’s hand on her shoulder.
“Are you ready?” he said.
“I’ve never been more ready,” she said.
“We’re all going to face this together, Leah,” Dylan said. She turned to him and to the rest of them, and all expressions conveyed ready-or-not, now or never convictions.
But an evil entity had been watching, and its guttural growl became amplified by the vigilant technology. Its sinister voice broke the meaningful silence they shared, uttering a single word with an unbound and writhing hatred...
“DIE!”
A pounding rocked the floor above them, and as all eyes looked upward. They watched as the great chandelier swayed back and forth above their heads. They scurried away from where they’d been gathered, disbanding in all directions in case the chandelier crashed to the floor.
Leah’s eyes were fixed upon the top of the staircase as she neared it, her body and mind ready for war. She turned for only a second, noticing that all of them were behind her. Then, Cory yelled out and pointed to the top of the staircase.
“Look,” he said. “There it is!”
She turned back and beheld the dark specter; the black mass seen by Snake and Hollywood now stood at the top of the stairs. It was solid, opaque, and unmoving. She heard the breathing coming from it, the long, drawn rasp that the teens had described to perfection. Now, everyone heard it; she felt them rally close behind her at the foot of the stairs.
“That’s it,” Cory said. “I thought I saw it earlier, but wasn’t sure. Now I’m sure.”
It stood still, not moving, not hovering, but watching. And then, it was gone, dissipated into the air around it. The surroundings resumed their original appearance like an evil trick of the mind, as though the blackened shape had never been there.
“Did you get it?” Leah turned to Brett who was using one of the handheld video cameras, while other cameras set in tripods around the grand hall caught different angles of footage.
“I got it,” he said. “I’m sure the other cameras got it too.”
“Shush,” Sidney said. “What’s that sound?�
� They exchanged glances. “Listen...”
The clear sound of bouncing plastic pounced upon the pine floors above them...
PING, PING, PING, PING...
Leah had heard that sound before; she knew it well. But it couldn’t be. She kept her eyes on the top of the staircase, watching as it reached the top of the stairs from where it bounced on the second floor. It was coming closer.
“Wait,” Brett yelled, as he moved backward with the camera. “What is that?”
There it was; her pink, plastic ball she had once played with in this house. It bounced on its own from the second floor, to the top of the stairs, and down the staircase, back to its original owner. It bounced from one step, skipped the next, and sprang from the third on down until it landed at her feet.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “My ball...”
“I had a funny feeling that’s what it was,” Dylan said.
“It’s up there,” Paul said. “I know it is. Leah, stay here. Don’t go up there.”
But she’d already begun ascending the stairs in a slow, vigilant movement, one foot cautiously following the other. Her ears heard nothing, while her eyes readied to see what waited at the top of the stairs. She could feel the others following closely behind as bodies briefly touched on the staircase. She reached the top, and found the one person she’d been waiting many years to see again.
There she was—rocking in the rocker, knitting what looked like a scarf. It was seconds before the old woman noticed the interruption in the form of an ensemble at the top of the stairs.
When the old woman lifted her head in her direction, Leah was certain, seeing that agile, friendly face once again. It was Agnes, smiling at her as though time had never been broken.
“Agnes,” Leah said. Tears of heartfelt joy drenched her eyes.
She stepped closer to her. She could see the green of her eyes, and her face showed a trace of youth underneath that had failed to disappear. The thick curl of her gray hair remained unchanged, making her look as regal as she must have been in life. Agnes placed her hands on the arms of the rocker and in an unexpected gesture, pushed her body up from the chair to a standing position.
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