Lifting my gaze, I scoured the bushes and shrubbery, searching for what or who, I didn’t know. The culprit would surely be long gone by now. At least I hoped so.
Reluctantly, I returned my gaze to the step. Someone had taken that well-loved teddy bear from a baby’s grave, mangled it beyond repair and buried it in my backyard.
This was not the work of an angry spirit or the negative energy of a poltergeist. This was not a sign or a portent from the other side. This was something dark and twisted. A human hand had wrought this damage and the warning couldn’t have been plainer.
Don’t go digging up secrets that are best left buried.
Twenty
I turned in early, certain that I would spend the night tossing and turning, but surprisingly, I dozed off before I made it through the first chapter of a new novel. With the security system activated and Angus snoozing in his bed beneath my bedroom window, I allowed a false sense of security to lull me. Pulling the covers to my chin and nestling my head against the pillow, I drifted off, and even my REM dreams were harmless before I sank into a deeper slumber.
I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping when a sharp knock on my front door awakened me. I lay still for a moment, groggy and disoriented, until the sound came again and then I bolted upright in bed as my gaze shot to the bedroom door.
Even as I listened intently, even as I glanced at the clock to check the time, I still had that dazed feeling of being trapped in a dream. I didn’t know if the sound had been real or the remnant of a nightmare, because all was silent now. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I perched on the edge as I tried to orient myself to the darkness.
When no other sound came to me, I might have been able to persuade myself that the knocking had been imagined. But Angus was up, too, and his behavior roused me from my indolence. Head and tail erect, he stood in the hallway just outside the bedroom door, his gaze trained on the foyer.
When he heard me stir, he momentarily left his post to pad over to the bed to make certain that I had heard the noise, too, and that we were both still safe and sound.
I gave him a reassuring pat as I grabbed my phone and the pepper spray from my nightstand. Slipping the phone into the pocket of my pajamas, I clutched the canister in front of me as I eased across the room on bare feet, pausing at the door to glance both ways before following Angus toward the foyer.
The house was too quiet, the abnormal hush of a tomb. I took stock of my surroundings as I crept down the hall. Behind me, the bathroom, kitchen and my office. Across the hall, the guest bedroom. Straight ahead the foyer. Just off the entrance, the darkened parlor.
I hated to turn my back on any of those shadowy rooms even though I felt certain the house was still secure. The alarm hadn’t been triggered and hallowed ground would keep the ghosts at bay.
We’re safe, I said to myself and then repeated the mantra as I paused in the archway, pepper spray lifted and at the ready.
I turned on a lamp and the shaded light threw my shadow against the wall, startling me. Hysteria bubbled a little too close to the surface. I swallowed it back. We’re safe, we’re safe, we’re safe...
Nothing was amiss in the foyer and I could see nothing out of the ordinary in the parlor. But that quiet. Utter and unnerving.
I moved across to the front door, once again pausing to listen. I heard no sounds from outside. No more knocking. No footfalls across the porch. Yet I sensed a presence. A thing.
No one I knew would come calling at this hour, much less pound on my front door as if they meant to raise the dead. A disturbance in the middle of the night never boded well, but I would have welcomed a human emergency at that moment. A frantic neighbor. The sound of a siren. Instead there was nothing but that wearing silence and a deep certainty that something waited for me on the other side of the door.
Already I’d worked myself into a state. My heart flailed and my knees trembled so badly I had to put a hand to the wall for support. Taking a moment to settle myself, I rose on tiptoes to peer out the peephole. Nothing. I moved over to the front window. I saw nothing. Heard nothing. And yet...
I scoured the shadows on the porch and in the front garden and then I moved my gaze along the street. It was possible someone had knocked on my door and then fled by the time I got up.
Yes, that must be what happened. It was a prank, nothing more. It wasn’t unusual for neighborhood adolescents to get up to mischief. I desperately wanted to believe that no one or no thing waited just beyond my line of sight, but my quilled nerves told me otherwise.
I remained at the front window for several minutes, searching the bushes along my walkway and peering into the shadows in the alley across the street. Just when I was about to give up my post, the knocking came again, so hard and rapid I had the image of someone out there pounding on the door with both fists, demanding to be let in.
I eased back up to the peephole. Nothing. Over to the window. No one was there.
Backing into the foyer, I placed my hand on Angus’s spine, as much to calm myself as him. He was clearly agitated. So was I. And I didn’t know how to end this. A button on my alarm would summon the police, but what could they do? Whatever had invaded my front porch had no substance or form. It couldn’t be seen. It wasn’t real, and yet the pounding was all too real.
The hair on Angus’s back bristled and he growled, curling his lip and tucking his tongue as he bared his teeth. He stood at attention, his gaze fixed on the door as he pressed forward on his front paws, ready to spring, ready to do battle for me as he had in Seven Gates Cemetery.
“We’re safe,” I whispered.
The pounding grew louder and more urgent. I half expected the door to be flung wide at any moment. I had a sudden image of a dark figure with beady eyes and a gaping beak standing on the threshold glaring in at me.
Don’t think about that now, I warned myself. Don’t think about what might come through that door if it opens. Steady yourself and get ready to run.
I still grasped the pepper spray, a totally useless weapon against dead-world invaders, but I couldn’t seem to let go. My fingers were frozen around the canister. My heart knocked against my rib cage and a pulse throbbed at my temples. I could smell something seeping under the front door now, an odor that did not come from the living world. I lifted my gaze to the brass knob, and almost as if I had willed it, the orb began to turn, slowly at first and then more frantically.
The rattling seemed to mesmerize me. I stood immobile for what seemed an eternity. Then I lunged across the foyer, dropping the pepper spray as I grasped the knob with one hand and the deadbolt lever with the other. I could feel the lock turn in my fingers and the door seemed to swell inward from an invisible force. I put my shoulder against the wood and then my back as I planted my bare feet on the floor and pressed.
Angus growled and paced and flung himself at the door. We had faced a lot of bad things together, but I had never seen him more stressed. I wondered if he recognized the smell. I wondered if, like me, he associated the threat outside our door with Asher Falls.
My heart was thundering by this time, my pulse leaping so erratically I could hardly breathe. The door bulged inward and I heard wood splinter. I didn’t know how long the frame or the deadbolt would hold. For the first time in my life, I wished for a gun, but even a silver bullet couldn’t stop the force that had laid siege to my sanctuary.
“What is it?” I whispered to Angus. “What’s out there?”
He gave a loud bark, a warning, and just like that, the pressure on the door eased. The rattling subsided and once again an uncanny silence fell over the foyer.
My back was still to the door, my breath still coming hard and fast. I wanted nothing so much as to dash down the hallway and hide in a closet or jump back in bed and pull the covers over my head. But I wouldn’t leave my place at the door. The moment I
let down my guard, whatever was out there would find a way inside my house.
After a few moments, I turned to have a look through the peephole and then I slipped back over to the window. The sight of my own reflection in the glass startled me and my hand flew to my heart.
“Easy, easy,” I whispered. “We’re safe.”
I moved back to the door and put a hand on the knob. I didn’t have the courage to flip the deadbolt and have a look around on the porch. Instead I put my ear against the wood and concentrated my senses.
Outside my sanctuary, the night was very still. No traffic sounds came to me. No blaring horns, no gunning engines. The neighborhood slumbered, but the silence seemed loaded and waiting. Portentous.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to focus only on the porch. The entity was still out there, I felt certain. I imagined it hunkered in a dark corner, watching and waiting. I could have sworn I heard the rasp of its breath and the scratch of claws across the floorboards. Then I heard a sort of rushing sound and a hard thud as if something had dropped from one of the trees onto the roof.
I lifted my gaze to the ceiling, once again pooling my senses as I tried to peer through the layers of plaster and shingles. I could hear nothing now beyond the sound of my own breathing. Even Angus had gone very still. But something was up there. Crouched and ready, beady eyes gleaming in the dark.
The upstairs apartment was directly above me, but I didn’t think my neighbor had made the sound. Macon Dawes worked long hours at the hospital and his car wasn’t in the drive. Besides, this was not the sound of someone casually walking through his apartment. The noise was fainter, stealthier. The softest of footfalls as if the thing tiptoed across the shingles, not wishing to be heard.
I followed the sound with my gaze, turning to track the furtive steps across the foyer roof and into the parlor. I zeroed in on the fireplace and a thought fleeted through my head that the flue might still be open.
Springing across the foyer, I tripped and stumbled through the archway, then righted myself as I dashed for the fireplace. Light spilling in from the hallway seemed to illuminate a path for me, but the rest of the room lay in deep shadows. Dropping to my knees before the hearth, I reached up into that cold, dark place for the handle of the damper.
An icy draft streamed down through the chimney, bringing the smell of human decomposition and rotten eggs. I thrust my hand higher, searched frantically for the lever. Something clamped onto my wrist and tugged so fiercely that for a moment, I thought I might be pulled up through the flue and into the night, into the Gray where my soul would be lost forever.
Angus growled as he left his place by the front door and rushed toward me. He planted his front paws on the hearth as he barked into the fireplace. The sound echoed up the flue and out through the chimney to the roof, where I could have sworn I heard an answering growl.
In the grip of full-blown panic, it took me a moment to realize that my pajama sleeve was caught on the handle. The fabric ripped and then I was released so abruptly I sprawled backward against the floor. I bolted up immediately and scrambled back to the fireplace, reaching in and up, searching, searching, searching until I finally grasped the lever and then I pushed it upward until the damper closed with a clank.
I allowed myself a breath. It seemed as if we’d been in the throes of battle for hours, but only a few moments had elapsed since the knock on my front door had awakened me. I wanted to believe it was over for now. We had withstood the assault and the rest of the night would pass peacefully. But I knew that it was still up there...out there...searching for a way in.
I struggled to my feet and hurried back into the hallway, calling for Angus to follow. I checked the deadbolt and glanced through the peephole. I still couldn’t see anything, and the smell in the foyer had faded. I cocked my head, listening. I didn’t hear anything at first. I thought again that maybe it was all over for the night. But as I settled my nerves and concentrated my senses, I heard the footfalls again. Still on the roof but now running toward the rear of the house.
Angus was at my heels as I raced toward the back door. The urge to flee the house was almost overwhelming, but I knew better than to go out into the night. Leaving my sanctuary was exactly what that thing wanted. If it could get inside, it would have by now. The banging on the front door, the footsteps across the roof...ploys to lure me away from hallowed ground.
After checking the lock on the back door, I padded into the kitchen and then out into my office, where I had a view of the garden. I hung back, combing the shadows from a distance before finally moving up to the windows.
I stood shivering as my gaze traveled along the flower beds and walkways. Even with security lights, there were so many shadows. So many hiding places. But now that I realized it couldn’t get in, I felt safer and somewhat calmer. I was under siege, no question, but the attack was over for now.
Angus didn’t seem as certain. He stood at my side, eyes peeled on the garden. When I touched his back, the hair along his spine bristled.
“We’re safe,” I said—for now. But we both knew evil would be back, because the ultimate prize was not the ghost child’s soul, but mine.
I remained at the windows for a very long time, but I detected nothing untoward. Which, looking back, was strange. The thing was right there before me, hiding in plain sight, blending so well with the night that it seemed like nothing more than another amorphous shadow.
Maybe the eyes had been closed before, which was what had kept it hidden. They were open now and softly glowing.
Beside me Angus tensed as if he had just spotted it, too. Neither of us moved a muscle or uttered a sound as we stared at the figure in the garden.
It was humanlike but not alive, I didn’t think. Not a living being as we knew it, though I could make out features. Eyes, nose, a mouth.
The thing hung upside down from a gnarled branch of a live oak, staring through the windows into my house. At me.
Twenty-One
I spent the rest of the night curled up on the chaise in my office with Angus on the floor at my feet. We were calm now, but neither of us could sleep. Pulling a wool throw to my chin, I stared wide-eyed into the garden as I clutched Rose’s key in my fist. I couldn’t see the hanging creature from my vantage, but if anything came to the window—or flew up to the roof—I felt certain I would see it. The deadbolts and chain locks kept the doors secure, and the alarm system remained activated.
“We’re safe,” I whispered. Angus answered me with a wide-eyed stare before he turned back to the windows.
Toward morning, I managed to doze off only to awaken with a start and scramble to my feet to check the house again. Angus followed me, sniffing at doors and prowling restlessly through darkened rooms. I allowed the steady glow of the activated light on the security console to lull me and I went back to the chaise, wrapping myself in the throw as I listened for any unusual sound.
When dawn finally broke, I arose as if nothing had happened and went about my normal routine. I filled Angus’s food and water bowls, let him into the side yard for his morning ritual and then I dressed and headed out for my usual jaunt.
The air was still cool but the sky was clear and I knew the temperature would rise by midmorning. Accelerating my pace, I turned down Tradd, heading toward the water with the bells of St. Michael’s at my back. I walked all the way to the end of the peninsula, pausing only for a moment to watch the sun crown the horizon. But I didn’t wait for the full show as I usually did. Instead, I turned on my heel and headed home without glancing back at the harbor, without pausing to search the third-story balcony of the Devlin mansion.
When I returned, I came in by way of the front gate. I had avoided the porch on my way out and I hadn’t yet gone into the garden to explore. Normally, I would have allowed Angus free rein inside the fence while I went for my walk, but what if that thing still hu
ng from the oak tree?
Whatever it was, I didn’t think it the same entity that had come pounding on my door, trying to find a way into my house. I didn’t think it evil at all, but rather one of those strange watchers or guardians that sometimes slipped through the veil. It had arrived at an opportune time, just when my sanctuary was under attack. It may even have been the force that had chased evil away from my front porch.
Or maybe the thing had no purpose at all except to hang from a tree in my garden. People and animals don’t act as they should.
Now with the sunrise at my back and the perfume of gardenias beckoning me up the walkway, I managed to convince myself I would find nothing more threatening than a sparrow gazing in my window.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. The stench hit me as I came up the walkway and climbed the porch steps. It was the same putrid combination of earthworms and spent matches that I had experienced at the edge of Woodbine Cemetery.
My stomach revolted and I very nearly fled back to the street, but I braced myself and climbed the steps slowly, stunned by what I saw when I reached the top.
Four deep gouges ran across the porch, and I had a sudden vision of the scratches I’d left on the side of Devlin’s face. But the marks were not the superficial abrasions made by human nails. The grooves were so deeply embedded in the wood that they could only have been dug by a routing tool or by razor-sharp talons or claws. I’d seen scars like that once before on the face of a man in Asher Falls. He’d been disfigured by an attack in the woods, but he had no recall of the event.
A gelatin-like substance crisscrossed the porch, reminding me of the slime of a snail. Maggots had already invaded the secretion and it was from this ooze that the smell emanated.
I turned and stumbled down the steps, leaving the remnants of last night’s dinner in the grass. When the nausea finally passed and my knees stopped trembling, I pulled the garden hose around to the front of the house and rinsed off the porch. Then I got a bucket and scrub brush and scoured every single floorboard. I kept at it until even my calloused hands were raw, and then afterward I went inside and stood under the shower until the water turned tepid.
The Awakening Page 17
