by John Saul
Even the chair lift was gone.
Finally, his heart thumping wildly, Emmaline had taken him up to the ballroom. He hadn’t wanted to go, not after the stories he had heard about what Will Hempstead found there, but Emmaline had shown him that it was just a room. The floor had been scrubbed clean, and the furniture—even the piano—removed. In the bright daylight it had been nothing more than a large and empty room.
“It’s only a house,” Emmaline explained to him that evening as they sat in the kitchen eating the supper she’d cooked. “Ain’t nothin’ here for you to be afraid of. Ain’t no ghosts—”
“But Ruby said—” Jeff protested, and Emmaline had cut him off.
“Ruby always had stories,” Emmaline said firmly. “But that’s all they was—just stories. All you saw out there was your auntie, and now she’s been buried.” Then she’d looked directly at him, her dark eyes deep and holding a warmth Jeff hadn’t felt since his mother died. “This is your house now, Jeff. Yours and Julie’s. Bad things happen in lots of houses, but that don’t mean we can just tear them down. We got to go on livin’ in them and try to make ‘em better, that’s all. And that’s what we’re goin’ to do here. In a little while we’re goin’ to bring your sister home and you and me are gonna make things all right for her again. And everything else, we’re gonna put behind us.”
Jeff hadn’t quite understood at the time. And for a while—for more than a year—he’d had terrible nightmares in the house, dark dreams in which he heard his aunt’s limping footsteps prowling the hall outside his door, and saw her feverish eyes glaring at him out of the blackness. But always Emmaline had been there. Eventually the dreams had stopped.
And the house had changed, for Sam Waterman had gone ahead with all of Kevin’s plans, acting as trustee for the Devereaux estate. By the end of the first year the mansion had been remodeled and a manager hired, along with a chef and a small staff.
Devereaux Inn was an instant success, and by the third year the development of the rest of the island had begun.
In the fourth year, when he was twelve and Julie was nineteen, he’d gone away to private school.
“Don’t believe in that,” Emmaline had protested when he and Julie had first talked to her about it. “Seems to me a boy your age ought to be at home, where someone can look after him. And your grandma sent your papa away to school,” she added darkly.
“It’s not the same,” Julie argued. “Daddy didn’t want to go away, and nobody’s sending Jeff away. It was his idea. He wants to go.”
Emmaline’s eyes had shifted suspiciously to Jeff. He was tall for his age, and looked closer to fifteen than twelve. Nor was his maturity only on the surface. Emmaline had long suspected that Jeff had grown up on that night he’d had to escape from the house to save his sister’s life.
“It’s true,” he’d said. “When I’m twenty-one I’m going to have to take care of this whole place. Mr. Waterman can’t go on taking care of us for the rest of our lives, and if I’m going to know what I’m doing, I need a good education.” When Emmaline’s expression hadn’t changed, he’d pushed harder. “I’ve already skipped a whole grade. And there’s a school in Charleston I can go to. I can come home on weekends and Christmas and summer vacation and—”
“And so you’d better go,” Emmaline had agreed, at last convinced that it had, indeed, been Jeff’s own idea. But she’d made him promise that if he didn’t like it, he’d come home again. He’d promised, but, as all three of them had known when he made it, had never felt like invoking it.
Now he’d graduated, and in the fall would be starting at the University of Texas to study hotel management. But for this summer he was back once more at Sea Oaks. He drove slowly up the paved road that now wound along the edge of the golf course, giving up the car to one of the parking attendants at the entrance to the mansion itself. Julie, her eyes glistening with happiness, was waiting for him on the veranda, Emmaline at her side.
Julie hurried down the steps, her limp barely perceptible, and threw herself into her brother’s arms. He was six inches taller than she now, and her arms barely reached around his broad chest, but she squeezed him tight, then looked mischievously up at him.
“You didn’t drive too fast, did you?” she asked. “I didn’t get you that car to kill yourself in.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten it at all,” Jeff replied, his brows arching in mock severity. “I can think of a hundred things we need to spend money on around here—”
“And we are!” Julie exclaimed. “Everything that needs to be done gets done, and you know it. And if you don’t think we can afford a nice car for you, you can go over the books yourself.”
“All right, all right,” Jeff protested, knowing as well as she did that the resort was making everyone in town as rich as they wanted to be. “Let go of me so I can kiss Emmaline, and then I want to know everything that’s happening.”
The three of them had gone through the entire mansion, and only Emmaline had found anything to criticize. But both Jeff and Julie had long since realized that no matter what they did, the housekeeping staff would never come up to Emmaline’s standards. Finally, when her sharp eyes found a single smudge on one of the brass sconces in the new dining room in the east wing that had been completed the winter before, Jeff had had enough. “Why don’t we all go out and inspect your house?” he suggested, and Emmaline glared at him as if he were still eight years old.
“This ain’t no shack behind Wither’s Pond,” she observed. “And you ain’t so grown up I can’t give you a good spanking, either!”
Finally the three of them had retreated to the third floor of the original house, where an apartment had been built in the space that had once been the ballroom. They settled themselves on the balcony outside the open French doors and gazed out over the island, silently taking in all the changes that had occurred over the last decade.
“It’s not like it was when we first came here, is it?” Julie finally asked after Emmaline had gone inside to leave them alone. Her voice was quiet, and trembling slightly as she remembered those first weeks on the island.
Jeff shuddered as the old memories stirred in him, then shook his head. “And the more it changes, the better I like it.” He turned to face his sister. “Are you sorry we stayed?”
Julie was silent for a moment. For her, coming back to the house had been even worse than for Jeff. She hadn’t been able to walk at all for the first few months, and the only thing that had made it even slightly bearable was that Emmaline had set up a bed for her in the little room off the kitchen, so that even at night she was never alone.
Whenever she awoke at night from the dreams, Emmaline was always there, already, awake, willing to stay up with her all night if necessary, often bringing Jeff down, too, the three of them sitting up as she and Jeff fought the fears the darkness always seemed to bring. But slowly her wounds had healed, and as she began to learn to walk again—Emmaline spending endless hours exercising and massaging her legs—the scars in her mind began to heal over too. “No,” she said at last. “Emmaline was right. If we hadn’t come back, we probably wouldn’t ever have gotten over what happened.”
“Have you gotten over it?” Jeff asked pointedly.
Julie’s eyes clouded for a moment and she bit her lip. “I—I don’t know,” she confessed. “Can anyone really ever get over something like that?” Then she brightened. “I’ve started dancing again. Did I tell you?”
Jeff shook his head.
“Oh, it’s not much. But there’s an exercise bar in the gym in the golf club, and one day when I was down there, I just couldn’t resist.” She grinned ruefully. “I’m never going to play Lincoln Center, but I enjoy it.” Then her eyes met Jeff’s. “I’m even thinking of starting to teach.”
A cold finger reached out of the warm evening and touched Jeff’s spine.
Jeff woke up in the darkness of the warm spring night, uncertain about what had disturbed his sleep. He lay in bed for a few
minutes, listening to the quiet of the house. It had to be after two, for there was no music drifting up from the lounge and no laughter from the garden around the swimming pool that now lay behind the building. And yet, very dimly, barely audible above the chirpings of the frogs and insects, he could hear something.
A tinkling sound, like a music box.
He got out of bed, slipping his arms into the sleeves of a light robe, and stepped out onto the balcony.
Moonlight glimmered on the smooth surface of the sea, and he could hear the gentle wash of waves against the beach.
And the melody of the music box was louder.
Almost against his will he turned to gaze down into the family cemetery, surrounded now by a low wrought-iron fence, protected by a locked gate from the wanderings of the hotel’s guests. For a moment he saw nothing, but then his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw once more the pale, ghostly figure he hadn’t seen in more than a decade.
But this time, he knew, it was not the ghostly image of his grandmother, or even of his aunt.
He watched sadly, his eyes filling with tears, as his sister moved stiffly around the marble crypt in which her ancestors were interred.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN SAUL is the author of twenty-seven novels, each a million-copy-plus national bestseller: Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury, When the Wind Blows, The God Project, Nathaniel, Brainchild, Hellfire, The Unwanted, The Unloved, Creature, Sleepwalk, Second Child, Darkness, Shadows, Black Lightning, The Homing, Guardian, The Presence, The Right Hand of Evil, and The Blackstone Chronicles. John Saul lives in Seattle, Washington.
ENTER THE TERRIFYING WORLD OF JOHN SAUL
A scream shatters the peaceful night of a sleepy town, a mysterious stranger awakens to seek vengeance.… Once again, with expert, chillingly demonic skill, John Saul draws the reader into his world of utter fear. The author of countless novels of psychological and supernatural suspense—all million copy New York Times bestsellers—John Saul is unequaled in his power to weave the haunted past and the troubled present into a web of pure, cold terror.
THE GOD PROJECT
Something is happening to the children of Eastbury, Massachusetts … something that strikes at the heart of every parent’s darkest fears. For Sally Montgomery, the grief over the sudden death of her infant daughter is only the beginning. For Lucy Corliss, her son Randy is her life. Then one day, Randy doesn’t come home. And the terror begins …
A horn honked, pulling Randy out of his reverie, and he realized he was alone on the block. He looked at the watch his father had given him for his ninth birthday. It was nearly eight thirty. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late for school. Then he heard a voice calling to him.
“Randy! Randy Corliss!”
A blue car, a car he didn’t recognize, was standing by the curb. A woman was smiling at him from the driver’s seat. He approached the car hesitantly, clutching his lunch box.
“Hi, Randy,” the woman said.
“Who are you?” Randy stood back from the car, remembering his mother’s warnings about never talking to strangers.
“My name’s Miss Bowen. Louise Bowen. I came to get you.”
“Get me?” Randy asked. “Why?”
“For your father,” the woman said. Randy’s heart beat faster. His father? His father had sent this woman? Was it really going to happen, finally? “He wanted me to pick you up at home,” he heard the woman say, “but I was late. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Randy said. He moved closer to the car. “Are you taking me to Daddy’s house?”
The woman reached across and pushed the passenger door open. “In a little while,” she promised. “Get in.”
Randy knew he shouldn’t get in the car, knew he should turn around and run to the nearest house, looking for help. It was things like this—strangers offering to give you a ride—that his mother had talked to him about ever since he was a little boy.
But this was different. This was a friend of his father’s. Her brown eyes were twinkling at him, and her smile made him feel like she was sharing an adventure with him. He made up his mind and got into the car, pulling the door closed behind him. The car moved away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” Randy asked.
Louise Bowen glanced over at the boy sitting expectantly on the seat beside her. He was every bit as attractive as the pictures she had been shown, his eyes almost green, with dark, wavy hair framing his pugnacious, snub-nosed face. His body was sturdy, and though she was a stranger to him, he didn’t seem to be the least bit frightened of her. Instinctively, Louise liked Randy Corliss.
“We’re going to your new school.”
Randy frowned. New school? If he was going to a new school, why wasn’t his father taking him? The woman seemed to hear him, even though he hadn’t spoken out loud.
“You’ll see your father very soon. But for a few days, until he gets everything worked out with your mother, you’ll be staying at the school. You’ll like it there,” she promised. “It’s a special school, just for little boys like you, and you’ll have lots of new friends. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
Randy nodded uncertainly, no longer sure he should have gotten in the car. Still, when he thought about it, it made sense. His father had told him there would be lots of problems when the time came for him to move away from his mother’s. And his father had told him he would be going to a new school. And today was the day.
Randy settled down in the seat and glanced out the window. They were heading out of Eastbury on the road toward Langston. That was where his father lived, so everything was all right.
Except that it didn’t quite feel all right. Deep inside, Randy had a strange sense of something being very wrong.
For two very different families haunted by very similar fears, THE GOD PROJECT has only just begun to work its lethal conspiracy of silence and fear. And for the reader, John Saul has produced a mind-numbing tale of evil unchecked.
NATHANIEL
Prairie Bend: brilliant summers amid golden fields, killing winters of razorlike cold. A peaceful, neighborly village, darkened by legends of death … legends of Nathaniel. Some residents say he is simply a folk tale, others swear he is a terrifying spirit. And soon—very soon—some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives …
Shivering, Michael set himself a destination now and began walking along the edges of the pastures, the woods on his right, climbing each fence as he came to it. Sooner than he would have expected, the woods curved away to the right, following the course of the river as it deviated from its southeastern flow to curl around the village. Ahead of him he could see the scattered twinkling lights of Prairie Bend. For a moment, he considered going into the village, but then, as he looked off to the southeast, he changed his mind, for there, seeming almost to glow in the moonlight, was the hulking shape of Findley’s barn.
That, Michael knew, was where he was going.
He cut diagonally across the field, then darted across the deserted highway and into another field. He moved quickly now, feeling exposed in the emptiness with the full moon shining down on him. Ten minutes later he had crossed the field and come once more to the highway, this time as it emerged from the village. Across the street, he could see Ben Findley’s driveway and, at its end, the little house, and the barn.
He considered trying to go down the driveway and around the house, but quickly abandoned the idea. A light showed dimly from behind a curtained window, and he had a sudden vision of old man Findley, his gun cradled in his arms, standing in silhouette at the front door.
His progress slowed as he plunged into the weed-choked pastures that lay between the house and the river, but he was determined to stay away from the fence separating Findley’s property from their own until the old man’s barn could conceal him from the same man’s prying eyes. It wasn’t until he was near the river that he finally felt safe enough to slip between the
strands of barbed wire that fenced off the Findley property and begin doubling back toward the barn that had become his goal.
He could feel it now, feel the strange sense of familiarity he had felt that afternoon, only it was stronger here, pulling him forward through the night. He didn’t try to resist it, though there was something vaguely frightening about it. Frightening but exciting. There was a sense of discovery, almost a sense of memory. And his headache, the throbbing pain that had been with him all evening, was gone.
He came up to the barn and paused. There should be a door just around the corner, a door with a bar on it. He didn’t understand how he knew it was there, for he’d never seen that side of the barn, but he knew.
Around the corner, just as he knew it would be, he found the door, held securely shut by a heavy wooden beam resting in a pair of wrought-iron brackets. Without hesitation, Michael lifted the bar out of its brackets and propped it carefully against the wall. As he pulled the door open, no squeaking hinges betrayed his presence. Though the barn was nearly pitch dark inside, it wasn’t the kind of eerie darkness the woods by the river had held, at least not for Michael. For Michael, it was an inviting darkness.
He stepped into the barn.
He waited, half expectantly, as the darkness seeped into him, enveloping him within its folds. And then something reached out of the darkness and touched him.
Nathaniel’s call to Michael Hall, who has just lost his father in a tragic accident, draws the boy further into the barn and under his spell. There—and beyond—Michael will faithfully follow Nathaniel’s voice to the edge of terror.
BRAINCHILD
One hundred years ago in La Paloma a terrible deed was done, and a cry for vengeance pierced the night. Now, that evil still lives, and that vengeance waits … waits for Alex Lonsdale, one of the most popular boys in La Paloma. Because horrible things can happen—even to nice kids like Alex …
