by Hazel Holmes
When Sarah felt a little better, she found the redhead at the door and then followed her upstairs, doing her best to stay upright on the upward spiral path.
“I won’t be able to go inside with you once we’re upstairs,” the ghost said, keeping a few feet of distance between the two of them.
“Why?” Sarah asked, reaching for the rail as another bout of dizziness struck her. When her hand went straight through the wood, she nearly tumbled downward before quickly correcting herself.
Redhead frowned. “It’s like the door is locked, and whatever… Happened inside—” She stopped abruptly and then turned around. “The thing that killed me, it doesn’t want me to see it. And since I’m living in its house, I’m forced to follow its rules.”
Once the pair passed through the door on the fifth floor, Redhead allowed Sarah to walk ahead, and when they reached the halfway point, she stopped completely. Sarah looked back at the girl, whose gaze was locked on the door at the end of the hall.
“You don’t have to listen to it,” Sarah said. “It doesn’t have to control everything you do.”
Redhead’s mouth went slack, and she gently shook her head. “No, whatever’s on the other side of that door—” She swallowed. “I just can’t see.”
Sarah stepped closer. “Show it that you’re not afraid. Show it that it can’t frighten you.”
The sunlight breaking through the window at the end of the hall dimmed, and Redhead floated backward, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Sarah.” Her voice trembled with fear, and she looked at Sarah one last time before disappearing through the door. “Good luck.”
And just like that, she was gone, leaving Sarah alone in the hallway. She turned to face the end of the hall, the light fading as if it were being sucked from the sky itself.
The darkness swallowed shadows from the furniture and paintings as Sarah neared the door. She reached out her hand and her heart hammered in her chest. The closer she drew to crossing the barrier, the louder the noises grew on the other side.
They were muffled at first, but then they started to sound like sobbing, and just before her face went through the door, she was greeted with a shrieking cry of pain.
“AHHHHH!”
It was the redhead, except she was in bed, sheets up to her chest and wearing the nightgown that Sarah had seen her floating around in. And much like the ghost’s, her living cheeks were a pale white, the color gone from her lips. But her hair was even more striking in person, the red so vibrant against the white of her skin and nightgown that it looked to be on fire.
Two people were in the room with her, a man on the left side of the bed and a woman on the right. At first glance, Sarah would have thought it was the girl’s mother and father, but then the man removed a stethoscope from a briefcase, and she noticed the long white coat. He was a doctor.
“Mary, you need to keep still,” the doctor said.
But the expressions of pain etched on redheaded woman’s face shifted and squirmed with the rest of her.
“Keep her still!” The doctor barked the order across the bed to the woman, who sprang into action, grabbing the girl by the shoulders and pinning her back into the pillows.
“Mamma, make it stop!” Redhead—Mary—screamed, bucking her hips up and kicking her legs while her mother kept her upper body pinned to the sheets.
“We’re trying, but you have to try and keep still!” The mother had a frantic anger to her words, the struggle of trying to maintain empathy while giving orders. And Sarah couldn’t help but notice how familiar the tone sounded. The mother turned back to the doctor, her daughter continuing to flail. “Isn’t there something you can give her?”
“I don’t even know what’s wrong with her.” The doctor placed the stethoscope against the girl’s chest and shook his head. “Her heart is racing. Mary, you need to calm down.”
Sarah inched toward the bed, wanting a closer look, as the doctor and the mother continued to try and calm her down, and Sarah noticed that the girl was covered from the neck down, even wearing gloves. As she stared at the girl, she finally saw the first frosted scale appear on her neck.
“Oh my god,” the mother said. She released her daughter and lunged across the bed and gripped the doctor by the throat. “Do something!”
But the doctor only shrugged, lifting his hands impotently in self-defense. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I’m sorry.”
“Mother!” the redhead shrieked, stretching out her hand, which her mother quickly took. “I can feel it! I can feel all of it!” She yanked her mother closer to her face, the pair only inches apart, the frosted blue scales crawling up the girl’s cheeks. “I’m so scared.”
The mother cupped the scales forming around her daughter’s face, her voice thick with grief. “It’s okay, baby, everything is going to be okay. I’ll bring you back, okay? I’ll find a way to bring you back!”
“Mamma?” Mary’s eyes were covered, and the scales consumed the rest of her face as she belted out another piercing scream before the ice shattered into thousands of icy shards.
The doctor retreated against the wall, his cheeks ghostly pale, and the mother had her hands pressed into the sheets on the mattress.
“Iris?” the doctor asked, his voice sheepish as he kept his distance against the wall.
And then Sarah saw it as Iris fisted a handful of the sheets and slowly turned her head toward the doctor, her cheeks glowing a bright red. It was that same expression of disdain with which Iris had greeted Sarah upon her arrival to Bell.
“Get out,” Iris answered, her voice a seething whisper.
The doctor pressed himself harder against the wall and started to shake, but he remained glued to the spot, frozen by fear and a mother’s wrath.
“GET OUT!” Iris roared the order, and the doctor snapped into action, quickly grabbing his bag. He sprinted past Sarah and then out into the living room, his footsteps disappearing down the hall.
With the doctor gone, it was just Sarah and Iris alone in the room, and Iris returned her gaze to the bed where her daughter had just been. Sarah walked around to the other side of the bed so she could get a better look at Iris’s face.
The old woman that Sarah had known had yet to arrive, but the pain and anger and bitterness were evident in her expression.
“You did this,” Iris said, again producing that seething whisper. She lifted her face toward the ceiling and then stomped around the room, shaking her fists in the air. “I don’t care how long it takes, and I don’t care what I have to do, but I will get my daughter back from you.” Her cheeks reddened, and that first shade of bitterness spread over her face. “Do you hear me?”
Iris ended the rant with a heavy stamp of her foot, and in the same motion, Sarah felt a tug at her chest that yanked her from the room and thrust her back outside as she collapsed to her hands and knees.
Sarah gasped for air, like she’d been choking. She hacked and coughed, and the pain in her head forced her to her side, but it was also accompanied by a queasiness in her stomach.
Bile crawled up her throat, and Sarah managed to turn her head just in time to vomit across the frozen ground. She heaved two more times before it stopped, and even then her stomach remained uneasy. She rolled to her back, too tired to put any distance between herself and the stench of her dissolved dinner from the day before.
“You saw me.”
Sarah spun around, finding Mary. “You’re Iris’s daughter.”
Mary scrunched her face in confusion as if Sarah had just spoken another language. “I think… I know that name.” She nodded but still looked confused. “But I can’t—” She shut her eyes hard, shaking her head, and then terror spread across her face. “I remember. The evil, consuming me.” She shivered, and the red in her hair started to fade. “It’s still calling me.” She looked at Sarah. “My mother. She can help you.”
“How?” Sarah asked.
“Tell her—GAH.” Mary winced, her body trembling. She took a few br
eaths and regained her composure. “Tell her that the moon still shines.” Another spat of pain crippled Mary, and in a panicked frenzy she gripped Sarah by the shoulders, her fingernails like ice picks digging into Sarah’s flesh. “Help me!”
Sarah winced. “Mary, you’re hurting me.”
But Mary didn’t let up the pressure; in fact, she pressed harder. “You have to help me!” she screamed, and Sarah shut her eyes, the noise more painful than the nails digging into her skin, and then Mary was gone.
Sarah spun around, but saw nothing but the night air, then felt a warm drizzle run from her nose. She swiped at her upper lip, and when she examined it under the moonlight, she found blood. She was rubbing it between her fingers when a flash of twirling red and blue lights through the trees caught her attention.
Sarah sprinted toward it and burst through the tree line to find the town of Bell. She spotted Dell’s cruiser as it screeched to a stop outside of Pat’s Tavern, and she smiled.
“Dell!” Sarah ran to him, waving her arms, moving her legs as fast as they would carry her, and the only sound from their greeting was the light smack of their bodies as they embraced. Sarah clung tight, holding on a bit longer than she intended, and it was Dell who had to initiate the break. He looked her up and down, checking to see if she was injured.
“I saw the wreck and looked for you, but Brent—”
The only thing she could focus on was the icy clouds that formed close to his lips with every breath. “Where is he?” Sarah asked, the rush of fear returning at the mention of his name.
“It’s fine.” Dell turned around, pointing to the back of the squad car. “He’s in cuffs and not going anywhere anytime soon.”
It was hard for Sarah to see him through the tinted glass, but she was able to see the outline of his figure, those sloped shoulders and face made all the more ominous by the fact that she could only see his silhouette.
And then, like a lightning strike, Sarah remembered why Dell had left in the first place. She hopped up, grabbing hold of his arms in the same motion, her eyes growing as big as saucers. “The doctor! Did you—”
Sarah cut herself off after the expression formed on Dell’s face, and when he shook his head, all the hope she had allowed herself to feel on the way through the woods, that turning point that she was so desperate to embrace, completely shattered.
“He didn’t know how to cure her, did he?” Sarah asked, still keeping her hold on Dell’s arms, though now it was just to keep her knees from buckling.
“No,” Dell answered, looking past her toward the house. “He said that Iris cured herself.”
Sarah finally released Dell, spinning around and shuffling a few paces toward the Bell mansion high on the hill, her eyes falling on the one window in which a light flickered to life.
Dell appeared on her right-hand side, looking at her now instead of the house. “Sarah, going back up there is a gamble. If we can wait until I can get a few highway troopers up here, just so there are more witnesses, I think that’s the safest way to go.” He gestured back to the cruiser with his thumb. “We wait for them to back us up, and then we go in and find the cure.”
“You really think she’s just going to hand it over like that?” Sarah asked. “We both know that she’s been involved with whatever’s happening and has been involved for a very long time.” She shook her head. “There isn’t any amount of backup or people that are going to stop that.” She placed her hand on her left leg, squeezing it gently. “And if we bring more people into this, I think it’s only going to increase the likelihood of more casualties. We need to go inside, and we need to go in quickly.”
And as if whatever demon entity was causing all of this trouble had heard her, the pain in her leg spiked. She collapsed to the ground, clutching at the leg, eyes shut, but still able to see. The vision took her inside the house, up to the fifth floor, back into that room. Iris was there, sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in a white gown, that perfectly combed white hair flowing down her back. She looked tired and weak and disarmed.
She didn’t notice Sarah at first, but then she turned her head slowly and smiled. “Come inside, dear, and warm yourself. It’ll be over quickly.”
Sarah gasped, suddenly thrust from the vision back onto the road with Dell staring down at her, holding her hand to his chest.
“Sarah? Are you all right?” Dell asked.
A tug in her chest sucked her backward, and the last thing she saw before darkness descended upon her was Dell reaching out, his mouth opening in a scream, though she couldn’t hear anything. Not even her own screams.
75
The darkness lingered for a while, and Sarah felt as if she was floating, suspended between the world she had been taken from and whatever world she was being transported to. And then, just as quickly and mysteriously as the darkness had descended over her, it was lifted.
Sarah was back in the Bell mansion, on the fifth floor, in Allister Bell’s room. And just like she’s seen in her vision before she was pulled in, Iris sat on the bed, dressed in that white gown that ran all the way to her ankles, and matched the color of the sheets she sat on.
“I had you pegged the moment you walked into town.” Iris stared at the wall, smiling, not yet acknowledging Sarah’s presence, twirling the wooden sphere that dangled from her necklace between her fingers. “A little girl from the big city, on the run from a past that she desperately wanted to forget, looking for a place to start fresh, to start over.”
Iris turned, chuckling, and finally looked at Sarah. “I’ve been on this earth for eighty-seven years, Sarah. And I can tell you from my experience that you can never start over. You can never start fresh, because the past remains imprinted on you like dirty fingerprints that never wash off.”
“I know about the witch,” Sarah said, still keeping her distance. “I know about the others that you’ve pulled into this mess, but it’s all over.” She swallowed, the confidence she’d felt before waning. “The police know, and they’re on their way. It’s over, Iris. You’ve lost.”
Iris stood and walked to the end of the bed. She dropped her gaze to Sarah’s leg and then smiled. “I’m sure it’s spread to most of your body by now.” She squinted, frowning. “I’m sure the voices have told you all sorts of things.” She raised her eyebrows. “That feeling never goes away, though some of the scars remain.” Iris lifted the hem of her gown, exposing scars in the same shape of the pattern of scales that were currently consuming Sarah’s leg.
Sarah shook her head. “Why? I saw what happened with your family. I know all of the Bells have died. So why are you helping that thing kill people? How can you just lead someone to slaughter?”
“Because she made a deal with the devil.”
When Sarah spun around, her senses numbed, and her jaw dropped in disbelief. “Pat?”
Pat spread his arms wide, that same warm grin on display that had first greeted her when she’d arrived in the town alone and afraid. The deeper he penetrated into the room, the larger he seemed to grow. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Sarah.” He laughed, rubbing his hands together slowly.
“I thought you were—”
“Dead?” Pat shook his head, slowly walking around the room, examining it as if he’d been here before, gently running his fingertips over the comforter on the bed and then along the baseboard at the end of the bed frame. “It’ll take more than a bullet in the gut to kill me. Something more…” He swayed side to side. “Holy.” He smiled.
Sarah turned her attention back to Iris, who had kept her head down the entire time. Sarah noticed that the old woman was trembling, silent tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping onto the hardwood.
“Don’t mind her,” Pat said. “We have a bit of a history with one another.” He casually walked over to her and pulled back the bangs that hid her face. “I’m afraid it’s not a very pleasant one though.”
Iris turned away, but Pat caught her chin with his right hand and pulled it back toward
him.
“This should be a happy day for you,” Pat said. “Why the tears?”
“Just keep your end of the bargain. You get her, you get your revelation, and I get my daughter back.”
Pat laughed and released Iris, who retreated toward the door but didn’t leave. “Oh, you’ll get much more than that, my dear. Everyone will.” He lifted his hands triumphantly into the air. “I have waited centuries for this day, and it tastes just as sweet as I thought it would.” He closed his eyes and ran his tongue over his lips.
But Sarah’s confused and surprised gaze hadn’t disappeared. “You were a part of this? But… why did you help me?”
“I wasn’t just a part of this, sweetheart. I started it all!” Pat laughed, swinging his hips forward before leaning against the bedpost for support. “That witch that made a pact with Allister Bell over one hundred and fifty years ago?” He spread his arms wide, stretching that smile even wider.
“You?” Sarah asked.
“In the flesh,” Pat answered and then looked down at his form. “Well, not exactly. But this body has served its purpose over the past few decades.” He looked up. “I try on something new every now and again, but now that the jig is up, I suppose I don’t have to put on the front anymore, do I?”
Pat suddenly shrank, the clothes he wore growing smaller as his limbs retracted, the bones just beneath the surface of his skin shifting and reshaping themselves. The features along his face morphed and grew more slender. His hair lengthened, switching from the salt-and-pepper gray to a silky jet black. Eventually the clothes slid right off, and once it was all said and done, there was nothing save a naked woman standing in front of Sarah, wavy locks of hair cascading down her shoulders and clashing against her porcelain skin.
She smiled, wrinkling her nose as she sauntered toward Sarah. “I’ve always been vain, ever since I was little, but damn, do I love this body.” She glanced down at herself, running her hands up and down her smooth skin, and then slightly tilted her head up toward Sarah. One eye was covered by her bangs, while the other one stared at Sarah seductively, the hazel color so bright it was almost amber. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?”
