“Don’t go in there,” she pleaded, her voice sounding like a child’s in her own ears. “Please, please, please.”
“Samantha, let go,” Ed said. “What’s wrong with you?”
And then, from somewhere deep inside the house they heard a bloodcurdling scream. Ed and Oliver drew their weapons simultaneously and lunged forward.
Samantha grabbed the collar of Oliver’s shirt and spun him, throwing him down the steps. He landed at the bottom on one knee with a grunt of pain. “Get out of here!” she shouted. “Go! Now!”
He scrambled to his feet and ran around the car and got into the driver’s seat. He hesitated and she pulled her weapon. “We’ll call when it’s safe to come back.”
He gunned the car away from the curb while Ed stood gaping at her. “Stay behind me and do everything I tell you,” she said. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage so hard that she winced with every beat. It was a trap. She knew it, but she wouldn’t be able to stop Ed from going in if he thought someone was in trouble.
She stepped across the threshold and a blast of air rushed past her. Invisible hands plucked at her shirt as though trying to pull her back outside. She pushed her way through the wind until she was standing in the middle of the foyer.
“You search down here. I’ll go upstairs,” Ed said.
“No. If there’s anyone here, they’re in the basement. Stay right behind me.”
“Sam—”
“Shut up and do as you’re told.”
The house caught her words and they echoed around her, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes in her own voice and sometimes in the voices of others. She heard women, a man, and children repeating her words. She felt dizzy, but she bit the inside of her cheek to have something tangible to focus on and it helped her push through the disorientation.
She turned around and slapped Ed across the face as hard as she could. He yelped in pain and surprise and the house caught that and sent it around the room as well.
“Focus on the pain, no matter what.”
She headed for the kitchen. She could hear the floor creaking behind her as Ed followed. Beneath her steps the floorboards were silent, as they had been designed to be. Only those who had never been welcomed into the home caused the wood to groan a warning to the occupants.
They walked into the kitchen and the outline of a woman passed before the window onto the backyard. She turned to look at them and tears streaked down her cheeks.
“Hey!” Ed shouted.
“It’s a ghost, Ed. Ignore it,” Samantha hissed. The image disappeared, much like a soap bubble bursting.
“Are you friggin’ kidding me?”
“Shut up!”
She crossed to the door to the basement and threw it open. She flipped the switch but was not surprised that there was no electricity. The darkness beneath was complete and heavy.
“We need flashlights,” Ed whispered.
Without taking her eyes from the doorway, Samantha opened the kitchen drawer nearest her and pulled out two candles and a box of matches. “Light them.”
She knew he wanted to protest, could feel it, but he didn’t. Instead he handed her a lit candle and she tilted it slightly so the wax wouldn’t run over her fingers as it dripped.
She stepped forward into the darkness and began to descend the staircase. The light from the candle sent grotesque shadows dancing over the ceiling and walls, but she ignored them, half shutting her eyes and taking the stairs more from memory than sight.
As she continued downward more sounds assailed her. She heard chanting, wailing, laughter, screams, all mixed together. She bit down harder on her cheek and gradually the sounds faded.
She reached the floor of the basement and stepped away from the staircase. A spectral child ran up it and straight through Ed, almost causing him to fall. He caught himself on the railing, then made it down the rest of the way. The smell of blood filled Samantha’s nostrils as memories came pouring back over her.
She was standing in a circle, cutting her arms, and there was so much blood, but not enough to save her, not enough to make the circle complete.
It’s not real; none of it’s real, she told herself over and over as she stepped slowly into the room, lifting her candle high. What I’m seeing, what I’m hearing, all of it is echoes only.
She took one more step and realized that while everything else she had seen and heard might be only phantoms, the pool of blood on the floor was not.
It can’t still be here, not fresh, not glistening as though it was spilled moments ago!
She bit the inside of her cheek harder until she tasted blood, but it didn’t make the vision go away. She took three steps forward until the light from her candle showed her the source. A young woman in a white gown was on the floor, her eyes wide-open in death. It was her blood that was rippling away from Samantha’s shoes as she stepped through it.
With a shout of dismay Ed rushed forward. “I knew I heard someone scream. We should have come faster.”
“It was her scream you heard, but she’s been dead for at least an hour,” Samantha said, wishing that it wasn’t true.
“But the blood, it’s so fresh. And the scream. That was only five minutes ago.”
“Don’t let it fool you. She was dead long before we got here. Call it in.”
Ed pulled his cell out of his pocket and pushed a button. He waited a moment and then held the candle up to it. “No service.”
Need to leave. She heard the words as clearly as though Ed had spoken them.
“Need to leave,” Samantha echoed, turning back toward the stairs.
Need to leave.
Need to leave.
“Something touched me!” Ed shouted.
“Need to leave!”
The door at the top of the staircase slammed shut and wind whooshed by her, picking the hair up off her neck. It snuffed the candles, plunging them into darkness.
“What was that?”
Samantha could hear the panic in Ed’s voice. It was nearly drowned out, though, by the other voices that were growing louder.
Going to die.
Going to die.
“Going to die,” she whispered, her fear choking off her voice.
5
“What’s happening?” Samantha heard Ed shout over the voices that surrounded her, the ones that bespoke their death. The harder she bit the inside of her cheek, the louder the voices became until she could feel blood oozing out between her lips.
I’m feeding them with the blood.
“Ed, listen to me—do exactly as I say!”
“Anything! Just tell me what to do,” he begged.
“Do you still have the matches? Can you relight your candle?”
She saw a tiny flame as he lit a match. It burned out and was replaced by another and then another until he was swearing steadily.
“What is it?”
“I’m out of matches and none of them would light the candle.”
She took a deep breath. They had been snuffed by magic and only magic would light them again. She wished she could teach him a spell to say to light the candle, but with true magic it wasn’t about the words but about the spirit and the intent of the practitioner. It couldn’t come from him. It can come only from me.
“No!”
“What?” he asked, misunderstanding her outburst.
“We will find another way,” she said aloud, mustering every ounce of defiance she had left.
Laughter filled the room, creaking and chortling and swirling around her and through her until she thought it might be coming from her.
“What do you hear?” she asked Ed.
“A woman screaming.”
He heard something different from what she did. To Ed a woman screaming was terrifying. To her the laughter was far worse. It was playing on their own worst fears, which meant there was no active entity behind it, just a booby trap left for the unfortunate intruder.
“Take a deep breath,” sh
e ordered him, trying to do the same herself. “It’s meant to scare us, but there’s no one else here.”
“Then what’s making that sound? Some kind of speaker system?”
“I’ll explain it to you once we’re out of here.”
Out of here, out of here, the voices mocked and the laughter kept time.
Fight back; you know how, a small voice whispered inside her mind.
“We don’t need the light,” she said out loud. “The stairs out of here are to my right about five feet away. And you were what, closer than that to me?”
“Yeah. You’re in front of me and the stairs are behind me.”
“I’m going to try to touch you,” she said to warn him and took a step in the direction she remembered the stairs being. She didn’t trust the sound of his voice, as the room caught it and echoed it round and round. It was designed to make sound do strange things and she couldn’t believe it.
Samantha stepped slowly, carefully, feeling her way with hands and feet and praying she didn’t trip over something in the dark. She stretched out her fingers toward where she thought Ed was standing. Something wet and cold brushed across them and she forced herself not to jerk away.
No! The word rang in her ears, so loud it made them buzz and ache. She pushed forward, emboldened by the sound until her fingers brushed the cloth of Ed’s jacket.
She felt him shy away at her touch despite her warning, and she lunged forward and grabbed his shoulder. She could feel the muscles coiled and tense beneath her fingers and for a moment she thought he was going to turn on her.
“It’s me,” she said.
“Let’s get out of here, please,” he begged.
Keeping hold of his shoulder, she slid forward, feeling for the stairs. You can do this. How many times did you find your way in the dark as a child? She took a deep breath and focused all her faculties on the task at hand. She blocked out the voices, the chill air, everything that wasn’t Ed or the staircase.
Her left foot bumped up against the bottom step and she yanked Ed forward, almost pulling him off his feet. She kept her hand on his shoulder as they made their way up the stairs. As they neared the top she began to move faster, aware that the danger was increasing even as they came closer to escaping the horrors below.
Ed came to a halt so suddenly that she staggered and her foot slipped on the stair. She let go of his shoulder to grab at the railing as she crashed to her knees.
“Listen. She’s still alive. We have to go back for her,” Ed said.
She struggled to her feet and grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him up another stairstep. “I promise you that she’s dead.”
He pulled back against her and she slapped him again as hard as she could. “Ed, focus on the pain. Remember what I said. And if you have ever trusted me, you’ve got to do it now and move!”
She didn’t know if it was the pain from the slap or what she had said, but something seemed to sink in and Ed came willingly with her up the last six steps. She grabbed the doorknob, but was not surprised when it wouldn’t turn. She threw her shoulder against the door, but it didn’t give even an inch. She thought of the gun she was carrying, but she knew that she would be just as likely to injure one of them if she used it. Nothing in the basement was as it seemed and she couldn’t risk introducing flying bullets into the equation.
Ed pressed against her, unnatural sounds of fear emanating from him. If he could have, he would have run over her to get out the door. His shirt where she gripped it was soaked with sweat and the stench of fear coming off him was starting to be more overwhelming than the voices that screamed that they were going to die. She slammed her shoulder into the door once more and it still didn’t budge.
Then, below them in the darkness she heard the sound of nails clicking and scratching on concrete. Something big began to climb the stairs behind them, its hot breath wafting ahead of it.
“No!” Samantha heard herself screaming.
She grabbed the doorknob again and a surge of energy flashed through her fingers as she shouted, “Patefacio!”
The door unlocked at her command and she shoved it open, Ed following with a rush. She slammed the door shut behind them and they raced together to the street. On the porch Samantha spun, hands raised defensively as she stared at the open front door and waited for whatever might be coming after them.
She stared, every nerve alive and quivering as beside her she heard Ed calling for backup. The hair on the back of her neck rose as something stopped just inside the front door and stared out at her. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it and she could hear the heavy breathing of the creature that waited there, daring her to make a move.
With a flick of her wrist she caused the door to slam shut in its face and then she collapsed to the sidewalk, sobbing.
Half an hour later she and Ed sat on the curb as a dozen officers from the Salem and Boston police departments swarmed all over the house. She had stopped crying but was still shaking. She noticed that Ed also looked the worse for wear, with an ashen face, vacant eyes, and blood-covered shoes. Fortunately Oliver had listened to her, and he and Grant had whisked Katie away from the scene quickly and had taken her to a different precinct to wait for them while reporters continued to arrive at their own precinct.
After a while an officer from the Salem department approached them. He had sandy blond hair and his name tag read WESLEY. “Sir, ma’am, we’ve set up some portable lights down in the basement at the crime scene. Would you care to come down? We’d like your opinion on whether this might be linked to the murders in Boston.”
Before the others had arrived she had used a few well-chosen words to banish the beast that had growled and clawed at the front door, the barrier it could not cross. Shame still filled her, but she had been able to think of no other way to dispel the creature and the danger it represented. After that, many of the barriers and protective spells guarding the house had fallen like dust. The barriers were magic; that’s all they were, mostly designed to protect the house and its former inhabitants from intruders. Some, like the floorboards that creaked beneath Ed’s weight but not hers, were like an alert system. Others, like the sounds they had each heard in the basement, were designed to scare those who did not belong there. The creature had been created to kill those who made it too far into the house and proved resistant to the other spells.
Ed stood up shakily, but Samantha stayed put. It was safe to go inside now. Even if a few barriers remained, they would be of the kind designed to work on the psyches of two or three people, not a dozen. Safety in numbers was an old concept, as old as magic itself. Still, she wasn’t going to set foot back in that basement, even if they had managed to drive away all the shadows they thought resided there with all the portable lights in Salem. Some shadows would never leave.
Ed looked down at her, but she shook her head slightly. He didn’t argue; he simply trudged into the house after the officer. She knew he didn’t want to go, but he was also still not sure what all had happened. If he knew how close they had really come to dying, he would have stayed on the curb with her and looked at photos later.
She sighed as she let her head drop into her hands. The truth was, even if he realized it, he would probably still go. He needed to see for himself that the girl was long dead and that there really had been no way for him to save her. His need to save others was the greatest thing that drove him, was what gave him the strength to go back into that basement. And I’m still just trying to save myself, she realized.
So she waited outside while her partner explored the depths of the house and examined the crime scene. She didn’t need to see it. Enough of it had been burned into her brain that she would not soon forget. After a while she realized that it had been a long time since Ed had gone back inside. Fear touched her and she turned to look at the house behind her.
It was a gray house, older than those around it by at least a half century. It was large, though. The windows in the attic stared down at
her like unblinking eyes and the maw of the beast gaped open. She blinked, forcing herself to see the door as it actually was and not as what it meant to her.
Could she have missed something? Had there been other spells, traps that even now could be killing the officers inside the house? She shook her head forcefully. If that were the case there would be screaming, some whisper of sound. She concentrated, focusing on shutting out all the other sounds around her until she could hear two officers on the main floor talking about meeting at Red’s Sandwich Shop the next morning for breakfast.
Finally Ed rejoined her outside and from the look on his face she knew that he had even more questions than when he had gone inside.
“The murders are linked,” she said quietly.
“I’m inclined to agree with you. She appears to fit the profile. No piercings, Star of David on a chain around her neck. The killer must have known we were coming, didn’t have time to stage the body somewhere maybe,” he muttered before sitting down next to her on the curb. “Maybe that’s why there was blood this time. You already knew that, though, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t find anything else down there—no speakers, no animals, nothing to explain anything. I searched that basement from top to bottom.”
“Did you tell anyone what you were looking for?”
“No. That would mean telling them what happened down there when I still don’t know myself.”
She nodded, staring at his bloodstained shoes and not trusting herself to look at him.
“They don’t need us right now. Let’s get out of here,” he said.
They found a Boston officer who was free to drive them back. They were almost to the precinct when Ed had him drop them off at Jake’s Eats instead. Samantha’s car was still parked on the street and she moved toward it until she realized that Ed was headed into the restaurant.
She followed him and they slid into the booth in the back. A waitress brought them coffee and menus. Once they’d ordered, they sat in silence until the food came. When the waitress set Ed’s steak and Samantha’s corned beef sandwich on the table, Ed ignored the potato chips and the pickle spear on her plate and went straight to eating his steak.
The Thirteenth Sacrifice Page 6
