Which left one possibility.
“Mom?” she asked hesitantly. She popped open another beer, and drank a little of it. “Mom, why are you messing with the freezer door? Okay, you died there, but still. Isn’t this a little bit of overkill?”
The door slowly opened, all the way, and then it closed again.
“Mom!” she snapped, slamming the beer can down hard enough that lukewarm, foamy liquid spilled out the top and over her hand. “Enough. Leave the freezer alone!”
She waited. The door didn’t move.
“There. That’s better.” Katie lifted her half-empty beer can to her lips again, then set it back on the counter without drinking any of it. She rinsed the spilled beer off her hand and wrist in the sink. She didn’t even feel like drinking anymore.
She wanted to talk with her mother again, was what she wanted. There was so much more she wanted to ask. How long would her mother even be around, she wondered. Didn’t spirits disappear after their murders were solved?
She had no idea if that was true, but she wasn’t going to waste the chance she had been given. If nothing else good had come out of this trip home, at least she had been able to mend things with her mother.
With that thought bolstering her, Katie gave the freezer door one last glare and went to the living room.
On the couch, Lizzy sat with her one arm hooked over the back. In her other hand was the Ouija board.
“What are you doing with this?” she asked Katie. “You don’t believe in this stuff, do you? Ghosts and things that go bump in the night?”
“I thought you left.” Katie didn’t like the look on Lizzy’s face. “I told you to get out.”
“I don’t care.”
“What? Lizzy, this is my house. I want you to--”
“But this isn’t your house, is it?” Sitting up, Lizzy spun the Ouija board between the fingers of her two hands. “This is your mother’s house. All you want to do is get rid of it. You don’t care what your mother wants at all. But I do.”
“Lizzy, for the last time, you need to get out of my house!”
The Ouija came down abruptly against Lizzy’s knee. With a snap that sounded like bones breaking, the board cracked down the middle, into two pieces.
“This is not your house!” Lizzy launched herself off the couch, her hands held in fists. Her legs bumped against the coffee table, shoving it aside. “This was your mother’s house and you never cared about it! This should go to someone who can appreciate it. Someone who loves it. Someone who loved your mother!”
“Who loved my...?”
No. Oh, no.
Katie finally, finally understood. All this time she’d been listening to lies.
Lies told to her by Lizzy.
“You...” Katie tried to say it, but her throat closed up.
It wasn’t Marlena that her mother had been waiting for in that dream.
Riley hadn’t killed her mother.
No.
It was Lizzy.
“I’m going to take this place away from you,” Lizzy threatened. “It’s going to be mine. Your mother should have left it to me. I begged her to see how much it meant to me. How much she meant to me. My real parents died in a car crash when me and Riley were very young. Can you blame me for wanting parents of my own? Why do you think I came over to your house when we were younger? Why do you think I kept coming around after you were gone? Huh?”
Katie had no answer. Her legs were locked in place or she would have run. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. All she could do was listen to this horrible story.
“But all your mom could talk about was you. Can you believe that? After everything you did to your mom she still loved you! It was always Katie this, Katie that. Blah blah blah! It didn’t matter how many times I came over, or how many times I pointed out that you weren’t here. It didn’t matter! She loved you too much! She deserved a daughter who would care about her. A daughter who was here!”
She threw the Ouija board at Katie, one piece at a time. The first one missed as Katie ducked low and threw her arms up over her face.
The second piece connected squarely with Katie’s temple.
All she knew after that was inky blackness that churned in her stomach and made her head pound in time to the beating of her heart.
The floor rushed up to meet her, and then she passed out.
It hurt worse when she woke up.
The world around her revealed itself very slowly. The first thing she knew was pain. The very next thing, was a stinging sort of cold.
Katie moaned and tried to move her body. She was sitting in a chair, but for some reason her arms and legs wouldn’t work right. She tugged at her arms but they only moved a few bare centimeters before they came up short again. Same thing with her feet.
When she opened her eyes, she couldn’t see.
A scream pushed up from deep within her but she bit it back as she realized she hadn’t gone blind. There was something over her eyes. Her arms were tied down. Her ankles, too. She was tied to a chair. It creaked when she tried to shift herself one way or the other. One of the chairs from the kitchen, then.
The cold. Finally, the cold she was feeling made sense. She was still in her mother’s house. She was tied up in the walk-in freezer.
Terror squeezed around her heart. She was in the freezer.
“About time you woke up,” she heard Lizzy say. “What, did you think I was just supposed to sit around and wait all day for you?”
“Lizzy, please--”
The slap that hit her cheek left her dazed and unfocused. For a few precious seconds she couldn’t think. When she was able to focus again she heard Lizzy still talking like nothing had happened.
“I tried to get you to leave. I told you that your mother had found a new daughter. I had to tell you it was Marlena, of course, because if I’d told you it was me then you would have known what I did.”
Lies. Those had all been lies, and Katie had fallen for them.
“Then,” she heard Lizzy say, “I killed the woman who took care of the house so you would have no one to help you.”
A hand gripped Katie’s chin and held her fast as her fingernails bit painfully into Katie’s flesh.
“I even framed your contractor for the murder! My own brother! I did that for your mother and what do you do in return? You still try to sell this house!”
Lizzy abruptly yanked the blindfold off Katie’s head. Katie blinked at the light and saw that Lizzy’s face was right there in front of hers, so close that Katie could see the feverish light in her eyes. The woman’s brightly dyed red hair was a mess of loose curls and strands sticking out from her temples.
“Why did you have to come back to town? Why!” She was screaming, and spittle flew into Katie’s face with each word. “Everything was perfect without you here. I snuck a copy of Marlena’s key, and I would sneak in here every night and pretend it was all mine. I slept in your mother’s bed. I stayed close to her. Did you do that? No! You only cared about yourself. You selfish, ungrateful child!”
She slapped Katie again. And again. Stars blossomed in Katie’s vision and she tasted blood in her mouth.
“You had it all,” Lizzy told her between blows. “You had a mother who loved you. All you had to do was show up! You couldn’t even do that!”
She lifted a hand, and Katie cringed because she was sure that Lizzy was going to beat her again.
Instead, this time, there was a serrated kitchen knife in her fist.
“This is where I killed her, you know.” Katie waved the knife point around, casting her gaze at the four corners of the freezer. “Of course it was full of stuff then. I was debating in my mind--when I did it, I mean--whether she would try to eat anything to stay alive. Guess she died from the cold first.”
Katie whipped her head back around to glare at Lizzy. She remembered her mother’s ghost, saying how cold she was, begging Katie for help, calling to her across all that distance to get her to come home...<
br />
Now she knew the truth, and she was helpless to do anything about it.
“When she was dead I took her upstairs and I dressed her and I put her in her bed,” Lizzy said, finishing her bizarre confession. “She was all peaceful like. I did that for you, Katie, so you would think she died in her sleep. Peaceful. So, you know, you’re welcome for that.”
The knife tapped against the hollow of Katie’s throat.
“You,” Lizzy said, “I’m not going to leave to chance. I want what you had. I’ve had to take every single part of it because you won’t just give it to me. So, I’m taking this part, too.”
The knife cut into Katie’s skin. It stung. She could feel the beat of her pulse, right there in her throat, right where the sharp tip was biting her.
“You monster,” Katie said through trembling lips. “You monst--”
Lizzy’s slap was hard-knuckled and it snapped Katie’s head back so far she thought for a moment her neck had broken and she was just spinning around on her shoulders like an owl.
Her teeth clacked together and she bit her tongue. Coppery liquid coated the inside of her mouth.
“Mom...” she begged in a whisper. “Help me...”
In the freezer, the lights went out.
Chapter 14
“Now what?” Lizzy asked.
Just as the door closed.
The click of the locking mechanism was way too loud in the enclosed space. Katie felt her panic mounting. She was trapped, in the freezer, with her mother’s killer.
Then something moved against her cheek there in the dark. Something gentle, and warmer than the cold air around her. It was an intimate sort of touch. So familiar...
Her eyes flew open, straining against the complete absence of light in the sealed room. Her vision had only barely adjusted and all she could make out was forms, and shapes, and bigger blobs of dark against a backdrop of nothing. She could sense the metal shelves around the walls. She could barely see herself tied down to the chair. There was Lizzy over there, turning a slow circle as she fumbled for the light switch.
And there, behind Lizzy, was something else.
The form of it reared up and spread out until Katie wondered how it was possible that Lizzy couldn’t see it or feel it right there behind her.
It stood very tall, and the edges of it quivered in Katie’s vision. Waves of unseen energy radiated from it, spiraling eddies of hate and anger and vengeance. It was the most frightening thing that Katie had ever seen.
For her, that was saying a lot.
Lizzy finally sensed that something was wrong. She stopped searching for the light. She stopped moving. The knife was a grayer slice of black against everything else. She lifted it up in front of her defensively.
“What is this...?” she started to ask.
She never got the chance to finish.
The darkness engulfed her. Washed over her.
Took her.
Katherine, came her mother’s voice in her mind, close your eyes. Don’t look.
She did. For a moment, she didn’t hear anything. Then there was a scream that raised gooseflesh on her skin.
When the scream cut off in the middle, the silence was just as loud.
Katie startled when that warm touch returned, this time encircling her wrists and her ankles, to untie the knots that had been holding her prisoner. The rough rope slid away from her skin, and a ghostly hand stroked her cheek.
“Mom, I don’t know what to do--”
Shh. Keep your eyes closed, Katherine. Let me guide you.
A tug on her arm was her mother’s old and arthritic fingers pulling her up out of the chair, and to the door. It opened for her on its own, and the light from the kitchen filled the room, pressing against her eyelids.
Katie kept her eyes shut just like her mother had asked her to do. Then she was out in the kitchen, and the freezer door was closing behind her, with a solid snap of the lever locking into place.
Then her mother’s touch was gone from her arm.
I’ve always loved you, Katherine. No one would ever replace you. Remember that, when you think of me...
“I will,” Katie promised. Her mother’s presence was so strong now. Like they had been moving toward this the whole time and finally, for this one moment, Katie could be with her mother again. A single tear fell from her eye, the only one she had left. “I love you, too.”
Then, with the feeling of a long held breath that was finally let go, her mother’s spirit lifted away, and she was gone.
She shivered, warming up now that she was out of the freezer. It had been so cold in there--
“The freezer!”
She rushed back to the door, grabbing hold of the lever. She’d forgotten all about Lizzy. If Katie didn’t get her out of there then she’d die just like her mother had.
Just before she yanked the door open, she stopped.
Would that be so wrong?
Lizzy murdered her mother. There would be a certain kind of justice in it if she died in that freezer now. Let her die, she thought to herself. It’s only right.
“No.” She shook her head, resettling her grip on the lever. “I won’t do that.”
Deep in her heart, Katie knew she wasn’t like that. She wasn’t a murderer. She could never be that evil.
She opened the door.
There on the floor, she found Lizzy. She was curled up into the fetal position. Her eyes were wide and staring. A thin layer of frost coated every inch of her exposed skin.
In only a few minutes, she’d frozen to death.
“That’s impossible,” Katie muttered. “How...?”
Shaking her head, she left Lizzy there and closed the door again. It didn’t matter how. It was over.
Her mother’s spirit was at peace now. She could feel how empty the house was now.
Everything was just how it should be. The only thing left for her to do was call the police.
That, and try to get her contractor back. There was a lot of work still to do.
“I don’t understand,” Mel said. She was sitting up in her hospital bed, eating pancakes from a tray one of the nurses had brought her. In between bites she’d been asking about a hundred questions. “The Ouija board told us ‘no’ when we asked your mom if she knew who killed her.”
Katie had spent the night thinking about that, and about everything else too. “Actually,” she said, “my mom was telling us that Riley wasn’t the one who killed her. Remember, Riley came in the house right as we asked the question. We thought he was after us. We thought he was the one who killed Marlena and my mother. But, Mom was telling us--”
“She was telling us no, not him.” Mel nodded that she got it. “Oh, wow. We totally missed that!”
“Right. I guess mothers and daughters always have a bit of a communication gap between them. Maybe it gets worse when one of them dies.”
“So then how did Riley get in the house in the first place? You said the door was locked, right? And then he left his toolbelt in the hall.”
“The toolbelt was left there by Lizzy. She was trying to frame him and ruin my chances of getting the housework done. She had a key to the new locks. Every time Riley came in the house uninvited, it was because Lizzy had been there, unlocking my door, trying to frame him.”
“Huh,” Mel said. “Kind of all makes sense when you look at it that way, doesn’t it?”
“Sure, except for...you know. My mom’s spirit.”
Mel pushed her plate of food away. “Seeing her?”
“And hearing her. When we were in the freezer together and something yanked me back in...that was Mom. She was trying to protect me. She was trying to bring me back to the Ouija board so she could answer my questions. She needed me to know it wasn’t Riley who hurt her.”
“He was there when she did that,” Mel pointed out.
“Right, and if I’d gone running out after him I would have accused him of killing Marlena, and my mom, and the whole thing would have been a mess.
Which, if you remember, is exactly what happened when we confronted him. All because I wasn’t listening to what my mom was trying to say.”
She took a breath, and then told Mel the rest of it. “All these years I thought so many horrible things about my mom, and about our relationship. I thought I broke her heart. I thought she would never forgive me for leaving and not coming back. Now I know that everything is all right between us. It’s like a weight got lifted right off my heart.”
Mel smiled at her. “I’m glad I was here to help.”
“Me too. Um. That reminds me, though. I’m sorry about your Ouija board.”
“You mean about it being broken in two?” Mel shrugged. “No biggee, chikiepoo. My great great great grandmother only paid about twelve bucks for it at a flea market. I’ll get a new one.”
“What!” Katie exclaimed. “You told me it was an antique. That...that it had some sort of sentimental value, or something!”
“Well, it did!” The smile on Mel’s face turned sheepish. “Although I may have exaggerated that part.”
“Mel!”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger here. I’m sure it’s really old, it’s just not that old to my family. It was never about the board, Katie. It was about whether you believed it could work. That’s what let us use it to call on ghosts. That’s what made it work.”
“So I had to have faith, is that it?”
“You got it.” Mel gave her a wink, and blew her a kiss.
They laughed about that for a while, and about other things, and it felt good to know that her best friend was going to be all right. The doctors had said she could be released later today. She was just waiting on the official word.
Her hand settled over Katie’s. “Chickie, you did good. Lizzy was playing with your mind. Now she’s gone. Don’t let her keep screwing with that pretty head of yours. Your mother said she loved you. When she needed someone’s help, she called to you.”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 35
