Chapter 11
In the morning, she felt fine.
Walking around the streets of Twilight Ridge in the warmth of a new day she let the wind caress her face. It felt really good. Even though this wasn’t her home--not even her state for that matter--she could picture herself living here. She could see why people would be attracted to the charm and peace of this little nothing town in the middle of nowhere.
The world around her was just waking up. A few cars were pulling out of driveways to head off to work in other places. People were walking their dogs, or walking hand-in-hand with loved ones, or sitting out on front porches. Everyone was smiling just like Katie was.
She didn’t have a destination in mind this morning. She was just going wherever her feet took her. It was nice to have a morning where she didn’t have to rush to a house inspection or dash to an appointment to have some paperwork signed. She didn’t need any of that today. She needed this. Slow, easy living. That’s what she needed.
It wasn’t until she came around a corner and caught sight of the library that she wondered...how did she get here?
Not here, in front of the library, but here on the streets of Twilight Ridge. When did she leave the Inn?
Katie stopped, and tried to think, her good mood disappearing as her eyebrows furrowed lower. She remembered being in bed. She remembered taking in the quiet morning all around her.
She did not remember leaving the Inn. She didn’t remember waking up, or getting dressed, or taking that first step outside. None of it.
Had there been a dream? Something with Riley in it?
No. Maybe. She didn’t remember.
Damn.
A knot of pain began to pulse in her brain. All morning long the headache from yesterday had left her alone. Now it was back.
How...?
Sleepwalking, maybe. That would explain it, wouldn’t it? Sure. She was sleepwalking and that had brought her...here, to the library.
Like subconsciously, she had brought herself here.
She blinked at the squat building. Dull red bricks and empty windows stared back at her. It was too early for the doors to be open. It was too early for her to be walking out in the sunlight, too. She had never once gone sleepwalking in her life. Not once.
And yet, here she was.
The library was where she’d first learned about the terrible history of Twilight Ridge. Those women in the photograph, and the accusation of witchcraft. If Dorathea was killed for such a silly superstition, wasn’t it likely that the other women were, too? That would be why Maggie had been so hesitant to tell her about them.
Florence was one of the other founding wives, she remembered Maggie saying. She died, um, unexpectedly.
Witches. This town had murdered women for being witches.
Thank God society had come so far since those days, and people could understand that a woman knowing an herbal remedy for the common cold wasn’t witchcraft. Knowing how to turn a breach baby around so mother and child didn’t have to die wasn’t sorcery. It just meant that women were smarter than men gave them credit for.
From the photographs and the historical biography she had read, Katie didn’t think Ebenezer was the understanding type. If he was as staunchly religious as he was made out to be, he probably didn’t tolerate the women in his town acting out against his wishes.
Hatred roiled inside of her as she thought about that. Women shouldn’t be treated that way. No one should be. How dare these men take advantage of their wives and then cast them away out of fear and ignorance and oh my God the pain don’t stone me again please don’t stone me again...!
When Katie looked up, she was inside the library, down on one knee, holding her hand up above her defensively as if she really was being stoned to death. The pain she felt was her headache, not the dull thud of rocks hitting her like she had imagined so vividly. She had felt each impact, and she had tasted blood in her mouth.
Now she took a breath. “Get a grip, Katie. Stand up, and get a grip.”
She did, and the headache subsided. Just a little.
She looked around her, at the books and the quiet, empty rooms. Katie felt drawn here. Like the library had something she needed. Or, something to show her.
Over her shoulder, she looked back at the closed front door. She didn’t remember opening that. She didn’t remember coming inside.
Maybe she had some kind of adult-onset sleepwalking. Or maybe she was just going crazy.
Her footsteps echoed inside on the tiled floor. It was eerie, to be in here all alone with the weight of these books all around her. She knew there was a phone behind the counter. She could call Maggie at the Inn and maybe find out if someone saw her leaving the Inn.
She could call Riley, like she wanted to last night.
Why hadn’t she called him? That had been the plan. Listening to his voice would have made everything better. He had that effect on her. She needed a little of that magic right now.
Heh. Poor choice of words, she told herself, standing in a town that used to kill women for being witches.
Instead of stopping at the counter to use the phone, she kept going to the far corner of the room. As much as she wanted to call Riley, and hear his voice, that wasn’t what she was here for. Now she understood why her morning walk had ended here. She knew what she was looking for, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself.
In the reading room she found the tables and chairs just like she’d left them yesterday. All the old books on the history of the town had been put back in their places on the shelves.
All of the books, except one.
On the table, open to a middle page, was the really old book that had given her so much trouble yesterday. The one that had spread dust everywhere and started this headache that was still clinging to the edges of her skull even now.
Franklin must have left it here, she reasoned. How else would it be right here, just sitting open and waiting for her?
Still, it was a long moment before she sat down to look closer at the book.
What she found made her blood turn chill in her veins.
This wasn’t so much a history of the town of Twilight Ridge as it was a journal. The names of the dead women were here, and comments on them having regular meetings at specific times of the month. Most of the pages, however, documented, powers and rituals and skills that made no sense to Katie.
Healing blighted soil to make things grow again. Expelling mice and vermin from a home by singing. Adding drops of your husband’s blood to your food in order to increase fertility.
Katie read on and on and each page was more bizarre than the last.
Hypnotizing animals so they wouldn’t attack you. The health benefits of ground up deer heart. Salting your floor to keep away evil spirits.
The next page rustled when she turned it, obviously well used. Her heart was racing, and her headache pounded with each beat-beat-beat, and she was scared to read any more.
But she did.
Halfway down this page she had to go back to the beginning, start over, and make sure she was reading it correctly. The words talked about pouring energy into a corpse. Giving part of your life, sending it into a dead body, in order to bring someone back from the dead.
Katie ran her fingers over the paragraphs, the neatly printed writing in such an old style. This was insane. All of it.
And yet...
The next part of the book was drawings, and diagrams, and a string of math symbols that made Katie’s head spin just to look at them. It blurred in front of her eyes, and began to move, until each picture came to life and created a flowing image.
As she traced the numbers and letters and squiggly lines moving across the page, she could hear music begin to play. It was as if the parts of the equation were really notes on a staff and her brain was somehow translating them as they passed before her eyes. She had no choice. She had to listen.
At the bottom of the page the music stopped.
Her headach
e exploded.
Katie had to turn aside as her stomach rushed up into her throat and she threw up, all over the floor.
The music stopped when the retching did, but the headache remained.
“Damn it,” she whispered, rubbing the back of her hand across her mouth. “What the hell?”
On the table, the pages of the book rustled.
Katie slammed her hand down on it. No. The book was not moving, there was no music, and she was just weirded out and in pain because of this damned headache. That was all.
The song was still echoing in her mind. She heard it even now, singing to her about living forever. A spell to grant life everlasting.
Witchcraft.
That was impossible.
And yet, the song continued to sing to her.
Katie’s mind was roiling, spinning in circles so fast that she couldn’t see the book in front of her anymore. It was just a blurry mess. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t be here in this town. Whatever was going on here, she didn’t want any part of it.
Chapter 12
She wanted to go home.
This town had surpassed her threshold for freaky factor. Like, way past it. Time to go.
She was alone here. She shouldn’t be alone here. When you were alone they came after you and accused you of things and then the ones you loved most threw the first stone and cheered while you died...
Her hands shook. Katie swallowed back against a dry throat and wondered what in the hell she had just been thinking. She wasn’t Dorathea Snidge. All of that--being accused of things, being stoned, dying--that had happened to Dorathea. Not her.
It didn’t matter if she looked like the dead woman. That did not make them the same.
Her headache clung to her inside of her skull and maybe if she could just get it to go away, then she could think clearly.
Riley.
Riley. His name floated up into her thoughts, cutting through the haze and the aching drumbeat that played along the nerves behind her eyes. Riley. She wanted Riley. She wanted to be with him so badly right now. He had been the best thing in her life so far. It was stupid coming out here without him. She realized that now.
Riley.
He’d know what to do. He’d listen to her and understand her and believe her no matter what because he understood that sometimes your ghosts were the things that haunted you just out of sight, around the corner, beyond your imagination, hiding where they might jump out and tear you to pieces before you ever knew what was happening.
That was what she needed. She needed to talk to him, and maybe if she could talk this out with someone, it would start to make some kind of sense.
She took her cellphone out of her back pocket, hoping against hope that this time...
...one bar of service.
“Oh, thank God.” She said. This was the first time she’d gotten any reception at all, although she hadn’t checked in this room before, and maybe she had service her all along and just didn’t know it. Wouldn’t that just be the way of it?
“Screw this town.”
The pain throbbing in her head made it hard to focus on the display as she dialed Riley’s number by heart.
It rang, and she cradled the phone to her cheek, imagining that she could hold him the same way.
It rang.
Rang.
Then static filled the line in a loud burst that made her flinch.
“Riley?”
A voice came through the static, indistinct and distant.
“Katherine...”
That was her full first name, but everyone called her Katie. Nobody called her by her full name.
“Riley, is that you? Can you hear me?”
The static seemed to collect itself together and shape itself into laughter, sharp and piercing.
“I hear you.”
That wasn’t Riley’s voice. It was something else.
“Who is this?” she asked, tightening her grip around the phone. “Who are you?”
Static.
“Hello? Hello! Who is this? Who are you!”
The static cleared for just one moment in time and into that silence, she heard a voice through the phoneline.
“I’m you.”
She couldn’t breathe. That voice...I’m you...she tried to believe it didn’t sound like her. She tried to believe that it was impossible.
The static came back loud and fierce and sliced through her like a hot knife. She dropped the phone to the table with a clatter and then sat there, staring at it.
When it didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t try to levitate off the table, she reached out for it.
The spark that zapped her hand was an arc of blue electricity lifting up from the screen with a snap to bite at her fingers.
Katie pulled her hand back and shook away the stinging, humming feeling that was left behind by the shock.
She held her breath and tried again.
The phone was just a phone when she picked it up. Like it always had been.
The screen showed zero bars, leaving Katie to wonder if she had ever really had service in the first place. Had she been calling Riley, or did the call never go through at all?
Bringing the phone up to her face she tapped the edge of it against her forehead, over and over, and then slipped it back into her pocket.
What was she going to do?
She was going to die here if she didn’t leave. She knew that, and she knew it with a certainty that she couldn’t explain.
Terror crawled through her. Suddenly the peaceful town of Twilight Ridge had an underside that was dark and menacing, and she did not want to be here any longer.
Leaving the book on the table, and the mess she’d made on the floor, Katie raced out of the room and through the stacks of books until she got to the front of the library.
When she got to it, the door was locked. It took her a moment of frantic pushing and twisting to realize why it wouldn’t open, and when she finally threw the deadbolt aside, she shoved the door open and escaped into the daylight.
Franklin was standing there. His faded gray eyes registered surprise as she came running out of the library, smack into his bony chest.
She bounced off of him, nearly tripping over her own feet before she caught her balance again. It was like hitting a brick wall and she had no idea how someone so old and frail could be so solid.
He focused his gaze on her, and then back up at the library. His eyes narrowed. Apparently he didn’t like that she had been in there.
“I’m sorry,” she babbled, “I’m sorry, really, the door was open and I just went in and...oh, man, there’s a mess in the reading room...I’m sorry.”
The thought of it made her want to be sick all over again.
“Why did you leave the book out for me? I didn’t want to see that. What is that? What is that book?”
He looked at her and smiled.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, fighting the urge to be sick all over the man. “I’m sorry I have to...I’m sorry.”
Then she turned, and she ran.
Franklin hadn’t been expecting her to be in the library. He’d looked annoyed to find her there. But, if that was true, then he couldn’t have been the one to lay out that book for her to see.
If he didn’t do it...then who did?
Chapter 13
She went back to the Harper Inn. Sightseeing was over.
Katie went straight in through the front door and headed across to the stairs. She wanted to get her stuff together and get her rental car back to the airport and fly back to the west coast. Right now. She was leaving. There was no reason to stay.
The floor creaked as she was almost to the stairs. It spooked her, and she jumped, and then she ground her teeth together and kept going because she couldn’t let every little sound frighten her.
A hand caught her arm and pulled her up short.
Katie tensed, the scream on her lips dying as she realized it was Maggie standing there, smiling at he
r.
“There you are,” she said to Katie. “I’m so glad that you came back. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Um, Maggie, I’m sorry but now isn’t a good time. I’m not...I’m not feeling well. I was going to lay down for a bit and then I think I’m going to leave town.”
The older woman couldn’t hide her disappointment. “Oh. My, that’s too bad. I’m very sorry to hear that. It wasn’t anything to do with my Inn, was it?”
“No, not at all.” Katie tried to put on a smile to reassure her. “This place is amazing. It’s really nice. I’m glad I got a chance to stay here.”
“Excellent!” Maggie fairly clapped her hands together, happy for the compliment Katie had just given both her and her establishment. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
The headache must be messing with her head, Katie thought, because that didn’t make any sense. “I don’t understand. You wanted to ask me about your Inn?”
“Yes. Well, you know that nice reporter who’s been here in town? That Mason fellow?”
“Mason Fieldman, you mean? Yes, I’ve met him.”
She thought about the failed attempt at getting coffee with Mason last night, and how she’d come back here afterward and totally forgotten about Riley. That man was having an effect on her and maybe that was another good reason to leave town.
No, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t this town. It was the headache. The pain. The blurry thoughts.
That’s all it was.
“Well,” Maggie was saying. “I saw him in town and I happened to mention that you were staying here. He told me that you flip properties for a living. You fix them up and sell them, right?”
Oh, now she understood. “You’re thinking of selling the Inn, I take it?”
“Why yes, I am. I have been for a long time.” She looked around the room with eyes that were looking backward through the years. “I’ve had a lot of good times in this place but I just can’t keep it up on my own any longer. I thought, maybe, if you could apply whatever magic you use here with this old Inn of mine, it might make you a nice profit, and make a new owner very happy.”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 41
