Riley smiled at her. “That’s part of it. I mean, we both know better than to buy into a house that isn’t worth it. So we’ll look at the outside structure but really I just wanted a chance to talk to you.”
“Oh? Couldn’t live without me, huh?”
He kissed the top of her head. “You know it. I never want to be apart from you that long again.”
“Riley, it was only a couple of days.”
“It was more than that.” He hesitated. “I mean, it wasn’t more than a few days, no, but it felt that way to me. When you came on this vacation I thought it would be fine, you know? I figured, it was just a little time apart from each other but then after a couple of nights I kind of felt like I was missing something.”
“Really. Well, tell me then, Mister Riley Harris, what was it that you were missing?”
“That would be you, Miss Katie Pearson.”
They stopped in the back yard and gave the Inn a critical examination from this side. The press of buildings on this street didn’t allow for much of a back yard but there would be space for a fire pit, Katie saw. There would be space for some benches and maybe some decorative hedge work.
“Those windows on the second floor need to be replaced,” Riley said, pointing up to the ones he meant.
“Don’t change the subject,” Katie told him. “You were saying just how much you missed me.”
He twirled her into his arms. Their lips touched, and pressed together, and Katie absolutely loved the way this man could kiss. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her forehead. She giggled and laid her head down against his chest. Damn it all to hell, she loved him.
“So,” she said, standing there with him and not caring who saw them, “is this why you agreed to do this project? Because you couldn’t stand to be without me for any longer?”
“That might be part of it,” he admitted. “And maybe there’s another reason I’m here.”
She looked up into his eyes. “What reason is that?”
“Well, maybe not now,” he said, seeming to back down from whatever point he had been circling. “I just want you to know how much I love you. There’s something I, um, something I want to ask you. But when we’re alone, okay? Just you and me. It’s a private sort of thing.”
Katie felt a humming all through her. A warm, pleasant sensation that made her feel lighter and as happy as she had ever felt before. He loved her, and he wanted to ask her a question, and every woman in the world knew what that meant.
She bit her lower lip, and let him know that she would wait for him to think the time was right. For as long as it would take.
There was crab grass in the back yard that would have to be taken care of, and a crack in the cellar wall that would need mending before it became a serious problem. There were small things like that, but for the most part the building was sound and everything looked fantastic.
“Should we go back in?” Katie asked him, still snugged close to his side. “We can tell Maggie that we’re interested. All we have left to do is see what she’s got in the basement.”
Across the lawn, from out of nowhere, a soccer ball came rolling. The black and white pattern resolved into its separate pads as it slowed to a stop. It was just a soccer ball.
Only that.
Katie shivered. For some reason seeing this ball again scared her as much as seeing Dorathea’s ghost pouring out of her and into Mason. She remembered seeing this ball when she first got here. A dead child’s favorite toy.
What was it doing here now?
“What is it?” Riley asked her.
“Um. Nothing,” Katie lied. “Let’s just go inside.”
The whole town was full of secrets. Twilight Ridge was a dark place, and maybe getting rid of the witch’s ghost hadn’t been enough to keep this place from being terrifying.
Or maybe Katie was still freaked out from what had happened here.
Thinking about that, she went inside with Riley, ready to tackle whatever the Harper Inn had to throw at them.
Chapter 24
The stairs to the basement were craftily hidden in an alcove behind the registration desk. Maggie hummed a sweet little tune while she led them there, eager to show her prospective new buyers around.
Katie hadn’t considered the basement before this. She hadn’t given any real consideration to what would be needed to flip the property at all because she’d been running for her life almost since the moment she got here.
Now, she put a critical eye to everything as the old-style wire bulbs in the basement came blinking to life. The walls were made of large stones set on top of each other with mortar in between, creating an irregular surface that was cool to the touch. The stairs were solid planks of wood. The smell was earthy, and not unpleasant.
“You’ll see that I don’t use this space for very much,” Maggie explained. “Cold storage, mostly. I can vegetables in the Fall, and if we have any leftover paint it goes down here, and that sort of thing. Cold storage. I’ve got the Christmas things packed down here in boxes, too, just to keep them out of the way until it’s time to decorate again.”
The further down the stairs they went, the colder it got. Katie could understand using the cellar as storage for jars of preserves or whatever else Maggie had down here.
In another step, Katie could see her breath.
“Ah, here we are,” Maggie said as they got to the bottom. “It’s a little cramped down here but the space goes from one side of the Inn to the other.”
Katie rubbed her hands up and down her arms as she stepped onto the hard-packed dirt floor. The ceiling was low because of the heavy beams supporting the ceiling above. Maggie was right. There wasn’t much to see. There were boxes stacked against the wall in the corner here, and free-standing metal shelves loaded up with canned food and sealed mason jars. A few cobwebs dangled from the light fixtures.
“Why is it so cold down here?” Katie asked.
Maggie looked at her oddly. “I haven’t noticed, dear. Oh my, you’re shivering. Come with me. The furnace is over here.”
As the owner of the Harper Inn bustled off, Katie whispered in Riley’s ear, “You’re cold, too, right? It’s not just me?”
“I’m freezing,” he told her. “My man parts are all shriveled up.”
Katie gave him a look, but she felt a little warmth coming to her cheeks at the thought of that. “Well, maybe I can help you with that later.”
“I’d like that.”
“I would, too,” she admitted, “after all of this experience with death...”
She stopped talking as they turned the corner around a row of shelves, following Maggie.
The other end of the basement was full of bodies.
“Now this,” Maggie said, spreading her arms wide, “is exactly what you came here for, isn’t it?”
Katie’s head spun. The basement at this end was rank with death. The bodies stared blankly at her with eyes that had filmed over, laying there and quietly decomposing. It made her sick to think they’d been down here all this time. Riley’s hand was on her arm, tugging her away, slowly moving them back the way they came.
Maggie walked over to one of the bodies, a woman laying on her side and curled up in a fetal position. Her skin was dried up and her eyes had sunk back into her skull and Katie had no idea how long she’d been dead. She just knew it had been a while.
Smiling down at the woman’s body, Maggie nudged her with a boot. “Come on, Jennifer. Wake up, sleepyhead. We’ve got new guests. They plan on staying.”
Then she brought her foot back and kicked the dead woman in the chest.
“They plan on staying.”
Kick.
“A very.”
Kick.
“Long.”
KICK.
“Time!”
Now Riley wasn’t trying to slowly sneak them away. He was running, and Katie was running, and she wondered if this whole town was just one long list of horrors.
They ran past the end of th
e shelves, and came around the corner again.
Right to the end of the basement where Maggie stood over her collection of the dead.
They’d come around in a circle. Katie stopped, and looked back over her shoulder.
Behind her, she saw Maggie standing over her collection of the dead. No matter where they went, here they were.
“Oh, there you are,” she told them. “There’s no sense in running, dears. The Inn likes you. The Inn wants you to stay.”
There was movement among the bodies. Katie held her breath as the dead stirred, and rose.
No. Not the dead themselves. Their ghosts.
There were six or seven people here, men and women both, some of their bodies old and decaying like Jennifer’s. Some of them were newer. All of them had several cuts across their throats.
One of them was freshly dead. Blood still stained the floor beneath him bright red. She knew this man. Katie recognized him as the other guest she’d seen at the Inn when she first checked in. His ghost lifted up from his freshly dead body and blinked around, like he was trying to figure out why he was here.
Riley saw the ghosts, too. He saw them all, and he stepped in front of Katie, even though both of them knew it wouldn’t do any good against ghosts.
“These are all my permanent residents,” Maggie was saying, going from one body to the next, looking at each of them carefully, sometimes straightening up a rotting piece of clothing, sometimes patting a face, sometimes kicking them like she had Jennifer. “They all checked in and never left. So popular, my Inn.”
“She’s crazy,” Riley whispered.
“Oh, really?” Katie said. “Thanks for the update.”
When Maggie had finished her inspection of her residents, she turned on Riley and Katie.
From under her shirt, she pulled a long butcher’s knife. Now Katie knew what had made those cuts on the dead.
“Your turns, dears,” she said to Katie. “I’m so glad you decided to stay. Oh, I just knew this would work out. I told you that story about the witch of Twilight Ridge because I knew you would be the one to break the curse. I just knew it, Katie!”
“You...on purpose?” Katie saw it now. It was a set up. Right from the start, Maggie had been dragging her into this horror story.
She circled the tip of the knife in their direction. “Oh, you two. So cute. I can feel it, you know. There was an evil over this town. It’s been there so long that most people don’t even feel it anymore. I did. I felt it so strongly it made me do things...crazy things...bad, bad things.”
Her hands curled into fists, shaking as her expression turned to stone and her eyes flared.
Then with a breath she was herself again.
“Now the evil is gone. It’s just gone. I can feel it. They all feel it, too.”
She pointed behind her, at the dead, with her knife.
The ghosts all turned together to look at Maggie.
“Dorathea’s power was the only thing keeping these poor dead souls here,” Maggie said, honest concern for them in her voice. “Now that her spirit is gone from the town I can feel these ones rising. They’ll be able to leave now.”
“You killed them,” Riley pointed out. “You did this. Why would you do this?”
Maggie shrugged, shaking the knife in the air. “I had to test the witch’s power. I had to see if her influence was gone. My guests wanted to stay, and I needed to know.” She smiled so widely at Riley and Katie that her teeth were showing. “Now I know. The witch is gone. Ding, dong, the witch is gone! You saved them, Katie, and now you can become part of them.”
The sign at the intersection leading to Twilight Ridge flashed in Katie’s mind, with its slogan.
Come to Visit, Stay Forever.
“Like hell,” she muttered.
She wasn’t going to die. Not here.
Maggie lifted the knife up.
Katie ran at her like a football linebacker, around Riley and straight for the deranged woman.
“Katie!” Riley called after her, trying to grab for her and hold her back, but it was already too late for that.
She ducked her head and brought her arms up protectively and had just enough time to think about what a stupid idea this was when she rammed right into Maggie’s midsection and sent them both sprawling across the floor.
They landed in a heap with the dead.
Katie reached for the knife.
Someone else got to it first.
Stiff, decaying hands reached up from the pile of bodies and wrapped rotten fingers around Maggie’s wrist. They held her in a grip as strong as death itself and pulled her down to the floor.
All of the bodies spread across the floor sprang for Maggie, the dead animated and angry. Katie could barely scramble out of the way before they were all tangled together in a knot of once-living flesh. The dead squirmed and stretched and crawled over Maggie. They attacked her, eager for vengeance on the woman who had taken their life.
Maggie screamed. She was in there, somewhere, among the dead she had created, buried under them. Katie saw the knife in the woman’s fist rise up above the surge of bodies and come down again, and again, and again.
It didn’t matter. The people attacking her were already dead. Nothing she could do would stop them.
Hands grabbed at Katie and she shrieked and tried to pull away but she was all turned around and she didn’t know which way was safe. She broke the hold on her and turned around and--
“Katie. Katie! It’s me.”
Riley’s hands. Those were Riley’s hands. He was pulling her back from the impossible madness going on right in front of them. He pulled her to her feet, and whispered how it would be all right, and then they were moving across the basement and thank God the stairs were right there.
The Inn was letting them go.
Chapter 25
“Where does this go?”
Katie looked at the box Riley was holding and tried to remember what she had been thinking when she wrote “Don” on the side of the box in magic marker.
“Oh! That’s full of things to donate.” She chuckled at herself and went back to sorting paperwork at the registration desk. “I was more than just a little tired when I finished packing up Maggie’s room last night.”
“Got it.” Hefting the box up higher in his arms he headed out the front door, and Katie got to admire the view of his perfect ass in those jeans the whole way.
They had been clearing out the Harper Inn in preparation for renovations for three days now. Admittedly the work would have gone faster if she and Riley didn’t keep ending up in their bedroom together, at the same time, with their clothes spontaneously falling off.
That was the risk you took when your contractor was also your boyfriend, who happened to have an amazing body, and an incredible amount of stamina.
Katie smiled to herself. Riley was an amazing man. Possibly the best thing that had happened to her in a very long time.
When they had decided to take over the Harper Inn and make a go at either selling it, or keeping it as a business under their name, he’d given her a very long look. It had been followed by a very long sigh, and then he had kissed her forehead and told her she always did make the very best mistakes.
Although she understood why he was saying that, she didn’t think that buying the Harper Inn was going to be a mistake. Sure, they had both nearly died in this town. Once at the hands of a vengeful witch’s spirit, and then the second time when Maggie had attempted to stab them to death to make them permanent residents. But, all of that was over now. The curse was lifted, and Maggie was gone. What could possibly go wrong?
She stopped what she was doing, hunching up her shoulders and looking all around to make sure no one was around. She had to stop saying things like that. She shouldn’t even be thinking it, because even that much could tempt fate.
Once they had escaped the Inn, leaving Maggie to her fate downstairs, she and Riley had jumped in his car and driven four miles out of town before they
remembered two very important details.
One, Katie’s rental car was still at the Inn.
Secondly, if Maggie was dead the police would come looking to talk to the last people who saw her alive. Since Katie had signed into the register, and was still technically a guest there, it would look very suspicious if she hopped a plane for the west coast without even packing her suitcase before she left.
After a little discussion, they decided the best thing they could do was call the police themselves, and report a disturbance in the basement of the Inn. If the police asked them anything else they could just claim they didn’t know what had happened.
Who would believe the truth, anyway?
The State Police had met them in the driveway, and the two officers had gone down into the basement with their guns drawn.
They had come back up a moment later looking pale and shaky. One of them had told Katie and Riley not to go down there. They never did find out what the officers saw. Both of them agreed they were better off not having that image in their heads.
With the owner of the Harper Inn deceased, the Twilight Ridge town counsel had been more than eager to sell the property to Katie. They needed the revenue the Inn represented. Katie ended up paying a lot less than she had expected.
Now came the hard work. Renovations, cleaning, and deciding how best to proceed...sell it, or keep it.
There was one other little detail as well. They needed a new name. Something that wasn’t going to be associated with a psychotic killer.
Riley had suggested “The Dew Drop Inn” or the “I’m All Inn.” Katie had nixed both of those suggestions point out that the first one sounded like a bar and the second one would make the place sound like a casino.
Well. They could work on that later.
Because they were now the proud owners of an Inn situated in the picturesque woods of New Hampshire, and somehow she felt like that had opened up endless possibilities for them.
Right now the focus was on clearing everything away. They had found closets full of guest’s belongings, and it hadn’t taken them long to figure out those were the personal effects of the people that Maggie had killed. Those had already been boxed up and given to the state police to figure out what should be done with them.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 47
