Instead, he slid it down into his pants pocket. His anger melted away, leaving behind only the sadness and pain that Katie had seen a moment before. She was beginning to get a very different picture of this household than what that book in the library had presented. From what she read, she expected Boris to be a monster.
What she saw here was a husband at the end of his rope, trapped in a loveless marriage.
Looking up through his tears, Boris began to run through the house. Katie found herself being pulled along with him. She wasn’t moving. Her feet never took a step. The image of the house and of Boris moved around her, dragging her with him through this memory.
He went from room to room, calling his wife’s name. “Anna! Anna, where are you? Why won’t you answer me?”
Wherever the servants had gone, they managed to stay out of his way completely. They were apparently used to this sort of thing in the house. Did this happen all the time, Katie wondered? Was this the daily life of Doctor and Mrs. Vykroft?
At last, Boris stepped into the second-floor bathroom. Inside a heavy claw-foot tub, Anna lay naked, sprawled out with her head laying back against the rim. There was no water to cover her up and she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Nothing except a round medallion on a heavy gold chain around her neck. The spiral emblem on the medallion was hypnotic. It drew Katie’s eyes to the perfectly smooth, pert curves of Anna’s chest. The woman was lying reposed, in the tub, her one hand splayed over her flat belly.
In her other hand, she held a straight razor.
It was long and slender, the kind of thing that men used to shave with back in this time period before safety razors. It shone malevolently in the light of an oil lamp burning on the table, next to the big ceramic bowl of well water.
Blood dripped from a fresh slash cut into her wrist.
“Anna, stop this!” Boris raced to the side of the tub, kneeling down and grasping hold of the hand holding that blade. “This is enough. You must stop!”
But Anna would not relinquish the razor. Katie could see now from her position in the middle of the room that there were several pale lines on both arms. Scars, from previous attempts. This wasn’t the first time that Mrs. Vykroft had tried to kill herself.
“I won’t stop!” she screamed. “Do you hear me? Oh, you’re such a great doctor you can cure anyone, is that it? Even that lovely widow down the street that you spend so much time with? Even the several young women who come to your office here in our home for private sessions behind locked doors? You have made this marriage a mockery!”
“Anna, please, you don’t know what you’re saying. The female body is very delicate and often times it requires more attention than a man’s. I simply try to serve our community as best I--"
“Like you do in your whorehouse? Let go!” she wailed, tugging on his grip now as she tried to get the razor back. “You are a charlatan! You brought me here from Europe with the promise of a life of luxury and friends and children and you’ve given me none of that! We scrimp and we suffer for what we have, and we’ve no friends, and you can’t even get me pregnant you withered old bastard!”
Boris’s hand came around quickly, and the slap against his wife’s cheek was like a thunderclap in the small space of this room. The medallion rattled on her necklace from the impact. Katie jumped, and wished that she could leave.
Instead of shocking her into silence, that strike from her husband’s hand sent Anna into hysterics. She began thrashing in the tub and then somehow she had pushed herself up to her feet with Boris still holding tight to her.
There was nowhere for Katie to go except the corner of the room as she shrank back from the two of them, wrestling with each other, blinded by their mutual hatred.
“I’ve done everything for you!” Boris shouted suddenly. His voice cracked before he drew a breath. “I’ve gone dancing naked in the rain because you said it would increase your fertility. You say I’ve made this marriage a mockery? Well, I’ve made a mockery of myself, is what I’ve done! Is it any wonder I spend my time with cheap whores who give me more attention than you? Is it any wonder that I might be open to my female patients wanting a physical cure, when my wife is so distant and cold!”
Katie put her hand up over her mouth. It was the excuses of any abuser, the lies a man told a woman to justify whatever he wanted to do.
“I’ve done everything for you!” Boris was shouting now. “I’ve tried everything you asked of me for your sake, buying witch’s potions and old wives’ remedies that I know are nothing but mixtures of weeds and spit! All for you! All for you!”
She swung the razor at him, aiming for his neck.
“You bitch!” he screamed, stepping back from the reach of that blade. “I’ll see you in the grave before I stand another minute of this! Why won’t you just leave me alone? Why won’t you just let me be who I am!”
In one angry surge, he twisted her around and threw her aside, wresting the razor from her grip as he did. He tossed it aside, and it clattered across the floor, trailing blood as it did.
The blood soaked into the wooden floor, and disappeared.
Anna Vykroft stumbled back against the bathroom table, catching herself by her elbow before she could fall and break her neck.
Her arm struck the oil lamp, and it slid sideways off the table and to the floor, shattering into a thousand glass shards under Anna’s bare feet.
The oil spread, and the flame followed.
Chapter 11
Fire.
Flickering tongues of red and orange caught at the walls and the curtains and spread quickly from there. Boris backed to the doorway while his wife floundered and fell among the broken glass, her pale naked flesh cut and gashed by the broken pieces.
In no time at all, the room was a blazing inferno with Anna Vykroft lying in the middle of the floor. The fire played on her porcelain skin. The gold medallion with its spiral pattern flashed in the light. She reached out to her husband, her eyes full of panic. “Help me. For God’s sake, Boris, help me!”
Katie urged him silently to save her. Certainly, these two people had hated each other with a passion bordering on obsession but they were still married. He had to save her.
He stepped forward, into the fire, his arms up over his face to protect him from the heat. He reached for Anna.
Then he backed away again, into the safety of the hallway.
“Please,” she begged. “I can’t even walk!”
Katie saw the way the glass had cut Anna’s feet. The tendons were exposed in what was left of the muscle and blood was pouring from the cuts. She was right. She wouldn’t be able to walk.
Katie stood in front of Boris, and screamed as loud as she could. “Save her. You have to save her you’re the only one here!”
For just a moment his eyes focused on Katie and it looked like he might be able to see her, and hear her words. Then he shook his head and looked through her at his wife.
“I just wanted you to leave me alone,” he said. He gave the approaching fire one more glance, but it was obvious what his choice was going to be. “I’m sorry, Anna. You’ve done this to yourself.”
He turned and fled as the flames cascaded across the ceiling and out the door. Behind him, Anna screamed.
Katie watched as the fire caught at her hair, and she writhed in pain, crawling toward the door, trying to escape a death that was already certain...
With a deep breath of clean, night air, Katie came back to herself.
She was outside again. Back in the empty field. Or maybe, she thought, this was where she’d been the whole time.
How long had she been standing here? She blinked at the house lights around her, and the headlights of passing cars, and it occurred to her that at some point, the sun had set. It was night time, and she was still standing in this field.
The buzzing and chiming of her cellphone in her back pocket startled her. She shifted the photocopy of Doctor Vykroft’s house from one hand to the other so she could take
her phone out and answer it...
And the photo disintegrated between her fingers. It had burned to ash while she was holding it. All that remained were black soot stains on her skin.
The phone continued to ring as she wiped her hand on her thigh. A shiver ran up her spine, because if the picture was burned, then what she had just experienced had to have been real. At least, on some level.
“Damn,” she swore softly as she put the phone to her ear.
“Katie? Katie are you all right?”
It was Riley’s voice, staticky and buzzing. Cell reception in Twilight Ridge was spotty at best.
He kept asking if she was all right, saying her name over and over. “I’m...yes, Riley, Damn it, Riley, I’m fine. No, I’m here. I’m fine. Riley!”
“Katie! Where have you been? I can barely hear you. I’ve been calling you since noon and now you just pick up the phone swearing up a storm and tell me everything’s okay?”
“Well, it is.” She didn’t know how to describe what had just happened to her. Not over a phone call. “Look, I’m sorry if I scared you I just had to, um, check on something in town, that’s all.”
“You had to check on something? Is that what you said? Do you know what time it is?”
“Actually?” She laughed softly. “No, I don’t.”
He was silent for a moment, the static continuing to pop, and then he was laughing too. “Oh, Katie. What am I going to do with you?”
“You can hold me tonight and love me like there’s no tomorrow. Did you take care of the Inn today?”
“Yup. Everyone had a great time at lunch.” He said something else, but it was lost to the static. Then it cleared again. “The guests were all asking about you.”
Well. Nice to be missed. “They were really talking about me?”
“Sure. You, and the ghosts. A couple of these guys are really hot to see a ghost. Too bad we’re going to disappoint them.”
She looked around herself again, and then started walking up the sidewalk heading back home. “They may not be as disappointed as we thought.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say, our Inn used to be a whorehouse, and one of its best customers nearly burnt down the entire town in 1921.”
“Katie? I didn’t hear that. What did you say?”
“I said we live in a whorehouse.”
On the porch of the house she was walking past, a woman stared at her with a drink halfway to her lips. Katie waved, and smiled, and hoped to God that didn’t start the wrong kind of rumor about the Heritage Inn.
“Look, Riley, I’ll explain everything to you when I get home. Unless you wouldn’t mind coming to pick me up?”
“Tell me where you are, I’ll be right there.”
Relief washed through her. Walking alone in the dark, after everything she’d just seen, was too terrifying for her to think about. She told Riley the name of the street she was on, then repeated it through the static, and then had to give him directions. As small as Twilight Ridge was, there were still any number of streets the two of them never had a reason to step foot on.
Katie planned on never setting foot on this one again.
She kept looking over her shoulder, back toward that empty lot where a house had once burned to the ground, killing the psychotic woman who had hounded her husband mercilessly, and nearly destroying the entire town. If she hadn’t been sure that Anna Vykroft’s ghost had a reason to be angry before, she was certainly sure about it now.
If ghosts were spirits with unresolved issues, then Anna Vykroft had to be the angriest ghost in the history of ghosts.
Katie looked behind her again. Nothing but the darkness and the wind rippling through the grass.
When she turned around again she nearly ran into a man coming up the sidewalk in her direction.
He was dressed in black, and with the way he blended into the night and the way Katie was so damned distracted, she hadn’t seen him until she was right on top of him. He caught ahold of her arms before they could bowl each other over, and held her fast.
“Well, Katie Pearson. We do keep running into each other.”
She relaxed now that she realized who it was. “Reverend Keller. Oh, wow you just gave me a fright.”
“Did I?” He let go of her, a smile coming and going on his face. “Sorry about that. I was just out for a nightly walk. It clears my mind.”
Katie gave another quick look over her shoulder. “Yes, I understand what you mean about that. Sometimes you just need to try getting away from your troubles, right?”
The wrinkles on his face deepened. “Sometimes you can’t run that far.”
“Uh, no I suppose not. Are you feeling okay, Reverend?”
He shook himself, and put his smile back on for her. It looked completely false. “I’m fine. Ghosts of my past haunting me, I suppose. What about you? Speaking of things like ghosts, you look like you’ve seen a few of your own tonight.”
“You have no idea how true that is,” she muttered.
“Katie, I’m here for everyone in Twilight Ridge. That includes you. Even if you did just move here, I consider you part of my town. If there is anything you need to talk to me about, I want you to know I’m here for you. I’m a very good listener.”
She almost told him, right then and there. She almost told him about the ghosts, and the way she’d just witnessed a woman burning to death, and how she was afraid that something bad was coming. All of it.
Almost.
The words were there on her lips, and then she let them slip away unspoken. Something about what Reverend Keller had just said bothered her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he sounded like a man with his own demons to conquer. Maybe he wasn’t in the best position to help anyone else, if he couldn’t help himself.
“That’s all right,” she told him. “Thanks anyway, Reverend, but Riley’s going to be here any minute to pick me up. Maybe some other time?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Well. You know where I am if you ever need me. I hold services every Sunday, too. It would be nice to see you there.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She smiled at him, but she’d already pretty much made up her mind. She’d never been much for church to begin with, and until she knew Reverend Keller better, she was going to be just as happy staying home on Sunday mornings.
Chapter 12
Snuggled into bed next to Riley, Katie could almost believe the world was normal again. This moment was almost perfect.
At least until he ruined it by talking.
“The watch?” he asked for what must have been the tenth time. “You’re telling me that you saw a ghost wearing the same watch that you have stuffed in a box in that closet? That watch?”
“Well,” Katie hesitated. He was making it sound so ridiculous. “He wasn’t exactly a ghost. It was more like a memory. That I was experiencing. Like it was real. Look, I don’t know how to explain it but I know what I saw and I know what I felt and damn it all to hell, Riley, since when don’t you believe me when I tell you things like this?”
Offended, he sat up in bed. “Hey, now. Just remember who it was that flew all the way across the country to save your ass when you were in trouble out here. I always believe you when you tell me weird things are happening.”
She threw the blankets off, sitting up next to him in her nightgown. “Then tell me what the problem is this time, because I swear to you it sure feels like you’re trying to call me a liar.”
“I never said that.”
“It sure sounded that way!”
“Maybe you’re just hearing what you want to here.”
Katie couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had fought. They were certainly fighting now, and she didn’t know why. She reached out to him, putting her hand on his bare knee. “Riley, I’m not lying.”
He sighed in one explosive breath, pushing his hands through his thick hair.
“All right, listen. You and I have seen ghosts. We’ve nearly died together. There’s been so much that we’ve gone through together but now you’re trying to tell me that the watch is haunted. Possessed, or something. The watch.”
“I’m very sure that I didn’t say anything like that. I’m just saying that I saw the watch. That’s all. I saw Boris Vykroft wearing it.”
“And you knew it was him? How? Did he come up and introduce himself?”
“Because I saw his picture in the book at the library! I told you that!”
“Uh-huh. Don’t you think that maybe this could have been just, you know, your mind trying to process everything you’ve learned already?”
She pulled her hand back. “So now you’re saying I hallucinated the whole thing?”
Pushing himself out of bed abruptly, Riley marched over to the closet and shoved the folding door open. Kneeling down, he reached inside. “I’m just saying it’s pretty far-fetched to think this watch, right here--"
From the back of the closet he grabbed Katie’s souvenir box and took out the watch from inside.
“--had anything to do--"
He slapped the watch on his wrist.
“--with whatever you think you saw.”
He buckled the watch on tight and lifted it to Katie again.
Then his expression changed.
For a very long moment he sat there on his knees, staring at nothing, his hand extended with the watch on his wrist.
Then he turned to face her, and his eyes burned with rage.
“I’ve done everything for you!” he blurted out suddenly. His voice cracked as he drew a deep breath.
Katie stared at him. This was what Boris had said to Anna when she had been there, in their house, watching their moment from the past. Boris had shouted those same words.
“I’ve gone dancing,” Riley growled at her, “naked in the rain, because you said it would increase your fertility. I’ve made myself a mockery around Twilight Ridge for your sake, buying witch’s potions that I know are nothing but ground up weeds! All for you! All for you!”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 53
