Thankfully he kept his voice down to a muted roar because Katie could only imagine what their guests would think of that tirade! He was up on his feet now, glaring daggers at her--no, through her.
“You bitch!” he said, still repeating Boris’s words. “I’ll see you in the grave before I stand another minute of this!”
He took a step in her direction.
“Riley, please...”
And another step.
“Riley?”
She looked into his eyes, looking for him, but he wasn’t there. This wasn’t Riley doing this.
Angry, still growling words of hate, he lunged for her.
Katie turned and ran. The door to the bedroom was closed and she had to fumble with the handle to get it open and then she was running down the hallway to the stairs, glad that the guests were already in their rooms for the night and no one was there to see this.
She flew down the stairs, and behind her she could hear Riley’s heavy footsteps coming closer, and closer...
Her nightgown slipped down one shoulder and she had nothing on her feet and she didn’t care. The front door was right there and if she could just make it then she would be outside and she could get away from this insanity.
“Katie, wait.”
That stopped her. It was Riley’s voice. It was really him.
She turned, and saw him sitting on the bottom step. From the fingers of his one hand dangled the strap of the watch. It slipped through, and then fell to the floor.
He looked dazed, like he had just run into a brick wall and didn’t understand how it had happened.
Katie ran over and grabbed the watch away before anything else could happen with it, and then she threw her arms around him and put his head on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Riley. It’s okay. Do you believe me now? Do you see?”
He nodded, and she could feel him shaking. “It was like he was in me, Katie. I couldn’t stop myself. What did I even say to you? I could hear myself speaking but the words were all muffled. What did I say?”
She hesitated, and swallowed as she remembered the sting of those words.
I’ll see you in the grave before I stand another minute of this!
“It doesn’t matter,” she decided to tell him. “It’s over. Come on. Let me help you back upstairs. We both need to sleep.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I think you’re right. But, uh, did this place really used to be a den of prostitution? I didn’t imagine that part, right?”
She managed a little laugh at his attempt at humor. “Don’t worry about it. I’m all the woman you’ll ever need.”
Later, when she had him in the covers, and his eyes were already closed and his breathing was slow and deep and even, Katie took the watch and put it back into the box. From a drawer in the desk at the side of the room, she took out the duct tape.
She didn’t go to bed herself until she had the box sealed shut with several crisscrossed layers.
Chapter 13
Sometime during the night Katie woke up to the sound of hammers banging against metal drums.
Groggy, still wrapped deep in the dual embrace of sleep and Riley’s arms, she listened for the sound to repeat itself.
Clunk. Ka-clink. Clunk.
She opened one eye to look around the bedroom. Without having to say anything at all they had both agreed to keep the lights on after what had happened last night with the watch. Katie was terrified that something else was coming for them. Somehow, they had done something to wake the ghost of Anna Vykroft. It had been Boris’s voice coming out of Riley’s mouth but it must have been Anna’s fears projected from beyond the grave.
Angry ghosts were capable of almost anything. Katie knew that firsthand.
Her other eye opened when the sound repeated itself.
Clunk. Clunk. CLANG.
Katie sighed, and almost smiled. This wasn’t ghosts. This was a normal problem facing any building that needed a few renovations. The pipes in the basement were banging. Probably the water heater.
In the next moment she moaned, and any pretense of a smile disappeared. Whether it was the boiler or the water heater, or something else, it didn’t matter. She and Riley were going to have to go downstairs, into the basement, and fix it before it could bother the guests.
If she lived to be a hundred years old she would always remember seeing all the dead bodies stacked in the corner of the basement, victims of the previous owner’s insanity. She would always remember fighting to get out of there alive. She did not want to go down there.
Did.
Not.
But the bodies were gone now, and the ghosts had been quiet except for that little tantrum last night. They had an Inn to run, and they couldn't ever go into that basement again. It was safe now. They just needed to fix the pipes. It would probably be as easy as turning a valve or tightening a screw.
Well. She could hope so, anyway.
Turning carefully in Riley’s arms she put a hand on his shoulder and started to shake him awake.
“I heard it,” he said, already opening his eyes. “Let me get some pants on and grab my tools. Whose idea was it to own an Inn?”
“Both of ours,” she reminded him.
He grumbled something she couldn’t make out. She got the gist, however.
There were dark circles under his eyes as he got up. Katie couldn’t be sure, but she was willing to bet that he had gotten just as little sleep as she had. Maybe less.
“I’m coming with you,” she told him, getting out of her side of the bed and pulling clothes from her dresser.
“Don’t be silly, Katie. Unless there’s a full-blown leak down there this is only going to take one person. And then if it is something that serious I’m just going to shut off the main valve and wait for daylight when I can get parts from a hardware store.”
“It’s not the size of the job that’s worrying me,” she told him. “Riley, I need to prove to myself that I can go down there whenever I need to. I can’t be afraid my whole life.”
Half dressed, he cupped her cheek in his hand. “And you figure it will be easier to go down there by yourself if you’re with me, right?”
She kissed his palm. “Exactly.”
They turned lights on as they went downstairs, pushing the shadows out of their way. They could hear the banging more loudly down here. Katie really hoped this wasn’t anything serious. Not right after they’d opened.
Behind the check-in desk, they stopped at the door to the basement. True to his word, Riley had installed the deadbolt lock. It was a flawless job. No one would ever know it hadn’t been there right along. None of the guests would be able to get through this.
Neither could Katie. “Where’s the key?”
Riley was on his knees behind the desk, and when he stood up again there was a ring of keys in his hand. “It’s right here with the others.”
“We should maybe put that somewhere else,” she suggested. “In case the guests get curious and start snooping when we aren’t around.”
He shrugged as he fit the right key to the lock. “I suppose. Let’s get the pipes fixed, and we can start keeping the keys upstairs in our room if you want.”
“Good idea.”
“I’m full of them tonight.”
“Tired man.”
“Why do I think I’ll always be tired when I’m living with you?”
She held his hand as he opened the door. “I promise tomorrow night I’ll make you tired for all the right reasons.”
Reaching inside the door, she turned on the light switch, revealing the wooden stairs that Riley had spent half a day replacing. It had been one of his first renovation projects. It was also as far as either of them had been comfortable going into the basement.
Now they would have to go further.
“Here,” Riley said to her, handing over a flashlight. “Just in case.”
He had one of his own, both of them four-cell metal Maglites. It was heavy in Katie’s hand. More like a weapon tha
n anything else. If anything moved down here, ghost or not, she was going to club it over the head and run.
Ducking under the ceiling when she was low enough on the stairs, Katie looked around the wide open space. There were still dozens of freestanding metal shelving units down here. They were mostly empty now, just shells that reminded Katie of skeletons standing tall in a museum. She and Riley hadn’t kept anything from the previous owner. This was the only real storage space the Inn had, however, so they had stacked sealed plastic bags of extra linens down here, and canned food, and other stuff. None of it amounted to much, and all of it was stuffed on the shelves closest to the stairs.
The water heater was at one end of the basement, the furnace at the other.
“Flip a coin?” Riley suggested.
“Let’s do the water heater first.” Katie didn’t know much about stuff like this, but she figured one was as good as the other. Especially since the clanging had stopped now that they were down here.
They went to the opposite end of the basement, and Katie fiddled with her flashlight while Riley checked over the tank and the pipes. “Everything looks fine here,” Riley said, pulling on fittings and shining his flashlight at the dials. “It’s running like it should as far as I can tell.”
Katie nodded, trusting his judgment. Truthfully she had been worried that the tank had burst and they would find water spraying everywhere. If water got into the cracks in the stonework of the walls before they could fix them, there could be a real problem. Riley had promised that it would take more than cracks to bring this place down, but still. She worried about her investment.
Now they both turned to the other end, looking through and past all the shelves, to where the big square of the furnace sat with vent pipes jutting out of the top and disappearing through the ceiling.
“It shouldn’t even be on, right?” Katie asked. They had moved back toward the stairs, back where she at least felt safe with an escape route right there and ready. “It’s been too warm to turn the furnace on. It couldn’t be the furnace.”
Riley sighed. “Better check it anyway.”
She knew he was right. Steeling herself, she took a step in that direction.
And the lights went off.
She froze, all of her muscles turning to ice. It was a moment before she remembered she was holding a flashlight and then she fumbled both hands along the shaft until she found the switch and turned it on. Riley’s turned on next to her.
Light filtered down to them from above also, but it only gave them a faint circle of illumination right where they stood. Everything else was in the dark. Anything could happen in the dark.
“It’s the fuse,” he said to her, shining the light up so she could see his face. “I heard it clicking off. Damn it. Okay, listen. Stay here, and I mean right here, and I’ll go throw the switch.”
“Riley...”
“Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. “You’ve got the flashlight and there’s nothing down here. Just you and me.”
“Right,” she said, and she even kept her voice from shaking when she said it. Just because they had been the only ones down here two seconds ago, didn’t mean they were alone now...
“The fuse box is right over there,” he reminded her, spearing the far corner of the basement with his flashlight. “You’ll be able to see me the whole time.”
“Okay.”
She smiled as he kissed her cheek and turned away.
Then she was standing there in the middle of the basement, by herself, shining her flashlight all around.
The floors down here were dirt, and the walls were made of stacked stones and mortar. Her light played over the irregular surface of the wall closest to her and kept going, the metal shelving units casting odd shadows all around when they got in the way.
Foolish, she told herself. That’s what she was. She was being ridiculous. There was nothing down here to be afraid of.
CLANK.
The sound drew her attention to her right. Something was over there. Not the furnace. Something else.
“Riley?” she called to him, but she couldn’t make her voice louder than a whisper. “Riley, did you hear that?”
The sound became a scraping noise that echoed and repeated. Slowly, very slowly, Katie turned her flashlight that way. The light shook in her hand.
The circle of bright white illumination slid over the stones, inch by inch, moving and finding nothing until there was the dark silhouette of a man, standing there with his back to her.
In the light, the man lifted a shovel and rammed it into the wall.
Clank.
Again, and again, he struck at the wall, wedging the blade of the shovel between the stones, trying to loosen them.
Clank. CLANK.
The last resounding bang of metal against stone shook her voice loose. “Hey,” she squeaked. “Who are you? Stop that!”
The shovel rammed into the wall again. Sparks flew.
“Stop it!”
The stone cracked.
“Hey!”
The man held the shovel in midair. His face turned toward her.
“I just wanted her to leave me alone,” he said. “Why wouldn’t she just leave me alone?”
Katie’s breath turned to ash in her lungs. It was the doctor, Boris Vykroft.
Chapter 14
Katie ran.
Or at least, she tried to. She turned sharply for the stairs and caught her feet on themselves and ended up pitching forward onto the hard-packed floor.
The flashlight bounced out of her hand, and switched off, and went clattering away into the darkness.
She crawled forward, listening to herself babbling as she tried to cry out for Riley while she felt ahead of herself blindly with her hands. She felt the edge of a shelving unit and used it to pull herself up and then she found the stone wall and felt along it, tears stinging her eyes, swearing and trembling.
Where were the stairs?
Instead, her hands found the broken stones where Boris Vykroft had been smashing into the wall with his shovel. Her fingers sank into cold, soft soil behind. She gasped in breath after breath and knew this was where the ghost had been standing and if he was still here then she was dead, she was so dead, he was going to kill her or possess her like he did with--
“Riley!” she screamed, too afraid to move, too afraid to do anything but cling to the wall and pray to God that this wasn’t happening. “Riley!”
Light flooded over her and for a moment it was too bright for her eyes that had adjusted to the dark. Then Riley was there, holding her, and when she could focus on his face she saw that they were alone again. It was just her, and him.
And the broken stonework of the wall.
The lights were on, but everything was still wrong.
“Katie. It’s all right, Katie,” he said to her, over and over. “I’m right here. It’s all right.”
She threw herself into his arms, wondering what sort of a nightmare they’d gotten themselves into this time. “Where were you? Huh? Where were you?”
“What are you talking about? I’m right here.”
“No! I mean, where were you two seconds ago when the lights were out and I fell and then he was right here, right here, right here!”
“Katie, what are you talking about? Who was here?”
She knew she was babbling, and she forced herself to take a breath and slow down. “He was here, Riley. Boris Vykroft was standing right here, trying to break through the wall with a shovel. That’s what we were hearing from upstairs. He was right here!”
“Katie...”
He was about to tell her it was impossible for Vykroft to have been standing here. She could see it on his face. Even after everything that had happened with the watch, and with her stepping back in time to see the day Anna Vykroft died in that fire, he was still going to try standing here and saying it was impossible.
“Then how do you explain this?” she demanded.
She held her hands up for him t
o see the dirt clinging to her skin, trapped under her fingernails. He looked at them closely, and then turned to look at the broken wall.
“Huh,” he said out loud. “There’s something...hold on.”
Taking out his flashlight, he turned the light on to see into the broken area of the wall. Several of the stones were pried out, Katie saw now, and behind it was the rich black soil that she had accidentally pressed her hands into. It figured that she would get turned around in the dark and find herself right back here when all she wanted to do was get out of the basement.
With all the practice she’d had running away from scary things in her life, she really ought to have a better sense of direction.
Riley began scooping dirt out of the broken section with his one hand. Katie had to wonder what this would do to the stability of the house but she supposed as long as the rest of the wall was sound then this one break wouldn’t cause too much trouble. What could Boris Vykroft have been looking for here, she wondered?
With one more scoop of dirt Riley swore very loudly and jumped back from the wall, his flashlight held out like a shield. His face was suddenly very pale.
Katie followed the direction of his gaze. Behind the wall, in the section that had been broken apart, the withered face of a corpse had been exposed. Cheekbones protruded from cracked, dried skin. The jaw hung open and the inside of the mouth was full of dirt. The nose was gone.
The eyes were gone.
The dirt around the body shifted, and a heap of it fell inward, into the basement, and as it did the body moved until that ruined face was looking directly at Katie.
Chapter 15
Police officers in New Hampshire were very different from the police in her home state back west.
Katie had first seen that several weeks ago when the New Hampshire State Police had arrived in large numbers at the Inn. That time, they had been here to remove multiple dead bodies collected by a crazy woman.
This time, they were removing just one dead body from the space behind the wall. Katie counted her blessings for that.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 54
