“She tried to warn us,” Katie heard herself saying, now that the rumbling and the roaring had disappeared from all around them. “She tried to make us leave before he found us. Anna knew. She knew!”
It wasn’t Anna’s ghost they had to be afraid of. It was his.
It wasn’t Anna’s body that Boris’s ghost had been trying to release. It was his own.
Clawing his way free of his own grave, Boris Vykroft sneered at the broken form of Brent Keller just sitting there, trying not to fall over.
One dead arm came forward, very slowly, and wrapped around Brent’s neck.
Katie tried to lunge for him, to save him if she could, but Riley held her back.
It was too late.
That arm contracted with an inhuman strength and pulled the Reverend up off the floor, his feet dangling and shaking as his windpipe was crushed. Boris’s wasted and gaping mouth screeched meaningless noise at him. Worms festered through a hole in the dead man’s skull.
Brent tried to tear himself free with his one good hand. His eyes pleaded for rescue as his face turned purple, and his eyes bulged.
The cross fell from his fingers to the floor and skittered away, still smoldering.
He looked down at the sacred symbol of his faith, completely out of his reach.
Then he looked up at Katie. She saw him mouth two words, no breath left to say them out loud.
I’m sorry.
Was he talking to her? Or was he trying to make an apology to a little boy that he’d killed while he was drunk behind the wheel? An apology he’d never been able to make before.
She never knew the answer. Boris screamed and squeezed harder and Brent’s neck snapped with such force that his head was nearly torn off his shoulders.
Boris dropped him without a care. The Reverend’s body crumpled into a heap at his feet.
The dead man’s corpse stood there, decayed from years of moldering in the dirt. He absently straightening the scraps of his filthy, rotten clothing as he looked around the basement, and when his dead eyes settled on Katie and Riley there was a momentary flash of his former self.
He looked just like he did in the memory Katie had stepped into. Tall and imposing, and angry.
“You whore!” he screamed. The word echoed, vibrating through the space between them. It was exactly what Katie had heard him say to Anna. “I’ll see you in the grave before I stand another minute of this!”
Only this time, he wasn’t talking to Anna. He was talking to Katie.
He took a step toward them, a decomposing corpse once again.
Riley tugged Katie back, heading them toward the stairs.
In that instant, Katie knew she couldn’t leave here. Not until it was truly finished.
She pulled her hand away from Riley, and lunged toward the ghost of the dead man.
A voice at the back of her mind tried to tell her this was the stupidest thing she had ever done.
She closed her eyes, and landed on the floor at Boris’s feet, and with her free hand she scooped up the cross that Brent had dropped.
Boris’s cold, dead fingers folded into Katie’s hair and yanked her neck backward with a violence that left her seeing stars. She screamed as he pulled her up to her toes and spun her around to put her eye to eye with him.
His eyes were blank, and cold.
“You’re all the same.” The stench of the grave followed those words. “Why can’t you just let me be?”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Katie said to him. “Leave us be!”
Katie rammed her fist forward, and it broke through the mushy, ruined mess of the corpse’s chest, burying Brent’s cross deep inside the dried gore.
Then the world turned upside down.
There was pain, and there was this sense of flying with her feet off the ground and the floor above her and the ceiling below her, and it was a moment before her brain realized she’d been thrown across the length of the basement. The landing was hard, and the stars from before became exploding supernovas that hurt her brain.
She wondered, just for a moment, if maybe she was dead.
Riley held her, and when he did the room stopped spinning and the ringing in her ears settled down for her to hear him telling her to look...look...
“Katie, look.”
She lifted her eyes up, trying to focus on the thrumming haze of pain spreading through her body. The ghost of Boris Vykroft was glowing, burning, cascading with a harsh light that spread outward from the hole in his chest to flood through the basement.
The light grew bright enough to hurt Katie’s eyes.
Flames followed.
Chapter 26
“Put it out!” Katie shouted, panic rising in her for a different reason now. “Put it out before the fire spreads! It’s just like it was before. It’s just like it was before!”
She tried to get up, but her body had forgotten how to work. Riley knew what she meant. He knew what to do.
The image of what had happened back in 1921, the fire that destroyed half the town, the fire that had been started by Boris Vykroft, flashed through Katie’s mind. This could be history repeating itself. It could be another fire that wiped out everything, starting with their Inn.
Unless they stopped it now.
Riley left her there and ran as fast as he could past the burning ghost. His hands were up, even though they wouldn’t offer any protection if Boris came after him.
Katie nearly toppled over to the floor without Riley there to hold her up. She caught herself with her hands and braced herself with her arms so she could watch. The flames rose high now, like a bonfire feeding on Boris’s dead remains, and the red-hot tendrils licked at the wooden ceiling beams.
In her heart, she urged Riley to hurry.
He ran to the water heater, and twisted a little valve on a pipe and suddenly there was water shooting everywhere, shooting through the air and running across the floor.
When the water struck Boris, he screamed.
Smoke hissed and flames sputtered. The ghost wailed in the dual torment of fire and water. Riley dove to the side, soaked to the skin as more water came down on him.
Boris’s screech shook the rafters, rising up to a keening pitch that shattered the lightbulbs over their heads.
Everything went black, and silent, as the embers of the flames died out, and the haunting scream faded away.
Riley stumbled his way to Katie in the sudden darkness. She heard him banging into the shelves, and then thudding against the wall, and then he was right there and she clung to him, and he did the same.
Somewhere he had found their flashlight and now he fumbled with it until he got it to turn on. Neither of them relaxed until he did.
Boris Vykroft was gone. His ghost had been expelled from the Inn. It was over.
“Are you okay?” Riley asked her, his whisper sounding incredibly loud now. “Should we get you to a hospital?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Everything hurts.”
“Is anything broken? Can you walk?”
“Riley. Just give me a minute, okay?”
He nodded, sweeping the light around the basement as he did. Katie watched as it played over the aftermath of what had just happened. The knocked over shelves. The wrecked section of wall. Brent Keller’s body lying there broken and bloody. The water from the heating tank, down to a trickle now, turning the dirt floor around it to a muddy mess.
The ghost of Anna Vykroft, standing there in a long black dress, staring at them with the fires behind those empty eyes.
The ghost did not move as Riley’s flashlight outlined her translucent form against the backdrop of the ruined basement. Her dress flowed in a breeze that wasn’t there. She no longer appeared to them as her corpse. This was how her spirit would remain for eternity. She was the beautiful, tormented woman that she had been in life once more.
Except for the eyes. The eyes remained hollow and filled with flames.
She lifted one hand
, and a finger curled out to stab the distance between them.
“I hated him,” they heard her say. Her lips did not move as the words unfurled. “He hated me as well. We have been imprisoned together for so long. All this time...”
Riley was trying to help Katie to her feet. Her legs felt numb. Her whole body felt that way, actually. Everything ached and cried out no matter how she moved. If the ghost chose to attack them, like Boris had, there would be nothing she could do about it. She had nothing left in her.
The moment stretched, and just when Katie couldn’t hold her breath any longer, Anna lowered her hand.
“You have broken the cycle. We hated each other. So much. I don’t think two people have ever hated that completely. I made him hate me, and he rose to the occasion. So much hatred. Now he is gone, and I can move on as well. I can finally be at peace.”
She nodded to herself, to what she had just said, and as she did the fires in what should have been her eyes went out.
“This is done.”
With a whisper of sound, she disappeared into a vapory mist that was there and gone again in an instant.
The flashlight’s beam was the only light left to them as they sat there huddled together on the dirt floor, just concentrating on breathing.
Katie’s mind was racing a mile a minute. Anna and Boris Vykroft. These ghosts were gone. For now the terror was over but Katie had known when she moved into the Heritage Inn that there were several entities infesting the place. She had no idea how many layers deep the haunting went, or what might pop up next.
For now, however, there could be peace in the Inn again.
The door at the top of the stairs banged open, slamming against the inner wall. Katie and Riley both jumped where they sat and Katie felt her heart jump into her throat once again.
Framed in the light from upstairs, Jason Maldeeves stood there, staring down at them in disbelief.
“Did you guys feel that? It was like an earthquake!”
Riley swore under his breath and got to his feet. With a little effort, Katie did the same.
“Are you guys hurt?” Jason asked. He reached in and flicked the light switch up and down, up and down, but of course it stayed dark in the basement. All of the lights were broken. “Huh. Well, hold on, and I’ll come down and help you.”
“No!” Katie and Riley both blurted out at the same time.
Katie threw a quick glance back toward the broken wall. She could only just see the outline of Brent Keller’s dead body lying there in the gloom. There was no way they could explain that. Not in any way that would make sense, at any rate. The local pastor, dead in their basement. No one would believe a ghost killed the man.
Brent had very nearly not believed them. Who else in this town could they turn to now? Katie’s dream to have the Inn exorcised might just have gone up in smoke.
Literally.
“Maybe,” Riley whispered to her, “we could tell people more of the wall collapsed. He died when the wall caved in. That wouldn’t be a total lie.”
Katie shook her head. She could picture the police investigation now. With all the death that had occurred down here in this basement, no one was likely to bat an eyelash at one more. That would be just one more page in what she had to imagine was a pretty thick folder on Leon Moresby’s desk labeled “Unexplained Occurrences at the Heritage Inn.”
Only this time, they would be the suspects. Her and Riley. They were the only ones down here when Brent died. Jason up there would be more than happy to testify to that, Katie was sure of it. A chance to get his name associated with a real-life haunted Inn? He’d probably kill his own grandmother for that chance.
Either way, the police would automatically suspect them and it wasn’t like they could call on Boris Vykroft as a defense witness in their favor.
“We can’t let him down here to see any of this,” Katie said as quietly as she could.
“I agree,” Riley said. “We can’t just leave it like this, though.”
“I know, I know.” She raised her voice to call up the stairs to Jason. “We’ll be right up. Remember, please, the basement is off limits to guests.”
“Yes, I remember.”
On her feet again, Katie hobbled her way up the first step.
“Katie...look.”
Riley was pointing back into the basement, shining his light on something. She couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw what it was.
A medallion on a chain, circular and gold, engraved with a spiral pattern. It was almost exactly like the one Anna’s corpse had been wearing, except this one was smaller, and somehow more manly. It must have been something that Boris Vykroft wore. The twin of the one Anna had.
Riley went to retrieve it for her, and stuffed it into his pocket as he helped her take one step at a time. Another souvenir, from yet another haunting.
When they got upstairs, Riley made sure to close and lock the deadbolt on the door. They smiled and promised Jason that they were all right, even though Katie felt like she was going to throw up and she could already feel the bruises forming.
“Just a minor earthquake,” Riley told him. “They happen in New England all the time.”
“I thought this area of the country wasn’t prone to quakes?” he said, eyebrows scrunched in confusion.
“It’s more of a local thang,” Katie said.
Jason looked at the door, and then at them, and it was obvious from his expression that he knew there was more going on than they were saying. Katie didn’t care as long as he turned around, and stomped back upstairs, and left them alone.
“Katie,” Riley said when they were alone. “What are we going to do?”
She eased herself into the chair behind the check-in desk. “I have an idea,” she told him. “You’re just not going to like it.”
Chapter 27
Two days later, Riley and Katie sat at the little table in the kitchen, away from the dining area, where they could have a little bit of privacy while they drank their coffee and ate a quick breakfast of microwave pancakes and bacon.
All of the guests from their grand opening, including Jason Maldeeves, had checked out at the end of their stays. They were gone, and they had the entire Inn to themselves once again. At least until tomorrow when more people had booked reservations.
In an odd way, Katie was going to miss this first group of guests. A couple of them, again including Jason, had promised to book rooms again as soon as they could. Their appetite for the thrill of ghosts and hauntings had been stoked. A dead body in the walls. A minor earthquake. The police investigating suspicious deaths right in front of them.
All of that was lies, of course, to cover the truth. It was still enough to pique their interest. Now they wanted more.
Katie was hoping that there wouldn’t be any more ghosts rising up at the Heritage Inn. She knew that was just wishful thinking but hey, she could hope.
This time had taken more from her than she cared to think about. There was a doctor in Twilight Ridge now, a nice man who had open office hours at his home when he wasn’t scheduled to work at the hospital two towns over. He’d looked Katie over and very pointedly told her that she did not get that banged up by falling out of a tree.
Katie had very politely smiled at him and told him to mind his business, and then accepted his prescription for muscle relaxers. One a night was enough to help her sleep, both in body and in mind.
Now, with all of that behind them, Riley sipped at his coffee and gave her a meaningful look from across the table.
“Well. That happened.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and she took that as a good sign. It’s not every man in the world who would help you cover up a man’s death and then joke about it afterward.
That was Riley Harris. Correction. That was her Riley Harris. She had definitely picked the right man to be her partner in life. In death, too.
The night after Boris and Anna Vykroft’s spirits had departed, she and Riley had snuck back d
own into the basement when everyone else was in their rooms asleep. They had wrapped Brent Keller’s body in a black tarp, and brought him back to his church.
After moving his body again, this time from the trunk to the church, Katie had gone back outside to stand on the sidewalk as a lookout. Thankfully the residents of Twilight Ridge pretty much all pulled themselves into their shells when the sun went down. No one came by while Riley was inside, putting their plan into motion.
He was a contractor. He knew how to build houses, and he knew how to take them apart. Pulling out a few support beams so that a wall and most of the ceiling in a back room came crashing down on top of Brent Keller hadn’t been hard for him to do at all. It had just taken a few hours.
When she heard the noise of the church collapsing on Brent’s already dead body, Katie had tried not to throw up. It was necessary, she told herself. It was the only way, she said for the hundredth time. It had been her idea, she reminded herself.
Even so, she was happy to be driving away from there and back to the Inn.
Nobody could know how Brent really died. Everyone had to think it was an accident so that the police wouldn’t come looking to arrest her and Riley.
When morning came and the town was buzzing with news of the poor Reverend Keller’s death, Katie and Riley had both done their best to act surprised. They had mostly succeeded.
Jason Maldeeves and Victor Akers and the other guests had been less circumspect about it. They had all gone crazy with the news of a second death in town. Especially on the last day that they had booked. It cleared them out of the Inn until after dinner, while they watched the police and the fire department extract poor Brent Keller out from under the corner of his church.
From what she understood, there was no risk of anyone figuring out that he had died somewhere else. There was too much damage to the body for anyone to know the difference. So, yeah. An unpleasant, but easy fix.
The basement was another matter entirely. The water damage wasn’t bad at all, thankfully. Riley tamped the floor back down and primed the pump and that was taken care of. Same with replacing the bulbs in the ceiling. Some of them had to be removed with pliers, with the power off, but once that was done replacing them was a snap.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 59
