The thud as the car slammed into the little boy’s body was loud in Katie’s ears. Much louder than it should have been.
The tires braked on the pavement and the car finally lurched to a stop. Martin jumped out of his side of the car and around to the front.
Katie saw the look on his face, and she knew the worst had happened.
She tried to turn away, but wherever she turned, there was the scene of Mark, picking up his son’s broken body. Mark, putting his son across the backseat. Mark, babbling now as he prayed to God to not let anyone find out what he’d done.
Not to save his son, but to save himself.
They drove back to Mark’s house, and then he took Martin out of the car, and Katie followed without taking a step as he brought the boy around to the backyard.
And opened the cover on the well.
And dumped his son into the water with a splash.
And covered the well up again, walking away as if nothing at all had happened.
Below them, Katie heard Martin speaking from his watery grave.
“This is why I’m dead. This is why I’m dead...”
Then everything changed in a flash and she was standing in the house again, just inside the door, in the daylight. The vision was over.
She stumbled forward a step, disoriented, and Mel was there to catch her.
“Katie? Katie what happened? You were just taking a step and it was like...like I lost you for a minute.”
Katie stared into the house, remembering everything she’d just seen. It wasn’t Vera who killed Martin. It was his father.
Either way, Martin was dead. His ghost was trapped in this place, even now that they’d found his body, he was trapped because he needed his father to take the blame for what he’d done. He couldn’t move on until he got justice.
Oh, dear God.
His spirit was trapped in this house.
“Mel, we need to get out of here. I was wrong to come here. This is...this is not a good home. This place has secrets. Martin’s ghost is still here.”
Cold rippled up her skin, from the soles of her feet.
“There’s something else, too...”
She shivered as it crawled up her abdomen, and across her shoulders, and down her arms.
“We need to go.”
The cold gripped her injured fingers, and they burned.
“Now! We need to go now!”
Mel nodded, her eyes wide, looking around at the empty house and seeing nothing. Katie could tell she felt it, though. The cold approaching. The way the house was breathing around them, darkness constricting around them and then expanding, contracting, expanding.
Like the house itself was breathing.
“Katie...”
The voice came from the end of the hall. Distorted, and familiar, and edged with darkness.
Katie saw Riley standing there, down at the end of the hall by the kitchen.
The soccer ball was in his hands.
Chapter 15
Katie heard Mel sigh with relief. It was Riley.
Just Riley.
Katie knew better. Now she believed the message from the Ouija board.
SOCCER.
RUN.
“Riley,” Mel said, “what are you doing here? Are you okay now? We’ve been looking for you and you would not believe the stuff going on here!”
He smiled down the hallway at them, and his eyes locked with Katie’s.
“Well?” Mel asked him. “You just gonna stand there or what?”
“Mel,” Katie said, her voice low and full of warning.
“Come on,” Mel said impatiently to Riley. “We’re leaving. Let’s get out of here. This house is all kinds of messed up.”
“Mel.”
“What is wrong with you, Riley? We need to go. We’ve got a story to tell you, and you’re not going to believe it.”
“Mel!”
Finally her friend stopped, and looked over at her. “What?”
Katie shook her head, not willing to take her eyes off the man at the end of the hall. “That’s not Riley.”
“Well, of course it is! Just look at...oh.”
The reality hit them both now.
No, this wasn’t Riley. This was the man who had been terrorizing Katie at the Inn.
Just like Mark Keats had terrorized his wife and his son. Katie had watched him do it right here. She’d heard some of the same words here, in her vision, as the ones that had been hurled at her back at the Inn.
That man at the Inn had not been Riley.
This wasn’t him either.
Katie knew who it was now.
He smiled at her, the gleam in his eyes changing as their color melted, and ran, and changed.
This man...
His face stretched and cracked and reshaped itself. Even his hair changed, the part moving and the color darkening.
This man was...
His body expanded, filling the hallway where he stood, and then resettled itself, taller, thinner, somehow less human.
This man was Mark Keats. The man of this household.
The man who had killed his own son in his anger.
That anger stared at Katie now from beyond the grave.
Not a man at all. A ghost.
She didn’t know when or how Mark Keats had died. Vera had never said. Katie doubted that she even knew. Maybe no one knew. Now here he stood. Dead, and not gone.
His ghost had been masquerading as Riley. That was why he always felt so cold when he touched her. That was why he did all those cruel things to her. Things that Riley never would have done.
And it had all started after Riley had gone down into that well in the backyard...
In the well.
“Katie?” Mel said uncertainly. “I don’t think that’s Riley.”
Katie rolled her eyes.
The ghost of Mark Keats took a step toward them, the soccer ball held out in front of him, between his two hands. It spun in a lazy circle between his palms, rotating under some unearthly power that Katie didn’t understand.
“Katie,” Mel asked her. “What do we do?”
“The Ouija board,” Katie whispered, remembering the message once more. “Run. Run!”
The ghost took another step, and another, before she or Mel could even move. With a grin that split his face and showed off every one of his teeth he raised his arms up over his head.
“There’s nowhere to run,” his voice hissed playfully. “Martin thought he could run, too. Remember what happened to him?”
Katie took Mel’s hand and started edging them toward the door.
“You can’t run,” the ghost promised.
The door was still so far away.
The ghost laughed, and held the soccer ball out higher.
“Catch!”
He threw it, and it came hurtling at them, a spinning black and white sphere. A child’s toy. A keepsake for a grieving mother.
And something deadly.
Katie ducked and pulled Mel down with her. The ball sailed over their heads, shrieking like a comet. The heat from its passing burned against the back of her neck.
An explosion deafened her. The house shook around them and Katie was thrown forward onto her hands, the pain of her injuries flaring again.
In the next moment the force of the detonation sent her and Mel both tumbling down the hall.
Closer to the spirit of Mark Keats.
He loomed over them, his shape growing longer, arms dangling as they scraped along the ceiling, knees bent outward and pressed against the walls. His face was dark and menacing and huge with the luminous eyes that were bulging, and hungry.
The mouth opened. A long and curling tongue slithered out.
“Don’t make me teach you a lesson again!”
Katie was too frightened to move. Too scared to think. This wasn’t like any ghost she had ever seen. It was something more.
Something purely evil.
It was Mel who picked her up and ran w
ith her through the slimmest of gaps between the floor and the apparition’s body. Together they ran, down the hall, and into the kitchen.
Behind them the ghost of Mark Keats doubled over, his misshapen head bending low and curving back between his own legs.
“Nowhere to run. Nowhere to run!”
There was a back door. It led to a porch and then the yard and that was their way out. Katie nodded to Mel as they both came up with the same plan at the same time. Run, and get away from the thing in the hallway--
A long black arm blurred through the doorway and into the room with them, smashing the kitchen table, crushing boxes of bottled water and bursting them open with loud, hollow POP noises. Water ran everywhere. Splinters of wood flew around the room.
Katie could hear Mel screaming but she couldn’t understand what she was saying. When she tugged them toward the back door Katie followed, and stumbled, and then crawled that way. She wanted out. She needed to be outside.
She needed to be away from this ghost thing.
Oversized fingers swept past them, above them as they crouched, catching in Katie’s hair, yanking her sideways. She felt strands pulled out by their roots. Her face banged off the front of the refrigerator. She blinked for a moment, confused and dazed, while another layer of ringing was added to the bells already gonging in her ears.
The hand came down, groping for her.
Mel pulled her away again, to safety through the back door.
They were on the porch, and the ghost was screaming at them and reaching for them and Katie kept moving because she understood that if she stopped, she would be dead.
The fresh, crisp autumn air hit her like a bucket of water as they fell together on the grass outside. It woke her up, bringing her out of a stupor she hadn’t even been aware of. She gulped a breath of that air, and then another, and a fog cleared from her mind.
She looked back at the house. It was this place. Everything here was toxic, not just the water. Somehow the air in the house was tainted, and it had been affecting her. Maybe it was the presence of Mark Keats that had made it worse for her. She didn’t know. She didn’t care, either.
She could stand up straight again. She could think.
Katie stepped away from the house, ready to run if anything happened. Mel came over to her, standing close, and she was just as tense and ready to bolt. After a few steps, when nothing happened, Katie began to wonder if she had imagined it all. Maybe the air inside the house was so oppressive that she’d been hallucinating. How could she know? Yes, ghosts were real but the way Mark Keats’ ghost had twisted into that nightmarish shape and come after them was insane. Impossible.
That couldn’t be real, could it?
“I think we’re safe,” Mel said, coming to a halt not far from the well, right beside the rope that Riley had put up to keep people away while he worked. “I think we’re safe.”
“Maybe,” Katie said. She was concentrating on breathing. She couldn’t get enough of the nice, clean air out here. “I don’t know.”
“Ghosts can’t come out in the daylight, right?” Mel asked her. She sat down hard on her ass, right there on the lawn. “Isn’t that a thing? Ghosts don’t appear in daylight?”
“I don’t know,” Katie repeated testily. Her legs were wobbly and she wanted to sit down with her friend, too, but she didn’t because she wanted to be ready to run if she needed to. “I don’t know how any of this works, Mel. It just does. Maybe ghosts can’t come out in daylight. Maybe they can. Maybe they can take the shape of my boyfriend’s face and sleep next to me in our bed and...and...”
Oh, hell. What had she done with Mark Keats’ ghost, thinking it was Riley? She thought back, and even though the moments where the ghost had been terrorizing her were hard to think about she forced herself to do it because she needed to know that there hadn’t been any kissing. No intimacy. Nothing that would send her into years of therapy before she would ever be able to touch Riley again--
Riley.
Where was Riley?
Panic welled up in her and pushed aside the calm that she had found out here in the fresh air. That damned Ouija board had told her to come looking for Riley here. He was supposed to be right here.
Her mind was close to cracking. This was too much. A boy’s ghost, the angry spirit of the monster who used to be his father, and now her boyfriend was missing.
She started back for the house.
“Whoa, whoa!” Mel said to her, reaching out and grabbing her by the wrist. Katie yelped. Her hands were aching worse than ever and Mel wasn’t exactly being gentle.
“Let go,” she demanded. “I have to find Riley. My Riley. He’s got to be here!”
“No.
Oh, hell no, Katie. You are not going back into that house. Not without a priest.”
It was almost impossible with her hands, but Katie managed to pull out the cross that she carried everywhere with her. “I’ve got this. See? Just like the rosary hanging in your car. I’m fine.”
Mel pointed to her hand, to where the blood had started to soak through the bandages. She’d torn her stitches again. “You are not fine, chickie. You’re hurt, and you’re in danger. That cross might get you a little ways and God knows I’ve fallen off the church wagon, but what you need is an actual and for real priest.”
“Well Twilight Ridge lost its pastor to, um, an accident.” Katie pushed the guilt of that aside because it hadn’t been entirely her fault. “So, unless you’ve got some holy man stuck in your back pocket then all we’ve got is each other.”
“Actually, I’ve got one of those in my car.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a priest. Well, an ordained minister actually. Your ghost hunting guest. Gary Wargo. He’s one. Right there in my car around front. Did you not hear him say when we got here that he’s an ordained online minister?”
Katie rolled her eyes. She seemed to be doing that a lot recently. Yes, she’d heard Gary say that. No, it didn’t mean anything to her. Anybody could get a minister’s license online. “Stevie Nicks is an ordained minister, Mel. Lady Gaga, too. Hell, Dwayne Johnson got ordained a few years ago! It doesn’t mean anything! Let go!”
“Katie...”
“I said let go, Mel.”
But her friend wasn’t paying attention to her. She was looking around them, with her eyes wide. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t say your name.”
“Katie...”
They heard it more clearly this time, echoing in an odd way that drew their attention to the open well.
“...Katie...”
She took a step in that direction, and then stopped.
“What is it?” Mel asked her.
Gathering her courage she stepped up to the edge. The voice was in agony. It was pleading for help.
And it was Riley’s voice.
Chapter 16
Without any concern for her own safety Katie slid herself out on her belly over the edge of the hole. She used her legs and her feet to brace herself more than she did her hands because they were in so much pain now that they’d actually started to go numb. She had let the little cross drop to the ground rather than even try holding it safe in those fingers. It was right over there, however. Still close if she needed it.
Where was that tramadol when she needed it?
“Riley?” she called down to him. “Riley? Are you there?”
It was a moment before he answered. “Here. I’m here.”
Katie could have cried she was so happy. He was here, after all. Stuck down there in the well, in the cold and the damp, just like Martin Keats’ body had been. At least the water was gone now.
They needed to get him out.
She strained to see down into the darkness, remembering how impossible it had been for her to see anything when she was down there. Damn it. She was so getting Riley some of those stand-up work lights for Christmas. “Riley, climb up to me. Climb up and we’ll get you out.”
A haunti
ng one word reply came back to her. “Can’t...”
“What’s wrong? The ladder’s right here, honey. I’m right here.”
“...Can’t...”
“Riley? What is it?”
Mel was beside her know, kneeling with her at the edge. In her hand she had a little metal flashlight. “I went out to the car to get this,” she explained. “Um, Gary’s still out there, if you maybe reconsidered having a minister come and--"
Katie shook her head adamantly. “No. I’m not going to bless this house and cast the spirit out. That’s too good for this bastard. We’re burning this place. Right to the ground.” Then, raising her voice, she called down to Riley. “We’re going to drop you a light, okay? Watch it as it falls so it doesn’t bang you on the head. Here it comes!”
She held it out, and turned it on, pointing the beam down. It didn’t reach. It was too deep to see anything.
Turning it around so the light pointed skyward, she let it go.
Halfway down it banged against one of the aluminum rungs of the ladder and began spinning wildly. Katie strained her eyes to catch any glimpse of Riley. How long had he been down there? He must have fallen in after the police hauled out the little body of Martin Keats. Katie had been down there when Martin came up out of the ground so Riley must have gone in after that.
The flashlight reached the bottom, the back end of the handle plunging hallway into the mud, at an angle. In its light, she saw Riley.
It cast an eerie glow over him, half standing and half slouched against the curving rock wall. He was just standing there with his head down. Katie didn’t understand what was wrong.
“Riley? Come on, honey. Climb up the ladder to us.”
“Can’t,” he told her again, even more quietly this time. His voice barely reached them. He lifted a hand up, his fingers reaching. “Help me.”
“The ladder, Riley. The ladder’s right there. Just climb up to us.”
But he shook his head, and let his hand fall away. “Can’t. Help me. Please.”
Katie got up to her knees, reaching for the top of the ladder, ready to swing her feet over and down and go save him. He must be hurt.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 68
