The ivory lady. The woman trapped in the dark hallway.
So. It wasn’t over after all.
Help me.
Someone dead.
Not Dead.
The message didn’t make any sense, and that scared her more than anything else. Who wasn’t dead? Why was it important to say only that?
For the first time, she stepped up to the wall and put her fingers against the letters. She traced them, and they felt dry and rough to the touch.
They smelled of copper.
Blood.
These were written in blood that couldn’t be cleaned away. It was there, and they wouldn’t be able to make it go away no matter how much bleach they used. The spirit who wrote this would keep it here until they got what they wanted.
Whatever that was.
“We need to cover this up,” Riley said. “We can’t let the guests see there was more to this. They can’t know.”
“They might be in danger,” Katie pointed out.
“I know,” he said. “Us too.”
A shiver ran through her blood, turning it to ice.
Chapter 11
The door to Pastor Jim Sutter’s little house only opened after Katie announced it was her.
“Hi there,” he said in that bass rumble of his. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Um. Well. Come in.”
He sounded unsure of his invitation. Like he wasn’t all that happy to see her standing there. But he was a pastor, and he really couldn’t turn away someone in need. What Katie needed right now wasn’t spiritual guidance, but she still needed to talk to Jim. She still needed answers.
Regardless of her embarrassing exit from Connor’s house earlier, she needed Jim’s help.
She hadn’t really paid attention to his home before. Now that she did, it was obvious that he took his vows as a pastor seriously. Austere was a word that Katie didn’t use very often. It meant having no creature comforts, shunning any sort of luxury, everything very plain and very simple. In her line of business--buying places and then dressing them up pretty, so people wanted to pay ridiculous amounts of money for them--being austere was a bad thing.
Pastor Sutter’s home had a minimal amount of furniture. A couch in the living room. A bookcase with several heavy tomes on one shelf. No television. A small round table and two chairs in the kitchen. The only pictures hanging on the walls were scenes of mountains, or of Jesus. Before, Jim had told her that he hadn’t gotten around to hanging up his framed photos. Now, Katie just thought he preferred the emptiness. It probably allowed him to keep his focus on his duties.
There was a tea kettle on the stove, but no plates or pans or boxes of pasta anywhere. She had the feeling that if she looked in the cabinets, there wouldn’t be much more than a few cans of soup.
“Have a seat.” He pointed to one of the chairs at the table and then busied himself with putting water in the kettle. “Glad you’re here, actually. I need to talk to you.”
“Really? That was going to be my line.”
“Figured as much.” He nodded, more to himself than to her. “Me first, if that’s okay?”
She settled herself into the chair. “Sure. I just need to ask you about Connor Norstrom and that side of your family, but it can wait until after.”
“I see.” He pursed his wide lips and lowered himself into the other chair, across from her. “That’s interesting because what I need to tell you involves all that, too. You ran out of Connor’s house so quickly that you missed the rest of our conversation. What happened there, anyway?”
The voice, calling to her, asking her for help. “Um. That’s why I need to ask you about your family, Jim.”
“I don’t follow,” he said, folding his hands on top of the table.
“Well, see...I think I heard your niece, Amber when I was in Connor’s bathroom.”
His eyebrows rose up, but he didn’t seem all that surprised to hear her say it. “Oh? Maybe you should tell me what’s been going on with you, and then I’ll tell you what’s been going on with me.”
Katie raked her hands through her hair as she stared down at the tabletop. “I told you that I see ghosts. I don’t know if you fully grasp what that means. I don’t just mean sometimes. I don’t just mean when they want to be seen. I see them all the time.”
He was looking around the room now as if he might see them, too. “So, like, now? Do you see them now?”
She smiled at him. “There are no ghosts in your house, Jim. There’s really not all that many of them in the world, thank God.”
“Amen.” The relief on his face was almost comical. “Good. Well, that’s good. You know, as a pastor I’m not exactly supposed to believe in ghosts. The Holy Spirit, sure. The immortal soul, absolutely. But that’s not the variety of ghost that you see in horror movies. No sir. The church frowns on that. Still, I figure if you allow for the reality of the human soul then you need to accept that ghosts can be--”
The kettle blew its whistle, making Jim lurch to his feet.
The chair fell over behind him, crashing to the floor.
“Real,” he finished, embarrassment creasing lines into his face. “Heh. Sorry, Katie. I’m a bit jumpy. All this stuff about ghosts, and after my discussion with Connor I think that’s understandable.”
“You haven’t told me what he said.”
“Yeah. Guess I haven’t, huh?”
Katie watched him go to the stove and get the kettle, pouring water into two plain green mugs he took out of a cupboard. A jar of instant coffee materialized with them.
“It’s kind of hard for me to talk about,” he told her as he mixed the drinks with a spoon. “Even now, after I’ve had some time to process it, I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“Try me,” she said, thinking of her own secrets. “You might be surprised.”
He came back to the table with a cup in each hand, the steam rising above the rims. It smelled wonderful. Both of them sat with their hands around the outside because neither of them felt like drinking.
“You know what they say about family?” he asked her when he finally spoke. “Sometimes blood is thicker than water. Other times, blood’s thinner than smoke. Always one, or the other. You never really know the truth about family. Of course, I suppose that’s true of anyone, but when you find out your family’s not what you thought, it kind of stings worse.”
He took in a big breath, expanding his chest, and holding it before letting it go. She sat patiently, waiting for him to tell the story. What was happening to her and Riley scared the living daylights out of her, and she just wanted it to stop, but as bad as that was she could tell that what Jim had learned was upsetting him, too.
“Remember,” he asked her, “when I told you about Connor’s sister dying? How it was a huge tragedy after my aunt’s death that one of her own kids had died too? I always thought to myself, what a terrible life Connor’s had to lead. How much pain and loss he’s had to endure. God’s world is a beautiful place, but sometimes it’s just so cruel. I wasn’t there for Amber’s burial. I feel terrible for missing it. Amber’s my aunt’s daughter, remember?”
“I remember,” she assured him. “Your aunt Emmaline had two children, Connor and Amber. Her daughter, Amber, is the one who died. She passed away just a few months before you came back to Twilight Ridge, right?”
“Right. Well, that was what I was told.” He swallowed, and then lifted his coffee cup halfway to his lips, and then set it down still untouched. “Turns out that I may have been misinformed. The whole family might have been, for that matter.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“Not sure I understand either,” he muttered. Then he lifted his voice for her to hear him clearly again. “Connor was annoyed at us being there, and when men get angry, they get stupid. That’s one of those eternal truths that you just can’t get away from. He let some things slip that he really shouldn’t have. He told me that he only thinks his sister is dead. She disappeared one day,
and never came back. The funeral happened at his insistence because he wanted to make sure her soul could rest.”
Katie gaped at him with her mouth hanging open. “She’s missing? Then what did they bury in her grave?”
“Empty casket, I guess. All for the show to make the family feel better. Hard to picture that my niece is out there, somewhere, lying dead and just waiting for someone to discover her, while there’s a gravestone with her name on it.”
Katie could imagine it, unfortunately. She’d had encounters with dead people before, with empty graves and with bodies buried where they shouldn’t be, and on the wall of her Inn was a message, written by the hand of some angry ghost...
Amber.
It must have been written by Amber.
But then...what did it mean?
Not Dead.
Not Dead...Not Dead...NOT DEAD...
NOTDEADNOTDEADNOTDEADNOTDEAD
“Katie?” Jim said to her. “Did you hear me?”
The world had gone black for a moment, and those words had filled her hearing. Now she blinked her vision back into focus. “I’m sorry. I, um, was thinking about something.”
“Obviously. You were a million miles away there for a minute. So tell me, what’s going on with you?”
“I think...I think there is a ghost reaching out to us. Me, and you as well. Your aunt’s brooch coming back here wasn’t a coincidence. It was your aunt’s way of reaching out to you. She needed your help. Now, I think Amber does, too.”
“What? How? She’s been missing for months, Katie, and she’s not the kind of person who would just up and leave without telling anyone or staying in touch with her family. She must be dead. What help can I give her?”
“I think,” she said, and then paused. This wasn’t an easy thing to say. She was about to suggest something very, very dark. Something about Jim’s family. “I think maybe your niece isn’t missing, so much as she’s somewhere, no one would ever think to look.”
“What’s that now?” he asked, putting his palms down flat on the table. “I don’t follow.”
“I think I heard your niece’s ghost when I was at Connor’s house, and I think that’s because...Amber’s body is in Connor’s house.”
Chapter 12
As it turned out, having a pastor standing beside her did not make it any easier to walk up to the door of a haunted house.
Was Connor’s house haunted? She thought so. Yes. It was the only way to explain everything. The brooch. The visions that she’d had of a woman trapped in a dark hallway, unable to escape. The voice she’d heard in the bathroom. All of that was Amber Norstrom, trying her best from beyond the grave to tell them that she hadn’t died peacefully. That she was dead, inside Connor’s house.
Katie thought she even had an explanation for the horrible message scrawled on the wall of the Heritage Inn in faded blood. Not Dead. Amber’s ghost was telling them that her killer wasn’t dead. She wanted the killer brought to justice.
The killer, who Katie believed was Amber’s own brother.
She knocked on the door while Jim cupped a hand over his eyes and pressed his face up against the windows. The blinds and curtains were drawn, and there was no way to see inside. There was a car in the garage, but in a town this small that didn’t matter. Everyone walked everywhere.
Knocking again, Katie strained her ears and listened. There was no sound from inside. Her heart was thumping in her chest and other than that she couldn’t hear a thing.
She knocked again.
“I don’t think he’s in,” she finally admitted. “We’ll have to come back later. I don’t know what else to--”
Lowering his shoulder like a pro linebacker, Jim ran up the front steps and smashed into the door. It exploded inward under the force of all that weight and bounced against the wall. Splinters rained down across the threshold.
They both stood there, Katie in shock, and Jim panting heavily, waiting for Connor Norstrom to give an irate shout or come running to the front door to see what was going on. He didn’t. The house truly was empty.
She turned to Jim. He smiled and brushed off his shoulder. “I used to play football in college. I was good for breaking through defensive lines. Guy my size, they don’t let you on the basketball team.”
“Okay, sure, but you just broke Connor’s door in.”
“Of course I did. I heard someone calling for help. It was necessary for me to get inside and make sure everything was all right. You heard it too, I believe. The public good always allows you to bend the rules just a skosh.”
Katie nodded, keeping her face perfectly neutral with only a little bit of effort. “Yes. Now that you mention it I definitely did hear something.”
“Well. Then there you go.”
Katie found herself liking Jim more and more. He wasn’t like other pastors. Rather than being all talk about Heaven and Hell and sin and good deeds, he was much more hands on and down to Earth. Right now that was what she needed.
“So, Katie Pearson,” he said, holding out his arm for her to take. “Shall we search my cousin’s house for his dead sister?”
Katie hooked her arm through his, even though she cringed at his words. “How can you be so cheerful about it?”
He led her inside, pushing the door closed as best she could. From the outside, it would look fine. As long as no one looked too close, that is. “I'm not cheerful,” he explained. “I'm hopeful. Death isn’t the end of things, you know. Just the end of your body. Amber is dead, but that means she’s moved on. If she’s dead, if her body is here, well that’s not really her anymore. Her soul is eternal. If us finding her body can give her some kind of rest, then I count that as a good thing.”
When he said it that way, she could almost believe him. Of course, she’d been seeing ghosts for a long time now. She knew that people continued on after death--their souls or their essence, or whatever name people used for it. It was the whole Heavenly afterlife thing that she wasn’t buying into. Not yet. It sounded so nice when Pastor Sutter explained it. Death, not as an end, but as a sort of beginning.
“So,” she asked him, “what if we do find her here? What if her brother killed her?”
His face hardened. “Then I’ll send him to Hell with my bare hands.”
Katie stopped in the middle of the kitchen, and the two of them exchanged a long look. They understood each other perfectly.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s start looking.”
The house only had one story. It wasn’t going to take long to look through the rooms and the closets and the cabinets to see if there was...well, a dead body in any of those spaces. Or part of one.
She sighed and wondered how her life had come to this. She used to be happy, just living her own life, no attachments, no strings, no damned ghosts. She made her money, she had a few good friends here and there, and she kept to herself. Now she was part of a community, and everywhere she turned the spirits of the dead were coming for her.
If she found a head in the refrigerator, she was going to puke for real this time.
Jim started in the kitchen, thankfully, while she went down to the far end of the house. Anxiously she watched every corner and every shadow. No one was here, except her and Jim, but somehow she could not shake the sensation that she was being watched. Like someone was always just over her shoulder, standing just past the edges of her vision. Just a few steps behind. Waiting for her to make a mistake.
But when she looked, there was nothing there.
She walked past the bathroom where she had heard the voice, and past other doors, to the one at the end of the hall. If she started down here, and Jim started at the front of the house, they would increase their chances of finding something more quickly. And if they didn’t, well, then they would meet in the middle and try again.
The door down here was open just a crack. It was dark inside. This must be the bedroom, she thought. Men always kept their most private things in their bedroom.
She put her ha
nd out and gave the door a little push, and it opened with barely a whisper. Everything around her had grown silent. Her thoughts were the loudest things in the universe.
Connor had killed his own sister.
How deranged must the man be?
Was it safe to be here, even when Connor was gone?
Her hands trembled as she slid them along the bedroom wall, looking for the light switch. The wallpaper was rough under her fingertips.
Nothing grabbed at her.
Nothing hurt her.
The switch was there, and with a click that was too loud in her ears the lights of two standup lamps turned on.
Katie let out the breath she’d been holding. She was standing alone, in the bedroom, and she was fine.
There was no way of knowing if they were looking for a body, or if they were looking for...evidence of a body. Realistically there were only so many places Connor could have hidden his dead sister. That meant the closet, or under the bed, or in one of the rooms she had already passed by. However, if they were looking for some sick memento of his sister’s death--her murder--then it could be small enough to fit in a drawer. Or a jar. Or under the pillows.
Katie bit her lip, and quickly snatched the pillows away, one at a time.
Nothing.
She went to the dresser next, pulling each of the four drawers open one at a time, pushing aside shirts and pants and underwear. She found porno magazines, and she found a box of condoms, and nothing else.
She looked in between the mattresses. Nothing.
Stepping back, she drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Under the bed. She needed to look under the bed.
Monsters lived under beds.
“Okay,” she said, to psych herself up. “Let’s do it. Anything living under there, I’m not here for you so just...chill.”
Sometimes it helped to talk, even if it was to hear a sound.
Staying as far away as she could, Katie lowered herself to her hands and knees, keeping her eyes on the bed the whole time. The blankets hung over both sides, but they didn’t reach to the floor. There was a gap of six inches or more. She lowered herself down more, and then more, flattening herself out on the floor and turning her head to the side to peer underneath.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 78
