“Still, I don’t know too many people who would go this far to help solve a murder and maybe get a dead soul some rest. Family or not.”
“Hey, helping your community is what being a pastor is all about. That comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes, is how I see it. Some days you’re sitting with a grieving widow to listen to her stories and help her feel better. Some days, you’re taking up a collection for someone whose house burned down. Some days...” He hesitated and looked all around them. “Well, those days you’re breaking into someone’s house to make sure they aren’t a deranged killer.”
They shared a look because there was nothing to say after that. That just about summed it all up. Katie could have told him about all the haunted houses she had stumbled into by buying properties sight unseen, or all the ghosts that had tried to take a piece of her with them beyond the grave. She could have told him that the smartest move he could make here would be to run and never look back.
Instead, she took his hand, and together they chose a direction from the access shaft. Left.
That way ended quickly. In a space at the end, there was the furnace. There was the water tank. There was a mess of pipes so tangled that Katie couldn’t tell where one section began and the other ended. The fuse box for the house sat on the wall, with an electronic red light blipping at her like it was watching.
“Do you think there’s another passage, or a room, maybe?” Katie asked, thinking out loud. “Something hidden, like this whole basement was?”
“Dunno. At this point anything’s possible.”
Her flashlight played around the room and found nothing but what her eyes could see. It was dark, and the light in her hand chased at the shadows. Some of them didn’t move like they were supposed to. It was like they were alive.
No, she thought to herself. That was her imagination.
It had to be.
“Nothing here,” Jim decided for both of them. “Rock walls. Dirt floor. Stuff to make the house work. Nothing here. Let’s try somewhere else.”
Together, they both turned to face back the other way, their flashlights piercing a long hallway that must run nearly the entire length of the house over their heads.
Almost halfway down, there was a long mirror hanging on the wall. There were light sconces at regular intervals, none of them lit. The dirt floor of that section of the hallway had been covered with a length of old carpeting.
It was the hallway of her vision. The hallway where Amber Norstrom was stuck, and pleading for help.
Katie’s mouth went dry.
They started back that way slowly, easing forward one step at a time until they were past the little alcove where the access shaft waited for them to return from this crypt.
Katie shivered. That one word slithered through her brain.
Crypt. A place for the dead.
Suddenly she didn’t mind calling it a cellar.
She kept a hand on the wall as she walked ahead of Jim down the narrow passageway. When a door suddenly appeared to her right, she was surprised. It had been hidden in the dark until her flashlight swept across it. Then the opening jumped out at her, and she stopped, staring it down, waiting for something to shriek and fly out at them.
Nothing. Just a room, with an open doorway.
“Here,” Jim said, putting his arm out in front of her. “Let me go first.”
“How chivalrous.”
“I don’t hear you arguing with me.”
“No,” she said, “you don’t.”
This space had cheap brown paneling on the walls. Someone had at least made an attempt to make it look halfway decent, even if they had failed miserably. There was an old wooden chair in one corner, and a stack of cardboard boxes on the other side labeled in black marker. Books. Clothes. Christmas. Photos.
Katie had a sudden desire to go through that last box. Photos. Connor Norstrom had a supremely sour disposition. Not the type of man who she would expect to keep mementos like family photos. These must have some kind of real importance. Would there be pictures in there of Amber? Maybe of her and Connor together? After all, they were brother and sister, children of Jim’s aunt, Emmaline. There might be secrets to discover in that box that would help them.
Secrets that Amber’s ghost wanted her to discover.
She reached for the folded top of the box.
The box shifted, scrunching up on itself, sending down a shower of dust. The flaps scissored tightly together.
Jim’s hand on her shoulder didn’t register at first. She was sure that he saw that, too. He had to. The box had sealed itself off from her. Then he was walking them both out of the room, and into the hallway again.
“Don’t think Amber wants us to look in there,” he told Katie. “Leastwise, not yet.”
“You're so calm again,” she said.
“Ha. Hardly. Inside I’m quaking like a leaf in a storm. I’m reciting the Lord’s prayer every five steps. I don’t sense evil here. Not the work of the devil. But this all feels horribly wrong. So...yeah.”
She put a hand in the pocket where her cross waited, just in case she needed it. “Does the Bible mention ghosts?” she asked, wanting to talk to take her mind off what they were doing.
“Sure. A couple of times. Guess I should’ve paid more attention to those passages. Come on. There’s still that room at the end of the hall to look at. This is starting to look more and more like we won’t find any trace of Amber. I don’t know whether to be relieved or upset. Sorry I got you into this, Katie.”
“You?” she almost laughed, stealing one last glance at the pile of boxes before they left the room. “I asked you to come along with me, remember?”
“Sure,” he said, “but I’m the one who broke the door in.”
The hallway ended in an empty room.
Katie took a look around, unable to believe it had come to this. Cobwebs hung thick in the corners. Instead of paneling or bare rock walls like the rest of the cellar, here someone had hung blankets from floor to ceiling. Blue ones, red ones, other colors. Almost like they were trying to keep the heat from escaping. There was a sharp tang when she took her next breath. A smell that she could almost identify.
Antiseptic. That’s what it was. Like Lysol. Or vinegar. Like a bunch of cleaning supplies. It was an odd smell for this room, that was for sure. It was like Connor had been cleaning down here every day. Just this one room.
Only, the floor was still the same hard-packed dirt floor as the rest of the cellar. The walls, when she peeked behind a red blanket, were still made from stone. There was nothing here to clean.
So where was the smell coming from?
Something drew her attention. Something at the edge of her senses. It wasn’t something she saw, exactly, but now she turned to face the blue blanket hanging down the wall on their left. Her flashlight played over it, from corner to corner. She stared at it and had the unsettling feeling that something was staring back.
Her heartbeat churned in her ears. Her breathing was loud in this space, and Jim’s as well, as she took the edge of the blanket in her hand and slowly, slowly pulled it back. The light in her hand trembled and danced over the folds she made in the fabric.
Then it pierced into the darkness of another room hidden behind the blanket.
It was like the cellar was a maze. One that came to an end here, in this small rectangular space that was crammed with curving wooden pole stands on which sat fat wax candles, none of them lit. There was at least twenty of them. A square of rug had been put here in the middle of the dirt floor, thin and worn but colorful.
Centered on the rug was a wooden table that must have been taken apart and assembled inside the room because it would not have fit in any other way. It was a solid piece of furniture, and it easily supported the weight of what their flashlights found lying on top of it.
On the table was the body of a woman, naked and pale, her short red hair falling away from a face, a purple streak chalked into a flirtatious line on one side
. Until now, Katie had only seen that face in visions.
Amber Norstrom’s arms were crossed over her chest, around her breasts, not doing anything at all to cover her nakedness. Her body was so thin that Katie could count her ribs. Her face had changed too from the loss of body mass. Her eyes were closed, and Katie took that as a blessing because she would not want to look into the cold eyes of this dead girl.
Jim cursed and turned away after seeing his cousin laid out in this horrific state. His hand made the sign of the cross over and over. It was like some sort of damned shrine to the dead. Some of the candles had been burned down to almost nothing, their wax trailing down the poles in thick lines to pool on the floor.
It had been four months since anyone had seen Amber Norstrom.
Katie put her hand up over her mouth, to keep in a scream and keep down the bile rising in her throat. That bastard Connor had killed his sister, and then set up this room to keep her stored away for whatever sick, twisted pleasures he took from seeing her like this.
Or whatever else he did with her body...
That was all her mind could take, and she dropped into the corner of the room and hunched over herself, and this time there was no stopping it. She vomited up a puddle of sick smelling mess that mixed with the smell of the antiseptic cleaners in the room and made her puke all over again.
When it passed, and she could breathe, she stayed right there where she was, on her knees, shaking, not daring to move until her stomach stopped tying itself into knots.
How long had Connor kept his sister down here? Had she really been dead for four months or had he drugged her and brought her down here as some sort of deranged plaything? Could he have been feeding her, in a drugged up state, and keeping her alive until finally her body had given up, and her ghost had come looking for revenge?
The image of Amber’s face in the mirror, begging for help, flashed through her mind.
Katie cast her flashlight back over the woman on her table, using the wall to help her stand up to get a better view.
There were bruises on Amber’s skin, along with the insides of her thighs, and on her forearms. On her hip, a bruise outlined the nearly perfect shape of a hand. Almost as if Connor had spanked his sister there.
Sick, twisted, deranged bastard. Katie’s mind struggled to find the right hateful words to describe what he had done here.
Sick fucker.
Her flashlight followed the line of Amber’s body. She wasn’t a police detective, and she didn’t enjoy reading murder mysteries, and frankly, she could care less about the details of how Amber must have died. There weren’t any obvious injuries that would tell her the cause of death. No stab wounds. Not even any bruises on her neck. Whatever. Katie was here to find Amber, and give her spirit some rest, and screw that bastard Connor to the wall. Amber was dead, and Connor was keeping her corpse down here, hidden from everyone. No wonder the ghost had been angry.
Katie frowned. They should be rushing upstairs to call the police and end this nightmare before Connor came home, but something was worrying her. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. In the illumination of her flashlight, Amber’s skin was so smooth and so perfect. Soft, almost. Her body was thin and bruised, but it glistened as well.
This was where the smell of antiseptic cleaner had come from. Dear God, Connor had been rubbing some sort of oil into his sister’s skin. She looked...almost alive. It was like she was preserved, kept just like she had been at the moment of death. Like death hadn’t been able to find her down here to take her.
Sick.
She tried to breathe, and she tried to think, but doing both at the same time was proving to be difficult in this room. They needed to call the police. The New Hampshire State Troopers could be here in fifteen minutes, maybe less if they realized there was a dead body involved.
To be down here, all this time, with no one knowing where you were...it was a horrifying thought. Katie couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must do to a soul knowing that their body would forever be a monster’s plaything hidden away in this room. Never finding peace. No wonder she wanted Connor dead.
Not Dead. Connor was alive, and she was not. Katie was sure that’s what she meant when she put those words on the wall of the Inn. A message seeking vengeance, and justice.
“There,” she said to the poor woman’s body, wanting to talk just to hear a voice in this dead silent cellar space. “We found you, Amber. Now you can rest in peace. Now you can leave the rest of us alone. Okay? Go on and find peace.”
She turned away, taking the light with her.
“Help...me...”
The sound of the ghost’s voice, calling to her again, sent gooseflesh all up and down her arms.
She stopped, frozen in place, by the thought that this might not be over.
They had already done what they could for Amber. She and Jim had found this place, and they would do everything they could to make sure Connor was brought to justice, and then they could all put this behind them.
Wasn’t that enough?
“Help...me...please...”
“Uh, Katie?” Jim asked her. “Did you hear that?”
Her mouth dropped open as she realized what he was asking. “Yes, I heard it. But...did you?”
Slowly, he nodded his head.
He shouldn’t hear the ghost. Katie had accepted the fact that she could hear spirits talk when no one else could. Even a man of God like Jim shouldn’t be able to hear the dead.
She looked over at Amber again, bringing her flashlight up once more. Those long, smooth legs, the hands folded over her chest, framing her breasts...
One of her fingers twitched.
Katie screamed.
Around the room, flames sparked on the candle wicks. The room was thrust into wavering, bright illumination.
Amber’s eyes opened. She looked directly at Katie, tears trailing down her face.
Chapter 15
The police had a million questions that they asked her. Or maybe they were the same questions over and over. Katie had honestly lost track.
She felt so stupid. Once the Troopers had finished writing in their notebooks and searching everywhere in Connor’s house, Katie sat in the kitchen, waiting for Jim to get done with his interview. It was taking him a little longer because he was related to the victim.
Victim. That was what Amber had been, in every sense of the word. The officers were very careful to only talk about it in whispers, but Katie still heard enough to know that Amber was lucky to be alive. She’d been abused, and she was malnourished, and apparently, there was a previously broken bone in her arm that had set badly.
Amber had been reaching out to Katie for help, and she’d gotten it all wrong.
Stupid. That’s what Katie kept calling herself as she sat in that kitchen and watched the Troopers rushing from room to room with serious expressions on their faces. She was stupid. The message on their wall had been so clear, and she couldn’t see it.
Not Dead
That didn’t mean Amber’s killer wasn’t dead like she’d thought. Amber wasn’t reaching out from beyond the grave to demand justice. Hell, Amber wasn’t dead! The message had been her reaching out to tell them that SHE wasn’t dead yet.
Dear God, she didn’t know which chilled her more. The fact that they had nearly left a living woman right here in this house to be tortured and molested, or the fact that somehow that poor woman had been haunting her. Not from beyond the grave. From down cellar.
There was that phrase again.
Katie had been so sure of herself. So positive that she knew everything she needed to know about the world of spirits. She was some sort of damned expert, as far as she was concerned.
Only, she wasn’t, as it turned out. As it turned out, she had a lot to learn.
It had taken them some time to move Amber from the cellar, up that shaft, and then onto a stretcher that rushed her to an ambulance. The poor girl barely woke up at all the whole way, except to say two wor
ds.
“Help me.”
If Katie hadn’t already thrown up, there would have been nothing stopping it now.
She took a deep breath and tried to tell herself that she’d done a good thing. She’d helped to save Amber’s life, as long as the hospital was able to reverse the damage her brother had done to her. The Troopers seemed to think there was a better than even chance that Amber would heal up from her physical abuse.
It was the mental abuse they worried about. Katie, too. Now there was a thought that would give her nightmares for the rest of her life.
In the middle of her dark thoughts, Riley came rushing into the house, allowed past the Troopers at the door after a few quick words. Katie had called him as soon as she could and now here he was. He rushed to her and threw his arms around her, holding her tight.
“You get into the worst trouble,” he told her.
She snuggled closer into his arms. “I love you, too. Just take me home. Okay?”
He didn’t hesitate. They went straight out of that damned house and to his car on the street. Around them, blue lights on patrol cars flashed in the darkness of night. The news media hadn’t gotten wind of this yet, but they would soon, and Katie knew their town would soon be swarming with reporters trying to sensationalize the evil that had taken place in Connor Norstrom’s house. She’d never been so happy to leave a place, ever.
“I don’t just want to take you home,” he said as they drove from street to street. “I want to take you out of this whole damned town.”
Funny, how that echoed her own thoughts. Away from this place. Away for good.
“Whatever is wrong with Twilight Ridge,” he said, “it runs deep. The hauntings at the inn were bad enough, but psychos keeping girls in their basements? No way. That’s too much, Katie. Something is going on here, beneath the surface, and I’m worried about you.”
Katie turned the heater up in the car, suddenly unable to get warm. “Riley, I’m worried too, but I don’t think we can just up and leave. We’ve got a business here now. We can’t just close that up and go.”
“Sure we can,” he insisted. “We just give refunds to all of our guests and cancel any future reservations and nail boards across all the windows and doors. Then we put a For Sale sign on the front lawn, and we point this car west and never look back. We could be in Minnesota by nightfall tomorrow.”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 80
