She brought her knees up, feet on the edge of the seat, and wrapped her arms around herself. “Things will be better now,” she told him, although she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince, her or him. “You’ll see. Look, we saved Amber’s life. That wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t here in Twilight Ridge. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
He set his lips in a firm line, but she could tell he agreed with her. It didn’t mean he still didn’t want to leave. He’d just run out of arguments for the moment.
With a final turn, they were on their street and pulling up to the Heritage Inn.
“You’ll see,” she told him again. “Everything will be all right now. The ghost--"
“What ghost?” he shouted abruptly, startling her. “Katie, there couldn’t be a ghost! This woman was alive. She wasn’t dead. We went through all of this--all of this!--and Amber wasn’t even dead. So explain it to me, Katie. Explain it to me. What in the Hell is going on!”
Unconsciously, she shrank back from him. She knew why he was angry, but it was like he was directing it at her. This day had been impossibly hard already, and if Riley started snapping at her, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to take it. She relied on him being the strong one. She needed him to be that person.
“Riley, please don’t yell at me.”
“Katie I’m sorry,” he said right away. “I didn’t mean to... I’m just upset. I’m scared for us.”
“You don’t think I’m scared, too?” she asked him, dropping her feet and slamming her fists against the seat. “I’m scared, okay? You want me to admit it? Fine, I’m scared! I’m terrified. I have no idea what’s going on here, and I’m scared.”
“Okay, but seriously, how did Amber’s ghost reach out to you if she wasn’t dead? How did she write that message on our wall? Not dead? What’s that all about?”
“I think I have that figured out.” She thought it through again, just to be sure, and then she nodded to herself. “Yes. I think Amber was close to death. Right on the edge, maybe going back and forth. Being kept like that, down there by her brother... I mean, how long can anyone live like that? She must have been slipping away into death, and every time she came close to dying for good...”
“Her ghost left her body.” Riley blinked at her, but he understood what she was thinking now. “Her ghost would leave her body and come to find you because they can all sense that you’re open to them or whatever. Then when she didn’t die her ghost went back into her body.”
“Yeah, exactly.” This was the Riley she needed. This was the man who completed her, body and soul and supported her completely. “So now, everything will be fine. It’s over. It’s finally over. Look, when we get inside the message will be gone off the wall. Our lives can get back to normal. The only ghosts we’ll have to worry about are the ones the mayor put up all around town.”
“Do you think so?”
“Amber was trying to tell us that she wasn’t dead. Not yet. Now that we know that, and now that she’s safe, it’s over.”
Katie was sure of it. It was more than just wishful thinking. This whole thing was over now. Amber was alive, brought back from the brink of death, so no more ghosts.
Riley shut off the car in the driveway of the Inn, and they got out together.
In the front room, they stood shoulder to shoulder, and stared at the space where a blanket was supposed to be hanging on the wall, covering up the message left for them by a scared woman trapped by her brother, and close to death.
The blanket was lying on the floor. The message was still very much there.
Not Dead
“One of the guests must have uncovered it,” Riley decided. For several long seconds, he was at a loss for words. “Maybe if we just scrub it now...it will come off?”
“Maybe.” Katie stared at those words. Not dead. She knew what they meant now, but they’d found Amber and brought her back from the very brink of death so why were the words still here?
For that matter, where were their guests?
Riley seemed to shake himself, coming back from whatever dark spiral his thoughts had dragged him into. “Whatever. I’ll get some rags and scrub this off, and then we’re going to talk more about selling this place.”
“Riley, I don’t really want to discuss it. This has been a hell of a day, and now it feels like you’re trying to push me into something that I’m not ready for. Can we please just clean this up and go to--”
On the wall, the words began to bleed.
Thick red liquid oozed through the outline of every letter, and ran down the wall, becoming a sheet of blood that obscured the words completely. Bubbles formed, and popped. Formed and popped, formed and popped, larger and larger, spattering more of the red ichor onto the floor. Katie and Riley stepped back.
Through the liquid, something began to push through. Five somethings. They bulged, and pushed through.
Fingers. Followed by a hand.
Then another hand, reaching for them, dripping blood.
Between the hands a face began to take shape, pushing through not from the other side of the wall, but the other side of the curtain that separated life and death.
The eyelids opened, and blood outlined the eyes. The lips parted, and the mouth gushed with blood.
Katie shook her head, frozen, unable to move. No. No, this was impossible. Please, God, don’t let this be real.
Riley had her hand in his, and he was pulling her toward the front door before she came to her senses. This ghost wasn’t Amber’s. Amber was alive. This wasn’t her. This ghost was here, now, and it was coming for them.
Then she was moving, with Riley pulling her to the door, and they were leaving.
Looking back over her shoulder as Riley stopped to open the door, all she saw was the wall, and the words in blood. The cascade of thick red ooze was gone. So was the ghost.
Where...?
No more time to think about it. Riley had the door open. She wanted out. As much as he did, maybe more, she wanted to be away from the Heritage Inn.
When the door opened, there was a man standing there. His eyes were full of rage. His face was creased into lines of hatred. Katie recognized him right away.
Connor Norstrom raised the bloody butcher knife in his right hand, point forward, and slashed at them without speaking a single word.
Chapter 16
Connor never came back to his house after Katie had found Amber--alive--in his basement. The Troopers had waited and speculated that he must have seen all of the patrol cars out front and knew they were for him. He must be on the run, she heard them say.
Katie hadn’t given it a second thought. It wasn’t her problem. The police would deal with it. He was supposed to be on the run from the cops, not standing on their doorstep, stabbing a knife at them.
Plunging it deep into Riley’s shoulder.
Time slowed until Katie could see everything about that horrible moment. The flash of light off the steel blade. The motion it made it pierced clothing and flesh alike. The blood that welled up immediately. In her state of panic, Katie could see exactly how close the blade had come to Riley’s heart.
Grunting with pain, Riley pulled back from the knife and slammed the door shut. He twisted the lock and then stumbled away, half pulling Katie with him and half leaning on her for support. He was hurt. How serious it was Katie didn’t know, but she knew how tough this man was. If he was leaning on her and wincing at every step, she knew it was bad.
Behind them, they heard wood cracking as Connor kicked at the door. He was coming for them.
“Should we go out the back?” Katie said breathlessly.
“No,” Riley answered her. His face was red, and his voice was strained. “He’ll catch us. Upstairs. In our room. Phone. Weapons.”
Weapons? Katie didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t know there was anything in the Heritage Inn more deadly than a monkey wrench. She didn’t have time to ask about it though. The stairs
were right there, and they had to move quickly if they were going to stay ahead of Connor. That doorframe wasn’t going to last forever.
Next time she renovated a building, she was going to put in steel reinforced doors. Not something pretty with scrollwork around the edges of decorative panels.
“Katie,” Riley started to say, and then his breath gave out.
“I know,” she told him. “I love you, too. Now keep moving!”
At the railing, they turned to climb up, step after step, and when they did Katie had a perfect view of the whole front room. She was just in time to see the front door smash inward on its hinges, the lock and handle flying across the floor in pieces, the sound of it oddly like a gunshot.
Connor stepped in. He smiled up at them with a wicked smile, one that was part insane and part wicked and totally murderous. The knife flashed in his hand.
Katie hoped that whatever Riley had come up with to save their lives, it was worth the risk.
Connor started after them before they were even halfway up. He took his time, knowing they had nowhere to go.
As he passed by the wall with its ominous message, he stopped and turned to read the words.
Blood erupted in a sudden, violent gush that surged out at him like a red tidal wave that took him off his feet and slammed him to the floor, and still it poured, like a waterfall from hell itself.
Some part of Katie’s mind whispered that they would never be able to get that out, no matter how hard they tried to clean it. She almost laughed at how absurd it was to worry about that now, at this moment.
Connor slipped and slid but got to his feet again, blood dripping from his hair and his clothes and running down his face, dripping from his hands, running down the edge of his knife.
Katie pushed Riley to go faster, but he didn’t need any convincing. They were at the top of the stairs now and heading down the hallway to their room. Then, they stopped.
A dead body blocked their way, lying spread-eagled in the middle of the hall, staring up at the ceiling with blank eyes.
Katie covered her mouth but couldn’t make herself look away. It was Devin Hollister, the guest who had been so keen on taking pictures of the message downstairs, him and his girlfriend, Melissa. He was dead. His throat had been cut open so deeply that they could see the white of tendons and bones laid bare.
“Oh, no...” Katie whispered. She couldn’t find her breath. She couldn’t think. Devin was dead, and they were next.
She looked at Riley’s injured arm, and then back at the wound on Devin’s neck. She knew without a doubt that it had been Connor who did this. Connor, with his knife. She remembered now how it had been already bloody even as he met them at the door. He must have come here looking for her, seeking revenge because she had found the horrific scene down in his cellar. When he couldn’t find her, he killed Devin.
Now that she was home again, Connor would do this to her, if she let him.
“Come on,” Riley said, tugging on her hand to wake her up and pull her around the dead man. He was already out of breath, his face red from pain. “Can’t let this stop us. If we stop here, he’ll get us. Have to get to our room.”
“Wait, Riley.” She definitely wanted to be safe with him in their room, but that wasn’t what was foremost on her mind. “What about the other guests? What about Devin’s girlfriend Melissa, and Garrett? They might need our help. We can’t just leave them.”
He held his arm up to show off the blood soaking through his sleeve. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m hurt. I need help. We can’t do anything to help. Not right now. Come on, Katie. Come on!”
She followed him, looking back at Devin only once, just long enough to hear Connor’s footsteps on the stairs. It was a slow and steady march, a hollow drumbeat out of time. Thump. Thump. Thump...
Riley was right. As much as she hated the very thought of it, they had to leave the guests and protect themselves first.
Both from Connor, and from the ghost downstairs.
So they kept going down the hall, trying to get to their room and ignored the smell of death everywhere.
Katie wrinkled her nose at it. Was that just the reek of Devin lying dead behind her? It was overwhelming, and horrifying in its intensity. Maybe it was the ghost. Maybe it was the blood oozing out of their home downstairs from two words that she would never get out of her mind.
Maybe, she thought, it was coming from the open guest room door right in front of them.
The stench wafted out from there, through the two inches of space between the frame and the open door. Katie stopped and stared through into the little gap. This was Garrett’s room. The other guest.
Riley stopped when she did. The wrinkled expression on his face told her that he smelled it, too.
Safety was in their room at the end of the hall. Anything could be beyond this door. Anything, including an injured man needing their help.
She had to try to help him. It was who she was.
Katie pushed the door open and hurried inside, conscious of the fact that Connor was coming and there wasn’t much time. It was her basic human compassion that drove her forward, overshadowing her sense of self-preservation. This was the right thing to do. That was why she did it.
Besides, there were phones in the guest rooms, too. They could call for help from here and lock the door and just stay right here where no one could get to them--
“Door won’t shut,” Riley said, a note of panic in his voice. “It’s broken. Hinges are warped or something. That bastard must’ve broken in. It won’t shut!”
Blood was dripping from the end of his sleeve now, and the way he was letting his arm hanging by his side told Katie that the injury was worse than he was letting on. He needed help.
She walked around the bed, to the other side where the old style tabletop phone sat on a little table. Her concern was in calling 911 now.
Then, tucked between the bed and the wall, she found Garrett’s body. His chest had been slashed open by a knife attack. So had his face.
One eye had been gouged out. The other was closed.
Katie gasped, startled, and for a moment she was unable to move. She didn’t have time to be scared. She didn’t have time to stand there like a frightened little girl just because her guests had been viciously mutilated and left to die in her Inn. Connor had been busy while she and Riley were out, and now she had no hope at all that Melissa, the third guest, wasn’t dead as well.
Her hopes that she and Riley might get out of here alive were dwindling even further.
In the hallway, they heard Connor start to whistle. It was a tune that Katie barely recognized. Something old. Something fun and silly.
It terrified her to hear it coming from that man’s lips.
“Do you like it?” he called out to them. “That was one of our favorite songs when we were kids. Me and my sister used to love that song. Wish I could remember the words.”
He started whistling again, the sound of it getting closer.
Riley caught Katie’s gaze and held a finger up to his mouth. Quiet, he was saying. They needed to be quiet, and maybe Connor wouldn’t find them. At least, not right away.
Even so, he had his shoulder braced against the door, keeping it closed as far as it would go.
She leaned over Garrett’s body, using the edge of the bed to support herself, holding her breath to keep from breathing in the smell of his death as she reached for the phone.
The handset felt far too light in her palm. It came away from the base, and the coiled cord came with it. Or rather, half the cord did. It had been cut in two. She had a feeling every phone in the place had met with the same fate.
She dropped the useless phone, and it quietly bounced on the carpeted floor, landing right next to Garrett’s head.
His one eye popped open, the one not eviscerated by Connor’s knife, and fixed a cold stare at her.
“Run,” the dead man said, the word gurgled around a mouthful of blood. “Run...”
&n
bsp; Outside, in the hallway, the whistling stopped. “Ah. I hear you now.”
Katie pushed herself away from Garrett, away from the bed, standing there helpless as Riley tried to force the broken door shut again. If only she could get help, somehow.
Her cellphone! She’d forgotten all about the phone in her back pocket. She grabbed at it now, hastily pulling it out and holding it like some sort of religious talisman. They needed to call for help. They needed to get out of this room.
They needed to run!
Phone in her hand, she reached out for Riley, to tell him they should try for their room again and whatever weapons he thought would save them.
Connor’s knife came slashing through the gap in the door, narrowly missing them both.
Chapter 17
Katie heard herself screaming.
She had faced ghosts. She had lost track of how many times she had looked into the face of her own death because of a ghost.
This was the first time a living person had tried to kill her.
Riley shoved his good shoulder up against the door to keep it closed even as Connor shoved against it from his side. Even injured, Riley had the superior strength. The door held. The knife kept slipping through the gap, the edge flashing, bloody and sharp.
Katie hid behind the door with Riley, pushing against it with him while she tried to hold her cell one-handed and dial 911.
“I can’t,” Riley huffed. Katie saw the sweat pouring down his face. “I can’t keep this up.”
Connor rammed his body against the door, and it lurched several inches, knocking the phone out of Katie’s hand. She pushed with Riley to hold the psycho back and out of this room. Tears of frustration stung her eyes.
She reached for the phone. It was too far unless she wanted to let go of the door, which she definitely did not want to do. She tried with her foot instead. She could just catch a corner of it with her toe. Yes, yes, yes! Carefully, slowly, she pulled it her way.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 81
