“Come on!” she cried, sweeping hard with her foot.
The phone flipped up, end over end, and pinwheeled further away. She stared at it in disbelief. If she wanted it now, she would have to leave Riley to go get it.
Connor rammed the door again.
She heard Riley whoosh out a short breath. He was pale, and sweaty, and obviously on his last reserves now. She couldn’t leave him to hold the door by himself. Not if they wanted to live.
Then everything went quiet.
Thud.
Something whacked against the door.
Thud.
Again.
THUD.
The doors of the rooms were as decorative as the front doors downstairs. They were a hollow core wood, carved around the edges into floral designs, and she had chosen them for how they looked rather than for protection. The idea that she might need to keep people from breaking into the individual rooms had never occurred to her.
Until now.
With another hard THWACK, the edge of the knife blossomed through the door, and that scene from The Shining came into her mind.
“Heeeeeere’s Connor!”
The knife was pulled out and shoved through the door again.
“Riley...” She stopped, not sure what she had been about to say, not sure what either of them could do to stop what was coming.
He smiled at her sadly, with so much love in his eyes.
Then he let go of the door.
It was more than Katie could brace by herself. She was thrown off her feet, both knees smacking hard against the floor. She threw her hands out to break her fall, landing badly, twisting her wrist.
When she turned around, sitting on her ass and cradling her hand, Connor Norstrom was standing in the doorway. He whistled his song and loomed over Riley, who was so weak and pale now that he might have been a ghost himself.
His voice was just as weak.
“Don’t...hurt her...please.”
Katie heard him pleading for her life, not his. She crawled over to him and held him with her back to Connor. “No, no, no, no,” she kept saying, over and over. “No don’t hurt him no, no, no don’t hurt him don’t hurt him don’t hurt him!”
Connor’s whistle became a throaty laugh. “You bitch. You stupid, damned bitch. I wouldn’t have hurt these other people either if you’d just been here like you were supposed to be. This is all your fault.”
The knife bounced in the palm of his hand. “You shouldn’t have gone down there. You shouldn’t have taken Amber away from me. She was my sister. Mine! You had no right. She belonged to me. I had to keep her for myself. That’s why I told everyone she died. I had to hide her. I couldn’t let them take her from me.”
Katie could picture the whole thing. Connor, lying about his sister’s death. Connor, holding Amber hostage. Connor, doing...things...
“You’re a sick pervert,” Katie said to him. “That’s what you are. What did you do to Amber?”
He shrugged. “Fed her. Bathed her. Took care of her every need. Drugged her, sure, but she wouldn’t have let me do it otherwise. I had to take care of her. Our mother was gone, you know. She was gone, and I was the only family Amber had left. She needed what I gave her. No one understands my sister like I do. I’ve known her in every way possible. Every. Single. Way.”
Katie had an idea what that meant, and she didn’t like it.
Her phone. It was right there on the floor, not that far away. She went to lunge for it.
Connor’s foot got there first. He kicked it aside, sliding it under the bed.
“Don’t even think about it,” he growled. Kneeling, he tapped the edge of the knife against Katie’s back. She was still laying over Riley, protecting him with her life. “Come on. It’s time to go.”
“Don’t you...hurt her...” Riley warned.
“Shut up. I’m in control here. Me. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to take Katie here away. As a replacement for my sister. Or, I can just kill you both right here.”
Katie shook her head furiously, hugging herself tighter around Riley. She wouldn’t give him up. Not even to save her own life.
“Fine,” Connor said. “You can die with him. Have it your way. See you in Hell.”
Waiting for the knife to drop into her back, Katie kissed Riley’s forehead. He trembled but didn’t move. He was just too weak.
She waited, and when nothing happened, she dared to look up.
Connor was still there, still standing and dripping with blood with the knife in his hand, but he wasn’t looking at them. His gaze was caught on something on the other side of the room.
“No...” she heard him say. “No, don’t. Stay back.”
Katie didn’t know who he was talking to. There was no one else in the room.
She rose up on her knees, just enough to look over the top of the bed.
A broken and mutilated Garrett stood there, chest torn open, shirt hanging in tatters, his one eye socket empty and bloody and oozing. The other eye was pale and unfocused. Dead. He was dead, but somehow he was moving. With choppy motions he climbed up on top of the bed, crawling toward them.
Katie couldn’t move. She had to stay where she was and protect Riley. She was trapped. She couldn’t breathe. Her heartbeat was the only sound she could hear.
The dead man kept coming. Stiff hands reached out to grasp at the air, as he crawled across the mattress, closer and closer.
Connor screamed and jumped forward, past Katie and Riley, slashing the knife right across Garrett’s face. It caught the side of his cheek, slicing straight over his open mouth, and through the other cheek.
Blood spouted.
Dead men don’t bleed, came the crazy thought into Katie’s head. Dead men can’t bleed!
Still, the blood came.
It spurted out Garrett’s slashed face, a geyser steaming across the space between Garrett, and Connor.
The blood stopped just short of touching him. Connor fell back, tumbling into the broken door, knife held up defensively.
The blood collected in on itself, taking shape, forming into the image of a woman in a long flowing dress and a face that Katie recognized.
It was the ghost from downstairs.
Garrett’s body dropped heavily to the mattress, dead once more, no longer used by the ghost.
She floated above them in blood, and smiled.
Chapter 18
A woman’s ghost described in blood. Kate’s mind reeled as she tried to accept what she was seeing.
The shape of a woman oozed and dripped thick, red gore as she floated several inches off the floor. Stringers of blood dripped from the hem of her dress to trail along the rug.
For a moment, the eyes in that gory visage turned toward Katie, and it was like looking into some deep dark place in Hell.
The face was familiar, though. Not quite Amber’s. There was a resemblance there, to be sure. It was different but similar...and then she remembered! She’d seen that face in the photo at Jim Sutter’s house.
This was Emmaline Norstrom. Connor’s mother. Jim Sutter’s aunt.
The owner of the ivory lady brooch.
The ghost smiled again, a bloody grin that slashed across her face and reminded Katie of open graves and stillborn children and things that not only went bump in the night but that strangled you in your sleep.
Then Emmaline turned that hateful grin on Connor.
He gaped, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. The knife slipped from his hand as recognition came to him just like it had to Katie.
“Mom...?”
Emmaline’s ghost swept forward and wrapped itself around her son, too quick for him to stop it, bloody arms and bloody body pressing into him so hard that he was shoved backward again, this time through the door of the room and out into the hallway. He screamed, and he struggled, but the ghost wasn’t something that could be fought with. It was formed from the blood.
She was an angry echo of the woman who had watched from beyo
nd the grave as her son molested and abused her daughter. How long had this been building up, Katie wondered. How long had Emmaline watched what was going on, powerless to stop it until finally that ivory brooch had found its way back home, to Twilight Ridge, and into Katie’s hands?
Probably from the moment that Connor had lied about his sister being dead.
All of that hatred pressed into one single moment.
Now Emmaline would avenge her daughter.
Katie thought about trying to stop what was happening. She knew this wasn’t right. Yes, maybe Connor deserved to die, but not like this. He deserved to pay for his crimes, but not like this.
Still, she hesitated to move because a part of her thought that maybe he did deserve this. She remembered the way Amber had looked down in that cellar, drugged and hardly aware of what was being done to her. Slipping in and out of death, her spirit looking for help. Not dead. Not dead...
Was this justice?
Maybe. Maybe not. Katie didn’t know.
Once more, she remembered what had happened to Amber, and she found that she honestly didn’t care if this was justice, or not.
Connor needed to suffer.
“Wait here,” she said to Riley. He nodded, his eyelids closed and fluttering.
He was barely conscious now, and she was frantic to help him but with a dead man lying on the bed right next to them and a dead man in the hallway and a ghost formed from blood killing Connor Norstrom in the middle of it all...
She gave Riley a kiss on the forehead. For now, it would have to do.
Katie got to the hallway in time to see the bloody apparition enveloping Connor, wrapping around him in unnatural positions, arms bent like rubber around his shoulders and twisted around his neck, head arching up and over him like a snake’s. Her dress caught his legs. Soon he was immersed in blood.
He screamed, begging for his life.
“No, mother! No please, don’t do this I only wanted to keep Amber safe, please, please! Don’t do this!”
His voice broke off into a gurgle as the blood crawled up over his face.
Emmaline Norstrom screamed, too, a high-pitched shriek that chilled Katie to her bones.
She stood there in the hallway, watching Connor fight for his life, stumbling backward a step at a time, pushing against something that wasn’t real, his hands splashing out only to be pulled under again. He was soaked with his mother’s blood.
He was drowning in it.
The very next time his face broke through the surface, Emmaline suffocated him by shoving a hand down deep between his teeth, pouring herself down his throat. Connor gagged, and swatted at her over and over, losing his balance completely and practically throwing himself backward, down the end of the hall, down to the edge of the staircase--
And over the top.
“No!” Katie finally called out, wanting it all to stop, wanting to have that moment back so that she could have done something to stop this killing.
There was no stopping anything now. It was too late.
She remembered what she had said to herself in the guestroom while holding her body protectively over Riley’s. She had wanted Connor to die. She wanted him to suffer like he made Amber suffer. To feel helpless, like he made Katie feel helpless.
To die, like he was going to kill her and Riley.
Now that she actually saw it happening, however, something changed for her. No matter what Connor had done, he was still a human being. Katie’s heart went out to him in a way that surprised her.
But it was all too late.
The ghost of Emmaline Norstrom and her son went tumbling down the stairs together, the dead tangled around the living. Katie rushed to the top stair to watch. The fall was not kind to Connor. He took the edges of the risers hard. The sound of bones snapping was loud in the otherwise silent Inn. He bled, right along with his mother, and it was impossible to distinguish his blood from hers.
They landed at the bottom of the stairs in a heap, Connor’s body sprawled in a shallow pool of blood that spread across the floor around him. His arms and legs were flung out at sharp angles. There was no doubt his bones were broken.
There was also no doubt that he was dead.
This was what the ghost had wanted. Revenge for her daughter, at the cost of her son’s life. It had been terrible to witness. Katie took a few steps down, but that was all she could manage before her legs gave out and dropped her hard on her ass. She sat there, halfway down and halfway up the stairs, unable to go any further.
She had thought that finding Amber had been the end of this curse. She was wrong. This had been the end. A horrible, horrible ending. The last few days had been an emotional roller coaster. Now that it was really over, she didn’t know what to think.
So she sat there, thinking nothing, staring at the blood and at Connor Norstrom, and not really seeing any of it. Was Riley right? Should they move away from Twilight Ridge and find someplace that wasn’t full of ghosts? Not that she knew where that would be. She’d traveled all the way across the country when she moved here to New Hampshire, and the world of the dead had still found her.
It wasn’t where she lived that mattered. It was the fact that ghosts always found her. Always.
She heaved a sigh. Move, don’t move. She would always be in the middle of death and mayhem. It was her curse, as sure as that brooch with the carving of the ivory lady had been cursed.
At least, for now, it was over.
She stood up to go back to Riley. He still needed help. The night wasn’t over yet.
A bubbling, gurgling sound caught her attention. Behind her, downstairs, the blood stirred.
It moved.
Chapter 19
At first, Katie thought that Connor was about to rise up from the dead.
Then she saw the truth. It was the blood that was rising, climbing up from the floor to form the ghost of Emmaline Norstrom once more.
It wasn’t over, and she wasn’t safe.
But Riley was down the hall and still in the guest room, weak and injured and in need of help.
The phone! Damn it. She forgot all about her cellphone. It was back in that room, too. Not that there was anyone she could call for help. Not with this.
They were on their own.
While she hesitated, the ghost reared her bloody head and stared at Katie with eyes of liquid red.
She froze where she was. There was no sense in running. If Emmaline was going to come after her, there would be no way for Katie to stop her. Besides...they had done everything they could to appease this specter. They had returned the brooch to her family. They had found her daughter. They had unwittingly brought Connor Norstrom to his death.
And it had nearly cost both her and Riley their lives.
Wasn’t it enough? What more could Emmaline possibly ask from them?
“What do you want?” she screamed at the ghost as it rose from the floor, a bloody mix of spirit and gore. “What do you want from us! What? WHAT!”
The ghost slid forward, across the floor, leaving a smear of blood in her wake.
Katie shot to her feet, the urge to run overwhelming even though she had just told herself it was pointless. It was a basic, primal instinct to run from the boogie man, to run from things that scared the living daylights out of you. She had to fight it, had to force herself to stand her ground and not back away from the ghost.
There was nowhere to run from something this sinister.
But her hand slipped into her pocket, and found the little metal cross that she always carried with her.
When Emmaline smiled, and raised an arm that dripped fat gobs of blood, Katie’s heart tried to beat out of her chest.
She held the cross up like a shield.
The ghost regarded her little talisman. “I am angry,” she said in a voice that was liquidy and hollow.
“I know you’re angry, Emmaline. I know you’re mad.” In one hand, Katie held onto that cross for dear life. She clenched her other into fist, curlin
g it so tight that her fingernails bit into her flesh. “It’s over now. Amber is safe. Do you hear me? It’s over! You can be at peace. Just go away. Leave us alone!”
The ghost moved closer, the hem of her bloody dress on the bottom stairs now. “I...am...angry...”
Moving backward, Katie took a step up the stairs. Her resolve was starting to break, and the urge to run away like a frightened little animal was taking over. She had the cross, she told herself. She had the cross. “I know why you’re angry. I was there in the cellar. Remember? I was there. I saw what he did to your daughter. I’m the one you came to for help. I’m the one who saved Amber.”
“Angry...”
Emmaline rose up another two steps, three, four.
Katie backpedaled a step at a time.
“I know you’re angry, just listen to me--”
“Angry.”
“I know, just listen. I understand. We helped you!”
She pushed the cross out further.
“Angry.”
“Leave me alone!”
“ANGRY.”
The voice broke over Katie like a foul breeze. She felt cold seep into her core. Every muscle in her body froze, and she was left staring at the ghost as it got closer.
And closer.
“Please,” she begged Emmaline. Her voice couldn’t get above a whisper. “Please. We helped you.”
The ghost reached out, fingers just inches away from Katie’s face. The grin in that bloody visage spread in a wicked curl. “Help yourself, little girl.”
Emmaline’s hand folded over Katie’s, and the cross, and squeezed.
Katie could feel the warm squish of the ghost’s blood on her skin. In her palm and between her fingers, the cross grew warm in response. Then warmer.
Then hot.
Katie screamed. She wanted to move, she wanted to move, but her body wouldn’t move, and she needed to get away but she couldn’t and then Emmaline laughed, and blood spattered across Katie’s face.
The cross was scalding her skin now.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 82
