The window of the police station was now completely covered with snow. A couple of officers were out front, digging a passage out the front door. It felt as if they were inside an igloo.
“Have you tried the Blue Boy’s phone again?” Richard asked Adam.
“Yup. Still no answer, chief.”
“The phone at Millie’s store still works. I just called her. So why wouldn’t the Blue Boy’s still be working?”
“Beats me, chief.”
“He’s disconnected it,” Richard said.
Adam looked up at him. “Who has?”
“Jack Devlin. I feel certain of it.”
In his mind’s eye he saw Amy, so small in her hospital bed. The snow had been piling up outside the hospital much as it was accumulating outside the station now. Richard couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu helplessness. The longer he remained trapped in the station, the greater likelihood that he would let Annabel die.
Outside, he heard the whirr of an engine. It sounded like a buzz saw at first, then like the spinning of tires in snow. He hurried over to the front door, Betty at his side.
“It’s Danny!” the secretary exclaimed.
A teenage boy in a bright green wool hat and orange parka riding a yellow snowmobile was stuck in a snowbank in the station lot. The officers who’d been shoveling out the front entrance were rushing over to assist him.
“That boy,” Betty said, shaking her head. “He’s so impulsive. When I told him you needed a snowmobile, he offered to come over. I told him under no circumstances did I want him venturing out in this storm. But he came anyway.”
Richard was grinning. “I’m glad he’s a disobedient child.”
Betty looked up at him. “But take a glance out there, chief, will you? He’s stuck! That’s not a very powerful machine. If Danny got stuck in our parking lot, how are you going to make it all the way out to the Blue Boy Inn?”
“Danny made it all the way out here from your house, didn’t he?” Richard asked, his eyes on the boy.
With a shove from the officers, Danny was able to maneuver the snowmobile out of the bank, then hopped back onboard and steered it over toward the front door, where he brought the machine to a stop. He waved a big blue-mittened hand when he noticed the chief and his mother watching from the glass door.
“I’m giving that boy a medal,” Richard said, beaming.
“If he wasn’t so tall,” Danny’s mother said, “I’d give him a spanking.”
93
Chad climbed the stairs to the second floor.
He’d thought he’d heard Jack’s voice, and then someone walking toward the stairs. But no one had come down, and now the house had fallen silent once more. Chad didn’t like going up the stairs. He was afraid of what he might find. He was also afraid the exertion would cause him to lose more blood. But he had no choice, really.
The only possible way out of this house was from a second-floor window. And besides, in all good conscience, he couldn’t just leave Annabel up here after he’d heard her call his name.
He reached the top of the stairs.
Chad looked around. There was no one. But peering down the hallway, he could see the door to Annabel’s room was open. He had to go in there and look for her. If she wasn’t there, then he was throwing open the window and making a jump for it. The snow was so high out there, Chad figured he might actually be able to just step out onto it, if it was packed hard enough.
He took his first step down the corridor. Under his foot, the old floorboards creaked.
Chad paused, listening. He heard nothing, so he continued on down the hall.
At Annabel’s door, he paused again.
“Annabel?” he whispered, looking inside.
He heard the sound of crying. It was coming from the closet. He hurried to the closet door.
“Annabel!” he called.
If that was her behind the door, she was sobbing uncontrollably. She couldn’t speak.
“Hang on, Annabel,” Chad said, grabbing the closet door handle and finding it locked. “I’ll get you out of there. I’ll get you out and then we are getting out of this house.”
He began to shake the door handle as hard as he could.
94
Annabel heard Chad’s voice as if from a very far distance.
“Hang on, Annabel,” he was saying. “I’ll get you out of there if I have to break this door down.”
She focused. She brought herself back to the present. She yanked herself out of her childhood, where she was a tiny girl, curled up in a ball in the closet, crying her heart out. Now she was back here, an adult woman, and she was going to get through this.
The door in front of her suddenly shuddered as Chad, outside, threw his weight at it.
Through the space at the bottom of the door, Annabel could see his feet. The black rubber soles of his boots.
“Oh, Chad!’ she cried. “Oh, Chad, get me out of here!”
“I will, Annabel,” he called in to her. “Just hang on.”
The door shuddered again.
Through the space, Annabel saw droplets of blood raining onto the floor all around Chad’s boots.
She turned her eyes. The little hand that had been beside her was still there. And now a little face emerged from the darkness to join her in peering out through the space under the door.
Annabel was face-to-face with Tommy Tricky.
He licked his blue lips with a snaky blue tongue.
“You’re not real,” Annabel told him.
Tommy just smiled, and then withdrew back into the darkness.
For a third time Chad threw himself against the door. It shook in its frame, and Annabel heard something crack. But still it did not open.
She could hear Chad breathing heavily outside. And she could see now another pair of feet. They appeared to be a woman’s feet, in fuzzy pink house slippers. They had come in behind Chad. Facing the closet door, he wouldn’t have seen whoever it was come into the room.
Annabel had to warn him.
“Chad!” she screamed. “Behind you!”
“Annabel, I’m—”
But whatever he was about to tell her became a scream.
Annabel watched as the pink fuzzy slippers came up right behind Chad’s boots. She heard the sound of a knife plunging into flesh. Chad screamed again, and then dropped to his knees. Annabel could hear the knife, plunging in and out of him, making a horrible suction sound each time. Chad was screaming. Suddenly, as Annabel peered through the space, she saw a river of blood rushing across the floor toward her. Her hands, pressed close to the space, were quickly covered in it. Annabel leapt to her feet and screamed.
The sound of stabbing—suction in, suction out—continued for the next several minutes. Annabel covered her ears, but she could still hear the terrible noise. Chad’s screams softened into moans. Finally, after agonizing minutes, he was silent.
Annabel dropped her hands from her ears. She heard the sound of slippers scuffing out of the room.
“Oh, Chad,” Annabel cried, the tears dropping off her cheeks as she leaned against the door. The young man’s blood continued to flow into the closet all over her bare feet. Annabel realized she had just listened to Chad’s murder.
And now she was certain that hers would be next.
95
“Okay, so you grab the handlebar like this,” Danny was shouting over the wind, as Richard watched him closely. The seventeen-year-old’s hands closed over the bar tightly and he pushed it up to demonstrate. “Once the key is in the position, you pull the cord out and push the handlebar up. You follow?”
“I think so,” Richard said. “Seems easy enough.”
“It’s more than easy. This is a really light-footed sled. You should be able to glide over ungroomed snow without any problem. Just watch out for trees or bushes or anything that’s covered that you can’t see.”
“That could send me flying, I guess,” Richard said.
“Well, maybe not flying
, but it could get you stuck.” Danny turned his red-cheeked face to him. “That’s what happened to me on the way in here, when I got stuck. I was fine all the way to the station from my house because I stayed on the roads. The minute I came over the station’s yard I didn’t know there was a hedge underneath me, and I ran smack into it. If you stay to the roads, you should be okay, because all that’s under you is six or seven feet of snow.”
“That should be easy then,” Richard said, his breath freezing in front of his face.
Danny shook his head. “You haven’t seen it out there, chief. Sometimes you can’t tell where the road starts and yards begin. And not everyone got their cars off the street in time. There are lots of cars buried under drifts of snow. You don’t want to run into one of them.”
“No,” Richard said. “I sure don’t.”
“How far you got to take this?” Danny asked.
“Up to the Blue Boy Inn.”
The teenager grinned. “That haunted house? What’s going on up there now?”
“That’s what I aim to find out.” Richard put his gloved hand out and Danny grabbed it. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing this over, Danny. If I cause any damage to it, the department will pay for a new snowmobile for you.”
“It’s cool, man,” Danny said, getting up off the seat and gesturing to Richard to take his place. “If you crack this one up, I’ve got my eye on a more advanced model.”
“I think the department may be buying a few of those,” Richard said, straddling the snowmobile and grabbing the handlebars. “If we’re going to have more snowstorms like this, we need to have them in store.”
“Oh, we’re going to have a lot more of these kind of storms. Lots of extreme weather ahead of us. The climate’s changing, chief. Hope you’re not a denier.”
Richard smiled at him. “Nope, no denier here, Danny. I’ve learned that we deny reality at our own peril.”
He checked that his gun was safely secured at his side, and then he revved the motor as Danny had showed him.
Behind him, Adam was shouting over the noise. “As soon as I can round up some more machines, we’ll be up to join you, chief!”
Richard gave his deputy a thumbs-up with his right hand. Then he pulled on his goggles, tightened his scarf around his neck, gripped the handlebars, said a little prayer, and took off across the snow.
96
Annabel sobbed against the closet door. Chad was dead. The poor man . . . he had come into this house on her request. He had come up here, trying to rescue her. And now he was dead.
The door shifted as she leaned against it.
Annabel pushed. The door creaked open. Chad had succeeded in breaking the lock.
Slowly, fearfully, Annabel stepped out of the closet. She had no idea who might lunge at her as she did so. Tommy Tricky? Daddy Ron? The woman in the pink slippers who had killed Chad?
His body lay crumpled on the floor in front of her. She tried not to look at it. She feared she would start to cry so hard she’d never be able to stop. Poor Chad. She thought of him at the tile store, telling her it was nice to see her smile. Oh, poor, poor Chad.
She couldn’t afford to break down. Not yet. She had to find a way out of the house.
She had no idea where Jack had gone to. Or the woman who had stabbed Chad. Who was she? Annabel thought she knew. She was the same woman she’d seen her first day at the inn. The woman in the woods. Perhaps she had been the killer all along.
But even if so, Jack was helping her. Jack was somehow under her sway.
Annabel knew she didn’t have much time. At any moment, one of them could come back into this room. She had to get out.
But first she had the presence of mind to reclaim Jack’s boots. If she was going out in that snow, she’d need them.
To get them, however, she had to step over Chad’s body. The very act of doing so nearly sent her over the edge again. She was shaking uncontrollably as she pulled on the boots, both of them sticky with Chad’s blood. It was all over the floor, coating the soles of Annabel’s feet.
She then headed for the door. Zipping up Neville’s coat, which she still wore, she hurried into the hallway, pausing only briefly to make sure the coast was clear.
Then she ran down the corridor toward Cordelia’s room.
Her plan was the same as before. She would go out the window onto the small roof over the front porch. The snow was at least as high as that. From there she would trudge off, as best she could, hoping the snow was hard enough that she wouldn’t sink too far. Hoping, too, that she could brave the cold and the wind until she got to Millie’s.
She made it to Cordelia’s room. Once again she had the presence of mind to close the door behind her. She didn’t want Jack to come walking past and spot her as she went out the window.
Annabel’s heart was thudding in her chest. She could see the window. She could see freedom!
But then she heard a two-note whistle. The same sound she’d heard that day in the woods.
Annabel stopped and looked frantically around the room.
And all at once, the woman who had killed Chad, crouching behind Cordelia’s bed, stood up.
They locked eyes. The woman had long gray hair and was wearing a diaphanous white dress and fuzzy pink slippers. Her dress and hands were splattered with blood.
“Hello,” the woman said, emotionlessly.
Annabel turned to run, but was stopped in her tracks when, directly in front of her, two little blue men suddenly ran past, scurrying under the bed.
Annabel screamed. This couldn’t be happening!
The woman was now directly behind her. Annabel felt the cold blade of the knife pressed against the back of her neck. She didn’t dare breathe.
“Where are you going?” the woman asked in Annabel’s ear. Her voice didn’t sound angry or threatening, just curious. “It’s really bad outside.”
Annabel didn’t answer.
“You have to stay here,” the woman told her. “You have to take care of the house.”
“Who are you?” Annabel asked in a little voice.
She felt the knife move away from her neck and she breathed a little easier.
“Zeke is very angry with me,” the woman said. “I can’t find him. Have you seen him?”
She moved away from Annabel, but not very far. She still held the knife upright in her hands. Annabel saw that, despite her long, stringy, unkempt gray hair, the woman was not that old. She was quite pretty, in fact. Her skin was pale but very smooth.
“I haven’t seen Zeke, either,” Annabel said, latching on to an idea. “Maybe we can go out looking for him.”
The woman smiled. “No. You’ll try to run away.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will.” The woman touched her fingertip to the blade of the knife. “I don’t want to have to do to you what I did to that young man.”
“No, no, please don’t,” Annabel said, shrinking back. “I won’t run away.”
“I had to kill him, you know.”
“I know,” Annabel said, desperate to appear cooperative and understanding. “You had to, because he was trying to run away and take me with him.”
“That’s not why I had to kill him.”
“No?”
The woman shook her head, her long gray hair swinging from side to side. “I had to kill him to feed the house.”
“Feed . . . the house?”
Now the woman nodded vigorously. “That’s my job.” She looked intently at Annabel. “It was supposed to be yours, as well.”
“Mine?”
“Yes,” the woman insisted. “You have to feed the house for me, because no one is supposed to see me.”
“Okay, okay,” Annabel said. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as they studied her. “You’re afraid of the house, though, aren’t you?”
“No,” Annabel lied. “I’m not afraid of the house.”
“Then crawl und
er the bed.”
Under the bed. The little men had run under there.
“No,” Annabel muttered.
“Prove to me that you aren’t afraid of the house.” The woman thrust the knife in Annabel’s direction.
“Please, don’t make me go under there. I know . . . I know what’s under there!”
“Do it!” the woman commanded, waving the knife back and forth in the air.
I’ve got to overpower her. I’ve got to jump her, wrestle the knife away from her, Annabel thought.
But the blade was suddenly at her throat. Annabel had no choice but to drop to her knees.
“Good,” the woman said. “Now crawl under the bed. They’re waiting for you.”
Annabel looked under the bed. Two pairs of eyes blinked in the darkness.
“No,” Annabel cried, trembling uncontrollably.
“Come join us, Annabel,” a little voice called to her. “It’s time you learned that we are real.”
97
Richard thought he had the hang of this. He was cruising pretty easily along Main Street on Danny’s Ski-Doo, taking the kid’s advice and staying strictly to the middle of the street. It was easy for Richard to do that here, since the buildings of the town center were on either side of him and it was clear exactly where he was. But when he had veer off and follow Route 7A up into the woods, it became increasingly difficult, with all these mountainous drifts of snow, to know what was road and what was not.
The chief did the best he could, squinting to see through his goggles, occasionally having to reach up and wipe the snow off them with the back of his glove.
The weather report had said the blizzard was winding down, but it sure didn’t feel that way to Richard. Even in his thermals and heavy parka, he shivered against the deep chill. And the snow was blowing and drifting as fiercely as ever.
He needed to get to the Blue Boy before it got dark. After nightfall, it would become impossible to make it through these woods. On the back of the Ski-Doo, there was room for one other person. If Annabel wasn’t the only one in need of help—if, as Richard feared, Chad was trapped there as well—then they might have to make several trips back and forth, and that could take the rest of the afternoon. Richard hoped Adam could scrounge up some other snowmobiles fast.
The Inn Page 25
