“Look, Beth. I’m sorry I got angry. I ... just need for you to hear me. To understand what I’m saying. I think you’ve been ... changed by all of this. That you’re not thinking right. I know that you love us. I know that you love Carly, anyway.”
His daughter threw her head back and gave a dreadful laugh.
“Changed? You have no idea how I’ve changed, Gavin.”
He swallowed. Those terrible eyes narrowed at him.
“I love Carly more than anything, Gavin. It’s the power of her love that has enabled me to be here like this now. To escape the bonds of Davis Crowley, to exert my will over his ... and now I sense that he has finally died. I am free to do as I wish, Gavin. I cannot change what I am, now, my dear husband ... but the power that I wield is beyond imagining.” She smiled and it was too large, that starry essence visible within her mouth, between her lips. “I want to share it with you and Carly, love. I am sorry for my indiscretions. I was fooled, I was weak. But now ... now I am strong.”
Ethan still hovered near Carly’s form, half frozen. His terrified eyes watched Gavin, pleaded with him.
“Let Ethan go, Beth. Come out of Carly. Let them be together. Maybe there’s another way that you can stay with us, that your energy can remain here. Maybe we can be here, all together again. I-I would love to have you here again, Beth. I ... I loved ... love you ... so much. When you were gone, it was as if the light had been drained from my soul. The pain of your absence awaited me around every corner. What I wouldn’t give to hold you again ...”
Gavin saw the effect that his words had on Beth, or, rather, the wraith that she had become. The energy around her softened, and she used Carly’s beautiful face to look at him longingly. And although everything he was saying was a lie—or so he told himself—he felt a sincere pang of yearning for Elizabeth. A nostalgic sadness. For days when they had been happy together. When the world had been theirs, and they had been young and in love.
“But Karen ...”
“Karen means nothing to me. She’s just someone to fill the nights when I think of you. She could never replace you in my heart.”
“Gavin—” the wraith spoke in that ominous, amplified version of Beth’s voice. It carried with it a deep loneliness. Deep pain. “Oh Gavin, how I wish I could feel your touch again.”
“You can, Beth. Please. Come out of Carly. Our daughter, our baby ... this ... it can’t be like this. There has to be another way.”
Ethan was released. As if invisible bonds had been cut, he dropped to the floor. As soon as he landed, he scrambled backward. Gavin reached out his hand toward Carly, speaking Beth’s name in a longing whisper, turning it into a chant.
Carly’s back arched. She threw her head back, mouth open wide. Cosmic light beamed from her open mouth. A shimmering image, like a glowing double shadow of Carly, pulled away from her, a double-exposure. The ghostly form exited his daughter’s vaulted body, her back bent at an angle so extreme that he prayed silently that her spine wouldn’t snap. As the ghost image lifted away, it took another form, more womanly and mature, but also partially inhuman, shimmering. As the invading spirit left Carly’s body, ectoplasmic strands stretched between the two forms. The strands sagged and snapped, and then Carly’s body collapsed on the floor like a marionette with cut strings.
Gavin’s instinct was to rush to Carly. He took a step, but the wraith that had emerged from Carly’s deflated form stood between him and his daughter, blocking his way.
And her appearance was a horror that froze him in his tracks.
The wraith bore only the vaguest resemblance to Beth ... all that she had been was gone, he told himself. His wife had died in that room where he found her six years ago, brains sprayed over the wall. What stood before him now was a form of energy, a remnant of her twisted psyche, something that Davis had cultivated in his wife, something he had manipulated inside of her, or in that spiritual realm Gavin knew so little of. But it wasn’t Beth. This thing ... it couldn’t be.
The wraith lurched toward him. It reached out one hand toward him, its fingertips like razors that had taken countless lives. Its face was long and drawn and gaunt, a sharp jaw set with ragged teeth like fangs, skin gray and translucent. The nose was caved into the face, a rotted pit of blackness, and its eyes were burning pits like novas of all the fury of loss, frustration, betrayal, and hate. Hair like tendrils hung from her elongated skull. Pearly nubs of demonic horns jutted from the forehead. Her torso was thin, breasts nothing more than sagging bags of decaying skin. Her ribs showed in painful detail, the cavity of her abdomen convex as if the internal organs had rotted inside of her. The hips gave way to goat-like legs, bending the wrong ways.
“Beth,” he gasped, because he could recognize her in this horror, he couldn’t deny it, and because he felt genuine compassion for what she had become.
“You do not love me, Gavin. You never loved me. And you do not love our daughter. I will do what you would not—I will destroy those who come against her, and I will clear the way for her to live a life of victory. And if you stand against me ... then I will destroy you, too.”
The wraith came swiftly at him, its razor talons in a blurred arc, aiming to rip him open.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Gavin saw the strike coming, and it came fast, but adrenalin and skill enabled him to arch his back and whirl away, but not without injury. The claws that caught his side were like the sharpened tines of a pitchfork that raked across his back and ribs, shredding his clothes and laying open his flesh.
The lacerations were deep, but not fatal. They oozed blood and he gnashed his teeth against the pain, scrambling clear.
The wraith opened its mouth, that mouth full of space and hell, and emitted a shriek that shredded his eardrums and sent him reeling, clutching his ears. Gavin backed away, stumbling. He coughed. In the thickening smoke, his eyes searched for Carly, who had begun to stir beyond the creature. If he could only get to her.
Abigail Holman rushed in through the front door.
Gavin blinked at her. Shocked that she would be here, his mind unable to process the unreality of the situation. As he tried to comprehend her sudden presence, Abigail hurriedly removed a backpack from her shoulder, blood running down one side of her face. In that instant he realized she looked ten years older than the last time he’d seen her at the station.
But that stood to reason.
She quickly began pouring something—a white powdery substance from a cylindrical container—around her in a circle on the floor.
“Abigail,” he yelled. “Get out of here.”
No sooner had Abigail completed her circle and followed up with a black, ashy substance, than the wraith emitted another indignant scream of fury. It turned toward Abigail, ready to attack.
Gavin took advantage of the shift in the wraith’s focus to scramble to Carly’s side. She was breathing but unconscious. Gavin looked back at Ethan and he came to them, helping Gavin drag Carly’s prostrate form to the corner of the room. Gavin realized that tears were soaking his face, and that Ethan looked the same—anguished and terrified.
A low howl rose from the center of the room, Abigail stood in the center of her makeshift circle. A bowl was at her feet, to which she had added salt and water, and some kind of stone. Two white candles burned on each side of her, their flames flickering tentatively in the combination of the cold wind from outside and the ebb of cosmic power from the manifestation of the wraith. Abigail lit a long bundle of bluish weed, the scent of it pungent in the room. Waving it around, she encircled herself with its smoke in the thickening haze. Then she raised her voice and projected a powerful tone.
“Goddess hear my plea, sustained by the unending energy of the mother, Crone of the Ancients dissolve this unwanted form, banish it from this place forever, as it will, so mote it be!”
The wraith screeched and rushe
d at Abigail.
Although she had made a good show of bravery, when the wraith came for her, she recoiled and lost her footing. Gavin heard her scream, and though his instinct was to go to Abigail and help, to fish across the floor for his gun and fire into the wraith, he had to protect Carly at all costs, and he would not leave her side.
Abigail was thrown back against the wall of the entryway—forced back as if by a surge of electrical shock—hitting her head on the back wall. She fell into a heap at the base of the wall, half in and half out of the circle.
The wraith lunged for her.
Abigail pulled herself back into the circle at the last moment.
The creature shrieked in indignation and stood at the edge of the circle’s boundary, raging at Abigail.
Hastily consulting the ancient book, she raised her voice in the face of a rising wind that seemed to come from a swirling cone; it appeared in the air above her and the wraith. Gavin looked on in horror as something like a portal materialized above them ... and beyond it he could see a sea of swirling stars, an ultraviolet negative of some undersea-like realm, some otherworldly abyss.
Abigail spoke in a language he didn’t understand. With each shouted word, she raised her voice, and what at first was authoritative now sounded just plain scared, and Gavin inwardly prayed to God, and Jesus, and Allah, and anyone else who might conceivably hear and help them that whatever she was doing wouldn’t bring all the demons of hell to bear upon them.
The room filled with purple light. It shone through the portal. Glimpses of extraterrestrial beings like pulsing amoeba and unearthly insects flashed beyond. Shapes of large worms and tentacled things like cephalopods drifted nearer the portal on the other side ... a fleshy tentacle, pink and mottled gray, came through the portal then and enwrapped the wraith’s form. A second and then third tentacle came through the dimensional rift, and more things followed—glowing violet insect-like creatures with proboscises that probed and then pierced the wraith’s neck and torso.
As Abigail yelled her chant, it caused a greater stir in the vast beyond. Gavin felt a pull, a supernatural force like a strong vacuum, tugging at him. He looked over to see Ethan anchoring himself on the corner of the wall at the base of the stairs, his arm wrapped around Carly. Gavin struggled to get to his daughter.
In a whoosh, the fires in the room were extinguished. The phone, books, magazines, logs from the fireplace, coats and anything else that wasn’t moored down was sucked into the vortex.
Abigail screamed her chant at the top of her lungs, shaking the smoking brunt of sage. The candles near her went dark and flew into the portal. The bowl at her feet spilled its contents, rolled and then followed the candles. The salt and ash from which she’d made her circle of protection were sucked into the vacuum of the gateway between worlds.
In a final, desperate scream, Abigail forced the final words of her spell from her raw throat.
The wraith’s anguished cry—full of indignant rage and pain—ripped the air. The being that had once been Elizabeth Wagner opened its fanged jaws, curled its deadly claws, and trembled. Its torso pulsed like a squirming bag of snakes as the giant, ethereal insect-things drank her essence. The green aura that had surrounded the wraith suddenly became a blinding white light that flashed like the exploding energy of a mini-supernova. Gavin recoiled and instinctively covered his face with his arm. He felt the heat of it searing his exposed skin. He heard screaming—Ethan, Karen, Abigail ... all of them screaming, and all he could do in the painful moment of blindness was clutch onto Carly and pray.
Then, abruptly, everything in the house fell silent and went dark.
Gavin held still for just a moment. He was still breathing. He felt Carly beneath him, still breathing, and she made a small groaning sound. She was coming awake.
She was alive! Thank God, she was alive!
Ethan’s hand gripped Carly’s ankle tightly, the boy’s knuckles white against the peach color of her flesh. He lay face down, coughing. Ethan looked up and stared, dazed and shocked, into Gavin’s eyes. When the boy realized Carly was safe between them, a relieved expression washed over his face that told the father all he ever needed to know about Ethan James.
But Abigail ...
Gavin surveyed the wreckage of the living room. The couch had tipped and turned, smoking and charred. He could see Karen’s unconscious form pinned against the wall. He went quickly to her, checked for her pulse, saw that she was still alive. Tears blurred his vision as he went then to Abigail, who lay in the corner of the entryway, crammed in a fetal position into the corner, eyes closed tight, a look of agony on her face. As he crouched next to her, he saw her take a labored breath.
Dear God, they’d made it. They’d survived.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The fire trucks and EMTs had followed hot on the trail of Oliver as they responded to the call of “lightning strikes” and “weird fire” at the Wagner home. The firemen and EMT’s took Carly and Karen from the house on stretchers and treated them for their wounds. Karen was in a tremendous amount of pain with numerous broken bones, so they hurried her to Langstaff-Brown Medical Center. Carly was still somewhat delirious. Gavin cried as he held her, held her hand as the EMTs waited to take her to the medical center for tests and observation. She had strange burns, her throat was raw, her eyes so bloodshot they might drip bloody tears, and her skin was mottled and cool to the touch. Ethan clung to the cold metal of the stretcher with a boyish look of dedication that defied all of hell to separate him from his love.
Gavin knelt next to his daughter, holding her hand. “Are you sure you’re all right, angel?”
Carly nodded, ever so slightly. “I’ll be fine, Dad.” Her voice was a croaking whisper.
“Damn right you will be,” Ethan moved the sweaty hair away from Carly’s blanch face. For a moment, Gavin saw the glimpse of the man inside of the growing boy at his daughter’s side. Gavin rested a heavy palm on the young man’s shoulder. He mustered a grim smile.
“She really shouldn’t be exerting any energy, Chief,” said one of the EMTs.
Gavin nodded.
Abigail, wrapped in a gray blanket from the back of Oliver’s patrol car, came to the side of Carly’s stretcher before they loaded her in. Her skin was blackened as if smeared with charcoal, but otherwise she looked fine, and didn’t complain of any pains. Gavin found it difficult to believe that nothing was wrong with her at all, with what had happened in those last few moments.
What had happened there?
No easy answers to that one. He’d probably never know. But as long as everything was now the way it should be, as long as everyone was okay, he wouldn’t question the whims of fate.
Oliver came up to Gavin. He regarded his friend with deep concern. He handed Gavin a steaming cup of coffee. Gavin laughed. It started deep in his belly and as he laughed he cried ... tears of joy. That he still had his daughter, that he still had Karen, that Carly still had Ethan, that Oliver could still bring him coffee. And everything was going to be okay.
“You okay, Chief?”
“Oh, that’s a loaded question. But yeah, partner. We’re okay. It’s gonna be okay.” He sipped the coffee. It scalded his tongue and burned its way down his throat and he followed it up with another swallow, steam filling in his face.
“Can I take you to the hospital? No room in the ambulance, I’m afraid.” Oliver nodded at the EMTs, about ready to load Carly into the back of the vehicle. Ethan clung to the gurney with both hands, one of which was covered by the weak hand of his daughter. Gavin didn’t think it was fair to boot him out and take his place.
“That sounds good, Oliver. Thanks.” To Carly he said, “You gonna be all right in there on your own?”
Carly smiled slightly. “I’m not on my own, Dad. Ethan’s here.”
“I’ll take care of her, Mr. Wagner. I promi
se.”
Gavin nodded. “I know you will, son.” He looked at Oliver and back at Carly. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“’Kay,” she whispered.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“Love you.”
Gavin went with Oliver to his car.
* * *
Carly’s eyes burned. It was hard to keep them open. The warmth of Ethan’s hand over hers was comforting. She felt safe. She watched Dad and Oliver disappear in the stir of emergency personnel.
Abigail had stayed behind. Wrapped in the blanket Oliver gave her, she looked like an old witch standing there, looking down on Carly.
“Looks like you’re going to make it,” Abigail said. The smile on her face looked strange, and Carly couldn’t place what seemed wrong with it. Maybe with all that her friend had gone through, she was just irrevocably changed. She imagined they would have to get to know each other all over again. She did seem dramatically different, even from the Abigail she had seen only a few hours ago, which now seemed like a lifetime.
“Yeah,” Carly whispered. “Thanks to you.”
“You should thank Ethan here. The big lug is the one that kept you from getting sucked into that portal.” Abigail smiled down at her friend. Her stare lingered too long.
“We’ve got to wrap this up and get going,” said the EMT. He looked at Abigail. “Sorry, only one passenger allowed in the ambulance.”
Abigail took a step back, regarding her friend with a steady gaze.
As Carly was hoisted into the back of the ambulance, Abigail said to Ethan, “You better take care of her.” Then she addressed Carly, her voice softer, “I love you, Care-bear.”
“I love you, too, Abi,” she said, her throat raw. The feeling of something not right wouldn’t let go. She kept her eyes on Abigail.
The EMTs closed the doors of the ambulance. Ethan exhaled loudly as they pulled away from the curb. Carly watched Abigail’s image through the back windows as they drove away: a cloaked silhouette, arms wrapped around her chest, eyes alight with a soft green glow.
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