Within the Shadows

by Brandon Massey

  The volume increased, muffling his voice to whatever helpful ears might hear it.

  He closed his mouth. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging them. He blinked to clear his vision.

  Mika appeared in the doorway that led to the hall. She sauntered into the room and knelt beside him.

  “I see that you’ve awakened, Eric. You were unconscious for almost ten minutes.”

  “Let me go,” he said. “Please. I’ll tell you where Andrew’s staying.” He was thinking that he’d tell her, get her out of there, and then call Andrew and warn them to get out of the lake house. Anything to keep from dying. He couldn’t die. He had twin girls on the way.

  She picked up the knife on the table.

  He sucked in a sharp breath. Tried furiously to break free. But it was useless.

  She straddled him, and sat on his lap. Her face was inches from his, her hazel eyes beautiful, but cold, calculating.

  Her jasmine perfume tickled his nose. Being so close to her would’ve turned him on if he hadn’t been terrified out of his mind.

  She placed the tip of the knife on his chest. Above his heart.

  “I know you’ll tell me where Andrew is staying. Didn’t Andrew share with you that I always get what I want?”

  Chapter 45

  As Dad spoke, he spread documents across the table, like puzzle pieces. But a clear picture slowly began to form, and it was beyond anything Andrew had imagined.

  “Mourning Hill was built in 1855,” Dad said. “It was constructed on land sacred to the Creek Indians, who used to occupy the area. The mansion actually was built on one of their old ceremonial centers, the pascova, where the Creeks would kindle what they called the ‘sacred fire’ at the Green Corn Festival each year. Now, I don’t know if this has anything to do with what happened later, but the sacred fire stuff sounded interesting . . . especially considering the nightmares I’ve been having. I’ll explain more about that in a bit.

  “George Mourning owned the mansion, named it after himself and the hill the house stands on. He was a physician from North Carolina, and he ran his medical practice out of the estate. An unusually successful practice. He acquired a reputation for being something of a miracle worker. Folks came from all over to visit him. During the Civil War, wounded Confederate officers begged to be taken to his clinic for treatment.”

  “She’d told me her dad was a doctor,” Andrew said.

  Dad showed them a copy of a black-and-white photograph. It depicted a solemn, bespectacled white man with a mane of black hair. And piercing, hypnotic eyes.

  “She’s definitely got his eyes,” Andrew said.

  Dad continued, “As successful as Dr. Mourning was, he couldn’t cure his first wife. She had a nervous breakdown, apparently, and he committed her to an asylum. She’d never given him any children. So he took up with one of the house servants, a black woman named Etta.”

  “He was one of those men, huh?” Carmen said. “Had to hook up with the sister who mopped his floors.”

  “She was high yellow, too, light enough to pass for white when necessary,” Dad said. “But she bore him only one child. A daughter, named Celestina. She was born in eighteen eighty-six.”

  Born in 1886? Andrew had to remind himself that they were discussing the same woman whose nubile body had pressed against his only days ago. It was unbelievable. But true.

  “Yeah, you heard me right, young buck,” Dad said, aware of his thoughts. “Eighteen eighty-six. Makes her one hundred and eighteen.”

  “And her real name is Celestina?” Andrew said. “I see where she got Tina from when you met her.”

  Dad passed him another photo. It was a black-and-white portrait of a family: the stern physician, the beautiful, light-skinned black woman whom he’d taken for his wife, and a little girl of five or six. The daughter’s resemblance to Mika was undeniable.

  “All was well in the Mourning household, for a while. The good doctor continued to work his miracle cures and amass his fortune. Things went smoothly, until Celestina hit her teen years. When she was thirteen, a hail of stones fell on the village of Millville, about a mile away from the estate.”

  “A hail of stones?” Carmen said.

  Dad gestured to a microfiche document. “That’s what was reported. Stones—real rocks—the size of baseballs, fell from the sky. Three people died.”

  “What did that have to do with the Mourning family?” Andrew asked.

  “People saw Celestina in town the night that it happened. They believed she caused it.”

  “But she was just a teenage girl,” Carmen said. “Why would they suspect her?”

  “I get the feeling that in spite of all the people her dad was curing, the townsfolk were scared of them,” Dad said. “You know how suspicious people can be, especially in the South. People accused the doctor of working roots, of being in league with the devil, all kinds of odd stuff. They were scared of Mourning’s ‘mulatto daughter’ most of all. They talked about her as if she were some kind of demon child. I doubt that the hail of stones was the first bad thing that happened that the town blamed her for, but it was the first to make the papers.”

  Thunder boomed, and something—a branch, maybe—clattered onto the roof and cascaded across the area above the living room with the brittle sound of rolling bones.

  “And it sure wasn’t the last,” Dad said.

  As Andrew and Carmen continued to listen, Dad ran down a long list of disturbing incidents that had plagued the unfortunate town of Millville, over the years.

  “Flash floods,” Dad said. “People struck by lightning. Pets—especially cats—attacking their owners. Vats of fresh milk turning to blood, overnight. Bizarre stuff. Folks blamed the Mournings for it, Celestina in particular. They were ostracized from the community. And Mourning, though his services were still sought by outsiders, started to lose business from all of the bad press. People were too afraid of the girl to visit the house.”

  “Like she was evil incarnate,” Andrew said. “But did anyone know how she could do these things?”

  “Nope,” Dad said. “There were plenty of rumors. Some said she was born with a veil, which is an old sign of special gifts. Others said her dad had made a deal with the devil to be successful—but had to pay by giving the devil his daughter, to do with as he wished.”

  “That’s crazy.” But Andrew shuddered.

  “When Celestina turned eighteen, things got even worse,” Dad said. “Her father went berserk. Blew his head off with a shotgun. But not before he’d murdered his wife.”

  Carmen recoiled. “Why?”

  “No explanation given,” Dad said. “It bugs me, too. Why would this highly regarded physician lose his mind, kill his wife, and take his own life? What triggered it? Makes no damn sense.”

  “Unless he did something that made his daughter angry,” Andrew said. “Like kill the man she’d secretly been engaged to marry.”

  Dad and Carmen regarded him curiously. Briefly, he told them Mika’s story of how her bigoted father had disapproved of the black man that she loved, and hired someone to kill him.

  “You’re probably right,” Dad said. “Sounds like it could’ve been the trigger for her to go off. And somehow screw with her father’s head, drive him to kill.”

  “What about her mom?” Carmen asked. “She was murdered, too.”

  “Maybe her mom took her father’s side about the marriage thing,” Andrew said. “So Mika decided to punish both of them.”

  “That’s cold-blooded,” Carmen said. “But at this point I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “At any rate, the town was shocked, but not overly sympathetic,” Dad said, shuffling through more old newspaper articles. “Again, there was some insinuation that Celestina was responsible.”

  “Jeez, they don’t show her any mercy,” Carmen said.

  “After that, Celestina falls off the map,” Dad said. “She’s never mentioned again in any articles or public records. Well, only once. In 1981, she tr
ansferred the deed to the estate. Guess who got it?”

  Dad watched them, with a gentle smile.

  “Who?” Andrew and Carmen said at the same time.

  “Lalamika Renee Woods,” Dad said. “Celestina would have been ninety-five years old in 1981. Although it seems that she completely isolated herself from the public, she likely thought it best for her to change identities, keep people from getting too curious about her true age and wondering if that young lady who lived in the big house in the woods was really Celestina, that old demon child.”

  Andrew paced again. His brain felt as though it were bulging with all of the information he’d learned.

  “Over the years,” Dad said, “after her father’s suicide, it seems Celestina toned down her activities. There were no more reports of hailstorms of stones or anything wild like that. But there have been disappearances.”

  Andrew thought of Sammy. The look in Carmen’s eyes conveyed to him that she shared his thought.

  Cool air danced around the living room.

  “The folks in Millville have been spared,” Dad said. “But there have been numerous instances of people traveling through the area who are never seen again. Single adults, runaway kids, couples, entire families—it runs the gamut.”

  “Sammy said she uses them,” Carmen said. “Feeds on their energy.”

  “But what is she doing with them?” Andrew said. “Where is she putting the bodies?”

  “I think I’ve got the answer to that. “Dad placed the folder on the table. “Let me tell you guys about my dreams.”

  Chapter 46

  Sitting on Eric’s lap, Mika pressed the tip of the knife against the flesh near his heart.

  Eric bit his tongue to stifle a scream. The scream that boiled in his throat didn’t come from the feeling of the blade piercing his skin—it was no more agonizing than an ordinary pinprick—but from the terrifying thought of what this might lead to. And how he was powerless to prevent it.

  A bead of bright blood appeared on his chest.

  She regarded the droplet of blood, her gaze intense yet oddly detached, as if she were a biology student studying a specimen under a microscope. She dabbed her finger in the blood. Tasted it. Smiled with evident pleasure.

  His intestines knotted.

  This woman was sick.

  Her gaze shifted to his face. “Do you love your wife?”

  “She’s my everything.” He nodded vigorously.

  “She’s pregnant. With twins. I watched her leave your house earlier today. She’s going to have little girls, I sensed it.”

  “Please, leave my wife out of this. I’ll tell you where Andrew’s staying. Please.”

  “You’re a loving husband, Eric. Your wife is very fortunate. You’re committed to her, through and through.”

  He didn’t understand where she was going with these disturbing comments, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

  God, please let me live. Give me a miracle, Lord.

  She flicked her tongue across the edge of the knife. “Andrew loves me. Did you know that?”

  He shook his head.

  “He shares everything with you, but he hasn’t told you how much he loves me?”

  “He doesn’t tell me everything.”

  “He loves me, but he’s afraid to admit it. He’d hiding from his feelings.”

  “You could be right.” He’d agree with her if it would spare his life.

  “He’s running from commitment, like you men so often do.”

  “We do that a lot, yeah.”

  “It infuriates me, Eric. It forces me to do things that I don’t want to do—but that I must do, to teach Andrew that there are consequences to his actions.”

  Troubled by the turn in the conversation, he kept his mouth shut. Air whistled in his nostrils.

  He was aware, distantly, of a new song booming on the house stereo. “Bring the Pain” by Method Man. She’d slipped one of his hip-hop compilation CDs into the system.

  “Men are like puppies,” she said. “If you urinate on the carpet, your nose is squashed in the mess and you’re scolded. If you retrieve a ball, you’re given a treat. That’s how men learn to behave properly. The pain and reward system. Do you agree?”

  “Train us like dogs,” he said hoarsely.

  She rapped his chin with the knife. He flinched.

  “Give me the location of where my man is staying, and directions from here.”

  He told her the address of his house on Lake Sinclair, and gave her detailed directions. She didn’t write anything he said, but her eyes were alert. He believed that she stored his words verbatim in her memory bank, like a computer.

  “Thank you, Eric.” She smiled sweetly. “Now, you’ll have to blame your best friend for what I’m about to do next. He’s been a naughty puppy and needs to be taught.”

  She slid the knife from his chin, to his throat.

  “No, no, no.” He strained to free his hands, couldn’t. Tried to rock the chair, but couldn’t gain any leverage.

  “It’s Andrew’s fault, dear,” she said. “You were a loyal friend to him and deserved better. I’m sorry it has to end this way.”

  “No!”

  She plunged the blade into his throat.

  Chapter 47

  Andrew and Carmen listened to Dad explain his recurring nightmare. Seeing a child version of Andrew ignore his warnings and enter Mourning Hill. Witnessing a green glow in an upper room of the mansion. Trying to get inside and encountering resistance from Walter, the caretaker, and the cats. The graveyard beside the house . . .

  “I believe they have a cemetery hidden somewhere on the property,” Dad said. “These unfortunate people who get drawn to the house . . . they’re buried there.”

  Andrew heard a frenzied clicking sound. At first, he thought it was rain, tapping against a window. Then he realized that the sound came from the computer.

  All of them rushed to the laptop.

  Sammy typed: YES YESSS YYES YEEES YESS YESSS

  Andrew looked at his father. “I think he’s saying that you’re right.”

  Sammy stopped tapping the keys, his message communicated.

  “The house is full of ghosts, I remember that much,” Dad said. “Could be the ghosts of the poor folks she’s drawn to that place over the years.”

  Sammy typed once: YES

  “But some other stuff in your dreams confuses me,” Andrew said. “Why am I, like, six or seven years old when I go inside the house?”

  “Don’t know,” Dad said.

  “You can’t always take dreams literally,” Carmen said. “It might not mean anything. Or it could symbolize, I don’t know, how that little boy Andrew was lost to you, since you weren’t around when he was growing up.”

  Shame stamped Dad’s face. “Could be.”

  Andrew wanted to change the subject. This wasn’t the time to poke old, tender wounds.

  “What I really want to talk about, Dad,” he said, “is this green light you saw in a window upstairs. You said something earlier about the Creek Indians, who used to have a ceremonial site on the property of Mourning Hill and would kindle their sacred fire there?”

  “Yeah,” Dad said. “Could be a stretch, but I think it might have something to do with that.”

  “Me, too,” Carmen said.

  Andrew went to the coffee table and riffled through papers. He found the documents about the medical practice that Dr. Mourning, “the South Georgia miracle worker,” had run at the estate.

  “I think I’ve got something,” he said.

  Dad and Carmen waited for him to continue.

  “I know a bit about sacred sites, or what some people call places of power,” he said. “Don’t ask me how. You learn about the damndest things when you do book research.”

  “Go on,” Dad said. Carmen nodded eagerly.

  “The Native Americans’ religions are earth-centered,” he said. “In other words, they’re really in tune with Nature. There’s a theor
y that’s been around for a long time that certain spots in the world are special, that these areas give off energy—magnetic fields, natural radiation, psychic currents—whatever you want to call them. You get the idea.”

  “Still with you,” Carmen said.

  “Stonehenge is a good example,” he said. “That ring of huge rocks in England? Some people think it was built by aliens, others think people constructed it, thousands of years ago, for ritual purposes. At any rate, it’s widely considered a place of power. There’s a unique energy to the area that you can supposedly feel on your skin, like a tingling in the air.

  “So then let’s say these Creek Indians, who would’ve been in sync with the energy of a natural place, selected the area of Mourning Hill for their sacred ceremonies because it resonated with earth power.

  What if the green light Dad sees in his dreams actually represents a power reservoir of some kind, that exists right there on the property, maybe in the house? And—what if Mika’s father was tapping into it, somehow, consciously or unconsciously, when he was running his medical practice? It could’ve enabled him to work his miraculous healings.”

  “And what if Mika uses that same energy?” Carmen said. Excitement sparkled in her eyes. “She channels the power, uses it how she wants.”

  “Then feeds it or something by taking other people’s energy,” Dad said. “Like Sammy told you guys.”

  “Exactly,” Andrew said. “She’s probably used this energy to keep herself youthful. And to do all the other amazing things that she does.”

  “But how does she harness this power?” Carmen said. “It’s not like you can buy a Psychic Power Channeling Kit from Wal-Mart, guys.”

  Andrew tapped his lip. “I think she has some genuine psychic talents of her own. It gives her the ability to draw from this other energy source. Which then turbo-charges her, so to speak.”

  “Now the big question is,” Carmen asked, “how can we use this against her?”

  All of them fell silent. Rain beat a steady tattoo on the roof.