Dad cowered on the floor, gaping at him, as if unsure of what he had seen. Swollen red scratches marked his face, like tribal scars. No doubt, he’d endured a battle with Mika’s infamous felines.
“Come on, Dad.” Andrew offered him his hand. “I haven’t killed her. We don’t have long before she gets up again.”
“You scared the shit out of me, man.” He took Andrew’s hand, and got to his feet. “Thought you were gonna put me down for good.”
“All writers are closet actors.” Andrew smiled briefly.
Dad watched Mika. “She looks dead to me. You sure she isn’t?”
“Ever seen a horror flick? She’s like the creature that won’t die. Come on, we’ve gotta get upstairs.”
Andrew hurried to the dust-covered staircase and began to climb, taking the creaky steps two and three at a time.
Dad pulled his attention away from Mika and followed him.
“What’s upstairs?” Dad asked. “Did you find . . . it?”
Andrew knew what he was talking about: the nameless power that dwelled in the upper room.
“Sammy showed me a door,” he said. “I think it’s what we want.”
“So that’s where the kid’s been. He’d been with me on the way here. Saved my ass when I was out there with Walter.”
“He may have saved all of our asses,” Andrew said.
As though they sensed trouble coming, the spirits in the mansion had become agitated. Along the hallway, doors flew open and slammed shut. Footsteps pattered through rooms. The chandelier swayed on its rusty chain, as if blown about by a violent wind.
At another, earlier time, the poltergeist phenomena would have scared the shit out of Andrew. But he ran down the corridor, unfazed by the supernatural activity around him. He’d seen so much in the past few days that it would take more than some agitated ghosts to frighten him.
They arrived at the attic door.
“I couldn’t open it,” Andrew said. “I got something like an electrical shock when I tried to go in. What do we do now?”
Dad scrutinized the door. When he looked at Andrew, his eyes were sober. “I go in.”
“But we can’t go in, Dad, that’s my point.”
“The door’s meant for me, not you, young buck,” Dad said softly. “The thing in there . . . it’s been calling me, in my dreams.”
Dad reached for the knob. Andrew grabbed his hand, pulled it away.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked his father.
“Son, I know you don’t trust me, never have. And that’s my fault. But this time, you’ve got to trust me.”
Dad had honed in on the exact conflict that divided him. Trust. He didn’t trust his dad to know what he was talking about, didn’t trust him to do the right thing. He felt as though he needed to be hovering over his father’s shoulder, to supervise his actions and make sure he didn’t screw up.
“I’ve got this, son,” Dad said. He squeezed Andrew’s hand. “Trust me. Please.”
“But—” Andrew started, and stopped himself when he noticed his dad’s eyes. They were iron, determined.
Dad was going to go inside. Even if he had to knock him down to do it.
Andrew swallowed. His feet were heavy as sandbags.
But he stepped out of the way.
Dad closed his hand over the knob. Andrew nearly flinched, fearing his father would get a terrible jolt.
Nothing happened.
Dad turned the knob, and opened the door. It came open smoothly.
Impenetrable blackness waited inside. The engine-like vibration that Andrew had heard earlier grew louder.
Before going in, Dad glanced at Andrew.
“This was meant for me,” he said. “But I did it for you.”
He stared at Andrew for a beat, then walked into the darkness and closed the door behind him.
Andrew slumped against the wall.
Somehow, he understood that he would never see his dad again. If his father emerged from that room, he wouldn’t be the same man that Andrew had despised for his entire life and then finally begun to love. The thing in that attic, whatever it was, was going to take his father away from him forever.
The most difficult part to accept was that he realized it could be no other way. This was the tragic hand that fate had dealt them.
He pressed his fingers to his eyes, to stop the flow of tears.
Downstairs, Mika awakened. Howling in rage.
Chapter 68
Raymond walked through the doorway and into the most perfect blackness that he had ever known. It was like plunging into an ocean of warm, pitch-black water, miles beneath the surface and the reach of the sun.
A low hum permeated the air. As if a massive generator of some kind were stored in the room. Whatever it was, it radiated a field of energy that lifted the hairs on his arms and neck.
Fear stirred in his gut.
What am I doing in here? I don’t know what I’ve done . . .
Like a blind man, he extended his arms, searching for a wall, anything. His hands found a smooth length of wood, examined it. It felt like a staircase railing.
He lifted his foot, edged it forward. It landed on a step.
Good, some stairs. Now just go on up.
The chamber had a clean, faintly antiseptic scent. It smelled nothing like the mildewed, dusty attic that he’d expected to find.
Slowly, gripping the railing, he navigated the stairs. As he moved upward, the humming increased in volume. His teeth thrummed in sync with the steady drone.
There were thirteen steps. At the top, his feet found a firm floor.
Although the view from outside the mansion indicated that there should be a window up here, the darkness was complete, as if the glass were coated with thick, black paint.
He ventured forward, closer to the source of the vibration.
Lord, I hope I’m doing the right thing. I’m stepping out here on nothing but faith.
As he neared the nucleus of the energy, the buzzing, suddenly, was no longer outside of him.
It was in him, resonating in the cavity of his chest, as if it had taken over his heart.
His body, numbed by the increasingly frequent vibrations, began to shake.
And visions flooded his consciousness. Exploded in his mind’s eye like supernovas in the darkness of space.
Verdant, primeval woods, disturbed by a rumbling in the air that climaxed with an orb of fiery energy erupting out of the very atmosphere . . .
Wild animals wandering to the area, basking in the power they sensed but could not see, their bodies rewarded with unnatural vigor . . .
Brown-skinned people arrayed in splendid, ceremonial garments, conducting tribal rituals here in foreign tongues . . .
A scholarly looking white man, Dr. Mourning, stealing into the chamber at night and drinking of the energy for short sips, sufficient to allow miraculous workings to flow from his fingers . . .
A doe-eyed, beautiful black girl, known as Celestina and later as Mika, sneaking into the upper room and absorbing the power that would change her life forever . . .
There were more images, some of which he understood, and others which he did not. A visual record of those who had used—and abused—the power over the centuries.
Knowledge came, too.
He knew what he could do with his power. The miracles he could work. The evil he could destroy. The good he could do for his son.
And he knew that to use the power as he desired would kill him. Would overload the capabilities of his physical body, perhaps induce a major heart attack.
But it had to be done.
Even as that bitter knowledge washed over him, green light flared in his vision, an all-consuming brightness that blasted away the darkness as effectively as the sun vanquishing the night.
And then the brilliant radiance was no longer outside of him.
It was in him, too.
Chapter 69
Mika had risen. Hiding behind the hallway balustrade, Andrew wa
tched her pull the axe out of her chest as casually as someone plucking a splinter from a finger. Her head swiveled around. Then up.
He ducked away, but too late. She had seen him.
He heard her footsteps racing to the staircase.
He looked to the attic door. His father had been inside for a couple of minutes. What was going on in there?
He wanted to check inside, but his painful memory of touching the knob kept him away.
Mika pounded up the stairs. Shouting his name.
What if Dad had collapsed and died up there in the upper room, his heart stopped by the alien energy?
Mika bounded onto the landing. A slash in her kimono revealed that the axe wound had faded entirely.
“You’ve pissed me off now, Andrew,” she said. “But I’ll deal with you after I’ve dealt with your father. Where is he?”
Andrew didn’t answer. But his gaze flicked across the door.
Mika’s eyes widened as large as saucers.
“He couldn’t have,” she said.
The door opened.
Andrew’s father emerged from the darkness.
Throughout the mansion, the spirits shrieked.
Chapter 70
Something about Andrew’s father was different. Although he looked the same, in a physical sense, as he had when he had entered the room, when he walked out of the darkness, an inexplicable change had come over him.
It was, Andrew decided, a transformation in his aura—an invisible field of energy that surrounded him like a second skin.
Andrew could feel the energy blazing from his dad’s aura, like heat waves from a fire.
Glaring hatefully at Andrew’s father, Mika coiled, preparing to attack.
His father strode past him, paying him only a reassuring glance, as if to say, I’ve got things under control.
Andrew backed against the wall and got out of the way.
Screeching, Mika attacked his dad.
Dad calmly thrust his arm forward and clamped his hand over her throat.
Gagging, Mika batted her arms at him, but she couldn’t break his powerful grip.
Dad lifted her in the air, her legs kicking.
He swung her around, to dump her over the balustrade.
Driven by desperation, Mika wrapped her legs around Dad’s waist.
Dad didn’t lose his chokehold on her throat, but he lost his balance.
Together, they flipped over the railing and fell to the floor below.
Chapter 71
The sound of Dad and Mika striking the hallway boomed through the house.
The mansion was alive with restless spirits. They banged doors. Hammered walls. Overturned furniture. Flung vases and sculpture. Screamed as if they had withheld all of their misery to be released at that penultimate moment.
Ignoring the chaos, Andrew sprinted downstairs.
Although they had fallen almost fifteen feet, neither Dad nor Mika had lost consciousness. They wrestled on the floor, bodies interlocked in what would have been an intimate manner if their angry grunts had not betrayed the true nature of their struggle.
Andrew found the axe lying near a table leg. He picked it up, though he was unsure whether he would need it. He moved closer.
Dad gained the advantage. He pinned Mika beneath him and pressed both of his hands over her throat.
Mika thrashed wildly, as if her body were a sack of writhing snakes. But she could not break free.
“Give it back,” Dad said over and over. “Give it back.”
He was talking about the power, Andrew realized. The power she’d stolen from the upper room and the souls of her victims.
He watched over his father’s shoulder.
“Give it back . . .”
He throttled her savagely.
Mika arched her back and released a garbled scream.
Dad pressed his mouth over hers, as if to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
But as Mika’s body buckled like a wind-blown sheet and began to shrivel, he realized that Dad was sucking the life out of her.
Her black hair lost its luster, turned bone-white at startling speed, and then fell away from her scalp in brittle sheaves. Wrinkles streamed across every centimeter of her skin as if poured on her from a jar, running over her in deep, saggy furrows. Her taut muscles deflated like balloons losing air; her curvaceous figure atrophied to a gnarled, stick-thin body that almost vanished in the red kimono’s billowy folds.
Drained of the power that had sustained her, she was reverting to her true, old age.
Her gaze found Andrew. Tears carved down her sallow cheeks.
He heard her voice in his mind, clear as a clarion: I’ll always love you, soul mate eyes.
Then, the brightness faded out of her gaze, and milky cataracts clouded her vision.
Andrew looked away.
He hadn’t loved her. He had feared her, and he despised her for what she had done. She had acted out of an unwavering but misguided love for him. It sickened him that she’d never realized how wrong she was.
But she had loved him to the end, as she’d promised she would.
Chapter 72
Wearily, Dad rolled away from Mika, and lay on his side. All that remained of Mika was a corpse that appeared to have lain in a grave for decades. Andrew averted his gaze and went to his father.
Dad clutched his chest. He sucked in short breaths.
“Can’t hold on . . . much longer,” Dad said. “Power’s . . . too much for me. Help me up.”
“Listen, you’re gonna be okay, Dad.” Andrew grabbed his father’s arm and helped him to stand. Energy crackled through his fingers where he touched his father, a pleasant tickling sensation. But he was starting to cry, and he couldn’t stop. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“Take me to your friends . . . outside,” Dad said. “Fast, son.”
Although Andrew didn’t understand his father’s request, he didn’t question him. He threw open the front door. Keeping a steadying arm around his father’s waist, they hurried off the veranda and across the lawn, to the moss-wreathed archway that enclosed the garden.
A thin mist hung over the area, but Andrew spotted the bodies of Eric and Carmen, lying beside a mound of raw dirt, not far from the watchful statue of Aphrodite.
Grief speared his heart. He nearly lost his balance.
“Here,” Dad said. He knelt beside the bodies. He gestured for Andrew to move away.
Andrew stepped back. “What . . . what’re you gonna do?”
Dad placed one hand on Eric’s head, and his other hand on Carmen’s forehead. He closed his eyes. He began to shudder.
Understanding came to Andrew.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said. He sank to his knees in the grass.
He didn’t believe what might happen.
But he wanted to believe, more than he’d ever wanted anything.
Hands pressed firmly against their heads, Dad shook as if experiencing a mild seizure. Eyes shut. Face contorted in a rapture of miraculous power.
The cool air around them grew warm. The bracing scent of ozone reached Andrew’s nostrils, and he looked to the heavens, half expecting to see a bolt of lightning sizzle to the earth.
Movement came from the dead bodies.
Carmen’s fingers twitched.
Eric’s folded leg straightened.
Oh, my God. Am I really seeing this?
He crawled across the ground, closer.
Dad moved away from Carmen and Eric. He raised his hands and face skyward, as if in supplication. Whispered words came from his lips. Prayers.
Carmen sat up.
She rubbed her eyes, blinked as if she’d been napping.
The fatal knife wound in her throat had vanished. Not even a scar remained.
Yawning, Eric rose, too.
He frowned at the house robe he wore. His flesh also was unmarked.
Carmen looked at Andrew. “Drew, what happened?”
Her voice was clear, blessed
ly normal.
“Yeah, what’s been going on?” Eric said. “Why am I wearing this thing?”
Tears running down his face, Andrew opened his mouth. But he couldn’t speak.
Dad collapsed.
Andrew cradled his father’s head in his arms. Eric and Carmen huddled around him.
Dad’s breaths came slow and ragged.
“Brought ’em back,” Dad said softly. “Least I could do . . . ’fore I check out.”
Andrew held his father’s hand.
“We’re taking you to the hospital,” Andrew said. “They’re going to take care of you there, you’ll be back to normal in no time, wait and see, Dad, we’ll be back on the links before you know it.”
Dad’s eyes were watery. “You forgive me?”
Andrew was crying so hard that he could barely manage to speak the words.
“Dad, yeah, I forgive you. Yes. For ever ything . . . everything.”
Dad smiled. “Always loved you, young buck.”
“You’re not gonna die. No, you’re not gonna die on me, not now, Dad . . .”
His father’s eyes slid shut. His shallow breaths ended, lips slightly parted.
He was gone.
Andrew buried his face in the crook of his father’s neck, and wept.
When Raymond died, his physical vessel breaking under the pressure of containing a prodigious amount of psychic energy—the totality of the power that had thrived in the land for eons—he unconsciously pierced a hole in the atmosphere of the spirit, the same dimension from which the energy had originated.
The power, drawn like a magnet to its home, poured out of him, and into its rightful realm.
Mourning Hill, once an estate built on an ancient, sacred place of power, instantly became merely a dilapidated mansion that stood on a large plot of ordinary, red Georgia clay.
Eric and Carmen pulled Andrew to his feet and held him in a tight, group embrace.
For a long time, none of them said a word.
Then, someone tapped Andrew’s arm. He looked around.
The translucent apparition of a child greeted him.
Within the Shadows Page 33
