Chill Of Fear tbscus-8

by Кей Хупер

  Descending to normality, Stephanie said, "Except that this place never really was unsullied, was it?"

  "Not according to Quentin."

  "And not according to what records I've gone over so far. Did you know that the first death recorded on these grounds happened while the place was being built?"

  "Yeah, one of my people found mention of that in a historical database. Not so uncommon around construction sites, especially over a hundred years ago."

  "Yeah. But this guy didn't fall from a scaffold or get crushed by falling stone, or anything like that. The local doctor at the time stated in writing that the victim was frightened to death."

  "Frightened? Of what?"

  "Nobody could say. They came to work early one morning, and there he was, just lying near the foreman's shack. No cuts, no bruises. Place wasn't far enough along to even have security out here, not that they needed much in those days. Bottom line, nobody saw anything."

  "Frightened to death. Heart attack?" Nate guessed.

  "The doc stated that his heart stopped — but that it wasn't diseased, wasn't enlarged, wasn't any of the things they believed in those days showed signs of trouble. And, apparently, he looked scared out of his mind. His face was frozen in an expression of absolute terror."

  Nate was silent, frowning.

  "That's not all," Stephanie continued. "Another half dozen men died during the construction of The Lodge and its stables. And all the deaths were...just a little bit strange. Surefooted men falling. Skilled men having accidents with tools. Healthy men getting very sick very suddenly."

  "What about after construction?"

  "Well, then the records get just a bit murky." She shrugged, frowning a little herself. "I know enough about record-keeping to know that the entries I've found so far concerning illnesses, disappearances, and deaths here were noted with an absolute minimum of detail, almost casually."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying that from the get-go, any sort of bad news for The Lodge — especially of the death-on-the-grounds variety — was strongly downplayed."

  "Wouldn't that be expected for a hotel?"

  "To a certain extent, yeah. But your average hotel, when faced with the disappearance, death, or even murder of one of its guests, would have paperwork up the wazoo. Police reports, security reports, doctors' statements. Every piece of paper that could possibly be required to acquit the hotel and all its employees of any wrongdoing."

  "Which The Lodge doesn't have."

  "Like I said. If you ask me, somebody very early on made the decision of how bad news was to be handled. And whether it became habit or an ironclad rule, that's how it was done from that point onward."

  "No paperwork."

  "No paperwork, and only the bare mention of an occurrence. Name, date, not much more. Usually buried in accounts of the day-to-day running of the place."

  Nate rested his forearm on her desk, fingers drumming absently. "I know how many deaths and disappearances we're talking about in the last twenty-five years, thanks to Quentin's obsession. What about before that? How many?"

  "Oh, jeez, it'll be weeks before I can tell you that. I'm barely up to about 1925."

  "Okay. How many up to 1925?"

  Stephanie drew a breath. "Counting the deaths during construction, I have reported on the grounds of The Lodge more than a dozen deaths by 1925."

  It took a minute, but Nate finally said, "Of those, how many were suspicious?"

  "In my opinion? All of them, Nate. All of them."

  "Are you dead?" Diana asked incredulously. Beau smiled. "No."

  She took a step closer, uncertain. "Are you a medium?"

  "No." Diana looked around her at the gray easels with their gray canvases daubed and stroked with varying shades of gray paint. She looked at the gray plants here and there in the conservatory, looked down at her own gray self and then up at him. Gray too. Everything was gray.

  "Then I repeat. What the hell are you doing here?"

  "I told you. Waiting for you."

  "Beau, do you know where we are?"

  "I think you call it the gray time."

  "What do you call it?"

  He looked around him, as though in mild curiosity, and said, "Your name fits. It's an interesting place. Or — time."

  "Only the dead walk here."

  "You walk here."

  "I'm a medium." She stopped, startled, and Beau smiled again.

  "Is that the first time you've said it?"

  "I guess so. First time I meant it, anyway."

  "It'll get easier," he told her. "Not so surprising. Even ordinary, after a while."

  Diana shook her head. "Never mind that. I don't understand how you're here."

  "It's a knack I have. My sister says I'm... very plugged in to the universe."

  "Is that supposed to be an explanation?"

  "Probably not. Diana, it doesn't really matter how I'm here. All that matters is that you see what I have to show you, and listen to what I have to tell you."

  "You sure sound like a guide," she muttered.

  "Sorry." He turned, beckoning her to follow, and led the way to the back corner where her easel was set up.

  Her easel. Her sketchpad. Her drawing of Missy, there despite the fact that she knew it was in the tote bag in her cottage. But more astonishing, there was a brilliant scarlet slash across the sketch, glistening wetly and, in fact, still dripping onto some rags below the easel.

  Scarlet. Not gray.

  Like the green door, this was a color she could see.

  "Why?" she asked, sure somehow that she wouldn't have to explain her question more fully.

  "Signposts," he said. "The gray time has them as well. Things to pay attention to. Things to remember, so you can find your way. Only here they stand out a bit more."

  Diana thought about that. "The green door I get; it's the way back. The way out. But this?"

  Beau stepped back, gesturing for her to move closer to the easel.

  She did so, looking at the sketch that certainly looked like the one she'd drawn. At the scarlet slash across Missy's delicate form. The scarlet that seemed to be... bleeding off the edge of the paper. Almost as if...

  Diana took another step and bent slightly forward, looking more closely at the scarlet marring the sketch. It wasn't easy to see, because the scarlet (paint? blood?) had run, distorting the shape of the... letters?

  "It wasn't clear at first," Beau said from behind her. "Just looked like a slash of color. Then, slowly, the letters began to appear. That's when I knew you needed to see this."

  Absently, she said, "Why not show me on the other side of the door, outside the gray time? It's there too, isn't it?"

  "It's there. Here. But it's only a slash of color, no letters. Someone suggested I take a look here in the gray time, in order to see what was really there."

  "Someone?"

  "Bishop."

  Diana wasn't surprised. "I should have known you were a part of that team. He expected you'd see a warning, huh?"

  "I think so. And said you needed to see it. He also said it would be tonight, which surprised me. After the day you've had, I didn't think you'd try this so soon."

  Diana straightened with a sigh. "I don't suppose he offered any instructions for me?"

  "No. Not something he often does in cases like this."

  "What's really astonishing is that there are cases like this. All this time, I thought I was alone."

  "You aren't."

  "Yeah. I'm getting that. I just hope it isn't too late."

  "If it helps," Beau said, "my window into the universe tells me that Quentin is your ace."

  "I've sort of been getting that too." She drew a breath. "But he is not going to like what I have to do next."

  "You know?"

  Diana nodded. "I do now. Seeing this... I remember all the nightmares. All the messages Missy has been trying to send me since I got here. Even before I got here. She's been preparing for this all this time
. Knowing I'd come. Knowing Quentin would be here as well. She's been... very patient."

  "Some things have to happen just the way they happen. In their own time."

  "Ironic that I learn that in a place with no time."

  "As long as you learn it."

  With a sigh, Diana said, "Anybody ever tell you that you sound a lot like a fortune cookie?"

  "It has a familiar ring."

  "I'm not surprised. And I don't suppose you can answer the one question I came here this time to ask?"

  "Sorry."

  "That too will come only in its own time?"

  "Yes. Until then, you have other things to worry about, Diana. You've already been here too long."

  "I know." The cold had been seeping into her very bones, and she felt stiff, almost sluggish. Even her thoughts were beginning to drift.

  "Go back. Now."

  Diana looked around her, frowning, and said, "I'm a long way from the door."

  "Diana—"

  "A long way. And I think..."

  Tha-thum.

  Tha-thum.

  "I think it's looking for me."

  Beau came awake with the suddenness of one leaving a nightmare, which was pretty close to the truth. He had to move quickly, and yet his body felt stiff and cold, and as he got himself off his bed and started toward the door, he was abruptly aware of a deeper appreciation of the colorful, three-dimensional world around him.

  Stupid thing for an artist to need a reminder of, but one visit to the gray time had certainly cured him of any tendency to take this warm and living world for granted.

  Even his Hyacinth Room, which he'd thought a bit too fussy for his taste when he first arrived at The Lodge, looked only pleasant and comfortable as he more or less staggered through it to the door.

  Christ, he felt as though he'd walked up a mountain. With a Volvo on his back. Pounding heart, shaking legs, weak as a kitten. In thirty-odd years of psychic experiences, some of them truly horrendous, he'd never emerged from anything that had drained him this much.

  He wondered if Quentin had any idea of just how strong Diana really was.

  He had to traverse a long corridor and climb one flight of stairs to get to Quentin's room, and by the time he reached the door he felt he was only just beginning to function normally. He was still cold, though. Chilled to the bone.

  He braced himself with one hand on the doorjamb, deciding that "normal" was probably stretching things more than a bit. Before he could rap on the door it was jerked open, and Quentin stood there. He was fully dressed, wide-awake and tense, and spoke to Beau as though the conversation between them had already started.

  "She's in the gray time."

  "Yeah. And I'm not so sure she can find her way out of it alone."

  "Jesus. Why the hell didn't you—"

  "Nothing I could do. I was just doing a version of dream-walking, not there in the flesh. And it's definitely her realm, not mine."

  Quentin didn't even question that. "Where was she? Relative to our side, I mean?"

  "The conservatory. But I don't know if she's still there. If her instincts are good, she's looking for a place to hide. Whatever's been doing all the killing here — I think it's after her."

  "I knew I shouldn't have left her alone. Goddammit, she can't fight this thing without help."

  "I don't think she even knew it would happen tonight; she just went looking for the answer to a question. But she's been in the gray time too long, especially here, and it's weakened her. Believe me, I know." He still had one hand braced against the doorjamb for support.

  Quentin seemed to notice the artist's appearance for the first time. "You don't look so good."

  "I'll be fine. Go after Diana. Your cop pal is still here; I'll get him to roust his people."

  "What good will that do? I'm not even sure I'll be able to see her this time — I sure as hell didn't see her leave, and I've been up and wide-awake."

  "Ellie Weeks, like all the other victims, was killed by a flesh-and-blood murderer. Whatever's pulling the strings from the other side, that killer's on our side of the door — and if he's hunting Diana, he's visible."

  Quentin stared at him for a moment, then went back inside his room long enough to get his gun. Tucking it inside the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, he said, "And he's hunting Diana because only the mind of a powerful medium can give him something he's never had before."

  Beau nodded. "A permanent way out, a means to live again in the flesh. And Diana knows it, thanks to a warning from Missy."

  After working so hard, fighting her way out of the haze of medications and then struggling to come to terms with what she could do, hiding now was the last thing Diana would have chosen. But —

  You have to. Don't let it find you. Not yet.

  There was a plan and Diana understood it, if only in its bare outlines. What she understood even more, however, was that she was not strong enough to stand alone, not now, not on this side of the door. That would be a battle she'd lose.

  Hide.

  It was almost like her own heartbeat, that voice in her mind, as familiar as her own thoughts. And yet separate, distinctly apart. Something she'd heard, listened to, all her life.

  Or tried to, through the medicated fog.

  "Dad has a lot to answer for," she muttered, stumbling from the conservatory and toward the main building.

  He was doing what he thought best.

  "He was afraid. I get that."

  He was trying to save your life. He'd lost me. And Mommy. He couldn't lose you too.

  "There was a better way."

  He didn't know that. He believed if you didn't know about me at all, it would hurt less than knowing I'd lived, and was stolen away — and died.

  "So he came down here and bought a cover-up, right? And then kept me medicated so I wouldn't remember, couldn't learn about my abilities, much less consciously control them."

  It wasn't that deliberate. The doctors and medicines. He never understood what happened to Mommy, but he was afraid it would happen to you too. He did his best to keep that from happening, Diana.

  "If you say so." Diana hesitated, sticking close to the shrubbery that half masked one of the service entrances. "Now where do I go? Dammit, never a guide around when I need one." She crossed her arms over her breasts and shivered. She was cold. And getting colder.

  You know why.

  "Yeah. Your plan. Why didn't you try it sooner?"

  Couldn't. I didn't live to be strong enough.

  "And I did?"

  Yes. It'll take your strength. Plus the others. The ones who're ready to move on.

  "Waiting all this time for me?"

  Yes. Waiting for a chance. A chance to stop it.

  "You keep saying 'it.' All of you do. But Samuel Barton was a man once upon a time."

  It was never a man. Not really. It was always evil. And when they killed its flesh, they set it free. Helped it grow even more powerful.

  "So it could possess anyone not strong enough to fight it off."

  Yes, sometimes. But if they weren't strong enough to fight it off, they weren't strong enough to hold it for long. They... burned out. And it was energy again, building up, looking for another host. A more permanent host.

  "Me."

  Once you discovered what you could do, once you began remembering and became aware, it was only a matter of time before it sensed your strength. Your abilities. But it happened much faster than we expected. I'm sorry, Diana.

  "Maybe faster is better," Diana said, half to herself. "I've barely had time to think. Otherwise, all this would probably drive me back into a mental hospital."

  No. That won't happen again. You're too strong now.

  "I hope you're right." Diana looked around again, then slipped through the shrubbery and used the service entrance. Despite the blinking control pad indicating the presence of a security system, she simply turned the handle and opened the door.

  Electronics didn't work in
the gray time. Or maybe they just didn't exist. Diana had never known which.

  Tha-thum.

  "Oh, shit," she whispered.

  Diana.

  She realized she was pressed up against the icy wall just inside the door, palms flat on either side of her hips. She realized that her legs were about to buckle, that she was about to slide down the wall and end up in a heap on the floor, helpless.

  Useless.

  Diana! Don't let it make you afraid. That's how it catches us. That's how it wins.

  "I can make a door," she whispered. "I can bring the door to me. I can — "

  No. You can't open a door. Not here. Not alone.

  She drew a breath, fighting to steady herself, trying to will the strength to return to her body. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, and she wasn't at all sure she was successful, but she tried her best. "Where is it?"

  Near. But you have a safe place. The green door, Diana. Find the green door.

  "I made one before."

  You have to find the one that exists on both sides. In both worlds. Find that green door, Diana.

  "Why aren't you here to lead me?"

  Because there's something I have to do on this side. But I'll help you. Just keep going.

  The plan. Diana pushed herself away from the cold, cold wall and started down what looked like an endless, featureless corridor, searching for a green door.

  CHAPTER 18

  He hadn't really expected to find her in the conservatory, but Quentin checked there first, just to be sure. No Diana, just a dozen easels holding sketchpads and canvases. He stood in the doorway and gazed out over the security-lit gardens, trying to quiet his mind and concentrate his senses, trying to reach out for her. To see farther than he could see. To hear farther than he could hear. To touch what was just beyond his reach. All he could feel was his pounding heart. "Is there something between us? You and me?" He should have answered her. Should have told her the truth, all of it. He had an aching sense that it would have made a difference now.

  "Quentin, what the hell's going on?"

  It was Nate, with Stephanie beside him, both of them holding guns and looking worried, and Quentin was conscious of a distant shock that they had approached without his awareness.