Eximere (The River Book 4)

by Michael Richan

  “What happened out there?” Russell said.

  “Yes,” Myrna added. “Please tell us.”

  “Well, we made it a ways down the path,” Steven said. “Then we heard a thumping sound. Her dog ran off, barking. Marilyn was yanked off the ground out of my sight. I tried to hide from it, but I could hear it above me, devouring Marilyn. At least, her flesh. It dropped the rest of her next to me. Thank god for that dog of hers, I think it distracted the marcher enough that I could get away. I raced back.”

  “Marilyn’s body is out on that path?” Myrna asked.

  “Yes,” Steven said. “Do we phone this into the police?”

  “And tell them what?” Roy asked. “You’ll be arrested for her murder, coming back here covered in blood.”

  “We don’t involve cops,” Jonathan said. “We never do, unless it’s something they’d understand. They wouldn’t understand this.”

  “What about her family?” Steven asked. “Relatives? Loved ones? Someone has to be notified.”

  “I think that’s something we’ll have to handle once we’re out of this mess,” Eliza said.

  “Someone needs to retrieve her body,” Myrna said.

  “I’m not going back out there,” Steven said. “No way.”

  The others looked at him. They could see the fear on his face.

  “Well,” Roy said, “we’ll do it tomorrow morning, when we leave.”

  “This is horrible,” Myrna said. “Just horrible.”

  “At least we’ve learned one thing,” Jonathan said. “Kent wasn’t lying about the marchers. So he might not have been lying about the device, either. I think we should assume he was telling us the truth.”

  “That’s a good bet,” Roy said.

  “So what now?” Russell asked. “We just go to bed? Try to sleep? With that device draining us?”

  “I guess so,” Myrna said. “What else can we do? I have no intention of trancing in this house again, and I don’t intend to go exploring.”

  “Sunrise is just after 7,” Jonathan said, checking his phone. “I suggest everyone get as much sleep as you can. We’ll head out as soon as the sun is up and we’re sure those things out there are gone.”

  Steven followed the group as they rose from the table and walked back to the hallway. “All of the bedrooms appear to be on the second floor,” Eliza said, walking next to him. “We’ve all picked out rooms. Roy got one for you.”

  They traced their way back to the stairs and ascended to the hallway where they’d seen the dark woman earlier in the evening. “Any more ghost sightings?” Steven asked the group.

  “Nope,” said Russell. “Nothing other than the woman earlier.”

  “Anyone feeling anything yet?” Steven asked. “Any draining?”

  “If it’s happening, it isn’t anything I can feel,” Eliza said.

  They walked to their individual rooms. They all said their goodnights.

  Steven was pleased to see that his room shared a bathroom with Roy’s room. “You OK, son?” Roy asked. Steven was a little taken back – Roy rarely called him son.

  “Yes, Dad, I’m OK,” he replied.

  “Sounds rather harrowing,” Roy said. “Out there.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “The bloody bodies in Oregon were close, but Marilyn was all…mangled.”

  “You were lucky to get out of it alive,” Roy said. “You should listen to me when I warn you about these things.”

  “You’re right,” Steven said. “I don’t know if the marcher passed me over because it couldn’t detect me, or if it was distracted by the dog. I can’t say.”

  “We’ll get you home tomorrow, then we’ll be fine,” Roy said. “I guess Eliza must be feeling a little sheepish right about now.”

  “I don’t blame her for any of this,” Steven said. “She thought she was helping someone.”

  “Yeah,” Roy said, “well, that someone turned out to be an asshole. She should have checked into it more.”

  “I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt,” Steven said. “After all, we do owe her.”

  Steven thought back to how Eliza had helped him and Roy as they were trying to get rid of the ghosts at a bed and breakfast in Oregon. Roy was helping out his friend Pete, who owned the place. The whole thing had been far more complicated than Roy had anticipated at the start. Things got out of hand, and many more people got involved before it was solved. So Roy wasn’t the one to talk.

  “What do you think the marchers are, exactly?” Steven asked.

  “If they show up every night,” Roy said, “this is either their natural home, which I doubt, or they were placed here for a reason, which I suspect.”

  “You think Percival placed them here, to keep us in?” Steven asked, pulling down the sheets from his bed and inspecting them.

  “No,” Roy said. “I don’t think Percival has any abilities at all. He’s been indoctrinated by the writings of his grandfather. He’s little more than a zealot, and a dishonest one at that. If it turns out we can leave tomorrow during the daylight, he won’t have been very effective at keeping us here.”

  “Provided we can leave tomorrow,” Steven said. “And what about the device? What if it completes its drain of your powers by then? Perhaps all he needed was one night to get it done. Maybe we should be looking for that device rather than sleeping.”

  “You might be right,” Roy said, “but I think Percival was telling the truth about it taking several days. I can still jump into the River, can you?”

  Steven tried – he slipped in without a problem. Roy joined him.

  See? Roy thought. Still works.

  What about a trance? Steven thought. Can you still do that?

  Roy concentrated for a few moments. From within the flow, Steven could see the bubble slowly form around him as his trance deepened. After a couple of minutes, Roy stopped and the bubble dissolved. Then they exited the River.

  “Trance seems normal,” Roy said. “And I’m not the only one trying it. Several others were checking that they could still do it, too.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s good,” Steven said.

  “There is something,” Roy said. “Noticed it just now. Remember how Percival said to avoid the room on the corner?”

  “Yes,” Steven said.

  “I believe that’s the room that the ghost woman came out of, before she went down the stairs,” Roy said. “That’s where a lot of the energy of this house lies,” Roy said. “The other part I’m more confused by.”

  “Other part?” Steven asked.

  “Where she went,” Roy said. “I couldn’t see them in the trance, but I could feel them. The house is full of secrets.”

  Chapter Four

  The group assembled an hour before sunrise in the dining room. When Steven came down, he found all the rest except Jonathan sitting around the table, drinking coffee.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

  “No,” Myrna said. “Thought I might as well get up.”

  “Beds were comfortable though,” Roy said. “At least mine was.”

  “Did anything happen overnight?” Steven asked. “Anyone see anything else?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Eliza.

  “Me either,” Russell said.

  Steven poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot on the table. “How long until we can leave?”

  “Well,” Roy said, “it’s still dark out there. Sunrise is in an hour. We should be seeing things get lighter soon.”

  Steven sat at the table and the group continued to discuss their situation. They mentioned seeing each other trancing after having gone to bed.

  “I still don’t feel anything,” Eliza said. “If I’ve lost any ability, I don’t know about it.”

  “Maybe that’s part of how the device works,” Russell said. “Numbs you to the loss, like a Novocaine shot at the dentist.”

  “Then I’d feel that instead,” Eliza said. “But I don’t feel any different at all
.”

  “It might be more subtle than Russell’s analogy,” Myrna said. “I do know there’s more going on in this house than people can see.”

  “I got that too,” Eliza said, “in my trance last night. Lots of hints at things I could have gone into, but chose not to.”

  “What do you mean, ‘things’?” Steven asked.

  “Things that aren’t normal,” Eliza said. “In a trance, the normal world looks a certain way. But things that have been constructed in the River, that aren’t part of the normal world, look different. There were a lot of those popping up in my trance last night.”

  “Same for me,” said Myrna. “Very odd.”

  “I didn’t want to pursue any of them,” Russell said. “I’m not going to engage with this house any more than I have to. I just want to put as much distance between myself and this place as I possibly can.”

  “Can you give me an example?” Steven asked Eliza.

  “Well,” Eliza said, taking a sip of coffee, “there’s the corner bedroom upstairs, the one Percival warned us about. It looks over the front yard of the estate. It’s not normal. A couple of the doors in that hallway aren’t normal, either.”

  “What, in that hallway, there?” Steven said, pointing at the velvet wallpaper hallway.

  “Yes,” Eliza said.

  “There’s a couple of objects in some of the rooms,” Myrna added. “Not normal.”

  “And then there’s the basement,” Eliza said.

  “There is no basement,” said Jonathan, entering the room.

  “Then it’s the foundation,” Eliza said. “The base of the house isn’t normal, either.”

  “This place is rotten from the core,” Russell said. “The very foundation is evil.”

  “I didn’t say it was evil,” Eliza said, “just that it’s not normal.”

  “I’m saying it’s evil,” Russell said. “My sense is that the people who lived here dabbled in dark arts, and it’s infected the building itself.”

  “Sounds a little melodramatic,” said Roy.

  “Yes,” said Myrna, “this isn’t your television show, Russell. We don’t need the extra drama.”

  “Did you sleep alright, Jonathan?” Eliza asked.

  “Yes, fine enough,” he said. “Sunrise should be soon, and we can get out of here.”

  “The sky is beginning to lighten,” Roy said, walking over to the large windows at the other end of the room. “The stars are fading.”

  “Can we leave now?” Myrna asked. “Or do we have to wait until the sun is up?”

  “Don’t know,” Jonathan said. “If the marchers are only out when it’s dark, we should be good as soon as it’s light enough to see our way.”

  “Give it another fifteen minutes,” Roy said, “and we’ll be there.”

  “Good,” said Russell. “The sooner the better.”

  “Is everyone ready to leave?” Jonathan asked. “Nothing left up in your rooms?”

  “I’ve got to get changed,” Steven said. “My clothes are in the kitchen. And my things are still upstairs.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Eliza said, standing. “I’ve been sitting in this chair too long.”

  “Once you’re back, we’ll all go through to the side door and prepare to leave,” Jonathan said.

  “All right,” Steven said, “we’ll be back in a minute.”

  Steven and Eliza retrieved Steven’s clothes from the kitchen and then walked towards the archway and the velvet paper hallway. As they passed the closed doors, Steven wondered which ones Eliza thought were abnormal.

  “How could you tell some of these doors weren’t normal?” Steven asked.

  “They look distorted in the trance,” she said.

  Steven slipped into the River as they walked, observing the doors. They didn’t look different to him.

  “You won’t notice in the River,” she said. “Only if you go into a trance.”

  “I’ve got to get that mastered,” Steven said. “I’ve been in one a couple of times, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

  “Roy hasn’t taught you how to initiate a trance yet?” she asked.

  “No,” Steven answered, “but to be honest, we haven’t really had the time.”

  “You need to learn it,” Eliza said. “There’s much more available to you in a trance. It’s not as convenient as the River, because you normally have to incapacitate your body while you trance, but you can go deeper and see more things. He’ll show you soon, I’ll bet.”

  “Hope so, I feel like I’m missing out on the party,” Steven said.

  “Well, in this case,” Eliza said, “be grateful. If you’re not tagged by that device, that’s a good thing.”

  They emerged into the room containing the stairs. Steven stopped and grabbed Eliza’s arm.

  “Look, on the staircase!” he said, pointing.

  They both dropped into the River immediately. The dark woman was about half way up the stairs, ascending. She floated smoothly above the stairs just as she had done the night before.

  Steven motioned with his head to Eliza that he intended to follow the figure. He quietly walked to the staircase and began walking up, several steps behind the dark woman. Eliza was right behind him with her hand on his back. Steven was terrified that the woman might turn around to face him at any moment, but she did not. Once the figure reached the top of the stairs, it turned and glided down the hallway in the opposite direction of their sleeping rooms. It was headed towards the corner bedroom.

  Steven turned to look at Eliza, who nodded to him in encouragement. They reached the top of the stairs and followed the woman.

  The dark woman reached the closed door of the bedroom about ten feet ahead of Steven and Eliza. The figure didn’t stop at the door, but passed through it and into the room. Steven and Eliza dropped out of the flow.

  “Do we go in?” Steven asked.

  “No,” Eliza said. “You go get your stuff, and we’ll get out of here.”

  They turned and walked down the hallway in the opposite direction. They passed the head of the stairs and eventually found Steven’s bedroom. Eliza waited outside as he changed and retrieved his phone from the nightstand, then glanced around the room to make sure he didn’t leave anything else.

  “I wonder what’s in there,” Steven said as he walked out of the room.

  “In where?” Eliza said.

  “The corner bedroom, where we saw her go.”

  “Are you kidding?” Eliza said. “We want to leave, not get deeper into this.”

  They walked back into the hallway.

  “We could just open the door, take a look,” Steven said.

  “Percival warned us about two things,” Eliza said. “That room, and the marchers. He was right about the marchers.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Steven said. They walked down the stairs to join the others in the dining room, but Steven knew that if he’d been on his own, he would have opened the door to the corner bedroom and taken a look inside. Probably a stupid move, he thought. Glad she stopped me.

  Once they reached the dining room, everyone rose from the table and Jonathan led them to the kitchen and the side door. They walked out into the yard. The light of dawn made the lawn and the front yard very visible. “Let’s go,” Jonathan said, leading them towards the brick path. Steven shut the door to the house behind him.

  As they started down the path, Steven felt his heartbeat increase. He glanced from side to side, looking for threats. He saw none. The lawn looked as quiet and beatific as when they’d first arrived. If they only knew, he thought.

  His heart picked up again as they approached the spot where he figured the attack had occurred. He wasn’t anxious to see Marilyn’s body.

  After several minutes, Jonathan came to a stop, looking down at the path. “This must have been it,” he said. There were dark splotches and smears on the bricks.

  “We were off the path,” Steven said, glancing to the left. There was nothing
there, where he figured Marilyn’s body must have landed.

  “The body is gone?” Myrna asked.

  “Yes,” Jonathan said. “Obviously the traces of what happened are here. But no body.”

  “Where could it have gone?” Russell asked.

  “Wolves,” Roy said. “They might have drug her body across the bricks like this. But who knows. Maybe some other creatures that haunt this place carried her off.”

  “What now?” Myrna asked.

  “We continue on,” Roy said, “and get out of here. That’s first.”

  Jonathan started back down the path, and the group followed. Soon they entered dense forest, the path twisting and turning. After several minutes they came to the gravel parking area inside the gate. The area was empty.

  Jonathan and Roy walked to the main gate, inspecting the lock. Then Roy returned to the others.

  “Hadn’t anticipated the gate,” he said. “It’s locked, and we’re not going to get it open. If we want to leave, we’re going to have to scale the fence.”

  “It’s ten feet high!” Myrna said. “That’s not going to work.”

  “This wrought iron fencing can’t possibly go around the entire estate,” Russell said. “I’ll bet it’s just along here, for show. We could follow the fence and see if it becomes scalable somewhere else.”

  “I’m fine with that,” said Roy. He looked at Jonathan.

  “Fine with me,” Jonathan said. “Let’s go.”

  They started off down the side of the fence. Whoever had been maintaining the yard had kept growth away from the fence on either side of it. After progressing a hundred yards, the fence disappeared into dense forest.

  “I can almost guarantee you that fence stops just inside there,” Roy said. “If we go in a little ways, I think we’ll find an opening.”

  Steven looked nervous, but Myrna charged forward. “Let’s go,” she said.

  They walked into the forest, their progress now slowed to a fraction of their former pace. Steven felt his fear rising as he twisted and turned between the tree trunks, bending to avoid branches. He kept his eye on the fence, and just as Roy had predicted, after thirty feet the iron fence came to a halt and became a barbed wire fence. Roy held the wire open as each person bent and passed through it to the other side.