by Brian Mercer
"No," I agreed, "they don't."
"I don't want to feel sorry for them," Emily said, "but I do."
"That's okay, Emily. Maybe it's for the best. When you think of them, when they're near, tell them you feel sorry for them. Send them the love they're looking for, maybe it will help them find their way home."
Sara had been meditating for so long in the corner that I thought she might have dozed off. Now she opened her eyes, grabbed the dog book next to her and began paging through it. "Here. Right here. This is the dog."
She handed me the book. "'English Bullmastiff,'" I read, "'a cross between an English Mastiff and an Old English Bulldog.' Wow, he is big." I handed Emily the book so she could see. "What else do you know about him? Why is he here?"
"I'm still sorting that out," Sara answered. "But I'm closer."
Chapter Forty
Cali
Lord Humphreys' Residence
12:03 a.m.
The tremor and buzzing intensified all over my body. This was the critical point, when all my senses were in balance. I'd projected countless times before, when I'd resisted the process, but now that I was trying to make it happen it no longer seemed so easy or so inevitable.
I tried to stay calm, exactly as I'd been trained, trying not to let the tremendous sense of electricity coursing through me distract from the mental projection technique that had started it. I could feel a sense of loosening, lifting, but just as I was coming free, squeezing free, I felt an all-consuming energy spread up from my lower regions through every cell of my being until my body ached with it.
I tensed, my rhythmic breathing faltered, and the vibrations flamed out like breath blowing out birthday candles. Oh! Close! So close!
I sat up, carefully brushing away sleep crumbs from the corners of my eyes. I took a moment to stretch, to massage the circulation back into my legs. After a short walk around the room, I lay back down on the cot, spread the blankets out over me, and started again.
Chapter Forty-One
Becky
Lord Humphreys' Residence
12:11 a.m.
"Emily," Sara said, opening her eyes from her meditative pose, "this dog growl that people hear in here, have you ever heard it?"
"Yes, a few times."
"Has it ever threatened you? I mean, have you ever felt threatened by it?"
"No. Never."
"That's what I thought."
"What have you found out?" I asked.
"It seems that this dog people have been hearing in here, the Bullmastiff, belonged to the house's previous owner. If I'm getting this right, his name was Buddy."
"Buddy?"
"Yes. It seems that before Emily's family moved in, this room belonged to another young girl."
"It's true," Emily revealed. "When we bought the place, this room was the most ghastly shade of pink."
"It seems that Buddy was very attached to the little girl and felt very protective of her. I believe Buddy passed on recently, just prior to the family moving house, and that he died in this very room. When Emily moved in, he naturally formed an attachment to her, like he did with the other little girl, whom he had remained behind to take care of. Have you noticed how the dog never seems to threaten any of us girls? It's only the men that it growls at, really."
"What are you saying?"
"The dog wasn't preying on Emily," Sara answered. "It was protecting her."
Chapter Forty-Two
Cali
Lord Humphreys' Residence
1:04 a.m.
My muscles were extremely relaxed. My breathing was deep and regular. That's when it happened. I heard what at first sounded like a snarl, close by, like in the room with me. When it happened a second time, I realized it was me, that I was snoring. The raspy sound startled me in the quiet of the attic. It pulled me out of sleep just enough to silence it. Again, I became aware of the rain pounding on the roof. But it was distant; so far away.
Dream images danced beneath my closed eyes. I felt the odd flutter of my eyelids trembling involuntarily. I was very close to sleep. Deep. Too deep. I had to wake up or my body would drift off to sleep and drag my conscious mind down with it.
Tyson was crouched in the living room next to Chris. The boys were playing checkers. Chris was putting his captured checkers, one by one, into his mouth and I thought, No, you duffus! Take those out of your mouth! You wanta flippin' choke?
Got... to... stay... awake...
"Come on, Cali," Nicole said, slipping her hand into mine. "Come with me. It's okay. You can come back later."
"But I've got to..."
"You can do it later."
The last thing I remember before drifting off to sleep again, was the hum and rattle of my own snoring.
Chapter Forty-Three
Becky
Lord Humphreys' Residence
1:13 a.m.
I jerked my head up and took a deep breath, rubbing my eyes and peering through the darkness. It was just as I thought. Emily had already drifted off. Sara, too, was asleep at the foot of the bed.
I stood up, wrapped my hands over my arms and rubbed them to get warm. When I stepped into the hall, it seemed noticeably warmer. Lights were out all over the house. How long had I been dozing? I had cloudy memories of Lord Humphreys walking down the hall, but it was muddled together with half-dreams.
Something croaked hoarsely at the far end of the hall. It sounded like a horrible wheezing sort of choke. I squinted, trying to see better in the gloom. The noise repeated, louder this time. Again, then again. Now I understood. It was horrible, all right. It was Lord Humphreys snoring.
I returned to the chair near Emily's bed and sighed. I didn't know what I'd been expecting. A showdown? Some sort of epic battle? If these entities had any kind of otherworldly knowledge at all, they only had to wait until tomorrow to continue terrorizing Emily. By then the girls and I would be exiled from the house and the spirits would be free to continue feeding on Emily's fear and whatever energy she produced in response to their sinister sexual abuse.
Thinking about it made me furious. If the girls and I couldn't put a stop to the hauntings, the entities would continue to mistreat Emily with impunity. And Emily, too mortified to tell her dad what was happening, would be alone, powerless to do anything about it. I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug painfully into my palms.
In seconds the air temperature plummeted. I felt a brief sense of claustrophobia, as if beings all around me were closing in. Then I heard it, whispers in the dark, in front and from behind, just loud enough to pick out a word here and there. And the one that I caught, again and again, passed along by unseen lips and repeated, spread terror through every part of my being.
"Becky."
"Becky."
"Becky."
Chapter Forty-Four
Tyson
Lord Humphreys' Residence
1:19 a.m.
Nicole raised her head off of my shoulder. "What's goin' on? What are you doin'?"
"It appears that I'm actin' as your piller."
"Pillow? I wasn't asleep."
"Naw. You wasn't asleep. And that spot on my coat ain't your drool neither."
She sat up and blinked in the dark. "Sorry. I suppose I haven't had a lot of sleep lately. What time is it?"
"I don't know. Twelve-thirty, close on to one. Somethin' like that."
Nicole straightened herself in her folding chair. She seemed confused for a second as to why my chair was so close to hers, but then she seemed to remember how cold it was, how she'd moved closer to stay warm.
She shivered and edged up to the front of her seat, massaging the circulation back into her posterior. Then she realized I was watching and seemed to think better of it. Something must have manifested in here. The presence didn't feel that far away, but nothing seemed like it was about to jump us.
Several chords played on the piano upstairs, muffled but distinct.
"What's that racket?" I whispered. "It's loud and gett
in' louder."
"Momma," she said. "Momma's song. I've got to go up there."
"I don't think that's a good idea. I think that's just what it wants."
She pulled away from me. "How do you know what it wants?"
"I don't know how I know. How do you know any of the psychic nonsense you know? I just know, that's all. It's tryin' to get us out of this here basement."
The pace and volume of the music playing overhead suddenly intensified.
"Crap," I said, "that thing is gonna wake Lord Humphreys and everyone else in the neighborhood. If Humphreys comes down here and finds me..."
Nicole took off up the stairs, flipping on the overhead basement lights as she went. I squinted in the brightness, swore silently, and followed her. By the time I reached the kitchen, the music had stopped. I froze with the silence, slipped off my heavy boots, and slid on stocking feet across the floor, through the dining room, and to the edge of the lounge where Nicole was leaning, peering inside.
"How did that not wake Lord Humphreys?" she whispered.
I was listening so intently that I'd stopped breathing. "I don't know. That fat fart sleeps pretty good."
We retreated back to the kitchen, only to discover the lights to the basement had gone out. "Did you turn off those lights?" Nicole asked in a whisper.
I shook my head.
"Lord Humphreys?" she suggested.
"I don't think so."
"Maybe someone came in from the unlocked basement door?"
"Came in to turn off the lights? It's possible, I suppose. One way to find out."
I leaned over and flicked the switch at the top of the stairs, but the basement lights didn't power back on. I flicked them off and on, off and on, but the basement remained a black hole.
"What happened?"
"Blown circuit it looks like."
"What do we do?"
"Reset the circuit, I guess. Power box in the basement, I expect. You got that flashlight still?"
She shook her head.
"Left it next to your chair down there, didn'cha?"
"Yeah."
"Swell." Still clutching my boots, I moved silently down the darkened slant, Nicole shadowing me from behind. When I paused in the middle of the descent, she bumped into my backside.
"Shhh. Did you hear somethin'?"
She listened. "No."
I reached out for her hand. She took mine and we continued to move downward. We felt our way through the perfect blackness, making our way to the folding chairs. I felt a presence out there, watching us from the shadows, and worried that our blindly searching arms would range into it, or worse, that it might grab us from the dark.
"Argh!" A sharp pain shot through my foot.
"Shhh."
"My toes!" I rasped. "Found those chairs. And your flashlight." I clicked it on, brightening her face. "Power box now."
Nicole pointed the way. I found it, opened the door, discovered the tripped switch and turned it off then on again. The overhead lights flickered and blinked on.
"Ah! That's bright."
"What would cause the lights to go out like that?" she asked
I shook my head. "Overloaded circuit most likely."
"You may have been right about something not wanting us in the basement."
I made the snake eyes at her. "I don't like to say I told you so but—"
A scuffing noise echoed from the dark part of the cellar, somewhere in the depths of old furniture and piles of boxes. Distinct footsteps shuffled slowly across the uneven, cobbled floor. Could someone really have slipped in from outside when we were upstairs?
"What do we—"
I put a finger to her lips, took her hand, and led her to the main aisle leading to the back of the basement. I nodded into the stacks, signaling for her to follow. At several points I had to turn my shoulders sideways to fit through the stacks. The space seemed to go on and on until finally we reached the back wall.
There were a few places where junk wasn't piled, giving us a place to turn around and investigate further. The beam of my flashlight stabbed into the narrow lanes and back corners of junk, vainly feeling through the shadows for evidence of whatever it was we'd heard. I still felt like something was out there. I caught the faintest sound of feet shifting on pavement and, maybe more important, a sense that something was watching us from the dark.
This thing, whatever it was, had been playing with us, luring us. We were doing exactly what it wanted. I reached out to touch Nicole's shoulder. "Maybe we'd better—"
A loud click echoed through the basement and the lights, all of them, shut off. The circuit had blown again.
"—go back," I finished.
Chapter Forty-Five
Cali
Lord Humphreys' Residence
1:24 a.m.
I woke without moving. I felt odd and disoriented. Disconnected. I'd been dreaming about flying. Gliding above trees and chimneyed rooftops. And as I reproduced the memories of flight through the center of my body, my spirit body rose off the bed and hovered at the ceiling, bobbing there like a lost helium balloon.
It startled me for only a second, then I felt the crystal whoosh of excitement tingle up my being like the release of adrenaline. I'd made it! I did it! I was free!
A picture of Nicole reached up through my awareness. Nicole. I had to get to Nicole. I willed myself to the floor and descended gently, slowly — maddeningly slowly. Nicole was in danger. I felt this in every particle of my being. The same sense of danger that I'd felt the last twenty-four hours, magnified now in my pure spirit state.
Unwilling to risk instantly transporting to Nicole's location, as Robert and Arika would have insisted I could have done, I willed myself toward the stairs. The momentum of my flight carried me farther than I'd planned. I bound past them and would have careened into and through the wall, if I hadn't calmly willed my spirit body to a stop and reversed toward the attic door.
I felt more in control as I passed through the opening and into the second story hallway. The corridor should have been dark, but everything was bathed in a creamy white light, like multidirectional moonshine. I sensed a disturbance in Emily's room but immediately shut it out. My entire focus had to be on Nicole or I'd get distracted and never make it.
I coasted down the stairs to the main floor and kept going, careening through the foyer toward the front door. Regaining my balance, I continued to make my way clumsily toward the basement, certain now that my astral presence was the only thing that could save my friend.
Chapter Forty-Six
Tyson
Lord Humphreys' Residence
1:27 a.m.
In a panic, I pointed the flashlight in Nicole's face, then angled it back down. "Who's out there?" I demanded, making no effort to keep quiet now. "Come out and show yourself, you little coward. You don't scare us."
As if in answer, a piece of debris boomeranged out of the darkness, striking Nicole in the temple and toppling her to the floor. I ducked, dropping to my knees, crouching over her protectively lest something else come shooting out of the shadows.
"Nicole, are you okay? Nicole?"
"Tyson? Tyson? What happened?"
I directed the flashlight to her forehead. A troubling amount of blood raced from a cut near her eyebrow, into her left eye and down her cheek. The bright red fluid mirrored her bright red hair. I'd seen head wounds before, knew how badly they bled. They usually looked a lot worse than they was, but it didn't make looking at it any easier.
I searched the ground around us until I found what hit her. It looked like the wooden armrest off a wrecked chair. I held it up. "This smacked into you."
She squinted at it blankly. Shook her head.
"Never mind. We need to get out of here. Are you dizzy? Do you think you can walk?"
I was still helping her to her feet when something crashed on the far side of the basement. I angled the flashlight in the direction of the disturbance in time to see the second stack of books knock
into the third, and the third knock into a fourth, starting a chain reaction of falling boxes, furniture, and debris that reached into the little nook where me and Nicole was sheltered, cutting off our path out through the main aisle.
Several large boxes knocked into a nearby desk where an old wooden spinning wheel perched. The rickety antique hit my shoulders with the weight of one of the boxes behind it, taking my feet out from under me and sending my flashlight spinning into the fallen debris. It hadn't even come to a stop before more boxes keeled over, burying it — our last remaining light source — completely.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Becky
Lord Humphreys' Residence
1:29 a.m.
I heard ghostly footfalls all around me. It was like all the boys that had been haunting the house had gathered in a mob to rush me, sensing me as a threat to their hold on the physical world. At the same time, Emily woke with a startled cry. She sat up and went slamming back down to the mattress, as if something had whacked her hard across the face. At the foot of the bed, Sara stirred.
"Sara, get up!" I shouted. "Emily's being attacked."
Sara opened her eyes, suddenly awake. She and I moved in to surround Emily, hugging her on either side protectively as all around us toys, books, and stuffed animals went flying back and forth through the shadows, bouncing off the walls, occasionally glancing off us as they passed.
Several times I was slapped across the side of the head or pinched or scratched. From the sound of Sara's cries, the same was happening to her. As I watched, a nasty cut appeared just under Sara's right eye and started to bleed.
