Her throat became parched. She thought about getting water from her backpack but couldn’t bring herself to stop again. The house still hadn’t appeared in her view. Doubt swarmed inside her. She thought she ran in a straight line, but maybe she didn’t. She picked broken leaves from her hair and felt stinging from the thorns in her forearms. Little spiked seeds dangled off her shirt and jeans. Her ankles seemed to swell in her boots. She hated admitting that Terrence was right. They should’ve called the cops. The Doyles had tricked them into coming out here. They’d probably been hiding here since the house invasion and wanted to lure her out. If Terrence died because of her decision, Evelyn didn’t know if she’d be able to live with herself.
In the distance, she saw the rusted tin roof. Thank God.
She crouched behind a tree and took aim with her shotgun. She could barely make out the back door where Catherine’s lifeless body seeped crimson. Where are you? Evelyn asked Terrence, though he could not hear her.
A twig snapped.
The hairs on the back of Evelyn’s neck stood.
She twisted back in time to see the axe head swinging to her face and pulled the trigger.
The tree bark behind him exploded into wooden shrapnel as the masked axe man staggered to the side. He went in for another swing before Evelyn could cock the shotgun. Momentarily shutting her eyes, she blocked the axe head by holding the shotgun horizontally in both hands. The force of the impact sent a shock up both her arms. For the one second they stood like that, Evelyn looked into the button-sized eye holes on the featureless white mask.
Evelyn put the toe of her boot into the man’s groin. Grunting, he staggered back. As soon as Evelyn cocked the weapon, the axe head hit the side of the barrel, causing the weapon to fly from Evelyn’s grasp.
She reached for her baton. The masked man grabbed her neck and slammed her back into the tree. Her wind left her. She swung the baton down on the side of the man’s head. With a thump, he staggered back. Evelyn went for the shotgun. Stephen took off his mask, revealing his disheveled gray/black hair, hooked nose, small boils, and crazed eyes.
He went back for a swing of the axe when he found himself looking into the barrel of Evelyn’s shotgun. Gnashing his teeth, he took a step back but kept hold of the axe.
“Where’s Terrence?” Evelyn demanded an answer.
Stephen’s face turned blood red. “You murdered my sister, whore.”
“Tell me where my husband is!” Evelyn yelled.
“He’s bleeding out somewhere. From my gunshot,” Stephen bragged.
Evelyn struggled to hold the gun steady. Her eyes watered.
“You going to kill me?” Stephen asked. “Get your fill of justice? It’s not as satisfying as you might think. I learned that when I burned Mary Sullivan alive for what your father had done. None of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t killed my Alannah. People thought I was crazy, but I saw Alannah in that house long before you showed up. I tried to tell you it wasn’t your home. It’s a graveyard for your father’s victims. My sister even had proof on her camera before you deleted it.”
“My father is innocent,” Evelyn said through her teeth. “You killed that little girl for nothing. You lured me out here for nothing.”
Stephen locked bloodshot eyes with her. “You’re wrong. Maxwell is every bit the monster they say he is.”
“Alannah told me otherwise,” Evelyn replied.
The words struck Stephen.
Evelyn raised the weapon. “I’m not going ask again. Where is Terrence?”
Stephen frowned heavily, “He’s bleeding out with every second you waste talking to me. So, go ahead, pull the trigger. You’ve already killed once. It’ll be easier now.”
Evelyn held her finger on the trigger and no matter how hard she wanted to pull it, brokenness in the man’s eyes prevented --
BOOM!
In a blink, most of Stephen’s head was no more. His body spiraled in the air and then flopped on the ground.
Warm tears of blood dripped down Evelyn’s horrified face and into the neck of her shirt. Her trembling hands lowered the shotgun that she hadn’t fired.
Slowly, she turned her head to the man standing beside her.
A bushy gray beard fell down past his skinny frame. Long and wavy soot-colored hair flowed down his bony shoulders. What little could be seen of his face was tired and wrinkled. Deep crow’s feet etched out from dark eyes. With tattered gloves, he held Terrence’s shotgun. A wisp of smoke snaked out of the barrel.
Evelyn opened her mouth to speak, but no words could escape her. The stranger stepped toward her and grabbed her shotgun. Evelyn wanted to resist, but her will was weak. With a weapon in each hand, the old man gave her final, unreadable look and then headed into the woods.
“Dad?” Evelyn finally got the word out.
The stranger paused for a moment. Then he continued on, soon vanishing into the thick foliage.
The Haunting of Quenby Mansion: Book 2
21
Days Before Death
On her way to her friend Janet's house, cute nine-year-old Bella Ann May biked down the tree-flanked street, blinked, and awoke, facedown, on the floor of the damp concrete basement.
Her head throbbed. Her vision blurred. Around her, the compact basement seemed to swirl. She put her palms against the ice-cold floor and pushed herself up. Her elbows wobbled. Nausea flushed over her.
She managed to plop onto her bottom before forgoing all further movement for now and possibly forever. She felt a bump on her pink neck. The flesh felt tender and caused her to wince. Did a bee sting her? If she did, she didn’t remember.
“Mommy?” Bella called into the dimly lit room. “Daddy?”
Gray walls seemed to absorb her cry. A moth fluttered around the exposed, glowing light bulb screwed into the ceiling.
With her tiny fingers, she brushed her rich brunette hair away from her pretty hazel eyes. The basement consisted of a dusty metal shelf, a brick-sized air vent high up on the wall, a few plastic buckets containing one oddly shaped sponge used to wash the car, and eight wooden steps leading to an unassuming door.
Bella’s eyes watered. She forced herself to her feet. Her pencil legs felt like jelly. She brushed off her little khaki shorts and midnight blue t-shirt as she stumbled to the door. The steps groaned beneath her. She tried the doorknob.
Locked. Fidgeting nervously, she gave the scary basement another glance before yelling for her parents.
No reply.
She hammered both fists on the door. “Let me out!” She screamed until her voice cracked and her bottoms of her hands were purple. Turning back to the basement, Bella sank down to the top step and pulled her knees close. She wiped tears from her angular face and sniffled. Fear, confusion, and anxiety swirled inside her.
Where were her parents? Why would they do this? Bella didn’t remember doing anything bad. That wasn’t completely true. She did steal chocolate from her mother's secret stash and faked a bellyache to get out of chores, but was that deserving of such a harsh punishment? Unless it wasn’t her parents… Bella shuddered. It couldn’t be her teachers. School was out for the summer, and her friends would never do something this cruel. Bella’s head hurt thinking about it. Her crying worsened. The worst part about crying was how she looked doing it. Everyone said that she had such a cute face, but when she wept, her nose turned red and her cheeks looked puffy. It only made things worse. Maybe whoever took her made a mistake, and they’ll come back to get her soon.
Minutes, hours, in the basement, time met nothing.
Bella had run out of tears ages ago, and she was antsy waiting for help. She screamed until she couldn’t talk. She beat the door until her hands were numb. She asked countless questions but found no answers. One thing was certain. She was alone in this basement, and no one was coming to save her.
When her body mellowed out, Bella got up and paced about the room. She looked up at the shelf and at the small vent nearby. She knew she couldn�
�t fit, but had nothing to do but try. She grabbed the shelf and tried to move it below the vent. It didn’t budge. Moping, she started to climb. The metal rattled under her shaking. She got to the top and reached for the ventilation grate. It was too far. She reached farther.
Snap.
The top metal shelf broke beneath her weight and her back hit the floor. She gasped and rolled to her side. Whimpering, she curled up into a ball. Even after the pain faded, Bella didn’t move. She watched the tiny cockroach scuttle up a wall. She remembered the sweet song her mom used to sing her but couldn’t remember the words. She hummed it instead, feeling the emptiness of the room bearing down on her.
She closed her eyes, clenching her rumbling stomach, and dreamed about horses. They were big, beautiful, majestic animals trapped behind a white fence. Bella dreamed she broke them out and was running free with them, through the rolling green pastures and by the red brick school. Above, fat clouds surfed on blue skies. Mommy and Daddy and all her other friends were there, welcoming her and her animal companions with open arms.
“Hey.” A muffled voice woke Bella from her slumber.
Bella quickly got up from the concrete floor, feeling a crick in her neck. She brushed her long hair from her face and listened.
“Are you awake?” the muffled voice asked.
Bella blinked away the sleep and charged up the stairs. She grabbed hold of the doorknob. It didn’t twist.
“Help me! I’m trapped!” she said in her tiny voice.
The man on the other side of the door replied. “I know.”
“Then get me out!” Bella begged. “Please. I’m sorry I stole Mommy’s chocolate. I’m sorry I pretended to be sick--”
“Bella,” the muffled voice said calmly.
Bella sniffled. “I don’t want to die, Mister.”
“You’re not,” the man said. “Not today at least.”
“Are you trapped too?” Bella asked innocently.
The man chuckled kindly. “No, Bella.”
“Then why can’t you help me?” the little girl asked.
“Because,” the man said as if that was an explanation.
“I don’t understand,” Bella moaned.
The man sighed. “I’ve hurt a lot of people. I don’t rightly know why I do sometimes. I’ve liked it since I was younger than you. Maybe it’s an ego thing, or genetics. I don’t know.”
“You don’t need to hurt me. I can be your friend,” Bella replied, confident that would work. “Friends make everything better.”
“I wish that were true,” the man said. “I’m old, Bella, and I have this… emptiness inside of me. If I don’t fill it, then I lose my mind and make stupid decisions.”
“I can help you,” Bella said.
“You are,” the man replied sincerely. “See, the thing about this emptiness is that I don’t know the best way to sate it. I’ve opened a beautiful woman’s throat. I made an old man drink poison. I took off a young athlete’s throwing hand. None of that did it.”
Wide-eyed and heart racing, Bella took a step back from the door.
“Every great killer has their method.” The man continued. “Some use knives, others guns, some cannibalism. Even after all these years, I haven’t found mine. That’s why I brought you here.”
The steps creaked beneath Bella’s feet as she distanced herself from the door. The man behind it didn’t seem to care. “I’m going to starve you, Bella. When you’re near death, I’ll come back and look into your gorgeous brown eyes, watch the light flicker out, and see if that does the trick.”
“Please,” Bella begged. “I don’t want…”
“I’ll see you soon,” the man said and walked away from the locked door.
Trembling, nine-year-old Bella Day clenched her cramping stomach and listened to its gargled rumble.
22
Crimson Tears
48 hours later…
Birds screamed and scattered at the thunderous boom of the twelve-gauge shotgun.
Their black wings fluttered desperately across the indigo sky.
Like raindrops, warm blood slithered past wide blue eyes, down pale cheeks, and leaked into the neck of a short-sleeve olive green V-neck. Blood-covered, blonde and slender, Evelyn Carr lowered her shotgun. Her body trembled as she looked down at the nearly headless corpse of Stephen Doyle, the man who had killed a child a decade ago and lured Evelyn into this trap.
Slowly, Evelyn turned her horrified gaze to the stranger nearby. Pale smoke wisped out of his shotgun’s barrel. Dressed in faded camo, the gaunt man had long ashen hair with a lengthy beard to match. Like the scars on Evelyn’s back, deep wrinkles etched the man’s dirty forehead and around his black eyes. He lowered his shotgun, which was actually Evelyn’s husband’s, and approached. Too shocked to resist, she let the man take her weapon. Silent, he turned back to the woods from whence he came. Twigs crunched beneath his boots. Holding the choke of the twelve gauges in each hand, he stepped over a felled tree dressed in green and white fungi.
Evelyn opened her mouth, as if trying to speak for the first time.
“Dad?” she managed to call out
The stranger paused, his shoulders slumped under the weight of the weapons. After a breathless moment, he walked on, soon vanishing into the Georgia wilds.
Evelyn’s knees hit packed dirt and dry leaves. Her thoughts transported her back to the lawyer’s office where she received her estranged father’s will. It was a simple letter, rather cold in nature, and heavily wrinkled. “Ten years,” the lawyer explained. “That’s how long the deceased instructed me to wait before delivering it.”
“In his will, he said that if he was presumed dead. What does that mean?” Evelyn replied.
The lawyer locked his fingers on the desk and leaned in. “Maxwell vanished from his home. All of his possessions were accounted for. However, a body was never recovered.”
The tall oaks began to warp into an amalgamation of brown bark and pointed green leaves. Stephen’s blood crusted on Evelyn’s soft skin. She remembered the man’s words, back when he still had a mouth to speak them. “He’s bleeding out somewhere. From my gunshot.”
Terrence, Evelyn thought. Her husband, her anchor, the man who pulled her from her crunched car years ago, was dying somewhere in these woods.
She forced herself to blink and shielded her eyes from the warm cadaver. There was another body back at the cabin. This one was Catherine Doyle, Stephen’s sadistic twin sister that had charged Evelyn with a raised axe and forced Evelyn to squeeze the trigger. Though she was painted with Stephen’s blood, it was Catherine's blood that would forever stain Evelyn’s hands.
“Evelyn!” A voice in the woods cried out.
Footsteps neared. “Evelyn! Where are you?”
The person paused.
Evelyn glanced up her husband, expecting to see a fatal wound. Terrence’s dark skin was free of any cut or blood. Sweat dotted his bald head and well-structured face. The top four buttons of his beige button-up were undone, revealing the few small hairs on his upper chest. With bloodshot brown eyes, he bounced his vision between his bloodied wife and the limp body ten feet away.
After his gawking ended, Terrence rushed to Evelyn, dropped to his knees in front of her, and looked her in the eyes. His dark irises seemed to tremble as he studied her. “Oh, God, Evelyn.”
He pulled a crinkled, half-filled water bottle from the back pocket of his khaki cargo shorts, poured some of the crystalline water into the palm of his hand, and washed away the blood from Evelyn’s cheek. The dried crimson thinned out to light red droplets and snaked down the curvature of Evelyn’s jaw. She had a beautiful but intimidating face that became more broken with sorrow the more it was cleaned.
“Where’s your gun?” Terrence asked softly.
“My father took it,” Evelyn mumbled back.
Terrence stopped brushing his thumb across her cheek. “Maxwell was here?”
Evelyn nodded slightly. “He took your shotgun too.
Used it on…”
Terrence didn’t need to glance back at the corpse to know it was right behind him. “I tossed my weapon after it jammed, how did he--why did he take it?”
Evelyn turned her eyes away. “Whoever owns the weapons is guilty of these murders.”
It took Terrence a second to realize what she was saying, and then he squeezed her. With trembling arms, Evelyn reciprocated and grabbed fistfuls of the back of his shirt. Minutes ago, she thought Terrence was dead. Now, she didn’t want to let go.
Terrence eased Evelyn off him and helped lift her by the hand. Leaning on one another, they traveled through the woods, leaving the cabin and the bodies of Stephen and Catherine Doyle in their wake.
The hike back to their plantation home took hours. Once, Evelyn saw a few hunters on ATVs. She and Terrence ducked behind a hedge of dirt. Dirty, worm-like roots jutted from its face. Soon, the camo-wearing hunters were far away. Evelyn wondered if they’d heard the shotgun’s boom. It was too late to go back. If law enforcement found the bodies and pinned it on Evelyn, she wouldn’t resist. She was far too tired for that.
The falling sun painted the world scarlet. The clouds above were thin and stretched like pulled cotton across the darkening sky. A sliver of the moon appeared in a rare moment where it shared the sky with the sun. Out of the tree line, stubby, cylindrical, yellow bales of hay could be seen spotting acres of trimmed field. In another field nearby, thorny weeds climbed rows of deep-rooted cotton plants with a massive charred smear at the field’s center. The burnt scar reminded the world of seven-year-old Mary Sullivan’s demise at the wrath-filled hands of Stephen, Catherine, and Andrew Doyle. They hated Evelyn’s father Maxwell because they believed he took the life of sultry Alannah Gimmerson, and many more. Whether the accusation was gospel or fiction, it didn’t stop them from taking Mary’s life, the child who Maxwell treated like a daughter.
The Haunting of Quenby Mansion Omnibus: A Haunted House Mystery Page 23
