“Last call,” Sheriff Yates said. “I can take you to the best motel in town.”
“Thanks for the offer, Sheriff,” Terrence said, shaking the man’s hand. “We’ll find our own.”
The sheriff smiled at them, though the motive behind it couldn’t be interpreted. Was it spiteful? Disappointed? Happy?
He and Deputy Painter ducked into their squad car and left Quenby. Officers Bailey and Davis followed, but not before saying, “You bring us solid proof, we’ll make the case for you, but we need your father.”
Terrence waved them goodbye. Evelyn didn’t say anything. She stood under the shadow of the mansion, wondering if it was even worth it to clean up the blood. Probably not. She returned inside.
The phantoms waited in the foyer, standing just under the interior balcony.
“We’re going,” Evelyn told them, already thinking about all the sleep she’d get back in her small Detroit flat.
“Without the money?” Barker exclaimed. He wiped away the blood on his lip with the top of his hand.
Evelyn took a deep breath and nodded. “It didn’t work out. Hell, you can have the place if you want it.”
Zoey scoffed and shook her head. “After all that you’ve done, you’re leaving?”
Evelyn felt her blood pressure rising. “Maybe you haven’t noticed the blood on our door or the brick dashed through our window?”
The victims looked at her with pursed lips and bleeding wounds.
Evelyn continued. “I did everything I could to help you. I risked my life. I turned down the fortune I needed to start a family of my own. I’m sorry, but I can’t offer anything else.”
“But you’re so close, darling,” Alannah said with her normal sultry tone.
“To what?” Evelyn asked. “Solving your murder? Finding the killer? Saving Bella? There’s only one person who might be able to help us, and we have no means of finding him.”
Terrence took a step forward and spoke to the phantoms. “We tried, but it's time to move on.”
Zoey gnashed her teeth. She fidgeted as Evelyn and Terrence started up the stairs. “Wait!” Zoey called out.
Evelyn let go of the curved stairs handrail and looked at the goth.
“Let’s do what Mary Sullivan did,” Zoey declared.
Everyone in the room gave her their attention.
The fifteen-year-old girl clad in black continued speaking. “She was able to…guide you.”
“Possess us,” Evelyn clarified. “While we slept and while we were awake. How will that help?”
“It will allow us to leave this house. To see the outside world,” said Zoey.
Barker puffed smoke from his pipe. “That’s a possibility. Seven pairs of eyes are better than two.”
“If we even have the strength to do it,” Peter said. The young football player put his one good hand on a nearby vase stand. “Something about Mary made her stronger than us.”
“I don’t believe that to be true,” Alannah said. She glanced at Terrence on the stairs. “We’ve never realized our full potential because we never had a chance to.”
Evelyn looked at them with doubt. “We’re still marching out into miles of woods. How will you know where to find Maxwell?”
Barker lowered his pipe to his chest. “I know you living folk look different than us. When you’re nearby, we can always sense you.”
Terrence shuddered. “That’s a terrifying revelation.”
“Tell me about it,” Barker replied. “If it works the same out there, we could potentially know if Maxwell or someone else is nearby even if we don’t see them.”
Evelyn contemplated what the phantoms were asking.
Terrence shook his head in disbelief. “Yeah, I’d rather not have anyone possessing me.”
Evelyn locked eyes with Zoey. “How can you guarantee we’ll be free after it’s all said and done?”
“Because we want to get home as much as you do,” Zoey said. “If we can’t find Maxwell, then you and Terrence are free to leave.”
“We were always free to leave,” Terrence replied. “Right?”
Zoey glared at him. “Leave guilt free.”
“Evelyn,” Terrence said. “This is a stupid idea.”
Evelyn walked back through the foyer floor. She glanced up at the angels in the door above, hoping that somewhere, a higher power was looking down on her. “If this fails and we come home tonight to the five men that tried to kill my father, I need you to promise me that you will put a stop to them if necessary.”
“We can certainly try,” Barker said.
Winslow nodded rapidly in agreement.
Terrence walked to his wife and put his hands on her shoulders. “Eve, let’s go upstairs and pack before it's too late.”
Evelyn gave Terrence a soft smile and looked into his tired, handsome dark eyes. “Our life has been a whirlwind since the first day we showed up. This is our chance to finally get some answers. To find my father.”
Terrence glanced up the phantoms standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a line and then back to Evelyn. “I’ll only do this under one condition.”
“Name it.”
“We leave all this risk-taking behind and start a quiet little family.”
“I’d like that.” Evelyn smiled at him. They let go of one another and turned to the five bloodied individuals before them. “How will this work?”
The ghosts approached them. Their movements were in sync with one another. They formed a circle around Evelyn and Terrence directly below the chandelier.
“Hold still,” Zoey said.
Evelyn blinked. She felt the ground moved beneath her feet. Suddenly, she saw double of Zoey and the other ghosts. Their doppelgangers overlapped one another as they walked in a circle. Terrence wobbled in place. He hunched over and dry heaved. Evelyn felt something punch her chest, sucking the breath out of her lungs. She dropped to a kneeling position. Candlelight illuminated the foyer around her. She heard piano music but couldn’t recognize the song.
Men in tops hats and jackets with long coat tails strolled by, with their arms locked with women in long dresses. Their faces were distorted, but they tracked Evelyn as they walked through the party that was now under way. Evelyn smelled cigarette and strong perfume. She blinked and the foyer was empty and dim, just how it was before she spoke to the phantoms. No music. No laughter. No odd smells. No people. Something pulled at her. It was Zoey. The girl clasped Evelyn’s hand in her own and led her out the front door, like how a child pulled at her mother.
Walking through the splattered cow’s blood, Evelyn looked out from behind the towering colonnade in front of her and at the bright sun. Terrence was moving ahead of her, being pulled by Alannah. They bounced down the few porch steps and onto the circular brick landing.
In an instant, blurred-face figures in fancy 19th and 20th-century attire filled the brick road in wonderfully-crafted, horse-drawn buggies. One of the horses passed by Evelyn and breathed her nostrils at her face. Evelyn smelled the wretched odor and stared into the horse’s eyes. They were a spiraling black hole.
Evelyn pulled her gaze away, and the afternoon returned to normal. Her feet took her beside the house. From the first floor to the attic, figures were silhouetted in the windows of Quenby House.
Evelyn shut her eyes and reopened them to the cotton field. Slaves in loose white shirts and brown pants plucked at the thorny crop while turning their distorted faces to Evelyn. There were seven in all, and each at a different distance. Evelyn tried to talk to one of them, but could not. She heard Zoey’s voice in her mind. “Leave them be. They’re nothing but memories of their former lives. Fragments, if that makes more sense, left behind when their living counterpart cast off of this plane. I don’t know if they're good or bad, or why they stayed, but they’re always around.”
“How do you know this?” Evelyn asked.
“I can’t say. I just… do.”
The woods came into view, meaning Evelyn had blacked out for at least
six acres’ worth of land. Terrence stayed ahead, Alannah still pulling him by the hand. Peter walked a few feet away, but there seemed to be some white cord connecting him to Terrence’s body. The farther Peter walked away, the farther the cord stretched. It looked like it didn’t have a limit.
A pack of deer darted past. Their beautiful brown and white skin was mutilated by bullets. One had an exposed portion on its ribs. The breeze swayed the flap of skin hanging in front. All the animals had eyes like spiraling black holes that seemed to drain Evelyn’s will the more she looked at them. Tattered-skinned squirrels scurried up trees. Decaying birds took flight across the indigo sky. In one second, the sun was high above. In the next, it was falling away.
Evelyn glanced around the unfamiliar forest as tall trees cast large shadows over the endless underbrush. The usual animal cries and screeches filled the woodlands, but there were other, alien sounds too; things that Evelyn had never heard before. Sounds that she could never hope to imitate. Shadowy quadrupedal beings lumbered just out of view, some of them three times the size of a human being. Somehow, Evelyn knew they were ancient or otherworldly. The only one Evelyn saw had a face like a black vortex, endlessly spinning. Instinct caused Evelyn to turn away her gaze. She saw a few of her hairs fall from her own head and turn gray as they hit the dirt.
Clouds raced and morphed overhead like in a time lapse video.
Sweat covered Evelyn’s body, but she suffered no fatigue. Though she walked on uneven ground and overfilled trees, she felt like she was floating across a flat plain. Like a speck in the woods, Winslow strolled. Evelyn traced the glowing cord snaking from his chest to the center of her own. A second cord grew out of her in the opposite direction, connecting her to Barker, who was five hundred feet to her right. Zoey continued pulling her along. Up ahead, Alannah did the same for Terrence with Peter tethered to him.
Instantly, it was night.
The woods seemed much more active now. New, terrifying cries and twisted shadows ruled the woodlands. Evelyn could only really see the glowing cords coming out of her and Terrence. Dozens of circular red dots spotted the darkness far up ahead. Zoey turned Evelyn in a different direction. Evelyn swore the teenage whispered the word, “eyes.”
“What is this place?” Evelyn finally mustered the courage to ask.
“The woods,” the girl in black replied. “You’re seeing it for what it really is.”
Evelyn thought her heart rate would quicken at the statement, but it stayed at the same steady pace it had been since they left the mansion. She blinked again and all the stars were out, more than she’d ever seen before, and the moon was white and full, seemingly quadruple the size of what it should be.
Suddenly, Terrence took off into a sprint. He and Alannah ran out of sight.
“What’s happening?” Evelyn asked.
“They found something,” Zoey replied and started running. Evelyn couldn’t let go of the girl even if she tried. Her feet crushed felled leaves and twigs. She hurdled over a jagged tree stump and ran through a bush, blocking her face with the arm Zoey wasn’t pulling. A dirt path came into view. It appeared to be too wide to be a game trail.
At the end of it was a small cabin. Yellow light bled from its windows. A skinny tower of smoke leaked from its tiny chimney.
Zoey let go of Evelyn’s hand and turned back to her, finally giving Evelyn a view that wasn’t a bloody head wound.
With wide eyes, the teenage said, “That’s Maxwell’s home.”
29
The Free Man
Zoey, Winslow, and Barker vanished. Evelyn collapsed in the middle of the trail. Her muscles ached. Her head screamed in pain. Tears blurred her vision. Up ahead, Terrence wobbled and caught himself on the trunk of a crooked tree. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes sunken. A gray stripe painted the left side of his small chin beard.
Under a normal-sized moon and black sky, he staggered over to Evelyn and dropped on his knees.
“I am never doing that again,” he said as he helped lift Evelyn up. “You saw those creatures out there, right? Or was that just me?”
Evelyn shook her head. “It wasn’t just you,” she said weakly. Her stomach grumbled. She felt like she had aged twenty years. The moment she stood, she wanted to fall back down again. “Do I look as bad as you?” she asked Terrence.
He brushed aside strands of greasy blonde hair spit-glued to the corner of Evelyn’s mouth. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” he teased with a froggy voice.
Leaning on one another, the couple shambled toward the solitary cabin.
Sporting wooden walls and a pointed frame roof, the cabin stood in a small clearing that consisted of a tree stump scarred by an axe head, a tanning rack, a table with fat logs for chairs, a garden surrounded by a crooked wooden fence, and a red water pump with chipped paint. The building didn’t have a porch, and all the windows had wooden blinds preventing anyone from seeing within. The light inside flickered, hinting at an active fireplace and candles. There was a rusty 1950s Ford truck parked nearby. Heaven only knew if it still ran.
“I wonder how far they took us?” Terrence asked as they neared the cabin’s front.
Evelyn struggled. She was too exhausted to speak. Her once-steady heart rate was wonky, slow one moment and then fast the next. All she wanted to do was sleep for a week. “What time is it?”
Wincing, Terrence fished out his cell phone from his jeans’ tight pocket. He held down the power button but it didn’t boot up.
“Dead,” he said hopelessly. “Let’s hope your father doesn’t chase us out of here. Otherwise we’re screwed.”
“Don’t joke like that,” Evelyn said as they stopped at the front door. She took inventory of her wrinkled and sweat-soaked shirt and pulled a twig from her hair. “Hi, Dad, it’s me, Evelyn. Yes, I am doing very well for myself.”
Evelyn knocked on the door.
“You think he’ll like me?” Terrence asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Terrence replied.
“Just being realistic,” Evelyn said plainly. “Try to impress him. I don’t want to walk home.”
Terrence chuckled. “If my parents could see me now. Voluntarily possessed, hallucinating, and about to meet the guy who blew off someone’s head in front of my wife. My pops would probably disown me. My ma would lock me in the church house.”
“I won’t tell them,” Evelyn replied.
It was official. They were both delirious.
Evelyn knocked again.
No response.
“Hello?” Her voice cracked as she called out.
Evelyn tried the knob. Her brows rose.
“Unlocked,” she whispered.
Evelyn pushed the door open and stepped into the one-room cabin. It had a kitchen area, fireplace, homemade table, and a ladder that climbed into a loft without a railing. From the front door, Evelyn saw the corners of a cot up there.
“Maxwell?” she called out, feeling some déjà vu to Stephen Doyle’s trap. Only this time, Evelyn and Terrence had no firearms to defend themselves. If not for the spontaneity of the whole situation, Evelyn would’ve prepared more.
“There’s no place to hide in here,” Terrence said, stretching out his palms in front of the active fireplace. Wood cracked under the small orange flame.
Evelyn glanced around the kitchen. In place of a refrigerator was an old plastic beer cooler. Evelyn opened it, revealing fresh slabs of meat. She closed it and checked the cupboards. Hard0carved mugs and bowls sat within. In one of the drawers, she found rusty knives of all different varieties. Evelyn guessed they had been lost by hunters and found by her father. In another drawer, she found non-fiction history books and survival guides with pages torn out alongside various magazines pertaining to firearms and muscle cars. These, Evelyn assumed, were lost by hunters as well.
“Should we go through all his stuff?” Terrence asked.
Evelyn handed him a knife with blac
k serrated edge and an olive-green handle. “Keep this on you. Just in case.”
Hesitant, he accepted the blade and put it in the back of his jeans. Evelyn did the same.
After, she climbed into the loft. It had a bed made of towels and tattered covers. As she climbed back down, the front door slung open.
A tall man stood in the threshold. He wore faded camouflage pants and a jacket. His black boots had turned the color of wet ash. The toes of the right one peeled back, revealing a black sock with a hole on the big toe. Parted down the middle, thick, ash-colored hair ran down the man’s back and shoulders. A shaggy beard covered seventy percent of his skeletal face and flowed down his chest. Deep wrinkles etched his tan forehead, and out and around his eyes. In his skinny hands, he held a shotgun. The eye of the barrel was aimed directly at Terrence.
Slowly, Terrence put his hands up. “We don’t want any trouble.”
The man walked inside and used his foot to shut the door behind him. His shaggy mustache concealed his mouth, and his dark eyes made it hard to read his emotions.
Making no sudden movements, Evelyn climbed down the ladder and stood next to Terrence. There was an awkward pause. Evelyn felt her throat go dry and her palms become sweaty. Is this man really him? Evelyn didn’t voice her doubts, she just pointed at herself. “It’s me. Evelyn.”
The man said nothing.
His unreadable gaze and the shotgun he held by his skinny hip didn’t make the encounter any easier.
“This is my husband, Terrence.” Evelyn said, struggling to keep a strong demeanor. “Please lower the weapon.”
Without clicking on the safety, the man rested the shotgun against his shoulder, the barrel pointed to the roof.
Able to breathe again, Evelyn took a step toward him, but something about the man’s look gave her pause.
“You are Maxwell, right?” Evelyn asked, unsure what to make of the wild man.
The man opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Terrence gently took Evelyn’s hand. “I don’t think he’s--”
The Haunting of Quenby Mansion Omnibus: A Haunted House Mystery Page 34
