Death's Sweet Echo
Page 26
‘She was.’
‘She was? What?’
‘Melinda was born here. But I’m not her mother.’ She sighed deeply, and I thought she was struggling to come to a decision. ‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘I want to show you something.’
The interior of the house was as grand as the exterior. The black-and-white marble tiles of the lavish hallway were polished and shining, and the doors that led off of the grand entrance were dark wood and gleaming with a rich lustre.
‘This way,’ the woman said.
She led me through to a side room that was ornately decorated with rich tapestries on the walls, and heavy, dark wood furniture. Paintings hung on the walls, in ornate frames. It was to one of these that the woman took me.
She pointed at an oil painting that must have been over one hundred and fifty years old. ‘Do you recognise her?’
Of course I did. The piercing blue eyes were enough, but the scared, haunted look was also evident, and the slightly arrogant way her chin was upturned.
‘That can’t be the same girl,’ I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.
‘She’ll have taken you to see her father,’ the woman said, and went on to tell me the name, the date of death and the cemetery where he was buried. Of course it was where Melinda had taken me. To see her father who had died two centuries ago.
‘You’re not her mother, so…’
‘Who am I? I’m the poor soul who has had to manage this mausoleum since my mother bequeathed it to me, and her mother before that, all the way back to Melinda’s mother.’
‘Why would she bring me here to meet her mother?’ I knew I was talking to the woman as if what she was saying was making sense, but it seemed the course of least resistance. I had no way of knowing who she was, or whether she was as disturbed as Melinda clearly was. I didn’t take any of this seriously. The Melinda who had leeched herself onto me wasn’t born in the 1800s, she was a modern problem. I’d let her use me as a willing host, and I was willing to admit what a mistake that had been. A lesson learnt, as my trainers would have said.
‘She believes the house belongs to her. She’s left me notes before: Give me back what is mine, that kind of thing. Then there have been the threats. I have no doubt she’ll do anything to try and keep a link to the house.’
‘But you’re selling?’
‘We have to. We can’t afford the upkeep any longer. My husband is ill, we’re both getting too old, and we have no children to pass the poisoned chalice to.’
I’d heard enough. ‘I’m sure what you say makes sense to you, but I deal in facts. The girl I brought here – and it was foolish and stupid to do that, I know – but the girl I came with is real flesh and blood, a young girl with problems that need up-to-date solutions.’
‘Counselling and psycho-babble, and if that fails, stuff her full of drugs, the legal kind.’
That sounded about right, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. ‘I’d better find her and take her home.’
‘Do you know where that is? Home.’
‘Not exactly, I was speaking figuratively. At any rate, are you going to help me find her?’
‘Be my guest.’
The house was silent as we moved back into the hallway. A scream reverberated through the air, and I started to run. The woman wasn’t far behind.
‘In there,’ she said, and pointed to a door that was slightly open.
It was the drawing room. A log fire lent a rippling effect to the shadows on the high ceiling. The walls looked as if they were splashed with orange and red paint from the flames that consumed the hefty logs in the grate.
On a rug in front of the fire, the body of a man of similar age to the woman lay twitching. Blood seeped from various wounds, staining the patterned carpet with mosaic shapes that were quickly assimilated. Beside me, the woman held her hand to her mouth and stifled a scream.
Melinda played with the long blade of a sword that she had taken from a display on the wall. She was pressing the pointed end into her leg and laughing as she drew blood.
I said that the first time I saw Melinda laugh out loud, she was already dead. She was laughing now, but I couldn’t tell which Melinda I was seeing.
Death’s Sweet Echo
13 ghost stories and strange tales
By Len Maynard & Mick Sims
www.maynard-sims.com
MAYNARD SIMS www.maynard-sims.com Len Maynard & Mick Sims are the authors of sixteen novels with more scheduled, in the genres of supernatural horror, the Department 18 series, crime thrillers and erotic romance. They have written screenplays, and one, based on the first two Department 18 books, won the 2013 British Horror Film Festival Award for Best New Screenplay. Numerous stories and novellas have been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines and Death’s Sweet Echo is their tenth collection. They worked as editors on Darkness Rising, they co-edited and published F20 with The British Fantasy Society, and as editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles
Table of Contents
GLORIOUS DILAPIDATION
ANOTHER BITE OF THE CHERRY
HOPING HE WOULDN'T BE TOO LATE
I’M HERE
SWEET DECAY OF YOUTH
I HEAR HIS FOOTSTEPS DRAWING NEAR
AND IT GOES LIKE THIS
SILVER
GUILT CASTS LONG SHADOWS
JUST THE WAY IT IS
THE WALTZER KING
COLD COMFORT
RESTITUTION