by Anne Frasier
This can’t be. This is impossible.
Whatever was going on, Evan was somehow involved. Even if he didn’t know it.
She locked the journal back in the safe, put on her jacket, and hurried to the morgue’s delivery entrance. A turn of the knob and the tongue slipped from the catch plate. The door was ripped from her hand, smacking against the wall. Her hair shot straight up. A nearby tree creaked and bent; electrical lines snapped against the sky.
The temperature had plunged since she’d last been outside—she checked her watch to be sure—an hour ago.
All her life she’d lived with an urgency, a slow drip, drip she’d always chalked up to her need to be anywhere but where she was. Her own internal warning system. But what if the warning wasn’t coming from inside? What if it was coming from somewhere else? And nobody was paying attention, so accustomed were they to tuning it out.
While her hair whipped and stung her cheeks, she turned her face to the northwest. Buildings and roads and hills and bluffs stood in the way, but she could feel it out there.
Old Tuonela.
It’s so strong.
Why hadn’t she noticed the growing strength before?
Where does the wind begin?
Out there. In Old Tuonela. In the Driftless Area, beyond the plains and hills, beyond the chasms and the roads that turned back on themselves. The wind began in Old Tuonela.
Evan.
She struggled to close the door, shutting and latching and locking.
She stepped from the protection of the building.
The force of the wind took her breath away, and shoved her to the side. Above her the sky was a slate gray, but below clouds moved rapidly, racing and changing, with no order or pattern, unlike any clouds she’d ever seen.
Leaves swirled and circled up into the sky, while others marched across the street like a row of soldiers being called into service.
She got in the van, started the engine, and headed north, toward Evan, toward the land of the dead.
Chapter Forty-five
There were many doors between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Dreams were just one of those doors, and Richard Manchester used the dark, lonely hours before dawn to visit Gabriella Nelson.
The wind blew south out of Old Tuonela. It circled to follow the flow of the river and the bend of tree branches as they reached and pointed toward the new town.
This is the way. This is where life dwells. This is where our sorrow and our children have gone and where we must follow.
Because the ties of past generations could not be forgotten, and there was no such thing as starting over. Time meant nothing to the dead, and a sleep of a hundred years was but a single sigh.
Gabriella’s dreams were more real than real life, and every morning when she awoke she thought Manchester was still with her. She would reach for him and find the spot beside her empty and cold. The loss brought about a grief that swamped her and held on so tightly that not a morsel of food had passed her lips for days.
But night brought about his return.
As she slept, Manchester held her in his arms and brushed his lips against her neck and breathed in her ear.
He told her things.
Never had she felt so wanted or so loved.
She craved him. Every waking thought was con -sumed by him.
She stopped answering the phone. Knocks at the door were ignored. She shut out the world.
Nobody else existed. Nobody else mattered.
She spent her days at the museum. Oh, she tried to be subtle, but when you hung around a mummy for hours on end people tended to notice. So she tried to disguise herself. And tried not to linger too long. Tried not to let anybody see her pressing her face to the glass of the mummy case.
Richard told her what she must do so they could be together forever.
A very simple plan. . . .
The museum was closed when she pulled into the parking lot. Earlier she’d called her nephew and explained that she was going to lay down a containment spell so the Pale Immortal couldn’t walk around the museum anymore.
Matthew had humored her.
Two weeks ago she would have thought that sweet of him. Now she saw him as simply a way to get what she needed. He meant nothing to her.
While the wind blew violently from the north, Matthew met her at the back door and let her in. He smelled like pot and his eyes were bloodshot. “So, you think this will work,” he said with a silly grin.
“It won’t hurt anything.” Her voice was just right. Kind of teasing but serious.
He nodded. “That’s what I said. What can it hurt? But we put a heavy-duty latch on the case. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”
“I have to do this alone.”
He stared. “You want to go down there by yourself?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, but . . . Wow. Okay.”
If he’d argued, she’d come prepared to kill him with the knife hidden in her coat pocket. That was how it would have had to be. That’s what she’d been told to do.
In the basement, she unlatched the case. And even though it probably wasn’t necessary, she got out her goofer dust and performed a quick spell. Then she waited and watched as Richard Manchester slowly came to life.
She wasn’t sure how long it took. Time was strange, more like a dream where a few seconds seemed like hours.
Should she say anything?
Did she need to? After what they’d shared?
He moved toward her. He came straight for her. When she looked into his eyes, she saw nothing.
Not even pupils, but black holes she sensed went deeper than his body, something connecting to a world she didn’t yet understand.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I came for you.”
She waited for him to respond, to say something, to embrace her the way he’d embraced her in the dreams. Instead he grabbed her, sliced her throat with her own knife, and drank her blood.
She watched him in horror, unable to speak. She felt the life draining from her body, felt the blood soak into the sweatshirt that said, I BRAKE FOR COVENS. He pulled away, his hands still gripping her, his face, from lips to chin, covered with blood, while his flat button eyes continued to look at her with nothing.
He’d tricked her. He’d used her.
There are so many of them. An army of his followers.
She understood that now.
They were everywhere. In the leaves that marched across the street, in the wind that came from Old Tuonela. Why hadn’t she seen them before?
Everywhere. Talking. Whispering. Living inside her, under her skin.
She felt that skin slip from her body as they fought over her.
They’d tricked her.
Oh, they were smart.
But there were others. Watching, sad and silent.
Chapter Forty-six
Rachel drove slowly up the lane to Evan’s house, careful of the deep ruts and pits. Small bits of ice hit the glass, sounding like tapping fingernails. Buildup on the wipers scraped and scratched.
She set the fan speed to high, the air blowing hot in her face. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, she peered through a small, clear area of the windshield.
Whispers were carried by the sound of the fan, mixing with the white noise.
Stay away.
She took the final curve and the van lunged forward, settling into the gravel parking area. She shut off the engine and left the keys in the ignition.
Out of the van, she circled around to the back of the house, the stone walk icy and slick underfoot, the force of the wind pushing her sideways. When her knock went unanswered, she stepped into the kitchen and shouted Evan’s name.
The floor above her head creaked, but no one responded.
Upstairs she checked vacant rooms until reaching a door that was partially ajar. She peered through the opening. The room was wrapped in darkness, but she was able to make ou
t a darker shape hovering in the corner.
Evan?
She pushed the door open, allowing dim light to find its way inside. Yes, it was Evan.
He held an ornate silver tin, one finger poised above it as if he’d been sampling the contents. Shirtless, a white scarf wrapped around his neck, his skin almost iridescent in the gray twilight.
She’d practiced in the van. She would be firm. “Evan, you have to come with me. Right now. You can’t stay here a minute longer.”
He said nothing.
“Get a shirt. Get a coat.”
When he didn’t respond, she charged into the room.
The bed was a rumpled mess, dirty clothes everywhere. Books were stacked along one wall; some of the stacks had tumbled to the floor. It didn’t look like a place where a person actually lived. It was more like an abandoned building taken over by a homeless person. How had she let this go on so long? Maybe if she hadn’t been grieving over the loss of her father she would have exhibited more clarity.
From behind her came the sound of metal on metal as Evan snapped the lid to the tin in place.
She found a shirt and brought it to him. She tried to take the tin away, but he wouldn’t let go.
“You wanted to give that to me once, remember?” she asked.
He turned, tucked the tin in the dresser, then closed the drawer. “That would have been a shame.”
“W-what?” The question was a half laugh in response to his odd statement.
He took the shirt and slipped it on, but made no effort to button the buttons.
She reached up and began to do it for him.
His hand wrapped around her wrist. It hurt. She tried to pull free, but couldn’t. “What are you doing?” She tugged. “Let go.”
“Ah, Rachel. Sweet, sweet Rachel.” He leaned close and inhaled. “Sometimes I get confused. Sometimes I get you mixed up with somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Florence.”
“The woman in the journal.” She couldn’t bring herself to say my great-grandmother. Not yet.
Until recently she’d never been afraid of Evan, and she was having a hard time thinking of him as someone she should fear. And yet if anybody else were holding her like this, she would be fighting him.
“You should never have dug up that journal,” she told him. “You should have left it where it was. We need to put everything back. Everything you’ve uncovered. It all needs to be returned to the ground.”
“Too late.”
“No.” She shook her head. “We can do it together.”
He pulled her close, until she was near enough that he let go of her wrist and wrapped his arms around her. He dug his fingers into her hair.
He means you harm. You and the baby.
Her breathing and heartbeat quickened.
It was too dark to see his face. “Ah, Florence.”
“Rachel. I’m Rachel.”
“The same.”
“Who are you?”
“Don’t you know me? Father of your child? I’m Evan.”
“What happened to you? Sometimes you don’t seem like Evan at all. Sometimes you seem like somebody else entirely.”
He laughed. “Do you want to know what happened to me? I’ll tell you. My father, my very own father, fed me a broth made from the heart of the Pale Immortal.”
The tin.
“He did it to save my life, or so he says.”
“When you were so sick. When you were a teenager.”
“But he chickened out before giving me very much. And then when I moved into his house in Tuonela, I found the tin. And you know how I have a penchant for exotic tea. . . .”
“You drank it.”
“Not all of it.”
“Throw the rest away. Get rid of it.”
“I was thinking you and I could share a cup. And the baby. We can’t forget about the baby.”
“I would have helped you. Why did you push me away?”
“I didn’t want you to see what I’d become.”
“Mental illness holds no shame.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“The tea is nothing. Nonsense. You’ve convinced yourself it has power. Don’t you see that? You’re trapped by your illness, and this gives you the illusion of strength, but it’s not real.”
“It’s real.”
There was no use arguing. “You have to leave here. This place is bad for you.”
Her words made sense, and she tried not to think about the whispering voices and the skin that had crawled across her floor, and her earlier resolve to finally see what had been in front of her all along.
He pressed his face to her scalp and inhaled deeply. “I can smell him. The baby. The boy. I can smell his blood. Sweet little baby. Sweet, sweet, infant.”
Evil, dark and dank, flowed from him.
Real or not, Evan thought the tea had changed him. He thought he was possessed by the Pale Immortal. The danger to her and her baby was real. And immediate. There was no time to reason, no time to try to reach him.
She wrenched herself away.
He was fast. Right on her heels.
He caught her arm. With her free hand she flailed, fingers stretching and reaching for the wall switch, finding it, flipping it on.
A dull red light barely penetrated the gloom.
Evan laughed and pulled her closer, pushing her to the wall at the same time.
She jabbed her knee into his crotch.
That was all it took to drop him.
She ran.
Her feet pounded down the stairs.
Hit the landing, another flight to the first floor. Through the kitchen to the back door. Turn the knob and pull.
The door moved a few inches back and forth—a vacuum created by the storm.
Evan. Right behind her.
With a burst of adrenaline, she tugged and the door flew open, shuddering against the wall.
Out into the darkness, into the night, hands stretched blindly. Snow fell, deep and thick and wet. The wind roared. Ice pellets hit her face. Wind snatched her breath away.
She put a hand to her mouth and nose and leaned into the storm, visualizing the path that would return her to the van.
Freezing rain followed by snow had created a deadly combination. Her feet touched a stepping-stone and shot out from under her. She slammed to the ground so hard it took her breath away. An explosion of pain ripped through her.
Evan was coming.
She rolled to her knees and pushed herself to her feet. The van was there.
She opened the door.
Sobbing in pain, she grasped the steering wheel to pull herself in.
Shouldn’t have come. Should have stayed away.
Across from her, the passenger door flew open and Evan dove inside. He grabbed the keys from the ignition and tossed them over his shoulder into the darkness behind him. Then he made a fist, broke the dome light, and crawled across the seat.
Rachel stepped back, slammed the door, turned, and ran—this time for the house.
With a hand cradling her stomach, her breathing ragged, she raced back the way she’d come, reaching the refuge of the kitchen, slamming the door, locking it.
She pulled out her cell phone even though she knew it was pointless. No signal. She stuck it back in her pocket.
The door shuddered as the weight of Evan’s body slammed against it.
He pounded and shouted.
Snow shot through cracks in the walls, and wind shrieked around windows. Glass shattered and something thundered against the table.
A massive stone.
Evan followed, tumbling through the window, crashing to the floor. Without stopping, he rolled and jumped to his feet.
Rachel spotted a cordless phone on the kitchen counter. She grabbed it and began dialing 911.
Evan swept up the base, tugged it from the jack, and smashed it against the wall.
The handset went dead.
Always run out, ne
ver in.
No choice.
She dropped the phone, grabbed the nearest door, and wrenched it open. Dark stairs.
No. Go another direction. She looked over her shoulder.
Too late.
She hurried down the uneven, ancient stairs.
Darkness swallowed her.
Her palms moved over stone and dust and dirt.
Her feet made contact with the ground. She lurched forward, hands outstretched.
Some sort of tunnel.
She smacked her head, then ducked.
Turning, winding, until she came to a solid wall. Frantic, she felt for a door, an opening.
And found one.
It was small and broken, but she managed to squeeze through.
A room. Damp and cold. Blindly, she found a notch in the wall and tucked herself inside and waited.
He would find her.
Like an animal, he would sniff her out and find her.
She heard him.
Moving closer, his feet shuffling over the dirt floor. She saw a faint light bobbing and moving in her direction.
There was no escape.
She turned, her eyes seeking something, anything. If not a way out then a weapon.
In the darkness she caught the dull glint of metal. She moved for it, her hand wrapping around a wooden handle.
A shovel.
She lifted it high and faced the entrance. Evan burst through the opening. She started to bring down the weapon, then hesitated.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t hit him.
He grabbed the shovel and tossed it aside. He held a lantern that gave off a muted light. Dust particles curled and drifted.
Sh, sh, sh.
“I see you found them.”
She didn’t understand.
He lifted the lantern higher, the weak light penetrating the deep crevices.
And then she saw the mummified remains.
“Victoria and her daughter.”
The girl in the photo. The poor little blond girl.
“When they were down here dying, you and I were upstairs making love. How does that make you feel?”
He’d read the journal; he was living in Richard Manchester’s house, drinking a tea he thought contained the heart of the Pale Immortal.
Oh, Evan.
“This is what I wanted to show you. This is what I’ve waited a hundred years for you to see. By killing me, you caused their deaths.” He stood in front of her, pressing her to the wall, too close for her to knee him.
