by Brian Harmon
This required a level of focus he wasn’t typically known for.
Once again, he found himself questioning the choices of whatever forces kept putting him in these situations. He clearly wasn’t cut out for this kind of pressure.
Something he already had. Something he brought with him.
Holly? Maybe to find the door, he needed a witch.
DID YOU ACTUALLY BRING HOLLY WITH YOU? SHE SORT OF CAME WITH KAREN
But she was with Karen today because Eric brought her home from Illinois.
No. That didn’t seem right. Besides, what did she have to do with the words “red” and “ice”?
Or was that something else he was going to have to figure out?
The children, he reminded himself. Listen to the children. Don’t lose track of the children.
But an icy prickle along his spine announced that he wasn’t alone anymore. Slowly, he turned and looked down the hallway.
The clown stood there, staring back at him, a smug grin on its painted face.
That creepy giggle echoed up and down the hallway, chilling him all the way to his bones.
AW SHIT
It was over. The clown was here. Bellylaugh Hell was taking over. And he still didn’t know how to open the door.
“Don’t give up.”
Eric turned to find William standing next to him, his eyes fixed on the clown. “You again…”
“I’ll hold him back as long as I can.”
The clown’s grin turned into a snarl. A long, black tongue slithered out between its red lips.
“You won’t have long,” warned William. “You have to open the door now.”
“But I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy. You just have to know that you can’t do everything alone. Sometimes you’re going to have to ask for help.”
Eric ran his hand through his hair, confused. “What?”
But William vanished. At the same time, a hot wind blew through the hallway.
The clown turned to smoke and blew away, leaving Eric alone in the hallway once more.
He couldn’t do everything alone? He never did anything alone. He had Isabelle. And he felt like he was always asking her for help. Or at least advice. But they’d already established that Isabelle wasn’t the key.
He turned and stared at the wall again.
His heart was racing. He didn’t understand. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to open a door that wasn’t here?
YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING
“But what?”
Can’t do everything alone? Learn to ask for help? Red ice? Something he brought with him?
A great, howling wind blew through the hallway again, this time blowing the other way. The overhead lights flickered on and off. The floor shook beneath his feet.
That would be William and the clown, going at it on some nearby plane of existence.
William couldn’t hold it off forever. He wasn’t strong enough. And when he was done, there’d be nothing standing between the clown and him.
He’d lose.
And everyone upstairs would die.
He closed his eyes, frustrated. “I don’t know what to do!” he shouted. He turned and looked down the empty hallway. “I need help, okay? You said I have to ask for help sometimes so I’m asking for it!”
He stood there, waiting for an answer, but none came.
“So now what?”
What was he supposed to do?
When he turned back to the door, he was suddenly staring into a pair of blood-red eyes.
His heart nearly leapt out of his chest. He stumbled backward with a shout.
“You…” he gasped.
He’d thought the children and clowns were ghosts, but they’d turned out to be other things. The woman who stood before him now was a ghost. He knew it because he’d met her before.
She was very thin, with long, tangled, black hair and a very pale complexion. She was also stark naked. And her eyes were filled with blood.
Last June, he and Holly found her haunting the basement of a mysterious bungalow just outside Creek Bend. In life, she was a witch, like Holly, but she was murdered more than half a century ago and her spirit trapped there until they set her free.
He thought she’d moved on to a better place, but here she was again.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked her.
She smiled at him. She had a kind smile. Sort of pretty, in spite of those gruesome eyes. Last time he saw her, she still reflected the cuts and bruises she’d had at the time of her death, making her a ghastly apparition to behold. Since then, it seemed she’d healed considerably. The only bruises still visible were the ones around her wrists, where the shackles had bound her in those last days of her life.
As he watched, she turned and walked through the wall, just as the hag had done in the video.
Something changed then. Eric could feel it. The hallway seemed to ripple around him. Then, suddenly, the door was there, as if it’d always been there and he simply wasn’t looking hard enough.
There was a loud click of a disengaging lock. The door knob turned and the door swung open.
The bloody-eyed woman smiled out at him.
SOMETHING YOU BROUGHT WITH YOU, said Isabelle.
Eric stared at her, at those crimson eyes. She’d spent the last days of her life being horribly tortured by a psychotic agent of a mysterious, nameless organization. He’d wanted her to reveal the secret to casting a nightmarish spell that would open a portal and summon a god-like force of fire and destruction into the world. She’d suffered such agony and screamed so long and so hard that the blood vessels in her eyes had burst, filling the whites of her eyes with blood. And in death, those bloody eyes had remained, a gruesome reminder of those last, horrible days.
Not red ice, he realized, but red eyes.
But he didn’t understand. “I thought you were going somewhere better…” Although she’d blatantly refused to “move on”, she agreed to leave that dreary basement and find somewhere better to go.
She smiled and nodded. She didn’t speak. She could if she wanted to. She spoke to him twice last time, but as far as ghosts went, she didn’t seem to have the hang of it yet. Her voice had come out in a strange, otherworldly distortion, disembodied from her lips and tongue and inserted directly into his brain. To be honest, it was downright terrifying.
Instead, she pointed at him.
“You came with me?” He stared at her, surprised. “So… You’ve been following me around ever since?”
She nodded.
Eric wasn’t sure what else to say. That was…kind of creepy.
DOOR’S OPEN, Isabelle reminded him. THINK ABOUT NAKED GHOST GIRL LATER
As if to punctuate her point, the floor shuddered beneath him and the lights flickered again.
William was losing.
He nodded at the screen. “Right. Later.” But when he looked up, his phantom companion was already gone again.
Was her only purpose to open this door for him? What if he and Holly never found her three months ago? Would he not have been able to open the door? Would he have failed today if not for the things he did then?
Now wasn’t the time to ponder it.
He took a breath, bracing himself, and stepped through the doorway.
Chapter Forty
The room inside was dark. But it was warm. The coldness that was overtaking the hallway didn’t reach in here. Neither did that eerie murmuring. The atmosphere was strangely safe. It even smelled of flowers and apples.
It didn’t feel anything like he thought a demon’s lair would feel.
He found the light switch. The darkness was washed away, revealing the space to be a cluttered office. Bookshelves and filing cabinets lined the walls. There was a desk with a very outdated computer sitting on it. On a small table in the corner of the room was a bulky, old-style printer. The place was a mess. The trash was overflowing. There were spent candles and empty water bottles everywhere.
And against one wall was a sizeable pile of blankets and pillows.
Eric stepped into the room, scanning his surroundings. Was this it? Was this what he’d been searching for these past four hours?
There was no demon in here, but there was another door. Maybe that was where he needed to go. He walked over to it and tried the knob. It was locked, of course. But if it was only an ordinary lock, then he probably had the key for it. He only had to find it on the keyring.
There was a large, wooden cross mounted to the door. It was off center and a little askew, as if someone had put it up in a hurry. He stared at it, his thoughts racing. Didn’t Poppy say something about a cross?
THERE’S DEFINITELY DARK ENERGY BEHIND THAT DOOR, said Isabelle.
The source of the demonic energy. He’d found it.
But as he stood there, another cold prickle crept up his spine. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t alone here.
He turned to find that there was a body under the pile of blankets, and it had sat up while his back was turned.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded an old woman.
Eric nearly jumped out of his skin.
“How’d you get in here?”
“Jeez!” he gasped. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Answer me!” she demanded as she threw the blankets aside and struggled to her feet. She must have been wrapped up head to toe in there. It looked like a pile of empty blankets when he walked in. “What are you doing in my records room?”
Eric stared at her, surprised. “Your records room? Wait… Are you Mrs. Boldt?”
“Are you dense?” she countered. “Answer my questions!”
“I’m Eric Fortrell. You asked me to inspect the place for you?”
“What are you talking about? I did no such thing.”
He blinked, confused. “You didn’t?”
“No. Now get out of here before…” She trailed off. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling. She seemed to be listening for something. “Something’s changed…” she whispered. Then she squinted into the distance, as if trying hard to think. “Wait… How long was I asleep?”
Eric stared at her. She looked incredibly weary. And her clothes looked like she’d been wearing them for several days. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her thin, silver hair was a mess. “You’ve been living down here,” he observed.
She snapped back to attention and glared at him. “It’s none of your business,” she told him. “Now get out.”
But he ignored her. His gaze was fixed on the pendant she was wearing around her neck. It was in the shape of a blue teardrop. The plain cross and the blue teardrop were two of the signs from Poppy’s divination. That meant this was where he was supposed to be. It was a place of importance. He was predestined to meet this woman. He was meant to find this cross. Whatever he was looking for, he was confident it was behind that next door.
He turned and studied the cross. He took hold of it, tugging on it, but it was screwed securely into place.
“What’re you doing?” the woman asked. “Get away from there.”
He pulled out the keys Kacie gave him and began flipping through them.
“Where did you get those?” she demanded, reaching for them.
Eric held them out of her reach and frowned at her. “You told Melodi to give them to me.”
“I did not!”
“You called her and told her I was supposed to inspect the place for you. You told her to give me keys.”
“Why would I do that?”
He stared at her. “So that wasn’t you on the phone?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
He squinted at her. So the Mrs. Boldt that called Melodi and told her to give him keys to the building was an impostor? Like the Isabelle impostor? Was it the same impostor? “What’s behind this door?” he asked.
“Nothing. A closet.”
Eric nodded and turned his attention back to the keys. “Then I’ll just have a quick look.”
“Stop! It’s not safe!” There was a shrillness in her voice that he couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t anger. She was afraid.
He stared at her again. “You know what’s living in there, don’t you?”
She stared at him, her lips pressed together, her eyes wide.
He turned so that he was completely facing her. “You know there’s a monster here. You’ve been trying to keep it locked up.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But her voice had lost its edge. Suddenly, she didn’t sound so confident.
He glanced up at the cross, then at the burned-out candles on the table. There was even a bible lying on the floor next to the makeshift bed. She must have had it with her while she was sleeping. She was fighting it with Jesus. Why would she do that unless she knew it was a demon? “Were you trying to exorcise it?”
“You’re crazy,” she told him. But the words cracked as she said them.
“The children upstairs are in danger,” he told her, raising his voice. “Everyone in this building is in danger. Including your granddaughter. And you know it.”
She shrank at these words. She looked wounded. “How…? How do you know these things?” she asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m here to help stop it,” he said, lowering his voice and taking a gentler tone. “But we don’t have much time. It’s about to break free.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m containing it.”
“No, you’re not. I’m not sure you’re doing anything. It’s feeding on the energy of this place right now. Of all those kids upstairs. But the party’s almost over. And when that party’s over and the energy goes away, it’s going to break free. And when it does, it’s going to kill everyone here. Everyone.”
Her eyes darted from him to the door and back again. “You… You can stop it?”
“Maybe. It’s sort of what I do. I…” He flapped his hand at the door, unsure what more to say. “I stop things. But I need you to tell me what you know.”
She licked her withered lips. “I… I’m so tired…”
“Let me help you, then.”
She sighed and shook her head. “It’s really that bad? Even with…” Her gaze drifted to the bible on the floor.
“It’s about as bad as it can get right now. It’s going to tear through this whole building any minute now. I need you to help me stop it. Please.”
She shook her head and then turned and sat down in the chair, weary. “It was here when we first built the place. We assumed it’d always been here. It didn’t seem dangerous back then. We thought it liked the children.”
“What was it?” he pressed.
But she only sat there, staring off into the distance, looking profoundly sad.
“Mrs. Boldt?”
“Helena.”
“What?”
She blinked and looked up at him. “Call me Helena. My name.”
“Helena,” said Eric.
“We thought it was a ghost, honestly. Our own gentle spirit. We thought it was fun. Sometimes it was just a soft glow. Sometimes it was a mist. And sometimes it looked like a beautiful, young woman. And every time we caught a glimpse of her, we’d get this…feeling. Kind of warm and fuzzy. Comforting. Like she was there to look after us.” She rubbed her hands together, as if cold. “We actually thought she was good luck.”
She kept saying “we”. He assumed she was referring to herself and her husband.
“So what happened?” he urged.
She sighed. “About two years ago, it just…changed. We could feel it. It was like it suddenly turned cold.”
“Cold?”
“Dark,” she explained. “Evil. Where we used to get those warm, comforting feelings, we suddenly started getting these feelings of absolute dread. Suddenly, we were afraid to walk around the place alone.” She shook her head. “We didn’t have much luck after that. Business was never great. Even I’ll admit that we never had much of a talent for making money. We didn
’t really care. We were in it for the fun of it. For the children. But suddenly everything was an uphill struggle. Things started breaking. We had to replace the furnace. The freezer went out in the kitchen. The roof seemed to spring a new leek every time it rained. It was like the place just suddenly started aging. And not just the building. We both started taking sick.” She stared into the distance for a moment. “And then Lester died.”
“I’m sorry,” said Eric.
She shook her head again. “It’s been really bad these past few weeks. No one else can feel it, but I can. There’s an evil energy in the air. It’s like it’s getting ready for something.” She nodded toward the door. “I traced it to that room and I started spending all my time down here. I put up that cross. I blessed this room. I did everything I could think of to seal it away. I didn’t dare tell anyone. They’d think I was crazy. They’d drag me away, put me in a hospital somewhere, and then no one would be left to hold the evil back.”
She was probably right about that.
She gestured at the pile of blankets. “About three days ago, I gathered some supplies and locked myself in. I haven’t dared leave the room since.”
Eric glanced around. Three days? He wondered what she did for a bathroom, but decided against asking her about it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And it seemed like an inappropriate question to ask a lady.
“It’s some kind of demon. I’m sure of it. My faith is the only thing keeping it trapped behind that door.”
Eric turned and looked at it. “Your faith is impressive,” he told her. “It really is. But I’m not sure it’s doing anything against what’s behind that door. It’s too powerful for you alone.”
She sighed. “I know. I’m not strong enough. I’m so tired… I’ve been praying for a miracle, but…” She looked up at him now, her eyes brightening. “Unless… Are you my miracle?”
Eric stared back at her, surprised. “No. I’m no miracle of any kind. I’m just a schmuck who keeps getting into these kinds of situations for some reason.” He turned his gaze back to the door. “But I’m all we’re going to get. And if I’m going to have any chance of stopping this thing, I need to open this door right now.” He turned and held out the key ring. “Tell me which key it is. Please.”
