For good measure, I ventured out onto the back porch. I considered the floorboards beneath my feet. Would Ethan go as far as to conceal his secrets beneath the house itself? I checked the time. I’d already been absent from the festival for forty-five minutes. Hopefully, Bodhi was keeping Ethan busy. My cell had limited service out here in the boonies. If Ethan threw Bodhi a curveball, I wouldn’t hear about it until I got back into town. I needed to expedite my search.
I surveyed Ethan’s backyard. The immediate area was perfectly maintained. Trimmed, lush grass flattened out like a green carpet across the yard, but the landscape grew wild near the edge of the canal. Trees soared overhead, darkening the ground below, their lower branches tangling up with overgrown shrubbery, reaching vines, and towering rose bushes, but nothing of interest caught my eye. I stepped off the porch to circle around the side of the house. The space beneath the porch was blocked off by wood panels, making it impossible to search without leaving evidence of my presence behind. I combed through the contents of Ethan’s small shed. It was full of power tools and hardware, but that was only to be expected in Ethan’s line of work. Frustrated, I planted my hands on my hips and examined the yard one last time, wondering if there was something I might have missed.
Nothing. I turned back to the porch—one last sweep of the inside of the house wouldn’t hurt—but sunshine reflected into my eyes off of something within the tangle of weeds near the water. I crossed the impeccable lawn then used the hem of my shirt to pull the thorny rose bushes out of the way. The sunlight fought to filter through the trees, and I squinted into the gloom. Finally, I saw it. A dilapidated boathouse sat near the edge of the canal, its weathered walls the same color as the trees around it. Vines and weeds inched up the sides, a natural camouflage. Were it not for the one window glinting in the feeble sun despite a layer of mold and grime, I never would’ve seen the building at all.
I clambered through the overgrown weeds, tripping every time a particularly grabby vine got caught in the Velcro straps of the walking boot. At the door to the boathouse, I stood on my toes, wiped the muck from the window, and peered inside. In the murk, I could just make out the shadow of a boat.
A rusty padlock secured the decrepit door. I braced my feet against the boathouse and gave it a good wrench, hoping to tear it from the decaying wood. No such luck. I needed something to help me break in.
In Ethan’s shed, I found a flashlight and a handy carpenter’s axe that felt nice and easy in my grip. I trekked back through the weeds to the boathouse, wound up, and aimed for the padlock. I was rewarded with the satisfying sound of the rusty latch separating from the wood. I struck again. This time, the entire padlock tore free. With a grunt, I jerked the door open, fighting against the corroded hinges.
I shone the flashlight inside. A large fishing boat sat in dry dock, suspended above the greenish water of the canal. It looked as old as the boathouse itself. The paint was peeling and it was covered in foul-smelling mildew. I circled around, carefully navigating the uneven floor, but as the flashlight swept across the bow of the boat, I inhaled sharply.
The front right side bore a hefty dent. It wasn’t enough to put the boat out of commission, but it was significant all the same. But the real kicker was the long scratch of blue paint that accompanied the dent. It didn’t match the white of Ethan’s boat. In fact, it was the same color as the blue stripe on the Winchesters’ sailboat. As I examined the damage, the baozi from earlier turned in my stomach. If this wasn’t confirmation of Ethan’s involvement, I didn’t know what was. I took a picture of the dent with my phone.
Tentatively, I stepped one foot into the boat, wanting to search the inside. It rocked precariously as the rusted winches that held the boat creaked under the extra weight. When it settled, I swung my other leg inside, lifting my walking boot high to clear the edge. The boat was empty—there was no tackle or gear on board—so I pulled open the door to the cabin and flashed the light around.
The first thing that caught my eye was the pile of Caroline’s journals, tossed carelessly into the corner of the cabin. A bottle of lighter fluid stood nearby as though Ethan had planned to burn them. I swallowed hard, examining the rest of the cabin.
A glimpse of something white lying beneath a storage bench caught my eye. I tugged the object into full view with the toe of my good foot, leaning down for a better look.
My stomach surged. I burst out of the cabin just in time to heave over the side of the boat. Leaning heavily against the warped fiberglass, I drew in ragged, wet breaths, shaking from head to toe and coated in a clammy layer of cold sweat. When my stomach settled, I steeled myself and went back in the cabin for a second look at the object.
It was a length of white nautical rope, tied in a noose, and encrusted with the unmistakable reddish brown color of dried blood.
In my imagination, Patrick Winchester dangled from the ceiling in the living room.
I slammed the cabin door shut and vaulted over the edge of the boat, landing heavily on my uninjured foot. Outside, I kicked the ruined padlock beneath the shrubbery. From the state of the boathouse, I doubted Ethan would ever notice that it had been broken into. Then I returned the carpenter’s axe to the shed, locked up Ethan’s house, and hid the key under the mat again.
On the road, I steadily jogged toward town, ignoring the ache in my ankle. When the summer festival came into view, I skirted around the edge, cutting through parking lots and backyards to avoid being seen. My phone chimed. Without slowing, I took it out of my pocket to find a message from Bodhi.
Lost Ethan. Get out now if you haven’t already. Find anything?
I texted back hurriedly. Ethan guilty. Meet me at the house ASAP.
By the time I made it up the path to the house, I was sweating heavily and out of breath. I limped across the front yard and threw open the door to the house.
“Caroline?” I called out. “I know what happened. What do you want me to do now?”
The house was silent. The only sound was my uneven breathing.
“Caroline, come on!”
“Caroline isn’t here,” said a deep voice.
I whirled around to find Ethan stepping out of the hallway and into the living room. He held up one of the pictures from the Winchesters’ photo album. It was the one of him and his father, standing with Christopher and Jane in front of Powell’s Lumber Mill.
“It’s such a shame, Bailey,” Ethan said calmly, caressing the photo with tender care. “I quite liked you.”
My heart pounded as he glanced up at me and smiled. There was no warmth in his eyes. They remained cold and gray, like the unforgiving waves that crashed against the rocks below.
“But now I’m afraid I have to kill you.”
Many thanks to everyone who read my story!
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Alexandria Clarke
The Haunting Of Winchester Mansion: Book 2
23
White Light
I always wondered if that moment right before you died was real. Everyone knew the moment. It was written about in famous works of literature, sung about in heart-wrenching songs, and the classic tragedies of film wouldn’t be complete without the hero’s life flashing before their eyes just prior to succumbing to the inevitable. Sure, the notion was romantic, but realistically, if you had the chance to save your own skin, why would you waste time reminiscing on the past when you could be fighting to ensure the future?
I stood in the foyer of the
massive house, mere feet from the mountain of a man who, I’d discovered mere minutes prior, was a homicidal sociopath.
“It’s such a shame, Bailey,” he said. Calm. Collected. Nonchalant. “I quite liked you.”
He held a photograph of himself between his fingertips. He was no longer the man printed on the twenty-year-old faded picture. He was someone else entirely. I calculated every one of his movements. The brush of his fingers across the surface of the photo. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The subtle rasp of one boot inching across the newly laid wooden floor. The triumphant shine in his blue-gray eyes.
“But now I’m afraid I have to kill you.”
I didn’t wait for Ethan Powell to lunge toward me. I didn’t pause in the doorway and beg for mercy. I didn’t cry or sob or attempt to reason with a man who had long since lost track of his humanity. Instead, in the precious seconds between his declaration and its attempted execution, I considered my options.
Time was relative. Arbitrary. A construct conceived to establish some semblance of control over our lives for us simple mortals. Sometimes, time betrayed you. Others, it worked to your advantage. In that moment, the hands on the clock slowed to an impossible rate, and my mind chased innumerable escape routes in search of the one with the highest survival percentage.
I’d seen enough slasher movies and yelled advice at enough girls through the television screen to know that haggling with a killer, or running upstairs, or hiding in closets or under beds never ended well for whoever was being chased. But this house was different. This house was haunted. And the phantom inside it had good reason to protect me against Ethan Powell. If I could only get her to react.
Behind Ethan, a long corridor led to the basement door. The room below was a cold spot. Our house guest was more active there than anywhere else. But dodging around Ethan to reach it risked immediate capture. Option number one was a no-go.
On the card table beside me, the keys to my husband’s truck glimmered in the sunshine that poured through the open door to my rear. The truck itself was parked in the lawn fifty feet away. Usually, I could cross that distance in seconds. Today, a fractured ankle wrapped in a plaster cast and a walking boot decreased my odds. I needed a distraction.
To my left, a red toolbox lay open. Nail gun. Pliers. Drill bits. A hammer. I made up my mind. My time was up. Ethan tensed, readying himself for the chase.
I seized the hammer from the toolbox and flung it with all of my might across the short distance between me and Ethan. Without bothering to see where it had landed, I took the keys from the card table, spun on my heel, and dashed outside. Pain pulsed through my ankle with every frenzied heartbeat. I ignored it. There was no point in tending to an injury when your entire life was on the line.
Twenty-five feet to the truck. I limped on. Ethan’s boots scuffed across the rotted wood decking of the front porch. I didn’t look back. Ten feet.
I practically slammed into the side of the white workman’s truck, yanked the driver’s door open, and vaulted into the seat. My feet didn’t reach the pedals. I fumbled with the seat adjustments as I shoved the keys into the ignition. Then I caught sight of the rearview mirror. Ethan leaned casually over the deck railing, watching me with an amused expression.
The truck wouldn’t start. No matter how much I jiggled the key. No matter the number of whispered pleas from my lips. The engine whined. Dead. Outside, a light chuckle floated across the yard, permeating the cab of the truck.
“I took out the battery,” Ethan called.
Panic threatened to overwhelm me, rising like a tidal wave rushing toward the shore. I fought it down. “Think, Bailey,” I muttered, my forehead pressed to the steering wheel. “Think.”
Across the yard, a footpath led down the steep incline of the bluff and into the town below. It was at least a ten-minute walk to civilization, but it was my only chance at making it through this. I bailed out of the truck, but as I sprinted toward the footpath, hoping to make it to the cover of the trees before my ankle gave out completely, Ethan stepped down from the porch. For a man of his size, he loped with an impossible grace to cut off my escape route as easily as a lion cornering its prey. Breathing hard, I skidded to a stop. I cursed the fractured ankle. I couldn’t outrun him. Time to move on to another strategy: mind games.
“Did you meet Caroline?” I huffed, steadily backing away from Ethan as he stalked toward me.
I was rewarded by his look of skeptical bewilderment. “I thought you had it all figured out, Bailey,” Ethan answered. “Or did I overestimate your sleuthing abilities? I killed Caroline. Twenty years ago.”
I shook my head. “Not that Caroline.”
He looked over his shoulder at the house. “Oh, you mean your Caroline. The ghost you tried to convince me didn’t exist.”
“She’ll come for you,” I told him, standing my ground. “Justice. That’s what she wants. She told me.”
Ethan smiled serenely. “Would you like to know a secret, Bailey?”
“Not particularly.”
“I already knew about Caroline,” Ethan said anyway, rolling his eyes. “Like it wasn’t obvious. People told stories about this house. Real estate agents tried to sell it only for their clients to see horrifying visions during the grand tour. For nearly twenty years, none of the locals would go near it. They claimed it had creepy vibes. But I used to come up to the house every year, just to make sure everything was nice and taken care of. Caroline was never subtle, even when she was alive. So enlighten me, Bailey. If Caroline is so determined to enact her revenge, why hasn’t she done it yet?” He spread his arms wide, spinning on the spot. “Come on, Caroline. Do your worst. Smite me down.”
The yard and the house were quiet. Motionless. Even the usual breeze was absent. The leaves of the trees didn’t rustle. The grass didn’t ripple underfoot.
Ethan surveyed me with a satisfied smirk. “Looks like you’re out of luck. I guess you can never really rely on the consistency of fifteen-year-old girls, no matter if they’re dead or alive.”
“What did you do to Bodhi?” I demanded, trying to keep my tone steady.
“Your pathetic husband?” Ethan picked dirt from under his fingernails. “I killed him.”
My head rushed. A dull roar rose in my ears. The line between the trees and the sky bleared into a muddied portrait.
And then Ethan laughed.
“Oh, darlin’,” he said, chortling. “You should’ve seen your face just now. Good Lord. I didn’t kill your dolt of a spouse. Although don’t get me wrong, I thought it was hilarious that you were under the impression he could distract me long enough to get away with your little scheme.”
I spoke in a low, rough voice. “Where is he?”
“Taking a nap,” Ethan replied simply. “But let’s not stray from the subject. Where did you jet off to after your fake little food poisoning episode? My house?”
He circled around, his laser-sharp gaze never straying from me as he prowled in a steady loop. I shuffled along the same route, keeping an even distance between us.
“Didn’t find anything, did you?” Ethan asked, but it didn’t sound like a question. “You wouldn’t have. My house is completely clean.”
“Your boathouse isn’t,” I hissed.
He halted his hunt, glaring at me across the damp grass. “You found my boathouse.”
If only I hadn’t. The memory would plague me forever. The pieces of the mystery falling into place. A murder weapon covered in blood. A sadistic crime hidden in plain sight.
“Tell me something, Ethan.” I balled my hands into fists, nausea and rage rising within me. “When you realized I had found Caroline’s journals, did you panic? Did you feel short of breath? Did your heart get stuck in your throat? If you have one anymore, that is.” The strain grew palpable between us, as if a frayed rope bound me to Ethan, stretched to its limits, waiting for one of us to snap. “Did you know then?” I went on. “That the game was up? That you would finally face the consequences of m
urdering Black Bay’s most beloved family?”
He stared at me, deadly calm. “No, my dear. Because who would believe the silly, mentally unstable woman who’s only lived in Black Bay for a few months over the man whose family built this town from the ground up?”
“The Winchesters saved Black Bay,” I corrected him. “Not you. And the one reason you possess even a sliver of respect from the locals is because they don’t know that it was you that ran Christopher and Elizabeth’s sailboat into the rocks that night.”
“That’s not all I did,” Ethan replied with a feral grin.
“I know,” I confirmed. “You drowned Caroline in her own bath, didn’t you? And hung Patrick from the rafters. There’s one thing I can’t work out though.”
“What might that be?”
It was bizarrely conversational now. I had to take advantage of it. If I made it out of this alive, I was going to do it with as much information as possible.
“Patrick and Caroline were in town when you murdered their parents,” I said. “How’d you end up killing them in their own house without raising suspicion?”
Ethan took a step toward me. My eyes flickered to his boots, measuring the interval between us. When the time came to bolt, I needed enough of a head start to make it worth it.
“I’m so glad you asked, Bailey,” he answered. “See, Patrick and Caroline were grounded that night. Not many people knew that, but I did. I overhead Chris and Liz talking about it right before I ran them aground. So I dropped my boat off and drove back into town. I checked the house first, but they weren’t there. They’d snuck out, as teenagers are apt to do.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Listen to your parents, kids.”
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 25
