Alex was too occupied with his own thoughts to respond. So much for following his lead.
“We intend to,” I told Ethan smugly.
He tipped his hat to us and with a grin that left his eyes empty and cold, he said to me and Bodhi, “Sleep tight.”
And then he was gone, moving to sit with a few older gentleman that I knew worked at his lumber mill. They welcomed him into their circle rowdily, budging up to make room for his enormous form.
“I want to kill him,” Alex said. With Ethan gone, his face had faded from crimson to pink, but he still looked ready to explode. “Did you hear what he said? About Caroline? About my wife? Like the only reason I married her was because I couldn’t have Caroline. What utter bull—”
Bodhi bumped Alex’s shoulder. “Ignore him. He just said that stuff to get you riled up.”
“It worked.”
“Don’t let him know that,” I said. “Besides, sleep tight? What was that all about?”
Bodhi placed his hand over mine, stopping my fingers from shredding a paper napkin to tiny pieces. “He’s just trying to psych us out. Don’t think about it.”
It was unrealistic advice. Until Saturday, the only thing I could think about was Ethan Powell. The real questions was if Ethan had a plan for us. He couldn’t allow us to exist with the information we possessed. At the same time, we had no definitive proof of Ethan’s crimes considering he had hidden all the evidence.
“Let’s go home,” I said to Bodhi, standing up. I couldn’t stand being in the same room as Ethan. “We’ll regroup tomorrow. Alex?”
“Hmm.”
“You should go too. Don’t torture yourself.”
But Alex’s gaze was trained on Ethan’s back. “No, I’m going to stay a while longer. Keep an eye out, you know?”
“Suit yourself,” said Bodhi. He clapped Alex on the back. “Have a good night. Stay safe.”
“You two, as well.”
We left a few bucks with Alex to pay for our coffee and left the Sanctuary, making a point to say a quick goodbye to Ethan. It was good for the rest of the town to see us on good terms with each other. The more normal things appeared, the easier it would be for us to continue our quasi investigation unhindered.
We drove back to the Winchester house in silence. The woods seemed darker than usual. There was no hint of the moon or the stars. It felt appropriate. Darkness loomed literally and figuratively. Our job was to shine a light into the black.
The house’s exterior lights welcomed us back as we pulled into the front yard. Warmth enveloped me, much like the feeling that Caroline had spread through the room the night before, and I realized that it was the foreign concept of comfort. The sight of the Winchester house soothed my anxieties. For the first time in who knew how many years, I felt like I was coming home.
If I wasn’t mistaken, Bodhi felt it too. His posture changed as soon as we approached the front door, no longer stiff and tense. His shoulders released and his gait grew languid. He was relaxed at the Winchester house despite the fact that we were currently sharing the space with two dead teenagers.
“Hello?” Bodhi called as we stepped into the entryway and kicked off our shoes. “We’re back!”
Patrick trotted down the staircase as though he had been waiting for us to return in his old childhood bedroom. “What did Alex say?”
“We have a lead,” I told him. “But that’s not the biggest piece of news for the day.”
“What is?” Patrick asked warily.
“Ethan’s back,” Bodhi said. Plain and simple.
For some reason, I expected Patrick to react like a scared teenager. In my mind, that’s how it should have happened. He was young, even if he had died twenty years ago, and it wasn’t fair for someone who hadn’t even made it to the legal voting age to think about things like murder. But Patrick continued to throw me off balance.
“Good,” he said. Resolution solidified in his inflection. “Right on time. How’s he look?”
“Annoyingly healthy,” I reported.
“Look, we need you to watch the house tonight, Patrick,” Bodhi said. “I don’t know what Ethan’s planning, but he’s got to have something up his sleeve. The house’s old alarm system doesn’t work, so we need you to act as our personal attack dog. Can you do that?”
“Woof, woof.”
“Atta boy.”
Patrick sat down on the floor near the glass doors, looking out at the black night. The porch light’s illuminated the garden, but beyond the wild tangles of roses and vines, there was only darkness. Caroline’s plumeria blooms were tiny pink fireflies in the gloom, and the bluff’s dropoff was entirely invisible. I suppressed a shudder, thinking of how much the backyard reminded me of the inevitable void. It was the one thing about the Winchester house that filled me with anxiety. That and the potential bodies buried in the basement.
Bodhi and I showered together. I tried to convince myself that the reason we did it was for fun. Or for old time’s sake. There was a time when we were younger that we had trouble paying our water bill. Then showering together had been romantic and adventurous. Tonight, I knew we did it because we were scared to be alone. At least I was. I wouldn’t feel safe until Ethan Powell no longer had any kind of access to us. But with Bodhi there beside me, it was easier to pretend we could lock the doors of the Winchester house and go to bed like a normal couple.
Instead, Bodhi locked every door in the house including the one that led to our bedroom. Then he propped a chair against the inside before climbing into bed beside me. He even found an old aluminum baseball bat left over from Patrick’s time in Little League in the basement. This he kept by our bedside table.
“Where exactly is the line between prepared and paranoid?” I asked him. I meant it teasingly, but the question came out in a more serious tone of voice than I intended.
“I don’t know,” he said, curling up around me and pulling me close. “But I’m not taking any chances.”
I snuggled into him beneath the blanket. “Did you ever expect any of this to happen?”
Bodhi snorted. “What? Befriending ghosts? Hunting down killers? No, I can safely say becoming a ghost whisperer was never on my to-do list.”
“Yeah, but do you think it was fate?”
He was quiet for a minute. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“But you believe in karma and destiny.”
“It’s different though.”
I rolled over so that I was facing him. “How so?”
Bodhi propped his head up on his elbow. Though we were inches away from each other, his head seemed to be in another dimension. “Think about it this way. Say you had a decision to make. Two choices are offered to you. The first one is the easy choice. It’s a shortcut to your destination, but it also comes with negative ramifications. The second one is less appealing. You know that it’s technically the right choice, but there are challenges to overcome before you reach your desired destination.”
“I’d choose the second.”
Bodhi held up a finger to indicate he wasn’t finished. “That’s not the lesson. This is. Fate teaches you that it’s okay to choose the first path. If we believe that our future is predetermined, it means that taking the easy way out won’t affect the overall outcome. You convince yourself that you are not responsible for your choices or the consequences that accompany them. Karma, on the other hand, teaches you that all things arise from the mind. Practice wellness. Practice progress. Everything that you do and say is your own responsibility. You are not controlled by fate. Your future depends on what you do now. So when the time comes to choose between the easy path and the right path, the stronger meditative mind is more likely to choose the right path.”
“And what about destiny?”
“Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.”
“Buddha?”
“Jean de La Fontaine. French poet.”
I pondered this quietly for a minute before another though
t crossed my mind. “Fine, then riddle me this. If fate doesn’t exist, how did we end up in this house? Say we decided to go to Nevada or New Mexico instead? Then what?”
“Then we would be renovating a home in Nevada or New Mexico without having to worry about ghosts or murderers,” Bodhi said. “What a dream.”
“But that would’ve been the easy path,” I pointed out. “Not the right one.”
Bodhi smoothed the crinkle that appeared in my forehead whenever I was thinking too hard. “What’s in your head, babe?”
“Say we had chosen another place to go,” I said, avoiding Bodhi’s gaze. “Sure, we wouldn’t be dealing with ghosts or homicide, but we would still be sleeping in separate bedrooms.”
He looked at me for a very long time. So long that I wondered if by mentioning that simple fact, I had pushed him away again. Then he said:
“You, my love, make a very good point.” He drew me closer, framing my face with his hands as he kissed me softly. “Remind me to thank Patrick and Caroline tomorrow.”
“For what?”
Bodhi nuzzled his nose against mine. “For bringing you back to me.”
“We have a long way to go, Bodhi.”
“I know that,” he said. “But it’s a start.”
“It’s a start,” I agreed. We lapsed into silence, breathing each other’s air. I looped my arm around Bodhi’s waist. “By the way, you’re wasted on carpentry.”
“Oh, really? What makes you say that?”
“Because you clearly missed your calling as a monk or a yoga teacher.”
Bodhi chuckled and playfully nudged me beneath the blanket. “Hush, you. Go to sleep.”
The sound of something shattering downstairs jolted me from slumber. I shot upright, tapping Bodhi on the chest to wake him up, but he was already awake and alert. He shushed me as he climbed out of bed and pressed his ear to the door.
“I don’t hear anything,” he whispered. “It was probably just Caroline.”
“Caroline hasn’t broken anything in days,” I reminded him.
He took the baseball bat from where it rested against the bedside table. “Stay here. I’ll go check it out.”
I scrambled out from under the covers. “Fat chance. That’s how every terrible horror movie starts.”
“Baby, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re already living in a horror movie.”
I grabbed a flashlight. “Whatever. I’m coming with you.”
In the landing, all was quiet. Shadows drew strange patterns on the creaky floorboards as we inched toward the stairs.
“Patrick?” Bodhi whispered. “Caroline?”
No one answered. That was disconcerting. I didn’t expect Caroline to reply. She was notoriously anti-social in her afterlife. Patrick, in comparison, almost always appeared when we asked. Not to mention, he had promised to watch over the house for the night. Where was he now?
“Turn off the flashlight,” Bodhi murmured.
“Why?”
“So if someone’s here, they won’t know we’re awake.”
“In that case, we should turn on every light in the house,” I muttered darkly, switching the flashlight off. “Do you think the Winchesters owned any guns?”
“I think they were more into sailing than hunting.”
“Pity.”
We crept down the stairs and tiptoed into the living room. Patrick no longer sat by the glass doors—a disturbing sign—but nothing out of the ordinary caught my attention at first. The back of my neck prickled in anticipation as I scanned the room.
“There,” I whispered, pointing. “The front window’s broken.”
The shards of glass on the new flooring reflected the porch light from outside. A cement block lay amongst the wreckage. Someone had thrown it through the window, leaving a jagged flaw in the house’s security. Bodhi raised the baseball bat as he snuck forward to inspect the damage.
“Should I call the police?” I asked.
“Wait. It could just be a couple of kids making trouble.”
I gathered to courage to join Bodhi in the living room. “If it is, it’s still vandalism.”
He lowered the bat with a sigh. “Whoever it was, they’re gone now.”
But I was rooted in place, staring at the spot near the sliding doors where Patrick had so recently lounged. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Why?”
I pointed. Bodhi turned. He saw what I saw.
“Run,” he whispered.
I ran.
Because Ethan Powell was waiting for us on the new decking of the back porch. Because he had been watching us calmly through the glass the entire time we had been downstairs. Because at his side, he held a length of white nautical rope, tied in the shape of a hangman’s noose.
31
Uninvited
My feet carried me without consulting my brain. I careened down the first-floor hallway with Bodhi on my heels, heading for the basement. Behind us, Ethan pounded on the sliding glass door. The resulting booms shook the house. Each one hit me like an electric shock. I skidded across the floor, sliding into the basement door.
“Go, go, go,” Bodhi urged as I coaxed the tricky door open.
A resounding smash rattled my bones. It sounded like Ethan had broken one of the glass doors in the living room. I gritted my teeth. “If Patrick doesn’t kill him, I will. Those doors were expensive.”
“That’ll be the least of our worries if Ethan finds us,” Bodhi said.
As if on cue, Ethan’s voice echoed down the hallway and through the basement door. “Bailey! Bodhi! Come on out, you two. We can settle this like adults.”
Bodhi locked the door, but we both knew the old door wouldn’t hold if Ethan decided to break it down. “Start piling stuff up on the stairs. Anything. Bikes, hardware, boxes you can lift.”
I hobbled down the stairs after Bodhi, cursing the plaster cast on my ankle for hindering easy movement. Together, we blocked the doorway with anything and everything, including a heavy-duty toolbox at the top of the steps, boxes full of Patrick’s old football gear, and even a moth-bitten sofa that the Winchesters had stored in the basement. Then we huddled together at the rear of the room, near the door of the wine cellar.
“Should I call the police now?”
Before Bodhi could answer, the basement door rattled in its frame. I jumped in fright. Bodhi pulled out his cell out of the pocket of his sweat pants and handed it to me. “Yeah, call the police. But if he makes it down here before they do, I am not at fault for what happens then.”
I dialed 911, breathing hard as Ethan thundered on the door.
“Let’s talk,” Ethan called, his voice muffled as it traveled beneath the gap in the door, through the mounds of the Winchesters’ forgotten items, and to our ears. “I just want to talk.”
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“Someone’s broken into our home,” I whispered urgently. Bodhi searched through the items around us. What he was looking for, I had no idea. “We’re hiding in the basement, but he’s trying to break down the door.”
“Okay, ma’am. Please stay calm. This is the Winchester house, correct?”
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the emergency operator knew my voice. After all, Bodhi and I had called 911 more often in the last few weeks than I had my entire life. “Yes, this is Bailey Taylor.”
“Okay, Mrs. Taylor. My name is Jane. I’m going to ask you to stay on the line with me until dispatch reaches you.”
“Okay, Jane.”
“Aha!” Bodhi stood up, triumphantly brandishing what looked like a vintage revolver.
“Baby, that looks like it belongs in a museum,” I said. “I doubt it still works.”
The 911 operator sounded confused. “Sorry?”
“Not you,” I said into the phone.
Bodhi checked the chamber. “It’s loaded.”
“Don’t—”
With a crash, the basement door gave way. I screamed invol
untarily as Ethan’s steel-toed boot appeared at the top of the steps, but with the stairway full of crap, he wasn’t making his way into the basement anytime soon.
“Mrs. Taylor?” Jane’s voice was tinged with concern, despite the fact that emergency operators were supposed to remain calm. “What was—?”
Bodhi fired the gun.
“Oh my! Was that a gunshot? Mrs. Taylor!”
“Bodhi!”
He fired again. “What?”
The first bullet ricocheted off of the metal toolbox at the top of the steps, leaving a noticeable dent in the metal. The second embedded itself in the soft backing of the sofa perched haphazardly on the staircase. Either Bodhi’s aim was off, or the antique gun wasn’t in great shape. On the upside, Ethan withdrew into the first-floor hallway. Apparently, he hadn’t been expecting a gunfight.
“Shots fired,” Jane said into my ear. “Mrs. Taylor, are you still with me?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And then Ethan slammed his boot into the door, sending the toolbox tumbling forward with a crash, and Bodhi fired the gun again. Ethan jerked back, presumably to avoid Bodhi’s erratic aim, but something odd was happening upstairs. Heavy, scuffling footsteps scratched overhead. Then a crash rang out, and Ethan yelled.
Even as Jane chattered in my ear, I forgot about her. The basement grew cold. My eyes found the patch of concrete in the middle of the room that was lighter in color. The flaw in the foundation. My body went deathly still. My vision clouded. There was something inside of me.
And then I was underground, staring up at Ethan Powell’s face as he shoveled dirt over top of me. It crushed my chest and filled my lungs.
“Mrs. Taylor!”
Jane’s voice jolted me from the illusion, but there was no mistaking the moment for what it was. Caroline had used me. I slumped against the basement wall, suddenly lethargic. On the floor above us, a loud bang echoed, followed by Ethan’s distinctly gruff tones shouting every curse word in the book. The cacophony continued, but it faded in volume, as though Ethan was slowly but surely being driven from the house.
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 34
