She hurried down the stairs and almost tripped over something. Not something; someone.
It was Eileen. She was trying to sit up, moaning and rubbing the back of her head.
“Eileen!”
Quickly, Keri knelt by the blonde. “Hey, what happened? Are you all right?”
“Oh, thank God, thank you... Help me up, Keri, please, help me up. I came down the stairs too fast, and I guess... I felt like someone pushed me. I guess I just tripped, I don’t know.”
“Sit, sit, maybe you shouldn’t stand yet. Eileen...”
She paused. Eileen was staring down into the room, her mouth an O of horror, her eyes transfixed. Then she screamed and grabbed Keri’s shoulders, struggling to stand. “Out, out, out, we’ve got to get out!”
Keri turned to look.
And she froze as well, terror streaking through her like a bolt of lightning.
A dark figure stood over the “torture” table, a block placed there when the inn had been used as a Halloween attraction.
A body was chained to the table.
She didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, it was such a bloody, broken pile. Implements lay on top of and around the body, knives, pincers, mallets...
Keri screamed; she tried to tell herself it was all a show, someone had set up the basement as a prank against the team of ghost hunters, or perhaps they had all arranged it just for her.
It couldn’t be real.
But Eileen’s terror was. “Keri!”
Keri began to move, trying to help the wavering Eileen and get the two of them back up the stairs.
She looked back, and she saw a figure standing there, softly weeping. It was a young woman, and she was in a soft white dress, dark hair wound into a braided chignon.
The woman didn’t touch the body; she just stared down at it, tears running down her face.
Transfixed, Keri stared at her, and then a sense of logic kicked in. There was no blood on the woman. None. She was pristine in her white. There was no way she could have recently beaten a body to a pulp.
“Come on, come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” she urged, reaching out to the woman in white.
“Yes, we have to get out of here!” Eileen said, hanging on to Keri. “Oh, my God,” she moaned, “it can’t be real, it can’t be real. I smell it, though, something awful, blood, death. Come on!”
“She has to come, too!” Keri said.
Eileen stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Come with us? We can’t help her, Keri. She’s not injured, she—she’s dead!”
“No, no, the other woman!”
“What other woman? Oh, God,” Eileen moaned.
Keri looked back, and she saw that Eileen was right; there was no one else there.
No one, other than whoever lay on the block, unrecognizable.
She caught Eileen’s hand and she ran. Up the stairs and out into the night, screaming for help at the top of her lungs.
The Seekers
by Heather Graham
Coming July 23, 2019 from MIRA Books.
Copyright © 2019 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
ISBN-13: 9781488088704
The Summoning
Copyright © 2019 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
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