Andrew repeated his question as the car straightened out, and Neil pounded the gear into drive. The car lurched forward, heading straight for Emily and Claudia.
“Neil!” Andrew hollered. “Watch out!”
Claudia grabbed Emily and threw her out of the way. When she saw Neil she stopped short and covered her mouth in horror. She began shouting his name, and he faltered for a fraction of a second, doubling over the steering wheel as though in intense physical pain.
“Neil, what the bloody hell are you doing!”
Andrew felt a fist connect with his jaw, and he was thrown back against the window. A sharp pain lanced his face, and he felt a trickle of warm blood ooze down his cheek.
Stars and splotches of light filled his vision, then the blurred image of Neil’s face and eyes swam to the surface. Except they weren’t Neil’s eyes. They shone milky and evil and deranged. Another fist connected to his jaw and sent his head crashing against the window as the engine roared and the car careened down the hill.
30
* * *
“WHY AREN’T YOU DEAD YET, boy?” the monster inside Neil bellowed.
The Lady in Red, Nick Chamberlain’s mother, had possessed Neil and was in control of a massive Range Rover, two and a half tons of steel capable of grinding the bodies of everyone he loved under its tires or smashing at high speed into the surrounding trees, killing them both.
Andrew attempted to move, but his face stung like hell, and his temple throbbed from crashing against the window. Somehow he managed to hoist his body around, desperate to make sure that Emily had escaped unharmed. The pain blurred his vision, but he could make out Emily and Claudia running and screaming in the wake of the car with petrified looks on their faces. The others raced to catch up to them, everyone shouting and waving their arms. Andrew’s heart plummeted to the bottom of his chest as they vanished from view; the Range Rover coursed down the hill and peeled out onto the open road.
Don’t follow us, Emily. Don’t follow us.
Neil’s hands clenched the steering wheel, sweat beading across his brow as his breaths came in shallow gasps. The Range Rover veered wildly back and forth across the road, forcing Andrew to brace his hands against the inside door panel as he fought to stay conscious.
“You should have killed her by now! What’s wrong with you?” she howled through Neil’s lips. “Why is she still alive?”
Despite the vicious screams issuing from Neil’s mouth, Andrew saw him fighting The Lady in Red, battling to take back possession of his body. But the harder he fought, the more erratic his driving became.
The ghoul’s warning from the séance blazed into Andrew’s mind: “Don’t you know I can kill her right now if I wanted? I could infect her mind and make her crash through that window. Would you like to see that? Her body slashed by those shards of glass and broken on the street?”
She could do the same thing to Neil. She could shred his mind to pieces, or force him to drive this car off the road and smash his body through the windscreen.
“Neil,” Andrew whispered, his head swaying as white blotches of light fired around the perimeter of his vision. “Don’t do it. Don’t fight her. She’ll hurt you. Please—don’t.”
Neil’s face contorted in anguish, and his hands clenched the steering wheel as he railed against the monster, every muscle in his body taut in pain.
“Please. Just do what she says. For me. For Mum.”
Neil seized as if pain shot through him like an electric shock. It wasn’t until that moment that Andrew understood how much Neil cared for both of them and had from the very beginning, even when Andrew hated him for it. Andrew couldn’t bear to watch the thing harm him, and he knew she would, in the worst possible way, given the smallest excuse. He was a Chamberlain, after all. They both were.
“What do you want?” Andrew choked out, the pain in his head blinding. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want my son back,” she spat at him.
“But there are only…ashes. They won’t bring him back to you. You must know that, Mrs. Chamberlain.”
“Don’t you dare call me by that name, boy!”
She backhanded him hard across his face, a ring on Neil’s hand gouging his skin, the force slamming his head against the seat. His ears rang with piercing echoes.
“You think you can use your saccharine voice and that pouty face on me? You might charm that whore of yours and all those little girls that fall at your feet, but not me, boy. No, you’re just like Nicholas. Stupid, foolish men. Stupid, weak Chamberlains.
“I know what you’re planning. You want to join his ashes with hers, so they can be together. So they can spend eternity gallivanting across the earth, hand in hand, without a care. That’s what Nicholas wanted when he found the ashes of the ones that haunted her house. To reunite those ‘poor lost lovers,’ they told me. Thought it was romantic to place them at rest together. Said they felt a need to do it. Need? Of course they felt the need—it was in their blood to help, being a Chamberlain and a Thomas. But did they ever think of my needs? Did they ever worry how they were breaking my heart—no! They never listened to me when I warned them about the curse. They called me a foolish, superstitious old woman. I told them it didn’t matter if they combined those ashes—it wouldn’t work—the curse was too strong. And it was too strong for them in the end—they couldn’t fight it.” She paused and glared at him. “What makes you different? Why haven’t you killed her yet, why is she still alive? She’s a Thomas, she’s cursed, she should be dead!”
Andrew pressed his hand against his temple and felt blood trickling through his fingers.
“Nicholas—he promised he’d take care of me after his father left us. We were all we had, Nicky and me. He promised. Promised me that I would never want for anything. And then when that bitch came along—” she pointed Neil’s finger at the satchel Andrew had slung across his shoulder “—he left me without a word, despite everything I had done for him, everything I sacrificed for him, despite knowing he would kill her in the end. He came up here with her and called me crazy, a lunatic. Laughed at the truth. Laughed at his mother who loved and slaved and gave him everything! Abandoned me for a tramp he barely knew. A worthless whore!
“And you’re no better!” She slammed Neil’s fists on the wheel. “Just another Chamberlain! Just like Nicholas’s father, just like Nicholas—you barely know that girl—but it doesn’t matter, does it? You have to have her. Stupid whoring men, you all are. And fucking whores, those Thomases!”
“Your husband—he didn’t—”
“A Thomas. Yes. Twenty-five years of marriage and he left me for one. And do you think anyone would understand? My friends, my priest? There was no one for me. The only one who would listen was the spiritualist. Everyone called her crazy, but she knew, and she could summon the white witch. She held a séance, and that’s when I learned about the curse, the evil of the Thomas women. They all should burn in hell. I’ll kill you all before I’ll let those ashes touch.”
Andrew swallowed down his revulsion, the sickening feeling of lightheadedness overtaking him. The salty, metallic taste of blood filled his mouth as it slid down the back of his throat. One of his eyes was swollen shut from her beating, making sight nearly impossible.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, not wanting to know the answer.
“I want my son back. He’s mine, not hers. Not then, and not now! Do you understand? He was obsessed—just like you. And that Thomas of yours is just as obsessed as his was. She’ll do anything for you, won’t she? She was willing to leave you forever. I saw the way she buried herself in the ground, how she almost died for you. See, see how she’s chasing us? See?” She forced Neil’s hand to gesture roughly toward the rearview mirror.
Whipping around, Andrew saw a white sedan gaining on them, close enough now to see Simon at the wheel and Christian next to him screaming into his cell phone. No! No, they had to turn away.
“Your Emily will give me Nicholas’s
ashes for your life, she will. And if you want to see this man you call ‘Dad’ alive again, you’ll destroy that whore’s ashes—you’ll throw them into the ocean where they belong.”
Despite the fear raging in his mind, something about her words struck a chord. You’ll throw them into the ocean. She had not said, “I will throw them into the ocean.” Could she not touch Nora’s ashes for some reason? Was what Dwayne had said true?
There was only one way to find out. Without a sound, he slinked the satchel off his arm. He shoved the bag at Neil’s chest. “Here! If you really want to destroy her, take her. She’s yours!”
Neil’s body plastered itself against the door as if hot coals had been shoved under his skin. His movements, however, caused the car to swerve so violently it careened around the curve on two tires. The Lady in Red hissed and struggled with Neil’s body to right the vehicle as it missed an oncoming car by inches.
She couldn’t touch the ashes.
Andrew’s mind raced with the implications. Even while possessing another body, she could not touch the ashes. Maybe that was why she hadn’t taken Nora’s ashes before? He shoved the satchel at Neil again, praying it would drive her out of his body.
It was a dreadful mistake. Before the satchel even touched him, Neil’s fist connected with his temple, and the force of the blow crashed his mangled face against the window.
“I’ll kill both of you, do you understand? Just like I killed that fucking doctor.”
Doctor. What doctor? Then the realization hit him. She had killed Vandin. She’d made him pull the trigger and blow his brains out in the caves. She was strong enough to invade his mind, drive him insane, and make him kill himself—what else had she forced him to do? Spy, steal for her? If she could break a man’s will like that, they were fucking doomed.
He moaned and saw a haze of blood coating the webbed glass. His head rocked in pain as he tried to focus on the end of the road that was fast approaching—the turnoff to the coast. “The cliffs,” he muttered, blood on his lips.
Neil wrenched the wheel around, and they took the curve at a frightening speed. Andrew’s hands flailed at the dashboard, attempting to hold himself in place. His pulse hammered in his throat as he tried to focus, tried to concentrate. He had to draw that thing out of Neil, he had to.
Their tires chewed the road, speeding faster as they neared the coast; only a hundred yards ahead was the turnout for the highway. Andrew glanced behind him and gasped. No! The white sedan was almost on them, only yards away. Suddenly Neil slammed on the brakes, and the Range Rover screeched and skidded, sending Andrew reeling against the dashboard. The sedan swerved, barely avoiding them at the last second, and headed straight for the ditch on the side of the road.
Andrew’s heart hammered against his ribs. They were going to crash. Yet seconds before tumbling into the ditch the sedan righted itself, squealing in the gravel before lurching roughly back onto the road with a roar.
“Yes!” he cried. But his euphoria died instantly as they finally reached the turnout and burst out onto the highway.
The stretch of headlands blurred past them on their left. It was a vast, green length of land that narrowed and ended abruptly with a sheer drop off of perilous cliffs. Neil floored the Range Rover and it rocketed forward, barely avoiding the oncoming traffic.
Neil turned, and Andrew saw the creature’s milky eyes narrowing in triumph. Suddenly, Andrew was no longer sure what the demon was going to do. She could wait to get her son’s ashes from Emily, or she could drive them both over the cliffs—killing everything she hated and banishing Nora’s ashes to the ocean—where they could never be reunited with Nick’s.
Andrew’s only choice was to try to take control of the car. He fisted his hand as hard as he could, knowing he would have only one chance.
He swung. His fist smashed against Neil’s jaw, sending a blinding jolt of pain up Andrew’s arm. The car skidded along the divider, metal grinding against metal. The creature roared in anger and flung Neil’s fist into Andrew’s throat. Andrew’s body flew against the window, shattering the glass. A sharp stinging pain sliced the back of his skull, and he felt a thick hot wetness leak down the nape of his neck. Grappling to sit up, Andrew grabbed his scalp and felt blood coating his hand. He reared back and smashed Neil’s forehead against the steering wheel.
A blaring horn made Andrew snap his head up, and he fought to jerk the wheel to the right to keep from rear-ending the car in front of them. Curses ripped from their mouths as the Range Rover swerved wildly across the highway. Neil’s body convulsed in fury, and his sweat and blood splattered the dash and console. The slickness made their hands slip along the contours of the steering wheel as they battled for control.
Without warning, another horn wailed and they both froze. A dilapidated van crested the top of the hill. He knew that van. Holy hell!
The Big Doobie took to the air and hung there as though in slow motion. It smashed down on its tires, and the wheel bed skidded against the ground in a spray of sparks. Its brakes squealed, and the van lurched to a stop, blocking both lanes of traffic. All at once, the doors flew open and bodies dove out and over the divider like rats fleeing the Titanic, as cars careened around it, spinning out of control. One after one, vehicles collided into the van, turning it into a block of distorted metal. Andrew steeled his body for impact, certain they would be crushed on both sides in the pileup of mangled cars.
But the Range Rover skidded to a dead stop instead. Hope rushed through Andrew’s heart. He lunged for the door, but a vice-like grip twisted his arm, nearly snapping it in two. He screamed—the pain was beyond excruciating as Neil hauled him out the open door.
“Out!” it bellowed, and dragged Andrew to the side of the road and over the divider.
“Andrew!”
In a white hot panic, he wheeled around to see Christian racing down the road behind him. He could hear Simon shouting as Neil dragged him off onto the headlands.
Then he saw Emily. And she saw him. Their eyes held. He could see the horror in her expression as she took in his battered and bloodied face, his injured arm.
Zoey ran to her side along with Christian and Claudia; Simon overtook them.
“No! Stay back!” Andrew screamed at everyone.
“Neil!” Claudia cried. “Luv! Stop! Neil!”
The Lady in Red within Neil roared in fury and twisted Andrew’s arm again. The agony was so severe he nearly blacked out. Claudia cried and rushed forward, but Emily held out her arms, blocking her from going any closer.
Andrew willed her with his eyes not to follow. His nightmare commenced as Neil dragged him toward the cliffs. It had begun, clear, precise—like a movie. This was the end. His body moved without his control. He was a player in a timeless, cursed play.
The monster had him at the edge of the headlands now. Rocks upon rocks jutted cruelly from the ground, the precursor to what lay below. The sea crashed against the cliffs, and the surf churned violently at the base of the outcropping. The wind whipped so hard against his body that he could feel the salt stinging inside his wounds.
He turned and saw Emily standing there, panting for breath.
“Emily, get away from here! Run! Leave the ashes and get away!”
But she didn’t. Her eyes never left the monster’s as she slowly came closer, like she was approaching a wild animal she thought she could tame.
“Give me the ashes, girl, or I kill him,” The Lady in Red demanded, jerking Andrew’s arm and making him wail out loud.
“No! Don’t listen to her, Emily. Leave! Now!”
“Just give me the ashes and you can have him. All I want is those ashes.”
Everyone else drew closer and closer as though empowered by Emily’s courage.
“Stop! She’ll kill him,” Andrew yelled. “Don’t you understand? She killed Vandin. She’s inside Neil. Get away, all of you! Simon, Christian, for God’s sake, take Emily away!”
Emily took another step closer. He turned to
face Neil. “Dad, please…Dad, I know you can hear me, please Dad,” he pleaded. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything that monster wants, but please—don’t hurt her.”
At his words, Neil’s body contorted as if he was being burned alive.
“Say any more boy,” she hissed, “and I slice his mind to ribbons.”
Emily took another step closer.
“No!” Andrew screamed, but it was too late.
In a frenzied rush, the demon threw Andrew to the ground where he landed on his arm, crippling pain slicing down his side. Wrapping his other arm around himself, he grappled against the rocks, fighting to stand, but Neil had descended on Emily and yanked her to the edge of the cliff. His hand went instantly to Emily’s neck, the other plundering her coat pocket.
“Where is it? What have you done with him?!” The Lady in Red shrieked. Emily’s head whipped around like a ragdoll as the demon shook her, screaming its demands.
“Let her go!” Andrew roared.
Everyone rushed forward, causing the monster to force Emily to the very edge of the cliff. They all froze to a dead stop.
“Why? Why aren’t you dead yet? You should be dead!” the abomination screeched at her. Emily’s nails clawed over Neil’s hands, trying to pry them free.
“I married her. She is my wife!” Andrew screamed.
The words paralyzed Neil’s body where it stood, their meaning stabbing their way into the creature’s mind.
“There is no more curse. She’s mine. Let her go! I’m her husband. We swore our vows to each other. It is enough. You know it is!”
Neil gasped, and his body shuddered, his consciousness breaking free from The Lady in Red and seeking out Andrew. “She knows, Andrew. She knows the curse is broken! Run!”
Emily must have felt his body fail, to falter for a moment; she wheeled around to escape, but the demon was faster and regained control of Neil. She twisted Neil’s hands around Emily’s throat. With a howl, she smashed Emily to the ground. Her head smacked against the rocks with a hollow thud.
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 53
