In the Dead of Night

Sara Douglas wasn’t afraid of the dark. She was a big girl, after all—almost eight years old. She didn’t believe in monsters or the bogeyman or things that went bump in the night. But lying on her frilly bed, watching the lightning flicker outside her bedroom window, she was scared.

She clutched her little blue hippo and counted the seconds the way Mommy had told her. One. Two. A yelp escaped her when thunder crashed. She slapped her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes tightly. The thunder seemed to go on forever, like the approaching footsteps of some giant beast.

Sara wanted to slide into bed with her sister, but Sonia was spending the night at her friend Jonie’s house. Sonia was nine years old and never got scared. She laughed at Sara’s fear of thunderstorms and called her a ninny. That made Sara mad, but she still wished she were here.

The curtains at the French doors that opened to the balcony billowed with a sudden gust of wind. In the darkness they looked like restless ghosts. Sara jerked the covers up to her eyes. Another flash of lightning speared the sky. Thunder cracked so hard the windows rattled.

Throwing off the blanket, she slipped from her bed and darted to the French doors. It wasn’t raining, but the treetops swayed like spindly fingers. Taking a deep breath, she ran along the balcony toward her parents’ room, her bare feet slapping against the tile like little flippers.

One of the French doors to their room stood open a few inches. Yellow light slanted out like a sunray. Voices floated on the wind. Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Nicholas. Sara liked Uncle Nicholas. He smelled like peppermint gum and told funny stories that made her laugh.

Putting her eye to the two-inch opening, she peered into the room. Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Nicholas were standing around the table in the sitting area, looking at some papers. But they weren’t laughing. Their expressions gave Sara a funny feeling in her stomach. She wanted to go inside. She wanted her mommy to hold her while Uncle Nicholas told funny stories.

But Mommy was crying. Uncle Nicholas looked mad. He was shouting, the veins on his neck standing out like snakes beneath his skin. Daddy’s face was red, his hands clenched into fists.

Sara wanted desperately to rush in and throw herself into her mother’s arms. But she couldn’t move. Her feet seemed to be frozen to the ground. She didn’t know why, but the thought of going inside frightened her even more than the storm.

She started to cry. Lightning flickered. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the tree branches claw at the night sky. She set her hands over her ears to block the inevitable crash of thunder, but she knew it wouldn’t help.

Thunder exploded. Three times in quick succession. So many times that Sara thought it would never stop. Holding her hands over her ears, crying, she shoved open the French door. Another kind of fear gripped her when she entered the bedroom. The kind that made her legs feel shaky and her stomach go tight.

Fear transformed into terror when she saw the gun. Death exploded from the muzzle. Once. Twice. Each shot was as bright as lightning. Louder than thunder. And more terrifying than any storm.

She saw a shocking bloom of red, as brilliant as the roses that grew in Mommy’s garden. The world spun as if a giant tornado had picked her up. The room blurred into an eddy of terror and lightning and thunder.

“Mommy,” Sara whispered.

When her mommy didn’t answer, the night rushed in and swept her into its dark embrace.

The headlights of the rental car cut through rain and fog and darkness. Gripping the steering wheel, Sara Douglas inched along the narrow coast road at a snail’s pace, not daring to look over the guardrail where the landscape dropped away to the rocky shore a hundred feet below.

The house had been calling to her for quite some time. Years, in fact, but Sara had never heeded that nagging little voice. Her job as a costume designer kept her far too busy to listen to frivolous voices inside her head. Certainly not when it came to the terrible chain of events that had shattered her life twenty years ago.

The phone call two days ago had changed everything.

Even now, the memory of the electronically altered voice sent a chill skittering up her spine. Why would someone call her and dredge up a past she’d spent a lifetime trying to forget? Who would go to such lengths to hide their identity and why? Sara intended to find out.

Midnight was not the best time to arrive at a sprawling old mansion you haven’t seen for two decades. She’d planned on arriving in the light of day, but her flight from San Diego to San Francisco had been delayed due to mechanical problems. She’d taken a puddle jumper to the Shelter Cove Airport, a tiny facility that served much of northwestern California known as the Lost Coast. By the time she retrieved her luggage and rented a car, it was nearly ten o’clock.

A leaning mailbox overgrown with a tangle of vines alerted her that she’d reached her destination. She turned the car into the weed-riddled driveway. The old Douglas mansion loomed before her like some aging Hollywood actress. Shrouded in mystery and glamour and scandal, the house was perched high above the rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The old place seemed to cry as it looked out over the black expanse of sea. Twenty-five years ago Sara’s father, Richard Douglas—an up-and-coming Hollywood producer at the time—designed and built it for his family. A dream home that should have been filled with children and laughter and happiness.

A double murder and suicide five years later turned his dream into a nightmare, the mansion into a dark legend and the setting for even darker stories.

Sara and her sister, Sonia, had inherited the property. They’d rented out the old place a dozen times over the years. They’d discussed selling it more than once, even going so far as to put it on the real estate market. But the house hadn’t sold. Later, the real estate agent told them no one wanted a house that had been the backdrop for the worst crime in the history of Cape Darkwood.

The headlights illuminated the battered mahogany garage door through slashing rain. Sara put the vehicle in Park and killed the engine. For an instant the only sound came from the pounding of rain on the roof.

“Welcome home,” she whispered. But her voice sounded strained in the silence of her car.

Not giving herself time to debate the wisdom of coming here tonight, she threw open the door and stepped into the driving rain. Darting to the rear of the car, she heaved her suitcase from the trunk and started toward the front door. Around her the cold air smelled of the ocean and wet foliage.

She rolled the suitcase up the slate walkway to the tall beveled-glass door and jammed her key into the lock. A single twist and the door groaned open. The odors of dust, mildew and years of neglect greeted her. She’d called ahead and had the utility companies turn on the electricity and phone. As her hand fumbled along the wall in the darkness, she fervently hoped they had.

A sigh of relief slid from her lips when her fingers found the switch and light flooded the foyer. For a moment, Sara could do nothing but stare at the majesty of the double spiral staircase. Constructed of marble and mahogany, twin stairs curved left and right to a railed balcony hall above that overlooked the grand foyer.

An onslaught of memories rushed over her. Her dad standing in the hall with his arms wrapped around her mother. The sound of laughter as she and Sonia rode their sleeping bags down the slick marble steps in a race to the bottom. She could practically smell the roses her mother picked every morning and arranged in a vase on the console table.

In a flash, the memories were gone, replaced by the emptiness of a house that had been vacant for so long there was no life left inside it.

Sara’s boots clicked smartly against the marble tile as she crossed to the formal dining room. She flipped the light switch and for an instant she could only stand there as the grandeur of the room washed over her. A crystal chandelier iced with cobwebs cast prisms of light onto an oblong table draped with a dusty tarp. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out over a garden that had once abounded with roses and wild-flowers, neat rows of herbs and the ornate Victorian gazebo Daddy and Uncle Nicholas had built that last summer. Little did they know that by fall all three of them would be dead—and her father would be accused of murder and suicide.

For twenty years Sara had believed that. She’d hated her father for stealing her childhood and shattering her happiness. For two decades she’d held that hatred close; she’d clung to it because she’d needed someone to blame. Someone to hate so she could lock all those old emotions into a compartment and get on with her life.

The phone call had brought it all rushing back, like black water backing up in a drain.

Leaving her suitcase in the dining room, she went through the first level of the house, turning on lights as she went. Some of the rooms didn’t have lamps, but there was enough light for her to see that the interior had fallen in to disrepair. In her father’s study, she walked along the floor-to-ceiling shelves, wondering what had happened to his collection of books. The scents of lemon oil, fragrant cigars and the leather of his chair drifted to her, but they were only memories. An arched hall took her to the bathroom. Several marble tiles on one wall had fallen to the floor and broken. Rust-colored water dripped from the ceiling, forming a puddle the size of a saucer on the floor. In the semidarkness, the stain looked like blood.

“Don’t even go there,” she muttered, refusing to let her imagination take flight.

She lugged her suitcase up the stairs. Her heart pitter-pattered in her chest when she shoved open the door to her old bedroom and turned on the light. For an instant she expected to see twin beds with matching pink comforters and frilly pillows. Carved pine furniture. A purple bean-bag chair and a doll-house as big as a Volkswagen.

Instead she was met with a queen-size bed and an antique cherry bureau that was covered with dust. A tarnished brass lamp sat upon a lone night table. Fresh linens rested on a wingback chair. It was the only room in which the furniture wasn’t covered.

Sara was glad she’d called ahead and told the caretaker, a retiree by the name of Skeeter Jenks, that she would be staying the week. She and Sonia had been sending him a small check each month for maintenance. She thought about the leak in the bathroom and made a mental note to call him the next morning.

Setting her suitcase on the bed, Sara unpacked her clothes and toiletries. She’d just hung the last pair of jeans in the closet when the lights flickered and went out. She knew it was silly—she was
not
afraid of storms—but her heart went into overdrive when she was suddenly plunged into darkness.

“Lovely,” she muttered.

Nothing to be alarmed about, a shaky little voice assured her. The mansion was old and practically derelict. More than likely, lightning or the wind had taken out a telephone pole. Or maybe she’d turned on too many lights and overloaded the fuse box.

Thankful she’d had the foresight to bring a flashlight, she went to the night table and pulled it from the drawer, hoping that the caretaker kept candles and fuses on hand.

She jumped at a deafening crack of thunder. Her laugh came too quickly and sounded forced. She was not afraid of storms. Really, she wasn’t.

Dim light filtered in through the French doors and within seconds her eyes adjusted to the inky blackness. The din of rain against the roof seemed louder in the darkness, the shadows more menacing. The wind whistled around the wrought-iron rails of the balcony. The silhouettes of the trees outside swayed in the gale. Somewhere in the house, she heard banging. A shutter? Or was it something else?

Using the flashlight, she made her way to the hall. The steps creaked beneath her feet as she descended the stairs and entered the foyer. The banging grew louder. She swept the beam right toward the kitchen. It was just the wind, she told herself. A piece of siding torn loose by the storm. But the flashlight beam trembled.

Thrusting the flashlight out before her like a weapon, she made her way to the kitchen. It was a cavernous room with cobalt tile countertops and intricately designed rosewood cabinetry. Once upon a time, it had been state-of-the-art. Her parents had enjoyed cooking and entertaining. Sara had spent many an afternoon sitting at the counter while her parents hovered over fancy canapés and hors d’oeuvres she couldn’t pronounce.

Dim light spilled in through the arched window above the sink. During the day the window offered a stunning view of a turbulent sea. Tonight, it held darkness and shadows and a vague threat Sara didn’t want to acknowledge.

Setting the flashlight on the counter, she went through each drawer. Relief slid through her when she finally unearthed a half-burned candle and a box of wooden matches.

“Who says I don’t have all the luck.”

She found a saucer in the cupboard, set the candle on it and lit the wick. Yellow light cast flickering images on the walls. Picking up the flashlight, she turned toward the utility room. She was midway through the kitchen when movement in her peripheral vision stopped her dead in her tracks.

Gasping, Sara spun. Her heart slammed against her ribs when she saw a shadow pass quickly past the window. She stumbled back, adrenaline burning her gut. The flashlight slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.

Quickly, she snatched it up, but the bulb had gone out. She tapped it against the heel of her palm. When she glanced back at the window, the shadow was gone.

A terrible uneasiness stole over her. Someone was out there; she was sure of it. But why would they be at the back window of a vacant old house on a night like this? Vandals? Teenagers looking for a place to hang out? Or was something more ominous in the works?

The memory of the phone call flicked through her mind, conjuring a tinge of fear. Had she locked the front door? Was the garage locked? What about the patio doors?

Setting her hand on the cell phone clipped to her waistband, she doused the candle, knowing she would be less visible to an intruder in total darkness.

Never taking her eyes off the window, she backed from the kitchen. Her heart hammered as she moved silently through the hall toward the staircase. She could hear herself breathing hard. Blood roared like a jet engine in her ears. She passed the front door. Through the beveled glass, lightning flashed with blinding intensity, illuminating a tall figure draped in black and dripping with rain. A scream tore from her throat. She scrambled back, her hand shooting to the cell phone at her waist. The door flew open with a burst of wind and rain.

“Stop right there,” came a deep male voice.

Gripping her cell phone like a lifeline, she spun and ran for her life. Tearing through the foyer, she rounded the staircase and took the steps two at a time. All the while she tried desperately to remember if there was a lock on the bedroom door.

She heard the intruder behind her as she reached the upstairs landing. Heavy footsteps. A hint of labored breathing. The knowledge that she was alone with someone who could very well mean her harm. Her fingers trembled violently as she stabbed 911 into her cell.

“Stop! Cape Darkwood PD!”

The words barely registered over the jumble of fear. She dashed into the bedroom, spun to slam the door. But the man stuck his foot in. “Take it easy,” he said.

Facing the door, Sara stumbled back. In a small corner of her mind she heard the dispatcher’s voice coming over her cell phone. “There’s a prowler in my house!” she screamed.

The bedroom door swung open. The yellow beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness. The man stood silhouetted in the doorway. Sara looked around wildly for a weapon. Finding nothing, she glanced at the cell phone in her hand and threw it with all her might.

He ducked, but wasn’t fast enough. The phone struck the left side of his face. Grunting, he lifted his hand to his cheekbone.

“The police are on the way!” she cried.

Spotting the lamp on the night table, she snatched it up and mentally prepared herself to use it if he got any closer.

“I
am
the damn police,” he snapped. “Calm down.”

The words penetrated the veil of shock, slowed the hard rush of fear. He illuminated his face with the flashlight beam, and Sara lowered the lamp.

“I’m a cop,” he repeated. “Put down the lamp.”

He didn’t
look
like a cop. Wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt beneath a dark raincoat, he looked more like the villain in a slasher film. The thought made her shudder.

“I—I want to see your badge,” she managed.

“Keep your hands where I can see them.” He shone the light at her, sweeping it from her head to her feet. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I own this place,” she said.

Sliding a badge from the pocket of his trench, he shoved it at her. “You’re the homeowner?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Show me some ID.” Tilting his head slightly, he spoke into a lapel mike. “This is zero-two-four. I’m ten-twenty-three. Over.”

“Whatcha got, Chief?” crackled a tinny male voice.

“Cancel that ten-fourteen, will you?”

“Roger that.”

Convinced this man was indeed a cop, Sara sidled to the bed and pulled her driver’s license from her wallet. “You scared the hell out of me,” she snapped as she crossed to him and held it out for him to read.

He shone the beam on her license. “Sara Douglas.” He said her name as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Th-there was a prowler,” she said. “I saw him. At the kitchen window. A man.”