Latham's Landing (23 page)

“
You keep it,” Barb said. “I never
learned to shoot.”

“
Point and pull the trigger,” Caroline
insisted, making Barb take the gun. “Wait till he gets
close.”

Barb nodded. “Okay.”

Carefully, both women made their way up the
stairs, crouching low.

“
Where are we going?” Lease asked,
following Mac up another flight of stairs. “My legs are beginning
to hurt.”

“
Those women are going to try to double
back and head for the boat,” Mac said with confidence, as he opened
another door, leading into a large room with a carved fireplace.
“Don’t worry, we’re at the top.” He turned to Lease. “I need you to
head down in that grass, and wait for them. I’ll wait at the back
of the island and herd them to you.”

“
What do you want me to do when I see
them?” Lease asked.

“
Try to get them into the house,” Mac
said, for the first time sounding unsettled. He began making a fire
in the fireplace. “I think they do better in the house than running
around the island. Once we get them in, we’ll lock the doors and
keep them there. We’ll leave tomorrow morning, bright and
early.”

Lease kept quiet.
That Sea Room—or
whatever he called it—going bright, that wasn’t supposed to happen,
not for so long. It was because those two women almost got away.
Whatever ghosts live here, Mac thinks he might have pissed them
off. We both heard that growl.

“
Maybe you should scuttle the boat, in
fact,” Mac continued, striking a match. “You can fly out with me,
when we’re done.”

Lease stopped.
No way was he scuttling the
boat. He was getting out right now, in fact, before this got any
weirder.
“Okay. I’ll go do that now—”

Mac turned to him, shaking his head.
“No.”

Lease readied his gun. “But you just told me
to—”

“
I thought you were a man like me,” Mac
said sadly. “But you’re not. You’re one of them.” He looked up at
Lease. “Sorry.”

Lease drew his gun and fired at Mac.

The fireplace shifted, a clawed wooden talon
with metal inlay stretching out to catch the bullet. It curled
around the slug slowly with a creak.

“
See?” Mac said, his dark eyes
gleaming.

Lease turned and ran out of the house, Mac’s
laughter echoing after him.

Mac turned to the fire, watching the dry wood
catch. He felt rather than saw the cloaked figure materialize
beside him.

“
I’m sorry,” Mac said,
contrite.

“
No matter,” the figure said in
rumbling tones with a wave of its clawed hand.

“
I’ll get the women,” Mac assured him.
“They won’t leave—”

“
Go now,” the figure intoned
sharply.

Mac scrabbled to his feet. Grasping his
rifle, he charged out of the house.

Helter was dreaming.

He was in a forest, hunting with his father,
a large deer in his sights. But when he fired, the deer ran without
faltering, its coat unbloodied.

“
There is much game here to hunt,” a
feminine voice intoned.

Helter shifted, the dream changing. He was in
a new house with his mother, his aunt’s house. They were hiding
from his father.

“
He won’t let me go,” his mother
sobbed, as his aunt comforted her. “Everyone thinks he’s wonderful,
but he’s a monster. Everyone respects him but they don’t know what
he is—”

“
Shh…you’ll wake Harold
Jr.—”

“
He treats me like a slave—”

There was a roar as the front door was hit
with a sledgehammer, the wood buckling in. His mother screamed, and
his aunt ran for the phone. Then his father was there, dragging his
mother out by the hair, yelling for Harold to follow.

At home, his mother fixed dinner, her eye
blackened, her lip still swelled and bloody. Harold finished as
fast as possible, walking on eggshells as he tiptoed up to his
room. His father was drunk when he was happy, and deadly when he
was hungover.

The police arriving, asking to search the
house, his father belting one, and then going for his gun…

Harold bit his finger in the dream, the
nightmare of his youth dissolving to the walls of a library, books
stretching up to the ceiling.

“
You’re intelligent,” a voice rumbled.
“There are not many who can break our visions with will
alone.”

“
The house was too big,” Helter said
slowly, blinking in pain as he sat up. “That’s how I knew it was a
dream. There is always something off a little bit in my
nightmares.” He stared at the cloaked figure across from him, its
red eyes watching him. “What are you?”

“
We are all that remains,” the demon
said, with a ghastly smile. “We are eternal.” The tone turned
mocking. “Burn us and we will rebuild. You cannot harm us in any
meaningful way.”

Helter narrowed his eyes. “But you can’t kill
me, or I’d never have woken up.”

The demon shook its head. “We see
possibilities with you, Helter.” The thing spread its hands. “Our
current provider is becoming unsatisfactory—”

“
The man in the helicopter,” Helter
supplied.

“
Yes,” the thing rumbled, its tone
annoyed. “You’re better.”

“
Better how?”

The cloaked demon paused, its words coming
with effort. “More intelligent. More cautious. So we offer you this
deal. Go now, and return with others.”

“
You want people to come here and die,”
Helter stated.

“
More must come,” the demon said, its
need palpable. “We must finish the building.”

Why was that so important,
Helter
thought,
if they could always rebuild Latham’s Landing?
“Say
I left,” Helter ventured. “What if I never came back?”

The demon laughed, its rasping cough of a
chuckle ghastly. It pointed its finger toward him. “You could not
stay away. No one is that strong.” Its smile was ghastly.

“
And the women?” Helter
asked.

“
They must stay,” the thing said. “That
is the deal.”

There was no choice.
Caroline’s God,
please bless me.
Helter fired at the creature. The bullet tore
into the demon. With a shriek, it ruptured, becoming wisps and
whirls of shadows. The impact blasted Helter back to the floor.

He struggled to get up, shaking his head. He
was back in the basement, sitting in brackish water. The far wall
was gone, in its place darkness and a corridor of shadows and
algae. The bag of weapons was also missing.

Helter looked up frantically, eyes searching
for his explosives.

The timer and charges were there on the far
wall hooked to a wooden beam where he’d placed them, the water
slowly seeping toward them as it rose. An hour and a half had
passed, the time to detonation now thirty-five minutes. The small
gold cross was gone, a gleaming pile of melted gold shining in the
dirt below the timer.

There was a splash from the corridor, as
something pale gleamed briefly in the darkness before submerging
again.

The timer was waterproof. But whatever was
in the water would reach the timer before it went off.

Biting his lip, Helter reluctantly removed
the rosary from around his neck. “Thank God for plastic.” Placing
it around the device, he climbed the stairs as fast as he
could.

“
Come on,” Barb said. “It’s not that
much farther, and it’s all downhill from here.”

“
If it’s the same as this morning,”
Caroline said darkly.

They both crouched as a man burst out of the
darkness, running for the shore.

“
He’s going for the boat!” Barb cried.
“He’ll take it first!”

“
No, he won’t,” Caroline said
murderously. “Stay here.” She took off running after the
man.

Barb sank down to the ground, her legs weak.
Who knew gunshots could hurt this much?

There was a noise, then a chuckle.

Barb looked up with horror to see a stranger
dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt looking down at her. His dark
eyes were maniacal, his days growth of beard scruffy.

Mac drew his knife, then threw it up in the
air and caught it. A pulsating rock beat began from somewhere in
the depths of the house, reverberating with hidden horrible
meaning.

“
Now the music’s on,” Mac said, his
knife gleaming as he approached Barb. “Dance with me, pretty
lady.”

Barb whimpered, then retreated into the
recesses of the house as fast as she could, Helter’s gun forgotten
in her pocket. Whistling his favorite tune, Mac sauntered after
her.

Lease slipped and slid down the incline,
hurrying as fast as he dared. Screw Mac and everything else, he was
leaving now!

Lease looked behind him and then slammed into
a man standing there. He scrambled up, staring at him.

“
Pardon,” the man said politely, his
eye sockets both empty, bloody holes where maggots played. “But I
need some assistance.”

Lease’s eyes bugged out. He scrambled
back.

“
I need your eyes,” the ghoul said
pleasantly, extending a bony hand. “Be a good soul and give them to
me—”

It bared needle teeth at him.

“—
or I’ll have to take
them—”

A gunshot rang out, striking the ghoul in its
head. It reeled back, falling to the ground.

Lease brought his gun up to see a woman
approaching him. He quickly dropped it, when he saw her point her
gun at him.

“
Police officer!” he shouted. “Please,
I’m on your side.”

She ran up to him. “I’m Caroline. Did you get
Barb’s message?”

Lease cast his mind back. “A woman called in
two snowmobilers who fell through the ice.”

Caroline looked him up and down. This was one
of the cops that had come with Bowman, the night her stepmother had
been murdered. She couldn’t remember his name.
Why would a
homicide cop go on a rescue mission in the middle of the night?
“And they sent you?”

Lease nodded. “Me and two others. They’re
dead. That man who came in the copter shot them.”

“
What’s your name?” Caroline
asked.

What had Chung Lai told them?
“Detective Bowman,” Lease lied.

Caroline’s memory unfurled with his
pronunciation of Bowman’s name.
Lease.

“
Come with me,” Lease said, offering
his hand. “We’ve got to go—”

Caroline raised her gun and shot him in the
chest, knocking him sprawling onto the ghoul’s corpse. “No, you’re
not Bowman,” she said. “You’re Lease.”

Lease clutched his stomach, blood spilling
through his fingers. “Please—”

“
You came to my house that night, with
Bowman and that other one,” Caroline said coldly. “You don’t
remember, of course. I was nothing to you, the way most women are.
The way Chung Lai probably was.” She moved past him. “You’re not
worth a bullet.” She smiled bitterly. “Especially here.”

A white hand reached around, grasping Lease’s
shoulder. He looked back in terror into the gaping eye sockets of
the smiling ghoul.

Caroline ran down to the boat, Lease’s
screams, and wet crunching echoing behind her.

Helter stopped, unsure.
He’d come in the
house easily, taking two minutes tops to get to the basement. Why
was it so hard to find a way out?
Ten minutes had already
passed, ten minutes he didn’t have.
God, please, please send me
help. I’ve got to get Caroline, Cooper, and Barb and get out of
here.

“
You asked for help?” a sepulcher tone
uttered.

Helter raised his gun, confronting the dark
skinned man in front of him. “Who are you?”

“
She called me here to end the curse,”
the man said sadly. “To combat the evil here with my magical help.
I was of the blood, and thought I could handle anything.” He raised
his bony hand, several fingers ragged stumps. “Instead we both were
drawn in to become ghosts to haunt this isle.”

“
Help me, please,” Helter
said.

The man pointed up. “Through that trapdoor.
Hurry, before it changes again.”

Helter hurried to the ladder, moving quickly
up it. He burst through into the main floor of the house, bolting
past the roaring fire towards the already shimmering door. The man
below smiled sadly, then faded away.

Barb pushed through the door, out onto a
veranda at the back of the unfinished house. She moved to the
ornate granite wall, looking out over a drop fifty feet into the
churning waters of the lake, where large waves hit onto sharp
rocks.

She was trapped.

“
I thought that the dock was gone,” a
voice said from behind her, impressed. “I had no idea this was here
now.”

Barb turned to face the man with the knife.
He moved toward her.
Wait until he gets close.
“Why are you
doing this?” she pleaded, her hand on the gun. “I never did
anything to you.”

“
You came here,” he said simply. “That
means you’re mine.”

“
Please, don’t,” she whispered, backing
up to the granite wall. “Don’t hurt me.”

Mac lunged with the knife, slicing into her.
Barb cried out, feeling the blade slide deep into her side. She
twisted, pulling the weapon from his grasp as she fell, her shot
missing him and taking a stone chunk out of the side of the
house.

“
Bitch,” Mac said with a frown. He
pulled his gun from his belt, pointing it at her head.