Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (16 page)

“We’re losing her,” I said, touching the papers carefully. “She’s fading.”

Jai Li nodded, but pulled my hands back, holding them in hers.

Safe,
she signed, pointing between me and her.

“Yes, you and me, we are safe.”

She tapped Katie’s last picture and shivered, signing
danger
.

I nodded, not saying anything else.

Finally, the last three pictures were different. These weren’t about any of us, nor of the typical denizens of the Sideways. These showed a shadow—a wraith, like one of the hungry spirits that had been trapped in the house out in Chumstick. It was the ghost with the bowler hat. The one that promised to watch me suffer. He was drawn in such a way that if you turned the picture ninety degrees, it looked like the focus was on him, and Katie, Jai Li, and I were the shadows.

He stood there, as I’d seen him that dark night. He had a bowler hat in one hand and a dripping axe in the other. A skeletal frame peeked out from beneath his shoulder-to-ankle trench coat.

He’d been just inside the dome Qindra had erected over the house, a shield to keep him and his ilk contained. As I traced his outline with my finger I could hear his voice in my head.

When you die, I’ll be waiting for you. Waiting to play.

The last picture was of him and Katie, superimposed over one another in one frame, then another where Katie lay on the floor of her school and her shadow and the Bowler Hat Man’s were both flying away as the book obviously exploded.

Her spirit was blasted out of her body, as I’d suspected. But was this proof she hadn’t been inside there alone?

I covered my face with my hands, leaning back. “Burn those, please.” I said, my voice muffled behind my hands.

“Dark portents,” Edith said, gathering the stack of papers.

Where did Stuart find Katie after the Solstice battle? Was it within the boundaries of the dome? The dome had blown by that point. And the spirits had been siphoned into the rituals of the blood cult. But had this one eluded them? Had he somehow marked Katie?

I excused myself quickly and ran down the hallway. I made it into the bathroom just before the bile rose in me and I spewed the beer Julie and I had drunk an hour earlier.

Was that who hunted us? Had he latched onto Katie somehow to withstand the necromancer’s summons? Had that mass killer been inside Katie when we’d made love? Was he looking out of her eyes, hidden in the darkness, feeding on her nightmares and fears?

I had to call Qindra. Hell, maybe I needed to call an exorcist.

Twenty-four

Qindra didn’t answer her cell phone, and when I called the house, Zi Xui, the head of Nidhogg’s servants, assured me she would take a message and see that Qindra got it. She said that Qindra had gone that morning and was not expected back for a few days.

I thanked her and hung up, looking down at my cell phone. What the hell was I supposed to do? Maybe the wraith had been destroyed when the diary had gone off like a magical nuke. Or, maybe he was just in the sideways, following me around when I was looking for Katie. That seemed more likely, now that the initial shock had subsided. Jai Li drew vivid pictures, but I was the one drawing the conclusions.

With the shock, and my extended absences, we decided to stay at Circle Q, do a little bonding and see if we could get some answers out of Jai Li without totally freaking out the child. I found it bizarre to be relying on her abilities, but she saw things we didn’t, or saw them in ways we hadn’t thought to consider.

It was almost as if she was an antenna into the psychotic and crazy that had sideswiped our lives in the last year. Of course, she was part of all that, having been a servant of Nidhogg her whole short life.

We had a quiet evening of knitting, games, and stories … lots and lots of stories. She especially wanted to hear silly things like The Three Pigs, The Three Bears, and Humpty-Dumpty. She thought they were high art. She’d begun to read on her own, as well. I think she just liked hearing me read. And it was something she hadn’t experienced frequently in her time with Nidhogg.

Of course it reminded me of the homey night I’d had with Katie, Melanie, and Dena the week before Katie’s collapse. It made things a little more manic, a little on edge. Not sure Jai Li noticed, but I think the others did. We called it an early evening and I trundled Jai Li to bed. Maybe I needed some sleep to help clear my head. Something without being hunted.

Jai Li must have been a good shield. I didn’t have any memorable dreams and felt better rested than I had since before the collapse. After a hearty breakfast of steel cut oats and fresh fruit (I thought we could’ve used some actual meat) we went for a horseback ride out to the wooded trails that backed up to Circle Q.

We all went, five women on horseback, riding out with a picnic lunch, more books, and a Frisbee. We were in no hurry and I really enjoyed the ride. It was peaceful. We rode for a couple of hours, had a nice lunch in the bright sunshine on of a wooded clearing, and threw the Frisbee around for a while.

When we were packing up, Jai Li and Edith were talking, their hands flying back and forth. I really needed to take the time to improve my signing. I had no idea what they were talking about. I was barely at the alphabet stage, and maybe the baby-words portion of the education.

When I asked what they were talking about, Jai Li pointed at my hair and drew her hands far apart, frowning.

“She says you have lost your way,” Edith said, stuffing a few loose folding napkins in her saddlebag. “You’ve let your hair grow out, and she thinks it makes you look funny.”

I ran my hands up through my hair, contemplating. I normally kept the sides shaved, but with all the crap going on since fall, I’d let it go. I pulled the sides of my hair and could tell it was down below my ears.

“You don’t think it’s pretty?” I asked.

“Oh, I think it looks a sight better than you normally keep,” Edith said.

“I agree,” Mary chimed in, grinning as she checked the saddle of her horse. “You’re a beautiful woman,” she said. “But you definitely don’t look like yourself.”

I helped Jai Li up onto her horse and mounted my own. “Okay,” I said, looking over at Julie who was just shaking her head and holding up both hands.

“I’m not sure how I feel about it at the moment,” I said with a laugh. It was true. I hadn’t given any thought to how I looked, honestly. Oh, I still had my jeans and my concert Tees, even my Docs. But before I’d been cultivating an image of the rebel. Now, it didn’t really seem to matter.

Jai Li pulled her horse around close to mine and leaned out, patting my leg. I looked at her, and she signed quickly. I let her finish and looked to Edith who had been watching.

“She said you need to find yourself before you can find Katie.”

I drew a deep breath, taking in the clean country air and clearing my head of cobwebs. “Find myself, huh?” I asked.

Jai Li signed a response that I understood.
Yes,
she signed.
We need you.

We rode back to the farm, one of us adults keeping pace with Jai Li, but the others rotating back to carry on conversations without the girl. She was happy to take point on the trail.

“Wouldn’t hurt you to start working out again,” Julie said, grinning. “You’re getting a little soft, or so the girl says.”

I looked down. I didn’t have a paunch or anything. But I hadn’t gone on a run for a while, and I can’t remember the last time I did sit-ups. Maybe I was depressed. Maybe exploring the Sideways was an excuse to not really do anything.

It was hard to tell. Was I wasting my time? Or, maybe I was just going about it wrong.

On the ride home, I decided I’d call Gunther, let him know about the wraith and see if he knew anything that would keep it away from Katie. I had a hunch that the magicked fence out at Black Briar could probably keep the wraith away. Would also explain why he had been following me. If he was still haunting Katie, he’d be there, not chasing me.

That thought buoyed me a little. Not that being hunted by eaters and wraiths were simple things. But them being after me meant they weren’t after Katie, and that was a relief.

Unless they were really looking for Katie and I happened to be in the same vicinity. Circles within circles. It made my head hurt. I rotated up the line to ride beside Jai Li and try and settle my whirling thoughts.

Time to get back onto my routine, do some smithing, restart life. Katie wouldn’t want me floundering around. And if Jai Li had to point that out to me, it must be pretty bad. No more dreamwalking for me. Time to face the real world.

Twenty-five

Then in the third week of June I got a surprise I hadn’t expected. Jai Li and I had pretty much moved full-time into Circle Q, so I drove down to our apartment in Kent to grab some odds and ends Jai Li and I needed.

I was in the kitchen debating if I had time to make a pot of coffee and go through the mail when I heard a voice calling to me from the old bedroom.

I spun around, reaching for Gram who was in her case in the living room. I vaulted over the bar, rolled over the top of the couch and ended up on my knees on the floor, pulling the case toward me, flipping open the latches, and grasping Gram by the hilt.

The world shifted like it did every time I held her—sounds were sharper, the world was a little crisper. We hadn’t slept in the bedroom since the night I went walkabout of my own volition months earlier. Astral projection, some called it. Like dream walking, but when you’re awake. It was crazy and damned dangerous.

At that time, I’d been exploring the apartment when I found we had a shadow door between our apartment and the next. It gave off that haunted house vibe, but I’ve never been one to be afraid. Being afraid was a good self-defense—a lesson I had a hard time retaining. I’d tried to push through the shadow door, like a ghost walking through the solid wall that it really was in the normal world. Just an experiment, to see what would happen. I expected to feel funny, maybe get cold or hot, something like when you walk through a ghost in movies. What I hadn’t expected was being sucked into the Sideways. Not the dreamscape, the real and for true land of eaters and malevolent spirits.

I could barely bring myself to walk into the room after that. Katie had humored me, and we moved the bed into the living room. Made having company a little awkward, but we didn’t entertain all that much. The place was too small as it was.

Katie had this ancient old mirror she’d inherited from her mother long before I’d met her. It had hung in that bedroom as long as I’d known her. She loved that mirror. I hadn’t thought much about it until I walked into the bedroom, looking for the source of the voice.

I got quite the surprise. In the mirror, glowing like an angel, was the elf boy Gletts—Skella’s brother—who’d been lost for so long. He’d rescued me from being pulled into the Sideways the day I’d discovered the shadow door. And lo and behold, here he was in Katie’s mirror.

His body lay in a house of healing in Stanley Park, Vancouver where his grandmother held vigil waiting for his spirit to return. I’m the one that told them his spirit was wandering the Sideways. They hadn’t been pleased.

His gran, Unun, was out of her head, worrying. I wasn’t sure she’d ever recover. It scared Skella. I think that more than anything was what was driving the girl to Bellingham and new friends—the grief and the madness brought on by the helpless waiting.

Pretty much how I felt with Katie.

My mouth went dry.

“Why are you here?” I asked, striding across the room. “Why don’t you go home, back to your body? Your grandmother is mad with grief.”

He held up his hand, grinning like an imp. “Keep your panties on,” he said.

I glared at him and he blushed.

“Or don’t.”

Such a boy. He’d gotten bolder since I’d seen him last.

“Why are you here, besides concern for the state of my underwear?”

The look on his face spoke of fear and nervousness. “Have you given up the search?” he asked.

It had been a few days since I’d gone dreamwalking. Is that what he meant?

“If not,” he rushed on, “you need to come up with a better plan. You’ve been searching in the wrong places.”

He looked like a normal gaunt Goth kid I’d first met, too thin, hair in his face, black eyeliner and fingernails.

“What do you know about it?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes. “Who do you think has been keeping you out of trouble, geez.” He pulled a face—petulant and exasperated. “You go running through places even the most experienced travelers fear, screaming your fool head off. It’s been damn close a few times, you know.”

“So it was
you
,” I said, finally putting the pieces together. “You’re the one who’s been guiding me, that voice in the dark.”

“Yep,” he said, grinning. “It was fun at first, following you, keeping the crawlies from catching you, but that was before
he
showed up.”

My blood froze. “Who? Who showed up?”

He leaned in toward the mirror, his face suddenly getting a little distorted. “The man in the bowler hat,” he said, shivering. “I’ll take the meanest eater over him any day. At least the eaters only want to eat. The hat man, he wants to hurt.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to settle my breath. My heart was pounding like I’d been running.

“Is he chasing me, or looking for Katie?”

A grimace flitted across Gletts’s face. “Katie,” he said. “I’ve heard him talking to some of the others. Some he negotiates with, some he tortures and kills. Eats the dead,” he stammered to a halt, his voice quivering. “Not afraid of eaters or anything in there,” he said, looking up. “I think they’ve started being afraid of him.”

“Thank you,” I said, shivering. “Thanks for helping me.”

“Katie’s holed up somewhere,” he said. “Scared. I’m betting she’s waiting for a time she can come home, if she’s not so lost she can’t find her way.”

“Maybe I need to start hunting the hat man.”

He stepped back, hands up in the air, shaking his head. “He’s bad news, Sarah. I’m not sure you can handle him.”

“I’ll think on it,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.” I looked at him. There was more, I had a feeling. “What have you been doing?” I asked. “Why aren’t you going home to your family? To your body?”