It was coincidence, of course. There was no such thing as monsters under the bed—or devils, for that matter. Still, it was the third time in as many days her daughter showed uncanny intuition.
April stirred and yawned. “Good morning, Mommy.”
“Good morning.” Emily stroked her hair. “How did you sleep?”
“I had bad dreams.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But dreams are pretend, right?”
She yawned again. “I want to sleep more.”
“Do you?” Emily poked and tickled her. “Do you want to sleep now?”
“Stop!” she squealed, rolling about the bed and laughing.
The alarm went off.
“Saved by the bell.” Emily clicked the top of the clock, and then retrieved the fallen sheets and pillows from the floor. “It’s time to get ready for school, young lady.”
“Yes, ma’am.” April disappeared into the bathroom.
Emily sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing her neck. She wondered if Officer Harris filed the missing person report on Dan yet, then quelled the impulse to call him on his cell. He promised to keep her apprised. Let the man work, she told herself.
Besides, she was becoming increasingly embarrassed about her behavior at the police station. Tears and hysterics were unprofessional. It wasn’t like her to react like that.
A clatter from the kitchen interrupted her thoughts. Esmeralda was making breakfast. Emily tied her robe closed as she stepped into the hall.
April stood in the doorway of her bedroom, peering inside. Emily touched her arm, and she jumped.
“What’s the matter?” Emily asked. “Why aren’t you getting dressed?”
“Will you come with me?”
“Only if I get to pick out your clothes.” Emily strode across the room and threw open the closet door. “Let’s see. A purple flowered top and green striped skirt.”
“Green and purple don’t match.”
“Then you’d better hurry and pick something yourself.”
April took a tentative step inside, glancing about.
“April, for the last time,” Emily said, “there are no monsters in your room. Now come and get dressed.”
She looked up in alarm, face pale, eyes magnified by tears. Emily could almost hear her reproach—
you don’t believe me.
In Emily’s experience, people, especially little girls, believed wholeheartedly in whatever they thought they saw. Her job was to provide them with explanations. However, she remembered her parents’ explanations never salved her own fears as a child.
“Here, let me help you.” She tugged the Strawberry Shortcake nightgown over her daughter’s head and replaced it with a green T-shirt to go with the skirt.
Breakfast was a dismal affair. April picked at her cereal and responded in monotone to questions about school. Esmeralda avoided Emily’s gaze, apparently still angry.
Emily watched her, wondering how she would break the news about Dan. It was one thing to tell her a friend disappeared, something else entirely to say the devil did it. Emily was aware of how ludicrous her story sounded. She thought again of Harris, wishing he would call to say he found Dan alive—or even dead. It would be easier to accept if they had a body.
After April left for school, Emily poured two cups of coffee and motioned to Esmeralda to sit down. “We have to talk.”
“If this is about my outburst yesterday—”
“It is, but not in the way you think. The reason I didn’t call—” Emily hesitated. “Dan is missing.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“The whole assignment was a nightmare. There is this mirror that is supposed to let you look into hell itself, and somehow Dan got sucked inside. I think it was a trick of some kind.”
“Of course it was a trick,” Esmeralda said. “What else could it be?”
“Exactly.” Emily blushed, thinking back to her panicked flight from the house.
“And you left him in the hands of some maniac? Who knows what’s happening to him? Dan is one of your best friends. He needed you to find him.”
“That’s a job for the police. Or so I’m told.” Emily hid behind her cup. “They practically ran me out of town.”
Esmeralda shook her head. “I don’t know how you could come home without him.”
“Look. First you get mad because I didn’t call, and now—”
“I couldn’t have known. Poor Dan.”
Silence fell between them. They drank their coffee, looking everywhere but at each other. After a while, Emily placed her cup in the sink. “I’ll be in my study. I have things to do.”
Emily’s home office was also her daughter’s broken-toy haven. Board games with missing parts filled the shelves, and stuffed animals in need of mending lined the couch. She pushed aside a doll with matted hair and sat, head in her hands.
She felt at odds with everyone in her life. She didn’t trust Ross, couldn’t talk to her daughter, and had alienated her housekeeper. The worst part was Esmeralda was right—Dan needed her. She never should have left Saint Augustine.
The screensaver on her computer monitor flashed April’s baby pictures. Emily watched for a moment without really seeing. She thought about the kids she met in the park. They weren’t eager to give her information. Were they afraid or simply reluctant to comment on rumor?
Dan would have burned the video to DVD. Where was that disk? Probably in the bed and breakfast. Ross would find it when he retrieved Dan’s belongings.
She sat upright. That wasn’t the only disk Dan shot. When she tried to take pictures of the figure on the porch, she had to change microdrives because the disk was full. Where had she put it?
Her backpack hung on the door, and she dumped it on the couch. Along with her ghost-busting paraphernalia, she found Dan’s camera and several microdrives.
“Good God. I almost gave these to the police.” She linked the camera to her desktop computer and viewed the images.
Dan had taken more pictures than she realized—starting with the parking lot at the bed and breakfast. She flipped through several shots of flowers, feeling a pang as she did so—were these the last flowers that would make him sneeze?
She slowed over the pictures taken at Vanessa’s parlor, remembering the squalid room with its stench of incense. The shots Dan took of the tapestries came out well. The color and texture was as she remembered.
Emily continued flipping through pictures, finally getting to those taken in the house on Weeden Street. She saw the upstairs room, the pentagram, and herself holding a meter toward a smudge on the wall.
Heart pounding, she zoomed in. Within the smudge, she saw a blurred swath of red. The devil. She leapt back as if it could see her, as if it could reach her through the monitor. Shaking so badly she could barely click the mouse, Emily closed the program.
It was a hoax, she told herself. A light show. Behind the projector was a man. She knew in her gut that Joey was involved. The question was how to expose him.
She saved the pictures both to her hard drive and to her laptop. Then she stowed the camera and disks in her backpack and hung it behind the door.
At the desk, she typed
Satan’s Mirror Saint Augustine
into a search engine. There were no results. She tried a Boolean search, typing in
Satan AND Mirror AND (Saint Augustine OR Florida)
. This brought up several hits.
Emily leaned forward, reading. Each link led to another, taking her into an avalanche of information. She learned that the myth of Satan’s Mirror in the Saint Augustine vicinity dated back hundreds of years.
In 1662, a young woman accused of murder in the disappearances of her fiancé and his parents, described the Mirror in detail at her trial. The townsfolk promptly burned her at the stake. The odd thing was, Emily thought as she re-read the passage, the woman did not mention a pentagram or other way of summoning the Mirror. She said it just appeared.
It showed again in 1669 to a woman who claimed to hear voices. Only she described the apparition as an angel who beckoned her into its light. After several weeks, she was never seen again.
Before the Revolutionary War, a Mirror was reported in Georgia, while at the same time it was seen in New Hampshire. In fact, an occult magazine called the
Cowbell Oracle
ran a piece on what they referred to as
The Devil’s Eye
less than two years ago.
In the article, a reporter infiltrated a coven of New Hampshire witches who believed they received special powers and protection from opening
The Eye
. Despite the difference in names, Emily thought the description of a Mirror was accurate. The story was followed by a how-to piece on the proper method of sacrificing rabbits.
“I brought your lunch,” said Esmeralda.
Emily jumped, looking about. She hadn’t realized the day was half-gone. She accepted the tuna fish sandwich and glass of iced tea without comment, her mind still on her screen. As she ate, she bookmarked the pages she kept open.
She logged onto Court Access and checked for outstanding warrants on Joey Mastrianni, and then asked Intelius to scan current criminal and civil records. Neither yielded any information, so she pulled up Virtual Gumshoe and typed in his name and the city. The records it found were so old the man would have to be in his sixties.
Unsatisfied, she ran a Yahoo! People Search. It brought up a hundred hits, everything from butcher to baker to candlestick maker. She skimmed the names, feeling increasingly frustrated. Only two belonged to men living in Florida, and they were both much older than the Joey she knew.
She plugged Mastrianni into several sites offering to locate long-lost high school buddies, and then, as a last resort, scanned the White Pages for the Saint Augustine area. He wasn’t there. Of course, he’d only returned to town five years ago. He’d been gone for twenty years. Where had he been?
Her daughter appeared at her elbow. “Excuse me, Mommy. Esmeralda says we should wash for dinner.”
“Is it that time already?” Emily blinked and rubbed her eyes.
April giggled. “You forgot to get dressed again. You’re still in your robe and slippers.”
“I must look pretty silly.” Emily pulled her onto her lap. “How was your day?”
“It was okay.”
“Do you have much homework?”
“I have to cut out pictures that begin with the letter T.”
“We can do that before bed,” Emily said.
April motioned at the cluttered couch. “Can I sleep here tonight?”
Emily rocked in her desk chair. She remembered Dan telling her he never argued the existence of monsters with his son. She felt it was a testament to him that she held her tongue. “Fear is a funny thing. If you don’t face it right away, it gets bigger and bigger. So, no, you can’t sleep here tonight.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
From the pile of junk she dumped on the couch, her cell phone blared
The 1812 Overture.
She rolled over to answer it.
On the other end, Officer Harris’ voice sounded cheerful. “Hello, Ms. Goodman. I thought you’d like to know that I filed the missing persons report on Daniel Hart. We have an APB on him.”
“Any luck?”
“Not so far, but it’s early.”
She sighed. “Thank you for keeping his case open. And thank you for calling. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I also wanted to tell you that we may have had a sighting on the tattooed man you saw.”
Emily sat up so fast she nearly knocked April off her lap. “You found him?”
“A patrol car spotted a man fitting your description going into that house on Weeden Street. He never came out. We searched the premises, of course. It’s like he vanished.”
THIRTEEN
The next morning, Emily found April rigid in bed staring at the ceiling. When she called to her, the girl did not respond. Emily rushed across the room, sitting beside her and shaking her. April’s eyes filled with tears.
Emily pulled her to a sitting position and held her. “Baby, you scared me.”
April sobbed against her shoulder. “The monster says mean things to me.”
Monsters again. Emily no longer believed this was a phase. What should she do? Take her to a psychologist? She cringed at the thought of her six-year-old daughter needing therapy.
She fell back on her old manner of making light of the situation. “Well, you know, maybe the monster only wants to be friends.”
“Don’t say that!” April cried, pulling away. “I will never be his friend.”
Emily looked at her, speechless. She cupped her hands about her daughter’s small face. April was pale, her eyes ringed with dark circles. Emily wondered if she slept at all. Perhaps she should cave in and allow her to stay in bed with her—but she always heard that could cause future problems.
She was surprised at how willingly April readied herself for school, as if she hated to be in the house. Emily watched her walk down the street, her slight form lopsided by the book bag. A few houses away, she joined a friend.
Emily closed the door and returned to the kitchen where Esmeralda rinsed the breakfast dishes.
“Any word on Dan?” Esmeralda asked.
Emily poured a second cup of coffee. “Not yet.”
She gave a derisive sniff. Emily felt the wedge between them dig a little deeper. She wondered if she’d been foolish to make an employee her friend.
“I paid the bills this morning.” Esmeralda handed Emily a print out. “Here is a list and the new password if you want to check your account.”
Emily nodded, looking at the paper. She had a thick file of similar notes. Esmeralda changed the password for electronic bill paying once a week.
“I have errands to run,” she said, taking off her apron. “I won’t be back until after lunch.”
“Have a nice day,” Emily told her.
She carried her coffee to her office computer where she searched for child psychologists in her area. There were three. Should she make an appointment for April? There was still such stigma attached to mental healthcare. Perhaps she should ask for a telephone session and get some child-rearing advice.
Her cell rang, and she jumped, staring at the phone as if it had read her thoughts. But it wasn’t a doctor calling, nor the school. It was Ross Devine.