Shadow of the Past (32 page)

“I . . . I . . . Something bad.
Something bad happened.”

She bit back a sharp retort. “Was it
him?”

“No. It’s . . . oh god, I did something
really bad. It was an accident, though! I swear!”

“Mark, calm down and tell me what
happened.”

“It’s my uncle. I think he’s . . . I
think he’s dead.”

“Oh shit,” she said. “Mark, what did
you . . . what happened?”

“He was hitting me, and I just . . . I
just fought back, and I didn’t realize . . .” He let out a choked
sob. “Oh, god, I thought I was dreaming, it didn’t even seem real,
but he fell and he’s not moving . . . Oh God, what am I going to
do?”

“Mark, you have to call someone. Call
Detective Pres--”

“No! They already think I’m a killer!
They’ll lock me away! I can’t . . . I . . .” he trailed off,
sniffling.

“It was self-defense,” she said.
“They’ll believe you, but only if you call them right now,
okay?”

“I can’t!” he wailed, and Christine had
to bite down on her lip to keep from screaming at him.

“You have to, Mark. It’s the only way,”
she said through clenched teeth.

“No,” he said again, his voice getting
firmer. “There’s another way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to prove to them that I didn’t
do these things. I have to stop this whole thing, and then maybe
they’ll believe me.”

“Mark, that’s crazy! If this doesn’t
have anything to do with the murders--”

“Do you think the police will see it
that way? Do you think that this time they won’t just lock me up?
If they do I’ll never be able to put a stop to this thing, because
I know that only I can!”

“Mark--”

“No,” he said, the sobbing completely
gone now. “You were right. This whole thing is my fault and I’m
sorry, I really am. If I’d done something about it before then
maybe I could’ve stopped what happened to your dad and Ryan, but
maybe I can do something now before anyone else gets hurt. I have
to end this thing, and I’m going to need your help.”

“Mark, I can’t just--”

“He killed your brother, Christine! He
walked into your house and killed him, and who knows how many other
people over the years. And do you really think he’s going to leave
you, or your mother, or your father alone? That he’s not going to
keep coming until we stop him? Do you?”

“Mark, we can’t. We don’t know the
first thing about how to deal with something like that.”

“It’s his house, Christine. That’s
where his power is. If we can shut that down, we can stop him. I’m
going to go there now but I need your help.”

“That’s crazy. I can’t just leave,
Mark.”

“I need you Christine. I’m sorry for
everything that’s happened, for dragging you into this, but I need
you. Please. For your brother.” The sobbing was gone, replaced by a
wobbling determination that sounded crazy enough to run into the
gates of a possibly haunted house on a crazed ghost hunt. Crazy
enough that if someone wasn’t there with him he could end up doing
god knows what.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Give me the
address again, and I’ll get there as soon as I can.” She got a pen
from her backpack and scribbled it down, and Mark quickly hung up,
saying he would meet her there.

Her aunt had gone down to the hotel
restaurant to get some food, and Christine scribbled a note for her
and took the car keys. On her way down to the garage, she paged
through the contacts on her phone until she found his
number.

If she had to go and stop Mark from
causing more of a problem for himself she wasn’t going to do it
alone.

“Hey,” Steve said, after taking a deep
cleansing breath before answering. He’d been waiting for this call,
but was surprised it had taken so long for it to come. “I was
wondering how you were holding up.”

“I’m fine,” Christine said, “but Mark’s
lost it.”

“Yeah, I know. He came at me yesterday
and--”

“That’s nothing. He just called me,
rambling about how he and his Uncle got into a fight and he thinks
his Uncle might be dead.”

“Oh fuck, are you serious? What
happened?”

“I don’t know, but he thinks that by
solving these murders he’s going to keep the cops from arresting
him.”

“How the hell is he going to do
that?”

“He . . . he knows stuff about this,
Steve. He hasn’t told you, but he told me the other day about what
he’s seen in his dreams and why this might be happening. Before he
flipped out about the two of us getting together.”

“Okay, wow. Look, I wanted to tell you
I was sorry about how that worked out, but--”

“So not the point! Look, he’s clearly
lost it. He’s going to the house that’s supposed to be the center
of the whole thing, and I need your help to try to calm him down
and get him to talk to the cops.”

“It sounds like he’s not the only one
who’s lost it. I’m not exactly high up on the list of people he
wants to see right now. Especially if he’s gone off the deep
end.”

“Look, he’s supposed to be your friend,
right? How about you act like it and we try to make it up to him
for what we did. For all we know we drove him nuts.”

“Are you serious? Is he that
bad?”

“Steve, he said he pushed his Uncle
down the stairs and he might be dead. What do you think? I’m going
to give you the address, and then you can decide if you’re going to
just sit around or if you are going to try to be Mark’s friend and
help him out, okay?”

“Okay, hold on, hold on . . . alright,
go.” He jotted down the address, which he realized wasn’t too far
from him.

“I have to go, I’m--” there was a
sudden blaring of a horn and screech of tires. “I’m not good at
this driving and talking thing. Be there, okay? We need you.” She
hung up before he could say anything else.

He looked at his phone for a minute,
and then started dialing.

“What?” Jack said. He didn’t recognize
the number, but that just meant it gave him free license to go
apeshit on some stranger.

“It’s time.”

“Who the fuck is this?” But soon as he
asked, he knew. “Really?” he managed to get past the lump in his
throat.

“Are you ready?”

“Hell yeah! I’ve been waiting
for--”

“Then take what you hid in the secret
panel in your closet and meet me at this address.”

“Okay, hold on.”

“Don’t be late. I don’t want to have to
start without you,” He hung up.

“Finally!” Jack threw the game
controller he was holding in the air. He’d been waiting for what
seemed like forever, and if he knew what was in the panel in his
closet then he knew what Jack had been aching to do with it. He was
going to be free. He was finally going to be free.

“Jackson, what’s going on up there? I’m
trying to grade papers!” His father yelled from the bottom of the
stairs.

“Nothing, Dad,” he called downstairs.
He opened his closet door and moved the pile of clothes away from
the panel he’d made to keep things from the nosy old prick. He
reached in and fished out what he had been looking for. He grinned,
turning it over in his hand.

“What was that?” he father called
again. “Jackson, you know I hate it when you just yell across the
house at me. If you have something to say, come and say it. Don’t
just yell like some kind of barbarian.”

“Okay, Dad,” he said, moving towards
his bedroom door. “I’ve got something to show you
anyway.”

“Mark?” she called from the head of the
walkway of Corwin’s house. The hedges had grown almost completely
over the entryway, but she could just make out a small break in the
branches. One that looked like it had been made
recently.

Mark hadn’t been kidding when he said
that the place looked evil. All it needed were a couple of well
placed heads on spikes and it’d be a shoe-in to win Creepiest Place
of All Time. She moved closer, peering through the break in the
hedges and seeing the front door ajar.

“Mark?” she tried again. Still no
answer.

She turned back towards the street,
hoping she’d see or hear a car, a bike or anyone coming from either
direction to confirm that she was still in the land of the living.
She’d been waiting on the sidewalk for over five minutes, hoping
that she’d beaten Mark to the place so she could try to talk him
down from his crazy plan out where it was safe. She wouldn’t be
surprised if the door to the place had been left open as the last
people that had been there fled for their lives.

Either that or Mark was stumbling
around in there right now on his crazy ghost hunt.

She walked into the yard and up the
porch steps, hoping the rickety old mess wouldn’t collapse under
her feet. She poked her head in as far as sanity let her and tried
again.

“Mark?”

“Right here.”

“Jesus, don’t do that! This place is
creepy enough.”

“It has that effect,” he said, walking
deeper into the house.

“Mark, we don’t have to do this now,”
she said. “We can come back later, with help.” He was just walking
slowly around the entryway, placing his hand lightly on the
crumbling banister, taking in every inch of the graying, cracked
and peeling wallpaper. Parts of it had come off in whole strips,
showing a chalky, white, crumbling material that in some places had
fallen away to show the thin strips of wood in the walls. He walked
straight ahead, down the main hall towards the back of the
house.

“Mark, are you even listening to
me?”

“I am, but we can’t wait. I have to do
this while I still can.”

She followed him down the hall and into
kitchen, partly to keep an eye on him and partly to not be alone in
this place for too long. They’d be lucky if it only had one ghost.
Mark walked in a slow circle around the room and then finally came
to a stop at a door on the far wall.

“Mark,” she said quietly. “Have you
been here before?”

“Yes. In my dreams.” He was trembling,
and she was thankful that he was still aware enough to be
scared.

“What’s down there?”

He placed his hand lightly on the
doorknob. “Down here,” he said, “is where he took them.”

“Oh god,” she whispered, her hands
clenching at her sides. “We don’t have to go down there Mark. Let’s
just talk about this, okay?”

“This is what it’s all about,
Christine. This is where he saw it, and what he showed me in my
dreams.”

“Mark, let’s wait, okay? Let’s just
take a second and talk about what we’re going to do in some crazy
murder basement that could be haunted.”

He looked over at one of the dirt
stained windows. “It’s getting close to dark, Christine. Do you
want to be here when the sun goes down?”

“I don’t want to be here at all! Will
you just stop walking around and talk to me, please?”

He turned and walked down the stairs.
“Sure. Let’s just do it down here.”

She waited several minutes, hoping
Steve would show up. When he didn’t she headed down the steps,
afraid Mark would hang himself or try to set the place on fire.
After half a flight, the wooden steps came to a small landing and
turned to the right for another half a flight and then coming to an
end on a worn and bare concrete floor. The only light was the soft
orange firelight coming from the massive furnace at the far end of
the room. Mark stood in front of it, his back to her and casting a
long shadow on the ground. She walked up to him, eager to be closer
to the light.

“Mark,” she whispered, “what are we
doing down here?”

“This is where he did it,” he said. He
turned and pointed back the way they came, and when she looked back
she saw the rusted pile of metal under the steps they’d walked
down.

Not a pile of metal. It was the cage,
the one Mark had told her about. “That was where he kept them,”
Mark said. “He had them watch the furnace to make them see what he
saw. That’s why all of this is happening. Because of this thing and
what it wants.”

“What does it want?”

“Blood.”

“Hello? Are you guys here?”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. The voice had
come from upstairs, and Christine could now hear footsteps moving
above them.

“Down here!” she yelled, and Mark shot
her a look. “Mark,” she said, reaching out to put a hand on his
arm, but he shrugged it away, taking a step back towards the
furnace.

“Mark, please, we need help! We can’t
do this alone!”

He simply glared at her.

She turned back towards the steps and
watched the pair of sneakers, and then jeans, descend down the
steps.

“Hello?” She had recognized Steve’s
voice, but seeing him come into view as he descended the final
flight of steps filled her with relief.