Authors: Beth Trissel
A
ny lingering grogginess fled in the
rush of terror.
All this, Will
observed in an instant and it came to him that his wrists were bound
overhead
and his ankles
tied
to the baseboard.
He w
as strung up
in his boxers
like a pig
roasting
over the flames
.
Julia
!
Agonizing fear ratcheted through
Will
at the all-consuming thought of her.
He
flashed his eyes
to the side.
Her terrified gaze
met his
frantic scrutiny
.
Both
arms
were bound over her head to
one of the bed posts
and her legs tied like his
.
Worse.
He
couldn’t
believe what he saw.
R
agged lengths
curled
around her chin
, all that remained of
h
er beautiful hair
.
What defilement
,
l
ike
shearing off an angel’s wings.
T
ears streamed down her face, b
ut she didn’t make a sound. She couldn’t.
Her mouth was gagged.
Paul hadn’t made it that far w
ith Will yet
, and he made good use of his voice
. “You damn worm!
What in hell are you doing?”
“KKK
––K
eep
ing
ppp
––
pretty Julia.”
“How?
By t
ying her up
?
Cutting her hair!
”
“PPP
––P
olice will come.
Find mmm
––
me.
I
kkk
––
keep her
ppp
––
pretty hair.”
Paul held up a plastic bag.
T
he reddish glow of shorn curls
glinted in the white light washing the room
.
Along w
ith the mass of hair,
was
the gold heart he’d taken from her throat.
He
gestured to Ju
lia’s portrait propped along the
wall
by the door
. “KKK
––K
eep her picture.”
T
he
n the
terrible
realization
cane to Will.
Paul didn’t actually intend to keep Julia herself.
He was gathering up his pretties
to remember her by.
Think
, Will
ordered
himself
, fighting to be calm.
Paul rose
on his haunches
lik
e the
fox
that he was
.
Every muscle was
taut
in his skinny frame, honed from all the garden work.
He raised the age-old knife.
Will couldn’t tear free from the bed fast enough
to stop him before he drove that blade home
.
An
d he knew Paul could
and would.
He h
ad no conscience.
Will knew
that now.
Was he always to
learn
t
h
ings too late?
It was Paul who’d poisoned the cup with the pearl, Paul who
’d
substituted poison
for the dye on the sword.
He’
d framed
Lyle and plotted Will’s death.
He must have had a grudge against Grandmother Nora for scolding him, so he’d finished her off
too
. But his scheme was backfiring.
The detective was too clever. And Will was remembering the past
along with Julia now
.
Paul slunk to Julia
,
his hackles rising
,
ps
yching himself up for the kill.
It ate into
Will
’
s innermost being
to see her
beg
ging
him
for help
with h
er eyes
.
He
jerked wildly at his bonds.
“Get away from her you godless bastard!”
Paul lifted
the dagger over Julia.
“I
kkk
––
killed Cameron.
KKK
––
Killed Cole. PPP
––P
retty Julia sailed
back to England
. I ccc
––
can’t
kkk
––
keep her.”
Will reaso
ned in a wild battle of words.
“You think you can keep her in death?”
Paul fired
him
a look of pure hate.
“YYY
––Y
ou can’t.”
“
What have I ever done to deserve this
?”
Flying
the blad
e back and forth like a toy
plane,
Paul said,
“YYY
––Y
ou wanted to thrash me.”
“
For locking Julia in the attic!
”
“
CCC
––C
ouldn’t keep her
there
,” Paul said
in disgust.
That must have been a trial run to see if he could pull it off and lock her away like one of his treasures
.
“
LLL
––L
yle shook me.
H
e’s in
jail
now
,”
Paul crowed.
“Where you’ll land
if you harm her.
Let us go and I’ll tell the policemen not to be
too
hard on you.”
Paul shook his lank
hair.
“YYY
––Y
o
u know what I did.
I mmm
––
must
rrr
––
run away.
”
“Then run
.
Leave us.
”
“YYY
––Y
ou not
kkk
––
keep Julia.”
Will cried out from his very soul as Paul slid the tip of the blade
down
over Julia’s perfect ch
eek, leaving a thin red trail. “For the love of God!
Stop!”
Gripping the
vile
silver handle, Pa
ul raised the blade above her.
His eyes took on the yellowish cast Will remembered
in
h
is worst nightmares
.
This was it.
Paul
was intent on driving it deep
.
He’d make Will watch and then stab him.
Will twisted
furiously
at his cords.
In a few seco
nds he’d have his hands free.
B
ut
a few seconds would be too late.
He needed more time
.
Wait
––
he wasn’t a
lawyer for nothing.
He’d battle with words
.
“Hey
loser!
Come after me.
You puny little coward.
”
Paul hesitated
at his challenge
and swung his head at
Will like a baited bear.
“NNN
––N
ot call me
ttt
––
that.”
Will eg
ged him on.
“I’ll call you what I like
––
you worthless piece of shit.
Fight like a man!”
Will had almost wrangled one knot free.
The dagger came
at him now.
And the
tawny
eyes.
“Three o’
clock,” Paul said, in the
steady
voice Peter had used
at the end
. “You
’ll
die at the
very hour Cole did
.”
****
At
that moment Julia thought of
Cameron
.
Suddenly
,
it was clear
to her
.
Cameron
was
the presence
in the house.
She
’d
felt his troubled spirit
like a primal force
.
Angry, chilled
.
The disturbance h
eightene
d. Paul disturbed him.
Paul who’
d knifed him in the back
as Peter the groom.
Cameron
! He’d adored Julia once.
She willed him to
come and
help her
now
.
To help them both.
Cameron!
I need you!
She sensed him
gliding up the stairs
…f
elt him coming, closer,
closer
,
entering
the room
like mist
.
The mist she’d detected before, only thicker now.
Though she couldn’t see his form, she knew he was here.
Her breath frosted the air as if on
a cold night.
So did Will’s, e
ven Paul’s
, at his coming
.
Cameron stop him
! she silently pleaded.
Paul––Peter––killed you
!
For the first time since Julia had
awakened to this nightmare
,
Paul appeared genuinely frightened
.
He goggled
at the hazy
presence
.
Maybe he
even
saw more than she did.
Maybe he saw the vengeful face of his murdered victim.
The knife
that had
once belonged to the Scotsman
poised
in mid-air as if Paul
struggled
against an unseen foe
.
His eyes bulged and his mouth twisted
in a fierce line
.
“GGG
––
Go!” Paul yelled, grappling with the blade.
Again
,
he tried to force
the knife
at Will
and agai
n he was stayed by the vaporous
phantom.
Frothy bubbles oozed from Paul’s
lips
, like a mad wolf’s,
as he struggled with the invisible hand
.
Will had undone
the la
st of the knots at his wrists.
He
started to
lunge at Paul
then
held back
.
The icy presence seemed a
ngrier now––the cold biting.
Paul’s hand wasn’t
his own.
He gave the distorted impression of a
frenzied
man battling
himself.
Julia
smelled
Paul’s
fear.
He
churned like a man in quicksand.
Deat
h was a stroke away for someone, l
ike a fatal clock about to chime
the
inevitable
hour.
Bong!
Bong
!
Bong
!
It was
the
grandfather
’s
clock
downstairs
.