Several minutes later, Mika strutted outside. He marveled at how beautiful and youthful she looked. He had last seen this woman thirty years ago, and for how she appeared, it might as well have been yesterday.
Mika didn’t look toward the water. She waited beside the car while Walter carried two people out of the house, limp bodies slung like garbage bags over his broad shoulders: Andrew, and Carmen.
Raymond’s blood turned colder than the water around him.
She couldn’t have killed Andrew. She was in love with him. Right?
But he wasn’t as optimistic about Carmen’s fate.
Walter put Carmen in the trunk; he placed Andrew in the backseat. Mika climbed in the back, too, and Walter shut the door behind her.
The sedan sped out of the yard, spitting leaves and grit in the air, and disappeared around the corner of the house. The echo of the rumbling engine faded.
They could be going to only one destination: Mourning Hill.
He had been left behind. They knew he was hiding in the lake. Probably, they figured he was too insignificant to bother with any more.
They’d underestimated him. Dismissed him as a non-factor.
But this was the event of which he’d been dreaming for the past few weeks. The nightmare had been a message; it also had been prophetic.
It was time to save his son.
Chapter 53
A
s the night extended its hold over the world, Raymond frantically moved around the lake house.
In a bedroom, he found clothes in Andrew’s suitcase. He changed out of his damp gear and slipped on jeans, a T-shirt, and low-cut Adidas. Fortunately, he and Andrew wore the same sizes.
Next, he searched for a suitable weapon. He found numerous knives in the kitchen, but disregarded them. He wanted something more lethal than an ordinary piece of cutlery. A gun would be ideal.
He didn’t find any firearms, but in the storage shed, he discovered a heavy-duty wood axe, nearly three feet long from the bottom of the handle to the tip of the head. The broad, wedge-shaped blade gleamed, evidence of a recent sharpening. This would do just fine.
He didn’t hold any misconceptions about what he had to do. Someone would likely end up dead before the night ended. The blood that stained the kitchen floor was proof of the high stakes for which they were playing.
Calling the police wasn’t an option. What was he going to do—tell the cops that a hundred-something-year-old woman who looked twenty-five and possessed extrasensory powers was taking his son to her haunted mansion? Sure, that would guarantee their assistance—hauling him to the local psychiatric hospital, that is.
Giving the authorities a more reasonable story—maybe saying that Andrew had been abducted—while it would likely secure the police’s involvement, wasn’t a much better option. What were the cops going to do when they faced Mika? Shoot her? It would never work. Conventional tactics bound the police.
But not him.
This was not a matter to be settled by ordinary thinking, commonplace methods. Which meant involving other people would be a waste of time. This was his responsibility. He had to go at it alone.
But in fact, he really wasn’t sure what he was going to do. All he was certain of was that he needed to get to Mourning Hill. By the time he arrived, he hoped that a plan presented itself.
Carrying the axe over his shoulder and his briefcase in his hand, like some weird lumber-chopping executive, he hastened to his Ford.
The driver’s side door sprang open.
He paused.
A coolness that couldn’t be attributed to the evening breeze danced around him.
“Sammy?” he said. “You with me, son?”
A cold sensation, not unpleasant, folded over his hand. Ghostly fingers gently pried the briefcase out of his grasp and carried it inside the truck, placing it on the passenger seat.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
He wasn’t alone after all.
Chapter 54
A
fter a deep sleep rife with disturbing dreams, Andrew awoke. He lay on his back on soft, burnished leather seats. Groggy, he tried to figure out where he was.
He was inside a car. The fragrance of jasmine hung in the air.
His breath snagged in his chest as comprehension came over him.
Mika’s beatific face floated into his line of sight. She cradled his head in her lap.
Looking down at him, she smiled. “Hi, baby.”
He opened his mouth to scream. But he couldn’t draw enough breath to do so. Bolting upright, he gasped, hyper ventilating like an asthmatic child.
Mike was unconcerned. “We’re home, darling. At last! I can hardly wait to give you a tour of our estate.”
He finally found his voice. “Get the hell away from me!” He scrambled to the other side of the car and grabbed the door handle, not knowing or caring whether the sedan was moving. He shoved the door open and rolled outside, onto the damp earth.
The Rolls Royce was parked at the end of a long, winding gravel driveway. Mourning Hill stood before him on the crest of a mound, wide roof framed by tattered clouds and a bone-white moon. The dreary mansion, its massive columns wreathed in Spanish moss, was every bit as forbidding as he remembered from his first time there.
This had to be the worst nightmare he’d ever had in his life. Someone had to wake him up before he lost his mind.
The sedan’s trunk yawned open. Fear made his legs watery, but he dragged himself to the rear of the vehicle, and peered inside.
The trunk was empty. There were no traces of blood or hair or clothing—nothing to indicate the terrible cargo that had been stored in there the last time he’d looked. The trunk was as clean as it probably had been on the day the car rolled out of the dealership parking lot.
He thought of Eric and Carmen. Dead. Gone forever.
Crippling grief buckled through him. He sagged against the bumper, hugging himself tightly.
“Walter has taken care of them,” Mika said, coming around the car’s flank. She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about such nasty things, baby. We’re home now. Let me hold you.” She stepped closer, arms spread to embrace him.
He knocked her hands away and backpedaled, squishing through mud. “I’m getting out of here.”
“That isn’t possible. You can’t leave. Ever.”
“Bullshit.” He sprinted along the driveway, away from the house.
“I’ll be waiting for you on the veranda, baby.” She laughed, and began to sing happily, a song about lovers reunited.
He ignored her maddening singing and concentrated on running down the narrow lane.
Carmen and Eric were alive. They had to be. They were alive, and he was stuck in this nightmare, and the only way for him to wake up was for him to get away from Mika and this lunatic place.
After he’d run a couple of dozen yards, he reached a head-high wall of shrubs that completely blocked his path. Pines and maples crowded the area, their leafy boughs interwoven like an immense net.
The last time he’d been here, he’d had to force his way through the shrubbery.
How had Mika’s Rolls Royce gotten through this? Could there be another way out?
In his mind’s eye, he envisioned Mika commanding the bushes to part, like Biblical sea waters, to allow the car to nose through. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.
The thicket certainly didn’t move aside for him, and he didn’t see a way around it, so he began to clear a path. He ripped aside branches and kicked down bushes. Cold sweat coated his face. Thorns scratched his arms and hands, but he didn’t register the pain. Desperation had numbed him to any distractions from his goal of escaping.
He fought through the last patch of shrubbery, and emerged in a clearing, underneath a canopy of trees.
Beyond the trees, Mourning Hill loomed like an old, abandoned fortress. He’d arrived at the back of the house.
This was impossible.
He’d been running
away
from the mansion.
You can’t leave. Ever.
It was as if he’d been magically teleported to the rear of the property.
He ran to the boundary of the vast lawn, on another side of the yard. A tall line of shrubbery formed the perimeter; black woods grew beyond. He plunged into the bushes and drove through them, pushing into the forest.
Nocturnal creatures croaked, hissed, and scampered around him. Bugs buzzed against his face. He batted them away, and pressed on.
After he’d run for at least a quarter of a mile, the woods thinned, and gave way to a high wall of bushes. He fought through them and stumbled into a clearing.
The broad, moss-covered side of Mourning Hill stood ahead of him.
Again, he’d been transported to another location on the estate grounds.
He shouted a wordless cry of anguish.
His lungs burned from the running he’d done. He sank to his knees in the thick, wet grass, drawing deep breaths.
He could no longer avoid the truth, as unbelievable as it was to his rational mind.
He was like a tiny mouse in a big maze with no exit. Trapped.
He found Mika on the veranda. She swayed on the wooden bench swing, clicking her heels together like a schoolgirl on a playground.
She cocked her head, eyes amused. “Tired of running, Andrew?”
“I want to go home,” he said. “Please.”
“You
are
home.” She hopped off the swing, and offered her hand. “Come inside with me.”
He didn’t want to go inside this madhouse. But what was the point of resisting? He couldn’t escape. He didn’t have the energy to continue what seemed to be a pointless fight.
However, he nursed a delicate hope that, once inside the house, he would discover something that would give him an edge over her.
He took her hand, like a child.
She led him inside Mourning Hill.
Chapter 55
T
he interior of the mansion looked nothing like the dusty, cobweb-filled estate that Andrew remembered from his initial visit, or that his father had described.
This was an utterly contemporary, fantasy place, like something from the MTV show,
Cribs
.
“This is . . . amazing,” he said, as Mika led him down the entry hall.
“This is your home now,” she said. “I redecorated and furnished it to please you.”
Gaping at his surroundings, he could only shake his head.
There were polished marble floors in the hallway, which was wide enough to accommodate driving a Hummer across its length. The creamy walls were adorned with dramatically lighted, framed artwork, with numerous insets full of Greek sculptures and ornate vases. Near the middle of the long corridor, an enormous crystal chandelier hung overhead, illuminating a grand spiral staircase; the staircase featured a gold balustrade and marble steps, with nary a cobweb in sight.
He peeked inside the living room. A vast space. Soaring cathedral ceiling. Snow-white carpeting. Humongous, flat-screen television. Plush, Italian leather furniture. End tables gilded with gold. A black grand piano. An aquarium large enough for he himself to swim in, full of shimmering water and stocked with exotic, colorful fish. A marble fireplace sufficiently spacious to contain an inferno.
A song played in the background, piped to his ears from hidden speakers: “Fantasy” by Earth, Wind, and Fire. They were one of his all-time favorite bands.
“When did you do all of this?” he asked.
“When I knew you were the one,” she said. She grinned. “Come, Andrew. I’ll show you more of our home.”
A door off the hallway opened to a theater that put the entertainment area in his house to shame. It had a massive, wall-size screen, seating to accommodate fifteen people, and even an old-fashioned popcorn machine.
The library was next. Pure light filtered from another crystal chandelier. The chamber contained a labyrinth of mahogany bookshelves, every one packed with hardcover volumes penned by all of his favorite authors: Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, Walter Mosley . . . thousands of books, books he’d read and books he wanted to read one day, all collected here. Comfortable leather club chairs were positioned near large bay windows that provided a view of the rolling, manicured estate grounds. The colorful Persian rugs on the floor were so soft he could’ve slept on them.
“And here’s the kitchen,” she said, gesturing to a room beyond another arched doorway. It could have served a restaurant staff: a big marble island, double-ovens, two gigantic refrigerators, a collection of shining pots and pans dangling from hooks, a cappuccino machine, and more, every culinary device he could think of neatly stored on the sparkling counters.