Lying at the base of the maple tree, Walter’s severed arm stirred—and began to creep like a tarantula across the grass, toward the body.
“Jesus, help me,” Raymond whispered.
The task before him was more gruesome than anything he’d anticipated. But it had to be done.
He shuffled forward and grabbed a fistful of Walter’s hair.
He refused to look down at the head dangling in his hand.
He cast the head into the unfinished grave that Walter had started digging. It thumped against the dirt, maybe three feet below.
Upside down, Walter’s inhuman glare fixated on Raymond. Raymond shuddered, looked away.
Behind him, Walter’s body scrabbled forward.
Raymond snagged an arm by the sleeve of the suit jacket. He dragged the body away from the grave.
Teeth gritted savagely, he went to work with the axe. He worked until he was convinced that Walter would be incapable of reassembling himself any time soon.
He finally plodded out of the garden on tired legs, soaked in sour sweat, blood streaking his hands and clothes, as if he were a butcher headed home after a long day at the slaughterhouse.
Once outside, he couldn’t hold it back any longer. He dropped to his knees, bent over, and vomited.
If he ever lived through this night, the memory of what he’d been forced to do would haunt him until the end of his days.
He wiped his chapped lips with the edge of his shirt, and used the axe to help him stand.
“Okay, Sammy,” he said. “That almost killed me, but I’m ready to go. What’s next?”
A nudge in his back directed him to the rear of the mansion.
Chapter 59
A
t the back of the house, Raymond found a weather-battered pair of wooden storm doors. A padlock secured the entrance.
“Locked,” Raymond said. “Got a key, kid?”
Sammy poked Raymond’s hand that gripped the axe.
“It’ll make a helluva racket,” he said. “But I’ve probably lost the element of surprise by now.”
Three clamorous whacks with the axe busted open the lock. The doors
eeked
as he pulled them open.
A concrete staircase descended into blackness. The stench of mildew assailed his nostrils.
He started to go in, then paused. Waited to see if something charged out of the darkness.
Nothing attacked him. Yet. He didn’t know quite what to expect in this palace of horrors.
He fished the mini-flashlight out of his pocket and walked down the steps, shining the light beam in front of him.
He was in an enormous, dank cellar. Bric-a-brac, dressed in cobwebs, crowded the area; furniture and odds and ends were piled up to the ceiling in sloppy heaps.
The ceiling.
He recalled a book he’d read at his wife’s insistence, entitled Dark Crevice or something like that; in one chapter, a clueless cop had walked into a cellar, only to find out—too late—that a bloodthirsty vampire clung to the rafters. He didn’t want to be like that dumb policeman. He played the light across the ceiling.
Only frosty spiderwebs and rusted pipes up there. Nothing threatening.
Panning the light around the chamber, he located a staircase across the room. He weaved between the dust-covered furniture, arrived at the foot of the stairs. He flashed the light up there, too.
All clear. A door waited at the peak of the steps.
“This was almost too easy,” he said. “Am I missing something, kid?”
The ghost did not respond. He no longer felt the chill in the air that indicated the spirit’s presence.
Had Sammy left him alone to fend for himself?
Graveyard silence permeated the basement. He heard only the frenetic throbbing of his heart.
With or without his ghostly companion, he had to move forward.
He climbed the steps. At the top, he grasped the doorknob, turned it, and pushed open the door.
Three big, bluish-gray cats stood on the threshold, as if they had been waiting for him. Ears flattened, they hissed.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
The animals attacked.
Chapter 60
D
isturbed by the abrupt silence, Andrew returned to the master bedroom, looking for Mika. The room was empty.
Where had she gone?
He despised her and wanted to get as far away from her as possible, but her disappearance, especially at this moment, when she’d sprung a shock on him with the letters, troubled him. Something was going on. He wasn’t sure whether the brewing incident was good for him. Or bad.
Behind him, the bedroom door whammed shut.
And opened.
But no one stood in the doorway.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
A penetrating draft whisked inside and embraced him like an old friend.
“Sammy,” he said. “Man, I’m glad you’re here.”
Sammy drifted away from him. The door closed, opened again.
Although they lacked the benefit of a computer or Scrabble board to communicate, the message was clear: the ghost wanted him to leave the bedroom.
He walked into the hallway. “What’s going on here, Sammy?”
A ghostly hand pressed against his back, urging him forward.
“I don’t get it. What you do you want me to do?”
A large, marble-topped table, adorned with a green vase, stood against the wall. Sammy guided him toward the vase.
Andrew touched the vase’s flawless ceramic surface. He looked inside the vessel, lifted it and checked underneath, found nothing of interest.
“What do you want me to do with this?”
Small, cool fingers grasped his chin and turned his head.
He faced the end of the hallway. The long mirror—the one he’d earlier thought he’d seen ripple like a lake—hung at the end of the hall. It reflected the image of him, holding the vase, bewildered.
What was Sammy trying to tell him?
The ghost applied upward pressure to his elbows, causing him to lift the vase higher.
“You want me to throw this at the mirror,” Andrew said, and knew he was right. He didn’t know
how
he knew that it was the message Sammy was attempting to communicate to him. But he knew it as surely as he’d ever known anything.
He didn’t know why Sammy wanted him to throw this thing, either, but he trusted that the child understood this house’s secrets better than he did.
He hesitated—his mother’s old teachings about breaking other people’s property echoing in his head—then he hurled the vase at the mirror.
The vase struck the surface and shattered on impact.
But the mirror didn’t break, as it should have; it didn’t sustain any cracks at all.
“Weird,” he said.
The glass shimmered, the surface swelling and ebbing, like a wall of water.
What was this?
He walked forward, his shoes crunching over ceramic shards.
“That’s not a mirror,” he whispered.
The entire mirror wavered . . . and then faded altogether, like water-colors washing away in a rainstorm.
It was a door.
Chapter 61
A
s the cats leaped to attack Raymond, he dropped the flashlight, startled. It clattered down the steps, leaving the dim light spilling from the room beyond the doorway as the only illumination to help him.
Goddammit, man, hold it together.
He didn’t drop the axe, thank God. As the felines pounced toward him in unison, one feral mass of fur, flashing teeth, and glaring green eyes, he swung the axe.
The blade caught one of the cats in the middle, hacked it nearly in half. The animal emitted a blood-chilling screech.
The other two cats jumped onto his face and chest. Claws tore into him.
Losing his balance, the axe slipping out of his grasp, he tumbled down the stairs.
He slammed to the floor on his back, his head knocking against the concrete. A sea of blackness floated in his vision, threatened to tug him under into unconsciousness.
But terror kept him awake.
The creatures clawed and bit furiously. Ripped into his neck and chest.
He rolled around, trying to knock them off. Pulled at them.
The damn things were hard to get ahold of, their lithe bodies in furious motion. He finally seized a cat’s head, went to twist it, and felt the animal’s sharp teeth gouge his fingers. He shouted in agony.
The other feline pawed at his cheek, dangerously close to his eye.
To hell with this. He hadn’t come this far to have his ass kicked by a bunch of cats.
Flipping over onto his back again, he jammed his elbows into the animals’ skulls. Shrieking, they fell off him. They dispersed in the shadows, like phantoms.
He groaned, got to his feet.
He was slightly dizzy, and his body was a canvas of bloody scratches, but he had no time to dwell on his condition. The creatures were still alive and had some fight in them.
The axe lay at the base of the stairs, revealed in a fall of light and shadow. He picked it up.
On the steps above him, the cat he’d cleaved with the axe quivered, paws pedaling the air. It wasn’t dead, either.
Didn’t anything at this house ever die?
He heard the other two cats around him. Creeping across furniture. Angling for another attack.
“Come on, you bastards,” he said under his breath.
One cat leaped off a dusty sofa.
Handling the axe like a sword, he swung the blade toward the creature and chopped it across the throat. Yowling, the cat dropped to the floor, head tethered to the body by a strand of fur and flesh.
He felt only a quick flash of nausea. After what he’d done in the garden, he’d acquired a cast-iron stomach for this gruesome work.
He picked up quick, stealthy movement in the shadows. The last cat.
He pivoted, following the rustling sounds.
“Not scared of you,” he said.
Paws padded across cushions. Something clanged to the floor. Then, silence fell over the chamber.
“Come on with it,” he said.
The silence stretched on.
He felt the creature out there, watching him. Hesitant, maybe. It had seen how he’d cut down its buddies.
Perhaps he was giving these cats more credit than they deserved. He assumed that they were as supernaturally smart as they were resilient and vicious.
Turning to face the cellar, he began to climb the stairs backward. When he reached the step on which the first injured cat lay, he kicked it to the floor.
As he’d suspected, his attempt to leave drew the final cat out of hiding. It scampered toward him in a streak of gray fur and fiery eyes. Jumped at him from the bottom of the stairs as if bouncing off a trampoline.
He slashed the animal down the middle.
Screeching, it thumped down the staircase.
He surveyed the cellar below him.
The nightmarish cats writhed and whimpered, but they were far from being capable of mounting another attack soon.
He cleaned blood from his face with the back of his hand. He ascended the stairs and stepped into the room beyond.
Chapter 62
A
s the mirror dissolved, so did the rest of the illusory furnishings in the mansion.
The fresh, creamy paint on the walls faded to reveal tattered, patchy wallpaper. The thick carpeting in the hall transformed to scarred wooden floorboards. The overstuffed chairs, which had looked brand new, became ancient lumps with ruptured cushions. The crystal chandelier still dangled from the ceiling, but instead of sparkling, it wore a garland of cobwebs.
He shook his head, as if clearing away cobwebs from his own eyes. This was the real Mourning Hill. Until now, he’d been wandering through a stylized fantasy version of the house, overlaid on the reality like a glossy varnish. He’d seen a glimmer of the true house a short while ago, before he’d lost consciousness in the bedroom—but this time, the images around him were solid, permanent. The truth was here to stay.
The silence had ended, too. On the fringes of his hearing, he detected incoherent whispers. Muffled footsteps came from within rooms along the long corridor. From somewhere distant, a childlike wailing reached him.
The tortured sounds of restless souls. Mika’s victims.