I inched my phone out of my jeans. Dylan was too close to pay attention to anything other than my face. “My husband’s on his way home. He’ll find you.”
“I can’t wait to meet your husband,” Dylan said, his eyes widening wildly. “I’m sure he’s a lovely fellow. The two of you will look great dead—don’t think about it!”
As soon as I’d unlocked my phone, it had made a sound to welcome me to the homepage. Dylan hammered his fist on my arm before I could dial 911. He hit the nerve in my arm, causing it to spasm. The phone jumped out of my hands and fell over the edge of the mezzanine. I heard it shatter on the first floor.
“I’m not playing your game, Peyton.” Dylan’s eyes were dilated, and his gaunt cheeks dripped with sweat. When he opened his mouth to speak, his breath wafted over me. The smell alone could have taken out an army. “You’re playing mine. Where’s Theo?”
He shook me again to emphasize the importance of his question. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my head. “I don’t know!” I gasped. “My guess is she hid when she saw your dumb ass come through the door.”
“Damn it!”
To my surprise, Dylan let me go, only to throw me to the floor. He paced across the short width of the hallway, rolling up his sleeve to scratch the track marks on his arm. If I had to guess, he was itching for a hit of whatever it was he couldn’t get enough of. That worked both for and against me. On one hand, drug addicts were unpredictable. I didn’t know what Dylan was capable of or if he really meant to kill me. On the other hand, drug addicts didn’t make the fastest or best decisions under pressure. Sometimes, if you got lucky, their reaction times sucked.
I stayed on the floor, curled into a ball both to protect myself from a potential attack and to keep Dylan thinking that I wasn’t able to move. Then, when his back was turned toward me on his next pass, I aimed a hard kick at the tendon behind his knee. His leg collapsed underneath him. Before he could recover, I sprang to my feet and slammed both hands against either side of his head. My palms hit his temples, and he went sprawling to the floor with a yell.
I ran. Right as I reached the entrance to the east wing, Dylan pulled a gun from his waistband and fired down the hallway. The bullet imbedded itself in the wallpaper, inches from my head. I chanced a backward glance. The idiot was still on the floor, cradling his head as he fired the gun blindly.
Breathing hard, I sprinted as fast as I could through the hallway. Dylan’s grip on my neck and the subsequent wall slams had done some damage. It wasn’t long before I had to slow down to let my body catch up, but I could hear Dylan’s staggering footsteps following behind me. I didn’t have much time. I needed a phone, but the landlines in the house didn’t work, and my cell lay shattered on the foyer floor. My next best plan was to get out of the house and drive away, but where were Theo and Sammy? I couldn’t leave without them.
“Peyton!” Dylan’s garbled yell echoed through a nearby hallway, making me jump. He was closer than I thought. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
I picked up my pace again, reached the stairs that led to the third floor, and headed up, Hopefully, Dylan would keep moving through the second floor and into the north wing. If he went that way, I’d have enough time to make it back to the foyer before he realized I was gone. I screamed when a hand shot out from a random room on the third floor and yanked me inside. The hand covered my mouth, and Theo emerged from the gloomy darkness.
“Theo!” I gasped and threw my arms around her. “You’re here! Dylan—he’s downstairs. I think he’s trying to kill you—us—I don’t know. Where’s Sammy?”
“I locked him in the attic.”
“You what?”
Theo’s eyes watered, but she held back her tears. “I saw Dylan through the foyer windows a split second before he got into the house. I’m an idiot. I should have locked the door. I did what I thought was best. I took Sammy and I ran. I took him all the way up to the fourth floor. He was the one who found the attic door hidden behind the tapestry. He wanted us both to hide—”
“Slow down,” I said as Theo started hyperventilating. “Stay calm. Then what?”
“Sammy wanted us both to hide until Dylan left,” Theo said, “but I couldn’t let you walk in here without knowing what Dylan was up to. I was trying to warn you from the window when you parked the car, but you didn’t see me.”
“Where’s your phone?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you call the cops?”
“I stupidly left it in the living room,” Theo answered, hiccupping. “Peyton, Dylan’s the one who made Hillary sick. He saw her at the Black Cat and dumped a laxative in her coffee when she wasn’t looking.”
A thump echoed from the hallway. I shoved Theo into a closet, where a collection of dusty fur coats muffled our whispered conversation. “We have to get to your phone, Theo. This house is huge, and we can use it to our advantage. I’ll lure Dylan away from the foyer so you can find your phone and call the police.”
“I won’t leave you alone with him—”
“He won’t touch me,” I told her. “I promise.”
“What about Sammy?”
“He’s safest in the attic,” I said, hoping I was right. “He can stay there until we handle Dylan.”
Theo wiped her streaming eyes on the sleeve of a coat. “I’m scared, Peyton. I’m really scared.”
“Me too, but everything’s going to be okay,” I promised her, hugging her tightly. “We have to be brave. We have to do this. Are you ready?”
She squared her shoulders and nodded. Quietly, I opened the closet door and listened for Dylan. Everything was quiet, so I inched down and beckoned for Theo to follow me. We waited at the door to the room. A minute passed, then two. Then a voice called up the stairs.
“Oh, Theo!” Dylan sang, his vocal chords straining. “Peyton! Why don’t you tell me where Sammy is, huh? I think we’re going to be best friends.”
Theo growled low in her throat. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Stick to the plan,” I whispered. “I’ll go out first. He’ll follow the sound of my footsteps. You go downstairs and get the phone.”
She grabbed my arm as I reached for the doorknob. “Wait—”
We locked eyes. Her fear was right there, etched in the color of her pupils for anyone to see. I rested my hand against her cheek for a short moment. “Trust me, Theo. We’re going to make it out of here.”
Before she replied, I made a run for it, letting my feet fall heavily on the creaky wood floors. At once, Dylan’s footsteps sped up, and his voice echoed through the corridor. “Oh, I love a good chase. There’s no fun in an easy capture.”
His words sent a shiver down my spine, but I kept running. He was stupid enough to lumber after me no matter where I set my path, so I led him down to the second floor and around the north wing at the back of the mansion. As I gasped for breath, I desperately hoped Theo had made her way back to the foyer. By now, she should have been able to reach her phone. If she hadn’t, I was in trouble. I was running out of gas, and Dylan was closer than I wanted him to be. When my lungs were burning too much to keep going, I ducked into a supply closet and blocked the door with a broom handle. My heart hammered against my rib cage as Dylan’s footsteps passed in the hallway just outside. I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep him from hearing my heavy breathing. He paused, and I watched the shadow of his feet wander back and forth through the crack between the floor and the door. After what felt like an hour, he continued in the same direction he’d been chasing me, and his footsteps faded out.
I waited another minute to make sure he wouldn’t loop back then slipped out of the closet and ran in the opposite direction. When I reached the mezzanine, I saw Theo in the foyer down below. At the sound of my footsteps, she dropped to the floor and rolled under the couch. To my utter relief, she had her cell phone in hand. I jogged down the steps as quietly as possible and crouched beside the sofa.
“It’s me!” I whispered when she let out a soft yelp
. “Move over.”
She shuffled to the left to give me room to join her under the couch. “Where did he go?”
“Into the west wing, but he’ll make his way back around soon,” I reported. “Did you call the cops?”
“They’re on their way,” she said. “They said they’d be here in less than five—”
She was interrupted when Dylan seized her by the ankle and dragged her out from under the couch. As he tried to control her, Theo screamed and thrashed like a demon escaped from hell. Dylan couldn’t get a good grip on her, and when she nearly gouged his eyes out with her fingernails, he threw her across the room. She landed on the coffee table, which broke under her weight. I rolled out from under the couch and lunged at Dylan’s legs. He fell backward and bashed his head against the wall behind him, but it wasn’t enough to render him unconscious. For the second time, he pulled his gun from his belt, but he didn’t aim it at me or Theo. Instead, he aimed it at the top of the stairs. When I looked up at the mezzanine, my heart stopped.
Sammy stood there, bracing himself on the railing as he measured the chaos in the foyer below.
“No,” Theo gasped. “Sammy, what are you doing? I told you to stay hidden!”
“Alyssa let me out,” Sammy said, staring blankly at the gun pointed right at his head. “She said you needed help.”
“Sammy, go—”
“Shut up, Theo!” Dylan roared. Theo flinched as he caressed the trigger of the gun. “Let the boy speak. Go ahead, Sammy. What else did you want to say?”
Sammy’s bottom lip trembled. “You’re a bad man.”
Dylan chuckled humorlessly. “I understand why you might see it like that, little man, but I’m just trying to take back what’s mine. You’re not a part of that deal. I’d say you’ll understand when you’re older, but” —he brandished the gun— “I guess we’ll see how about that.”
“Dylan,” Theo gasped from across the room. “Put the gun down. He’s just a kid. I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Theo, no,” I said.
“Shut up, Peyton,” Theo ordered sharply.
“Yeah, Peyton, shut up,” agreed Dylan. He had a glimmer in his eye now, like he knew he was about to get what he wanted. “Theo, come here.”
Theo lifted herself up on trembling legs. Some of her hair hung loose from where Dylan had ripped it from her scalp. Blood ran down the side of her neck and face. Her ankle was already swollen from where it had banged against the leg of the coffee table, but she made her way across the foyer until she was within Dylan’s reach. He grabbed her around the neck and pulled her close.
“Don’t you miss this, baby?” he whispered in her ear, brushing her hair away from her neck so he could kiss her. His lips came away bloody. “When it was just the two of us?”
Theo caressed him, running her hands across his biceps and arms. She got closer and closer to the gun in his right hand. “Yes, Dylan. I missed you. Take me with you. Just leave Sammy.”
Dylan leaned his head against Theo’s skin, nuzzling in her neck. He didn’t lower the gun. “You really want me to leave the kid?”
“Yes,” Theo said. “You have me. You just said it yourself. It’s better when it’s just the two of us.”
“Just to be sure: leave the kid?”
“Yes, baby.”
Dylan grinned against Theo’s neck, baring his teeth. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
He pulled the trigger.
Theo screamed.
The air turned cold.
Sammy collapsed.
And Dylan’s head snapped back as, at the last second, something hit his elbow and forced the gun up under his chin. The bullet ripped through his face, and he fell out of Theo’s grasp. Dead on the floor, Dylan began to leak blood all over the new foyer carpet. Theo covered her mouth, sobbing into her hands. Together, we both turned our eyes to the mezzanine.
At the top of the stairs, a ghostly figure helped Sammy to his feet. It was a woman—tall and thin—wearing a silk nightgown that flowed all the way down to the floor. Once Sammy was standing upright again, she held tightly on to his hand and looked down at me. My heart stopped.
“Penelope?” I whispered. “Penelope Abram?”
21
Purgatory was a police department. More specifically, it was the Falconwood police department, where I’d been waiting all night while the cops checked out the crime scene in my house. I’d expected to be bombarded with questions the second I got here, and I mentally prepared myself to give the answers, but how do you explain that a ghost made your best friend’s ex-boyfriend shoot himself after he threatened to kill his own son? Thankfully, the town of Falconwood was so small that there weren’t enough officers to monitor the crime scene and babysit me at the department. That, at the moment, was for the best.
My husband—almost ex-husband—came crashing through the front entrance of the police department, slamming the door so hard that the wide window behind it shuddered. “Peyton!” he gasped, wrapping me up in his arms when he saw me. “What happened? I got your call in the middle of the night, but when I went to the mansion, there were a bunch of cops outside. They said you were here? What’s going on?”
I rested my head against his chest, listening to the blood pumping through his heart. The plaster cast on his arm chafed against my shoulder as he hugged me, but I didn’t care. I needed the contact, to be held by someone who loved me. I burst into tears, sobbing into Ben’s sweater. They were tears that I’d been holding back all night without realizing it. Ben tightened his hug until all I heard was the steady, muffled beat of his heart. I let it lull me into a more peaceful state of mind, counting the beats until I could control myself. My breath hitched two or three times before it settled, and my pulse stopped bouncing erratically around in my neck. Ben held me until I calmed down, his chin resting on the top of my head. When I was ready, I pulled away and wiped my eyes on the back of my sleeve.
“Are you okay?” Ben stole a stack of tissues from behind an officer’s desk and handed it to me. “That’s the first thing I need to know. The police said you’d been beaten up—” His voice cracked and broke off, and he bowed his head to hide his look of pain. “God, Peyton, I should have been there, and I don’t even know what happened.”
I’d practically forgotten that I’d been manhandled just a few hours earlier, dragged around the mansion like a rag doll. From what I could see of my reflection in the window, I had bruises all around my neck and on the backs of my arms. My aggressor, however, had gotten what he deserved.
Ben’s warm hands caressed either side of my face, turning me gently so that he could examine the damage. “Tell me you’re okay. Do we need to go to the hospital?”
I took his hands in mine. “No, the medic at the house checked me out. It’s all superficial. I don’t have a concussion or anything like that. It’s nowhere near as bad as when you fell off the roof.”
Ben’s own wounds were healing well. I’d spotted him trying to scratch underneath his cast with a pen, but the plaster reached all the way from his hand, past his elbow, and up to his shoulder. After his fall, the bones is his arm were shattered, and he needed surgery to put it all back together again. He had a long way to go before he regained full mobility, but it was the last thing on his list to improve. The bruises around his face were gone completely now, and his broken ribs only bothered him every once in a while—if he turned the wrong way or moved too abruptly—during his daily routine. When he’d first returned home after his injury, he had been bound to a wheelchair and had a bad attitude. In just under two months, he’d come so far.
“Forget about me,” Ben said. “It isn’t a competition. I just want you to be okay. Will you please tell me what happened? I mean, can you? I won’t make you talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m dying from the suspense, Peyton. Your voicemails didn’t make much sense.”
I couldn’t remember what I’d rambled over the phone to Ben’s message box. Everything that happened
between leaving the mansion and arriving at the police station was a blur. “Theo and Sammy came over last night to keep me company while you were at Basil’s, but when I got there, I couldn’t find them. Then Dylan showed up—”
“Who’s Dylan again?” Ben led me to a comfortable ergonomic chair behind one of the police officers’ desk and sat me down. He kneeled in front of me, making sure to stay right in my line of vision, and kept his warm hands on my knees for comfort. “I’m a little behind on the story, baby.”
“He’s Theo’s ex-boyfriend,” I told him, going through tissues like nobody’s business. “Sammy’s father. She ran away from him when she figured out she was pregnant with Sammy. Anyway, he found her here in Falconwood a few weeks ago. She didn’t keep me updated, but I guess he started harassing her. He tried kidnapping Sammy, but thankfully that kid’s smarter than your average six-year-old boy.”
“I remember.” Ben patted my knee reassuringly. “It was only a few days ago.”
“Oh, right.” At this point, the four months we had already spent in Falconwood felt as though they had stretched into four years. I’d lost track of when things had happened. “Anyway, we thought Dylan had given up after Sammy gave him the slip that day, but I guess it only pissed him off more. My guess is he was stalking Theo, and he followed her to the mansion last night. He broke in, so when I got there, he attacked me—”
“Wait, where were Theo and Sammy?”
“They hid,” I said. “I got away from Dylan and ran. When I found Theo, we split up. I distracted Dylan while she went to the foyer to get her phone. She called the cops, but Dylan found us before they got her. We attacked him, but he aimed—” I choked up as the moment flashed before my eyes. “He aimed a gun at Sammy.”
Ben cupped his head in his hands, as if he couldn’t bear to hear what happened next. “And then what?”
To tell him the truth would be to admit that I’d been lying to him for months. The truth was hard to believe, and it didn’t make much sense to me either. The truth was that a ghost had turned Dylan’s gun away from Sammy and onto himself. The truth was that the ghost had forced Dylan to pull the trigger when the muzzle of the gun was under his chin. Dylan had died in an instant, and the woman at the top of the stairs holding Sammy’s hand vanished as quickly as she had appeared. It was easier to believe she hadn’t been there at all.
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 28