by E. J. Dawson
There was a gasp, a noise he hadn’t expected, and he turned to see the woman from before at the door’s entrance. Almost a ghost as she glanced at him, she ran down the secret stairs.
She was invading his hallowed sanctuary.
Lynwood had to stop her, and while he paused to light a spare lantern, he discovered he couldn’t find the key. She must have taken it.
She’d left the door open behind her, and with another glance around the empty foyer, he climbed through the opening, sealing the door behind them. No one would find them. The stupid woman had just walked into the best of traps.
Humming to himself as he descended, he was irked that his final victim might not be of his taste, but when the police came it wouldn’t matter, he’d have time at least to add something to his collection. It would be a new experience to accompany him to the afterlife.
No place was like this place, he knew that now, and he’d rather die in here than on the run.
But first, he’d enjoy his last victim.
Neither one of them would leave this room alive.
Lying with a woman with hair between her legs. Feeling that ample soft body.
A part of him was revolted, wanting the smooth clean lines of a young body, but another part was intrigued. And it was better than nothing at all.
He traced his hand along the wall, feeling every stone, hearing the song echo off its surface as he admired the masonry and skill gone into building the spiral staircase.
The site had originally been a house with a cellar that had a cave beneath it. A long, rocky passage led down to beneath the headland, and in all the nooks and crannies guns had been stored during the Civil War. But after his uncle died and the war ended, all of that had been useless. It didn’t change what an excellent hiding place it was, or how strategically located.
But Lynwood was penniless aside from the land. He needed a reason to be there. Picking up and discarding dozens of ideas he didn’t have the funds for, one finally became obvious. The far headland was a frequent picnic and scenic spot for travelers between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Lynwood had been quick to discount a restaurant, but a hotel?
Lynwood approached Harlow, a wealthy man from the gold rush, to finance the idea. He’d accepted. Lynwood need only hand him the title documents and Harlow would build the hotel. Lynwood already knew what he wanted to do, even if it cost him his pride during the day. He’d been an integral part of its development and shown Harlow he was a capable manager. Onsite, Lynwood had bribed the bricklayer to incorporate the spiral stairs from the old house into the new hotel. It wasn’t on the plans, and Harlow had never known it existed. Lynwood just wished he’d had more time. It had taken two years to build the hotel, and another ten to have it perfectly operational.
None of it mattered if he could finally indulge his fantasy.
He wondered what would happen to the place now. The police would undoubtedly shut them down.
As he thought of his collection, he didn’t care.
There were sixteen locks of hair on the walls. Sixteen reams of skin. Sixteen bodies taken through to the little alcove where the seawater came out of the bowels of the cave. He could hear the tide pushing water through the rock, see the water moving. It never came up above the lip of the cave, and no waves came in and out. When he’d jumped in, he’d found it was about waist height and that there were other underwater caves leading away into the dark. He’d never dared to venture through to see if he could reach the shore. No, his purposes had been far more particular.
He used the water inlet to weigh down the remains of the bodies and let the fish eat their fill, and if anything came back up, he buried it under his makeshift bed.
Lynwood liked sleeping down here.
Sometimes he could only sleep if he could hear the live ones whimpering.
Now though, it was silent, and he listened for the sound of the woman’s breath. She had run in here, and he scanned around his castle looking for signs of her. The light glimmered over his home, but she was not there.
The more he searched, the more confused he became. She couldn’t have gotten out, there was nowhere for her to hide or run. He started to become nervous and offended by her uncontrolled presence. The feeling grew, urging him to anger that she had somehow escaped, that she had brought the police, and that she was going to tell everyone!
“Where are you?” he asked, not expecting an answer when even the light showed no one there.
“Did you think it would be like this?” A ghostly voice called.
Something grabbed his thigh. Hard enough to bruise.
“Are you as afraid as they were?” she whispered.
His wrist burned, and he shook it, using the light to see what had been done, but there was only a faint pink mark.
“Did you think it would be easy?”
“Where are you, witch!” he snarled into the dark. Mocking laughter floated in the gloom.
This wasn’t right. This was his domain, his place of refuge, his secret…
Lynwood stopped.
“It wasn’t like this,” he said aloud, and the voice was silent.
He walked around the cave, knowing every crevice, every stone, every cage…
Whirling about, he looked at the wall of trophies.
There were more than sixteen.
He’d been tricked.
There was someone else in the cave. Someone who danced in the shadows and had tried to make him afraid. He smiled as he sensed her presence and became aware of it as a growing aggravation and not another lamb for the slaughter. A woman with ghosts in her eyes and a stain on her soul that opened wide for him...
He reached out. “Got you!”
Chapter 22
His hands were around her throat.
She was thrust face down in the bowl of water, his invisible hands pinching at her neck. The tureen was far deeper than she realized, and no matter how she battered at it, it wouldn’t move. Violent struggling brought on panic—the need to breathe, the splashing water filling her mouth as she fought to push away from the table.
Hands wrapped around her arms and with a wrench she was torn backward into Alasdair’s arms.
Letitia coughed the water out of her throat and lungs, blearily wiping her eyes.
“Are you all right?” Alasdair cradled her. “Answer me, Tisha, are you hurt?”
“No,” she sputtered. “But I know where he is, I know how to reach Finola—”
She stopped at his indrawn breath and turned in his arms to scan the room.
Everything in the room floated.
Pots, pans, buckets, skillets, chairs.
Hovering ever so gently in the air.
There was a vibration, the hum of a string pulled taut and ready to snap.
Letitia remembered the glass shards. Instinct drove her to roll under the table, and Alasdair was quick behind her as everything came crashing upon the cupboard they’d just been leaning against.
The noise of smashing pots and breaking furniture was deafening, and she threw her arms over her head, Alasdair using his body as a shield as the shards flew everywhere. She was pelted and shards scraped against her clothes, but all fell away to nothing. For several moments she lay curled in a ball, afraid to move, as a hush descended. Alasdair’s arms let go only when the last noises died away.
Letitia lifted her head, looking around for a new threat, but there was nothing.
Then there came a sound, distant at first, like the noise of an approaching train.
Under the table, her view was obscured, and as she warily looked over its edge, the table jerked above them. The legs lifted from the floor and then came hurtling down on them.
“Move!” Alasdair shoved her toward the door.
She scrambled to the exit, his hand on her back urging her on. The table flew at them, though it wa
s too wide for the door, and instead landed with a crash against its frame. Letitia staggered to her feet and ran into the foyer, Alasdair close behind her.
As they tumbled out into the corridor all stilled behind them.
They held one another, panting. Letitia was shaking off the vision’s haze and readying for the next attack. But there was silence.
“I think…I think he stretched himself to his limit,” Letitia said. “Spirits have finite power.”
“Did you find her?” Alasdair asked as she rounded the receptionist desk to retrieve the key from its drawer.
“Yes, I think so, but we have to hurry.” She found the key in the drawer and returned to where she’d seen him in the vision.
The wood was older now, the beautiful polish dried and flaking.
Letitia focused on the latch that held the little door closed between the open reception and the foyer. She unhooked the latch that held the half-door open, closing off the reception area. She now faced the paneled wall beneath the stairs. As she scanned its surface, her gaze dropped to the metal latch that held the small reception door back. There was a narrow opening under the latch.
Letitia didn’t dare breathe as she slid the key inside and turned it.
There was a click to her left, causing her to jump. A door in the wall popped open, the gap enough to slide her gloved hand in. She thrust the panel back to reveal a set of stairs leading downward. This is what they were searching for.
“Alasdair…” she said, and he collected the lantern from under the receptionist’s desk, safe from the spirit’s rage. He held it aloft, ready to enter but she grasped his arm.
“This time,” she said, “we must not fall into his trap. He is using whatever he can to distract us so he can gather his energy. He’s proven he can overcome our defenses, but I’m not sure what else he’s capable of.”
She didn’t want to hurt Alasdair, to have what happened in the cellar occur again, but one look at his stern face told her there was no negotiating with him.
“I go where you go, Tisha.” It was said with kindness, and with a quick sigh, she nodded and turned to the doorway.
There were no railings, and the stairs were barely wider than her shoulders. Alasdair would need to turn his body to enter. She took the stairs with care, one at a time, turning ever downward into the dark. It might be a subcellar, yet still, the staircase went on until she became dizzy with the turns.
“Any sign of the blasted bottom?” Alasdair asked behind her.
“No,” Letitia said, the confines of the walls pushing at her senses, fear curling in her throat. Onward they went into the dark, the spiral around her like a net she couldn’t see. Only the tender flickering flame of their lamp eased the pressing shadows.
Letitia knew its game then. It was using terror trying to choke her, made every step about the one after that, and the one after that, each harder than the last.
She tried to curb her fear of the dark and of falling, but as she stepped down something far worse pressed on her senses.
She could smell the rot of brine and the stank of seaweed, and underneath it was a far more harrowing scent. Blood. Urine. Death.
Letitia’s lips trembled with a useless prayer before she made it to the bottom, terrified of how far they had come and what she would see when she descended into the cave.
Yet there it was, the dirt and sand floor, stretching away to the edges of the light, and for a moment she thought she heard the rattle of chains.
“Good God,” Alasdair said, holding his kerchief against his mouth.
“This is it,” Letitia said, without having to look. “This is the lair.”
Her eyes were drawn to the far side of the room. Three wrought-iron cages were buried into the rock, solid as the walls of the cave itself. They were empty but for the chains strewn on the floor, rusted and worn with use.
No, not empty.
A bundle lay within one of them.
“Finola!” Alasdair rushed forward, grabbing the door but it was padlocked shut.
Calbright had dumped Finola inside, her temple bleeding.
“Oh, God.” Letitia wept, her hand going to her mouth to cover the revulsion.
“I’ll get her out,” Alasdair said, seeking something to break open the lock.
“Finola?” Letitia crawled over the rock to reach out for the girl, but like that night in her room, she didn’t respond. Finola was shivering with the unknown touch, lost in a nightmare.
“Hold on,” she called to Finola. “We’re going to get you out—just hold on.”
There was a grimace in the dark. Alasdair uttered a curse before he came back to the cage with a file in hand.
“It will take me a few minutes,” he said, focused on his task. Letitia nodded and rose to scan the room and learn what she could of it or what might be useful for stopping Lynwood.
There was a rocky center, almost a platform, with bolts through the stone. Melted candles adorned the stonework around the four chains, and when she drew closer, lamp light illuminated the stains of blood across the macabre temple.
Unable to stomach what the vile things had been used for, she turned away and instead focused on Alasdair’s back. He was methodical in his rasps on the chain. Letitia didn’t want to know where he got the file from, but something drove her to search the cave to try to comprehend the depths of Lynwood and Calbright’s depravity.
A cul-de-sac made into a working room showed benches and tubs, a chopping block, and working tools, all gleaming sharp from a whetstone that lay on the bench. Letitia’s gaze followed the bench to the far end until she was drawn to the back wall.
Bits of hair and leather hung from racks upon racks, some of it incredibly old, others gleaming with youth and vitality. A wavy brown set of locks. A curling set of blonde.
Letitia recognized it from a photograph.
She turned away, rupturing her stomach’s contents all over the sandy floor as she came to terms with what was hanging on that wall of horrors. The sheer amount of variety festooned there and the disgust of it all spilled up from her guts in a font of bile that burned her throat and tongue.
“Easy.” Alasdair was beside her, holding her.
“Sweet Jesus,” she uttered, as her stomach threatened to heave again.
“Just slow down and try not to move,” he said.
“We need to get the police down here,” she said. “That lock of hair belongs to Cassy…Cassy was here, only days ago. That’s her hair.”
Letitia waved to where she meant, but he grasped her hand.
“I need to get Finola free,” he said. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Go back to her.”
He handed her a kerchief and helped her to her feet.
Her task was not done here, though. She needed to find a way to stop Lynwood from hurting anyone else.
She hesitated, drawn to the little alcove that Alasdair had left.
“Letitia, you don’t have to look,” he warned, and she waved him off, nearly stumbling forward. As she walked on unsteady feet over the dirty surface of the cave’s floor, she scanned the other section. Inside sat a desk and a small bunk with a figure curled up on its side away from the light.
It was a skeleton in a suit covered in a blanket.
Curiosity, morbid to say the least, drove her to take one step after another nearer to that small and huddled figure. But as she drew closer the old scent of rot and decay assault her senses, and she wrinkled her nose, staring at the huddled figure and unable to stop reaching out to it.
She gripped the edge of the old blanket, every second stretching into eternity as she drew it back. Something stuck to the thick wool, and she tugged at it until a dark head of hair showed, along with a loose woolen suit down to thin legs and brown shoes.
There was bone gray in the gaps.
Between the collar of his shirt and his hair.
Around his ankles.
Where there was a glimmer of the bone of his hand at one end of the suit’s arm.
This man was dead—had been dead for more than fifty years. He had come here, laid down, and died.
But that couldn’t be all there was to it, and so she reached across and touched his shoulder, the form stiff, the resilience in a pose that had been held for decades. She yanked it around to face her.
A wide-open skull greeted her, mockingly, with empty eyes and rotted teeth. Letitia knew it was Lynwood.
At the same time, she sensed his growing resentment, the essence of him filling the room. He’d gathered himself once more, and he was coming for them again now that she’d found all of his secrets.
Here was the key to defeating him. The refuge was within his body.
“Alasdair…” she said, tone rising with a warning.
“Almost done,” he panted, sawing through the lock, the vestiges of rust giving way with a snap. “There.”
He flung open the door. That was the last straw.
Wind filled the cave, a whirling sound so fierce that Letitia turned with dread to the room full of tools.
“Run!” she called out, and Alasdair needed no goading, sweeping the unconscious Finola into his arms and running for the stairs.
She was fast behind him as hurtling metal ripped through the air to strike at the stones around her, but with every turn of the tunnel’s upward climb, they clattered uselessly onto the stairs.
As they neared the top, Letitia knew it wouldn’t stop the spirit, the open space dangerous since they now held his prize.
Letitia had to keep it distracted.
“Run to the car,” she yelled at Alasdair. “Don’t stop. You must get Finola away from the hotel, out of range, and you must do it now.”
“Don’t you dare stay behind,” Alasdair shouted over his shoulder as they fell into the foyer.
As they reached the front door, the warmth of headlights vanished as an infinite blackness swallowed the space beyond, forbidding them from leaving. Letitia didn’t dare approach it or let it in.