by K. F. Breene
The oddness of his hold broke, and I fell onto my side.
“Ella, you are safe here,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his. It was too flat and high. Too listless and without expression.
“Oh no,” I said, scrambling up.
He stepped forward and retrieved something from his pocket. Light flared from a match and then bloomed as the wick of a candle took the flame. Another candle’s light was added, and then a third.
Before I could run, he was there, faster than me on my best day, sweeping me up into his arms again, the hold sweet but for the situation surrounding it.
“Almost there,” he said, and continued walking.
The concrete ended, turning into a rough stone path. He stopped and lit another candelabrum. The rest of the area was all dirt, some of it heaped in small mounds, a few in recess, and a few larger mounds lining the dark, distant walls.
My gaze snagged on one of the piles alongside the wall. The lumps in it didn’t look right. They had more definition, somehow. After he lit the third candelabrum, I saw why.
I scream-gasped, clutching Braiden’s shoulders.
Bones. Human bones. Discarded into two piles, each topped with the small skull of a child.
“Oh God,” I said as my middle burned with terror and sadness. “Oh God.”
I tried to look away, to avert my gaze and find air to fill my lungs, but on the shelf to our other side sat ornaments. Little things, all. A retainer. A pair of old-style glasses. A teddy bear.
Keepsakes.
“No,” I said through a constricted throat. Tears rolled down my face. “No!”
It was all the kids. The ones who had left their houses, answering the pull of the Old Woman. They hadn’t been killed by the house. They’d been killed below it, and buried in its depths.
Fueled by adrenaline and desperation, I flung out my arms and legs at the same time, making me as awkward to hold as a flopping fish. I twisted to the side and back, trying to wriggle free.
Braiden staggered, his grip loosening.
I jabbed him in the eye with my finger, making him jerk back. I rolled and bucked, breaking out of his hold.
“No, Ella, you have to see. You have to see! This is the only way you’ll be safe. Trust me.”
I’d been right all along. The Old Woman was using him to bring me to her…only he didn’t seem to realize what was happening. Right now, I wasn’t sure he was in control at all.
I jumped up from where I’d fallen and tried to run around him, desperate to get back to the door. He spread out his arms and stepped in my way.
“Ella, trust—”
“Stop saying that!” I batted his hand and balled up my non-throbbing fist. I punched, aiming for his stomach. He grabbed my fist in his and held it tight.
“Ella—”
I stepped in front of him and swung up a knee. He clamped it between his thighs, keeping it from reaching his apex.
“We’re almost there, Ella,” he said in that strange voice.
I reached for his eyes, but he was onto me. He shoved my arms to the side, thus forcing my upper body to swing with them, and wrapped his arms around me. He flung me over his shoulder again, much too big and strong for me to escape.
That didn’t mean I stopped struggling. You only lost when you stopped fighting.
I tried to knee his chest. To punch him in the kidney. Anything to break free. I reached back and scratched his neck, to make sure I had his DNA in my fingernails. Even if I didn’t survive, I wanted the police to know he’d played a part in this on the off chance he was a willing participant. They’d question him. They’d see the scratches on his neck. And if they ever found me, they could match it up.
No one’s going to find you in this place, Ella. They never found all of these other kids…
He headed to another shadow-draped corner. This time he bent, nearly putting me down as he did. The door popped open and we were through. He set me down on the other side, and a click announced the closed door.
Pitch black accosted me again, but I didn’t let it slow me down. I ran for the door and felt along the rough wood. As light from more candles filled the room, I saw that there was a handle.
A handle!
I grabbed it, but his hands were already on me, turning me around.
“Witness,” he said in a voice that made my middle ache.
Without realizing what I was doing, I turned to see.
Seven little graves lined the walls, their gravestones round and pristine, each with a different name. Mary, John, Helen, George… Those with female names had little bows at the base, and those with male names had little baseball gloves. A rocking chair sat on a rug in the corner. Beside it, a stack of books.
A presence drifted in, and I knew who it was before I saw the form. Sure enough, the Old Woman walked along a path with her head hanging low and tears dripping from her cheeks. She stood in front of each little grave, her hands clasped solemnly at her waist.
“The doctors said I was cursed. That the miscarriages were my fault for my wicked ways.” Her voice was like a bell. She wiped her cheeks. “No God I know would punish innocent children because of their mother.” She sniffled. “I was not at fault for my husbands’ deaths. Nor for inheriting from them. I tried to do good. I gave to charity. I helped the community. But still…” She put out her hands, and I could feel the misery emanating from her. “I lost them all. The last, Margaret, made it the longest. Stillborn at eight months. She died like all the others.”
She looked at each one, her soft prayers filling the silence. At the end, she sat in her rocking chair and picked up a book. “I think John killed someone. I have no proof. I can’t be sure. But he went a little mad after the last pregnancy. After Margaret. His head isn’t right.” She shrugged, the tears renewed. “It was wrong not to go to the police. I know that. But John doesn’t know what the doctor told me. That the miscarriages are my fault. He blames himself. And so, the spilt blood is on my hands.” Her book trembled. She stared straight ahead sightlessly. “I can’t feel anything for whoever he lured into the woods the other night. I can’t feel…anything at all, other than grief for my children. I am dead inside. Dead.” She stared down at her book. “Maybe it is for the best.”
“But you were the one walking the streets,” I said without meaning to. “Not him. You. You still do.”
She blinked rapidly a few times, and the lights wavered. Her form flickered.
She went back to studying her book.
Suddenly it all made sense.
I was standing witness, like a confessional. I was letting her vent her grief. The past was revealing itself to me, to those of us who’d come to McKinley Mansion, but this wasn’t the past. This was right now. Florence’s ghost sat in this room with me, spilling her guts. The power of the mansion allowed her to communicate with me in words. Past and present had converged so that I could play witness and let her tell me her sins.
Well, I wasn’t buying it. Not after seeing the outer room. Not after being plagued with her visits for most of my life.
“You did it,” I accused her, bolder now. “You lured someone back here. Maybe he killed that someone, but you were the one who wandered the streets.”
She blinked rapidly again, and the candlelight dimmed. Her face swiveled around, moving farther than a human neck would allow.
“You did it,” I said again, adding a finger jab.
“What did you say, little girl?” The mood in the room changed. Intensified.
“You are the one who lures kids back to your house. Before you died and after. Were you the one who killed them, too? Buried them down here where they wouldn’t be found?”
Her eyes narrowed, and the room dimmed a little more. “My children are in this room. I would never taint their memories like that. John can’t even get in here. He doesn’t know it exists. He thought my babies were incinerated. Burned, like dirty secrets.” She scoffed. “I would never. I had them buried down here, in my home.
Here. Where they would always be loved.”
“Where are we?” Braiden said softly, grabbing his head in confusion.
“What about all those children out there?” I pointed, bile rising in my throat. “What about them?”
The light dimmed again, almost snuffing out. I could barely see.
“I don’t know what he did with the body,” she said in a sickly voice. “Bodies, I should say. I think there was more than one. It helped him forget the pain, I think. I should’ve said something. Told the police. But it was my fault.”
“How did you get the kids out of their houses?” I asked, pushing through. Wanting her to admit it, for my own peace of mind if nothing else. “The whole town recognized you walking through the streets. How did you get the kids to come to you?”
“I went for walks. Long walks. I…don’t remember what happened, but sometimes flashes of memory stayed with me. Seeing a little boy that looked like what George might’ve looked like had he grown. I called for the boy to come down to me, I remember. I called to him. I wanted to show him my George. To let them meet.” She blinked rapidly and touched the pad of her finger to her temple. The lights burned a little brighter. “A little shoe was left behind. Red had been smeared across the sole. John snatched it from me. The next morning, when I found it, he snatched it from me. Told me to go to my room. That I wasn’t well. And I suppose I wasn’t. I couldn’t remember anything after calling down the little boy. But…when John turned, he had a splatter of red across his side.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “You lured them back, and he killed them. Not once, but multiple times. And you did nothing to stop it, which made you an accomplice.”
The candles went out. Pitch black took away my sight, enhancing my other senses to compensate.
I heard a deep groan from the ancient wooden rocking chair. “Yes…” The word was like a sigh.
Maybe this was what she had actually wanted—to make a confession. To admit her wrongdoing. To ease the burden of guilt that had trapped her.
Or maybe she was stuck in an endless loop, appearing when her energy was at its highest, trying to lure out kids like she had before she died.
What Braiden had said came back to me. Maybe I could get her to move on. Maybe I could put an end to this for good. I could at least try…
I increased the firmness of my voice.
“You have been heard. Losing your children was not your fault. I will make their existence known. The historical society will make sure they won’t be forgotten.” As would the newspapers, when the police found the room outside this one. “And you have admitted to the role you played in the deaths of the missing children. You have admitted it, and in life, you were punished for it. You know…the stoning.” I cleared my throat. “You must leave this town. You must leave it alone. You cannot stay here. You cannot plague it any longer. Do you hear me?”
Something thumped above us. The candles flickered back to life, the illumination dim but bright enough for me to see the woman sitting in the chair with her head bowed. A tear dripped from her face. Relief coated her expression.
And all went black again.
Silence descended and a weight was lifted from my chest and shoulders. “That worked,” I said with a sense of awe. “She’s gone. Can you feel that?”
“Yes.” Braiden sighed. “I wouldn’t say I’m relaxed, but I’m not as stressed, either. Let’s get out of here.”
My feeling of relief was short-lived. I remembered that the first door we’d come through, the secret door, didn’t have a handle on the inside. Now that he was no longer bewitched, Braiden wouldn’t know its secrets. We still had to find a way out.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I know you meant well, but coming to this house was the dumbest idea you’ve ever had in your whole life, and I will never let you forget it,” I told Braiden.
Another thought crossed my mind. The Old Woman hadn’t lived long enough to kill all of the kids whose bodies were collected in the other room. Even if John had carried on after her, he must’ve died of old age years ago. And while the ghosts in this house certainly could’ve been responsible for the deaths, they wouldn’t bury the bodies.
So who was responsible?
A shiver ran through me. That bit of detective work would have to be reserved for the police.
I just hoped we could get out of here to alert them.
I grabbed Braiden’s hand, groping in the direction of the shelf where he’d lit a couple of candelabra while I was trying to escape. He must’ve gotten a match from somewhere… “Stay there.” I felt along the top until my hands hit off one of the candelabra. Next to it sat a small tin, and beside that a rough, flat something or other. It felt kind of like wood, but harder.
Something rattled inside the tin. It groaned when I opened it, and inside lay a bunch of little sticks I knew were matches. I took one out, felt along the sides of the metal container, and realized the little thing off to the side had to be for striking the matches.
With the smaller end between my fingers, I slid the bulbous end along the little flat something-or-other. My heart stilled in anticipation. Then the match crumbled in my fingertips.
“Dang it.” I threw it on the ground and grabbed another one. Same result. “They’re too old. The Old Woman’s energy must have made it work before. We’ll have to use our other senses to get this door open.”
I swung my hand until I felt Braiden and grabbed his wrist.
“Hold on to me, okay?” I placed his hand on my shoulder. “The layout of the next room is etched into my brain. I can get us to the second door.”
“Okay.” He reached up and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry,” he said as I let my fingertips skim the wall and walked to the nearest door. “I…I was the danger I was supposed to protect you from.”
“What do you last remember?” I opened the door easily and led us into the other room.
“I remember the haze, and someone coming down the servants’ stairs, but things get…dim after that. I can vaguely remember being terrified of the man who found us. The one I fought earlier. I knew something bad would happen if he got you. Then everything went black.”
“I’d bet a million dollars that Mr. Charming is John. A million dollars. Florence was out of her mind, and maybe he was, too, but unlike her, he doesn’t seem to have any remorse as a ghost. Either he didn’t recover in death, or he was bad to begin with. After she died, and her ghost still lured out kids, someone continued to kill. Who else would it have been?”
“You won’t be seeking him out to ask him,” Braiden said in a hard tone.
“No.” I wiped the hair from my damp face. “No, I don’t suppose I will. That’s the piece of this we’ll never know. It’s too bad her life had to end up like that. In this day and age, she would’ve been able to get help. She could’ve at least seen a different doctor. At the very least.”
I kicked something right before my face hit the wall. I bounced off and felt Braiden’s steadying hands.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered urgently.
“I’m dumb and I punched the wall with my face.” I scrubbed at my nose.
“What were you doing with your free hand?”
“Letting it hang at my side like a doofus. I just said I was dumb. Leave me alone about it.”
He laughed and slid his hands down my arms and to my waist. “Mum’s the word.”
I felt along the wall, horribly distracted by the weight of his warm hands, and eventually found the second door. Where the handle should’ve been, there was a small, raised circular area, as if someone had taken the handle out and patched it up. I felt along the sides and to the bottom, where Braiden had found the handle or lever or whatever on the other side. I was no Scarlet, though. I didn’t find anything.
“Step up here.” I shifted to the side and dragged him closer. “You knew how to open this from the other side. I know you weren’t…well, you, but if you just…open your mind, ca
n you figure out how to open it from this side?”
I heard something slide against the wood. His hands, probably. “I don’t remember coming through here, much less opening it.”
I thought back to the old, brittle matches in the other room. Certainly they’d be the same out here. Still, I told him to keep trying and felt my way over to the shelf by the door.
“What are you doing?” Braiden asked, scratching at the door.
“Trying to see if I have luck with the matches out here. It can’t hurt to try.”
“There is…something covering the handle hole. It seems…glued on, I think. I can’t feel any holes for screws or anything. I wonder if we could pry it off. Although…” He paused for a moment. “We’d need something to pry it off with.”
The side of my hand hit a bumpy surface. The candelabrum and a pool of hardened melted wax. Beside it was a different box than the one from the other room. This one was large and paper, with a familiar sandpaper strip for lighting.
I frowned in the darkness, because this style of box felt like the ones I had in my house, which I’d blindly used on many occasions when the power had gone out.
The matches were long and dry, and when I struck one against the side of the box, it immediately ignited. Sure enough, it was a newer-style box made by a company still in business.
“This box of matches was purchased recently…” My voice drifted away after I lit the four candles in the candelabrum. It struck me that the style of the metal holder was different than the one I’d seen on our way through this area. It looked…current. “Someone is still using this room.”
“Why do you say that?”
I noticed a large yellow plastic lantern, also from current times, but the other two candelabra Braiden had lit were gone—relics of the past, apparently. The keepsakes stretched out beyond that, as many as I’d seen before, organized in two neat rows. The past and present had definitely overlapped on our first trip through this room.
I clicked the button on the lantern, blasting us with white light. The skulls in the corner showed their grim smiles, watching us from hollowed eyes.