And now he was rattling on about his cousin, who’d worked at a haunted B&B one summer in Providence.
It was just that he was talking so much. It was just that he seemed so excited, as if this were some big adventure.
It was just that he wasn’t Jake.
She’d never thought Jake would abandon her. Leave her all on her own.
But she wasn’t on her own now, was she? Alan was here, stepping hard on the brakes again as a rusty old pickup truck turned out of the Chestnut Hill Cemetery and onto the road in front of them. And if Haley was a halfway decent person—which, apparently, she wasn’t—she’d be grateful for that. Instead of really, really wishing he would just shut up and let her think.
“And there was this time my brother and me, we were at this vacation house my parents rented, and we heard these footsteps on the floor above. Over and over, you know? And there was nobody in the house but us.”
“Yeah?” Haley stared out through the windshield. There was a small backhoe perched on the bed of the pickup truck. A shower of fresh dirt fell from the shovel.
“Only when my dad went up there, he found this squirrel that had gotten in the window, so that probably doesn’t count. But still—”
The truck ahead of them picked up speed and Alan stopped talking at last as he turned off the road and had to concentrate on coaxing his car up the steep slope of Aunt Brown’s driveway. He stopped and shifted into reverse a couple of times when the wheels spun helplessly in muddy patches. The engine whined as if frustrated and Haley winced at the noise. It wasn’t exactly a subtle approach.
But nothing stirred as they got out of the car and climbed the sagging steps of the front porch. The sound of the pickup truck had faded in the distance. There was not enough wind even to send a dry leaf skittering across the grass. Everything was bright, and quiet, and still.
Alan put out a hand to knock on the door. Haley stopped him.
“Let’s just—” She hesitated. They’d said they were coming out here to “check” if the story were true. What did that mean, exactly? How did you go about checking to see if somebody was a vampire?
“Let’s look around a little, first.” Her voice wasn’t much above a whisper. She slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and turned it off. The last thing she needed was for that to ring, breaking the silence and letting Aunt Brown know they were poking around in her house.
Alan nodded. He did the same with his phone.
“And thanks,” Haley added. She owed him that. “For coming with me.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Alan cheerfully. “Vampire hunting in Exeter, Rhode Island? This’ll be the best creepy story ever.”
It’s not a story; it’s my family! Haley wanted to snap at him. But she didn’t. Instead, she closed her hand over the doorknob. Even in the sunlight, it felt as cold as if it were coated with frost. She turned it and pushed the door open.
The hallway was exactly as Haley remembered it from her last visit. Sunlight from the door lay in a sheet of light across the floor, blocked by Haley’s shadow. Then Alan’s shadow joined it. He stood at Haley’s shoulder.
Together they stepped into the house.
Chilly and dim. Filtered through shades and curtains, light couldn’t fill up the rooms, which loomed like caves, the old-fashioned furniture half lost in shadow.
“Whoa.” Alan looked around appreciatively. “Very atmospheric. Very Stephen King.”
Everywhere, the familiar earthy smell teased at her nose. Cold and heavy and damp. The smell of wet clay—the smell of the grave. It seemed to cling to the air.
And no one was there.
Hallway, living room, dining room—all were empty. She’d never realized before how loud most houses were. A refrigerator humming, a furnace rumbling to life, pipes clanking, a floorboard creaking, a loose window rattling in its frame. None of that here. Haley could hear the air moving in and out of her nose. She could hear Alan breathing at her elbow. She could hear herself swallow.
Alan pushed open a swinging door in the pantry. After a moment his voice broke the silence. Even his low murmur seemed shockingly loud. Haley wanted to scream at him to shut up. She nearly clamped a hand over her own mouth to keep herself from doing it.
“Haley, look.”
For a change, he sounded serious.
Haley came to look over his shoulder. The kitchen. A bare wooden table, scrubbed clean, stood in the center of the room. The cupboards were closed, the counters empty.
A cold breeze seemed to wreathe itself around Haley, caressing her neck, whispering down her spine.
“See?”
“See what?” The room looked perfectly normal to Haley. Well, oddly clean, definitely. Even unused. But empty, that was the main point. Where was Aunt Brown?
“There’s no refrigerator.” Alan took a few steps into the room to open some of the cupboards. Bowls and plates. Cups and saucers. All clean and chilly and white. Haley couldn’t help thinking of bones, gnawed clean and stacked tidily away.
Alan turned back to look at Haley. “No food. There’s no food anywhere.”
Suddenly he didn’t seem to think that vampire hunting was so much fun after all. Haley shuddered. Strangely, the bare kitchen seemed more scary than anything else—than the dark figure in Jake’s apartment, than the message in the dust, than the heartbeat from the grave. It was so—real. So ordinary. So everyday. So wrong.
“Come on,” she insisted. “We have to keep looking.”
And what were they going to do if they found something? Haley wondered about that as they climbed the stairs. If they discovered Aunt Brown in an upstairs bedroom or in the attic, what would they do? Say, “Aunt Brown, we think you’re a vampire. We think you attacked Eddie. We think you’re killing Jake. Come over here so we can stake you”?
Talk about terminal embarrassment.
They’d try to lure her outside, that’s what they’d do, Haley decided. Coax her near the front door, the one they’d left open. Pull her outside by force if they had to. There, in the sunlight, they’d see—whatever they’d see. They’d find out if they were both crazy, or if insanity was true.
Haley looked up to the landing and saw the flicker of a gray skirt as it disappeared around the turn in the staircase.
She should have called out, should have shouted, “Aunt Brown!” She should have acted innocent. It would be easier to lure Aunt Brown downstairs, close to the open door, if she acted as if she and Alan had every right to be here.
But she couldn’t. The silence in the house crushed the words in her throat.
Instead she ran up to the landing, clutching the newel post to spin herself around. Behind her she heard Alan call, “Haley, wait!”
She stopped, looking up the rest of the stairs to the second-floor hallway. It ran straight ahead from the staircase, three closed doors on the left, three on the right.
And someone standing between them.
Alan nearly ran into Haley. He was gasping for breath. “What’re you—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
The stake dropped out of Haley’s hand and rolled, bouncing down the stairs. Haley hardly noticed. She found her voice, faint and wavering. “Do you see—her?”
In the half-second that passed between her question and Alan’s answer, she had time to think, Please. Please say yes. Please tell me I’m not alone.
Alan’s voice, low in her ear. “I see her.”
It wasn’t Aunt Brown Haley had glimpsed on the staircase.
A slender, pale young woman, about Haley’s height, stood at the top of the stairs. Dark brown hair was pulled into a coil of braids on the back of her head. Heavy bangs framed a face that would have been plain except for the wide, dark eyes. She wore a long gray dress with a full skirt an inch or two off the floor and a small silver locket around her neck.
Only a stray sunbeam or two crept between the curtains of the window at the far end of the hallway, but every detail of the woman’s clothes and fac
e was clear, as if she stood in her own light.
And at the same time, Haley could see through her. She could make out the hallway behind her, the branching cracks on the bare plaster walls, the panels on the doors.
The woman’s mouth moved. She was saying something. Maybe she realized that they couldn’t hear her. She repeated herself, despair welling up in those dark eyes, and gestured, reaching out one pale hand and drawing it back toward herself.
That was clear, at least. Follow me.
Then she turned aside, so that Haley saw her in profile. Again, she stretched out one hand. This time her wrist twisted as if she were turning a doorknob. She walked through the nearest door and vanished.
Haley was suddenly aware of her heart thumping against her ribs, hard enough, it seemed, to shake her whole body. She felt as if she’d run a marathon standing still.
“That was—” Alan’s voice sounded as rattled as she felt. “Um. Unexpected?”
“She wants us to follow her.” Haley stared up the staircase at the hallway, the closed door through which the woman had disappeared. Plain, solid wood with a handle of porcelain that had once been white, now dingy gray. It looked exactly the same as the other doors. Nothing to show that someone had just walked through it.
“Yeah. Are we going to?”
The glove, the message on the TV screen, the sound of the heartbeat, the face in Haley’s camera. For weeks now, someone had been trying to tell Haley something. Mercy had been trying to tell her something.
Maybe all she had to do was listen.
“We have to,” Haley answered Alan. But it still took a determined effort of will for her to lift her foot and set it on the next stair. Clutching the banister tightly, she walked up and into the narrow hallway. If she stretched her arms out, her hands would brush the walls on either side. Alan stayed close behind her.
When they got to the doorway, Haley didn’t give herself a second to hesitate. She reached out for the knob, cool and slick beneath her fingers, turned it, and opened the door.
She stepped through it into night.
There was no shade or curtain on the single window in the room. The sky outside was black, sprinkled with faint stars. And it was icy, as if she’d walked from November into January. There was a single bed against one wall, a rocking chair beside it. A candle in a pewter candlestick sat on the floor, casting a circle of light.
Someone was sitting in the rocking chair, a bright patchwork quilt wrapped around her. It was the woman Haley and Alan had seen in the hall.
Haley whispered her name. “Mercy?”
She couldn’t hear her own voice.
And anyway, Mercy was asleep. Her head had fallen back against the chair; her eyes were closed.
She was not the only sleeper in the room.
Someone lay on the bed as well. A quilt sewn in soft browns and grays covered her up to her chin, and the face looked something like Mercy’s—the same heavy, dark eyebrows and thick lashes that lay smoothly on her cheeks. But the sleeper’s face was thinner than Mercy’s, her cheeks pale and sunken, her lips dry and cracked. She looked worn-out and sick.
Haley reached behind her, feeling for Alan, wanting to touch his arm or grab his hand. But her fingers felt nothing but air. She turned. The door was closed behind her; she didn’t remember closing it. And Alan wasn’t there. Why hadn’t he followed her?
Mercy sighed and stirred a little in her chair. The quilt wrapped around her slipped off one shoulder. Haley couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She found herself wanting to step forward and wake her, tell her to go to bed. Tell her that she, Haley, would watch at this sickbed. Because that’s surely what Mercy was doing. It must be her sister, lying there ill. Her older sister, Grace, the one who’d died too.
Mercy sighed again. But the figure on the bed didn’t stir. Haley stepped closer. Her feet made no sound against the floorboards. There was a light rime of frost on the quilt that covered the sleeper. Haley found herself watching for a breath that would lift the quilt ever so slightly. But none came.
That’s when Haley knew. Mercy wasn’t watching over a sickbed. She was watching over a deathbed.
Grace had died, quietly, while her sister slept.
Haley felt tears stinging behind her eyes. But why had Mercy brought her here to see this? Haley already knew that Grace had died of the same disease that had killed her mother, would later kill her sister and her brother. What was Mercy trying to tell her by showing her this?
The woman on the bed opened her eyes.
If Haley screamed, she didn’t hear the sound. She found herself on the other side of the room, as far from the bed as she could get, without a memory of moving. Grace threw the quilt from her and climbed out of bed. Dark hair slipped from her loose braid to spill around her shoulders. She was wearing only a long sleeveless gown of white linen, trimmed with lace; her feet were bare. The room was freezing, but she didn’t seem to notice.
She didn’t seem to notice Haley either. Haley might have been invisible. A ghost. Like Mercy.
Had Haley been wrong? Had Grace just been sleeping? But no, Haley was sure that the still figure on the bed had not been breathing. No air stirred in those lungs. No heart pumped blood through veins and arteries beneath that chalky white skin.
Grace smiled slowly. She spread her fingers wide and looked at them closely in the candlelight. She ran her hands slowly up and down her arms and touched her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips, as if her own body were a marvel she had never seen or felt before.
Then she turned to look at her sister, asleep in the rocking chair.
But Grace died, Haley’s mind insisted, frantic. Grace died and was buried. Her gravestone is right next to Mercy’s. Grace can’t have—she can’t be—this can’t be Grace.
Grace hadn’t been Mercy’s only sister.
Mercy had turned her head a little to one side. Gently, with fingers as pale and light as snowflakes, her sister reached out. She hesitated for a moment. Her hand moved as if she wanted to stroke the soft skin of Mercy’s throat. But instead, delicately, she moved aside the locket that hung around her sister’s neck.
Haley could see a swirly M engraved on the locket’s surface.
Grace—no, it wasn’t Grace—bent over her sister. As she did so, something slipped loose from the neckline of her shift. A locket swung on its silver chain, identical—except for the P engraved on it—to Mercy’s.
Grace hadn’t been Mercy’s only sister. There had been one more. The only one of the four siblings who’d survived. The only one without a tombstone in the cemetery.
Patience.
Maybe she hadn’t survived. Maybe she’d died, quietly, in the night, with her younger sister watching by her bed. She’d died after all, but no one had known. No one had known because she had refused to stay dead.
Haley saw Patience’s mouth open. There were no fangs. A red tongue gently caressed the front teeth, in eagerness.
Mercy stirred a little and whimpered in her sleep. But she didn’t wake as her sister bit into her neck. Haley saw the muscles in Patience’s throat move as she swallowed.
Haley shouted in terror and outrage. She threw herself forward. And the scene vanished like a reflection in still water when a stone is thrown in.
The candlelight was gone. Darkness closed over Haley’s head, bringing with it a foul smell. Sound burst over her. Someone was kicking a door, yanking the doorknob, rattling the wood in its frame. And shouting.
“Haley! Are you okay? Are you in there? Answer me!”
“Okay!” Haley shouted back. She ran to the door. It was latched on the inside. How could that have happened? She flipped the latch up and Alan almost fell into the room. He grabbed Haley’s arm.
“Are you all right? What happened?”
“Mercy. She showed me. I know who she is. She’s—”
“That woman was there, I saw her, and then you—I swear, Haley, you went through the door after her and I couldn’t open it—”
; “Mercy’s sister. Patience. She died—I mean, she didn’t—I mean, she’s still—”
“That smell. What’s that smell?”
Haley and Alan both stopped talking and took stock of where they were.
“This was Patience’s room,” Haley said slowly, looking around. “Mercy’s sister. The older one.” The room was nearly as dark as it had been in Mercy’s time, with no candle burning to lighten the blackness. Haley groped her way to the window and pulled the heavy curtains aside.
The room hadn’t changed. The bed still stood by the wall, the rocking chair near its head. Both were empty.
On an old dresser near the window, there was a hairbrush, a comb, and a small silver locket without its chain, an elaborate P engraved on its surface.
The smell seemed strongest by the bed. Swallowing hard, Haley walked toward it. The dull brown quilt that had covered Patience’s body was gone, replaced by a plain blanket of iron-gray wool.
Reluctantly, her fingers twitching, Haley reached out to touch the blanket. She pulled it back.
Stains covered the sheets beneath and splotched the pillowcase. Most were old and brown, a few rusty red.
The stench rose up and hit Haley in the face. It was like a living thing, trying to smother her. She dropped the blanket. Her stomach heaved.
Then Alan grabbed her arm and pulled her back, out into the hall, and slammed the door behind them.
“Come on, Haley. Let’s go.”
“We can’t! We have to—”
“We have to leave.” Alan was still holding her arm, so hard it hurt. “This is crazy, this is dangerous, and we have to get out of here.”
“You knew it was dangerous before!” Haley protested. “You said you wouldn’t miss it!”
“Yeah, well, now it’s dangerous and real,” Alan said flatly. And Haley knew he was right.
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