Blood in the Mirror (Haunted Collection Series Book 3)

by Ron Ripley

  She couldn’t understand Stefan’s hatred for their father, and she despised him for his lack of fealty.

  Sighing, Ariana put the mirror away and turned her eyes back to the house. Unlike the one Stefan had so recently abandoned, the home in Fox Cat Hollow was well kept. It was a saltbox Victorian, painted blue and three stories high. Like the previous building, it was tucked away from prying eyes. Her brother disliked neighbors, and his antisocial, paranoid behavior was a boon to her.

  And to their father.

  Ariana took a bag of trail mix out of her pack, unrolled it, and ate sparingly. Once she established her brother’s routine, she would get a hotel room nearby and get a decent meal.

  But, she reminded herself, not yet.

  Chapter 19: In Lambtown Cemetery

  Tom scrambled over the cemetery wall, tripped and landed hard on the ground. Behind him the stranger coughed and hacked, muttering and cursing.

  Adrenaline coursed through him as he picked himself up, eyes darting around, searching for anything he could use to defend himself.

  “Come back,” the old man snickered, his deep, wracking cough coming nearer, “I just want to see what you have. See if you won’t share with me.”

  Give it to him, just give it to him! Tom shrieked to himself, but the adrenaline drowned it as his gaze fell upon a steel spike driven into a nearby grave. Atop the spike was a metal circle, the word ‘Veteran’ legible in the night. Tom bent down, grabbed hold of it and wrenched it out of the ground.

  The spike was rusted and thick, the circular end heavy.

  Tom dropped his bag and spun around to face the old man. With the knife still held in his hand, the stranger grinned, nodding at the marker in Tom’s hands.

  “Best to put that down, boy,” the man said, swinging one leg over the wall, “or you’re going to regret it.”

  Tom remained silent, not trusting his voice.

  The grin dropped from the old man’s face, and a nasty sneer replaced it. His teeth were cracked and jagged, a pale, sickly tongue darting out to lick his lips. “Put the God-damned thing down.”

  Tom tightened his grip on it.

  “I just want your bag,” the man said, a wheedling tone entering his voice. “Just give me the bag. I’m hungry. You’ve got enough fat on you.”

  The man got his other leg over the stone wall and stood in the cemetery.

  His face broke into a grin again, and he said in a soft voice, “Come on now, boy, didn’t your parents teach you to share?”

  “No,” Tom whispered, and the man lunged at him.

  Cursing, the stranger slashed with the knife while Tom brought the marker down like a cudgel.

  The old man missed, but Tom didn’t.

  A wet, thick smack rang out as the heavy, round head of the marker struck the old man at the base of the skull where it met the neck. Instantly the man went limp, the knife falling from his hand as his body hit the ground with the grace of a dead fish. Tom watched the man’s body quiver for several seconds.

  He wondered if the man was alive or dead, and that curiosity was followed by the thought that he should probably make sure the man couldn’t come after him.

  The idea of smashing the stranger’s head in, or using the man’s own knife to finish him off churned his stomach, and Tom staggered away. He dropped the marker, put his hands on his knees and threw up into the grass and onto an obsidian headstone with a cross laser-etched into the surface.

  When he finished, Tom wiped his mouth with the arm of his sweatshirt and straightened up. A cold rain began to fall, and he glanced at the prostrate stranger.

  With a shudder, Tom picked up the marker, gathered his makeshift bag, and hurried out of the cemetery.

  He needed to get to Jeremy’s.

  The rain, Tom hoped, would wash away any evidence if the man was dead.

  Chapter 20: 40 Minutes Away

  Victor was still shaken by his encounter with Ivan Denisovich Korzh. The raw power of the dead man had been chilling, and while there had been no immediate threat of violence, Victor knew that Ivan was far stronger, and vastly superior in intellect, to any of the other ghosts Victor and Jeremy had faced.

  With a quivering in his stomach, Victor parked on a main road, got out and stretched. The trip from the home he and Jeremy rented had been a forty-minute, mundane drive through flat land. He had seen cornfields and pumpkin patches, and little else. The random evangelical billboard had broken the monotony, but their entertainment value was short lived.

  Grumbling, Victor read the street sign, Monroe Street. And although he didn’t need to, he looked down at the paper to confirm that the house he wanted to look at was on Monroe.

  It was.

  Victor put his collar up and stuffed his hands into his pockets against the chilly morning air. He walked along the side of Monroe, hoping that he looked like someone out for a stroll, and not hunting a murderous beast.

  Victor passed houses of various styles, most of the driveways empty, the residents off on their normal workdays. The idea of normalcy, his own, past solid and safe life, caused him to stutter-step as sadness swept over him. He bit down and clenched his teeth, hating the vivid nature of his memories. With perfect clarity he could recall Sunday mornings on the couch with Erin, chatting about the week ahead, or the week that had just finished. He could smell her coconut and aloe shampoo, feel the soft touch of her hand against his, and he had to stop.

  Victor took a deep breath, let it out in a slow, controlled fashion, and repeated the process until he had regained his composure. He wiped tears from the corners of his eyes and then continued. He needed 117 Monroe Street, and he was only at 29.

  The road stretched on, curving first to the left, then back to the right, like an undulating snake. As he walked, the distance between the houses increased, side streets appearing between them and branching off. He soon came to a yellow and black sign that declared the rest of Monroe was a dead end.

  When Victor passed the sign, he knew he was near his target. He saw number 111 Monroe, and then nothing. The woods had not been trimmed back along the end of the street. They bordered the asphalt, leaning in and darkening the road. There was, for some strange reason, a sinister nature to the trees. They were malignant in shape and atmosphere. The trunks were gnarled and twisted, the branches long and fingerlike in the way they stretched and grasped the air.

  They were unnatural, and their appearance suggested a vile intelligence behind them.

  Sweat ran down Victor’s spine, and his hands felt clammy in the confines of his pockets. He moved out into the center of the road, far from the reach of the trees, should they decide to ensnare him and drag him into the woods.

  Victor resisted the urge to laugh at his own fear, but he knew it wasn’t rational, just as he knew the sound he made was one of trepidation rather than bravado.

  Then 117 Monroe Street came into view, and he focused on that rather than the trees.

  Unlike the other homes, this one was not well kept. The paint was peeling from the clapboard siding, and the front and side porches sagged in various places. Stumps riddled the yard around the house, creating, Victor realized, a clear field of fire for anyone in the building. The trees ringing the yard had a fouler appearance, as if they were enraged with the owner for the butchery of their relatives.

  Victor felt a sudden kinship with the strange trees.

  He focused his attention on the house and saw how some of the windows were boarded up. Others were not, nor was the door. Victor wondered if Korzh had set traps, like the one on Long Island and he shuddered at the memory.

  It didn’t matter if there were traps. If Korzh was in the structure, he would have to be removed.

  Victor didn’t know if the man was or wasn’t.

  His fingers curled into a fist, frustrated that he didn’t even know what Korzh looked like.

  But the desire to strangle the man threatened to push all rational thoughts out of his head, and Victor struggled for a moment befor
e he overcame his murderous desire to throttle whoever answered the door.

  But this has to be the place, Victor thought, shaking with fury, no one else would board up the damned windows.

  With his rage still threatening to blind him, Victor left the safety of the road, found a brick walkway partially hidden in the unkempt lawn, and followed it to the front porch. He climbed the steps, watchful for traps, and reached the porch without incident. At the front door, Victor hesitated, lifted his fist, and then knocked sharply three times. When no one responded – and when he couldn’t hear the sound of someone approaching the door – Victor knocked again.

  With his blood pounding in his head, Victor hesitated for a moment before he reached out, grasped the doorknob, twisted and found it unlocked.

  On silent hinges, the door swung open, and the smell of mildew and age rolled out.

  Victor ignored the smell and crossed the threshold in search of Stefan Korzh.

  Chapter 21: Searching for the Provenance

  Martin picked up his home phone, dialed the number, and after it rang twice, it was answered.

  “Hello?” Eugene Harper asked.

  “Eugene,” Martin said, “It’s Martin Luther.”

  “Back from the dead?” Eugene asked with a snicker.

  Martin rolled his eyes. It was a joke that his friends never seemed to tire of.

  “That’s me,” Martin said. “Protestant zombie. Say, do you still have those old catalogs?”

  “Which ones?” Eugene asked. “The ones from Moran and Moran?”

  “Those exactly,” Martin said with relief.

  “Why?” Eugene inquired.

  “I purchased a small piece the other day,” Martin explained, “and I think it may be far more dangerous than I expected.”

  “Sounds bad,” Eugene said after a moment. “Listen, I’ve got to step out of the shop for a while, but I’ll leave the key tucked in the usual spot. The door to the reference room is unlocked. Don’t answer the phone or anything.”

  “I won’t,” Martin promised. He thanked Eugene and hung up the phone. Within a few minutes, he had everything he needed, his keys jingled in his hand as he hurried out of the office, locking up behind him.

  The ride to Eugene’s store was mercifully free of traffic, and Martin made it there in less than half an hour. He pulled into the lot and parked in front of Eugene’s place of business, a small, high-end antique shop named, “Monson’s Lost Treasures.”

  Eugene specialized in New England pieces, and the store took its name from an abandoned town in New Hampshire. There was nothing sinister in the store or the name, and that was something Eugene prided himself on. He had a medium he worked with when new items came in. Eugene made certain that any item that came into the store was nothing more than an antique.

  Eugene, like so many others Martin knew, had suffered through a bad experience with a possessed item. It was why the man insisted on using a medium to examine each item, and why the antiquarian kept a full run of “Moran and Moran Antiquities and Oddities” in the reference room.

  When it came to the dead, Eugene was one of the most cautious men Martin knew.

  With that thought in mind, Martin went around the back of the store to the small entrance tucked away in an alcove. Above the lintel was a plaque that read, in Tolkien’s Elvish, Speak Friend and Enter. On the heavy, metal door itself was a second, rectangular plaque, bolted into place, that had the word Cara, the Gaelic word for friend, engraved into it. Reaching up, Martin tugged on it until the entire rectangle slid out, revealing a small nook.

  Martin managed to get his fingers into the space and removed an extremely ordinary and mundane key. He shook his head at the complexity of his friend’s key placement. Any thief could get in, and disrupt the alarm system.

  Martin unlocked the door and let himself in. The alarm system, hidden behind a false frame, held an image of the cover of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. A soft light turned on illuminating the alarm’s keypad, and Martin quickly punched the seven-digit code in.

  8201890.

  H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday.

  When the alarm beeped once to assure him that he had successfully turned off the system, Martin closed the false frame and went to the research room. Thankfully, there were no other alarms for him to disable, quotes to remember, or Gaelic words to know. Entering the small room, no larger than a walk-in closet, Martin sighed.

  The shelves that lined the walls were packed, caving downwards in some spots. A small, antique writing desk was tucked into one corner with a green shaded brass lamp upon it. Martin’s eyes ranged over the shelves until he spotted the black-bound catalogs. Moran and Moran was written in silver script along the spine, with the date and issue number as well.

  There were over a hundred of them.

  Well, Martin told himself, let’s get to it.

  He took volume number one, 1906, and sat down with it at the desk. In the silence of the research room, Martin sought out the history of the pen.

  Chapter 22: Attempting to Hide

  Paranoia ate at Stefan as he sat in darkness.

  Since arriving at the house in Fox Cat Hollow, he hadn’t moved from the second floor. As the day had progressed from day into night, Stefan sat in the hallway, furious at the turn of events.

  He cleaned a pair of pistols, .22 caliber revolvers, the perfect weapons for murder by firearm. A shot through the temple, or at the base of the skull and the bullet would ricochet within its confines, scrambling the brains and destroying any ballistic evidence. And, given the plentiful nature of the weapon, it wouldn’t break his heart to throw the pistols away.

  The pistols were on the floor beside him, the only light from the bathroom window, cast by the three-quarter moon in the sky.

  Somehow, his father had managed to get through the barrier Stefan had built in the spare room. Barriers that were impenetrable, even to the strongest of ghosts.

  Which meant that once Stefan had forced himself to calm down and think rationally, he realized that someone had helped Ivan Denisovich. Someone had circumvented all of Stefan’s precautions, and that nearly cost Stefan his life.

  Stefan didn’t know how the unknown individual had been able to achieve such a feat, but once he calmed down and got himself under control, Stefan would find them. He wanted to know how it had happened.

  And once he had that information, he would kill them.

  A long, slow kill. One that he could enjoy and remember, savoring the memory for years to come.

  From the first floor, a mantle clock chimed twenty-one times. Stefan closed his eyes and subtracted thirteen from twenty-one.

  Eight, he thought, his stomach grumbling. He needed to eat, but there wasn’t anything upstairs, and the food he had in the kitchen required light to prepare.

  And he wasn’t ready for anyone to know he was still alive, not yet.

  Whoever had helped his father could easily have scouted the remaining houses, and they could be watching for him as he sat in the darkness. Going down to the kitchen, then, was an unacceptable risk.

  Everything, he realized, would be an unacceptable risk until he figured out who was helping his father.

  Everything.

  Stefan picked up one revolver, checked to make sure it was loaded for the hundredth time, and then repeated the process with the other pistol.

  From his seat on the floor, he could look out the bathroom window, and he stared at the night sky. Too paranoid to sleep, he waited for dawn to come.

  Chapter 23: A House Guest

  Victor had scouted three of Stefan Korzh’s houses, spent the night at a motel of dubious hygiene, and returned home to the house he and Jeremy shared.

  When he walked inside, he smelled coffee, eggs, and toast, and he saw Jeremy’s overnight bag still on the floor near the door.

  “Hello,” Victor called, hanging the keys up and closing the door.

  “In the study,” Jeremy answered.

  Victor wandered into the r
oom and found the older man seated in a narrow backed, Queen Anne style chair. The house had come fully furnished, which had been one of the selling points of the property. Neither of the men had any inclination to find furniture of their own, not with Korzh somewhere in southwest Pennsylvania.

  Jeremy was still dressed in his pajamas, wearing a threadbare robe and looking tired.

  “Are you alright?” Victor asked, sitting down across from the man.

  Jeremy offered a weak smile as he nodded. “I am. I am also incredibly tired. Lengthy drives are neither pleasant nor good for me, unfortunately. Before I go into the details of my trip to the wonderful Miss Le Monde, tell me, how has it been here since I left?”

  Victor shrugged and told Jeremy of the empty houses, and of the meeting with the ghost of Ivan Denisovich.

  “How curious,” Jeremy murmured, rubbing at the white stubble on his chin. “And he is hunting his own son as well?”

  Victor nodded.

  “I doubt then that there will be much left of Stefan Korzh, should his father reach him first,” Jeremy said, clearing his throat. “The man could be notoriously brutal when he feels it is necessary, and I believe he will see his son’s betrayal as a significant motivator for brutality. If you are to have your vengeance upon Stefan, then we had best reach him first.”

  “Alright,” Victor said, his throat tightening. The idea of his wife’s murderer getting away caused him to feel physically ill.

  “Now,” Jeremy continued, “you are no doubt wondering what occurred in New Orleans?”

  “A little,” Victor confessed. He glanced around and added in a low voice, “I thought you said Leanne wanted you to escort someone here, to observe?”

  “She did,” Jeremy said, sighing, “and I did. And, I might add, it is to assist us in the discovery and removal of Stefan Korzh. My travel companion is currently sleeping since he was not particularly thrilled with the travel accommodations.”