Raising his arm again, Frank brought his hand down hard on the side of Emily’s face.
Katie’s scream echoed around the room. Her father had recovered from his shock and was back to hitting his daughter again. He tugged her up one step. Then another.
“Stop it!” Katie yelled at him. “Stop it, you’re hurting her!”
Ignoring Katie as if she was the ghost here, Frank hauled his daughter up to her feet, screaming in her face. “How could you do this? How could you do this!”
Then he practically ran up the stairs with her, heedless of how she banged her knees and tore her dress. Katie heard the door to that first bedroom on the right open and slam shut.
After that, all she could hear was Emily’s screaming.
Katie started up the stairs. She had to do something!
She started up the steps.
A hand on her shoulder brought her up short, and she nearly stumbled into the dusty, grimy wall as all around her the house snapped back to its normal self in the space of a single breath. Creaky floorboards. Loose railing. Threadbare rugs. She was back in her own time, and in her own world.
Still she heard the screaming from upstairs.
“Katie, what’s wrong?” That was Mel’s voice, and now Katie realized it was her friend’s hand on her shoulder. Mel was there for her, just like she always was.
“Do you hear that?” Katie asked. “Can you hear that screaming?”
Mel looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “There’s nothing to hear, chickie. Are you all right? You look pale. Come on. Let’s get you some air outside.”
“No, no, we need to go see...”
What, she asked herself? See if Emily’s all right? They knew she wasn’t all right. She was dead. Poor, poor girl.
However she’d been able to see that memory of the past just now, she knew it was all real. Almost like the house was telling her its story. She survived an abusive father and a mother who told her the abuse was okay, only to be killed later on. Did Miguel do it? Who else was there to suspect except Miguel? Emily had told her father she was running away with Miguel, because she was pregnant. Something must have gone wrong. He wouldn’t be the first boyfriend to kill a girl out of pure frustration!
At the edge of her senses she heard the screams again.
“Come on,” she told Mel. “We’re going back up to Emily’s bedroom. And bring your Ouija board!”
Chapter 12
In the upstairs bedroom, Katie waited for Mel. Would the Ouija board work this time? It couldn’t possibly. The last time they’d used it they hadn’t called up anything. Well. Except for Bill.
The cold in the room seeped into her skin, and she shivered.
Where was Bill? she wondered. For a man who wanted a job he certainly seemed to be keeping his own hours. After all, what had he done for her? He’d made a hole in her living room wall, that’s what.
No, wait. He hadn’t even done that. He’d taken off the trim around the wall and pulled up her carpet and basically slowed the whole project down. Sam and her guys had actually been the ones to tear open the wall and find Emily Knox. Now that she thought about it...
“You’d think,” she said, narrating her thoughts out loud, “that Bill didn’t want me to see what was in that wall. What kind of a contractor doesn’t want to do work?”
“It’s not like that.”
As if her thoughts had called him up, there was Bill, standing in the open bedroom doorway. Katie folded her arms and glared at him. “Well, well, well. Twice in one day. I feel so special.”
“You are special, Katie.”
His soft words sent a thrill up her spine. This man was going to be her undoing. Another night like they’d had together and she might just decide to hold onto this house no matter what the cost. Just to be around him.
“You shouldn’t be in this room,” he said to her, neatly breaking the spell of her own thoughts that she’d been falling under.
“I’m pretty sure I’m still the owner of this house.” She levelled her stare at him, and refused to be distracted by how pretty his face was, or how big the muscles on his arms were. “I’ll stand in any room I please, thank you very much.”
A shadow passed over his face. “This is not a good room. You see how cold it is in here? That’s not natural.”
“I know,” Katie admitted, not wanting to get into a discussion with him about ghosts and how firmly she believed in them. Some days she wondered if she had ever passed a ghost on the street and mistaken him for a real person. Or if she could reach right out and touch one the same way she could touch her best friend.
“You know? Is that what you just said? Then fine, Katie. Listen to me. Let me protect you. That’s what a man is supposed to do. Come out of that room.”
“A man is supposed to...?” She gasped, unable to make herself repeat the rest of it. “You don’t own me, Bill! I’m my own woman. I go where I please, I do as I please, and I sleep with whoever I please.”
She put an emphasis on those last words that was laced with acid. He was beginning to remind her of how Justina had described her own husband. Controlling. Domineering. Justina had been married to W. Frank Knox for years, and taken his abuse, and obviously watched him abuse their daughter, and still she tried to defend him all these years later. Men did not own their women. They were not possessions. Any man who thought like that was nearly a century out of date.
“I think you should leave,” she said to him, turning her head aside and telling herself she would not cry just because she was so upset. The deal with the house was falling apart, and now a guy who had seemed so great at the start was turning out to be a real bastard. “I don’t need your...services anymore.”
Her mind tripped over that one word, realizing it could be taken two ways.
“You still need me,” he insisted.
She gathered her courage, and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I think I’ll be the judge of what I need. I want you to leave.”
Silence.
“Bill? Did you hear me? I asked you to go.”
She listened, but she didn’t hear anything at all. What was he doing? Then, she heard the floorboards creak, creak, creak, and she let out the breath she’d been holding because it meant he was walking away just like she’d asked him to.
Only, the noises of protest from the worn out floor were getting closer. Closer.
Closer.
She clamped her mouth around a very unladylike scream and opened her eyes, swinging out defensively with one hand.
If Mel hadn’t ducked, Katie would have hit her for sure.
“What are you doing!” Mel demanded. “I know you’re under a lot of pressure, but do you have to take it out on me?”
“Oh, Mel, I’m so sorry! I thought you were Bill.”
Mel stood up as straight as she could, at a height with Katie’s cheekbones. “Are you saying you mistook me for a boy? Do I look like a man to you?”
“No, I meant... Bill was just here! You must have seen him!”
Mel shook her head, still angry over the swipe Katie had made at her. “So, what are you saying? You were trying to hit Bill? Why? I thought you two couldn’t keep your hands off each other.”
Katie hugged her arms around herself, suddenly cold again. “Things change.”
“Hmph. Whatever. Sorry to disappoint you but there’s no Bill here, just me. With the Ouija board. Now if we had some alcohol with us, this would be a real party.”
“We need to try to reach Emily’s spirit,” Katie said, ignoring Mel’s attempt to make this into a joke and pushing thoughts of Bill out of her head. “How do we set this up? We just put it down on the floor, right? With the heart shaped triangle thing?”
Mel looked at her skeptically. “You don’t really believe in this, do you?”
“No,” Katie admitted. “Why? Is that necessary? Does it only work if I believe in it?”
“Well, sure. I think.” Mel laughed nervously. “I
really don’t know. I’ve seen my grandmother use it to contact specific people in her life but I always did suspect she was just putting on a show for me.”
“I never used to believe in ghosts,” Katie told her. “But I’ve still seen more than my share!”
“But we tried already. Remember? We didn’t connect with Emily Knox.”
“I think we will this time. I feel like...” How was she supposed to explain to Mel about the vision she’d had downstairs, or the dream either? She couldn’t even explain it to herself! “I just feel like she’s closer now than she was before. I feel like, you know, she’s trying to tell me something.”
Mel put the Ouija board out on the floor, folding herself to sit cross-legged on one side of it. “You and your ghosts. You used to be more fun, Katie.”
“It’s not my fault, Mel! I didn’t plan to buy a haunted house!”
“Two haunted houses. This is number two, remember.”
“Whatever. I don’t do it on purpose. It’s not my fault!”
“Uh-huh. Says you. I sell houses for a living too, you know. Maybe I don’t rebuild them from the ground up like you do but still, you don’t see ghosts flocking into my life!”
“They aren’t...” Flocking? Were ghosts flocking to Katie? “Whatever. I think we have a real chance at talking to Emily Knox. I really feel connected to her. I need to know what happened in this house. You can’t tell me you aren’t the least bit curious yourself.”
Mel frowned, and then she sighed. “Yeah. You know I am. Fine. Let’s begin. Why this room, though? Just because it was her bedroom?”
Katie swallowed, and settled herself on the floor along the other side of the antique wooden board. “I can’t explain why, but I think she might have been killed here.”
Looking around the room with wide eyes, Mel hunched in on herself. “Here? Ooh, that’s some bad mojo.”
Despite the situation, Katie giggled. “You shouldn’t use words like mojo. It sounds weird coming from you.”
Mel stuck her tongue out at Katie, who licked her finger and touched it to the backside of her jeans, making a hissing sound. This time, they both laughed together.
When they stopped, the laughter continued.
They stared at each other, neither daring to speak until the sound of it had died away. It was a girl’s laughter, young and full of hope and completely out of place here in this house.
“Please tell me you heard that too,” Katie asked.
“Uh-huh. I heard it. Was it...Emily?”
“I told you she was close. Come on. We need to ask her about her death.”
“You mean who killed her.”
Katie gathered her courage and put her fingertips on the planchette above the board. “Let’s ask her if she knows.”
Mel rested her hands against the other side of the planchette. She took a deep breath. Together, she and Katie pushed the heart-shaped marker piece around the board in several small circles. It came to rest on the letter G in the middle. It was as good a place as any to start.
“Emily?” Mel asked the empty air. “Emily Knox. Are you here with us?”
Silence.
“Are you here, Emily? Can you answer our questions?”
Again, there was nothing.
Katie was disappointed. “This is going to be just like the last time, isn’t it?”
“This was your idea. Don’t give up now.”
“But how are we going to ask her anything if she doesn’t show herself to us?”
Cold air washed around Katie, as if it was slithering down her body.
The planchette quivered under their hands.
“Emily?” Katie breathed a little quicker. “Was that you?”
The trembling against her hands got stronger as Katie strained her ears to hear any hint of a response. The silence in the room was suffocating her.
“Emily, please, help us understand. You didn’t run away, did you?”
Her fingers stung with a sudden cold.
Katie opened her eyes. The planchette was shaking violently now. It wasn’t anything that she or Mel were doing. Nothing could account for this. Nothing scientific or rational, anyway.
Then the Ouija pointer went still again, slapping flat against the board.
“What--?” Katie started to ask.
Under the planchette, the board moved. Katie stared as it slid along the rug between her and Mel, slowly at first, and then more quickly. Up. Down. To the right. To the left. Each time it stopped, a letter showed through the circular glass window in the pointer’s tip.
The board repeated its pattern twice. Katie couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
G-E-T-O-U-T
Katie licked her dry lips. They tingled in the cold. “Emily. If this is you, can you tell us who killed you?”
The board moved again.
H-E-K-I-L-L-E-D-M-E
Mel squinted down at the board. Her voice was very quiet. “What did that say?”
Katie understood. “It said, he killed me.”
“But who is ‘he?’ Does she mean Miguel?”
“I don’t see who else...” But Katie realized, she did know someone else Emily might be talking about. What other male figure did Emily have in her life? The one who had dragged her to this very room and beaten her mercilessly.
Her father.
“Emily?” Katie’s voice trembled as she asked. “Did your father kill you?”
The board slid under the planchette again. Katie saw the direction it was moving, bringing the window of the pointer up toward the YES. She expected it to land there. Instead it slid to stop over a single letter.
W.
They both waited for the ghostly hand moving the Ouija to say more. Instead the board stayed perfectly still. Just that one letter.
“What’s that mean?” Mel asked. “It’s just a letter. Does it stand for something? Winning? Wonderful? Wishbone? How are we supposed to know what that means?”
With a violent jerking motion the planchette pulled their hands around in a circle, then landed back on the W.
Katie knew Emily was trying to get a message through. She was trying her best to answer Katie’s question. Did her father kill her?
W...W...W...
Her father! Of course. Katie had forgotten because everyone kept calling him Frank Knox. Even his ex-wife, Justina, called him Frank. She’d heard his full name enough that she should have remembered, though.
W. Frank Knox. That was his name. He abbreviated the first part of it with that single letter.
Emily was answering the question after all. Just not the way Katie had expected.
So what was his real first name? “Emily, your father’s name. His first name. What was his first--”
The board and pointer both flipped straight up into the air, slapping their hands away and rattling flat against the ceiling before falling down to the floor again.
Then it lay there like it was nothing more than a thin piece of wood.
Katie’s breath caught in her throat. “Uh. Well, I guess the conversation is over.”
In the doorway of the bedroom, a dark shadow moved. Katie snapped her head up, terror filling her, but it was only Bill.
“See?” he said. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
Chapter 13
“I’m going to be out in the car,” Mel muttered. She bent to pick up the Ouija board from where it had fallen next to Katie. As she did, she whispered, “You call my cell if he tries anything. Or if you end up staying with him. Don’t leave me hanging!”
She glared at Bill as she walked past him, but then she gave Katie a wink before disappearing down the hallway.
When the last creak of Mel going down the stairs was done, Katie got up on her feet. “I know I told you to go, Bill. Just leave. We’re dealing with something here and I don’t need you--”
“Yes,” he insisted, “you do.”
His confidence was so unnerving. It pulled her in several different directions all at once and she
just didn’t know what to do anymore. On the one hand they had just been talking to a ghost, and that was just about the craziest thing she’d ever done in her life. She wanted to get out of this house and never look back.
Plus, she thought maybe she owed it to Justina Knox to tell her that it was her husband who had killed their daughter. Only, she didn’t have any proof. Nothing that would make sense, anyway.
On the other hand, Bill was so damned gorgeous. If he didn’t insist on being a creep and trying to dominate her then he might just be perfect.
Her face heated as she thought about him dominating her, and the fuzzy memory of their night together took on a few details of him telling her what to do, how to do it, when to do it...
She took a breath and folded her arms. It was still so cold in this room. First thing, she decided, was to get downstairs where it was warmer and where she could maybe think straight again.
Keeping her eyes on the floor she started to walk right past Bill. She wasn’t expecting it when his hand caught her arm and he pulled her into his strong chest. The scent of him filled her senses, a strong and masculine smell mixed with dust and something like wood burning over an open fire. He kissed the top of her head, and the sensation of it went straight down to her toes.
“Stop that,” she murmured.
“Why?”
She didn’t know.
His hands were around her waist suddenly and then he was lifting her up off her feet and holding her body against his. His lips kissed her face, her ears, her neck, and there was no way she was cold now!
Something in the way he held her moved her deep inside. She was his again, just like she had been...had it been yesterday? The day before? She was no longer certain. Time was losing its meaning altogether.
He swept her down the hallway in his strong arms, and it was like she was flying as they returned to the master bedroom. There wasn’t a sound the whole way, and then just a single soft sigh as he laid her down on the bed.
This time, Katie knew it was a dream right away.
“I must be getting used to all the crazy. Yay me.”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 20