“I’m gonna take a walk around.”
She yawned. “Good . . . get accustomed to our home.”
This will never be my home.
He climbed out of bed and shuffled into the carpeted hallway.
The mansion was as silent as a mausoleum. He heard only the wind soughing through the eaves, and the creaking and settling noises typical of older homes.
But he felt as though he were being watched. He turned.
It was one of the cats. As motionless as a piece of sculpture, it sat at the end of the hallway, in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror that covered the wall. It observed him quietly.
“Damn thing,” he said. “Why don’t you go away?”
The cat stared at him.
He ignored the feline and began to explore the house. It was vast, with eleven bedrooms, almost as many bathrooms, and a couple of dozen other rooms and sitting areas. Every room was immaculate and stylishly furnished with high-end, contemporary furniture and the latest and greatest technological gadgets.
It was as if Mika had discovered the blueprint for his dream home and brought it to magnificent life.
But it’s not real, a voice whispered. You had a glimpse of the truth before you blacked out . . . this place isn’t what it appears to be . . .
But everything he touched felt real; the jasmine in the air smelled real; and everything he saw was colorful and brand new, indisputably real.
Two things, however, captured his attention.
One: although there were numerous telephones, none of them had a dial tone. All of them issued only dead silence, as if they were mere props in a model house.
Two: a closer look at the oil paintings revealed that he and Mika were the featured subjects of each one. One work depicted them lying together in a grassy meadow under a summer sun, on the verge of a kiss. Another showed them riding a galloping black horse across a flowery countryside, her hands wrapped around his waist and her face pressed against his neck. Yet another piece had them sitting at a banquet table laden with fruit, feeding each other white grapes.
There were dozens of other paintings, but no matter the setting, the tone of all of them was the same: the celebration of a passionate romance.
She had created these works herself. On their first date, she’d told him that she was a painter. She was talented, imaginative.
But looking at the paintings made his stomach sour. Her obsession with him knew no limits.
I have to get out of here.
Downstairs in the foyer, he grasped the knob of the front door and twisted.
Surprisingly, the door opened. Cool, damp air drifted inside, carrying the sounds of nighttime creatures.
He thought of running out of the house, and dismissed the idea. She’d secured the boundaries with some kind of weird magic. Why waste more energy running in vain?
He had to accept the truth.
He was trapped. In a luxurious prison.
Mika awaited him at the crest of the staircase. One of the cats lounged on the balustrade, furry tail caressing her arm.
“Enjoy your walk?” she asked.
“My father said that he heard voices when he came here,” he said. “Screams, footsteps—ghosts in torment, I guess. What happened to them?”
Her lips curled in disdain. “Those dreadful things would only distress you, baby. I’ve shielded you from them.”
“Have you shielded me from anything else? Like the dust and junk I thought I saw around here, right before I passed out?”
“Dust and junk?” She spoke the words as if they tasted foul in her mouth. She swept her arm around them. “Do you see any of that, Andrew?”
“No, but I did, for a second.”
She smiled. “Are you certain that you weren’t dreaming?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t certain of anything anymore.
“Where’s the attic?” he asked.
“Why do you want to know?” Her gaze was sharp.
“Just curious. Place this big has to have an interesting attic, right?”
“Hmm. Curiosity can be dangerous. For your own safety, I’ve hidden the upper chamber.”
“Sounds like you’ve hidden a lot from me.”
“Does it? I apologize, but it is only to keep you happy. May I ask you a question?”
He shrugged.
She touched his cheek. By sheer force of will he kept himself from pushing her away. He was on her turf. Pissing her off wouldn’t help him.
“Do you remember our love?” she asked.
“No.”
“Still?” She slipped her hand into the kimono’s voluminous front pocket, fingered something there. “Remember how I promised to show you proof of our romance?”
“You said something about that, I think.” What craziness was she going to bring out this time?
“Here it is.” She dug something out of her pocket: a thick, worn, leather-bound diary. She handed it to him.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Open it.”
He turned the brass latch on the diary, opened it.
The journal’s ruled pages were yellowed, filled with elegant writing that could only be Mika’s.
“Read the letters,” she said.
Near the middle of the diary, he found a bundle of folded, age-softened papers. He unfurled one of them.
It was a letter, the careful penmanship—different from the cursive writing in the diary, somehow more masculine—done in dark ink. It was addressed to, “Celestina, My Love.”
“Celestina was my birth name,” she said.
He started to read.
By the time he reached the end of the page, his hands shook badly.
“You see?” Mika said. She smirked. “Proof, baby.”
“This can’t be real,” he said. “You’ve made this up, had this forged or something.”
“They’re one hundred percent genuine, darling. I kept those letters because they kept you alive in my heart—and I knew you would come back to me one day, too. I wanted to have them as evidence to help you remember.”
“This is bullshit.”
“All of your running, all of your hiding from our love . . . see how pointless it was? You’ve always been mine, before you ever had any inkling of the truth—”
“Listen, this is bullshit!”
“Stop resisting the truth, honey—” She reached out to touch him.
He ran away from her. Bolted into the room across the hall: his so-called office. He slammed the door.
His legs felt weak. As if he were on the brink of passing out again. He dropped into the leather desk chair and drew deep breaths, to regain his bearings.
He clutched the diary and its unbelievable letters in his clammy hands. He wanted to throw it into a fire. But he couldn’t. Because if she were right . . .
“Can’t be,” he said to himself. He shook his head, fat beads of sweat streaming down his face. “Can’t be.”
He would deny it forever. Accepting his connection to the letters was unthinkable.
She knocked on the door. “Let me in, Andrew. I know it’s hard to accept the truth. But please don’t shut me out like this.”
Tensed, he sat still. He half expected the door to blow open. This was her lair, and she could do whatever she desired.
But she didn’t force her way inside.
Was she trying some kind of reverse psychology tactic on him?
He waited another minute. Looked around the room anew.
If he ever got away from here and had an opportunity to build a dream home, his office would look nothing like this one. The fantasy had been ruined for him.
Finally, he rose. He opened the door.
He frowned.
Mika had vanished. Her loyal cat had departed, too.
At the end of the hallway, the long mirror rippled, like the surface of a lake. Then, it solidified.
The house was tomb-silent.
His frown deepened.
Something wa
s going on.
Chapter 58
As the shovel whistled through the air on a direct course for Raymond’s head, someone pushed Raymond out of the deadly blade’s path.
He fell on his behind on the wet grass, the impact rattling through his pelvis.
A vortex of coldness spun around him.
Sammy. The kid had knocked him down—and saved his life.
“You have no business here,” Walter said. He raised the shovel, preparing for a mighty downward swing.
Raymond grabbed the axe and logrolled across the ground.
Walter slammed the shovel against the earth in the spot that Raymond had vacated only a second ago, divots flying into the air and spraying the legs of a nearby goddess statue.
Raymond bounded to his feet.
He saw two bodies—Eric and Carmen—lying at the rim of a half-dug grave, like statues that had yet to be erected on bases.
Dear God. They were only kids.
Acid-hot grief boiled up his throat, and he choked it down. He didn’t have time to get emotional. Allowing himself to lose focus would land his body next to theirs.
He brandished the axe like a baseball bat.
His steel-gray hair flopping on his head like a bad wig, Walter grunted and yanked the shovel out of the earth. He grinned, showing huge, straight white teeth that seemed misplaced in his weathered, walnut-brown face.
“I’ll dig a hole for you next,” Walter said. He came at Raymond, swinging.
The shovel sliced through the air. Moving away, Raymond almost slipped in the grass, but narrowly avoided the blade’s swooping arc.
He swung the axe. Walter whipped the shovel toward him at the same time. The blades clashed together with a clang, the vibration rattling through Raymond’s hands so violently that the axe jumped out of his fingers.
As he dove to the ground to retrieve the weapon, Walter struck his shoulder with the back of the shovel. Agony exploded through Raymond’s arm. Crying out, he dropped onto the grass on his side.
“Too slow, old man,” Walter said.
Tears of pain almost blinding him, Raymond rolled, found the axe, scrambled forward on all fours.
Move your ass, Ray. Ignore the pain and move.
In his mind’s eye, he saw a terrible vision: Walter splitting his head open like a cantaloupe, his brains splattering the ground . . .
Don’t think about that, Ray, don’t you dare.
He crawled behind a thick maple tree. Using the trunk for support, he slid upward, until he was on his feet again. Gritted his teeth as intense pain fanned through his shoulder.
He saw graves around him, marked not by headstones, but by clumps of summer flowers. Dozens of them, grouped around the boxwoods and statues. To anyone else, it might have appeared to be only an oddly arranged garden. But because of the insight his dreams had given him, he knew what lay only a few feet beneath the surface.
I’ll be damned if it’s my time to die. I’m not gonna be buried here.
His face a visage of fury, Walter thundered toward him. He swung the shovel at Raymond’s head.
Raymond ducked out of the way.
The shovel thwacked against the tree, bit deep into the bark. Walter struggled to dislodge it.
Recognizing his opportunity, Raymond lifted the axe and brought it down on Walter’s arm.
The axe cleaved through as if his limb were made of balsa wood.
Roaring, Walter fell to his knees. Blood spouted from his severed arm. He stared at it, stupefied.
Raymond froze, too. Stunned at the savage act he’d committed. Warm blood dripped down the axe handle, colored his fingers. He looked at the blood on his hand with an almost childish awe.
Shit, did I really do this? Did I really have to do this . . .
Walter forced himself to his feet. No weapon in his remaining hand, eyes afire, he lunged at Raymond like a rabid dog.
Raymond’s conscience quieted and his survival instinct took over.
He stepped back like a baseball slugger and heaved the weapon toward Walter in a powerful arc.
The axe lopped off Walter’s head with sickening, fluid ease.
The caretaker’s decapitated body crashed to the ground. It writhed against the grass, legs kicking.
Raymond jammed his fist in his mouth to stem the urge to vomit.
Walter’s head lay on its side, at the feet of a statue of Athena. The eyes blinked rapidly, like some macabre kewpie doll. The gaze honed in on Raymond. Hate burned in those eyes—eyes that should’ve been unblinking and dead.
He was still alive. God in heaven, how?
Walter’s torso twisted onto its stomach. Using its good arm, it crawled toward the head.
Raymond understood, with dreadful clarity, what was going to happen.
Walter was going to pull himself together. Like some horrific Humpty Dumpty.
Lying at the base of the maple tree, Walter’s severed arm stirred—and began to creep like a tarantula across the grass, toward the body.
“Jesus, help me,” Raymond whispered.
The task before him was more gruesome than anything he’d anticipated. But it had to be done.
He shuffled forward and grabbed a fistful of Walter’s hair.
He refused to look down at the head dangling in his hand.
He cast the head into the unfinished grave that Walter had started digging. It thumped against the dirt, maybe three feet below.
Upside down, Walter’s inhuman glare fixated on Raymond. Raymond shuddered, looked away.
Behind him, Walter’s body scrabbled forward.
Raymond snagged an arm by the sleeve of the suit jacket. He dragged the body away from the grave.
Teeth gritted savagely, he went to work with the axe. He worked until he was convinced that Walter would be incapable of reassembling himself any time soon.
He finally plodded out of the garden on tired legs, soaked in sour sweat, blood streaking his hands and clothes, as if he were a butcher headed home after a long day at the slaughterhouse.
Once outside, he couldn’t hold it back any longer. He dropped to his knees, bent over, and vomited.
If he ever lived through this night, the memory of what he’d been forced to do would haunt him until the end of his days.
He wiped his chapped lips with the edge of his shirt, and used the axe to help him stand.
“Okay, Sammy,” he said. “That almost killed me, but I’m ready to go. What’s next?”
A nudge in his back directed him to the rear of the mansion.
Chapter 59
At the back of the house, Raymond found a weather-battered pair of wooden storm doors. A padlock secured the entrance.
“Locked,” Raymond said. “Got a key, kid?”
Sammy poked Raymond’s hand that gripped the axe.
“It’ll make a helluva racket,” he said. “But I’ve probably lost the element of surprise by now.”
Three clamorous whacks with the axe busted open the lock. The doors eeked as he pulled them open.
A concrete staircase descended into blackness. The stench of mildew assailed his nostrils.
He started to go in, then paused. Waited to see if something charged out of the darkness.
Nothing attacked him. Yet. He didn’t know quite what to expect in this palace of horrors.
He fished the mini-flashlight out of his pocket and walked down the steps, shining the light beam in front of him.
He was in an enormous, dank cellar. Bric-a-brac, dressed in cobwebs, crowded the area; furniture and odds and ends were piled up to the ceiling in sloppy heaps.
The ceiling.
He recalled a book he’d read at his wife’s insistence, entitled Dark Crevice or something like that; in one chapter, a clueless cop had walked into a cellar, only to find out—too late—that a bloodthirsty vampire clung to the rafters. He didn’t want to be like that dumb policeman. He played the light across the ceiling.
Only frosty spiderwebs and rusted pipes up there. No
thing threatening.
Panning the light around the chamber, he located a staircase across the room. He weaved between the dust-covered furniture, arrived at the foot of the stairs. He flashed the light up there, too.
All clear. A door waited at the peak of the steps.
“This was almost too easy,” he said. “Am I missing something, kid?”
The ghost did not respond. He no longer felt the chill in the air that indicated the spirit’s presence.
Had Sammy left him alone to fend for himself?
Graveyard silence permeated the basement. He heard only the frenetic throbbing of his heart.
With or without his ghostly companion, he had to move forward.
He climbed the steps. At the top, he grasped the doorknob, turned it, and pushed open the door.
Three big, bluish-gray cats stood on the threshold, as if they had been waiting for him. Ears flattened, they hissed.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
The animals attacked.
Chapter 60
Disturbed by the abrupt silence, Andrew returned to the master bedroom, looking for Mika. The room was empty.
Where had she gone?
He despised her and wanted to get as far away from her as possible, but her disappearance, especially at this moment, when she’d sprung a shock on him with the letters, troubled him. Something was going on. He wasn’t sure whether the brewing incident was good for him. Or bad.
Behind him, the bedroom door whammed shut.
And opened.
But no one stood in the doorway.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
A penetrating draft whisked inside and embraced him like an old friend.
“Sammy,” he said. “Man, I’m glad you’re here.”
Sammy drifted away from him. The door closed, opened again.
Although they lacked the benefit of a computer or Scrabble board to communicate, the message was clear: the ghost wanted him to leave the bedroom.
He walked into the hallway. “What’s going on here, Sammy?”
A ghostly hand pressed against his back, urging him forward.
“I don’t get it. What you do you want me to do?”
A large, marble-topped table, adorned with a green vase, stood against the wall. Sammy guided him toward the vase.
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