by Loretta Ross
Ruhr ruhr ruhr ruhr.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
She tried it a couple more times, just in case it was, she didn’t know, a glitch in the matrix, maybe, rather than an actual problem. With the rain pouring down, she decided to call Death to come pick her up and worry about the truck in the morning. But when she pulled out her phone, it was dead and she couldn’t get it to turn on.
“The battery. I forgot to plug it in to charge.”
Cursing under her breath, she dug in the console. She’d left her big flashlight at home that morning, but she had a small but bright LED light on a headband that cast light on things while leaving her hands free. Putting it on, she popped the hood, steeled herself to a cold shower, and jumped down.
The ground squelched underfoot and the metal of the hood was cold and slick under her hands. She found the hood release, raised the hood, and leaned in under it, seeking some scant shelter as she peered at the motor, trying to see if she could see what was wrong.
The motor had turned over but wouldn’t catch. Since the truck had run fine that morning, her first thought was that corrosion had built up on the battery posts and was keeping it from getting a full charge. The posts gleamed in the bright blue glow from the LED, though. The battery could be dead, but it was practically new and she hadn’t left the lights on or anything.
Electricity, fuel, spark. The three elements of starting a vehicle. If it wouldn’t start, you eliminated them one by one until you discovered what was missing. The battery should be okay, and she’d gassed up only that morning, so unless someone had siphoned her tank she should have fuel.
That left spark. It should have started, or at least tried to start, with one or even two loose spark plug wires. She had no other ideas, though, so she moved over and refocused her light to check them.
They were gone.
The spark plug wires were gone.
The only way they could be gone was if someone had taken them. The only other person she knew had been on the property that day was Robin Keystone, but the missing spark plugs meant that she was alone and stranded twenty miles from town. That wasn’t a prank any of her friends would play on her.
With a sick feeling, Wren closed the hood, got her keys and her dead phone, and ran back to the house to lock herself in. Just inside the door, with her back to the wall, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The sound of the rain on the windows intensified, and she wondered who else was here and what they wanted with her.
_____
Death, in his office on the square, was deep in financial paperwork, figuring his quarterly tax payment. His phone, lying on the blotter next to his left hand, buzzed and vibrated.
“Hello?”
“Do you own your home? Let me tell you what vinyl windows and doors can do for you!”
“I’m not interested,” he said. “I’m on the do-not-call list. Don’t call back.”
He hung up, got up, and went to the mini-fridge in the other room for a can of soda. He’d just gotten back to his desk when he heard the door down at the street open and close and a set of familiar footsteps climbed the stairs. He kept his head down and kept working.
Randy crossed the office, came to a stop in front of him, and leaned down to put his face a couple of inches from Death’s. Death looked up finally, grinning hugely.
“She said yes?”
“She said yes. Well, she nodded. Same thing.”
“And the ring? Did she like the ring? Did it fit and everything? You didn’t drop it off the Ferris wheel, did you?”
“No, I didn’t drop it! I didn’t put it on her until we were back on the ground. And yeah, it fit and yeah, she likes it.”
Randy clapped him on the shoulder, beaming. “Man! That is so awesome!” He pulled up a chair and dropped into it. “Have you set a date yet? I better be your best man! Does Madeline know yet?”
“No, of course you are, and no, why would Madeline know?”
“You didn’t tell her? I’d have called and told her first thing.”
“What, like ‘nanny-nanny-boo-boo! I’m engaged and you’re not’?”
“Well, yeah!”
“Well, no.” Death laughed and pushed the paperwork aside. “What happened between Madeline and me is in the past. I have more important things to do than gloat over my ex-wife.”
“That’s a very mature and healthy attitude. So can I?”
“What? Gloat over my ex-wife?”
“Yeah. I want to tell her that you’re marrying Wren.”
Death took a drink from his soda. “Why?”
“Because she’s a bitch. And when you and she got married she was all smug and pleased with herself. And she told Wren, when you all thought I was dead, that it was karma because she didn’t like me so I deserved to die.”
“She said that? Really?”
“That’s what your fiancée told me.”
Death’s phone buzzed again.
“Bogart Investigations.”
“Do you own your home? You would be wise to listen to what I have to say!”
Death growled and hung up and tossed the phone in a drawer.
Randy frowned at him. “What was all that about?”
“Telemarketer. Keeps calling and trying to sell me vinyl windows.”
“Oh. Yeah, telemarketers are a pain in the butt. Kind of like Madeline.”
“Okay, fine! You can tell her Wren and I are engaged.”
“Awesome!” Randy grinned ear to ear. “I know. I’ll ask her if she’s interested in a job in show business. When she asks why, I’ll tell her I’m planning your bachelor party and I need a cheap stripper to jump out of the cake.”
Death dropped his head into his hands. “Oh god. Knowing Madeline, she’d probably do it. Congratulations, Randy. I think you broke my brain.”
“Well, it was never very sound to begin with.”
“Just don’t say anything to her until after Wren tells her parents. She wanted to tell them first, before we announce it or anything.” Death drained his soda, set the empty can down, and leaned back, kicking his feet up on the desk.
“Where are her parents? I’ve never met them.”
“Neither have I.”
“Oh!” Randy grinned. “Nervous much?”
“A little, yeah. They’re retired. They have a pop-up camper trailer they pull behind their truck and they just travel all over the US doing whatever they feel like doing.”
“Sounds awesome.”
On the desk between them, Death’s empty soda can started to jitter and vibrate. It rattled and shook and danced across the wooden surface. Death and his brother both sat up and stared at it as it moved, by fits and starts, toward the edge of the desk.
Death yanked open the drawer. His phone lay there, vibrating with an incoming call. He snatched it up with a curse and ran for the door.
_____
For the first time since she’d started working there, the Hadleigh House’s long, echoing corridors and warren of empty rooms frightened Wren. Leaning against the wall, just inside the door, she half expected the pretty, engraved-glass window light to come crashing in and a hand to reach in and grab her. Or a claw. Or a meat hook.
Trying to shake off the horror movie imagery, she held her breath and willed her pounding heartbeat to still so she could listen for any sounds that might betray a presence. A sign that she was not alone. Only the sounds of the storm reached her, wind and thunder and rainwater gushing down the gutter spout off the verandah and dripping from the eaves.
Her best bet, she decided, was to get to somewhere she could secure, then plug her phone in and call for help. She ran over the house’s blueprint in her mind. First floor would be better than second floor, she decided. If the person who took her spark plug wires was determined to kill her, the simplest thing to do would be to set the house on fire. While she really didn’t see that happening, she didn’t want to chance getting trapped on the upper floor if it did.
For th
at same reason, a room with at least one window she could escape from would be best. It would be a trade-off, though, because windows would render her vulnerable to an attack from outside. She needed a place with limited windows, a single door she could defend, and something she could use for a weapon.
She had a weapon in her truck, of course. As a hobby a couple of years earlier, she’d taken up using an atlatl that she’d gotten at an auction. The atlatl, a prehistoric spear chucker, was basically a short wooden stick that used the principles of leverage to add force and distance to a thrown spear.
Back in the spring, when she’d first met Death, she’d used the atlatl to help drive away an armed intruder. Ever since, she’d carried the weapon and a collection of six-foot-long spears in the back of her truck. It would have been simple to grab one, had she been thinking clearly, and she knew she would feel a lot better with a weapon in her hand. She was loathe to go back out into the dark now to fetch one, though.
That seemed like the sort of thing a character in a slasher flick would do, just before their friends started stumbling over their dismembered body parts.
“At least I don’t have a group of friends with me. I’m the only character in this movie. That should work in my favor.”
Perfectly aware that this reasoning made no sense, Wren forced herself away from the perceived safety of the front door and into the dark recesses of the old house. Ducking down to stay clear of the windowpane, she edged down the corridor, keeping near the wall on the left but careful not to touch it. She didn’t want the sound of fabric moving against wallpaper to betray her presence.
Halfway back, she came to the corridor that ran north-south. She hadn’t turned the lights on yet and she hesitated. The headlamp she wore gave her a bit of illumination, but it also might act as a beacon to someone stalking her. She had yet to hear anything other than the weather, though, so she decided to leave it on until she reached her destination.
Imagination running rampant with what might be waiting for her (and not all of the denizens of her imagination were living human beings), she ducked out quickly and looked down the corridor. The light on her forehead reflected back from the window in the nailed-shut door at the end of the hall, but the hall itself was empty. She had to pass three empty rooms—a morning room on her left and a study and a smoking room on her right—before she came back to the game room she’d been working in that day. At each doorway she paused and listened for movement or the sound of a breath, and then rushed past.
Finally, she was back where she’d started. Once she was inside with the door closed and certain that she was the only one there, she flipped on the light, turned off her headlamp, and took stock of her situation. The pool table was too heavy for her to move and the lighter furniture would make no barricade at all.
In addition to her atlatl, Wren was proficient with a slingshot. She had one that she’d disguised as a necklace, with throwing stones threaded on like beads, but she’d had to take it apart and use it when they’d rescued Randy in St. Louis and she hadn’t put it back together yet. She did have her dead cell phone and a charging cord still gripped tightly in her hand.
She searched the room for an outlet, plugged the phone in, and waited impatiently for it to power up. It cycled through introductory screens and the opening music began to play, an odd lyrical counterpoint to the dark and the wind. She put her thumb on the volume button, hastily turning it down to mute, and finally the lock screen came up.
She unlocked it and hit 911, but nothing happened. In the upper right-hand corner, the icon for “no signal” flashed.
Wren cursed under her breath. With the weather the way it was, she should have expected this. Still, it didn’t make her feel any better about being stranded, alone and cut off from civilization, at the mercy of whomever had sabotaged her truck.
It occurred to her that she could make a run for the veterans’ camp, through the rain and the darkness. But what if someone at the camp was behind this? What if that was what they wanted, for her to come running to them? She didn’t feel that the Robinsons were dangerous killers, but was that because they weren’t, or because she liked them and didn’t want them to be?
A brilliant flash lit up the windows and a deafening peal of thunder came simultaneously. Lightning had struck somewhere in the woods. Somewhere along the haunted Vengeance Trail. The light in the game room flickered and died, and Wren’s phone glowed briefly, flashed a dead battery warning, and shut down.
She stood in the darkness, hardly daring to breathe.
The storm sounds seemed suddenly muted, as if the blast had stolen all the energy from the atmosphere. Rain still drummed down, but without the sheer fury; the sensation of standing beneath a waterfall. The wind whispered around the dark corners of the old house.
Somewhere off in the distance, from one of the lonely, empty rooms, came the sound of glass breaking.
seventeen
The wipers were at their highest setting but still they battled the rain sheeting down the Jeep’s windshield. Death leaned forward, trying to see out. Randy, clutching the chicken grip, cracked his window and craned his neck. Their breaths were fogging up the inside of the glass, but with the window down, the rain driving into his eyes nearly blinded him as well.
“Man, can you see at all?” he asked.
“Hardly. Help me watch.”
“I am. Okay, the road’s coming up. You’re almost there. Turn now.”
Death eased a right turn onto the gravel. The road leading to the vet’s camp was narrow and rough, but the trees lining both sides gave them a windbreak and the rain lessened enough that he could turn the wipers down a notch and still have improved visibility.
Lightning flashed almost continuously, painting fleeting, grotesque pictures of the sodden landscape. They climbed a hill, the ditches on both sides running like creeks, and passed the carcass of the abandoned church on their right. Another fifty yards and a long series of lightning bolts showed them the gravedigger’s angel.
She—Agathe—looked almost alive in the dancing white light. She peered out at them, across the underbrush and across the decades, in windblown robes. She held her hair out of her eyes and offered them a ladle dripping with rainwater; victim of the War To End All Wars, reaching out to a soldier of the war that came a hundred years on.
The road dipped down again, crossed a culvert where the stream had risen nearly to the surface of the gravel, and they came at last to the driveway into the camp.
The driveway curved before it crossed the little bridge over the gully. Death eased the Jeep down and around it, through a shallow, puddle-filled dip in the road and out into the gravel parking area. The lights were on in the Robinsons’ cabin and in the barn and he could see, in the stormlight, horses and humans running in the pasture beyond.
Death and Randy went through the barn and found Nichelle, dripping, in the paddock arguing with Kurt.
“It’s okay,” she shouted over the wind and the rain. “They’ll be fine!”
“Just stay here while I get the others!”
Sugar and a little roan mare were in the paddock, still saddled. Three other horses ran in the pasture, wild with the lightning. To Death, they seemed more energized by the storm than frightened of it.
Kurt had run back out, calling to them. The Bogart brothers turned to Nichelle.
“What’s going on?”
She shrugged helplessly, turning up her palms to the sky.
“We went out for a ride in the rain. It was peaceful, you know? We didn’t realize a storm was coming up. We were clear over by the river when it got bad. Thunder and lightning, they freak Kurt out. He feels like we’re under fire and he’s not happy until everyone is safe under cover. We rode home as fast as we could, and now he’s trying to get the rest of the horses in out of the weather.”
“We can help,” Randy said.
Robinson was coming back, leading two prancing mares. He walked between them, his hands tangled in their wet manes, an
d Randy hurried to open the barn door so he could take them inside.
Death went out into the pasture, where one horse remained. He recognized her as Leia, a paint filly he’d petted when they were out the day before. She wasn’t saddle broke yet, and was too young for an adult to ride, in any case. A beautiful animal, she was going to be a show-stopper some day. Water dripped off her mane and tail and off Death’s nose and the near-constant lightning created a disco effect.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he coaxed. “Let’s get inside, out of this storm.”
She butted him playfully and pranced away. He had just gotten hold of her, her wet mane tough and wiry in his grip, when a massive bolt of lightning struck on the hill above and the thunder washed across the valley. Leia jumped and tried to run, her eyes rolling in terror, nearly pulling his arm out of the socket. And then Robinson was there on her other side, and between the two of them they were able to coax her back to the paddock and the safety of the old barn.
Nichelle followed them in, leading Sugar and his mate, still saddled. Death closed the door. Outside, the storm raged on, muted but hardly silenced by the thin barn walls.
Kurt Robinson was still on edge, bustling around trying to take care of everyone at once. To the right of the paddock door, opposite the stalls, there was a desk with a hanging light over it and a chest of drawers. He went to the chest and started pulling out towels and tossing them at the other three.
“Here. Get dried off. You’re dripping wet. Randy, can you help me rub the horses down? Sit down, sweetheart, I know your leg’s hurting. Death, you need to get out of those wet clothes. Go ahead and strip down and I’ll get you a blanket to wrap up in until we can find you something else to wear.”
Death blinked. “You want me to just take my clothes off ? Right here?”
“Yeah, man. With your lungs the way they are, the last thing you need is to wind up with pneumonia. What? You’re a Marine. You mean to tell me you’re shy?”
“It’s just a little rainwater. I’m fine. You’re fine, Nichelle’s fine, Randy’s fine. The horses are fine. Just calm down and breathe for a minute.”