What? Jess stared at him, incredulous.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he went on. “If this doesn’t go down the way we want, we won’t have time to cross over the girls.”
He had that determined look on his face, the one that said his mind was set. He also looked mad. She’d never seen him like this before.
“Besides,” Gage went on. “It’ll piss off Riley, and right now, that’s fine with me. It might even work in our favor.”
Jess frowned. “You want to piss off Riley? Are you nuts?”
Gage picked up the pace as he headed for the back lawn instead of the front door. “I refuse to let that little prick have us run around as if our heads have been handed to us. If we’re not thinking clearly, Riley and Siler House will have the upper hand.”
“So, how’s getting Riley angry going to help?” Bryan wanted to know.
“We turn the tables. If he’s angry, he’s the one not thinking clearly,” Gage replied.
Bryan laughed. “Yeah. And when he’s flinging knives or taking over one of us, what are we going to do?”
Gage stopped once they reached the oak, his face tight and eyes dark. “You think it’s going to get any easier once we’ve pulled Riley through? It’s not. And right now, he and this fucking house have us running scared. You think he’s not going to pull out all the tricks? You think he’s going to follow all those baby-game monster rules you had when you were a kid? That if we don’t stick a leg or arm out of the covers the monster under the bed has some code of ethics where they won’t eat us alive? I’ve got news for you, guys. Pissed or not, he’s coming after us. And he’s not going to play fair.”
Like the others, Jess stared at him. She considered what he’d said and had to admit he had a point. They needed an advantage. But what? “If we put Gracie and Emma to rest now, we lose any chance they’d help us with Riley.”
Gage let out a small laugh. “Sweetheart, if they could do something to stop Riley, I’d bet they’d have done it by now.”
That was true, too.
“I say we go dig up some bones,” Gage said.
Bryan sighed deeply. “When?”
Without so much of a pause, he replied, “Tonight. Now.”
“Now?” Jess nearly shouted in protest. “No way, Gage! No. We’re not going in there.” She expected a reaction, some wisecrack, some angry retort. But Gage simply looked at her, unwavering, determined. The thought of stepping foot back into those woods, going back to the spot where Riley had killed the girls was too much. She drew her arms up against herself. “No, Gage. Just…no. Especially in the dark. Not a chance.”
Gage shrugged. “You don’t have to, then. Stay here with Allison. Bryan and I will go. Just tell me where to look.”
“Gage, that’s impossible!” Bryan said. “How are we supposed to find the same spot? We need Jess to show us.”
All eyes turned to her. They were asking too much on this one. Her mind scrambled to find some excuse. If she didn’t, Gage and Bryan were going to do it, anyway. She didn’t like the idea of them out there, either. “Guys, I can’t. We can’t! It’s dark. We don’t have a shovel or even a flashlight.”
“It’s the only way, isn’t it?” Allison said in that resolved, trance-like voice she got into now and then that set Jess’s bones on ice. “I don’t like it either, but what choice do we have? The sooner we do this, the better.”
“Why can’t we do this in the morning? We’ll find some other way to get him angry,” Jess protested. Great. Three against one. There was no winning this one, no matter how she tried. She’d thought Allison would be on her side, but now, Allison just looked…defeated.
Bryan leaned one shoulder against the oak tree and closed his eyes. “Jess, you know Gage is right.”
Gage nodded. “Besides, even if we could wait, we’re burying a kid’s skull…in the cemetery, which is sectioned off with a padlocked iron fence. Brandt might be getting a little weird on us, and the dude’s all about the experiment, but I don’t think he’s going to stand by and let us dig up Gracie or Emma’s grave tomorrow.”
“I’ll go fetch the shovel.” Bryan shoved off from the tree. “I noticed a couple of them just by the side of the house. They must belong to the renovation crew.”
Gage leaned in and kissed the top of Jess’s head. “Stay here with Allison. We’ll get the shovel and some flashlights and be right back.”
He and Bryan set off across the lawn. Jess opened her mouth to complain, but to what end? The others were set on doing it now, and eventually it had to be done.
Jess wanted to tell him to not go. Instead, she called after him, “Be careful. Don’t get caught.”
By anyone.
Or anything.
He turned, walking backward. “Never,” Gage said as he offered that devastating grin of his before turning once more and walking off toward the house.
Jess stared after him, never realizing until now just how large Siler House truly was.
Allison stood next to her. “How’s he going to get the flashlights with Dr. Brandt in the house?”
“No idea. But he’ll be right back with them. They’ll be okay.”
She hoped.
“It’s getting more dangerous.” A small breeze blew wisps of hair across Allison’s face, but she didn’t seem to notice. “For all of us. It wasn’t Brandt or some faulty switch that stopped us at the gate. It was the house.” She turned her head in Jess’s direction. “It watches us. It’s watching now.”
Jess stared up at the house, taking it in. It was bleak and cold against the night sky, void of color.
You see what it wants you to see.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. Just days ago, Jess would have argued Allison’s point. Not tonight. Not ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
After what seemed like an eternity, Jess heard Gage and Bryan’s voices. Gage flicked a flashlight on and off, letting them know they were okay. She and Allison had been sitting quietly at the oak’s base, neither talking much.
Relieved that they’d returned, Jess got to her feet as they approached. “I see you didn’t have any problems getting the flashlights.”
Gage shook his head. “None. Brandt wasn’t in his room. The door wasn’t even closed.”
“Where was he?” Allison asked.
“We don’t know.” Bryan shrugged. “We never saw him. We just got in, grabbed the flashlights and took off.”
Gage turned to her. “Want to give us some direction?”
Jess let out a long sigh. They’d be forever if they went in by themselves. Or at least, longer than Jess was comfortable with. Who knew what else was out there.
She felt a chill despite the temperature. “I’ll show you. Just everyone stay close, all right?”
They each nodded.
Gage handed her a flashlight. “I’ll be right beside you.”
She silently chastised herself for going along with this. “This way.” She motioned for them to follow and headed for the woods, her heart pounding so hard her chest ached.
The woods looked every bit as eerie as it had when she’d last been here. Although the flashlights helped, their stark circles of light only managed to illuminate how much scarier everything looked in the dark. Shadows danced and shifted, giving Jess the illusion that whatever had been in her flashlight’s path a moment before had darted into the nearby darkness.
She stayed in the most open of areas, just as she and the girls had done. Twice, she doubted her sense of direction until finally Jess spotted a familiar, shorn tree trunk with a hollowed base in the middle of an otherwise empty path.
“Over here,” she said, taking a right. Wordlessly, everyone followed her another couple hundred yards. Jess stopped when she recognized the two small saplings whose limbs crossed the pathway in front of them like an arch.
It’s just ahead. Only a little farther.
Adrenaline coursed through her.
“Are you okay?” Gage a
sked, concern evident on his face. Behind him, Bryan scanned the area with his flashlight. Like Gage, he’d put on a brave face.
Jess let out a quick breath, willing her heart not to explode from fright. “Yeah. We’re almost there.”
Gage walked ahead of her, taking her slowing pace and choice of words as a sign that she wasn’t willing to lead any longer, although she wasn’t any more thrilled to have him walk into the area, either. She stayed close as he pushed onward.
“Here,” she said once they’d reached the spot. She scanned the area with her light. Leaves and twiggy debris covered the ground, but one area stood out the most—a cleared patch of upturned earth. A small, whitish item that, in this lighting could be anything—a pale leaf or a rock—protruded from the ground.
Or bone. She knew it was bone.
“There.” She wiggled the light, coming to rest on the object.
Gage knelt down to examine it.
“Is it a skull?” Allison inquired. She hadn’t ventured as close as the boys, staying a good distance away.
Gage brushed away some of the dirt. “No idea until we dig it up.”
The guys dug up the area, uncovering not one, but three bones, although one was nothing more than a long fragment. Rib? Part of an arm bone? Jess refused to get too close for fear she’d see the vision again—see Riley biting into Gracie’s cheek.
Bryan held the first bone under his flashlight for all of them to view, but it didn’t take much to know what it was—a section of skull.
Moving closer, Allison reached in to touch it, then apparently thought better of it. “Why did they leave behind some of their bones?”
“No idea,” Bryan replied. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? We’ve just got to get them back to the gravesite and bury them.”
He and Gage collected the bones and they began to walk back. Allison hurried behind them. Not wanting to be last to leave, Jess quickened her pace. She hadn’t noticed it the first time she’d been here, but the place didn’t feel right. It felt…
Evil?
When she could see the clearing, it was all she could do to keep from running.
“We’ve been gone awhile,” she said as they emerged from the woods. “Do you think Brandt has been looking for us?”
“Probably,” Gage replied. “But we’ll worry about that later. Let’s get these bones buried before Brandt comes out here looking for us.”
He walked on, stopping in front of the padlock on the iron gates surrounding the girls’ gravesite. He reached into his back pocket and extracted a small Allen wrench and a modified paperclip and immediately went to work.
He gave the lock a quick tug, and it opened. He glanced at her again, a cockeyed grin on his face. “Always come prepared for the job.”
Jess laughed and smacked him playfully on the arm.
Bryan grabbed the two shovels they’d left leaning against the fence, pushed past them and swung the gate open. A gust of wind kicked up as they stepped inside, and Jess recalled the figure pointing toward the graves and back to her.
Had this been what he’d meant? Were they doing the right thing?
Bryan and Gage began digging up a patch of earth at the base of the monument. Gracie and Emma’s statues had taken on an eerie glow in the moonlight and Jess shivered. It was as though the girls were watching them from their carved pedestals. The sound of the shovel seemed louder than what she’d expected. Brandt had to hear them out here. She glanced at the house, but no lights came on.
After a while, Bryan hit something with the tip of the shovel. They all exchanged glances.
“It’s got to be the casket,” he announced.
Gage shone the flashlight into the hole. “Hardwood. Probably mahogany or something like it, seeing as the Silers were wealthy.”
“Which grave?” Allison asked. “Is that Gracie’s or Emma’s?”
Gage glanced up at the monument. “No idea. Maybe Gracie’s. Of course, we don’t know whose bones we have, either.”
“Now what?” Jess asked nervously. She hadn’t thought about that part. “Can we just bury the bones on top or do we…”
…break open the coffin?
From the looks on everyone’s faces, they were wondering the same thing.
Bryan leaned on the shovel. “Unless someone has a manual for this kind of stuff, we’re just winging it. I mean, we don’t know whose bones we’re even burying here. Unless we open up both caskets and can figure out who’s missing a rib or whatever that is, and part of their skull, it’s a crap shoot.”
Gage pitched the handle of his own shovel from hand to hand. “In or out of the casket, it doesn’t matter. We’re only going to bury the bones on top. Which means this one is as good as the other. Mind handing them to me, Allison?”
Allison shook her head and took a step back from the bones resting at her feet. “I’m not touching them.”
Gage shot her a hard glance, tossed the shovel down and picked up the bones. Jess understood both sides here—Allison’s reluctance to touch the bones, and Gage’s irritation after he and Bryan had been digging in the August heat while she and Allison merely watched.
“Aside from not knowing who’s missing what, is there a reason we’re not putting the bones back in the coffin?” Jess asked.
Using his forearm, Gage wiped sweat from his forehead. “Because, for whatever stupid reason, I paid attention to some crap on TV once—about burials. We have no way of knowing if the girls were embalmed with arsenic or not. It was common around the turn of the century. I can’t remember an exact year, but Gracie and Emma were buried close enough to the timeframe that I’m not willing to take any chances.”
He carefully set the bones on the coffin’s top, then picked up his shovel and started tossing dirt back onto the coffin. “Hell, for that matter, I have no idea if this stuff leaches into the soil.”
Bryan scoffed. “You’re kidding, right? It’s probably mahogany like you said. You think arsenic might have seeped through the caskets and into the soil?”
A sheen of sweat covered Gage’s muscular arms. “Sorry. Can’t answer that. I’m not a mortician. I’m not a chemist, either, but I don’t think coming into contact with a poisonous substance at a haunted house is a good thing.”
Jess watched as the bones disappeared beneath the spray of orange earth.
“Should we say something?” Jess asked.
“Like what?” Bryan asked.
She shrugged. “A prayer?”
She recalled the first time Gracie and Emma had shown themselves to her, their faces so frightened and pale. She thought of how young they were when they’d died. How they had promised to help her.
How they creeped her out at times.
As Gage continued shoveling dirt onto the gravesite, Jess recited a childhood prayer. It was the only prayer she could think of.
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” She paused. The next part didn’t fit.
If I should die before I wake…
Jess knelt once Gage had thrown the last of the dirt onto the grave. “I hope you two are at rest now. I hope you’re free of Riley and this place. Take care, Gracie and Emma.”
Allison handed her some flowers she’d picked nearby and Jess placed them on the broken earth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Gage had expected Dr. Brandt to ask where they had been and what they’d been up to, seeing as how dirty and grimy they were—especially him and Bryan. He didn’t know how Brandt could miss it—they all looked like they’d been digging up graves. But Brandt merely glanced up from his spot on the sofa, eyeing them briefly, then ordered them to get cleaned up before the séance.
Weird. Too weird.
“Snap, snap!” Brandt said cheerfully. “The room is ready for us except for the candles. I just need to get them from the basement.”
“I’ll help,” Gage offered. “It won’t take me but a few minutes to clean up. Bryan can use the shower first.”
&nbs
p; Dr. Brandt seemed genuinely surprised by his offer, which confirmed Gage’s suspicions. He was hiding something. Had he been doing a little practicing of his own—without them? Allison had thought he might be, and Gage agreed. Until tonight, Brandt was the only one actively working on crossing Riley over into their realm.
Then why do the séance with us at all?
Easy. Because despite his efforts, Brandt had failed. He hadn’t told them about his work in the basement because they’d…
What? Stop him? Ask him why he was conducting séances without them?
“No,” Brandt said, voice no longer cheery. “I’ll get the candles. Get cleaned up. And find separate rooms. It’ll take too long if you have to wait on the others.” He glanced at Jess and Allison, who were waiting on the bottom stair. “Besides, the renovation crew broke a window and left everything a mess. I don’t want anyone injured.”
“Okay,” Gage replied. “It’s a good idea. We don’t have much time left before midnight.”
Brandt stood patiently in the Great Room. With a final glance, Jess and Allison headed up to the third floor. Bryan waited for Gage and they went to their own floor together.
“I’d bet anything he’s been holding séances without us,” Bryan said once they were out of earshot. “He’s been acting weirder every day. You think he’s using the Ouija board and trying to channel Riley?”
“No doubt,” Gage replied. “The question is who answered. Riley or some other spirit in the house? He’s clearly not himself.”
“What do we do, then? Do we go on with the séance?”
“Yeah. Right after we knock his ass out cold.”
Bryan laughed. “Dude. We can’t just knock him out.”
“He’ll be fine. We need something to tie him up with, though.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll think about it. I’m going to go to the next room and shower,” Bryan said, grabbing some clean clothes. “Maybe if we’re done fast enough we should check out what he’s been up to.”
“Good plan.” Gage avoided telling Bryan that maybe they didn’t really want to know what Brandt was up to—that it didn’t matter because he didn’t think Brandt was entirely Brandt anymore.
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