by John Bladek
I thought back to Vaughn up the road. Had explosives been what was missing from the quarry? Maybe Duncan had stolen them, and wired the tower—and probably the entire building—to explode. I didn’t see any detonator on him, but I figured the abbey was soon to be a pile of rubble.
I jumped down the hatchway and raced past him.
“The drownings, the deaths. She can’t be allowed to harm anyone else,” he called after me.
I had no objections. I only wished he’d done it years ago.
chapter twenty-three
In a blind panic, I ran out of the abbey. I turned toward the beach and sprinted to the slope leading down to the water. The wind had picked up, biting and salt-scented, still flinging shard-like flakes of snow at me. I tried to cover my face from the burning sensation.
Everything was clear now: Angelica had used me to lure Emily here, where her powers were probably at their strongest. The blanket was some kind of supernatural snare. I’d let it entrap me, then given it to Emily. Perhaps my having a pregnant wife had been a terrible coincidence, or maybe Angelica could tell somehow, read my mind or something. Why hadn’t I seen? Why?
I ran on.
Reaching the path on the cliff, I looked toward the beach.
The silhouette of a woman dressed in black contrasted sharply against the fog and white shoreline. In front of her, another woman wearing a long white nightgown was inching away. The woman’s damp nightshirt clung to her body, accentuating her belly.
“Emily!” I yelled. My voice was lost on the wind. She will freeze out here.
I kept running down the path but had to slow over patches of ice forming on the already slick rocks.
Finally I reached the bottom. A jolt hit me from behind, and a sharp pain began to throb at the base of my skull. “Oww!” I put my hand to my neck. Something oozed wet and warm against my frozen hand. I glanced at my palm. Blood.
A loud shriek sounded over my head. I looked up through the snow. Dozens of seagulls flew against the wind with a fierceness that overmatched the wild weather. They circled, riding the frozen air currents, wings outstretched, hovering above me. Eyes black yet somehow alight, their jagged razor beaks opened and called out.
One of them dove straight for me.
I threw my arms in front of my face and jumped out of its way.
The maniacal thing hit the rocks with a muffled crack, breaking its neck.
The birds had to be crazed, just like the one in the hotel parking lot and the flock that had mysteriously come out of nowhere inside the abbey.
I looked down the beach.
Emily edged closer to the water. The waves crashed against the shore, wild as the birds, and washed around her feet.
The ghost turned toward me. I saw the face of the girl from the newspaper article. Angelica—posing as Pamela—waved toward the seagulls and then at Emily.
I ran to Emily.
A shriek rang out and another sharp pain tore at the top of my head.
“Dammit!” I yelled as the seagull swooped away, my blood staining its beak.
Another dove. I lashed out, and it struck my arm, a hammer blow. It flew away, and yet another hurled itself at me. I blocked this strike as well, but the bird’s beak ripped into my forearm. I could barely take a step under the assault.
They would kill me if Angelica kept up this attack.
“Emily!” I shouted again.
Her ankles were now in the water, and I could see that she held something blue in her hand. Pamela’s blanket.
My blood ran cold. I swatted away another bird and took off again.
There was another lacerating peck. This time at the top of my ear. I cried out and held my head.
Again. This one on my forehead.
Emily was now knee-deep in the water.
Angelica kept waving.
Emily edged further away, but not before she looked back at me. There was a flash of recognition in her eyes.
“Emily, please, fight back! She’s trying to kill you!” I screamed.
Just then something struck me, but not from above. A burning, a sense of rage, but not my own, scorched my chest.
Get away from her, the voice of a woman called into my head.
I looked at Emily, and her expression blurred, pixelating into an old black and white photograph. There was no trace of her blonde hair and soft features. Instead, a young girl wearing a nun’s habit, her look serious and unsmiling, stared at me from the water.
I stumbled backwards, trying to dodge another bird.
Emily opened her mouth. “You just missed your mom. She dropped off some of your childhood keepsakes!” she yelled. The sound of a baby’s rattle reverberated around me. The noise intensified. It morphed into the shrill tuning-fork sound, becoming deafening.
I covered my ears. “Stop!” I yelled. “Leave me alone! Leave Emily alone!”
“Stop!” Emily yelled, imitating my plea. “Leave me alone.” The sound of intense rain hitting pavement replaced her voice. She pointed at me. “Will, watch out! The motorcycle. It’s going to hit us! Stop! Stop!” Emily screamed.
All at once, the sound of glass shattering shrieked up and down the beach. I dropped to the rocky beach again as another bird pecked my arm. I screamed, and my eyes widened as a pool of blood formed on the ground.
Emily’s monochrome face began to change and contort. Glimmers of normal, human flesh tones shone through.
She was fighting, but I didn’t know how to help her, or myself.
Just then, Angelica stepped toward me, and I thought I would stop breathing. I stared at her face. “Not you, nor anyone, is going to hurt her any more. She’s going to fly away on angel’s wings, out there,” she said, pointing to the horizon. “Norman won’t have her again, or Mother Angelica. No one will be able to take her baby away.”
Pamela?
Duncan had been wrong.
This ghost was not Angelica.
Emily was now waist deep.
Another bird dive-bombed me, this time on my thigh. I held my leg as blood seeped into my jeans.
I pointed toward the abbey. Now that I knew for sure who the ghost was, I screamed to be heard in the wind. “Duncan is up there. He wants to be with you. Go to him, and leave us alone! Emily doesn’t need to be protected! Your tormentors are dead, gone. They can’t hurt anyone.”
Pamela didn’t move.
Instead, my voice began to echo back toward me, slowed, distorted.
I glanced over at Emily. Her face was now back to normal, but her neck was bent awkwardly, and she was staring at me. Her mouth moved, and I heard my own voice come out. “Emily doesn’t need to be protected!” she cried with my voice.
My fear and frustration became violent rage, spewing up in my throat. Before I knew what I was doing, I charged at Pamela.
As I got closer to her, a strong surge of current pulsed through my body. She tried to move away, but I drove headfirst into her, intent on knocking her down. A shock wave rippled through all my limbs. I closed my eyes. The world vanished as Pamela screamed.
I opened my eyes. The beach reappeared, transformed, the world emerged in black and white, a faded universe devoid of color and depth. There was no snow, no cold. Only a sea that looked like blue flame, a burning pit of fire. Where was I? Was this Pamela’s reality?
When I stared at Emily out in the surf, all I could see was a white figure in the flames, shifting and undulating in pulses of light. A black fog enveloped her head and the hand holding the blanket. Ebony tendrils extended all the way from Emily toward Pamela’s waving hands.
I ran toward Emily, but when I reached the black fog it pushed me back.
I looked back at Pamela. “You have to stop. Please.”
Pamela glanced back at me. This time I didn’t see a malevolent face. Instead, her face was pained, frightened. This was the eighteen-year-old girl who’d lost everything. The girl who had been locked away in a small room, shunned by people she trusted, tortured by those she’d feared.
I looked out toward the waves. Emily’s figure edged further out into the bay. She would be under the waves any minute.
I stumbled toward Pamela and fell to my knees.
“Please, it’s not too late. You don’t have to protect any more girls. No one can ever hurt you again. If you’ve ever loved someone, please don’t do this. You can still find peace. Let me save her. She’s my wife. I love her.”
“You don’t deserve love,” Pamela said through her tears. “No one does.”
Her words cut through me, a burning sword of hatred, but somehow I forced myself to move. I staggered up and started running. Not toward Pamela or Emily, but to the black fog that connected them. If I broke the connection, maybe it would free Emily from Pamela’s stranglehold.
As I stepped in front of the haze, I was again stopped cold. Voices pierced my thoughts as the fog enshrouded me. Women sang soft lullabies, children cooed. The blanketing warmth of a summer day flowed around me, followed by images of children swimming in pristine lakes and pools. I felt pulled, coaxed, and caressed in ways I hadn’t felt since I was a child. I could only guess Pamela was broadcasting these thoughts at Emily, luring her out to sea with a false sense of security.
How could I break this chain? Was it possible in this weird netherworld to cast my own thread into Pamela’s net?
I closed my eyes and thought of Emily. Images of the day we first met, our first night together, our wedding, the day the babies were conceived—all spun through my mind and out toward Emily.
“Hear me,” I whispered. “I’m here.”
My voice wavered, was overawed. As I spoke, Pamela’s idyllic, hate-filled fantasy towered over mine.
“Drop the blanket!” I screamed at Emily.
Emily stared, unhearing.
I pushed my thoughts again to Emily, but she showed no recognition. The water was up to her chest. In my despair, I started thinking of Duncan and replayed everything he’d told me at his cabin to direct toward Pamela. All his anguish, laid bare for her to see.
When I conjured the image of Duncan drunk and crying for her, all the voices and thoughts diminished, ever so slightly.
“No!” came a distorted cry. Pamela moved, repositioned the tendrils binding her to Emily.
I moved in the way of the black fog one more time, again thinking of Duncan.
“You’re just like him!” she screamed at me. “You never wanted your baby. Neither did he. He left me to rot, just as you would have left her. Don’t pretend to care.”
“That’s not true! Duncan loved you and the baby. He didn’t know what Angelica was doing. He was respecting your wishes to be left alone. Like him, I want to be a father. Everyone has a moment of weakness, and I had mine, but it means nothing now.”
“And nothing is what you will have,” she snarled. A wave of her hand threw me to the ground.
I faced the sea. The brightness of Emily’s body almost blinded me. I crawled to my feet and stumbled toward her. “I love you!” I yelled. “And our babies! Don’t let her have you. Please, forgive me.”
Emily looked at me, and I could see her eyes shining with recognition. “I do,” she said.
I closed my eyes for an instant and then turned to Pamela, determined to die to stop her. With all the strength I had left, I lunged at her.
A terrible shriek rang out.
All at once, I was everywhere and nowhere, falling into a vortex, dividing into an infinity of parts.
A loud crack burst in my ears.
I lay face down on the beach, water slapping my face. Snow fell, whipped by the wind at horrendous speed. The seagulls flew away, unable to withstand the tempest. Color returned. Blood red.
I lifted my head, and my mouth dropped at the sight in front of me.
On the cliff, an orange glow enveloped the abbey as an inferno blasted through the roof, raging into the sky.
chapter twenty-four
Smoke and flame roared from the abbey like an avenging angel. The old building cried in agony as fire blackened its skin, broke its bones. Another explosion racked the south end, and the bell tower collapsed in on its pyre.
He’d done it. Duncan had actually blown the damn place up.
I stood up immediately, turned away from the howling disaster, and searched for Emily in the foaming surf. I’d nearly freed her from Pamela’s grasp when the blast struck.
Neither Emily nor Pamela was anywhere to be seen. Had the abbey’s destruction broken Pamela’s hold on this world?
“Emily!” I scrambled to my feet. “Emily!”
Wind-driven waves crashed on the beach at my feet. “Emily!” I scanned the surf. There was still no sign of her, Pamela, or any threatening seagulls.
Had she gone under? I plunged into the sea, not thinking of the numbing cold. Pain shot up through my legs until I lost all feeling. I continued to swim in the direction of where I’d last seen her.
Finally, I came up for air, and a wave cascaded onto me, forcing me down again. I swam to the surface and glanced out to the horizon.
No one was in sight.
Shouting until my voice grew hoarse, I stumbled out of the water and ran up and down the beach in search of my wife.
The sound of the howling wind was the only response to my calls.
I fell to my knees onto the rocks.
The police found me there, lying on the beach, waves washing over me. I don’t recall much else. Later, a nurse told me that a giant Saint Bernard lay next to me, keeping me from freezing to death. Vaughn dragged me to the ambulance that rushed me to Winterbay hospital. I’d suffered from severe hypothermia, frostbite in my hands and face, and multiple lacerations.
I’d nearly died, the nurse added. I wished I had. There was no sign of Emily. So far, the only remains they’d discovered were Duncan’s among the ruins of the abbey. The police said Duncan was clutching a gold necklace with a cross pendant charm, a slight smile on his face.
The next day, when I finally awoke, my hands were covered in bandages, and I lay propped up in bed. The nurse took my temperature and asked if I was warm enough as she checked the drip on my I.V. “Two men are here to see you, if you feel up to it,” she said, a sweet smile on her face. “I’ll send them away if you want to be alone.” She took my gauze-covered hand in hers.
“Ted and James?” My voice sounded as though it came from someone else. I was too numb to say no.
The nurse nodded and opened the door for them. She looked back at me. “I’ll be just outside if you need anything. The button is right there in your hand.”
The two walked in together, holding hands. Ted stood over me and bit his quivering lip. “Will…I, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.” He looked away.
James stepped up next to him and patted me on the arm. “It was that crazy beach guy, the lighthouse keeper.”
“Duncan,” I said.
“Yeah, Duncan,” James went on. “He had some grudge or other, the police said. They also said he stole explosives from the quarry and wired the whole building. He must have set it off just as you arrived. You’re lucky you weren’t inside. Although….”
I swallowed, my throat raw and dry. “I know,” I said. “I did go inside. I saw the wiring and Duncan.”
Ted turned back around. “You did? Then you got out just in time. Do you know why he did it?”
I looked away. What could I tell them? It’s not like I could explain that Duncan had destroyed the abbey to rid the world of a malevolent, vengeful spirit. “It’s my fault,” I cried, choking back tears.
“Your fault?” Ted said. “How could it be your fault? You may have caught him in the act, but there was no way to have known beforehand he’d go off half-cocked.”
“I never should have brought Emily here,” I said, shame overwhelming me.
Ted put his hand on my arm.
I wanted to crawl under the bed and hide. “Why didn’t I see? The cradle, the knitted heart, those other girls….”
Ted and James g
lanced at each other. Quizzical looks spread over their faces.
“What do you mean?” James asked.
“Winterbay,” I said, not even sure I was making sense. “Cursed,” was all I could muster.
chapter twenty-five
Time almost stood still for me.
Ted and James drove me to the airport a week later. Gryffin sat next to me, his head resting on my lap. Ted and James had adopted him after they found him whimpering over his dead master.
I patted Gryffin while my thoughts turned back to Emily. She was all I could think of. I hadn’t been able to rest. She was in every thought and dream. The nurses had taken care of me as best they could before I left for home. In some ways, I didn’t want to leave the hospital. How was I even going to go on living after this?
Standing near the ticket counter at the airport, James stepped forward. “I really hate to bring this up now. It seems so cold, but with you now leaving….We just wanted you to know that we plan to completely rebuild the abbey, or rather the hotel. We’re going to start from scratch. The property is too nice to let go.”
I nodded and continued to shuffle through the line. “I’m sure it will be a huge success for you,” I said, numbly.
“We still want to use your ideas, and we hope you’ll see them through, you know, adapting to a completely new structure,” Ted said.
I was surprised they were even telling me this right now. It did seem insensitive. I really couldn’t think straight.
“We realize how painful this place may be for you. There’s no need to come back. You can do everything from Seattle. And if you choose not to, we completely understand.”
“Yes,” James continued for him. “And…we have more projects we’d like you to consider if this one is too…too hard. Sorry, I’m sure that came out all wrong.”
I held out my hand and shook both of theirs. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll think about it.” I turned away, determined never to see Winterbay again.