by Kira Hillins
“Well, I’m in the middle of something right now.”
She opened the drawer and searched inside. The silverware was still there. She picked up a small flashlight and turned it on. It worked well enough to use for her inevitable venture into the dark. Everything that used to be here was still here, but the case with the blue candies was gone.
“Betty told me you went to Manzanita. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Anna closed the drawer, irritated that Betty had told him where she was. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t want you to worry.”
Jack was no dummy. He’d detect the urgency in her whispering voice, and he wouldn’t let it go until he’d wormed the information out of her.
“You don’t have to explain. I just wish you’d told me you were going on a trip.”
“Then you would’ve talked me out of it, or tried to come with me.” Deciding she might feel better if she kept Jack on the line, she drew in a short breath, covered her face with her shirt once more, and then stepped down into the dark. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just need to do this on my own.”
“For god’s sake, Anna, why are you whispering? What are you doing there?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m doing.” She descended the stone steps. “Mac had a friend on the outskirts of the town. He left me a note to check in on him, but he’s not here. There’s this horrible smell coming from the basement. I need to find out what it is.” As she went farther down inside the dark room, the line grew with static.
“Anna…get out of…Come home, and I’ll…with you…” Jack’s voice muffled. She couldn’t tell what he said any longer, so she hung up the phone and stuffed it back inside her pocket.
The stench grew worse with each step. As she made her way to the bottom, she held her shirt tighter and drew in very short breaths. Spiderwebs hung from the wall like wadded cotton, thick and untouched by time. It was like walking into a horror film. She was again the stupid girl who ignored all the signs to leave only to get killed by the villain.
She shined the light on his bare cot. His wool blanket was at home in her closet. Why she’d kept the damn thing all these years was beyond her. When she got home, she’d make sure to toss it.
Her picture was gone from the wall. Maybe the tape had grown cold and lost its stickiness then the photo had fallen behind the bed. She wasn’t about to lean down to find out.
She moved the light across the floor until she stopped on a dark pile in the corner of the room. The heap moved, and her heart shot to her throat.
She inched closer, never looking away. It could be a bunch of snakes gathering in a cold dark dungeon. Highly unlikely. Or possibly it was a dying dog that’d gotten trapped here after chasing an animal. The closer she got to it, the more her fears became reality.
She shined the light over the body of a woman. Her gray eyes were widened and mouth open as if the last thing she’d witnessed was terrifying. Anna heaved as the foul stench mixed with the sight of rotting flesh. Her mouth and eye sockets swarmed with maggots as rats feasted on her body.
Anna dropped the flashlight from her trembling hands. She ran up the stone stairs. With long quick strides, she left the house. Her foot knocked over the angel statue as she sprinted toward the path on the other side of the driveway.
She scraped her way through overgrown weeds until she fell to the ground in front of a cross. This was her mother’s grave, name permanently etched in stone. Sia Hart.
Tears flooded down Anna’s face. In her mother’s time of need, Tristan had helped her give birth, and then took her life for his own perverted fantasy.
Why would Mac put her in harm’s way? Obviously Tristan was a very sick man. If he killed that woman in the house, she feared what he would do to her. Mac’s dying wish or not, she didn’t want to find out.
Chapter Eleven
Mother
“Miss Holden.” Sheriff Mason Hershel moseyed into his small, windowed office. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his thick auburn hair. Big brown eyes tiredly scanned Anna’s face as he sat on the chair across from her. “Are you okay to give a statement now, and maybe answer a few questions?”
Anna fought the image of the corpse, but it was stuck in her mind like a bad dream. “I guess so.”
He studied the star-shaped badge embroidered on his ball-cap then looked her in the eyes. “Exactly what were you doing up there? The city condemned that house about seven years ago. They had plans to bulldoze it off the cliff, but got tied up in legal issues.”
That was an interesting bit of news. “What kind of legal issues?”
“I don’t know. It’s a shut case that nobody’s allowed to see.” He stared as if he read her mind. It was creepy. “I was hoping you might fill me in on why anyone would want to save that monstrosity of a house. Let’s get your statement first.”
She cleared her throat. “Well, Sheriff.”
“Mason.”
“Mason.” She forced a grin. “My step-father passed away three months ago. Before he died, he asked me to look in on the house. I went up there to do what he asked, and that’s when…” She cringed as she thought of the nightmarish face.
“You found the body.” Mason leaned back in his chair. “So you are connected to the house then?”
“Sort of. It belonged to a family friend.”
“Then you should know why it’s a shut case.”
“No. I don’t know why.”
“You must know something about the previous owner.”
“Yeah.” He was a con who took advantage of everyone. “I knew him a long time ago.”
“You knew him well enough that he gave you a key.” He sat rigid in his chair and grinned as if he enjoyed this interrogation. “I think it’s strange that you claim you haven’t been here in over ten years, and yet, on the same day you come back, you find a dead body. Why do you think that is? What can you tell me about the time you spent there? Were you part of the occult? Did you and your partners sacrifice animals or worse yet, people?”
“That’s ridiculous.” She scoffed. The guy was trying to get her riled up and it was working. “Nothing weird went on there that I know of. It was just one man who thought he was a…” God, I can’t say vampire or he’ll lock me up in a cell for being nuts. “He thought he was—“
“—a vampire?”
She drew in a quick breath. “I was going to say sick. He had some sort of disease I’d never heard of.”
“I know about the wine cellar behind the wall in the basement.” His increasing excitement was evident from the extra lines on his rugged face. His shadowed jaw tightened as he waited for more explanation. “Do you know what the bottles contained?”
Oh, she knew, but wasn’t about to confess that bit of information. “I imagine wine.”
“Wine? Yeah. Not exactly.” He shook his head, disappointed that she wasn’t playing along with his game. “So what was the name of this family friend? And how long ago did he live there?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to give out his name. Since he did nothing but lie and con anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to see what this sheriff could muster up about him. “His name’s Tristan Ashfield.”
“Tristan Ashfield?”
“Yes. I saw him in the house just before he left town. Eleven years ago.”
Mason lifted a small pencil and notepad from the breast pocket of his jacket. He opened it to a blank page then wrote something down. Though she couldn’t see what it was, she was sure he wrote Tristan’s name.
“Are you still in contact with him?”
“No. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Do you know where he might’ve gone?” Strange how quick things change with just a mere look or tone of voice. Both changed during his question, as if behind his protect-and-serve attitude lingered eagerness to lock Tristan away and make him into a freak show.
Sure, she might know of his whereabouts, but damned if she was going to tell this weirdo. Not a
fter the unusual Jekyll and Hyde act. “He didn’t tell anyone where he was going.”
Mason nodded as he tapped the paper with his pen. “The body you found—her name was Eileen Compsy. She was a nurse here in town. Ring any bells?”
Putting a name to the disfigured body made her ill again. She had seen cadavers many times in college, could complete autopsies on them blindfolded, but had never seen anything as gruesome as this.
“No,” she replied with a quiver. “Should I know her?”
“She disappeared about a month ago from the hospital parking lot, worked night shift. We found her car in the bay a few weeks ago but figured her body had washed away. The coast guard’s been searching all along the coastline, and a few volunteers have been searching the beaches and parks.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Mason picked up his hat and inspected it again. He was a good-looking guy, a little heavy-set, but had a grin that might make a woman melt. Though maybe in his early-forties, at this moment he looked like a child playing with his toy.
“The house is registered to a James Wallace. He built the house about sixty years ago.”
“I’ve never heard of James Wallace.” Anna shook her head. “The owner’s name was Tristan Ashfield.”
“There’s no record of anyone by that name owning the house.”
“Well maybe they were related.”
“I doubt it.” He put his cap back on his head. “James’s wife, Darlene, died of cancer months before James went missing. There’s a few other people connected to him that, guess what, are on the missing persons list too.”
“I don’t know any of those people.”
He retrieved two blue folders from the top drawer of his desk, and then slapped them down in front of her. His finger tapped the top a few times then opened it. “I’ve done research on James Wallace, the real owner of the house. A local farmer found him in a field nearby about thirty-some years ago. If you look at this picture, you’ll see his death is quite similar to the woman we found yesterday.”
She looked to the side. “I don’t need another face to go with my nightmares.”
“I know this is difficult. But if you look closely, you might see a resemblance.”
She forced herself to look at the photo. Nausea crept up into her throat. The man’s dead body looked similar to the woman she’d found. “Oh, that’s awful.”
He held out another photo. If she had to look at one more maggot infested body, she was going to vomit all over his desk. “This is James, the same man you’re looking at now. It was taken about five years before his death.” She glared as she snatched the photo from his hand then looked at the picture.
The man stood in front of a gray screen with an ear-to-ear grin. Magnificent eyes, deep blue and friendly, stared at the person behind the camera. He could’ve been a model with blond wavy hair that hung down just below his ears, and a chiseled super-hero-like jaw. A woman could fall in love with him.
She handed the photo back to Mason. “He was a nice-looking gentleman, but I don’t understand why you’re showing me this.”
Mason thumbed through papers in the folder until he came to the one he searched for. “James Wallace.” He tossed her a glance. “Born July 14 in Los Angeles. He married Darlene Hallows from Sacramento. They moved to their dream home above Devil’s Cauldron until she passed from cancer.” He pulled the bottom folder out and laid it down on top of the last file. “This is the woman he dated afterward. Sia Hart. She was the number one suspect in James’s death, but disappeared before anyone could question her. She was pregnant.”
Anna followed Mason’s gaze to the photo clipped on the folder. Chills spread over her like wildfire. It was like looking into a mirror. Long blonde hair waved down around her face to her shoulders. Big blue eyes sparkled in the light as she smiled.
The resemblance was uncanny. This had to be her mother. “I knew her name, but I’ve never seen her before.” Anna’s heart sank. Numb, she leaned back on the chair, hand over her mouth and holding back tears.
“Believe it, missy.” He strode to the coatrack beside the office door. “I know you want to go home, but with this case breaking wide open, I’m going to have to ask you to stick around here for a little while longer.”
“Why?” She glared at him. “I obviously had nothing to do with my parents’ deaths. And I called you about the body in the house. Why would I do that if I was involved?”
He unhinged his jacket, and then shrugged it on. “Young lady, there’s been disappearances and murders all up and down this coastline for a hundreds of years. I was elected sheriff with a promise to continue searching for whomever or whatever committed these crimes. With the find of this new body, we must have a copycat out there. You’re the first real big lead. So I’m not about to let you run off until I know everything about you—where you grew up, who your foster parents are, and where they adopted you.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“Not yet.”
She lifted the photo of her mother and stuffed it in her jacket pocket. “I know my rights. If you’re not arresting me, then I’m leaving.”
Mason repositioned his hat as a cowboy would before riding his horse. “I have a few questions for your foster mother. I’ll follow you to her house.”
“To Seattle? Oh, no! You are not following me home.” She tried to leave, but he blocked the doorway. “Get out of my way.”
He zipped up his sheriff’s jacket. “I could arrest you for obstructing justice.”
If she could get away with sending this cop to the floor, she would ball her hand into a fist and take a swing. She drew in several deep breaths to calm the fire inside. It didn’t help much, but it gave her the time to come up with a better way to get out of this mess.
“All right.” She groaned. “How about I bring Betty here next weekend? You can interrogate both of us all you want. Just, please, please, let me through. I’m a pediatrician with a load of patients to see tomorrow.”
At first she didn’t think he’d let her go, but then he stepped aside. “If you’re not here by next Friday, I’m sending a unit to pick you up…in handcuffs. Better yet, I’ll personally come get you and your foster mom.”
“Fine.” She glared as she hurried around his bulky frame. “Goodbye, Sheriff.”
When she made it outside, she drew in several deep breaths. The cool air brushed her heated skin as she got inside her car. As she backed out of the parking space, Mason came to the exit. He watched her with that annoying smirk on his face as she sped out onto the highway.
“Asshole.”
Driving through town brought memories of Mac taking her to and from school. All those times they’d stopped for an ice cream cone on the way home. Betty had scolded him for ruining their appetite for dinner. Mac opened the bar around seven. Then Anna would sit in front of the living room window and wait for dark.
Not much had changed in scenery. She didn’t reckon small towns ever did. With no more ties here, she felt like a tourist passing through. As much as she loved this place, it hurt to be here. There were too many memories of Mac, and too many unwanted ones of Tristan.
She pulled the photo of her mother from her pocket. “Sia Hart.”
Tristan had met her at the door. He’d helped her inside the house and delivered her baby just before she died. What was he doing in her parents’ house? What ties did he have to them?
“Did he kill them?”
Tears fell as she glanced at the photo then back to the road. Only one person could put the pieces together, and that was Tristan himself. If he murdered her mother, she would avenge her death by tracking him down and making him pay, even if it meant she had to die too.
Chapter Twelve
Reunion
Anna parked in the grass on the side of the narrow road. She took a moment to look at the map. With the line drawn from her current location straight into what looked like an empty field, it’d be an easy trek.
Map in h
and, she got out of the rental car. She lifted her backpack onto her shoulders, locked the doors, and then hiked through the field.
The clerk at the hotel had told her the old castle, now a historical site, lay on some of the richest land in the Blackdown Hills of England. At one time it stood as one of the largest castles of the fifteenth century. After so many years, it was easily forgotten.
With no records of how the thick stone castle burned and crumbled to the ground in one night, she had to dwell on some cockamamie story Mac had written in his journal. This Madeline had infected Tristan with, what he’d called a disease that gave him the strength of a thousand men. Enraged, Tristan had used his bare hands to destroy his home stone by stone.
Anna snickered. Oh the lies he’d weaved. Mac was gullible to believe in such a story. And by the way he’d written it all down he’d believed. Tristan was a vampire.
“Whatever.”
The scenery was beautiful. Marvelous green rolled beneath the late afternoon sun and gave the scent of fall rain. She hiked across streams and little coppices, where sheep grazed and wildlife flourished as if untouched from centuries past. Bluebells and snowdrops created breathtaking imagery against the green. If she could, she’d fill a bottle with its marvel, patent it, and label it as heaven.
No matter how serene, she couldn’t forget her mission—to find his house, invade his quiet life, and then make him talk. Frightening indeed, but she’d come prepared in case he tried to hurt her.
She tapped the can of pepper mace in her pocket with her fingers. With her cell phone tucked inside her other pocket, she was confident as she hiked on.
Her heart beat faster. Had she made the right decision by coming here? She imagined herself in front of him, questioning his purpose for the awful things he’d done. Why had he left her? Twice. No matter how she looked at it, he’d left a hole in her heart. To look into his dark eyes would dredge up old feelings, sorrow she’d buried far beneath the hate.