Betty Sanders dropped the red dripping axe on the floor, and waited for her one, her only, true antagonist to arrive.
Chapter 54
Lynn Overman had stepped out of her room a few minutes ago and had seen Andrea standing in the hallway, transfixed, her mind concentrating on something far, far away. Lynn had not disturbed her. But now, a look of shock and anger and disbelief had broken out on Andrea’s face. Lynn went over to her, reached out a tentative hand. “What is it, Andrea? What’s happened?”
Andrea put her hands over her lips. Her eyes were flooding, overflowing, thick streams of tears ran down over her face.
“Anton was killed a while ago,” she whispered. “And I forged a psychic link with Ernie, to make sure he was going to be safe. But he’s been murdered. I just felt it. Ernie’s dead. Oh God-now Ernie’s dead, too.”
She lifted up her hands, made fists, and began to pummel Lynn all over—hitting her in the face, on the arms, the shoulders. Lynn began to scream, tried to pull away. “Andrea! Stop! Why are you doing this? Leave me alone!”
“It was you. All your fault. If you hadn’t fooled around with that terrible spell—none of this would have happened. But no—like a petulant child with a new toy you had to abuse your power, not caring what disaster you might cause. I hate you. I HATE YOU.”
Lynn was crying also, stunned by her old friend’s outrage and accusals. “I didn’t mean any harm, Andrea. Please leave me alone.”
Out of breath, trembling, Andrea stopped her assault, and let the tears overwhelm her. “Dead. That good, decent man is dead. And oh God, I felt it. I felt it.”
“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t touch him.”
“I know you didn’t.” She stood still for a moment, trying to bring her rage, her desolation, under control. “The killer, the necromancer, is at the old house. She’s waiting for me. She’s finally dropped her guard, let me see her face.”
“Who is it?”
“Betty.”
“Betty!
“Yes, it seems you weren’t the only one who’s been practicing up in the dark arts all these years since graduation.”
“I mentioned my interests to Betty once,” Lynn said tonelessly. “But she said the whole business was too scary for her to want to get involved in.”
“Obviously Betty overcame her fear, and kept it to herself, more so than you did. You gave her the idea; she took off with it in her own fashion. I think she thought she might find a way to get back at everyone who laughed at her, who used her, who failed to return her love and affection. Well, she’s going to learn that there is a price for everything. Just like you did.” Andrea began walking towards the staircase, a determined, infuriated look on her face. She would mourn Ernest Thesinger later.
Now … now she would avenge him.
“Don’t go,” Lynn called after her. “Don’t leave me alone. I’m frightened.”
The only answer Lynn received was the sight of Andrea’s shoulders receding step by step down the staircase.
Chapter 55
Andrea moved across the threshold into the old house. She was surrounded by darkness and despair. There was no sight of her adversary—yet. The air in the house was cold tonight, ice cold, not hot as it had been this afternoon, yet Andrea still felt as if she were stifling. She had been wrong that the final battle would take place in the guest house, fatally wrong. In spite of that, she felt strangely calm, confident, as if she had been waiting for this day her entire life, waiting for something to test the limits and the range of her powers. It was as if she had sent a doppelganger forth to do battle, while she herself waited at home for the outcome, seeing and feeling through the duplicate’s eyes, but not really being there.
There was no way she could have avoided this confrontation. If she had not gone to Betty, Betty would have come to her. Perhaps not physically; perhaps she would have sent something in her stead, some pleasant little nightmare meant to bend Andrea’s mind in shapes and configurations no human brain was ever meant to go in. Andrea did not need to be near Betty to fight her either, but she wanted it that way. It would be easier—no, it would be more satisfying —if Andrea could see the look on Betty’s face.
Andrea stepped into the library where she knew her foe was waiting. She braced herself. She was sure Betty would have placed Ernie’s remains where she could see them—the first strike in their emerging war, a bold psychological blow that might cripple Andrea emotionally and therefore completely, before the battle had even begun.
But no. There was nothing there. Ernie had been moved. Andrea gave silent thanks to whatever gods were listening.
Betty stepped out of the shadows.
“Hello, Andrea.”
Andrea stood facing her, about ten feet away. “Why did you do it, Betty?”
Betty didn’t answer. Instead she lifted her hand.
“I could see Anton, after what he did to you, what he said to you. I could understand your hating him, although I can’t approve of what you did. But why Ernie?” She felt the tears welling up again, fought successfully to control them. “Why the others? What did they ever do to you?”
The hand was changing, growing, evolving. It was no longer human.
Andrea stepped back, appalled by what she was seeing, yet somehow relieved.
Betty’s form was transmuting into something else. A creature with claws and teeth, with crusty dark flesh and deep red eyes.
Andrea had been warned at the very beginning, been warned by her teachers in the psychic field. “Beware of travelers in the nether regions. Not all of them are human.” Call them devils, call them demons, Andrea knew that many believed in the existence of other lifeforms on what humans referred to as the astral plane, that higher level into which souls were said to ascend, in which intangible shapes and forms could float about unbridled by earthly constrictions. She was looking at someone, something, that also traveled through the endless space of the nether world. Another being, a non-human creature from an alternate dimension.
At least she wanted to believe that’s what had happened. Wanted to believe that Betty was still the same sweet innocent that she had always been, but that she had been possessed, taken over, by something far more powerful and experienced that she, something giving vent to her hurts and frustrations, someone who got revenge whereas Betty would only have whimpered. Perhaps Betty was not even aware that she had picked up this unholy traveler. Andrea could hear herself explaining it to Ernie, knowing he preferred good, rational, scientific explanations to supernatural balderdash.
“It’s another lifeform, not a devil, not a demon. A lifeform that lives on planes normally closed to the human species. Betty tapped into that plane, drew the creature out, sucked it into her. Perhaps she knew what she was doing and did it willingly, providing a host body for this parasite if it gave her the power she was craving. Perhaps Betty is culpable for all that has transpired. Perhaps not. Perhaps part of her knows part of the time, yet does nothing. Perhaps she doesn’t really care. I guess we’ll never really know for sure.”
She could see Ernie’s perplexed expression, see him nodding, trying to understand.
Ernie.
Andrea was renewed with the onrush of anger as if a thousand quarts of adrenaline had been pumped into her system. This terrible creature would pay for what it had done to them, to Ernie, to Betty perhaps. It would pay.
It stood there in the dark, glistening, emitting a putrid fragrance. The limbs were scaly, the back slightly hunched. It opened its mouth and snarled. It still had Betty’s face—though now it was grotesque, inhuman—and it began to step closer, closer to Andrea, its long-clawed hands outstretched.
This was how Betty had gotten around so quickly, gotten out of her room by the window, dragged those heavy bodies around. The creature was huge, muscular, strong. It could tear Andrea apart with very little effort.
Andrea knew if she was to defeat it it would have to be on a psychic level.
She held back.
What if Betty, the real Betty, was still in there somewhere, guilty only of having fooled with forces beyond her understanding, as Lynn had done? If Andrea destroyed the creature, she might also destroy her friend. Somehow she had to send the thing back where it came from without hurting its host.
But then she heard a voice in her mind and knew that it no longer mattered. She heard Betty’s voice, the real, true Betty, and what the woman said was enough to chill her down to the bone.
“I know what you’re thinking. But this is me, Andrea. Betty Sanders. I know what I’m doing and have known all along. I tried to keep my actions as the necromancer separate from my everyday existence, as if they were dreams only, not real occurrences. I didn’t want to admit to myself what I was capable of doing. For awhile it was as if I had a split personality. But, Andrea, deep down I always knew what my evil side did— and I did nothing to prevent it.”
Betty was not the innocent victim. The other-dimensional creature was. It had been called forth, enslaved by Betty, forced to a subliminal existence until Betty summoned it forth to do her bidding, to add its power to her own. Betty was really the one and only necromancer.
The voice in Andrea’s brain continued: “I had to pretend, playact, and at times I almost believed it. I was really falling for Anton, you know. But after what he said, I knew not even he would be spared. I reveled in his death agony, Andrea. Reveled in it. He paid … he paid for what he did.
“I had such fun, Andrea. I showed myself—my demonic self—to poor Mrs. Plushing. But she was so sick—too sick to tell anyone, though she tried to. My human side was repulsed by what I did. It was so messy … I had to leave the room before it began. I have such a vivid imagination. Always have. Even I don’t know quite where the imagination, the hallucinations, ended, and reality began.
“All I know is I had fun closing my eyes and killing them all, making them dead just by wishing it. Fun.”
“Why are you doing this, Betty?”
The creature was moving forward, slowly, carefully.
“I sensed the presence of the mystical object, the book, as soon as I stepped onto the boat that took us over here. Lynn must have had it in her luggage. It’s a very special book, as I’m sure you know. I’ve read Lynn’s mind and now understand where it came from. There are great forces on this island, Andrea, the life energies of souls trapped, dying, screaming for help. Those energies can never die; they exist for all time. I have become one with this creature I called from the void as magicians in the days of old called demons—what they thought were demons—from the pit. It has great knowledge, this creature, great power. With its aid, I will gather the psychic forces of the island, through the focal point, the book—and then all the psychic forces in the world.
“There won’t be any silence anymore. No one will hurt me. Whatever I want I can have just by thinking it. Unlimited power. Think of it, Andrea. Unlimited. I’ll do what I please with the world, and the world’s sole obsession will be to satisfy me.”
Andrea prepared herself. Betty was utterly mad. And she remembered what a professor had once told her. Madness is the only true strength.
The creature rushed her. Andrea got out of its way, ran towards the hall. She felt images, sights and sounds, invading her mind. So, Betty was going to fight on a psychic level, too. Andrea tried to fight it all off, each wave of the mental assault. She saw her dead parents standing out in the hall looking at her beseechingly, and her heart wanted to run to them and embrace them. She saw a child at her feet, begging for food, affection. She saw a huge wave of black water rushing down the corridor about to engulf her.
Not there, Andrea. None of it is really there.
Snakes, she was covered with writhing, twisting, biting snakes. She closed her eyes, opened them. The snakes were gone.
There were rats skittering across her feet; she felt herself falling, falling, down a long tunnel, the hall had changed into an endless pit.
Andrea concentrated. The pit was gone.
Only the rats were real.
Betty was using every power at her disposal.
Andrea felt something grab the upper part of her right arm. She felt burning, aching pain. The claws, the clawed fingers had gotten her. The Betty-creature had caught up with Andrea while she’d been fighting off the psychic attack, kicking away the scurrying rats at her feet.
Andrea looked up into that innocent-horrible face. She reached into her jacket pocket, got out the scissors she had thought to bring—stabbed the creature again and again in the face.
Betty howled, dropped Andrea’s arm, backed off.
The very walls of the house were beginning to crack, to topple. Was it real? Was it hallucination? Andrea didn’t know. The floors were buckling, and she saw hawks and eagles and bugs and bats and horrible zombie-like creatures shuffling through a fetid mist. There were loud, ear-splitting screams coming from everywhere, echoing through each chamber of the house.
She saw Ernie bending before the cabinet. Ernie, where she had told him to go.
Ernie was going to die again, right before her eyes. Betty was going to torment her, show Andrea how she had made Ernest Thesinger die.
No! Fight it. You must fight back.
Andrea turned away, squeezed shut her eyes, tried to separate illusion from reality.
There! The mists, the cracking walls, the false image of Ernest Thesinger, the flood and bugs and pleading relatives were gone. All that remained were the Betty-creature and a few rats, skittering in terror, delirious with freedom, around her feet. They would not harm her if she kept Betty too busy to send them against her. If Betty could tap into the psychic forces of the island, so could she. Keep them at bay.
It was Betty who presented the most danger. Concentrate on Betty.
The shambling horror, half-woman, half-monster, opened its mouth and emitted a serpentine hiss. The fangs in the mouth glistened with mucus. It moved forward, injured and enraged, the wounds in its face dripping a repulsive greenish slime. Andrea saw the torn portions of Betty’s scissors-ravaged face, flaps of skin hanging down, and was glad at what she’d done.
But that was only the beginning.
The thing reached out its clawed hands again, seeking to rend and tear. Andrea backed away, her fingers scrambling in her pocket for the other weapons she had brought along. A small container of lighter fluid dropped into her hand. She took it out, aimed the nozzle at the Betty-creature, and squeezed the container. The oily liquid shot out, squirting in Betty’s eyes, on the tattered remnants of her clothes which hung on the mottled gray skin of the creature she had blended with.
Betty’s eyes lit up in alarm. Too late—it saw what Andrea was doing.
Andrea got out the book of matches. Struck one. Sent it hurtling at Betty.
Betty raised up her arms to cover her face. The match hit. Everywhere the fluid was, it burned. Betty’s clothes went up in flames, her face smoked. Andrea smelled burning flesh and gagged. Betty rolled around and around on the floor, trying to extinguish the fire. The fire ignited the carpet, raced across the floor, and burst into full glory as it enveloped the drapes.
The old wood of the house would go up very easily. The whole mansion would burn down to the ground.
Blackened, sizzling, the Betty-creature raised its evil head off the floor, and cried, “Help me. Please, Andrea, help me.” Andrea was no longer looking at a hybrid monstrosity, but at a feeble human female, her old friend, Betty, harmless Betty, sweet Betty, Betty-on-fire. Do not be fooled, Andrea thought. As long as she was thinking, breathing, Betty was still dangerous.
Andrea felt Betty’s mind reaching out, seeking up, down, around. If I must die, her mind was saying, I will take you with me, bitch.
The house was going to be consumed by the flames; there would be another terrible conflagration—but Andrea still had time to make it out the front door, just a few feet, a few seconds, away. The walls had caught fire, and the whole library was ablaze. Smoke began to irritate her eyes, enter her lungs
. Betty’s body was lost in the haze. First this room would go—then the others on this floor, then the ones above. The house was doomed.
Coughing and wheezing, Andrea sped toward the front door and safety.
I’ll take you with me, bitch.
There was a tremendous vibration that shook the whole house, coming up from deep in the earth and rocking the mansion on its foundation. Immediately after, there came the thunderous boom of an incredibly powerful explosion that blew the house right off the surface of the island and out of existence. The old house was no more.
Epilogue
Lynn Overman stepped out of the shower in her apartment on Hereford Street and began to dry her body with a fluffy blue towel. Her skin felt cool, tingling, clean. She wiped with a desperate fastidiousness, afraid if she stopped for an instant the thoughts would intrude, the terrible thoughts she’d been having all day.
“I suppose it will be like this for the rest of your life,” she said out loud. She looked at herself in the mirror, put on her bathrobe, and went out into the living room. She sat down on the sofa and wondered what she could do today to keep busy, to keep from brooding. But even if she tried to think of some mind- and memory-numbing activity, the thoughts came flooding back over her and she was back on the dock at Lammerty Island almost a year and a half ago.
They’d found her there screaming, in shock, crying for all the others. Strangely, she had been able to pack her bags, to put all her possessions neatly away and wait quietly on the dock until the man came to pick them up. Only there had been no one to pick up except for her. She was hysterical, overcome by the trauma of the weekend. She’d spent all day and all night Sunday alone on the island. She’d heard the explosion, seen the fire lighting up the sky for miles around. She knew then that the terrible battle between Andrea and Betty had ended in tragedy for both, for all of them—but her. It was as if the island knew she owned it, and had protected its new mistress from harm.
Late at Night Page 26