The Sinner

by Amanda Stevens

  “Only glimpses,” he said. “But even in this weather, I can feel their cold.”

  She stepped out of the shadows and put a hand to his cheek. “You understand why they are drawn to us? What we must do because of our gift?”

  “Oui.”

  “Ours is a noble calling. Remember that in the dark times, mon petit prince. Remember me.”

  “Always, Mamiluce.”

  “Bon voyage.” She hugged him fiercely, kissing both of his cheeks before fading back into the shadows of his memory.

  He stepped into the glow of the streetlamp, his gaze meeting mine across the wet street, across the long years and through the misty twilight, before a wall finally came up. That was all he would allow me to see, but it was enough.

  He wasn’t Congé. He was a ghost-seer. He had walked my dark path. He had known my fears and loneliness. And now he was offering me, what? Solace? Understanding?

  And what would he expect in return? I wondered with a shiver.

  Twenty-Five

  Far more important questions needed to be asked. How had Kendrick known about me in the first place? What had I done to give myself away to him?

  From the moment we met, I’d sensed that he knew things about me. I had assumed that he’d researched me on his way to the caged graves that first day, but now I was forced to consider the possibility that his interest went beyond my role as a material witness in a murder investigation. Perhaps even beyond the ghosts. Could he have been the watcher in the woods? Was he the one who had summoned me to that airless circle?

  His eyes shimmered in that strange, yellow light. I didn’t trust myself to speak, but so many more questions bubbled inside me. Had he always been aware of the ghosts or, like me, had he acquired the sensitivity in early childhood? Had he been sent to live with his grandmother because she shared his sight? Did he know about hallowed ground? Had he been given rules to follow?

  And what had his grandmother meant by the nobleness of their calling?

  “Do you understand now why I felt compelled to warn you?” He slid his hand up my arm, a feathery touch that made my breath catch. “I was afraid of what you might find in that house. Of what might find you.”

  I still couldn’t bring myself to open up about my gift. So much was at stake and secrecy had been too deeply ingrained. “I don’t understand anything. This house, this town...you.”

  He trailed both hands over my shoulders, cupping my neck as he gently caressed my jawline with his thumbs. His touch mesmerized me and yet I felt anything but languid.

  “I don’t know if we should,” I said, my voice raw with nerves.

  “Is there someone else?”

  My hesitation was slight. “Not anymore.”

  “But there was. Someone important.”

  I nodded.

  He stared into my eyes, searching for a way in. I tried to glance away, but he wouldn’t let me. His fingers slid into my tangled hair as he lowered his lips to mine. But he didn’t kiss me. He remained so close and my chest was suddenly so tight that I wondered if he’d stolen my breath.

  I kept my hands at my sides, but they itched to touch him. I wanted more than anything to thread my fingers through his hair and tug him to me until that minuscule distance between our lips had closed. I wanted to run my hands over his biceps and shoulders and press myself against him as my tongue tasted his skin. I pictured myself opening his shirt and unfastening his belt as I sank slowly to the ground.

  In that moment, I craved him as surely as a ghost hungers for life and that desperate longing should have worried me. I was a careful person. I’d paid dearly for throwing caution to the wind and now I knew better. Lowering my guard was never a wise option, especially when I couldn’t be certain that my feelings were even real.

  Tread carefully, a voice whispered through the haze. And trust no one.

  Kendrick’s head came up. “What was that?”

  I was still so lost in my fantasy that his question barely registered. “What?”

  “You didn’t hear that noise?”

  “No... I...”

  “Shush. There it is again.” He cocked his head toward the door, his expression grim as his hands fell away from me. “You were right. Something is locked inside the shed.”

  That jarred me back to earth. “Oh, my God.”

  “It’s not a person,” he quickly assured me. “I think it’s a cat. A stray, most likely. Sounds like it may be wounded.”

  “Wounded?” I shook off the last of that betraying fog as I pressed my ear to the door. I heard it then, a soft, faraway mewling that tugged at my heart. “Oh, it’s a kitten! We can’t just leave it in there. We have to help it.”

  “If we’re not too late.”

  His words conjured distressing images and I said urgently, “We still have to try.”

  He nodded. “I’ll see if I can get one of the windows open.” He moved away from the door, brushing my shoulder and making me all too aware of my momentary lapse and my still-thudding heart. I felt dismayed and not a little embarrassed as I followed him around to the side of the building.

  “Can you see anything?” I asked anxiously as he shined the flashlight beam into the window.

  “Looks like a bunch of old furniture and equipment.” He placed the flashlight on the ledge and tried the window. Layers of paint and grime had sealed the frame tight, but after a few tries, he managed to get it open. Hitching himself over the sill, he reached for the flashlight, and then ran the beam over the walls and floors as he searched the interior.

  “I smell decay,” he said. “Probably a dead rat.”

  “What about the kitten?”

  “No sign of life yet. Unless you count spiders.”

  I braced myself against a twinge of arachnophobia. “Is there a light?”

  He disappeared for a moment and then came back to the window. “No power.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  He reached a hand down to me. “Are you coming in?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

  He clasped my wrists and easily lifted me off the ground. Once I had my upper body over the sill, I pulled myself through, and then glanced around as he passed the light over the piles of furniture. I caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror. The sight startled and intrigued me because somehow his reflection looked different. Or had my perception of him changed?

  “All this stuff must be leftovers from the Willoughbys’ antique business,” he said.

  I turned in a slow circle, lifting my gaze to the roof. “The place is literally packed to the rafters.”

  “Some of it may even be valuable. Strange that Annalee would leave it out here to mildew and rot.”

  “Maybe she found the memories too painful to deal with it. Then again, she claims to have no recall of what happened in here.”

  Kendrick turned. “Claims?”

  “That’s what you said, isn’t it?” But Annalee did have memories. Perhaps buried so deeply that the images only surfaced during her blackouts, but they were there just the same. “Officer Malloy told me a story of when he and Annalee were children. She once lured him in here and locked him inside an old wardrobe. He wasn’t found for hours.”

  “Sounds like a typical kid prank.”

  “I suppose so. But it’s easy to imagine his terror, isn’t it? To be trapped inside a confined space, not knowing whether you’ll ever get out.”

  We both fell silent, listening for the telltale cries. I sensed nothing unnatural in the building. No ghosts or the evil that had allegedly taken possession of Mary Willoughby’s body, driving her husband to murder her while she slept. And yet there was something disquieting about that place, apart from the spiders and the smell.

  Kendrick was still moving the light slowly over the
stacks of furniture and up under some of the larger pieces.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he muttered as he knelt to run the beam across the floorboards.

  I watched him curiously. “Why do I get the feeling you’re looking for something besides a wounded kitten?”

  “Someone was in here earlier. We need to figure out what they were up to.”

  “So you believe me now,” I said on a breath.

  “I’ve seen no evidence, but I doubt it’s wise to bet against your intuition and observations.”

  I told myself now was the perfect time to open up a little about my gift, return the insight he had allowed me earlier. But our moment of bonding had passed and my self-preservation had returned. I needed to watch myself with Kendrick. Whether intentional or not, he’d shown me a memory that mirrored the loneliness of my childhood and I had to be careful that I didn’t succumb to a false sense of kinship.

  I watched him in silence as he moved about the crowded space, squeezing between heavy pieces of furniture to peer into web-draped corners.

  “What about the other rooms?” I asked. “Can you go all the way to the back of the building?”

  “Not easily. There’s too much stuff in the way and it looks as if the doorway has been barricaded.”

  “Maybe that explains the hammering.”

  Stepping onto a box, Kendrick hoisted himself to the top of an old wardrobe—perhaps the very one that Malloy had been confined in—and then used the wooden beams to propel himself over the furniture.

  He had only progressed a short distance when I heard the mewling. “There! Did you hear it? I think it’s coming from beneath the floorboards.”

  “Hold on.” He backtracked along the beams and swung down from a rafter to land at my feet. We both stood listening for a moment.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “It’s under the floor.”

  “Should we go outside and look?”

  “I don’t think we can get to it from outside. If the animal is sick or wounded, its mother may have abandoned him. He probably crawled up under the floor as far as he could to hide from predators.”

  I thought of the way Angus had looked, beaten and starved, when he crept out of the woods in Asher Falls. I hated to think what would have happened to him if he hadn’t found me, just as I hated to think about a frightened and possibly wounded kitten cowering beneath our feet.

  I was fully prepared to rip up the floorboards with my bare hands if need be, but Kendrick reasonably suggested we try and pinpoint the cries first. He cleared some of the lighter pieces of furniture out of the way and then knelt to glance under an old library table. From what I could see in the dim light, the piece looked massive. We were both strong, but I doubted our ability to move the heavy table without help.

  “Can you still hear it?” I asked worriedly.

  “You’re the one with the superhuman hearing,” he said. “You tell me.”

  I crouched beside him, listening so intently that I fancied I could hear the scurry of spider legs up the walls. But the mewling had stopped and I wondered if we’d scared the poor creature back into a hidey-hole. I remained frozen, my senses attuned to the darkness. After a moment, a plaintive cry rose up through the floorboards.

  “There,” I whispered, pointing to the spot where the sound had apparently emanated.

  Kendrick maneuvered under the table and flattened himself on the floor as he ran his hands over the planks.

  “I feel a slight draft coming up through the cracks,” he said, sweeping aside cobwebs that hung from beneath the table. “Which is odd because the shed sits on a concrete foundation. This place is solidly built. You can tell by walking across the floor. Not much give and take or even creaking for an old building.”

  “Then how did the kitten get up under the floor?”

  “Who knows? Right now I’m trying to figure out where that draft is coming from. Roll the light to me, please.”

  I upended the flashlight and gave it a shove. The arcing beam cast leaping shadows on the walls, making the place seem truly haunted. I had no trouble imagining a distraught George Willoughby closed up in that desolate room, brooding about what he had done to his wife as he worked up the courage to take his own life. The images were so vivid that I wondered if I had somehow slipped into his memory. But George Willoughby had been dead for a long time and so far I’d yet to encounter even his ghost.

  Kendrick rapped on one of the planks and then moved his hand over a few inches. “Do you hear the difference?” He repeated the knocking.

  “Sounds hollow,” I said.

  “There’s a hole beneath the floor. I don’t know how an animal managed to get inside, but I think that’s where we’ll find our stray.” He glanced back at me. “I saw some tools on a table near the window. See if you can find a crowbar or hammer, anything we can use to pry up these boards.”

  I collected the tools and then hurried back over to shimmy up under the table.

  “The draft is coming from this spot,” Kendrick said. “Can you feel it?”

  “Yes, but...” I stopped to listen.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The cries are getting weaker.”

  “He’s probably just frightened by all the noise. But we should hurry before he decides to crawl off somewhere out of reach. Move back a little so I don’t hit you with my elbow.”

  I pushed away, holding the light steady for him. He fitted the claw of the hammer beneath a nail, taking care not to splinter the wood as he prized it loose. Within a matter of moments, he’d removed several boards, revealing the source of the draft.

  A circle had been cut in the concrete subfloor and fitted with a metal grate that was roughly the size of a manhole cover.

  “What is that?” I asked as I moved back up beside him.

  “Could be an old well or cistern.” He shined the light down through the grate. “The cover was probably put in place before the shed was built to keep someone from falling in.”

  “I wonder why they didn’t fill it with concrete when they poured the foundation.”

  “Too costly, maybe. It looks pretty deep.”

  A terrible dread came over me. There was something strange about that hole. Something sinister. I felt a powerful urge to look over my shoulder as I remembered Dr. Shaw’s warnings about sacrifices and torture and young girls being held against their will.

  From the bottom of the pit came a piercing yowl. If the kitten had been frightened into silence before, now he seemed determined to alert us of his whereabouts.

  I moved in closer, trying to get a glimpse through the grate as Kendrick aimed the flashlight straight down through the layers of cobwebs and shadows.

  “Can you see the bottom?” I asked.

  “No. It’s pretty murky down there. Too many spiderwebs.”

  I could feel those tiny feet crawling all over me now, but I ignored the sensation as I focused on helping Kendrick remove the metal grid. The hinges had rusted in place and we couldn’t get leverage in such cramped quarters.

  After a few minutes of pulling and tugging, I pushed back in frustration. “The thing won’t budge. We’ll never get it off without moving the table and I don’t think we can do that by ourselves.” I hated to think of the hours that would be eaten away if we had to wait for help. Who knew how badly the kitten was injured or how long it had been constrained in that terrible place. If we didn’t get it out of there now, we might be too late.

  “We’ll have to break the hinges,” Kendrick said. “Or figure out how the cat got down there in the first place. I can still feel that draft. Maybe there’s another way in.” He moved the flashlight to a different angle as he searched the confines of the pit. “I’m guessing it’s at least twenty or thirty feet deep. Maybe mo
re.”

  “Can you see water?” I had visions of a wet and trembling kitten desperately clinging to the walls to keep from drowning.

  “It’s not a well.”

  Something in his voice made gooseflesh pop on my arms. “What is it, then?”

  “A cylinder.”

  “Like a silo?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t think it’s a silo, either.”

  “What do you think it was used for, then?”

  He met my gaze over the grid. “From what I can tell, the walls are solid. I doubt we’ll find another opening.”

  “You’re saying our only way in is to remove the grate?”

  “I’m saying there’s no way a cat could have gotten into that hole of its own volition. Someone put it down there.”

  Twenty-Six

  I stared at Kendrick wide-eyed as his revelation sank in. Even the yowling had stopped, as if the kitten could sense my horror. I could picture that looming shadow hammering the floorboards back into place, admonishing his feline prisoner that no one would come looking after all this time.

  My heart started to pound in agitation. “But the hinges are rusted in place. The cobwebs haven’t been disturbed. You said yourself there’s no sign that anyone has been in here in years.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Then how...”

  His gaze was still on me. “I don’t know.”

  I bit my lip, trying to quell a terrible trembling. Who we were up against...what we were up against...

  How did one combat spells and witchcraft and a reality that transcended concrete walls and a metal grate? How did one catch a killer that left no footprints and buried his prey alive?

  I was as frightened as I’d ever been by the prospect of confronting Atticus Pope in whatever body he now occupied. But as I stared down into that swirling darkness, visions of his mutilated victims flashed through mind, stirring another emotion. The same thirst for vengeance I experienced in the church ruins with Darius Goodwine.

  “Why would he put a kitten down there? Why would he harm such a defenseless creature?”