Chill of Fear

by Kay Hooper

  You open two doors. In both worlds. Don’t let go of the handle, Diana. Not until it’s over.

  “But—”

  Reach for Quentin. And open the door.

  Diana turned the handle and at the same moment reached back with her free hand. And reached out with more than flesh, more than will.

  Almost immediately, there was a bright flash, and for an instant the gray time was gone. The door was a brighter green, and the embossed wallpaper of the short hallway showed its rich Victorian colors.

  Then another flash, and this time she felt the warmth and strength of his hand gripping hers. Another flash, and she turned her head, saw him there.

  And—

  She was back. One hand holding the handle of a slightly open green door. The other hand holding Quentin’s.

  “Diana—”

  Tha-thum!

  Tha-thum!

  She caught a whiff of the unnervingly familiar stench, and before she could warn Quentin they both felt the heavy tread of surprisingly quick footsteps bearing down on them.

  Don’t touch the vessel, Diana.

  To Quentin, she whispered, “Don’t—”

  “I know,” he breathed in return. His fingers tightened around hers, and like her he pressed his back to the wall, leaving the hallway as open as possible in front of them as they both watched the corner.

  She was already speaking as she came around it.

  “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. This late, you should be in your bed. That’s where I expected to find you.”

  It didn’t take the strange light in her eyes or the weirdly pleasant smile to show that the creature who looked like Mrs. Kincaid was something other than sane.

  The bloody butcher knife she carried was more than enough.

  “I told Cullen,” she went on as she stood in the short hallway with them. “I told him I wouldn’t let him stop me. Wouldn’t let any of you stop me. He tried, of course, just like he’d tried to warn Ellie. He really shouldn’t have done that. Made me angry.”

  “You killed Ellie,” Quentin said.

  “Oh, that was just a favor for Mrs. Kincaid.” It laughed. “She was pissed because she was pretty sure the girl had gotten herself knocked up by one of the guests. Can’t have that, now, can we? Bound to cause trouble. So I took care of it.”

  Diana said, “Like you just tried to take care of Cullen?”

  “I told him he should have stayed away. That he had no business coming back here. He’s lucky I didn’t take care of him years ago, when he figured out what was going on. But who was going to believe him? The cops? Of course not. Made ’em wonder about him, though. So he left.”

  “Why did he come back?” Quentin asked.

  “Said a voice in his head told him to. Told him there’d be somebody here now who could stop me. That he could help. Funny as hell, isn’t it? He’s helping by bleeding all over himself.”

  Quentin said, “You’re—Mrs. Kincaid is a medium. That’s why you’ve been able to use her more than once.”

  Still holding the knife in a loose grip that wasn’t at all casual, she—it—looked at him and smiled. “Why, yes. Always has been. But untaught, and not very powerful. It was easy to get in, though. Easy to use her. I could never stay very long, of course. But long enough. Always long enough.

  “And you never picked up on it, did you? All your visits over the years. Even way back, when you were just a kid. You didn’t want to see the future, so you couldn’t even see what was right in front of you, most of the time. Blind, in a way.”

  “I’m better now,” Quentin said.

  “Are you? Because of her, I suppose.” She used the knife to indicate Diana. “I knew somebody was opening doors, but I wasn’t sure who. Not until she started visiting the gray time.”

  “You were a killer once,” Diana said. “A long, long time ago. You killed a lot of people.”

  “Why, yes, so I did. Still do, of course. Thanks to the bastards who killed me. I’d never felt rage until then. Never been so sure I wanted to go on living. So I did.”

  Quentin said, “In a manner of speaking. You existed, possessed weak minds and vulnerable bodies. That was why so many children died because of you.”

  “You don’t get it. The fun wasn’t in killing the kids. The fun was in possessing their parents and forcing them to kill.”

  “Then Missy—”

  “The one calling herself Laura Turner killed Missy. With a little help from me.” The human face behind which a monster lurked twisted in a grimace. “Drove her mad. It does that sometimes, to the weak-minded. I had to get out of her fast. Couldn’t control her after that.”

  “You—Mrs. Kincaid gave Laura an alibi.”

  “Well, of course. I didn’t want anyone here at The Lodge under suspicion. This is my . . . home base, you might say. Besides, I wanted to use her again. But then she called the child’s father, babbling out of her head about what she’d done and how she ought to be punished. I didn’t wait for him to come do it, though. Took care of things myself.”

  “She hadn’t left, had she?”

  “No, but I made it look like she had.” The thing inside the housekeeper shrugged.

  Diana said, “And when he—when the child’s father got here, he wanted it all to . . . go away.”

  “Guess he did. Because that’s what happened. Which was fine with me.”

  Diana felt Quentin’s fingers tighten on hers, and she knew he was aware of how much of her concentration was focused on that partially open door she was holding. It was taking all her strength and some of his as well; she could feel the pull on the other side, the natural force of something intended to be closed except in brief intervals.

  The longer she held it partially open, the more force was being exerted in the effort to slam it shut.

  It would require all that force, Diana knew. The only way to destroy the evil confronting them was to hurl its energy back through the gray time, through the limbo between worlds, and to what lay beyond. To carry it far beyond the physical world so that no doorway could ever allow it access again.

  Diana was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold the door open long enough, even with Quentin’s help, but then she saw Missy appear behind the creature, and the frail-looking child pushed its physical shell violently from behind, toward the doorway.

  Using every ounce of strength she and Quentin could muster, Diana pulled the green door open all the way.

  For just long enough.

  In a moment out of time, Diana saw the ghosts of The Lodge, all of them, rushing past, helping to carry the creature and its shell through the doorway. The woman in Victorian dress, the nurse, the man in rough worker’s clothing, the little boys—and then a blur of energy, of spirits, dozens of them, merging, melding, flowing through the doorway, all the doorways, raw power with absolute purpose reaching, grasping, drawing the black essence that was all that was left of Samuel Barton out of the human vessel containing it—

  It seemed for that eternal instant that the energy pouring through the doorway would carry Diana in as well, but Quentin didn’t let go. Until finally the last wisp rushed past and jerked the door from her hand, slamming it closed.

  “It’s all right. It’s just a door now.”

  Diana leaned weakly against Quentin as they both looked at Missy.

  A different Missy. Flesh, seemingly, rather than spirit. Still thin and fragile, but smiling now, no longer haunted.

  Now, there’s a thought. Diana almost wanted to laugh.

  Still without letting go of Diana’s hand, Quentin said tentatively, “Why can I see you?”

  “Because Diana can. You two connected the first time you touched.” Her smile widened. “I think some people call it fate.” She held up one hand, from which dangled a small locket. “Maybe that’s why the thing inside Mrs. Kincaid took this from Ellie’s body after it killed her. So I could get it back.”

  Almost too tired to think, Diana began, “Missy—”<
br />
  “She’s at peace, Diana. Mommy. She crossed over a long, long time ago, after she found me.”

  “That’s why?”

  “After I was abducted, she thought she could use her gifts to find me. But they were too strong for her. The door she made was only . . . one-way.”

  Softly, Quentin said, “And a body severed from its spirit doesn’t live too long.”

  Missy nodded.

  Diana had endless questions, but she knew there was little time left. So she asked the only thing that mattered, to her and to Quentin.

  “Are you okay now?” she asked her sister.

  “I’m okay now. It worked. The energy of everybody who was ready to cross over was enough to pull that evil out of the vessel holding it and through the gray time to the other side. It can’t hurt anyone ever again.”

  Quentin glanced at Diana. “A basic law of physics. Energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed.”

  Solemn, Missy said, “Yes, it’s all about physics.”

  Again, Diana wanted to laugh. Instead, she said, “You do realize that once the sun comes up, I’m going to be convinced I dreamed all this?”

  Missy looked at their clasped hands and smiled again. “I don’t think so. I think that from now on, you won’t have any trouble at all knowing what’s real and what isn’t.” She stepped past them and opened the green door. There was an oddly blurred moment, and then they could see inside what appeared to be a pretty, old-fashioned bedroom.

  “Missy—”

  She looked at Quentin. “Thank you. For caring enough to keep coming back here all these years. It helped give me the strength to do what I had to. And it wasn’t your fault, you know. It was never your fault. Something that old . . . that evil . . . You couldn’t have known, and you couldn’t have stopped it. And some things are meant to happen just the way they happen.”

  Diana would have said goodbye, wanted to, but Missy took the choice out of her hands by smiling sweetly at them both and stepping into the pretty bedroom. And closing the door behind her.

  Quentin and Diana were left staring at each other, with barely a moment to adjust before Nate hustled around the corner, gun drawn.

  “Jesus,” he exclaimed, “are you two all right? Cullen said the Kincaid woman went nuts and tried to kill him. He’s bleeding like a stuck pig. Where is she?”

  Diana hesitated, then reached out and slowly opened the door. Inside, they all saw the orderly shelves of a linen closet with sheets and towels piled high. And in the center of the room, beside an empty laundry cart, lay the sprawled body of Virginia Kincaid, the bloody knife still clutched in her hand.

  Nate went in cautiously, kicking the knife away before bending to check her pulse. “She’s still alive,” he said.

  “Breathing, anyway,” Quentin murmured.

  “The doctors say she had a stroke,” Nate told them much later that morning. “She’s in a coma, and they don’t know if she’ll ever come out of it.”

  “I have a feeling,” Diana said, “that she won’t.” She also had a feeling that much of Virginia Kincaid’s spirit had been eroded over the years, and that the final release had been just that. A release from an evil and unrelenting hell.

  Unaware of—or studiously ignoring—undercurrents, Nate added, “And Cullen Ruppe is out of danger, since they got the bleeding stopped. He claims not to know why she suddenly went after him. Ask me, the woman just went nuts. I think there’s something wrong with the air in this place.”

  “Not anymore,” Quentin said.

  The cop eyed them both as they sat side by side on the sofa across from his chair. “You two look pretty chipper, considering a very long night with no sleep.”

  “Lots of coffee,” Diana said.

  Nate grunted. “I’ve had gallons, and I’m still beat. And you’d never know it’s Saturday, from all the stuff I’m supposed to be dealing with. Since the Kincaid woman confessed to you that she killed Ellie—the cell phone records show, by the way, that Ellie called an out-of-state number we’ve traced to a guest who stayed here a couple of months ago, and the doc confirms she was pregnant, so— What was I saying?”

  “Since she confessed,” Quentin prompted.

  “Oh. Yeah. Since she confessed, that pretty well solves the murder. That spelunker team you told me about is coming to check out the caves, but it’ll probably be next week before they get here. In the meantime, the forensic anthropological team arrives first thing in the morning, and I’m keeping someone posted in the tack room twenty-four/seven for the duration. The team will also take a look at the skeleton we found in the garden, though the DNA analysis confirms the remains of Jeremy Grant. Thanks for pushing that through so fast, by the way.”

  “No problem,” Quentin said. “Somebody owed me a favor.”

  “Must have been a doozy. In the state labs, it can take months to get DNA results.”

  Without responding to that, Quentin merely said, “Has the boy’s mother been notified?”

  “Yeah. Closure for her.”

  “Sometimes,” Quentin said, “that’s what we need before we can put something behind us. And look ahead rather than back.”

  “The end of an obsession?” Nate asked curiously.

  “You could say that.”

  Stephanie, coming into the lounge just then, said, “I still can’t believe my housekeeper was a murderess. Except that part of me can believe it, which is creepy.” She, also, looked rather bright-eyed for a night without sleep.

  “Think of her as sick,” Diana suggested. “Very, very sick.”

  “Lizzie Borden sick, yeah.” Stephanie shivered. “I want to hire a new housekeeper. Soon.”

  Quentin looked at her. “One who won’t write down secrets of the guests?”

  “Exactly. Because I’m pretty sure she did. All on her own, though, not because she was paid to.”

  “That list you showed us of the managers who were paid to record all the secrets they knew of here—it ended with the manager who was here about five years ago?”

  She nodded. “Neither of the two managers prior to me was on that list. And neither am I, obviously. I didn’t even know about it until I found it. And I wouldn’t have recognized it for something suspicious if I hadn’t been looking for just that. At first glance, it was just a list of bonuses paid to Management. Nothing unusual, on the face of it. It wasn’t until I dug into separate salary records that I could be sure the bonuses were way out of line. Plus, I found the first of the account ledgers to cross-check, and so far at least a couple of those so-called bonuses were paid in cash and off the books.”

  “I’d call that suspicious,” Nate said.

  “And I wonder why it ended five years ago,” Quentin said. “Stephanie, any idea who was keeping the list?”

  She nodded promptly. “If I had to guess—and I do—it was probably Douglas Wallace. I think he instigated the so-called organization of the records in the basement just about five years ago, probably just because he’s an anal neat freak. But then he found the sort of stuff he really didn’t want to find, and started compiling that list.

  “I double-checked some dates, and about the time Doug was going through old records in the basement, the last descendant of one of the original owners had just died.”

  Nate guessed, “You’re saying the secret-keeping died with him?”

  “Well, the official secret-keeping. And it makes sense. What probably started out as a pretty ruthless way to get some leverage when necessary back in the old days of robber barons just gradually became a practice nobody questioned and, finally, like a lot of old traditions, became unnecessary.”

  “We haven’t found any recent dates,” Diana noted. “Though, like you, I’m willing to bet we’ll find a journal among Mrs. Kincaid’s belongings. I’ll bet she was keeper of the secrets in recent years.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to see the old tradition die,” Stephanie offered. “She was like that, pretty much.”

  Diana didn’t argue, s
ince she had no way of knowing whether the housekeeper’s own spirit had been capable of that or if it had been the controlling influence of Samuel Barton.

  Stephanie shook her head. “I wonder if this place can ever be anything approaching normal.”

  “Maybe it can,” Diana said. “Now.”

  “We’ll see. Look, I don’t know about you guys, but the mundane truth is that I’m starving, and the cook does a wonderful brunch. How about a little good food to balance all that coffee?”

  Nate got to his feet promptly. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

  As Diana and Quentin also rose, Stephanie said to them, “If anybody’s interested, I think we’ll be able to lay quite a few sins at the doors of The Lodge and the people who owned and ran this place over the years. Do you know, I found in one file a newspaper clipping about a man and his family who’d been killed in a car crash between here and Leisure about ten years ago. The article strongly implied that he’d been depressed and suicidal. And in the very same file was a notation from, I assume, the manager here at the time that a waiter had been fired sometime afterward for making up stories for reporters. The manager had also added another note that the surviving family members should be notified of the false newspaper article. But it was never done.”

  “How do you know?” Quentin asked.

  “No copy of the letter in the file. And that particular manager seems to have been extremely meticulous about copying everything.”

  “You,” Nate informed her, “have too much time on your hands.” He took one of them and led her, laughing, from the room.

  Quentin was about to follow suit when the little girl they’d seen several times came into the lounge from the connecting library, carrying her dog.

  Gravely, she said, “Bobby needs to know that.”

  “Needs to know what?” Diana asked.

  “That Daddy wasn’t trying to kill us.” She held her dog, rubbing her chin absently in his silky fur. “See, my little brother Bobby wasn’t with us. He’d been sick, so he stayed with Grandma while we came here. And when we left, well, it was raining. And foggy. And Daddy wasn’t used to mountain roads. That was why.”

  Quentin was conscious only of shock, but this was clearly a familiar thing for Diana, who simply nodded and said, “We’ll make sure Bobby knows the truth. What was your name?”