“Do you really believe that?”
He heaved a sigh, withdrawing to his side of the table again. “I don’t know what to tell you, Bailey.”
“You can tell me that you’re being an idiot and trying to convince yourself that everything is all right.” I threw the packet of artificial sweetener across the table at him. “As always.”
Ethan’s chair scratched against the tile floor as he pushed himself away from the table. “This sounds like a conversation between husband and wife. I’ll see myself out.”
As he crossed the cafe and joined a couple of men sitting at the countertop, I studied Bodhi. When he noticed my gaze, he spoke up.
“Bailey, come on,” he said. “You have to admit it. An earthquake is way more likely than some random ghost haunting the house we’re renovating.”
“You weren’t so convinced last night. What about that thing we saw in the master bedroom?”
He gave a half-hearted shrug. “Hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep. Like Ethan said.”
I wasn’t buying it. “So you think that we had some kind of joint hallucination?”
Bodhi pushed his coffee mug to the opposite side of the table and rested his forehead in his hands. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m dead tired.”
I pressed my lips together. There were so many things I wanted to say to Bodhi, but in that moment, all of the things that crossed my mind were bound to cause a fight.
Bodhi tilted his head to look at me. “I have an idea.”
“What might that be?”
“Call Milo.”
The suggestion threw me off. “Why?”
Bodhi perched his head on the palm of his hand. “He’s owned that house for a while, and his dad owned it before him. If anything weird happened, he would know about it, wouldn’t he?”
“Don’t you think he would’ve told us about something like that before we bought the house?”
“Not necessarily. He was pretty desperate to sell it, remember? Maybe he already knew that something was going on in there.”
The thought had never crossed my mind. Sure, Milo’s insistence on selling the Winchester house had been a little out of the ordinary, but he seemed honest about his desire to move out of Black Bay. Then again, it had been nearly two months since we had officially signed the closing papers, and Milo hadn’t mentioned anything more about relocating.
“I’ll call him,” I decided, taking out my cell phone.
“Good.”
I dialed Milo’s familiar number, never having entered his contact information in my cell, but instead of ringing, an automated voice message answered instead.
“We’re sorry,” said the pleasant female tone. “The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”
10
Dead End
I hung up. Maybe I had remembered Milo’s number wrong. I punched it in again.
“We’re sorry. The number you have dialed—”
“He didn’t answer?” Bodhi asked as I lowered the phone from my ear.
“Wrong number,” I said. “That’s weird. I could’ve sworn—”
Bodhi stretched over the back of his chair. Ethan’s borrowed jacket swung open, revealing Bodhi’s bare chest. He groaned then fastened the first few buttons. “I say we head back up to the house.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Look, Bailey. Let’s entertain the thought that the house is haunted for a moment.” He sat up, swinging his legs around so that our knees kissed. “But it’s daytime. So far, nothing bad has happened in the daytime.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not?”
“The day I skinned my knees. You weren’t home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“Oh, sure. ‘Hey, babe. Just thought I’d let you know that I heard someone screaming in the basement, but when I got down there, I realized it was all in my head.’’’
“You heard screaming?”
I nodded, staring down into the dregs of my coffee.
Bodhi stood up, tossing his used napkin into an empty mug. “Okay. Let’s go. We’re never going to figure this out if we cower in a coffee shop all day. We’ve already put a lot of time and effort into this house. I won’t waste that over a few good scares.”
There was no point in arguing. Bodhi had made his decision, and I knew from experience that talking him out of it wasn’t an option. We left the Sanctuary, thanking Ethan on our way out, and got back in the pickup truck.
The ride up to the bluff was quiet and tense. Bodhi’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel as we slowly ascended through the trees. I didn’t dare to break the silence. There was a spell over the cab of the truck, an illusion of safety and normality, and if we allowed it to exist for long enough, maybe it would spread to the Winchester house.
It worked. When we trundled into the front yard, there was nothing inherently wrong with the house. There was no eerie vibe. No evidence of struggle. The front door was wide open, but we had left it that way in our rush to get out. All in all, other than the construction materials out front, the Winchester house looked just as it had when we first arrived in Black Bay: stately and serene.
“Here goes nothing,” Bodhi said as he kicked open his door and hopped out of the truck.
We approached the front door warily, peering inside for any hint of discord. The entryway and living room were still, so we edged over the threshold. Once inside, Bodhi seemed to relax, his shoulder blades flattening against his back rather than hugging his ears.
“See?” he said, indicating the silent space around him. “Nothing. We should call the crew. It’s not too late to get some work done today.”
I wasn’t so sure. I followed Bodhi into the kitchen, where everything was as it had been the night before, but the real test would be upstairs. If my past experience in the first floor office was any indication, Caroline’s room would still be wrecked and the French doors would not have magically repaired themselves.
“We should check the bedrooms,” I said.
“In a minute. I’m buzzing and anxious from all the caffeine.”
He filled two water glasses at the kitchen sink and turned to offer one to me.
The glasses slipped from his grasp. Crashed to the floor.
Bodhi’s eyes went wide, his pupils blown. He whispered:
“Someone’s standing behind you.”
The words had barely dropped from his lips before his amber eyes flooded with black. I screamed as he lunged toward me.
This was not Bodhi.
His hand covered my mouth as he forced me into the hallway. The length of his body heaved against mine. I felt every one of his muscles contract as he crushed me against the wall. His eyes weren’t just black. There was nothing left. No iris. No whites. Just liquid pools of pure hell.
An inhuman sound escaped my throat as his face neared mine. Bodhi tilted his head, listening. The hand over my mouth loosened ever-so-slightly.
“Please,” I whispered against his fingers. “Please let us go.”
Bodhi stared vacantly back at me, but the creature inside him seemed to pause, considering my request. I drew a strained breath, waiting for the decision.
And then Bodhi whirled me around, wrapped an arm around my neck, and began to drag me down the hallway.
“No!” I choked out, wrestling against Bodhi’s grasp. The crook of his elbow mashed against my windpipe. I cough spasmodically as we neared the door of the basement.
He threw me down the stairs.
A flash of light burst behind my eyelids as the back of my head hit something on the way down. My ankle caught the edge of the handrail and snapped. At the bottom of the steps, I lost the concept of reality.
My cheek rested against the cool concrete foundation. There should’ve been pain, but as my vision blurred in and out of focus, I could only register the sound of the basement door lock clicking into place.
&
nbsp; Bodhi’s footsteps thundered toward me. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself for whatever came next.
“Bailey! Bailey!”
Gentle hands embraced my face. I looked up.
Bodhi’s eyes were brown again. He was crying.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. That wasn’t me, Bailey. I swear on my life.”
My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. “I know.”
He situated himself on the bottom step and lifted me to lie down in his lap. “The door’s locked,” he gasped. “From the outside. We can’t get out.”
“Your phone.”
He fumbled in Ethan’s jacket pocket and took out his cell phone. “Shit. Shit! There’s no fucking service in this godforsaken pit.”
Bodhi lifted the phone above his head in the hopes of finding a bar or two. Suddenly, it was smacked from his hand. It flew across the basement and shattered against the opposite wall.
Bodhi cradled my head in his arms, folding over me like a protective shell. “Leave us alone!” he yelled. A blood vessel burst in his eye. Somehow, the deluge of red around his iris was more terrifying than the black holes that had been there a few minutes ago.
My head throbbed, but my vision was clearing. If I had sustained a concussion, it was a mild one. I could see enough. I could see the basement come alive. Boxes upended themselves. Pool cues snapped and splintered. Spare boat sails ripped to shreds. The toolbox spat nails and screws like a loaded gun. An invisible child pedaled past on a pink bicycle with tasseled handlebars.
A baseball smashed through the one and only storm window, set at the very top of the basement wall. Through the opening, an object flew in from outside, navigating the turmoil until it landed at my feet.
It was Caroline Winchester’s most recent journal, flipped open to the last page she had written.
As soon as my fingers touched the leather binding, the basement quieted. Objects paused to hover in midair, as though waiting on my reaction before deciding whether or not to resume the slaughter. I willed myself to focus on Caroline’s polished penmanship.
August 16th, 1996
Well, so much for our weekly boat trip. In an unexpected twist of fate, Mom and Dad grounded us both. Patrick and his dumb football cronies stole the mascot head from Black Bay’s rival school. It might have been funny if he’d managed to pull it off, but the principal caught him. I told him that he should have brought me along. I never would have gotten caught.
Anyway, he deserves to be grounded. I don’t. All I did was point out to Mr. Powell that the sawmill would generate a lot more revenue if he stopped being a prick long enough to take Dad’s management advice. Apparently, my tone was considered “rude.” Give me a break.
I was actually looking forward to this week’s outing too. Miss Watson scolded me for finishing the summer reading list for the upcoming seniors instead of the juniors. I told her I’d already read the juniors’ list last summer. To make matters worse, Alex walked right by me in the lunchroom without a passing glance. So much for getting noticed for something other than my staggering wit this year.
The point is that it would have been nice to get my mind off of everything out on the water. Instead, while Mom and Dad get to gallivant about on their own, I have to spend my Friday night alone in the house with Patrick. He always orders anchovies on the pizza. It’s disgusting. In fact, I might tie him down if he tries it tonight. Details to come.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, reading over the words again.
Bodhi’s gaze remained fixed on the levitating basement items. “What is it?”
“Caroline and Patrick Winchester were grounded on the night they died.”
“So what? No offense, Bailey, but does it really matter right now?”
I propped myself up against the stairwell, balancing Caroline’s journal on my knees. “Don’t you get it? They never got on the boat, and if they never got on the boat, then they didn’t die in a boating accident that night.”
“What happened to them then?”
Before I could reply, the toolbox shot across the floor and bounced off the bottom of my foot. I howled in agony, dragging my broken ankle inward. The toolbox popped open, and a carpet knife lifted itself from the mess of hammers and wrenches. Bodhi tried to grab it out of the air, but it flashed toward me so quickly, I had no time to register the rough cut that it opened in the palm of my hand until after it already happened.
Something pressed into the wound like freezing cold fingers attempting to stanch the flow of welling blood. Then it began to write on the concrete, etching out two words in what could have been mistaken for dark red paint.
Bodhi swore beneath his breath. I took one look at the message before my head filled with rushing white noise. The world dissolved around me, but the words written in blood haunted the dark place behind my eyelids.
Help us.
Many thanks to everyone who read my story!
Writing is the best way I know to express myself, and I’m so glad that you all have rewarded me with the opportunity to share my imagination with you. As an author, I learn and evolve from the input of others, so if you have a spare moment and you enjoyed the story, please leave a short, spoiler-free review of the book. As readers, your personal opinions are often the best references for a writer. Your commentary allows me to further provide you all with fun, engaging material.
I would love if you could leave a review: Click Here to Review!
All the best,
Alexandria Clarke
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion: Book 1
Prologue
Blood welled in the palm of my hand, staining the pale underside of my wrist dark red as though someone had poured a bottle of fine wine across a white tablecloth. As it dribbled to the cold concrete floor of the basement, time seemed to suspend itself. My husband, Bodhi, held me from behind—my back pressed to his firm chest, my throbbing head resting against his shoulder—and his fingers tightened around my midsection. Oh, to be held as though nothing else in the world mattered. It was a promise. Every touch, every kiss, was a silent pact to love and adore the person to whom it was given. People often forgot that. We handed out our affection freely, carelessly, finding easy comfort in interlaced fingers or the parting of lips or casual embraces. Then it crumbled. Love was not a rock at the edge of the sea, stoically weathering the storm. It was something to be nurtured, to be made and remade every day, but the work was often mistaken for tedium, and those who did not endure found themselves with a handful of dusty pebbles.
For Bodhi and I, it had taken a possessed house, a demonic spirit, and the locked basement door for us to realize how little we had tried. My body reflected our lack of effort. My knees were hardened and scabbed, the gash that ran from my wrist to my elbow oozed through the bandages, my ankle lay at an ominous angle, my head pounded with every inhale, and the new cut—the one that had just been opened with an animated carpet knife—pulsed in little red tides. Still, as the pain burned white hot, I found myself thinking that the entire house could go up in flames as long as Bodhi continued to hold me with the warmth I’d forgotten he was capable of giving.
But when something—a demon, a ghost—pressed its invisible frigid fingers to the laceration in my palm, it was hard to ignore its chilling impact. Words appeared on the concrete floor, written in the ink of my blood.
Help us.
“What the hell?” whispered Bodhi, his breath warming my ear.
It wrote the same words again, each letter fading as it ran out of bloody paint.
Help us.
My voice was thick and garbled. “Who are you?”
Bodhi’s arms tightened around me. “Why does it matter?” he asked furiously. “Look at what it’s done to you, Bailey.”
A cardboard box zoomed across the room, bounced off the last step of the stairs, and settled against Bodhi’s leg.
“What’s in there?” he demanded of the empty basement. �
��A machete? Haven’t you done enough already? Look at her—”
I squeezed Bodhi’s knee as the box popped open. It did not reveal a machete or any other weapon of the basement’s choice. Instead, it toppled over on its side and spilled out a slew of ancient first-aid supplies. A tube of antibacterial ointment came to rest against my bare foot. Then a supportive ankle brace landed in my lap.
“Thanks,” I murmured. My head was still fuzzy. “But I don’t think a brace will do me much good. It’s broken.”
“Stop talking to it,” hissed Bodhi, taking the brace from my hands and chucking it across the room. It stopped in midair then changed direction and plunked Bodhi on the head. “Ow!”
“Who are you?” I mumbled again. The basement itself seemed to rumble, but no clear answer presented itself. “Can you write it down?”
An icy chill stole over me, and I tucked my ruined wrist behind my back.
“Not with my blood!” I ordered.
“Here,” said Bodhi. He reached into the pocket of the denim jacket he was wearing and extracted a carpenter’s pencil, which he threw to the floor unceremoniously. For a minute, the pencil lay still. Then something swept it up and scratched a message into the cement.
Help us.
“Oh, for the love of Pete,” said Bodhi, exasperated. “Bailey, this is pointless.”
“Do you want to stay locked down here forever?” I asked him, wincing as another shot of pain radiated through my skull. “At least I’m trying.”
“To reason with a demon,” he pointed out.
An embroidered purple throw pillow lifted itself from a pile of dusty linens and batted Bodhi around the ears.
“I don’t think demons start pillow fights,” I said.
“I don’t care—”
“Shh.”
The pencil scribbled across the cement again.
Bailey.
“That’s me,” I confirmed to the presence with a nod. “Can you tell me who you are?”
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 10