“What did you do with them?” I demanded.
“I found Patrick and Caroline around the block from Lido’s,” Ethan explained. “Told them I’d seen their parents heading back into the marina early. Boy, did they panic. I offered them a ride. God, they were so stupid. It was so easy to convince them to hop into the truck. I drove them up to the house before anyone realized they’d been gone.”
Ethan crossed the yard to the bed of Bodhi’s truck where he rifled through the hardware tools for a moment before finding a machete. He hefted it, testing the weight in his hand. I thought of the footpath behind me. If I made a run for it, what were my chances of reaching town before Ethan caught up with me?
“It went well enough,” he continued, swinging the blade experimentally. “I suffocated them both. There was something poetic about all four of the Winchesters dying without a breath to spare, choking in panic. Originally, I wanted to drown them all, but Patrick ruined that. Caroline was small. Easy to hold down in a bathtub. She didn’t have a chance in hell, but Patrick just had to try and defend her.”
“You’re sick,” I declared, swallowing the bile that had risen in the back of my throat at Ethan’s blasé recollection.
Ethan appeared not to have heard me. “He got in a few good punches before I hit him over the head with a golf club and strung him up in the living room. Watched the light go out of his eyes. God, what a beautiful moment it was to realize that I was finally free of all four of the Winchesters.”
I took a step backward. The footpath beckoned. “You killed the very people that saved your family’s business.”
“They didn’t save anything,” growled Ethan, advancing toward me. “Every one of the Winchesters deserved to die. Taking over the town. Showboating and strutting about like they owned the damn place. For God’s sake, they put so much pressure and stress on my father that he had a damn heart attack and died.”
“So everything you told me about them was a lie,” I said. I had to keep him talking. Divert his attention. “All that stuff about how wonderful they were, how loved Patrick was, how intelligent Caroline must’ve been. Talking about how you owe everything to them, as does the rest of Black Bay. It was all a crock.”
“They thought themselves superior to us,” Ethan snarled. “Buying up my family’s pride and joy. Black Bay belongs to the Powells, Bailey. We ran this town before the Winchesters, and we’ll run it long after you and your nonconformist husband are gone.”
“That might be difficult without any other Powells to take over the family business,” I pointed out.
For the first time, Ethan dropped his facade of bravado. “You bitch,” he spat. “I’m done talking. Start running.”
He didn’t have to suggest it twice. I whirled around, aiming for the footpath, but he quickly intercepted my route.
“Boo,” he whispered. And he swung the machete.
The blade whistled through the air, but it didn’t come close enough to pose a real threat. Ethan got a thrill out of trying to frighten his target. I skidded to a stop and changed direction, cutting around the corner of the house. If I could make enough headway, I might be able to lose Ethan in the confusion and shadows of the woods. There was no way I could outrun him—my ankle was proof enough of that—but there was a slim chance that I could outsmart him. I plunged into the foliage. Behind me, I heard Ethan tearing through the trees. I was small enough to duck under and around the maze of plants, but he barreled through them instead.
“Bailey, I can tell you from experience that this kind of thing is always less hassle if we skip the whole chase scene bit,” he called casually after me as though we could sit down and negotiate the terms of my murder.
I huffed, making a quick left and sliding under a fallen tree trunk. Ethan was close on my heels. Even if I kept out of his line of sight, he could hear the sound of my feet shuffling across the leaves and branches on the ground.
“Bailey,” he called in a singsong voice. The machete made swift work of the wilderness behind me.
I scrambled up an embankment. He was boxing me in. I realized that when I tried to cut around him and he swiftly herded me uphill again. I spotted the backyard of the Winchester house through the leaves. Ethan was steadily pushing me up the bluff. There was no way down that wouldn’t lead me right into his arms. I needed a better tactic. I glanced upward, toward the steep angle of the rock, and got an idea.
I hefted myself on to a ledge. Ethan grunted as he tried to follow but lost his footing. I caught my breath on the outcrop as Ethan looked for another way up. When he found a lower rock to hoist himself over, I resumed my climb. A protruding branch caught on my T-shirt. I ripped free, tearing a hole in the fabric. My ankle trembled beneath my weight as I put on another burst of speed. I could only keep this up for so long. I looked skyward again. Somewhere up above, years of erosion had carved a tiny alcove out of the stone. It was the perfect hiding place: small, secluded, and nearly impossible to find if you didn’t already know where it was. If I could just reach the grotto, I would be able to defend the modest space from Ethan long enough for someone to come looking for me. To my rear, Ethan tore down a thorny rose bush with his bare hands. His breath now came in short gasps. He was built for strength rather than stamina, a flaw in his build that I was determined to use to my advantage.
I made a flying leap across a gap in the terrain, catching myself on the opposite ledge by the tips of my fingers and scrambling to the top. Below, Ethan looked around in confusion. I’d finally thrown him off my trail. Taking advantage of my head start, I darted across the smooth, flat stone. The hideaway was up ahead, completely invisible from this side of the rock. I tiptoed around the narrow edge, flattening myself to the stone wall and keeping my gaze level. If I looked down, the distance to the ground would surely overwhelm me.
Finally, the rock opened up and revealed the little grotto. I slid into it with a relieved sob, shrinking into one corner of the shadowy cave. I closed my eyes and tried to control my breathing. My hiding place was no good if Ethan heard me blubbering like a five-year-old. With trembling hands, I pulled my cell phone from the back pocket of my shorts and dialed Bodhi’s number.
It went straight to voicemail. Bodhi’s phone was either off or the battery had died. Or worse, Ethan made sure Bodhi wasn’t able to answer it.
“Damn it,” I whispered. I dialed 911 instead.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“I’m being stalked,” I reported in the softest voice I could manage. “There’s a man chasing me through the woods.”
“Okay, ma’am. Please stay calm. What is your location?”
“I’m hiding up in the rocks above the Winchester house—”
A violent blow to the back of my head knocked the phone out of my hand. My vision doubled, and a heavy boot crushed the cell to pieces before kicking the remains over the edge of the rock. Ethan dragged me upward by my hair.
“Didn’t I tell you this would be easier without the chase scene?” Ethan rumbled, tipping my head back to show me a long, bloody scrape on his forearm. “Look what you’ve done. Got a nice scratch climbing up here. How’d you find this little hidey hole anyway?”
Ethan’s girth made the intimate space claustrophobic. He had to crouch to reach me, his back flush against the rock above. I tucked my knees into my chest and kicked out with all of my might. My feet bounced off the hard muscles of Ethan’s stomach. He grunted, the wind knocked out of him, but grabbed my ankles and hauled me flat against the stone. I struggled as he straddled my hips and pressed his thumbs to my windpipe.
I pushed at his hands. It was no use. There was no escaping out from under Ethan’s full weight. In a last-ditch attempt, I clawed at his face, digging my nails into his skin. He yelled, lifted my head, and slammed it into the stone. Dazed, my hands fell limply to my sides. Blackness beckoned at the edges of my vision. Ethan’s scratched, bleeding face loomed above me. His hands found my neck again. He leaned into it.
I convulse
d. White light popped and fizzled in my line of sight.
This was it. This was the end.
Sorry, Bodhi. Sorry, Caroline. Sorry, Kali.
I did my best.
And then the pressure around my throat was gone. Through an agonizing haze of disorientation, I watched as a pair of tan hands ripped Ethan off of me. They did not hesitate. They did not consider the aftermath of their actions. With a ferocious power that seemed more godlike than human, they heaved Ethan over the edge of the rock face. Ethan’s resulting yell cut off with an abrupt thump. He’d landed somewhere below, dead or injured.
I looked up at my rescuer. He looked at the trees beneath the outcrop, his back to me. Blond hair rustled in the breeze as his shoulders rose and fell with the intensity of his breath.
“Milo?” I asked hoarsely.
The person turned around. My eyes widened. I had hit my head too hard. I was surely seeing things.
Patrick Winchester stood before me, seventeen years old and the picture of perfect health.
24
The Dead Boy
Patrick stretched a hand toward me. I stared at it, unable to comprehend how it was possible for Patrick to exist in such a capacity. Caroline’s presence was simpler to wrap my head around. She stayed mostly invisible, appearing every once in a while as a glimmer in the shadows, but Patrick was corporeal. Solid. Of flesh and blood.
Or so it appeared.
When it became apparent that I did not possess the mental faculty to allow Patrick to help me to my feet, he knelt and scooped me up from the rock. As he looped my arm over his shoulder, I gawked at his angled cheekbones, golden baby scruff, and boyishly arched eyebrows. This was the young man who had once been the heart and soul of Black Bay. The locals thought he’d been lost, yet here he stood, perfectly preserved at the height of his high school success.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Patrick said as he guided me across the narrow ledge that linked the mouth of the grotto to the safer side of the cliff face. “I didn’t have much of a choice.”
I stuttered, the words getting lost in my stupefaction. “M-Milo.”
Patrick arched an eyebrow. “I regret to inform you that Milo Holmes never existed,” he admitted. His grip was soft, his breath was warm, and a pulse beat in the blue veins of his neck. For a dead boy, he looked more alive than ever. “You already figured that out. Or you guessed, at least. I knew when you asked me about the property records that I’d have to come clean sometime soon.”
“But how—?”
“Did you not recognize me?” He shrugged and gently lowered me off the edge of the flat stone outcrop until my toes reached the softer ground below. “To be honest, I’ve been doing this sort of thing for almost two decades, and I still don’t understand the science behind it.”
Patrick leapt down from the outcrop, landing in a crouch beside me. As he rose to his full height, I studied his features. Now that I thought about it, his honey-colored hair, bright sky-blue eyes, and the mischievous tilt of his lips did seem familiar.
“You look like him,” I noted.
“I am him,” Patrick replied. “If I’d had the opportunity to age, I would’ve ended up looking something like Milo did to you.”
He beckoned me to follow him through the mess of trees and plants. Ethan’s pernicious effect did not go unnoticed. A path of destruction led us downward, the landscape cut to smithereens by Ethan’s machete.
“How did the townspeople never realize who you were?” I asked Patrick, stumbling over a lifted root. He caught me mid-trip. I nodded my thanks.
“No one in town ever saw me, remember?”
“But they knew about you.”
Patrick skated down an embankment then paused at the bottom to catch me. “It’s easy to plant stories when you’re dead, Bailey.”
I slid into his outstretched arms. Respectfully, he set me on my feet.
“Wait here,” Patrick said. “I need to check something.”
He vanished through the trees, twigs and leaves rustling beneath his deck shoes. Nervously, I scanned the area around me, but the forest was pleasant and benevolent. The trees whispered secrets, a stream bubbled happily out of sight, and a family of finches danced by, chirping merrily to one another. There was no sign of Ethan or any other danger.
I touched the back of my head, wincing when my fingers found the tender lump from where Ethan had slammed me into the rock. This was the second time in a matter of weeks that I’d ended up with some kind of head injury. If I wasn’t careful, the trauma would add up.
Patrick returned from his short exploration, ducking low to avoid disturbing a small nest on an overhanging branch. “It’s as I thought,” he reported. “Ethan’s gone.”
“Gone?” I repeated. “What do you mean he’s gone? He fell off a cliff!”
With a light touch to my forearm, he encouraged me to continue down the hill. “If you recall, I told you I fell from the exact same ledge once. There’s another overhang below it. Ethan might’ve broken a few bones, but he definitely survived it.”
In my haste to depart from the forest, I lost my footing on a patch of fallen leaves. The walking boot slid out from beneath me, and I landed with a thud before Patrick could intercept my fall. Pain laced through my tailbone and the back of my head. I groaned, cradling the sore spot.
Patrick lifted me helpfully. “Bailey, please relax. I’d hate to see you get hurt even more. Ethan’s in no state to attack us anytime soon. We have a little downtime.”
“How do you know?”
“Believe me, I know. You’ll be safe at my house for a few days at least.”
I took his word for it. After all, he was a ghost. Or something superhuman. Maybe omniscience came with the territory. I had more pressing things to worry about, like if Bodhi had survived his outing to the summer festival with Ethan.
The trees thinned out, and the wild garden of the Winchester house welcomed us back to relative safety. I lengthened my stride, cutting through the back door of the house and the unfinished living room to the front yard. Patrick followed me to Bodhi’s truck. I popped the hood.
“What are you doing?” he asked, peering at the truck’s inner mechanics.
To my relief, Ethan hadn’t actually removed the car battery. He had just disconnected it. I reached in, reconnected the cable clamps, and slammed the hood shut.
“I need to go find Bodhi,” I told Patrick, climbing into the driver’s seat.
He leaned against the open window. “Do you think it’s wise to drive in your condition?”
I fired up the engine. The truck roared to life. “I don’t have a choice. I’ll be back as soon as possible. Stay here.”
Patrick retreated, giving the truck a wide berth so that I could pull out of the front yard unhindered. “I don’t have a choice either,” he called to me.
I waved through the window and steered the truck down the dirt road and into town.
The summer festival was still in full swing, which meant Main Street was closed off to accommodate the number of food trucks, craft booths, and other entertainment for the locals of Black Bay. I parked the truck near the orange barricades that blocked the start of the festival and hopped out. The sun crossed low over the horizon, sending its blinding beams directly into my eyes. I shielded my face with the palm of my hand, stepped between the barricades, and scanned the area for any sign of Bodhi.
“Bailey?”
I swiveled around. Ava, the kind, middle-aged woman who owned the local coffeehouse, peered worriedly at me. For a moment, I wondered why. Then I remembered that my trek through the woods with Ethan probably left me looking a little worse for wear.
Ava took me by the hands. “My goodness, what happened to you?”
I fished a leaf out of my hair and flicked it to the ground. “Oh, you know. Summer festival shenanigans. I picked the wrong dog to play Frisbee with.”
“But your head! That bruise!”
Self-conscious, I covered the lump at the base o
f my skull with my hand. “It looks worse than it is. I’ll be fine. Have you seen Bodhi?”
Ava’s pretty gray eyes widened anxiously. “Isn’t he with you?”
“We lost track of each other.”
Ava brushed dirt from the front of my torn T-shirt. “I saw him with Ethan about an hour ago. They were playing with the Tibetan singing bowls.”
Of course. Bodhi played to his strengths. He loved those bowls, and it would’ve been effortless for him to distract Ethan by coaxing dulcet tones from the brassy rims.
“Where was that?” I asked Ava.
She pointed to the far corner of the park. Past the flag football tournament, a row of booths advertised specialty items. The one nearest the stage boasted an impressive meditation display, from Baoding balls to challenging puzzles to the singing bowls that Bodhi so adored.
“Thanks,” I told Ava.
“Sure, honey. You should really get that bump looked at.”
“I will,” I called over my shoulder as I trotted away from her.
Ava wasn’t the only Black Bay resident concerned with my haggard appearance. Children pointed out my sweaty, dirty face to their parents, who politely piloted their mini-me's in the opposite direction. I dodged a rogue flag football player and approached the meditation booth. Bodhi was long gone, but the ethereal woman who manned the merchandise was as good a source as any.
“Excuse me?”
The woman looked me up and down, expertly spinning a pair of Baoding balls in the palm of her hand. “Oh, darling,” she said. “Your energy is all bad.”
“Don’t I know it,” I replied darkly. “Have you seen my husband? He’s about six feet tall with golden-brown eyes, an olive complexion, and long dark curls.”
“Ah, yes. The handsome Nepali man.”
“That’s him,” I said, nodding. In a town like Black Bay, Bodhi’s ambiguous ethnicity was always a good icebreaker.
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 26