“Patrick?” Bodhi suggested.
I shook my head, gasping for breath. “Caroline.”
“Mrs. Taylor, our officers should be there any second now,” Jane reassured me over the phone. I could only imagine what was going through her head.
Sure enough, the basement lit up red and blue as a squad car pulled into the front yard, the emergency lights shining through the small storm window. The siren drowned out the noises on the first floor. Part of me wanted Caroline to drive Ethan right into the arms of the police. Ultimately, we needed Ethan to go free. Then we needed to survive his wrath until Saturday night.
The door at the top of the stairs rattled again, but this time it was a uniformed officer instead of Ethan who poked his head into the basement. Bodhi hid the antique revolver behind his back.
“Black Bay PD,” the officer said. “Everyone all right down here?”
It took the better part of an hour to clear a path to the doorway, explain to the officers what had happened, and convince them that we had no idea who would’ve wanted to break into the Winchester house. The hallway was littered with evidence of Ethan and Caroline’s fight. Broken plates, coffee mugs, and silverware—left over from the Winchesters’ original kitchen—created a hazardous obstacle path on our way to the kitchen. Luckily, none of our renovation work was damaged, excluding the shattered sliding glass door. We also dug ourselves into a hole with the antique revolver. Jane confirmed gunshots over the phone, but we couldn’t blame it on our intruder since there were no signs of damage on the first floor. Bodhi admitted he found the gun in the basement and used it in self-defense. After a stern talking-to about using unregistered guns without training, the officers confiscated the revolver, expressing surprise that it had even fired. By the time they explained Washington’s self-defense laws, helped us cover the giant hole where our door had been, and took their leave, the sky had already begun to lighten.
“You don’t think he’ll come back, do you?” I asked Bodhi, securing the tarp over the open window with a piece of tape.
“Not anytime soon.”
“Now he can just waltz in whenever he likes,” I grumbled.
“We’ll get the door replaced today,” Bodhi assured me. “If I have to drive into the city to pick another one up, I will.”
“Don’t you think this is a bit much?” I asked Bodhi. “It’s insane. We’re waiting around for a guy to kill us, and in the meantime, we’re pretending that we’re all best buds. I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Hey.” Bodhi detached my hands from where they were taping the black heavy-duty plastic to the wall in a haphazard fashion. “It’s three more days. Who know? Maybe we’ll figure this out sooner. We could evict Caroline and Patrick tonight.”
“Ouch,” said a voice behind us.
We turned to see Patrick sitting on the counter in the kitchen, munching on a package of mini cupcakes that we had picked up from the Sanctuary the day before.
Bodhi grinned, walked over to Patrick, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, Pat. I love your company, but you would be a lot less hassle in my book if you didn’t come with a homicidal maniac. Also you eat a lot of our food for someone whose digestive system no longer functions.”
“Did you want one?” Patrick offered through a full mouth, proffering the package. Bodhi snatched it away from him. “By the way, I’m not offended. I want to get out of here as much as you two want me to.”
“It’s not that we want to get rid of you,” I said as I abandoned the tarp. At this point, there was so much duct tape on the wall, the tarp might end up as a permanent fixture in the house. “Actually, I quite like having you around.”
“But I’m not supposed to be around,” Patrick reminded me.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s like—”
“Having a son,” finished Bodhi matter-of-factly.
Patrick and I both stared at him.
He shrugged, tossing a mini cupcake in the air and catching it skillfully in his mouth. “What? It is. Watch. Patrick, catch.”
And he launched another cupcake across the kitchen in Patrick’s direction, who immediately repositioned himself underneath it so that it landed squarely between his teeth. Patrick grinned, but the top of the cupcake separated and hit the floor, icing-side down.
“Really?” I chucked a roll of paper towels at Patrick. “Clean that up, troublemaker.”
Bodhi chuckled, shaking his head. “See? Just like a mom.”
As Patrick hopped off the counter to wipe up pink icing from the new flooring, I played with the idea in my head. At first, when Patrick had been Milo, it was easy to view him as a fully-fledged adult. He was open, mature, and respectful, three things that most people well into adulthood found difficult to learn. But ever since I found out that Patrick was just Patrick, something had shifted. I felt weirdly protective of him now, like he was my responsibility. In a way, he was. Caroline, too. When we promised to help Caroline, we had signed an official contract, one that made us the temporary guardians of two teenagers in need of parents. And it just so happened that Bodhi and I were in need of children. Granted, we hadn’t anticipated teenaged dead ones, one of whom wasn’t visible to the physical world.
“You’re right,” I said finally. “And if Patrick really was my son, I wouldn’t want him to suffer in a world that he couldn’t truly interact with.”
“Thank you,” Patrick said.
“Speaking of our adopted children,” Bodhi quipped. “Has anyone heard from Caroline as of late?”
I shuddered involuntarily. Caroline had been less and less active in the past few days, but there was no doubt as to what had occurred in the basement earlier. Caroline had sapped energy from me to chase Ethan out of the house, and no amount of espresso would replenish what she had taken. I was beyond sleepy, my muscles felt stiff and achy, and my eyelids were a burden to my face. Even so, I knew that Caroline had gone easy on me. If she had taken more, I would be upstairs in bed.
Patrick noticed my silence. “I, uh, think Bailey and Caroline had a misunderstanding last night actually.”
“What kind of misunderstanding?” Bodhi asked, immediately alert.
I waved a hand to dismiss this. “It wasn’t a misunderstanding. She borrowed some energy from me.”
Bodhi’s eyes widened. “From you? Why?”
“To get Ethan out of the house,” I explained. “That’s why she hasn’t been around lately. She’s getting weaker and weaker. Even the poltergeist stuff is getting hard for her to manage.”
Patrick nodded in agreement. “I feel it too. It’s like when you know you have a cold coming on. That tickle in the back of your throat.”
“So basically we need to get a move on,” Bodhi clarified. “Bailey, are you okay? How much did Caroline take from you?”
I hoisted myself onto the counter that Patrick had so recently vacated. “Enough to know I probably shouldn’t handle any power tools today. What’s our next step?”
“I think we’ve already agreed it’s to find the bodies or whatever’s left of them,” said Bodhi. He looked to Patrick. “Any ideas?”
I took a cupcake for myself, but as soon as the pink icing touched my lips, I blanched. It was sickly sweet, although my nausea was probably a result of the day’s events thus far. “Caroline was alive when she was buried.”
Bodhi wrinkled his nose in distaste. “How do you figure?”
“She showed me.” I sighed and passed my uneaten cupcake to Patrick. “I’m not sure how. She remembers Ethan burying her.”
“Where?” Patrick asked. “I have no memory of that.”
“Probably because you were already dead,” Bodhi pointed out.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
I flicked Bodhi’s ear. “Be nice to each other. And I didn’t see where she was buried. I was too distracted by Ethan shoveling dirt on top of her.”
Bodhi grabbed my fingers and cracked the knuckles for me. “Then we’re still at square one.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” grumbled Bodhi. “We don’t even know if that’s where Ethan buried them.”
My head swam, and dots of colorful lights decorated my vision. I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself. Caroline had had more of an effect on me than I originally thought. I swayed, nearly toppling off the counter, but Patrick and Bodhi caught me by either shoulder.
“You need to go to bed,” Patrick said, studying me with a worried expression. “Recharge. Alex is working on the bodies problem today, right?”
I nodded wearily. “He was going to scope Ethan out to see if he could glean any more information.”
“Then you can take the day off,” Patrick said in a firm tone.
“But we’re running out of time!”
Patrick shushed me. “I know that, but I also know that it’s completely immoral if I let you run yourself into the ground for mine and Caroline’s sake. So be quiet and let Bodhi take you upstairs.”
I would’ve argued more—our lack of progress was making me feel overwhelmingly useless—but Bodhi swept me up in his arms and carried me from the kitchen before I could say anything else. I leaned my forehead against the crook of his neck, listening to his pulse beat soundly beneath his skin. As exhaustion engulfed me, I savored the safety I felt in Bodhi’s arms. He was strong and sure of himself. His bare feet landed with precision on each step as he took me upstairs. By the time we reached the bedroom door, I was already asleep.
When I woke again, the pinkish hues of sunset had descended upon the Winchester house. I groaned, massaging my temples. I felt as though I’d downed several bottles of wine the night before. My head dully ached, and my mouth was as dry as a cotton ball. Thankfully, someone—Patrick or Bodhi—had left a tall glass of cool water on the bedside table for me. I gratefully tipped it back, swishing it around in my mouth to get rid of the tacky texture.
Bodhi’s voice floated up to me from the first floor. There was someone else here too, speaking excitedly, but the conversation was too muffled for me to recognize the second voice. It was probably the last of the construction crew, finishing up the day’s work. I frowned. I had wasted an entire day sleeping. It was starting to feel more and more like Patrick and Caroline were going to be stuck in Black Bay for the rest of their immortal lives.
The thought propelled me from bed. I kicked the sheets off, chugged the rest of my water, and headed into the hallway. I paused at the top of the stairs, listening, but when I realized who Bodhi was talking to, I thundered down to the first floor.
Alex paced back and forth in the living room. His cropped dark hair glistened with water droplets, dripping abstract patterns on the wood flooring. His T-shirt and shorts were damp too, as if he hadn’t dried off properly before getting dressed. Bodhi sat at the card table, rifling through a curious pile of what looked like waterlogged photographs, while Patrick tiptoed along the track of the open glass doors like a gymnast on a balance beam. As promised, Bodhi had replaced the shattered door. The tarp was gone, but remnants of my hazardous duct taping abilities remained on the freshly painted walls. I mentally added touch-ups to my to-do list.
“—and I can absolute help with that if you and Bailey aren’t up to it,” Alex was saying as he aired out his T-shirt, flapping it fruitlessly so that it billowed in and out against his chest.
“Aren’t up to what?” I asked, padding into the room and sitting down next to Bodhi at the card table. I shuffled through the photographs.
“Bailey—” Bodhi started.
“Wait—” Alex said.
“Why?” Most of the photographs had been ruined by the water. The colors had run and bled together, leaving nothing but drooping faces and unknown locations. But when I finally came across one that had braved the damage and brought it closer to my face to study the subject, my stomach heaved. Had I eaten anything that day, I highly suspected I would’ve seen it again.
Bodhi snatched the photo from my hand and hid it beneath the pile. Then he reached across the table to take my wrist. “Damn it, Bailey. I wish you’d waited for me to tell you.”
“What difference would it have made?” I mumbled, dropping my head into my hands in the hopes of quelling the nausea.
The photograph was of Caroline. Her face was blue. Lips robbed of color. Gold hair reduced to drenched, ratty tangles. Sopping wet and unmistakably dead.
Ethan had kept records of his disgusting deeds.
“Crap,” Alex said as he wandered over to me. He smelled faintly of saltwater. “Bailey, I’m so sorry. You didn’t need to see this.”
“Where did you get these?” I asked him, finding his distressed expression instead of staring at the photos. Across the room, I caught Patrick pause in his balance act out of the corner of my eye. His cheeks were pale, and his jawline jutted against his skin, as though he hadn’t eaten in several days.
Alex glanced at Bodhi.
“Go ahead,” said Bodhi. “Tell her what you told me.”
Alex pulled out the chair next to mine and sat down. He flipped over a photograph so that it was face down. I didn’t want to know what was on it.
“I found Ethan’s boat,” Alex said.
It took a second for this information to sink in. “You what?”
“He sank it,” Alex continued as he censored more pictures. “Deep enough to avoid notice. No one would find it unless they were looking for it.”
“How did you—?”
“When you left the café last night, I made sure Ethan was going to be occupied for a while,” Alex admitted. “Then I went back to his boathouse. There were signs he’d moved the boat. The winches were broken, and the algae had been disturbed recently. I followed the breadcrumbs. It took me forever, but I finally found it.”
He shuffled through the pile of photographs, unearthing a familiar object. It was one of Caroline’s leather journals. It was totally waterlogged, but whatever expensive ballpoint pen Caroline had used to record her inner thoughts had weathered the storm. The ink ran a little, but it was still legible.
“I spent the entire day diving down to it to bring this stuff up,” Alex went on. “I have all of Caroline’s journals. The photos were hidden in a lockbox in the cabin. And—”
“He found the rope,” finished Patrick.
Relief flooded my system. This was a good discovery. This was the breakthrough we needed to make sure everything went according to plan. “Where is it?”
“Hidden,” Bodhi assured me. “Locked in the wine cellar until we need it.”
“That’s not all,” Alex said.
“It isn’t?”
“No.” Alex pushed a photograph my way, but I flinched, unwilling to lay my eyes upon whatever terror Ethan had inflicted upon the Winchester children so long ago. “It’s okay. That one’s all right to look at. Check it out.”
I squinted at the picture, but the murky setting didn’t seem familiar to me. “What is this?”
“It’s the crawl space beneath the house,” Patrick said. His voice was hoarse as though he was coming down with a sore throat, but there was no mistaking the bitterness there.
The revelation hit me slowly. “The crawl space…”
“Yes,” Patrick confirmed. “The place where Ethan left me and Caroline to rot.”
32
Beneath the Basement
Patrick simmered with rage. I could practically see it boiling off of him. His usually casual stance was tense and stiff. The easy smile I’d gotten used to morphed into a disgusted sneer. He shook visibly, as though his temper was on the verge of spilling over.
“There’s an access point,” Patrick spat. “I never knew. What did I care about the house’s insulation? No one’s thinking about crawl spaces in high school. I was more concerned with girls and football.”
There was more than bitterness in his voice. There was blame. I stood up and walked over to him, but he stiffened the closer I got. I waited a
few feet away. “Pat, no one’s blaming you.”
“If I had known—”
“You were seventeen,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t your responsibility to know. Don’t sweat it. We know now. That’s going to help us out immensely.”
“Not to mention, most houses with basements don’t have crawl spaces,” Bodhi said. “A basement essentially serves the same purpose as a crawl space. I wonder why your parents built the house like this at all.”
“Ethan found it though,” Patrick said shakily. “He barely had to lift a finger to hide our bodies. All he had to do was drag us down there.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “If Ethan didn’t jackhammer the foundation, then why is the concrete in the basement all messed up?”
“We think it was Caroline,” Alex explained. “Patrick said she’s been obsessed with the basement ever since they died. He just didn’t know why. We figured she was subconsciously trying to unearth her own body.”
Another wave of queasiness overtook me. I didn’t want to think about how confused and terrified Caroline must have been in the days following her death. “So when are we doing this?”
Bodhi, Alex, and Patrick all knew what I was talking about, but there was a mutual hesitation as they exchanged sidelong glances with each other. It was apparent that the three of them had had a private conversation while I was asleep upstairs.
“What is it?” I demanded. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing,” said Bodhi. He pushed his chair back and walked over to me. “You know everything, but we were wondering if you should maybe sit this one out.”
I ogled him in disbelief. “You really think I’m going to sit out exhuming Patrick and Caroline’s bodies? I don’t think so.”
Bodhi took my hand, but I found it difficult to find comfort in the gesture. “Bailey, you saw those photographs. This isn’t going to be pretty. It’s going to be gruesome, and I don’t want you to have to see that.”
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 35