She ran up to Kat and Sam who were huddled by the fire. Sam held a napkin to Kat’s hand and blood seeped through. “What happened to you?”
Sam’s lip trembled. “We don’t know, exactly. One minute we were just sitting here having a glass of wine and then the next second there was a huge explosion and the glass from the front window shattered everywhere. Some of it hit Kat.” Sam held up her wife’s hand. Kelsey saw a nasty cut that needed stitches. Sam jutted her chin towards the back of the lounge. “The mom with the two kids is huddled over there in the corner and their father left with the rest of the Craggs to go help. Everyone else is outside, except for the old bat and her husband who are blitzed at the bar. How’s your boyfriend?”
“Sleeping,” Kelsey muttered. She turned to the bar in question and there were the Scotts, laughing and still knee deep in martinis. Ernest poured Lady Camille a glass and kept adding olives until they filled the bottom of the goblet, as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on. He’d even donned Herb’s apron. Kelsey watched in disgust as Lady Camille raised her drink and heartily toasted her husband.
Kelsey’s blood boiled. Thank God I believe in Karma or I might do something to them I’d regret in my next life. Then again, maybe I’d do it anyway.
She turned back to Kat and Sam. “Keep pressure on her hand. I have to go.”
She took off.
#
Kelsey flew out the front door of the inn and was immediately knee deep in snow. The air was freezing and she wrapped her jacket tighter around her chest. She could barely see three feet in front of her because of the blinding snowfall, but the blazing fire ahead guided her. There’d been no time for anyone to shovel and she painstakingly followed the wild mass of knee-deep footprints tracked by the people frantically barreling through the snow to get to the staff quarters. The blizzard still raged and snow pelted her face with hard, wet flakes that stung. She’d gotten halfway down the path when another explosion rocked the night and she fell face first into the snow. Screams echoed ahead. She crawled her way over a snow bank and then followed the cries until she could finally rise and slog her way down the side of the hill towards the staff quarters.
The heat from the fire was intense and she found it hard to breathe. Kelsey coughed ferociously and covered her mouth with her sleeve as she pressed on. The smoke changed direction constantly with the wind, and when it turned on her it burned her eyes. She pushed through until she was in front of the house. The staff quarters were ablaze and people ran around them in absolute chaos, trying to find a way inside to help others get out. A loud crack sounded as a side door was kicked open. Dooley barreled through the doorway with a woman held in his arms. He moved down the path as far as he could and collapsed with her on the snow. Kelsey trudged to his side. She recognized his burden as the woman she had met on the walking path that morning. Roselyn had been her name. Kelsey was dismayed to see her vision was giving her problems again and the woman’s image was again doubled. Not now--of all times! She moved closer to Dooley. “Can I help?” Why is it my eyes are playing tricks on me with only certain people?
Dooley wiped the woman’s face, which was wet already from the pelting snow. “She’s alive, but she’s not breathing.” He looked up, searched around desperately, and then bellowed. “Gerald, get over here! I need you, right now! It’s Roselyn! Leave everyone else!” His screams were desperate.
Kelsey leaned down. “Let me start CPR.” She opened the woman’s blouse to begin compressions mixed with giving breaths into the woman’s lungs, but once she touched Roselyn’s lips, revulsion filled Kelsey and voices pounded into her head that were so loud and vile that she gasped and fell backwards into the snow as if she’d been slapped.
Filthy! Scum of the Earth! Don’t you dare touch us!
Kelsey stared at the woman wide-eyed and then leaned back in to do compressions. She put her hands together and touched the woman’s chest, and more hateful words pummeled through her skull until she pulled her hands back again. What the hell is going on? This is exactly like what happened with Pago!
Gerald dropped to her side and pushed her roughly out of the way. “Move over.” The doctor was covered in soot and wore no hat. She could see the pink of his earlobes shining brightly from the cold.
“Roselyn, come on!” he pleaded. She didn’t respond. Gerald glanced at his father and Kelsey could see sheer fear behind his eyes. Not sadness or loss, but a deep-seated fear.
Suddenly Roselyn’s back arched and then she lay back down to the ground, dead. Something had seemed to push itself out of Roselyn’s body. This presence swooped by Kelsey and threw her violently to the ground. She could hear Dooley and Gerald screaming something about Roselyn, but she couldn’t make out what they shouted. All she could hear was a blur of echoes in her mind.
Free, free… It sounded giddy, girly… and… evil.
Kelsey closed her eyes and peered inward. Had it been Roselyn’s soul she’d felt? Was that what all this was about? Was she finally feeling and reading souls on earth? But when Kelsey looked back to Roselyn, her image was no longer doubled. Dooley and Gerald were speaking heatedly to each other and searching around fiercely for something.
At that moment another person screamed and Kelsey glanced back at the house. Her heart froze. A woman held a squirming young child out of a third floor window. The first and second floors were ablaze and smoke poured through the windows.
A woman whose image was also doubled.
“Please, someone take her! It’s me, it’s me. She’s with me! Please, she can’t die. I can’t hold on to her for long!” There was a loud pop and fire lit up in the room behind her. With a scream of desperation, the woman let the little girl go and then without a moment’s notice, jumped out after her.
“No!” Kelsey screamed and slogged over to the house, but she was too late.
The child landed in the snow and disappeared. Snow fell from the roof and covered her. Kelsey dove through the mounds towards the child and desperately dug her out. Come on, come on. Her hands scraped against the hidden sharp, jagged landscaping rocks that had lined the path to the house and her heart filled with dread. She dug further, found the child’s arm, then her face and lifted the girl up, but she was bloody and lifeless. Kelsey turned to the mother, who lay dead beside her, her neck twisted at a deadly angle. Her image was no longer doubled.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why did she jump like that?
Kelsey cradled the child in her arms and trudged back over to Gerald, who sat back on his haunches, breathing hard. Roselyn was still dead. Kelsey reached out with one hand and gripped her arm, but felt nothing.
Instead, she lay the baby next to her on the ground and started CPR.
Minutes went by with the screams of those still stuck inside the house resounding in the back of her head. She focused all her attention on the child. Over and over she kept at her. Over and over she tried to breathe life back into her. She had to save her. She ignored the little girl’s sightless eyes. Ignored the blood that seeped from her head wound. Ignored the fact that she could see nothing and feel nothing coming from her, but Kelsey could not stop until she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Anna’s dead. She suffered severe trauma to her forehead.”
Kelsey glanced up into Gerald’s stricken face. His expression was bitter. “There’s nothing we could have done. Let her go, Ms. Porter. We have other people to help.” And he left Kelsey holding court over the body of the dead child.
Seeing Josh finally made her move. Through the haze of the smoke, she saw him climbing down a ladder with an old woman flung over his shoulder. At the bottom, he handed the woman off to Bain, and the two of them took her as far from the burning building as they could.
At that moment Kelsey heard a loud, eerie crack and a sound like a thunderclap roared while the entire left side of the staff quarters collapsed.
Elsa fell to her knees and screamed. Kelsey couldn’t figure out how the old woman had even gotten down here
.
Elsa wrung her bare hands, which Kelsey could see had turned a sickly blue from the cold. “Someone, help! Ronald and Charlie are still inside!” Elsa shrieked. The old woman rose and struggled towards the house, but Jenella grabbed her shoulders and pulled Elsa back.
“No, no! You let me go!” She fought Jenella valiantly until Dooley trudged over, grabbed his sister by her thin shoulders and shook her. “Elsa, stop it and get back! There is nothing we can do. It’s all coming down and we can’t afford to lose you!” Elsa slapped him in his face. With a single, swift and fluid move, Dooley responded by hoisting his sister over his shoulder and traipsing further back in the woods. He deposited her unceremoniously in the snow on her backside where she sunk down so low she could hardly move. All Kelsey could see was her flailing arms and legs sticking up out of the snow and hear her desperate cries about her family.
Kelsey glanced back towards the hotel and realized the fire was not spreading. It was safe from the flames. Desmond will be okay for now. Thank God.
Knowing she now had time to help, she turned back to the staff quarters. What can I do? I have to be able to do something. Kelsey summoned everything in her power, tried to rise off the ground, tried to bring the power she’d felt while in Aihika here to the forest, but nothing happened. She closed her eyes and wiggled her fingers. Over and over she wiggled them, up and down, up and down like waves crashing to the shore. She felt her body leaving, heard the haunting wail of the dungchen, the long horn in Xanadu, play in her mind.
No! I don’t want to travel to Xanadu. Not now! What I want is power. The power I felt in Aihika. The power to move, to fly, to get bigger and rise up and sweep all the victims in my arms. Or the power I felt in Egypt when I could grab the thousands and thousands of souls and release them to the universe. She closed her eyes and went deep into her mind, searching for some spark, some singular piece of power she could latch on to, but nothing came forward except a vision of another young girl.
A seven-year-old was trapped under her bed while flames engulfed her home. She was crying for her mother and screamed when her bookcase went up in flames.
The child coughed ferociously and while she could hear her mother’s desperate calls for her, she couldn’t move from under the bed because the flames blocked her way. She grabbed her teddy bear and was found clutching it when the firemen were finally able to recover her burned and lifeless body from the fire.
Later they found out the blaze had been purposely set. Someone had intentionally surrounded the home with gasoline and heating fuel and set it on fire, but for what reason, the family had no idea.
But Kelsey did.
The girl’s name had been… Tiffany.
“Kelsey, what the hell are you doing? Will you wake up?” Josh shook her arms. Kelsey opened her eyes, for a moment disoriented in the memory of one of her past lives. She was startled how they kept popping up, over and over at the most inopportune times. She swallowed hard, thinking of that little girl under that bed. She knew that child’s fear, felt her pain when the flames licked her feet. Heard her terrorized screams deep in her heart. She tried to push aside the desperate panic the child felt when she could no longer breathe because of the smoke. She also knew exactly why the fire had been set. Mara, her spiritual father had sent his minions to kill this little girl. She knew all of this because she WAS that little girl. I’m so sorry, Tiffany. So very sorry.
Kelsey brusquely brushed Josh off and glanced around desperately, with the sudden, horrible certainty that she was powerless on Earth to aid any of these people. She could tap into nothing to save anyone trapped in the house. But she could feel. She could feel everyone’s fear. She could feel everyone’s sorrow, horror, and absolute grief. But what she could detect most significantly right at that moment was terror coming from all parts of the area. It was like a black aura surrounding everyone. Something horrible had happened and every one of the staff, and every one of the Craggs, felt it. The only understanding Kelsey had was that the terror didn’t stem just from the horrors of the fire. Something else was plaguing them.
At that moment, the entire house collapsed and Josh threw himself onto her. They both slammed into the snow and the horrified screams continued to echo around them.
He protectively covered her with his body as embers and ash rained around them. She had snow in her mouth and tried to spit it out.
“Are you okay?” he asked, helping her up.
“I’m fine, get off of me.” Her eyes burned and watered and she realized she couldn’t see through the smoke. She blinked ferociously, but still couldn’t see. Josh grabbed her hand and refused to let it go, even though she dug her nails into his palm. With a grunt, he roughly pulled her forwards. She heard him barking orders. “Everyone, get the survivors back up to the Mountain House. Grab whomever you can.”
He could barely be heard above the noise, but people started to move. She could make out their shapes shuffling towards the mountain house.
There were scant few survivors to take to shelter at the mountain house. Those who had made it out alive stared back at the servants quarters in a trance, knowing their loved ones had been trapped. Others wept over the bodies that had already been removed from the charred wreckage, but were lying lifeless in the snow on the front lawn. The snow was already covering them up like a makeshift grave. A pervading sense of intense grief and fear hung like a veil over all.
Kelsey could see again and pulled herself away from Josh. “I’ll meet you up there.” She weaved her way back and picked up the little girl Gerald had called Anna and lay her in her mother’s arms. She couldn’t just leave her lying in the snow alone. Then she turned and joined the procession back to the mountain house. They resembled survivors returning from a terrible war as they slogged through the snow. Pago, with his double image, had gone to Roselyn and wept over her body. He’d knelt to his knees and placed his hands to the woman’s chest, and Kelsey could see him close his eyes and mouth words she couldn’t hear. She assumed he was praying for her. There was an intimacy to it and Kelsey wondered vaguely if they’d been a couple, but realized they were cousins. No, it was something else. Tooh wrapped his huge arms around an older man and nearly carried him towards the inn. Everyone else helped whomever they could. Even Bain held Malacki, who could barely keep weight on his right foot and cried about losing his sister. The lawyer’s normally coiffed appearance was now disheveled and Kelsey saw a bloody cut on his own brow.
Elsa was inconsolable. Not only had she lost many of her beloved staff, but her husband and son and others as well. She could not stop screaming the words, “she is gone, she is gone. What are we to do?” Kelsey did not know which woman she was referring to. Was it Roselyn? That woman who jumped from the third floor? She had no words to comfort her. Dooley carried her in his arms, cradling her like a baby and telling her that things were going to be okay.
Kelsey helped Gerald usher everyone inside, and was about to go in when she spied the young boy guest, little Billy, standing alone near the end of the driveway and getting pelted by the snow. He seemed to be speaking to someone and looking up, but no one was near him.
What is he doing?
Kelsey trudged over to him. “Billy, are you okay?”
He turned, startled, but didn’t say anything.
Kelsey glanced around. “Who were you talking to?”
He bit his lip and hedged. At that moment, his mother raced frantically out of the mountain house, calling his name. “Billy, where are you?” She spied them and trudged her way through the snow.
“Lady, don’t say anything to my mother, okay?” He seemed upset.
Kelsey leaned towards him. “I won’t. Who were you speaking with?”
He turned to his right and glanced up as if listening. Then nodded. “Her name is Roselyn.”
Kelsey froze.
His mother was suddenly at their side and nearly crying. “Billy, you scared me half to death! What are you doing out here? Please, I was so worried. Come
inside before you freeze.” She grabbed him by the arm and ushered him back towards the hotel.
Kelsey simply stared after him. Roselyn? Did this child have the gift of sight?
“Wait!” Kelsey called out, but the mother had already hustled him back inside.
Chapter 12
Bain paced the lounge area while talking heatedly on his cell phone. “That’s no excuse. We need help right now!” he shouted. “Dammit, no, that’s too late and don’t you dare hang up on me again. My phone is almost out of power. I can’t keep telling you this. You have to get a team up here right now.” He listened for a moment. “Yes, we have injured. And yes, I know there is a blizzard outside, but we’re in dire straits here.” A pause. “Yes, the flames have gone down and no, it’s no longer spreading, but that’s not the point. There’s a blackout here. Some people are severely injured and need to get to the hospital and we are completely closed off and can’t get down the mountain!” He listened a bit longer and then with a disgusted grunt clicked off the phone. He turned and addressed everyone in the lounge. “There is an emergency shutdown across the entire region. No one is allowed to come in or out with the blizzard and no one can even get a helicopter to us until it stops which isn’t projected until tomorrow evening. The blizzard has cut down power to all the surrounding counties, and has stranded people everywhere. Temperatures are supposed to drop tomorrow to record lows, icing everything up further. The entire region is on emergency lockdown and we’ve been told to sit tight. There is nothing they can do and help is not coming. We are officially on our own.”
Moans and murmured whispers of despair met his speech.
The Haunting of Cragg Hill House Page 15