I knew for a fact that I hadn’t. It was this one question that would prove to me who she really was. If she would have said someone told her who he was, then I would have doubted it. But, since I knew I didn’t tell her, all signs pointed to her being Evangeline. Now, what to do about it. On that particular issue I wasn’t sure.
I decided to play coy. “Oh, I totally forgot. Well, I gotta run. See you tomorrow.”
She waved and I walked off the campus with a whole new problem.
Chapter 15
Ephraim stood outside the gates holding roses in his hands. I blushed at the sight of him. Now everyone would know we were fighting.
Screw it. What did I care?
I ran toward him and stopped just before I reached him, unsure of his mood. He wasn’t smiling. He also didn’t come home the night before which left me exposed and hurt. Was I mad at him now?
“Brylee, please.”
“I’m not sure what happened the other day, Ephraim. At first it was perfect and then …”
“No,” he stopped me short. “I acted like an ass. I have to remember that we want different things. And that’s okay. I know you want to be with me, I know it. I blew up yesterday because, well, I’m all alone. My mom’s gone, my sister’s a ghost and you are all I have.”
My mouth fell open and I suddenly felt like a complete jerk.
“I know what I want in life, but you’re still dealing with school. You want a future for yourself and I will support that. I am so sorry for being such a jerk and pressuring you. If you don’t want to move in together, I understand.”
I stopped him before he could say more and kissed him. I pulled away and looked into his deep blue eyes. “Ephraim, I don’t see a future without you in it either.”
He sighed and gave me the flowers. “I stayed at a hotel last night. I should have called, it was an asshole move.”
Granted, it was very assholian of him to do to me, but he had needed his space. I could understand that. Our little fight was the least of my worries. The sooner we could stop talking about it the sooner we could prepare.
“Your parents are home,” he told me as he walked me to my car. “Your dad is already packing to go back to California.” My stomach lurched.
“What? Why?” My dad had just come home from a ten day cruise, why would he leave now?
“He said he has a job offer.”
That damn job offer was threatening to take my dad away and to tear our family out of New Jersey. I would stand strong just like I had in the summer. I wasn’t moving.
“Ephraim, right now we have a lot more to worry about.” I told him pretty much everything. He cringed at the replay of my mornings’ terror attack and almost vomited when I told him who I thought Sophie was.
“Wait, so you’re telling me she’s my mom? No way. Brylee, how?” He pounded the steering wheel in frustration.
“I don’t know how, Ephraim. I do know that she’s back and she is having Agnes hurt me. She probably wants to get me alone so she can take the key,” I mused aloud.
He thought for a moment. “Okay, we have to hide it. If it’s on you, then you are more likely to get hurt. Give it to me to wear for a while.”
I handed it over gladly. He would be able to handle himself against Sophie and hopefully even Agnes. Once it was tucked under his shirt I felt a sense of relief.
“We’ll find a good hiding place for it soon. For now, let me handle it.” He looked around the now empty campus as if she was hiding in the tree line. “I’ll kill her if she tries to hurt you.”
I didn’t doubt the sincerity in that statement, but the problem was she couldn’t be killed. Not the regular old kill a person way. She was a witch, and a dark witch at that.
He walked me to my car and closed the door for me. “I’ll follow you the whole way, okay?”
“Okay.”
We arrived at the house and had been talking on our cell phones during the drive to come up with a way to get rid of Sophie. One thing Ephraim did say that made sense was that we had to be sure it was her before we tried anything. Even though in my heart I knew it was, he had a valid point. A few random coincidences didn’t make it true, I had to be sure and for that I would have to make a plan.
My mom was waiting in the drive way for me wearing a megawatt smile. I was glad she was home and wanted to tell her all about our craziness, but first I wanted to hear about her cruise.
“It was like being royalty,” she described. “We dressed up every night for dinner. Brylee, we got you a little something.” We sat at the table and she held up a beautiful wind chime. It was handmade with shells and colorful pebbles. I held it up and it made a beautiful sound.
“Thanks, Mom. I love it.” I hugged her again, almost too tightly.
“So, what happened here?” I pulled away suddenly remembering all that had happened. She could tell something bad occurred and she rubbed my hands. “Brylee, what is it?”
“Well, I don’t know where to start,” I told her. Did I omit the day’s events? Or did I tell her everything, not holding back?
“They found a body out back in the old stream,” Ephraim interrupted. I was almost glad he did, I was about to have a serious heart to heart with her.
“What!”
“Yeah, a girl that went missing a few years ago. Turns out she drowned and her body lodged under a tree root. It was pretty awful.” I let the two of them talk as I sat back and watched the events unfold. My mom’s face went from elation to shock and then horror. She didn’t even know the real horror that surrounded this house.
A knock at the door interrupted Ephraim’s story and I shot up to get it. I didn’t want to sit and listen to them talk about Kayla anymore. I opened the door and was faced with about twenty of my neighbors standing in the yard.
“Is your mom home?” one of them, an older lady, asked. I recognized her so I nodded.
“Uh, Mom can you come here a sec?”
My mom and Ephraim were at my side immediately. Ephraim put his arms around me and ushered me back from the crowd. He now stood with my mom, at her side.
“Can we help you?” he asked, assuming the man of the house role.
“We didn’t come here to talk to you, Mayhew. We came for Mrs. and Mr. Branson,” a man said in a stern tone.
“My husband is not home right now. Whatever this is about you better make it quick,” my mom said.
“We know about your house.”
“It’s evil.”
“They found a dead girl in your backyard.”
They all started talking at once. Ephraim held up his hands and shouted, “Hey! If you want to explain why you’re on private property, you better get to it. None of this yelling will be tolerated.”
They quieted down and a woman approached. I had never seen her before, but she seemed to be the leader of the gang. “It’s simple, we want you out of here.”
My mom gasped.
The woman stood tall, I had to give her respect for her bravery. I would never talk like that to my mom.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all pretty clear, really. This house is evil and we all want it gone,” the woman said. “We have been dealing with the house’s problems for years, now they found another dead body just today.”
“Wait, another one?” I asked her. She didn’t answer me she just kept going on and on blaming the house.
My mom calmly collected herself before saying, “I want you and your gang of jerks off my property in twenty seconds, or I’ll call the cops.”
They all turned to leave, except for the woman. She stayed there, giving my mom the stink eye.
“Consider this a warning,” she told my mom.
“A warning! For what?” My mom said, taking a step toward the woman.
“We wanted to do this peacefully. We didn’t want anyone getting hurt. But you leave us no choice,” she said as she backed off our land. “The house needs to burn, with or without you in it.”
My mom slammed th
e door shut and turned toward Ephraim and me.
“Can you believe that? Crazy ass weirdos.” She walked to the phone and called my dad, who was already on his way home. He had to finish a few errands before his trip back to Cali tomorrow. I sat with Ephraim in his room, shaking my head.
“What did she mean by ‘another dead body’?” I asked him. He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by that.
“She threatened to burn your house down. I just … I just don’t understand that.”
I didn’t either. The town was going crazy and forming a lynch mob, and that mob wanted to burn my house down.
Chapter 16
My dad got home that night and I was able to spend all of ten minutes with him. He left early the next morning. I found a goodbye note for me on the kitchen counter. It made me sad that he couldn’t even say goodbye to me. I shrugged it off, determined not to allow it to bother me.
I made breakfast for my mom and Ephraim, since it was Saturday. I figured I would do something nice for them on the weekends. Lyn sat on the counter with me while I cooked. My mom slept in and Ephraim was showering.
“So, what are you going to do?” Lyn asked. I had just finished filling her in on the lynch mob’s threats.
“I don’t know. Maybe we will make a stand and fight them, pitchfork to pitchfork,” I joked.
She shook her head at me. “You might want to take this more seriously. You know that my mom is back, she could be controlling them.”
I hadn’t thought about that. I bit into a piece of bacon and pondered the way the lady had threatened us. She was honestly scared of the house. Evangeline wouldn’t want to burn the house though. She would want to get us out, but not risk destroying the magic inside it.
“No, it’s not your mom. It’s the people. They’re scared of the house,” I told her. “What do people do when they’re scared?”
“They destroy the thing they think is evil,” Ephraim answered from behind me.
He looked gorgeous today. I noticed his hair was getting longer, almost touching his eyelashes. I didn’t mind. He ran his fingers through it to tame it, but it fell back.
“Yes, they do destroy things. Which scares me,” Lyn replied, pulling me out of my daze.
“Don’t be scared, Lyn. It’s all gonna be okay.”
We ate breakfast when my mom joined us. She told me the real reason my dad left. I knew something was up.
“Your grandma isn’t doing well. She fell and broke her hip while we were away. So, your dad said he would go home and take care of her until she’s better. He did get the job though, so this was the little push he needed to take it.”
My mom sighed. She didn’t want to tell me the truth, I could tell.
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
She held my hand in hers and I really felt panicked now.
“Brylee, I don’t want you to worry because we will always be there for you, when you need us,” she paused. “We know you’re going to be accepted at the colleges you applied for, but, they’re all here.”
“So?”
“So, we want to go home. New Jersey isn’t home to us. We talked about it this summer. I know how much you want to stay here. I just want you to know we understand and we will support your decisions. But, your dad and I are going home.”
I swallowed hard. Yeah, I had said I didn’t want to leave Ephraim, but now that they were truly leaving, I was scared.
Ephraim smiled at me reassuringly.
“You’ll be fine here. And you can come home, if you ever want to. But I know that Ephraim is your future, Brylee.” I saw the honest emotion in my mom’s eyes. She really believed that we would stay together. She believed I would be okay without them.
“But won’t you guys miss me?” I asked quietly.
“Oh, don’t be silly. I’ll miss you like crazy. I guess I should tell you the other news,” she said. But before she could get another word out, a knock came at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Ephraim said. I wanted my mom to continue, but I changed my mind when Rich came into the house.
“Hi. I’m Detective Richard Stockard,” he told my mom. They shook hands. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
“Of course. Please, take a seat.” He looked awful. When he sat down I could see the lack of sleep on his face. His eyes were red and he had bags that were a testament to the number of days he had gone without sleep.
“Coffee?” I asked.
He nodded before replying, “Yeah, that’d be great.”
I busied myself making his coffee while he explained to my mom about locating Kayla the other day. She listened and nodded when he told her that Kayla had been missing for some timeand he had known her in school. He told her that he had always known she had died.
“So, that brings me to why I am here today,” Rich said, taking a sip of coffee.
It had to be about the other body they found.
“The lady at my door yesterday mentioned another death?” my mom whispered, like it was some terrible secret.
“Yes, a young girl. She was so marred that we didn’t get her identity until today.” He set down a photo of a girl. “Sophie Parsons.”
I picked up the photo, and my mouth dropped open in shock. “She’s dead?”
“Yes. Murdered. Did you hear anything yesterday? See anything out of the ordinary?”
I had to think. Yesterday Ephraim and I had stayed a while at the school then came home. I had seen no one and hadn’t heard anything either.
“No.”
“She was killed around 4:45 PM yesterday, out by the creek where we found Kayla,” Rich told us. “She was stabbed several times.”
“Did you guys get ahold of her dad?” Ephraim asked.
Yes! That’s right, her so-called dad. This would tell me if what I thought was true. If Evangeline was in fact Sophie.
“Sophie went missing in Paris this past summer. She wasn’t even living here.”
“Paris, France?” my mom asked.
“Yes, France. That’s why this is so baffling to us. We can’t figure out why a French student would run away to our little town. There’s no rhyme or reason. We are in contact with the French police as we speak.”
I sat back in my chair, my mind reeling. She was Evangeline! There was no father, no American connections. Evangeline had killed her and took over her body, like she had done so many times before. Now the question was, whose body had she taken next?
Chapter 17
Sophie Parsons was a fake name. The French girl that Evangeline Barclay had killed was named Antonella Beaumont. She was only sixteen. She had a mother, a father, and a brother. The family was traveling here to the U.S to see the body of their only daughter and sister.
I clicked closed the news article on my laptop after reading it and shut my laptop. I was disgusted with myself for letting Evangeline off the hook that night. I should have killed her while she lay on the floor, bleeding. If I did, she wouldn’t have killed this poor girl.
I had to find out who she was now, and fast. I lay back in my bed, hoping for sleep. It had been days since I had slept. School was awful. Everyone was in shock over the poor girl’s death and everyone blamed me. Since it was on my property, it had to be my fault. The whole town was in an uproar over it all. A serial killer in Wilson, NJ, nothing like this had happened here in many years. The town didn’t know what to do.
Ephraim wanted to stay with me tonight, but I didn’t want him to. I just wanted to be alone for now. I was the one who could take her down. I was the one who had this gift. And it all rested on my wary shoulders.
I took out my sketch pad and started drawing Sophie’s, or rather Antonella’s face. It came easily. My fingers flowed with the pencil, we were one. Her eyes came easiest, they were so pretty and innocent looking. I was drawn to them from the beginning. I wondered as I drew her, what she had been like in life. Was she popular? Was she talented? Did she have dreams of going to college? It was all over for her now. Just like it was for K
ayla, and for Lynley. Everyone was dying around me and I didn’t know how to stop it.
An hour later I had drawn Antonella’s picture and put it away in my book for safe keeping. My fingers were sore and black from the pencil. I stretched them out and felt the exhaustion creep up on me. I rested my head on my pillow and felt the pull of sleep take over.
I don’t know how much sleep I got when I was woken up. It was a chill that woke me. I pulled the sheets up around myself, but that didn’t work. Finally, I got up and stumbled to my drawer for a hoodie. I pulled it on and fell back into bed.
Did I shut off my lamp? I didn’t think I did. In fact, as I lay there trying to ignore it, I knew I had left it on. The light made it easier to sleep in here after what had happened. The fear of being drug out of bed by my ankles seemed to ease with a light on. Now, in the dark, that fear threatened to consume me. I sat up, looked around the room and then I switched on the light, but it didn’t turn on. The moonlight gave me enough light to see that the bulb was removed.
“What the hell?” Who would remove the bulb? Someone wanted me to be in the dark. In fact, someone was in the room right that second. The window was open and that is where the chill came from.
I stood up looking around the dark room. And then I saw her, a silhouette in the corner.
“Who are you?” I asked as my body trembled. I wasn’t sure if the shadow was human or ghost.
“You don’t know who I am?” she asked with a sinister laugh.
“I don’t. Why don’t you come out and let me see your face?”
She threw the bulb at me and it shattered against my closet doors. I jumped at the sound of the breaking glass. “You won’t be able to see me, not now,” she said with malice. “I want it that way. I don’t want you to figure out who I am this time. I realize I wasn’t so smart last time and I left myself out in the open. I won’t be making that mistake again.”
“Evangeline,” I whispered.
“You made me kill someone else, do you know that? It was bad enough that I had to kill the poor girl from France. It was a shame that she had to die so young, but I needed to blend in and be a high school student. I had to be able to get close to you, but you don’t make that easy, do you?”
The White Door Page 8