Ghost House Revenge (36 page)

Owen found his tongue and was surprised to hear himself speaking to her as if she
were simply one of his patients.

“Why do you want revenge so badly?” he asked. “So far as I know, Melanie was only
defending her child. Jacob Armand had turned you into a madwoman. What was she supposed
to do?”

“She had no right to kill me!” Janice snapped. “I was only twenty-eight. I was beautiful.”

She leaned forward to kiss Owen, but he backed away.

“Don’t do that,” he said, feeling weak. What was it about her eyes?

“I want you, Owen Crewe,” Janice whispered.

Calling himself a fool for coming here, Owen tried to turn and run away. But he couldn’t
feel his legs.

Janice pulled him down to the floor. “Make love to me, Owen,” she whispered passionately.

“Let me go,” Owen said, feeling powerless as a baby. This was happening too fast.

“I waited for Derek,” Janice said, “because I needed him for something. That was a
mistake—I lost him. But I won’t lose you, my handsome Owen. I want you.”

Her lips pressed his, her tongue pried them open. Suddenly Owen found his strength
and tried to knock her away. She sat
up and slapped him, hard, again and again. Her face changed then, bloated and turned
green, and became Liza’s face. Blood dripped onto Owen.

“No!”

“I want you with me, brother,” Janice teased, in Liza’s voice. “I’m so alone without
you. Oh, so alone! Die, big brother!”

Owen closed his eyes and felt his heart jump. When he opened them again, there was
nothing above him but stars and blackness.

When the moving company came Monday morning, they found Owen’s body on the living
room sofa. His arms were folded across his chest, his hair neatly in place. The effect
was like a wake, but Bryan Davis insisted the death certificate should read heart
attack. The coroner accepted a sum of money and obliged. Who was Owen Crewe to him?

Though she didn’t know him, Melanie cried when she read the obituary. She was sitting
on the porch of her parents’ house, with Gary at her side and the children sitting
nearby. They kept close to her these days. Nancy stood up from the game she was playing
with Kyle and came to put her head on Melanie’s lap.

“Mommy, why do we all cry so much?”

“Because many sad things have happened to us,” Melanie said, gently rubbing the child’s
back. It was a hot day, and Nancy’s sunsuit was soaked with perspiration.

“I don’t want to be sad any more,” Nancy said. “Daddy promised we wouldn’t be sad—didn’t
you, daddy?”

“I did,” Gary said. “Melanie, what are you reading there?” Melanie showed him the
paper. “Don’t think about it,” Gary said. “You didn’t even know the guy.”

She leaned across the wicker sofa and kissed him. In spite of all that had happened,
she still had her career, didn’t she? And her beautiful family. Nothing bad could
happen to them again. Not if they stayed away from that hateful, evil house.

Still, the next day, she couldn’t help driving back to it for one last look. She didn’t
cry to see the high white towers and bay windows, nor the porch and bay windows. She
felt a loss, of course, but also a joy that the terror was at last over. She would
have sat there, near the car, looking at it for hours, remembering the good times
they had had—and there had been many in spite of everything—if a sight in the upstairs
window hadn’t broken her spell. She saw two blond people. Melanie could barely make
out the mustache on one. Was that Owen?

“My God,” she said. “The papers were wrong. He didn’t die of a heart attack—she killed
him!”

She saw Janice pointing at her. Before those eyes could take her into their evil power,
Melanie turned and ran to her car. It carried her at top speed to the highway, to
safety. By the time she reached the main street of Belle Bay, she had forced herself
to calm down. She had escaped. And it was over.

Her only worry now would be her career, and nothing else.

There didn’t need to be any other worries, for Janice no longer wanted revenge. She
had found something in Owen Crewe that satisfied her. He had become her total slave,
easily forced into submission by the sight of his sister’s face.

No one ever came back to the house after that, except for a crew to block the door
and put up a condemned sign. Gary had wanted the place torn down but was told it would
be too expensive. So now the house sat regally upon the hill, rotting and lonely.
Winters passed and tore at the shuttered windows, summers made the white paint crack
and peel. And as the house grew uglier, legends by the townspeople grew around it.

They called it the Ghost House. And sometimes, if the wind was blowing just right
and imaginations were tense, people would swear they could hear the laughter of two
people sounding from behind its ancient, dilapidated façade.