Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (14 page)

Janus shut the door and the spell was completely broken. They were in a plain hallway again, free of the spinning room and its monotonous hum. Quinn sat against the wall and looked around.

“Thanks,” he said to Elyssa.

She nodded back at him. Quinn couldn’t be sure, but he thought the idea of dropping him to his death had occurred to her too. He turned to Janus.

“Why the hell did you tell me to look down?” he said. “That nearly killed me.”

“I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t look down,’” Janus replied. “I was trying to make sure you didn’t see it.”

“Didn’t work.”

“So I gathered.”

Quinn looked at their surroundings. He still felt dizzy and weak from the long climb to the top of the room. But here at least they seemed safe. It was just a hallway, and unlike the one with the clowns, there were no doors on either side. There was just one innocuous doorway at the end.

Quinn opened his mouth to ask what they should do next when he smelled the distinct odor of smoke.

“Where’s that coming from?” he asked.

Janus pointed to the door behind them, the one that had housed the vortex. Smoke poured in from underneath it.

“And now, we come to the end of the line,” a voice said over the loudspeaker. “It really has been a pleasure seeing you again, Quinn and Janus, but you know what they say, ‘All good things...’”

Quinn looked at Janus.

“Again?” he asked.

Janus shrugged, but Quinn was suddenly struck with an inspiration. If he was right, it made the situation even worse, something he didn’t think possible a few moments ago. The hallway was rapidly filling with smoke. Elyssa calmly walked to the other end and tried to open the door. It didn’t budge. Quinn followed her and tried to put his weight against it, but it didn’t move.

“I locked them in, you know,” the voice said. “Something your friend never turned up in his research. He found a lot of things out, but not that.”

“What is he talking about?” Janus asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Quinn responded.

All three of them started coughing.

“Down on the ground,” Quinn said, knowing it was futile. Smoke rises, but when there is nowhere for it to go, it heads back down. They had only a few minutes left, if that.

“I waited until Halloween night of course,” the voice continued. “I locked the exits and blamed that poor schlub of a security guard. The fool didn’t even know he was innocent. I heard he drank himself to death three years later because of the guilt.”

Quinn looked at Elyssa and Janus as they crouched on the ground.

“Anyone see a way out?”

There weren’t any good options. There was no going back into the vortex and the way ahead of them was blocked.

“I set the fire too,” the voice continued. “You’d be surprised just how flammable a little wood and gasoline can be.”

Quinn couldn’t accept it. How could they come so far just to be stuck with no way out? The more he thought about what they had encountered so far, the more it seemed like a game or some kind of test. If that was true, there had to be something he was overlooking.

“What if we rush the door?” Janus asked.

“I tried that,” Quinn replied. “It’s locked tight.”

“What about both of us together?”

Janus didn’t bother waiting for a reply.

“Fuck this,” he said.

He stood up, coughed, and made a run for the door, putting all his energy into it. The voice on the speaker laughed.

“That won’t work, Janus, you pain in the ass,” the voice said. “Didn’t you hear me? I locked them in. Just like I locked you in. Welcome to the jungle, baby. You’re gonna die.”

Janus hit the door with as much speed as he could muster. Quinn felt sure he would break his arm, not that it would matter for very long. Instead, the door didn’t just open — it shattered in an explosion of wood. Janus screamed in victory.

“Fuck, yeah!” he said. “Janus for the win!”

Both Elyssa and Quinn stared at each other.

“I checked that door myself,” she said, and then coughed. She sounded almost defensive.

“So did I,” Quinn replied. “Let’s worry about it later. Come on!”

The two of them covered their mouths and ran out the door. Behind them, Quinn was sure he heard a cry of frustration and rage over the loudspeaker.

At that point, Quinn thought nothing he found on the other end of the door would surprise him. But instead of more haunted house, or even more of the amusement park, the door led outside to a thick cornfield, with high stalks of corn swaying in the breeze. A white, glowing full moon hung overhead.

Quinn saw a narrow, dirt path leading away from the haunted house and into the cornfield. A small sign stood to the right of the path.

“Corn Maze of Death,” it read.

“How come we can’t get the ‘Corn Maze of Nice Puppies,’ or the ‘Corn Maze of Beautiful Women?’” Janus asked. “Also, who named this shit? There’s no artistry to it.”

“I think I can answer that question,” Quinn said.

Janus looked at him expectantly.

“I remember who mentioned Halloweenland to me once,” Quinn said. “Now that I think about it, it was probably a slip-up. We were talking about some fall festival in Fairfax County and whether we should check it out. He just mentioned Halloweenland in passing.”

“I don’t suppose it was your Uncle Richard or something?” Janus asked.

“No,” Quinn said. “It was Kyle Thompson.”

“Oh shit,” Janus said.

“Who’s Kyle Thompson?” Elyssa asked.

“The psychotic killer who murdered Janus and nearly took out me and Kate,” Quinn said. “He called himself Lord Halloween. And from what I can tell, he’s become a lot more powerful.”

Chapter 12

Kieran and Tim were still talking excitedly, but Kate couldn’t hear them anymore.

The voices in her head had grown louder since Kieran told his tale and though she tried to quiet them, she couldn’t. She was dimly aware that she had lost her own voice amidst the squabbling.

Quinn and Kyle bickered about everything, each insisting the other was lying. The Horseman occasionally weighed in, usually on the side of whoever wanted to commit the most violence. That meant that he supported Kyle more often than not, which didn’t make any sense to Kate. Quinn had defeated the Horseman and then assumed his form. Last year, he had no trouble controlling the phantom. She had never sensed any kind of internal struggle from Quinn, or if there was one, it was brief. But now the Horseman seemed to have a mind of his own, independent from Quinn. Why? Shouldn’t he still answer to Quinn?

It’s all in your head
, she thought.
They aren’t real.

In the room within her mind, where she found herself most often now, Kate realized it was the banshee who just spoke to her. The banshee never actually said anything out loud, but Kate occasionally heard her voice nonetheless. The others — for whatever reason — never heard it.

That’s because I’m you
, the voice said.
There is no separation between you and me. It’s the others who are intruders here.

But Quinn was here because she wanted him to be, and Kyle was here because she deserved it. She had murdered people in cold blood; she was a killer like him. And the Horseman was here because he was useful, and people were afraid of him.

“Kate, are you listening?”

At first she thought it was Quinn inside her head asking, then she realized it was Tim speaking. She nodded, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. It didn’t matter. Last time she tuned in, Kieran was talking about a cave filled with cats, which made no sense to her.

That’s because it’s all a lie
, Kyle said.
Kieran’s just stringing you along, filling your head with false hopes and delusions of saving Quinn.

Don’t listen to him
, Quinn jumped in.
What Kieran is saying makes sense.

Oh, really?
Kyle responded.
Cave cats will bring you back from the dead?

She wanted to tell them to shut up, but it was pointless. The voices in her head wouldn’t stop no matter what she did. Only the drugs the doctors at the asylum had given her had blocked them out, and even those didn’t work anymore. Not after she got her powers back. She felt helpless and lost. If only there was a way to verify at least part of Kieran’s mad story. That’s what she needed, some way to tell if he was selling her truth or delusion.

The idea hit her like a thunderbolt. In the room in her mind, she looked up. While Kyle and Quinn sparred with the Horseman watching, the banshee nodded at her. Kate felt a mirthless smile form on her face. There was a way to put this to the test, to know if this could be done. She stood up.

“I have to go,” she said.

Kieran and Tim looked alarmed.

“Kate, the police are looking all over for you,” Tim said.

“Uh, don’t you think we should keep planning?” Kieran added.

The two men shared a worried look, which only served to anger Kate further. Quinn’s murderer and her former boss were sharing some kind of bond, and she was left out in the cold. They said they were trying to help her, but she couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

“The police are useless,” Kate said. “And before we plan, I need to do something.”

She opened the door and left without another word. She didn’t need to explain herself to them. She had enough trouble telling the voices in her head what she was up to.

Kate still heard them talking, however, while she stood on the front stoop.

“That’s not a good sign,” Kieran said. “You have any idea where she’s off to?”

“I just hope it doesn’t involve murdering anyone,” Tim replied.

Kate disliked listening to others talk about her, but she was unable to walk away.

“We have a very big problem,” Kieran continued. “I hope you realize that.”

She couldn’t hear it, but she could sense Tim nodding in agreement.

“If she can’t find a way to silence the voices in her head, this plan doesn’t stand a chance.”

*****

The Headless Horseman rode through the streets of Leesburg once more. It noted with satisfaction that the town was deathly silent. It was past 3 a.m. and if the Horseman had sensed anyone out this late, he would have assumed they were up to ill intent. And that would have only distracted him.

He rode down Route 15 for several miles, before breaking off across a field to the right. Out here, the trappings of civilization began to fall away. There were no more parking garages or crowded outlet stores. The Horseman rode through old Virginia, looking much the way it had two hundred years prior. The Horseman sped like a midnight blast through woods and over streams.

When he arrived in Middleburg, he rode past the Red Fox Inn and other landmarks before heading to the Middleburg Baptist Cemetery.

The Horseman stopped in front of the gate, his steed kicking up dirt as it came to an abrupt halt. There was a flash of light and the ancient figure and his horse disappeared, replaced by Kate Tassel.

She almost feared entering the graveyard, not because of what she planned to do, but because of all the memories entombed in this place.

Her mother, Susan Blakely, was buried here, murdered more than a decade earlier by the killer who had now taken up residence in her head. She had also first talked with Quinn here, sitting on a bench looking over the small pond. A year later, they had met up and made love in that same spot, oblivious to whether they would be spotted. She smiled at the memory, the first genuine smile she had experienced in a long time.

Of course, Quinn — the real Quinn, not the ghost in her head — was still here. They hadn’t let her out of the asylum long, and she could barely remember the actual ceremony, but they had buried Quinn here on a chilly November day last year. In one of her brief moments of clarity, Kate had asked for him to be buried right near the memorial bench where they had first talked. She didn’t know she was asking the impossible, that no one was buried here anymore. But Tim had quietly pulled some strings and made it happen.

Kate took a deep breath, turned into the banshee, and walked through the iron gate. Once on the other side, she became herself again, and walked in a straight line to Quinn’s grave.

She hadn’t been back since the funeral. Most of that time she had been locked up, but even since she’d escaped, she couldn’t bring herself to return here. In her heart, she knew why. Coming here was admitting the one thing she hadn’t been able to fully comprehend: that Quinn O'Brion was really dead.

She still heard his voice in her head; she had even assumed his identity and form, all in an effort to keep him alive.

Only now, arriving at his grave site, did she realize how foolish that was.

His grave was plain, inscribed with his name and the dates of his life. But Kate was shocked to see a small statue perched just behind the headstone. It was a small girl with her arms out to either side. She recognized the statue from the cover of one of Quinn’s favorite books,
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.