Gravestone (29 page)

65. Hell Is Here

When you’re running in the dark not knowing where you’re really going and feeling something scraping at the top of your head and imagining you’re hearing footsteps behind you, you can be as brave as possible but you’re still about ready to pee in your pants.

I hear something in front of me before I actually feel it. I slow down just as I crash against a wall.

For a second, while I’m on the ground, I fumble and try to turn the flashlight back on. My hands are shaking so badly I’m like a junkie holding a syringe. Finally I press the button.

Light. Just like that.

I wave it all around me like a deranged man.

There’s nothing down there. I’m at the end of the tunnel. A door about three feet tall is at the bottom.

I find the cell phone in my pocket.

Everything’s fine just stop imagining things Chris.

I feel the door and find a handle. It turns with ease.

I think I expected a dungeon or something like that. Instead, I’m walking through an ordinary—well, more like a nicely finished—basement.

The door opens up to a narrow, long, closet-like room that turns out to be a wine cellar. On both sides of the room, racks of wine bottles go from the floor to the ceiling. The door I came out of blends into the wall, not as if to hide it but more as if to keep with the decor of the room.

It’s not like he’s trying to hide this passageway.

But then again, I don’t know what he’s trying to do.

Once out of the cellar, I walk down a hallway and see a few other rooms—a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms. Then I enter an open area that appears to be a media room, with a gigantic flat-screen television on the wall and several couches around it.

Everything looks new and expensive and appealing.

I guess I never really thought I’d get into the house. But now that I’m here, I’m not exactly sure what to do. I think of calling Poe but then decide against it. I don’t want her barking in my ear.

I quickly survey the rest of the downstairs. A wet bar, a storage room with lots of stuff like golf clubs and skis and toys rich people have. I don’t find any horse heads or dead people or upside-down crosses.

Maybe I’m wrong about the pastor.

But that’s crazy. I’m definitely not wrong about the pastor. The question is what can I find on him. And how quickly I can do it.

I find a set of wide wooden stairs heading up. Again I think about calling Poe, but I don’t.

I start up the stairs, my legs feeling stiff and unsure of themselves.

This place is cold. Unusually cold. I shiver and hold the flashlight that I no longer need in my hands, ready to use it like a baseball bat. Ready to swing and then get out of here.

Upstairs is a home fit for a movie star. This could be Tom Cruise’s Carolina getaway. Everything looks and feels and smells new. Open windows reveal the woods in the distance. Everything looks neat and organized. Suddenly I realize what’s making me so uncertain. Besides the fact that I’m, like, breaking and entering.

There’s nothing personal in this house. Nothing at all.

Even Mom has a few pictures of the two of us around the house, along with the mementos of a life being lived. We’ve been here just a little over six months, and she has more in her home than Pastor Marsh has in his. There are no pictures of Marsh and his family, no piles of mail, no messy counters or pillows on the floor or random remote controls in the wrong places.

Everything seems too perfect.

I check the cell phone to make sure Poe hasn’t called. Then I go down a hallway past the kitchen. I find a study that looks more organized than a library. A guest room. A bathroom. A laundry room. Then another door leading to a garage.

When I open it, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The silver Mercedes SUV, the same one the blond was driving when she picked me up. If I needed proof, here it is. The woman driving the SUV,
this
SUV, was indeed Heidi Marsh.

I go back into the main room and again look outside. It’s still dark and raining.

I’m not going to find anything here. Nothing at all.

I wonder if the pastor even lives here.

All of this will be pointless if I don’t find something, anything. It’s still not noon and church hasn’t gotten out yet.
I have to go upstairs.

For a second I pause by the large stairway. There’s a loft area with rails that overlooks the main room below. I take a few steps and then hear a shriek above me.

Up in the loft, wearing a white robe like some wicked witch from Oz or Narnia, stands a woman with crazed hair and an even crazier face, opening her mouth as wide as it can go and screaming at me.

I’m so startled I miss a step and stumble backward.

From my position sprawled on my back I see that it’s the blond.

Heidi Marsh.

But this time I see eyes red and evil and makeup smeared and grotesque like a clown. She looks pale and sickly, at least from what I can see of her under the oversized robe she’s wearing.

“Get out of here, you devil! Get out, you whoremonger! You liar! Get out!”

She screams again, and I scamper like a wounded, wet dog. I bash my hip against a couch and search for the front door. At this point it doesn’t matter how I get out. I’m already in deep trouble.

Her howling is awful, and it doesn’t stop. I swing open the door, and as I glance back I see the woman on her knees, bony arms hanging on the rails of the loft like a prisoner in a concentration camp grabbing on to barbed wire.

“Hell is here, and he will not die!”

Those are the only words I can make out before I reach the driveway and rain falls on my face and I run and keep running and almost run right past Poe’s parked car.

66. Love

It takes me a while to stop hyperventilating or whatever my lungs are doing.

I tell Poe to drive.

Again a part of me wonders what would happen if we just drove and kept driving and kept driving far away from this place.

I finally manage to tell her what happened. I include everything, from the laugh I heard in the tunnel to finding a deranged Heidi Marsh demanding a housewarming gift.

“You think she’s crazy?”

“What’s your definition of crazy?” I ask. “A year ago I would’ve said yes, but I don’t know. I’m beginning to think
I’m
crazy.”

“I never see her with the pastor.”

“You’ve been watching?”

“I see him all the time. He’s everywhere.”

“She’s not right. But then again, if I were married to that weird pastor, I wouldn’t be right either.”

“We have to tell somebody.”

“No,” I say. “I’m already in trouble—she’s going to tell him.”

“You think he’ll believe her?”

I try and sort out all the thoughts going through my mind. This was definitely
not
what I was supposed to do. This was definitely not lying low.

“We need to see Jared,” I say.

“
You
need to see Jared. Don’t tell him about me.”

“Why?”

“The fewer people that know, the better.”

The rain keeps falling and Poe keeps driving and the sound of the windshield wipers hypnotizes me.

“What are you thinking?” she eventually asks.

When I exhale, I can hear my voice shaking. “This is only going to get worse.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. That’s the only way this can go.”

“Not everybody around here is evil. My parents—I know they’re not.”

“But you don’t trust them.”

“I don’t want them getting hurt,” Poe says. “That’s why I wanted something—I wanted proof.”

“Shall we go back and get a picture of Mrs. Completely-Wacked back there?”

“I don’t think we want to go back there anytime soon.”

“What if—no.” I can’t believe my own thought. “What if it’s a ploy. Some kind of game or something. Like a dare.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if—what if we did tell someone? Like the sheriff, who already doesn’t believe a word of mine. What if we brought them to this house and got there and saw Mrs. Marsh sitting there drinking an iced tea and dressed like a pretty pastor’s wife and smiling?”

“You’ve seen too many horror movies.”

“I haven’t seen enough,” I say. “Otherwise this might all make more sense.”

“I don’t think the pastor even lives there.”

“What?”

“The way you described it.”

“Maybe he’s a neat freak.”

Poe is thinking something, but I don’t want to push. It was her idea to go into the house. I’m afraid to hear any more ideas.

“Talk to your friend and tell him everything.”

“And?”

“And then we’ll go from there.”

“But don’t mention you.”

“No,” Poe says. “As far as they’re concerned, I still hate you.”

“Oh, so you don’t hate me anymore?”

She glances at me and then rolls her eyes. “I’d like to keep you around a little longer.”

“Just a little longer, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Until I finally escape once and for all.”

The stillness beats like a heart. I can’t tell if it’s the ticking of my alarm clock or the pumping of my heart or the pulse of fear.

In my room, I sit and think.

I’m doing nothing but thinking.

I’m not even listening to music.

I keep asking myself questions like
Do I tell Mom?
and
Do I leave altogether?
and
Can I trust Poe?
and
Can I trust [insert any other name here]?

A part of me answers with no and no and no and no.

I go to my desk and find the picture of Jocelyn and me, the computer printout. I want that back, that moment, that time, that snapshot. I want to go back in time and then escape. Escape with her holding my hand.

Another photo under some papers gets my attention. It’s the snapshot I found in my locker, the one where I’m in the sun, smiling, looking carefree and happy. I pick up the photo and study it.

It’s starting to fade. Not just the colors, but the entire shot. It looks like it’s been out in the sun too long and the image is beginning to blur and wash away.

But I never left it in the sun.

It’s symbolic. Next thing I know, it’s going to light on fire and I’m going to finally understand.

Yeah, Heidi, you’re right. Hell is here, and I’m stuck right in the middle.

Dad’s voice comes to me, but I bark back a curse to shut it up.

It’s followed by another voice. Iris’s voice. Proper and eloquent and sophisticated.

I think of something she said to me recently.
Want to know the most powerful thing in this world, Chris?

The secret of life, and she was going to tell me.

Of course I wanted to know.

“Love,” she said.

Of course that’s what she would say.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that wisdom.

“I think you’re the only person in the world that loves me now, Midnight.” I scoop her up and bring my nose to her soft little head.

It’s terrifying to think what’s out there, beyond this door and this cabin.

But holding this little thing that I love, this precious little life that reminds me of a love I believed I held—a sixteen-year-old’s notion of love—I think that maybe Iris is right.

Love is powerful. I just wish it could keep the demons out at night.