House of Reckoning (12 page)

“Be quiet?” Conner said, jabbing him in the chest again. “You don’t tell me to be quiet. Get it?”

A blaze of agony exploded in Nick’s brain, and his vision abruptly cleared.

The flesh of Conner’s face was falling away in strips as blood ran down his neck and dripped onto the ground.

Elliot burst into flames, his mouth wide-open in a scream drowned out by the demons in Nick’s head. “Stop!” Nick yelled. “Stop it!”

“Shut up, loser!” Bobby Fendler shoved Nick hard to punctuate his words.

Now pieces of Bobby were flying off as if caught in some great wind, hanging like gory Halloween decorations in the naked branches of the leafless trees.

Meanwhile, Elliot Nash still burned, his flesh melting off his bones.

And Conner West’s tongue hung by a thread, flapping grotesquely with every word he spoke.

“Quiet!” Nick screamed, suddenly lashing out, flailing at the air around him with a viciousness that made all three of his tormentors step back. “Leave me alone! I don’t want to see this anymore!”

“Hey, cool it,” Conner said. “We haven’t done anything to you.”

Conner’s voice sounded like nothing more than warbling static to Nick, whose head felt like it would burst with the pressure of the shrieking voices he was hearing and the horrors he was seeing, even when he clamped his eyes shut. Now he put his hands over his ears and began turning slowly around. “Please, please, please,” he said, turning ever faster until he was whirling violently, as if under the impetus of some unseen force.

“Jeez,” Conner whispered, grasping Elliot Nash’s elbow. “Let’s get outta here—I think Nick’s about to take a dive over the edge for good.”

“Crazy,” Bobby Fendler said, but couldn’t resist a final shove at the spinning boy.

Nick lost his balance and tumbled to the ground, and his three tormentors stepped back, glancing around to see who might have been watching the scene on the football field. Then, seeing no one, they turned and fled.

Nick covered his head with his arms and pleaded in a choked voice that seemed lost in the cacophony of the demons in his head who were still screaming for their revenge.

The voices finally calmed.

Nick sat up, groped in his backpack for his knit cap and put it on his head, pulling it down to cover his freezing ears.

From the corners of his eyes he thought he could still spot scraps of Elliot Nash caught in the twigs of the trees, and for a moment he thought he saw blood still running in rivulets in the gutter in front of the bleachers.

But he could see real things again, too. Only a few steps away from the football field were houses and the sidewalk, and after a few blocks he would be home.

He stood up, brushed the dirt and gravel from his pants, and started homeward.

Her backpack stuffed with more books than she would have thought she could carry, Sarah paused on the sidewalk outside the school and
looked around for Nick. They hadn’t actually talked about meeting up after school, and even if he’d hung around waiting for her, she was late because of her meeting with Miss Philips. Still, when she didn’t see him, she felt a pang of disappointment that was almost as painful as the twinge that went through her hip with every step she took.

Well, maybe tomorrow.

She started along the sidewalk and was just passing one of the gift shops in the middle of the block on Main Street that faced the village square when something in the window caught her eye. It was a large—and way too colorful—map of Warwick, with all the historic buildings and churches prominently displayed, if not quite as prominently as the Chamber of Commerce-affiliated businesses that had contributed to the creation of the map.

She stopped to study it more carefully, located the high school, the Garveys’ house, and, of course, the shop in front of which she stood. At the edge of the map was the prison that held her father. And just a mile from where she was, on the shores of Shutters Lake, she saw something else.

The site of an old prison, which had apparently been replaced by the new one.

Sarah cocked her head, eyeing the small drawing of what had once been the warden’s mansion and was all that was left of the prison.

She cocked her head, looking at the drawing more closely as she realized it sort of resembled the house she’d drawn in art class.

The house she’d only seen before in the nightmares that sometimes haunted her. She frowned. The resemblance was definitely there, but how many big old stone houses were there in New England? Hundreds? Probably thousands. And in one way or another, they’d all have some similarities.

Then another thought occurred to her: Could that be the house Bettina Philips lived in?

Deciding the exercise would be good for her leg, she concentrated on the map, memorizing the streets that would take her to the old prison site. When she was certain she wouldn’t get lost, she set off down the sidewalk, came to the end of the block, and turned north. Then as the streetlights suddenly came on, she hesitated. But the sun was still shining and it wasn’t very far.

She had time.

Fifteen minutes later Sarah gazed up the long curving driveway that led toward Shutters. Ornate, rusted wrought-iron gates hung crookedly on their hinges, entwined with frost-covered bindweed. She shrugged out of her backpack and let it fall to the ground, then stretched her sore shoulders.

Gates were meant to keep people out. If she went farther, would she be trespassing?

But they weren’t closed, so maybe Miss Philips didn’t mind if people came up her driveway. Besides, she’d only walk far enough to get a look at the house.

She stashed her heavy book bag behind the gate and walked slowly up the drive, which turned out to be longer than she’d expected.

And then, as she came around one more crook in the drive, there it was. Bettina was right: it really did look abandoned. Its shutters hung as crazily as the wrought-iron gates at the bottom of the drive, and the gutters around the eaves drooped loosely, some of them hanging so far away from the roof they couldn’t have caught any water at all.

And all of them were bent and rusted.

Stones were missing from the walkways, and a big fountain in the front looked like no one had cleaned it out in decades.

The place really did look haunted.

Haunted, and strangely familiar
.

Sarah closed her eyes and pictured the art paper on her table and the brown pastel crayon.

She saw the image of a stone house, with an intricate roofline complicated by gables and shadows.

She opened her eyes and there it was, standing before her. Shabbier than she had drawn it, but still the same house.

A shiver crept up her arms, then the skin on her back was crawling, too.

She should leave before Bettina Philips looked out a window and saw her trespassing.

Then a black dog, the fur around its neck up and its head lowered, slunk around the corner of the house and crouched low to the ground, staring at her.

Sarah froze. The last thing she needed was to be confronted by a watchdog. If it jumped at her, she wouldn’t be able to fend it off before it knocked her over.

Now it started down the driveway toward her, moving very slowly, the strip of fur along its spine still raised, its head still lowered.

Sarah stood quietly, her breath loud in her ears, her heart pounding.

They both heard the slam of a car door, and the dog, startled, crouched, took one last look at her and vanished into the woods as quickly and silently as if it had never been there at all.

A car engine started.

Sarah stepped off the driveway and into the shadowy trees. The sun, very low in the sky now, shone right on the driver’s face, and Sarah saw her clearly as the car passed her. It was a lone woman, her hair bound severely to her head, but smiling as if she’d just heard something good.

Was this one of the gossiping women from town who passed rumors about Bettina Philips, then came to her for advice?

Sarah waited until the car disappeared around the first curve in the driveway, then emerged from the shelter of the trees and took one last look at the house.

Suddenly she wished she could see the inside. She could hardly even imagine how Bettina lived in that enormous house. Did she live there all alone or at least have some pets? Were the furnishings in as bad shape as the house itself?

A thin line of smoke now trailed out of one of the chimneys. Dusk was coming on, and Bettina Philips was building herself a fire.

Sarah realized she’d have to walk quickly to get home before dark and even then would have to tell Angie Garvey something about where she’d been.

The library—that was it. She’d just say she went to the library, and to keep it from being a lie, she’d actually stop there on her way home. And she wouldn’t say a word about Bettina Philips.

Not one word.

S
arah made her way along the frozen sidewalk as fast as she could, the cold of the Sunday morning making her hip ache with every step as she tried to keep up with the Garveys. Yet even walking as fast as possible, the family was well into the next block by the time she turned the corner and the Mission of God church came into view.

Sarah stopped dead in her tracks.

An icy chill—far colder than that of the late fall morning—filled her body as she gazed at the building that proclaimed itself the house of God.

But if it truly was God’s house, why did she feel an overwhelming sense of darkness and evil as she beheld the simple frame building adorned only by a tall steeple spiking into the sky?

“Come on,” she heard Tiffany calling, “keep up.”

But the dread that flooded over her was so dark that she felt like even the wrath of Mitch Garvey might be preferable to being drawn through the doors of that church.

“Sarah?” Mitch said, his voice sharp and his eyes boring into her so deeply she was afraid he might have heard her thought.

She put her head down and kept going, but the closer she drew to the church, the colder she felt.

And now she felt eyes watching her.

Evaluating her.

Condemning her.

She wanted to turn away and run, wanted to find someplace—anyplace—that would shelter her from the strange cold that was invading her.

But there was no place.

Besides, she told herself, you’ve survived worse. It’s only a church and there’s nothing to be afraid of.

The pastor, wearing a long white robe and a black stole embroidered in silver, stood on the front step, nodding to each of his parishioners as they streamed through the door.

Sarah’s palms went clammy as she waited, shivering, behind Zach and Tiffany on the step while Angie Garvey leaned in to the pastor’s ear for a private word.

The pastor’s eyes fixed on Sarah as Angie whispered, then he nodded, and one by one the Garvey family filed into the church. Mitch introduced her to Reverend Keener, but Sarah tried to evade both his gaze and the touch of his proffered hand until Mitch squeezed her elbow hard enough to hurt as the pastor’s cold fingers closed on hers.

She peered up at the minister’s thin, deeply lined face, and his ice-cold eyes pierced into her as if he were looking into her soul.

Looking into it, and hating what he saw.

“Welcome,” he said.

She drew her hand back and slipped it into her pocket, even though she had a feeling it would never be warm again. Then, as Mitch steered her to the doorway, Sarah balked. “I … I don’t feel well,” she said.

“Come on,” Tiffany said, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the small anteroom and into the sanctuary.

Light seeped in through two tall and narrow stained-glass windows that flanked the altar, their leaded panes casting a tangle of shadows onto a thin metal cross suspended over the altar.

Hanging on that cross was a skeletal Christ, his mouth sagging open in a perpetual moan of helpless agony.

Sarah shivered and lowered her eyes.

A low and throbbing chord of organ music rolled out of unseen speakers, and then the choir, clad in black robes, appeared through a
side door and took their places, sitting silently as Sarah followed the Garveys to their pew. She recognized some of the faces in the choir, which seemed mostly made up of the girls who sat with Tiffany in the cafeteria.

Now, as they had in school, they all turned their heads to stare at her.

Sarah took a deep breath, decided to ignore them, and glanced around to see if maybe Nick was here.

The church was filled, but Nick was nowhere to be seen.

But everywhere she looked, everyone seemed to be looking back at her.

And whispering to each other, their eyes remaining fixed on her.

She recognized some of her teachers, and the gym coach, and even the woman she’d seen in the car coming down Bettina Philips’s driveway.

That woman was sitting next to Conner West, one of Zach’s friends.

And they all knew who she was—the newcomer—and wanted to see her for themselves.

Some of them smiled at her, but their smiles felt cold, and even as they smiled, they kept on whispering.

Where is she from?

Who is she?

She’s the Garveys’ foster child
.

Her father is a murderer
.

Her father tried to kill her, too
.

She stays after school in Bettina Philips’s room
.

“Straighten up,” Angie whispered harshly, and Sarah jerked around, fastening her eyes on the back of the pew in front of her.

It’s only church, she told herself. It’s no big deal.

As if in response to an invisible signal, the entire congregation stood and opened their hymnals. Lagging behind the rest of the worshippers, Sarah pulled herself to her feet, found the hymnal, and tried to mouth the words of the two dark dirges that followed. Then the pastor took his place in the small pulpit high above the congregation and began to speak.

Sarah tried to follow what he was saying, but her mind kept drifting back to the little country church where all her old friends back
home were right now, singing joyful music, swaying together, smiling, and anticipating the great potluck feast that always followed Sunday services.