Love Everlastin' Book 3 (21 page)

Encountering Agnes on three
occasions had not helped to ease his confusion. She refused to say
anything to him, but then, she didn't have to. He could read her
disappointment, her anger, and her burgeoning grief over her
separation from her son, in her watery blue eyes. He and Agnes had
not had a refined or amicable relationship during most of the years
she'd taken care of the house. But toward the end, shortly before
last Christmas Eve, they had grown fond of each other and united
for Roan, Laura and the boys' sakes. It was all lost. Whenever she
looked at him now, he wanted to hide. Wanted to scream that it
wasn't his fault he was alive, and Borgie wasn't. So Lachlan found
solace in his Scotch. Found warmth, forgetfulness and forgiveness
in the amber liquid, and kept to himself until he could sort
through his alternatives for the future. He couldn't bring himself
to worry about Beth or his babies. Until he came to terms with his
life, he was no good to anyone.

Winston also preferred
solitude. Unlike the others, he didn't have the privilege of
wallowing in self-pity. His psychic core had been under assault
since the miraculous return of the previous laird and his American
lady. He was enduring more and more extraneous levels and degrees
of emotions, and it was all he could do to keep his own close to
the surface. He remained in his room most of the time. Reading was
futile. His brain was not willing to accept fiction, not when so
much was happening beneath the multi-rooftops of this house.
Sleeping was fatiguing. In lieu of his own dreams, he unwittingly
tripped into the others' nightmares. Night after night, all but the
babies spent their slumber in tormenting dreams. Laura's mostly
involved varying creatures trapping her in the basement, creatures
part human, part assorted animals. She would always awaken just as
she was about to be ripped apart by their claws and
teeth.

Roan's nightmares involved
falling off high places, from the tower to unknown cliffs. Each
time, he would stand at an edge, fighting for balance, but pitching
into air, and he would scream throughout the descent until, at the
moment before crashing, he would bolt up, awake.

Beth's dreams altered
between two very different themes. In one, her mother would be
climbing out of soft earth covering her grave, and she would be
condemning Beth for letting her suffer as long as she had. In the
other, a dark silhouette would hold her babies, one in each arm,
and the figure would be sliding backward away from her, backward
into infinite darkness, while Beth wept for her babies to be
returned. The latter distressed Winston the most. Probably, he
reasoned, because the infants were so helpless.

Lachlan often dreamt of his
headstone and just that. Intermittently, the date depicting his
death would become a wavering question mark. A winking, blinking,
taunting question mark. In the same way some feared death, Lachlan
feared life. It was the greater unknown and, in a bizarre way,
Winston could identify with the man's feelings to a certain degree.
Life was fraught with uncertainty and the knowing that eventually
the end would come. But in death, Lachlan hadn't feared an ending,
only a continuance without his Beth. In death he would have
forsaken anything to be with her. In life, insecurity created a
vast wall he couldn't bring himself to scale.

Kevin mostly dreamt of
snakes. Fat, huge snakes, which covered him in his bed, and
wouldn't let him go to the bathroom. Sometimes Winston wondered why
snakes. It seemed a horrendous nightmare, especially one as
repetitive as this one, for a boy of eight.

Kahl dreamt of headless
dolls pursuing him, and of Alby being lost within walls of fire, in
which Kahl tried to enter to find his youngest sibling. The dolls
Winston couldn't evaluate, but the fire was understandable. The
boys had nearly been victims to Viola Cooke's diabolical plot to
burn them in the house, then offer their spirits as a ready-made
family for Lachlan. Something Beth couldn't give him at the
time.

Alby's nightmares were the
most benign, although still scary to him. He would be sitting in a
small clearing in a jungle, where animated toy animals threatened
to bite him. Often Alby wept in his sleep, as did the other boys.
Sometimes, Winston went to them and remained sitting on their beds
until the nightmares passed.

But of them all, Deliah's
were the most disturbing. She was always alone and always in
darkness. Sometimes weeping. Sometimes silent. Sometimes calling
out his name. He couldn't sense anything threatening her. Not
extraneous, anyway. Her true terror came from within herself, a
void she couldn't fill, an emptiness that grew ever wider with
every dream. Each dawn, he told himself he needed to delve more
into her mysteries. He knew without doubt she was the nymph from
the fourth dimension. She was not the house, but she was somehow
connected to it. However, day after day past and he found it easier
to avoid her. His subconscious knew why, but his consciousness
wasn't ready to open that door yet.

Winston was relatively
certain the weather and the endless confinement were mostly
responsible for the frayed nerves in Baird House. Little did he
know that the turbulent emotions of the others blocked out
another's dreams. Dreams of stalking women and ending their lives.
Dreams of ending the world of its begetters.

* * *

The peafowls' shrill advent
of a new dawn, again awakened Winston. Groggily, he slipped from
the bed and padded barefoot across the cold floor. He relieved
himself in the bathroom, washed up, brushed his teeth, shaved and
combed his hair. More awake now, he donned a pair of Roan's jeans,
dark woolen socks, and a heavy blue jersey. His stomach growled as
he re-entered the bedroom. Another squall rent the air and he
muttered a curse at the birds. If he lived in this house the rest
of his life, he would never get used to the bone-chilling cries of
those pests.

As he stacked logs and
scrunched newspaper on the iron dog in the hearth, he thought about
his decision to leave Baird House once the weather permitted. Last
night, while lying awake, he realized there was nothing for him
here. He wasn't even sure anymore what he'd been looking for and
why he'd thought he could find it in this house. He no longer
morbidly dwelled on Rose's fate, and he no longer was opposed to
returning to work at the Shields Agency. All he'd really needed was
a vacation.

Deliah.

She bounded into his
thoughts like a great wave crashing on the shores of his awareness.
He scowled as he struck a wooden match along one of the bricks. For
a moment he stared into the flickering flame then lowered it to the
paper. He remained hunkered and absently watched as flames
gradually engulfed the wood. Rolls of warmth swept over him. He'd
always liked the smell and sounds of a roaring fire. As a child in
his parents' palatial home, he often curled up in front of one of
the hearths to read or daydream.

Deliah.

His scowl returned and he
straightened and walked to the foot of the bed. Impatiently, he
raked his fingers through his hair. He was determined not to think
of her. Not to succumb to the memories of their meeting in the
dream-garden, where he'd nearly made love to her.

Against his will, his body
tensed. An all-too familiar tightening in his groin sparked his
temper. He wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anything in his
life, and it irked him that he couldn't exorcize her from his
thoughts. But what his body so readily demanded, his mind refused
to accept. For all he knew, she was one of the solidly dead. Like
Lachlan and Beth had been. Like Agnes remained.

The fourth dimension
couldn't sustain a corporeal existence. Only the mind could visit,
and that had its limitations. He was now convinced that he hadn't
physically transported to her garden the first two times he had
encountered her. It was all dreams. Somehow, she possessed
abilities he couldn't yet fathom. But he would before he left the
estate. He would know everything about her and prayed the knowledge
would free him from her hold over him. If not, once he returned to
work, she would become just another memory locked away in the vast
storage of anomalies his mind sheltered.

Just one more
anomaly.
Just...one...more.

His stomach growled with
more ferocity. He was about to head out of the room when he felt a
strong compulsion to look out the window. Beyond the panes, he
could see nothing but a curtain of thick, downy snowflakes.
Gooseflesh rose up on his arms, but it was not cold-induced.
Something was beckoning to him from within that falling whiteness.
His mind detected soft weeping, so full of sorrow, his heart
skipped a beat. He was on the verge of tears, himself, and he
didn't know why, but he experienced a maddening compelling urge to
soothe the person's pain.

Without understanding what
motivated him, he quickly donned his shoes and tore out of the
room. He ran down the stairs to the first floor, turned left and
soon headed out the front doors. Winter's embrace shocked him, but
he went on, snow in areas knee deep and slowing his progress. By
the time he reached the rhododendrons bordering one side of the
driveway, he was so cold his teeth harshly, uncontrollably,
chattered. He hugged himself, but there was no warmth to be had in
the gesture. His chill-burned eyes, squinted against the white
glare, searched the land beyond the driveway. For long seconds, he
could see nothing to warrant the beckoning, but still he could not
bring himself to return to the house. The deepening sorrow was out
here. It filled the air as thoroughly as did the great
flakes.

And then he knew whose
sorrow had reached him.

"Deliah!" he bellowed, his
hands cupped around his mouth. "Deliah, where are you?"

Panic gripped him. Fear
yawned within his heart like a black hole opening in
space.

He trudged across the road,
the effort to hurry his gait in the deep snow, causing his leg
muscles to cramp in protest. When he came to the edge of the
ravine, he wildly scanned the infuriating whiteness for her. She
was here. Somewhere. He could hear soft, choking sobs. Then he saw
her. How, he wasn't sure, for she was as snow-clad as everything
else. But there she was. Sitting on the ground. Her arms about the
trunk of an oak and one side of her face pressed against the rough
bark.

Angry, worried and fearful,
Winston started down the slope. Twice he slipped and twice his
temper surfaced as he struggled back onto his feet. By the time he
reached her side, he was breathing hard and his heart was hammering
painfully against his He didn't touch her right away. Didn't dare
to. She was hugging the tree, tears spilling down her face, sobs
shuddering through her. He was in part relieved that she wasn't
naked this time. She was covered with a wool blanket, but that,
what he could see of her nightgown, and the fur-lined slippers
loaned to her by Laura, were soaked.

"Deliah?"

"I thought I heard them call
to me," she wept, hugging the tree more fiercely.

"Deliah, let me help you
back into the house."

He was reaching out for her
when her next words gave him pause.

"I canna bear the hurtin’,
Winston. Ye know wha' I mean. The emptiness. The grievin’ for wha'
canna be. Let me die here. I beg o' ye to leave me to
die."

He was angered and appalled
at the same time. "So life's a little tough, sometimes," he bit out
sarcastically, forcefully removing her arms from about the trunk.
"Quitter's never find peace, Deliah, and I'll be bloody damned if I
let you lay this on ma conscience!"

"No, Winston, please!" she
cried when he jerked her to her feet. "I belong wi' the
oak!"

"You belong wi' me!" he
shouted, then flinched when he realized the truth had surfaced,
launched from the depths of his subconscious where he'd kept it
hidden.

She continued to weep as he
led her to the road and beyond the rhododendrons. His grip on her
hand was unyielding, and he held the lead at the maximum distance
their outstretched arms would permit.

He led her beyond one of the
large, double, dark-stained oak doors and into the glass
greenhouse. Before venturing past the bird's-eye maple doors, he
pulled the blanket from her shivering body and shook the snow off
it. Just beyond the second set of doors, he hung the blanket on a
coatrack to his left and testily pulled her toward the
staircase.

A grim-faced Agnes came from
the dining room. Her hands were folded in front of her navy blue,
white polka-dot dress, and her mouth was set in a fine line of
disapproval. But to Winston's chagrin, the disapproval was of his
impatience with Deliah and he offered the ghost a scowl.

"Agnes, would you be kind
enough to bring a pot o' tea and two cups to ma room. If you're no'
o' a mind, then I'll do it maself, but it'll mean the lass will be
waiting on me as wet as she is."

His gruff tone caused Agnes
to stiffen defiantly, but she gave a curt nod and headed down the
hall in the direction of the kitchen. It was then that Deliah
tugged to free her hand of his hold. Winston turned to face her,
anger heightening the color in his cheeks and brightening the green
of his irises.

"You've pushed enough o' ma
buttons this morning," he growled low, determined not to wake the
others in the house. "Give me anymore trouble and I promise you'll
find yourself across ma knee and receiving the spanking o' your
life!"