Mysteries of Holt House - A Mystery (33 page)

“Follow Jem,” Mike said. He and David
ran after the dog.

Lucy and Josh pulled in beside David’s
truck, finding the truck door open. Lucy began to cry.

“You stay here,” Josh said.

“No! I’m coming with you.”

Josh could tell there was no point in
arguing with her. “Hurry up then.”

As Lucy and Josh entered the house they
heard a piercing scream. Mike and David heard it, too. It sounded like it came
from far off in the distance.

Jem made a snorting noise as his four
legs moved with the precision of a machine and he ran into Sharon’s room.

“I’ll get the flashlight from my room,”
David said.

“Hurry,” Mike begged.

Jem had already started into the open
cavity in the wall behind Sharon’s bed.

“I saw the lights were out so I brought
the flashlight from the car,” Josh said, as he ran in bringing light. His gun
was in his pocket, but he didn’t mention that.

“Good! Let’s go.” David returned just
at that moment and they all followed in Jem’s tracks.

Chapter
Forty-two

I lost time by moving Sharon, but I had to
do it. I couldn’t take the chance he’d find her and kill her. Life didn’t seem
to mean anything to him.

I stopped to catch my breath. I was moving
too slowly, but it was so dark. Suddenly I heard him, only a few feet away.

“Amelia,” he said in a sing song voice. “I
took my shoes off so you wouldn’t hear me. You were always out to get me, but,”
he giggled, “I’m going to get you instead.”

He reached out and grabbed me, this time
with a vice-like grip. I couldn’t get away.

“Ted,
please
listen to me,” I
begged. “Hear what I’m saying.
I’m not Amelia. Please!
”

“This time I’ll make sure you’re dead,” he
said.  He didn’t seem to have heard what I said to him. He put his free
hand on my shoulder, sliding it toward my neck. I screamed.

“No one will hear you,” he said. “I made
sure of that. I chose my time carefully. There’s no one here.”

I knew he was wrong. I’d heard something,
but I couldn’t identify the sound. The blood was pounding in my ears. He hadn’t
heard the noise and he moved his hand from my shoulder to my neck. Taking his
other hand off my arm, he moved it to my throat and began choking me, cutting
off my air supply. I tried to knock his arms away, but I couldn’t loosen his
grip.

Slowly, slowly, he kept tightening his
hands around my neck. He wanted to make it agonizingly slow. I couldn’t
breathe. It was dark, but it seemed like things were turning even blacker. I
needed to cough but I couldn’t.

Through the haze of my mind, I heard a thud,
and his grip was broken. I thought I heard growling and voices as I gasped for
breath. Jem began barking. He’d come to rescue me. The voices were closer.

I heard a cracking noise, like the sound
of a firecracker. Ted’s voice. He was infuriated, making sounds, not saying
words. Another crack, and something heavy landed next to me. My throat and head
throbbed, and that was the last thing I knew.

***

Waking up in the hospital, I looked around
and saw Sharon in the next bed.

“What happened?” Wasn’t
that
an
original question?

“You missed most of it,” Sharon replied.
“How do you feel?”

“My throat and neck hurt, not to mention
the rest of my body. How about you?”

“Broken leg and cracked rib. No concussion
though, but I’ve got stitches in the back of my head. He pushed me down the
stairs.”

“Poor baby.” I coughed.

“It was Ted,” Sharon said.

“I know.”

“We learned more about him. Do you want to
hear it now, or do you want to wait until later?”

“I want to know now.”

Sharon pushed a button and her bed raised
so she was sitting up a little. “Okay, but it’s a long story. As a child he
seemed normal, but somewhere along the line he crossed over. Just plain freaked
out. He couldn’t relate to other people. He became more and more violent. The
older he got, the more paranoid he became. He thought everyone was out to get
him. It finally got so bad that the Holts moved to Holt House and virtually
kept him a prisoner in his home, which
really
pissed him off, and
convinced him that his parents were out to get him, too.

“Actually,” she continued, “they were
afraid he’d hurt someone if they didn’t remove him from society. Well, as it
turned out he did hurt someone. He pushed his father down the stairs. Sound
familiar? He said his father had been spying on him.”

“He seems to have a penchant for pushing
people. Down the stairs, out of windows,” I said.

“Yeah. Anyway, the housekeeper found Mr.
Holt. Mrs. Holt had driven into Waverly for a doctor’s appointment and the
housekeeper had been napping, but the noise woke her. Mr. Holt’s leg was
broken, just like mine. The housekeeper called Mrs. Holt at the doctor’s office
and he agreed to come back with her to treat the leg at Holt House. I guess
doctors used to make house calls.” She paused as she glanced up at the door.

“Go ahead,” Mike said. He walked in and
pulled up a chair next to my bed.

“Okay,” Sharon said. “Anyway, to make a
long story short, the Holts decided they couldn’t handle him anymore, so they
hired a couple of guys, big guys, to transport their son to a mental hospital
in California.”

“Where did you get all this information?”
I asked.

“Josh got most of it from Rose Mental
Hospital,” Mike supplied. “They said that at first they couldn’t handle him at
all without sedation, but after a while he started to respond to treatment,
they thought. He was crafty, playing their game and biding his time. He hated
the hospital, and for some reason he blamed his mother for everything. It was
irrational reasoning, but he thought she hated him and wanted to get rid of
him. Of course, you have to remember, he didn’t think there was anything wrong
with himself. He was positive his parents just wanted him out of the way.”

“After he had the doctors convinced he was
cooperative and responsive to treatment, he began making plans to escape,”
Sharon said. “Which is exactly what he did after spending about five years in
the hospital.”

“He escaped after strangling a male nurse,
and hid out in the secret passages of Holt House from what we can put together,”
Mike said. “That’s an educated guess, actually. We don’t think his parents even
knew he was there.”

“Where are you getting these educated
guesses from?” I asked.

Mike was quiet for a moment. “Kelly, Ted
is dead. He rambled a lot before he died so we were able to draw some
conclusions. He thought he was talking to Amelia. We also talked to his doctor
in California.”

“I see.” I didn’t ask any questions about
what he said.

“He finally showed himself to his
parents,” Sharon said, “and he threatened them, scaring them so bad that they
ran. Apparently, that’s when they were killed, while they were leaving the
house to get away from him.

“The doctor said he believes Ted felt
cheated,” she continued. “He hadn’t had his revenge against his mother, at
least not the kind of revenge he wanted. He kept up the house though, and
eventually you showed up. You must have been a dream come true for Ted, because
you looked enough like Amelia to be her sister. He watched you out the window
the day we first came out to the house for the auction. When you bought the
house he set his plan into action, biding his time. He was going to rid the
world of his mother, his idea of the ultimate evil, once and for all.”

“You guys are giving me chills,” I said.
“This is so bizarre. I mean, it really was just a coincidence that we went to
the auction in the first place.”

“Maybe,” Sharon said, “but it seems like
too much of a coincidence, plus it almost cost us our lives.”

“Well, we certainly didn’t know I looked
like Amelia. Although, I have to admit that once I saw her portrait, I became
almost obsessed with the house.”

“I know,” Sharon said.

“He was so quiet, so clean and neat. I
just can’t picture his as a murderer,” I said. “He seemed almost shy.”

“That’s one of the things his doctor told
Josh over the phone last night,” Mike said. “He said, and this is a
psychological thing, that the reason Ted was such a neat freak was because he
was trying to wash away his guilt. It made him feel dirty, I guess. I don’t
understand it all, but underneath all his hatred, there was a tremendous guilt,
and the guilt made him hate even more. Sort of a never-ending circle of guilt
and hate.”

“Did anyone find out why he took all the
little things from our rooms?” I asked. “That’s something I’m curious about. It
doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It was sort of a cover, I think. He was
trying to lead us away from himself. Mr. Perfect wouldn’t steal, right?” Sharon
folded her hands in her lap.

“Now, for the big question,” I said. “How
did Ted die?”

Mike leaned forward. “When Josh and I
entered the passage, Jem had knocked Ted away from you. He was trying to
strangle you.”

“I remember that well,” I said shakily. I hugged
myself, not wanting to remember but unable to block it out. My head was rising
out of the sand, a little too late.

At the sound of the door, I looked up and
saw David enter the room. He walked over to stand by Sharon.

“Well, Ted kicked the dog and went after
you again. Josh warned him to stop and Ted pulled a knife out of his pocket. I
don’t know if he planned to use it on you or Jem.”

“A knife?” I said in surprise.

“Yeah, a knife. Jem snuck up behind him
and leaped at him, and David and I rushed him, but Jem’s attack catapulted him
in Josh’s direction. I guess he figured if he couldn’t get you, he might as
well take out whoever he could. So he lunged at Josh with the knife. Josh had
his pistol in his hand and shot him, but Ted kept coming. Josh had to shoot him
again.”

“What happened?” I asked, finally noticing
bandages on Mike’s hand.

“Ted got one good swing in with the knife
before he fell. I happened to be in the way. You have to remember the tight
space this all took place in.”

“From what we understand, for a while he
was taking medication while in the hospital, and he really did seem better,”
Sharon said. “But then he started faking it and quit taking the meds.”

“We found a piece of paper in his dresser
drawer last night. It had two last quotations written on it, but I think he
meant them for himself, not for you,” David said.

“What were they?” I asked.

Sharon handed Mike a piece of paper, which
he passed on to me.

The first one read:

“
He beareth his misery best that hideth
it most.

Gabriel Harvey

Marginalia”

The second one, the one that tore me
apart, read:

“
Come death, and snatch me from
disgrace.

Bulwer-Lytton

Richelieu Act iv, sc. 1”

I read them and cried.

“He must have been going through a hell that
we can’t even imagine,” I said. “These quotations make me feel like on the
outside he was completely out of it, but on the inside he must have known how
wrong he was. I’m no psychiatrist, it’s just that that’s how
I
feel
about it.”

“I would tend to think a lot of mentally
ill people probably do go through something like that,” Sharon said quietly.
“It’s hard enough to get through life without thinking everyone is out to get
you, that everyone hates you. What torture his mind must have gone through.”

“Did anyone remember to pick up Marion?” I
asked.

“Only you would think of that,” Mike said.
“Yes, Josh took care of it.”

Mike moved to the edge of the bed and sat
down, holding my hand. I looked out the window and saw a soft, white mist. It
was still snowing.

Epilogue

I stayed in the hospital overnight for
observation and was released the next day. Sharon was there for two days longer
than I was, and then she came home, too.

Mrs. Banks returned from New York just
long enough to gather her things together, saying she’d decided she truly
missed New York and her old friends. She decided to go back and pick up the
pieces there. My gut feeling was the house scared her.

J.T. said country life wasn’t what he
expected, and he moved back into town. Apparently, he and Richard English had
become better friends than any of us had realized. He confided in me the day he
moved out that it just wasn’t any fun without Richard there to tease, and he
really missed him, even knowing what a coarse person he was.