Red House (19 page)

“And now you’re stronger? And him too?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what just happened.” I was feeling a little seasick too.

“Oh, yeah,” Blake said. “We’re stronger.”

The back of the house had a wide veranda with a door that opened into a sunroom. Blake strode toward it. With a motion of his hand the door flung open and he walked right in unmolested.

Daniel cut his eyes at me. “I guess if we’re doing this, we better do it.”

“Yeah.” If there was no one inside that house I’d tell Julia to burn it to the ground and salt the earth under the ashes. But there were people in there, so we had to go. “Let’s do this.”

He raised the shotgun and I squared my shoulders. Walking the path of the ley line, we made our way to the door. With one last look at the night, first he crossed the threshold and then I followed. The door slammed shut behind us.

Chapter 15

The house was quiet. Too quiet, unnaturally so, like outside. The creak of floorboards, the gentle hum of appliances, perhaps a
wump
as air conditioning kicked on–all the normal things we should have been able to hear were missing. I looked at Daniel, trying to convey the question in my expression. He understood, shaking his head once. Even his preternatural vampire hearing detected nothing.

A murky darkness blanketed the house. Fumbling for a light switch, I was unsurprised to find it didn’t work. Blake held out a hand, palm up, and bounced it three times. At the third bounce a ball of silvery light emitted and hung in the air just above our heads, giving us plenty of light in a localized area.

“Looks like a disco ball,” Daniel said.

“Yeah, but it’ll be a big help as we work toward staying alive.” Blake topped his bad joke with a snicker.

“Both of you shut up,” I grumbled.

Traces of ectoplasm hung on the walls like old spider web. Smears of dark energy smudged across the surface of some things but there were no visible spirits in the room. I could feel energy everywhere though. The pure clean force of the ley line convergence radiated up from beneath the house. It warred with the dirty tang of angry ghosts littering the air, creating a suffocating melange that weighed heavily on my senses. Usually I could see better than I could feel. Tapping into the ley line seemed to have given me a boost.

Blake stood in the doorway leading out to the main hall. His aura still glowed brighter than usual but it looked somewhat calmer now. I hoped that meant he was exercising some control. “Do you feel anything?” I kept my voice low, just above a whisper.

“Two people upstairs. One’s a witch.”

“That’s probably Shelby.”

“Can you feel them? She’s broadcasting pretty loud.”

I shook my head. “When we get closer I should be able to.”

“You’re too dependent on your vision. You’ve got a lot more at your disposal, you need to use it.”

“Go fuck yourself.” I didn’t put a lot of vehemence in that. He was right of course, but I could still be a twelve-year-old about it. Daniel snickered. That should have made me feel better but it didn’t. “Come on, let’s go find them.”

I led the way, Blake behind me and Daniel bringing up the rear with his shotgun. As we passed the parlor the faint strains of music reached us. The flickering shade of a man playing a fiddle stood in the corner, the song cutting in and out and sounding as if it came from under water.

“
Leaning On The Everlasting Arms
,” Daniel said, identifying the song. “You reckon Haschall’s with the kids?”

“He could be in the walls for all we know,” I said before moving on.

The old hardwood gave a satisfying creak as I started up the stairs. A ghostly hand reached out of the floral wallpaper, fingers making an icy trail through my shoulder as I jumped away. Blake steadied me with a hand on the small of my back.

The small snuffling sound of crying could be heard coming from inside the first bedroom we reached. The door was ajar a couple of inches. I closed my eyes, trying to feel rather than see. An oily malevolence overpowered a faint hint of magic. I met Blake’s eyes first, then Daniel’s. We all understood what we had to do. We’d gone over it as we’d driven to the house. Fear bit and clawed at my nerves. Instead of trying to push it away I welcomed it, absorbing it into the energy I gathered within myself. Blake and Daniel took up positions on either side of the door. I nodded and Daniel used the shotgun to push the door open.

I crossed the threshold. Shelby hung in midair in the center of the room, arms slack, head bowed with her face hidden by the fall of her dark hair. I called her name, slipping one hand into a pocket. She raised her head, scarlet blazing from her eyes through the strands of her hair.

“Their blood fell like rain.” Her mouth moved but it wasn’t the voice I recognized from our phone conversation.

I didn’t take the time to look at Daniel and Blake to make sure they were ready. Pulling my hand from my pocket, I flung the mixture of graveyard dirt and hotfoot powder at the possessed girl. “I command you be gone from her!”

Power I’d soaked in from the ley line flared from my voice and my will, forcing Haschall out of the girl’s body and out of the room. His scream of rage filled my ears but a sense of triumph followed in its wake. Blake pulled Julia’s grandson from where he crouched under a table while Daniel caught Shelby as she dropped from the air. I slammed the door with just a thought and we all converged on the center of the room.

I said, “Shelby, can you hear me?” Daniel cradled her in his arms. Her pulse was erratic and her skin pale except for a nasty bruise on one cheek. I shook her gently and said her name again.

She began to stir, raising one hand to her head. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell us.” Her brother Tyler wrestled away from Blake and took up his previous position under a table against the wall. The boy curled into a fetal position, rocking slightly and crying. Blake looked at me, an eyebrow raised in question. I shook my head once. Better to leave the kid alone while we could than have to hold him down.

“Tyler!” Shelby scrambled away from Daniel, crawling to her brother’s side. “Get out of there, come on.” She reached for him. He cried out, kicking and flailing his arms. Shelby backed off and looked at me, her dark eyes almost angry with determination. “Can you get him out of the house?”

I pulled a container of salt from my bag and tossed it to Blake. He went right to work laying down a barrier in front of the doorway and the two windows.

“We’re getting you both out of here,” I said. “I just want to make sure you’re okay first.”

Looking at the upper walls, Blake addressed Shelby. “Are there air vents in the floor?” Uncomfortable memories of spirits making their way through my house via the ventilation system made me glad Blake remembered and thought to ask.

“Uh, yeah.” She rubbed her face, then pointed to a far corner. “One over there.” She pointed to another spot, this one next to a closet door. “There too.”

“Any other points of entry?” Blake circled both vents with salt with quick economical movements.

Shelby laughed, harshly and without humor. “The floor. The ceiling, the walls. Salt won’t keep that one out.”

I said, “What about the rest?”

She gave her brother a look. He was curled against the wall as far from her as he could get. Dark, ugly pain clouded her features, making her look far beyond eighteen. “Yeah, I think so.” She stood and joined the rest of us in the middle of the room, looking frightfully small between Blake and Daniel. “That one, though, nothing seems to work on him. Not for long, anyway. Are you Roxanne Mathis?”

“Yes.” I felt bad for not making that clear sooner but there really hadn’t been time. I introduced the men and asked her what happened.

“I was gonna try something. If it didn’t work I was going to call you again. My idiot brother followed me and he said he was going to tell Mom what I was doing. Not that he had the first freaking clue. Then we couldn’t get out of the house.” She shook her head, hands balled into fists at her side, pressing into her thighs. “He started coming after us.”

I wasn’t sure where to start. “What were you trying to do?”

“Did you look at the stuff I sent you?” I nodded. “Okay, so you know the history of the house. I think that maybe Susan McCrickard has been guarding the house. Either her or Ester, I’m not sure which. But I do think the house has a guardian spirit.”

“And they were swept out with the flood.” It made sense.

“The flood?” Shelby shook the tension from her hands and drew the sleek fall of her hair into a ponytail secured with a holder from her wrist. “Is that why there’s stuff here that has nothing to do with Maple Hill’s history?”

I gave her a quick rundown of my theory. She said, “Okay, so that makes sense. I thought something made Susan or Ester, whichever, leave for some reason. So I was going to try to call them back.”

I gaped. “You were going to try to summon something?”

“Ooh, she doesn’t like that,” Blake said, leaning slightly closer to Shelby.

Shelby glanced at him, looked at me, then looked back at Blake. Her eyes widened, dark pink staining her pale cheeks. Suddenly she was a teenage girl again as she took her first real look at Blake. It would have been adorable if we weren’t trapped in a house with a homicidal ghost. “But, um, well. You know. Ah.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

A quick shake of her head was all the answer I needed. “Good. No telling what you might have invited into the house.”

“But the ritual is for them. It’s to bring them home.”

“You have to be very specific when you summon anything or you could wind up with God knows what.”

“The spell is specific.”

“You said you don’t even know which one is acting as a guardian for the house. There might not be one at all.”

“There is, I know there is!”

Blake cleared his throat. “Considering the house’s history, at least during the Civil War, it would make sense there might be something keeping any spirit activity at bay. Otherwise there would be more anecdotal evidence of a haunting.”

Shelby pointed at his chest with both index fingers. “See. He knows I’m right.”

I gave Blake a look to let him know just how appreciative I was of his meddling. “Thank you, Agent Mulder.” To Shelby I said, “It’s too dangerous to summon something without being a hundred percent sure of what we’re summoning and that we can control it.”

“We have to. You don’t know what he’s like. What he does.” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch, her body vibrating with fear.

“We’re going to get you and your brother out of here before we do anything else.”

“He won’t let us go.” Blinking away tears, she shivered, hugging her torso. Blake placed a hand on her shoulder.

Daniel had been keeping quiet so far. I met his eyes, wondering what he was thinking. He said, “Get them out first, then come back in and deal with Haschall. End this tonight.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” I considered saying something to Blake or maybe trying to discreetly draw him away from the kid. He did not need a teenage fan club. Then I realized why he had his hand on her shoulder. Shelby’s trembling had stopped, as had her tears. She stood a little straighter, looked a little calmer. He’d been feeding her energy, helping her ground. I recognized it because he’d done that for me once during a dangerous situation.

“Shelby, I want you to talk your brother out from under that table. I don’t want us to have to drag him out. We’re gonna get you two out.”

Shaking her head she said, “He is not going to let us out.”

Daniel said, “These two are pretty powerful, okay. They got us in the house.”

“Actually, I got us in the house,” Blake interjected.

Daniel ignored him. “They’ll get y’all out. Just trust us.” He hefted the bottom of the shotgun from his shoulder to indicate me. “Trust her. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Fine, great. And I know what I’m talking about. He will not let us leave!” Shelby gripped the sides of her head with her hands, fingers digging into smooth dark hair and pulling it loose from its ponytail. “He’ll come back soon and it’ll happen again. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop him.”

I looked at Blake, asking him silently to ground her again. He nodded, reaching for her. Shelby was already on the move, too quick for him. “Get my brother out of here.” She was out the door before we could stop her.

“Wait, no.” I turned to Daniel, waving at the door. “Now would be a good time for some vampy speed.”

Abashed, Daniel disappeared. Blake crossed the room to kneel in front of Tyler. “Okay, kid, time to go.”

Tyler punched and kicked at him with surprising vehemence. “Keep her away from me.”

“We’re getting you out,” Blake said, dodging blows. “Your grandmother’s outside.” Tyler landed a lucky punch on Blake’s left eye, hard enough to leave a mark. “That’s enough.” He grabbed the kid’s ankles, dragged him out from under the table, and picked him up by his neck. Pushing him against the table and glaring down at him with the menace, Blake said, “I don’t care if you’re a kid. I will beat the shit out of you if you don’t calm the fuck down. Got it?”