The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) (11 page)

“Because of Bingham?”

“Yes,” Lorenzo replied. “He’s waiting in those duplicate
houses. He’ll take more of you if you try again.”

“But you said you merely ‘dropped out,’ wasn’t that how you
put it? You just left, and were safe. That’s exactly what we all shall do. If
Bingham appears, we will all end the séance. It should work!”

“It won’t work,” Lorenzo said. “Forgive me, Henry, but you
don’t share the gift I have. The way I enter and leave the other side, you
don’t have that skill. Bingham will take one or more of you while you’re in the
séance, before you can shut it down. You can’t proceed. More will be lost if
you do.”

“Please, Henry,” Emma said.

“Now you’ve upset my wife,” Henry said, standing and pacing.
“If you can reach the other side, then we can too. Perhaps you have a gift,
perhaps you don’t. As a group we’ve been successful in reaching the spirits,
and I can’t see why we wouldn’t be able to pierce the veil if we tried.”

“I don’t doubt you’ll pierce the veil,” Lorenzo replied. “It’s
already thin enough here, due to all the séances over the years. I’m saying
that once you do, you won’t be able to protect yourself from attack.”

“I’ve survived so far,” Henry said.

“Pure luck,” Lorenzo replied. “Bingham just didn’t happen to
pick you.”

“Perhaps it’s because he knows I’m the leader of this group!
Perhaps he fears me! Exoneration would come in very handy right now, Lorenzo,
and if I can obtain that by piercing the veil and discovering what you have
discovered, I shall do it of my own volition.”

“Henry!” Emma pleaded, but Henry left the room, disappearing
deeper into the house.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said, turning to Lorenzo.

“See if you can persuade him,” Lorenzo replied.

“I’ve always tried to be supportive of him and his pursuits,
but things seem to have become much more sinister lately. The disappearances
have brought suspicion upon us, and I rarely receive the time of day from the
sisters in the ward now. I was hoping he’d curb his interest, but it looks as
though what you’ve told him has rekindled it.”

“For that, I apologize,” Lorenzo replied. “I did not
anticipate he’d react this way.”

“He shouldn’t do it; it is dangerous, isn’t it?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“I will try to stop him. But he is the master of this house,
and if he becomes determined, I’m afraid I may not be able to deter him.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know,”
Lorenzo said. “I’d like to come back tomorrow, and try again, if you don’t
mind.”

“Is it safe for you?”

“I think my approach might be the only safe way to explore
what is happening here,” he said, rising to leave. “I have to get back home.
I’m afraid I’ve been gone longer than promised.”

“You’re welcome to come tomorrow,” Emma replied, rising and
escorting Lorenzo to the door, leaving it open as he left, until he reached his
wagon and pulled out of the yard. He could see the worried look on her face
even from that distance, and hoped Henry would come to his senses.

Obligations at home caused Lorenzo to reach the Blackham mansion
later in the afternoon the next day. He could tell something was wrong long
before he pulled his wagon off the road; Emma, seeing him coming in the
distance, had run out of the house and was waving hysterically for him. He
jumped off his wagon and ran to her.

“What is it?” he asked. She fell into his arms, sobbing.

“Thank God you’ve come!” she said, pulling her emotions back
so she could communicate. “We need your help, desperately!”

“Is it Henry?”

“Yes,” she said. “Come inside, quickly!”

Lorenzo ran to the house, Emma right behind him. He burst
through the front door and into the living room, and saw the others, several
remaining members of their séance group, assembled around the table in the
central chamber. Heavy curtains had been pulled over the windows to make the
room dark, but the gas light was turned on, fully illuminating the room. Around
the table sat Henry, Langford and Jonas Orton, Espy Farnsworth, and two others.
They were all slumped over the table, as though they had fallen asleep.

“I came downstairs after more than an hour, and found them
like this!” Emma said. “I can’t revive them. What’s happened to them?”

“Do you have salts?” Lorenzo asked, walking to Henry and
reaching for the man’s wrist, to feel for a pulse.

“I’ve tried that already,” Emma replied. “It didn’t rouse any
of them!”

“Are your children still at school?”

“Yes, for another hour.”

“Good. If they are still asleep like this then when your
children arrive, make sure they don’t see it.”

“Dear God!” Emma said, raising her hand to her mouth. “Can
you do anything to help them?”

“I don’t know,” Lorenzo replied. “But I will try. I am going
to do what I did yesterday. I’ll sit here at the table with them, and enter a
trance.”

Emma was immediately upset at the idea.

“I believe it is safe for me,” he assured her. “I have skills
the others do not have, which is why I warned your husband not to proceed.
While I’m in the trance, I want you to be out of the house, for your own safety
and to ensure that you catch your children coming home. No one must enter the
house until I’ve finished. Can you arrange that?”

“Certainly,” she said. “I’ll work in the front yard. I’ll be
able to see the children coming that way.”

“Good,” Lorenzo replied, sitting at the table. “We’d better
get started. I don’t know if time is of the essence in this, but we’d best
proceed without delay.”

“I’ll go,” she replied, turning to walk away. Then she
stopped, and turned back. “Lorenzo?”

“Yes?”

“Please help my Henry if you can. Please.”

“I will try,” he replied, entirely unsure if there was
anything he could do to help.

She turned again and left. When he heard the front door
close, he tried to relax and let his eyes shut. The proximity of the comatose
bodies around him added an unsettling air as he drifted into the River.

The monochromatic colors of the house appeared before him,
and he rose from his chair. The bodies of the others still surrounded him at
the table, but he could sense nothing else of them. He started searching the
house as he’d done before, and came up empty.

Then he went to the kitchen door and opened it. Inside was
another front entryway.
The second house
, he thought,
just as
yesterday
. He entered it and walked into the living room.

Something’s different,
he thought.
The curtains are drawn. There are no
coats on the coatrack.

This is not the same house I inspected yesterday.

As he moved around the table, he heard talking — a voice he
recognized.
That’s Jonas!
he thought, and hurried to the kitchen. Jonas
was standing at the door to the back yard, talking with someone.

“Jonas?” Lorenzo called.

Jonas turned, and a huge smile of relief appeared on his
face. “Lorenzo!” he replied. “Thank God you’ve come! We’re trapped!”

Jonas stepped away from the doorframe and there was Langford,
his brother, standing on the other side of it in another copy of the house.
Lorenzo could see the front entryway beyond.

“Lorenzo!” Langford called, almost hysterically.

“Langford is upset,” Jonas said to Lorenzo. “He says he saw
Espy murdered. By Bingham.”

Lorenzo walked to the door. Langford was highly agitated and
anxious, his eyes red from crying. “What did you see?” Lorenzo asked him.

“I’m not going back there!” Langford cried.

Lorenzo crossed the threshold into the entryway where
Langford stood.

“My God, Langford!” he heard Jonas say behind him. “Look!
Lorenzo was able to come in! He walked right through!”

Lorenzo turned to look at Jonas. “You cannot enter?”

Jonas pressed his hand up against the air of the threshold.
Lorenzo saw the flesh of Jonas’ palm flatten as it came into contact with some
force.

“I’m trapped in here, and he’s trapped in there!” Jonas said.
“He’s been here with me for the last several minutes, ever since he saw
whatever it is he saw. It has shaken him to the core.”

Langford was grabbing Lorenzo by the arms. “You got through!
You can save us!”

“Where’s Espy?” Lorenzo asked.

“Through there,” Langford said, pointing down the hallway
that ran by the stairwell. “In another kitchen. I saw him attacked. There was
blood!” Langford was crying as he talked, making it difficult for Lorenzo to
understand exactly what he was saying.

“Can you show me?” Lorenzo asked.

“No!” Langford replied. “I’m not going back down there! I’m
staying here with Jonas!”

Lorenzo turned to leave Langford and walk down the hallway.

“Where are you going, Lorenzo?” Jonas called.

“I’m going to find Espy,” Lorenzo replied, without turning
around.

“Be careful!” Jonas called. “And please come back!”

Lorenzo walked down the hallway, reaching the stairs landing,
and turned left to proceed down the perpendicular hallway that led to the outer
door at the end. He kept his eyes peeled for Bingham, ready to drop out of the
River if he saw him.

Once he reached the end of the hallway, he opened the door.
There was another kitchen.
The fourth copy,
he thought. He drifted in,
and saw on the floor a long streak of blood, as if some violence had happened
and a body had been dragged out of the kitchen and into the central room.

If Bingham has captured Espy, as Langford said, I don’t want
to come upon him. It’ll alert him to me, and make it hard for me to come back
without him waiting for me.

He turned and left the fourth house, returning to Langford.

“He’s right, something happened in the next kitchen,” he said
to Jonas. “Tell me again what you saw, Langford. Langford!”

Langford slowed his sobbing and spoke. “Espy and I were
speaking through the doorway. He was trapped on his side, just as Jonas and I
are separated here. Bingham came up behind him, and pulled him to the ground.
He sunk his teeth into Espy’s neck, and then strangled him, right there on the
kitchen floor. I ran.”

“Dear God,” Jonas said. “Did you see it, Lorenzo?”

“I saw the results of it. I didn’t see Espy or Bingham. The
body was dragged into another room.”

“Help us!” Langford began to sob again. “He’ll come for me
next!”

“Calm yourself, Langford,” Lorenzo said. “Your cries might
summon the monster. Be silent.”

Langford stifled his sniveling, and Lorenzo walked back into
the kitchen where Jonas was standing.

“Tell me what happened today,” he said to Jonas. “The whole
series of events.”

Jonas took a breath and held it as he recalled the day, then
he expelled the air and began. “Henry contacted us last night, and said a
solution may be imminent. He wanted to conduct a séance in secret today, so he
scheduled it for a time in the afternoon, when the Sheriff and the people in town
would not think we’d meet. Several of us arrived clandestinely, and Henry
explained we’d be trying to create an intense focus upon the multiple houses
that he’d learned were the source of the problem.

“We sat at the table and began. He repeatedly encouraged us
to focus on that single issue, and we concentrated until our minds ached. There
was a moment when I felt things were ripping, as though we’d pierced through,
and I found myself able to leave my body. Langford, Espy, Henry — they all
seemed able to do it, too. Henry took off within the house, exploring, and was
gone. Langford and I explored together.

“We went through several houses, mystified by them. I recall
wondering if they would just go on and on, like reflections between two
mirrors, when I found I couldn’t progress any further. This unseen barrier
stopped me. Langford had been walking ahead of me, and he was able to pass
through, but I couldn’t. And Langford couldn’t come back. Langford tried going
to the other end of his house, to see if anyone was there. He told me he found
Espy, similarly trapped. Then he saw…well, he told you.”

“I don’t understand,” Lorenzo replied. “You said you walked
through many houses before becoming trapped?”

“Yes.”

“How many, do you recall?”

“Three or four.”

“Did you go upstairs in any of them? Did you see any sign of
Abraham? Or Jacob?”

“No, I didn’t go upstairs, and I didn’t see any one.”

“I’m going to check on something,” Lorenzo said, turning to
leave.

“Don’t leave us!” Jonas called. “Please help us get out of
here!”

“Stay quiet until I return,” Lorenzo replied. “Noise may
attract Bingham.”

He saw a panicked look cross Jonas’ face, and he left the man
in the kitchen. He walked through the central room, around the table, and to
the front entryway, where he turned to proceed to the stairs.

Once in the upper hallway, he walked to the master bedroom,
where he’d seen Abraham hanging the day before. He opened the door, expecting
to see the putrefied, swinging body — but the room was empty.

Then, even through the solid walls of the well-built Blackham
mansion, he heard the screams from downstairs. It was Langford.

He rushed back down. Jonas was emerging from the kitchen, a
look of horror upon his face. He held his hand to his throat, as though he was
holding back vomit.

“Run elsewhere in the house and hide!” Lorenzo said, and
Jonas stumbled away.

He turned into the kitchen, and could see movement in the
room beyond, the front entryway of the house Langford was trapped in. He moved
slowly and quietly, trying to position himself so he could see what was
happening without giving himself away.

Langford had been pulled back to the hallway by the stairs,
where it was darker. Lorenzo strained his eyes to see what was happening there.
He heard ripping and tearing. Langford was now silent.

Then two eyes appeared in the darkness, looking up and at
him. Wide, wild eyes. Bingham.

Lorenzo felt the fear race down his spine as though someone
had drawn an ice cold pick over his back. He dropped from the River.

After the exhale of a deep breath, he opened his eyes. The
bodies slumped on the table, the drawn curtains. He was back with the living.

Some of them might not still be living,
he thought.

He rose, and walked around the table, checking each body for
signs of life. Langford and Epsy had no heartbeat, while the others were still
breathing.

“Dear God,” he spoke aloud. “Dear God.”

He walked outside, finding Emma. As she looked at him he
could tell she was searching for some indication of hope on his face. He was
unable to summon it.

“We must reach the Sheriff,” he told her, “if for no other
reason than to secure our own innocent place in this. Langford and Espy are
dead.”

“Henry?”

“He lives, but I fear it may not be for long. The same with
the others. I will go for the Sheriff. When your children arrive home, send
them with messages to all the spouses, with urgency.”

He gave Emma the best look of reassurance he could under the
circumstances, and ran for his wagon.

▪
▪
▪

Lorenzo twisted in bed, trying to sleep, but his brain
wouldn’t let him. The events of the past two days kept replaying in his mind,
and no amount of warm milk had led to any relaxation.

He felt the Sheriff wanted to put him in irons the day
before, when they’d explained what happened. Emma’s testimony that Lorenzo
hadn’t been a participant in the séance, but had only arrived after, was what
had saved him from imprisonment. He also suspected that his father’s reputation
in the church may have played a role in convincing the Sheriff of Emma’s
truthfulness. Many times in his life Lorenzo had received deference due to his
father’s apostleship.