The Haunting of Maddy Clare (35 page)

Matthew was so very still. I willed him to move, willed him to breathe. A sound escaped my throat, and a small convulsion wracked my chest.

The hard prod of the gun in my back brought me back to the moment. “Move,” said Barry.

“Is he dead?” I had to ask.

“I hope so. If he isn’t, I’ll soon take care of it. Move.”

I didn’t want to move; I didn’t see the point. It all seemed so hopeless, for a long moment. Matthew was lost to me, alone in this awful house; before him, Maddy had suffered here, too. And now I would die, before Constable Moores even put down his teacup and got in his motorcar to come for me—that was, if Evangeline Barry, this monster’s wife, had found her courage and run to fetch him at all. Perhaps she had lost her nerve, stripped by years in this terrible place, trapped in a marriage with this nightmarish man. Perhaps she was silent even now, afraid to raise the alarm. Perhaps no one would come until it was too late, if ever.

I felt a deep wrench of pain. There was no one to regret me amongst the living, and that itself was painful, almost as bad as missing someone would be. There was no one except Matthew, who I wasn’t sure even lived; without him, there was only Alistair—who would be saddened, I was certain, but would not mourn too deeply. I sensed he would not let himself. He liked me; we were friends. But he had lost so many friends already.

The gun prodded me again, and under this hopelessness I felt a bone-deep chill. It was not fear exactly, but a terror slow and deep, pushing its way out from an icy well inside me, freezing my limbs. I looked at my hands and saw I was shaking. I whistled a breath into my lungs and realized I had felt this fear once before.

“It was you,” I managed through numb lips. “In the woods that night. It was you on the path.”

I remembered the rush of fear I’d had that night—
There’s something on the path.
Something that waited and watched. I had felt it then, this deep unreasoning fear. Because Tom Barry had really been there, in the woods that night.

His hand clamped to the base of my neck, where it met my shoulder, and I felt him move close behind me, his breath in my ear. “Ah, well,” he sighed. “I was so close then, wasn’t I? You knew it. I was so very close. I haven’t done it again, you know, since her. It was a lark. We’d had too much to drink and we wanted a bit of fun. But you…I was in the woods, watching the inn, and then there you were. Running like a hare, just like she did. That white nightgown. I hadn’t thought of it, but that night—my girl, if only you’d been alone, what fun we could have had. What wonderful fun.” His chuckle was hot on my skin. “Maybe we still can.”

“You can’t do this!” I cried. The hopelessness was gone with his words, and panic started in my veins. “Everyone will know!”

He sighed. “Last time was such a perfect opportunity, really—it couldn’t have been better if we’d planned it. Such things don’t come often in life. Even my wife was out of town, visiting her mother, or she would have seen something. The circumstances aren’t so favorable this time. Still, we make do with what we have, don’t we? Your friend here was an intruder—he attacked me. That much is simple. As for you…” He tightened his grip on my neck, sending shoots of pain up into my skull. “I’ve never seen you, and I don’t know what happened to you. Perhaps your friend lost his temper. Perhaps the madman did you in. The woods are dense out there. So many people have been lost in those trees. How many people are going to go searching for you, a stranger? And for how long?”

He was so close to me now, leaning in to sneer. I could smell tobacco and sweat. I realized that in his position he had lowered the gun; though his hand was still clamped on my neck, his guard was down for a brief moment. If I could think clearly, if I could control my shaking body, I could take advantage.

I took a breath and drove an elbow backward, into his sternum. He was surprisingly hard—he had almost no fat on him—and I felt the impact up my arm and to my shoulder. At the same time I twisted away from him. He teetered for a split moment, off-balance. I had never hit anyone in my life, and I had no idea how to do it. I could think of nothing better to do than to hit, as hard as I could, the hand that held the rifle and hope he dropped the gun.

He fell backward, but even as he fell, the look of surprise on his face slipped away, and as the gun fell with him, he was reaching for it again. He landed on his back with a heavy thud. I stepped backward to turn to run, but he already had the rifle in his hand again, and he pointed it at me from his position on the floor.

Our eyes locked. We froze a long moment like that, each one
of us taking the measure of the other. A sick humor came into his eyes, and he chuckled darkly. He pointed a loaded, cocked gun at me, and I knew he would use it. I would not run.

“Not bad, darling,” he said. “Not bad.”

He pulled himself to his feet, slowly, the rifle never wavering. Now I saw something different in his face—interest, and even pleasure. I realized I had triggered something in him, the same instinct that had made him enjoy chasing Maddy. The instinct that had made him enjoy what he did to her. I was no longer a nuisance to him. I was prey.

He came toward me, smiling.

“Don’t do this,” I said softly.

He opened his mouth to speak, but what he planned to say—whatever it was—I never heard. We were interrupted by a commotion at the window across the room.

It was the low, whirring sound of wings flapping. A crow—a large, dark, long-beaked creature—was alighting on the sill outside the window. As we watched, it gained its balance, scrabbling its feet and flapping its inky wings in a dark tattoo against the glass. Another alighted next to it, the soft thud of its wings hitting the window adding to the noise of the first. The second bird opened its beak and cawed deep and throaty, even as a third bird appeared behind the first two.

The same thing was happening at the other window, near the fireplace; and I could hear the same beat of wings from the other windows in the house. Something large and bony flapped against the front door, over and over, and I felt a new kind of fear come over me.

I looked at Tom Barry. He was gazing around, bemused, but
the aim of the rifle never wavered. He turned back to me and his eyes narrowed. The bruises on his face were starting to darken.

“Please,” I said to him as I noticed a familiar metallic smell. “You need to get out of here.”

Surprise transformed his face, his eyebrows shooting upward; then he laughed. “Get out of here? What do you take me for, darling? It’s just a few birds.”

“It isn’t. Don’t you hear them?”

“I hear birds,” he said, but the first spark of uneasiness crossed his expression. The birds were loud now, and unmistakable; they were obviously at every window of the house, and we could hear them calling to one another in their awful voices. I was reminded of the day we had seen them on the barn, covering it like a shiny black shell.

His face hardened, as he obviously pushed the uneasiness away. “Enough about a few birds. I want—”

Again something thumped against the front door, something large and heavy. We both jumped. The sound came again.

“You don’t understand,” I said, the words bursting out of me. “You’re in danger. It’s Maddy. It’s her ghost. She’s still here, and she talked to me, just as you suspected. It was you watching me from the woods, wasn’t it? It was you who ransacked my room.”

“Shut up.”

“You don’t want to admit it, but you were worried that the rumors were real. That she was truly haunting the barn. Roderick saw her that day, and told you, and you knew she was still alive, that she hadn’t died when you buried her. And then you heard she killed herself, and you thought it was over. But there were rumors that her ghost haunted the barn, and then Mrs. Clare brought us
in, and even though you didn’t quite believe it, you still worried. What if the ghost was real? What if it said something to one of us? What if your perfect crime was undone at the very end? Well, you were right to worry.
You were right.
”

“Shut up!” He jabbed the gun at me in anger, and it hit me hard in the soft part of my stomach. I gasped in pain, but the sound was lost under the overwhelming whirring of the birds on the house. “I’ll take care of this,” he said. “Walk. Toward the stairs.”

I obeyed, but the words wouldn’t stop coming. It didn’t matter how wild I sounded; now was no time to worry about sounding like a madwoman. “She didn’t remember,” I told him. “For years, she didn’t remember what had happened. And then, again, after she died, I don’t think she remembered—I think she’s been living in a shadow world of some kind, unable to leave. But she remembers now. It wasn’t Bill Jarvis or Roderick Nesbit who told me what happened—Roderick confessed, but I already knew. It was Maddy, do you understand? It was Maddy who told me, because she remembers what happened now. I didn’t want to come to the house, because she follows me. She’d find you. And now she knows who you are. You have to get out of here. It’s your only chance. You have to run.”

He had prodded me down a set of stairs, into a dark cellar. The sound of the birds was fainter here. I smelled damp, and coal, and the earthy scent of potatoes. The ground was cool through the soles of my shoes.

He glared at me in the gloom. “I’ve had enough of listening to you. You’re completely mad. Just stay still and shut up. I’m going upstairs to deal with those birds, and then I’ll be back.”

“You can’t!” I cried. “You can’t! She’s come here!” I grabbed his sleeve. “You have to run!”

“Enough!” His face contorted. He jerked his arm away, and brought up the butt of the gun. I had time to glimpse its dark, wood-marbled surface before it connected with my cheek and threw me backward. I lost my footing and fell to the floor. Pain shot through my skull. I rasped for breath and looked up at him from the floor as the warm wetness of blood began to flow down my skin.

Barry blinked, as if unsure for a second who had just hit me; then I watched his expression settle again. The sound of the birds was louder now, and he couldn’t deal with them and me at once. “Just stay still, for God’s sake,” he said. “Just stay still!”

He retreated up the stairs, backing slowly, the gun still pointed at me. He needn’t have bothered. I could only lie on the floor, cradling the pain in my face, feeling it overtake me like a living thing. Dimly I was aware of the beating of birds’ wings, somewhere overhead, and the strong metallic smell in my nose. I closed my eyes.
Don’t go up there,
I meant to say, but I didn’t have the words.

The door closed; I heard the click of a lock. I had to stop this from happening. I had to. I searched my mind for Maddy. She was here; I could feel it.
Maddy,
I thought.
Maddy, don’t, please don’t, please.
But there was no answer. I could not even tell if she heard me.

I heard Tom Barry’s heavy footsteps upstairs. I heard him mutter, and curse; he went up a second staircase, out of listening range, and then he came back down. His steps traveled back to the kitchen, where I heard the tinkle of something breaking, and another curse.

There was a sharp cracking sound—almost like the report of a gun, but not quite. Tom Barry’s steps came again, running now. He cursed. And then he shouted—a quick, barking shout, hoarse and strangely high-pitched.

A jumble of confused sounds then. Thumps and crashes against a wall. Something crashing down. Once, a curious dragging sound.
But Tom Barry’s voice didn’t come again—not a yell, not a curse—and he didn’t fire his gun.

After a time, all was quiet.

I lay on the cellar floor, cradling my injured cheek. It was over, then. I had done nothing, prevented nothing, and Matthew was still up there somewhere. I cried until the pain overtook me in a sort of fog, and I laid my face against the floor.

I was still there when Constable Moores came, sometime later, to clean up the blood and the bodies.

C
onsciousness came slowly, and I thought I heard footsteps and a voice. I opened my eyes.

The voice was big, booming, and familiar. “Police! Police, I say! If you’re here, show yourself!”

I stood on shaky legs. My head throbbed horribly, and for a sickening moment I thought I’d lose my balance. I pushed myself forward, up the cellar stairs, trying to make a sound from my hoarse throat. Finally I rattled the cellar door, pounded on it, and shouted for help.

The constable’s expression, when he opened the door, went from surprised caution to utter shock at the sight of my face. He had a gun in his hand, though it was lowered to his side. He backed up a step. “Are you alone down there?”

I could hardly speak. I pushed past him and ran down the hall to the sitting room. Matthew was still on the floor, still and quiet, though he had been turned on his back. I ran to him and fell to my knees.

I pulled him into my lap and started to cry again, this time from helpless relief. He was warm to my touch, warm under my hands, though his face was stark white and I could trace the blue veins of his temples. I pulled him to me and bent over him, weeping helplessly.

Constable Moores’ steps approached slowly from behind. “He’s alive, though it looks like he’s had a nasty knock. I’ll call for a doctor. Do you mind telling me what happened?”