The Thirteen Hallows (7 page)

And there it was again.

A disturbance.

A tremble in the ether, a shifting in the perpetual night.

Something ancient had been awakened.

Something powerful.

I made you some tea. I wasn’t sure how many sugars—”

Sarah Miller stood in the bedroom door, her mouth wide open in surprise.

The room was empty: Judith Walker was gone.

Her brother’s bed was neatly made, the bright blue duvet folded down and smoothed flat, the hodgepodge zoo of stuffed animals nestling neatly against the pillows. The only clue that someone had been there was the faintest trace of a floral perfume in the air. Puzzled, Sarah returned to the kitchen, sipping the tepid tea and eating the Walkers biscuit she had commandeered from the bottom shelf of the cupboard where her mother squirreled them away. An impossibly tanned TV anchor was reading the seven o’clock news.

What time had Judith Walker left? And why?

Sarah heard creaking upstairs, her mother’s distinctly heavy steps on the floorboards. The walls were so thin, she could trace her mother’s path from the bedroom to the bathroom. No wonder Judith had left. Her mother was famous for her shrill voice, and last night she had been in rare form. Naturally Judith had sensed the icy atmosphere. No wonder she’d escaped at the crack of dawn.

After finishing the tea, she spent ten minutes looking for her Coach briefcase before she remembered that she’d left it in the office. Sarah was dreading going in; what was she going to say to Mr. Hinkle? She’d just walked out at lunchtime and not returned. Her mother had taken an almost malicious pleasure in reminding her that she might very well lose her job. Last night she hadn’t cared, but this morning…

She was pulling the door closed behind her as James meandered down the stairs. Occasionally—very occasionally—they managed to catch the train together. Sarah hated that; a journey into the city with her mother’s lover was always vaguely embarrassing. She never knew quite what to say to him, and she knew James wanted nothing more than to be left alone to read the newspaper and enjoy a moment’s respite from Ruth Miller’s constant haranguing. But he’d not be on the train with her this morning. James was still wearing the obnoxiously loud terry bathrobe that her mother had given him at Christmas. Sarah had seen the empty tequila bottles in the sink and knew that the balding car salesman was going to miss yet another day of work. Sarah grimaced, realizing that once again almost her entire paycheck would have to be handed over to her mother.

As she hurried down the street, Sarah felt a guilty stab of relief that Judith had gone. Despite her frustration with the direction her life was taking, Sarah appreciated order, and Judith had certainly put a minor wrench in her comfortably regimented life. She still couldn’t quite fathom what had come over her yesterday. First, she had come to a stranger’s aid, and after that…things had become a little hazy. Well, it was over now: a brief show of courage in an otherwise cowardly life.

She grinned, wondering if perhaps she had finally shown a spark of the latent potential within her. Perhaps this was the beginning of a new future, one filled with hope and possibility. Yet as she entered the dull gray bank building and headed toward her suffocating cubicle, she guessed that her life was destined to continue along its same staid, dreary path.

Sarah’s phone was ringing as she approached her desk.

“Hello?”

“I would like to speak with Sarah Miller.” The voice was male, cultured, and colored with the vague hint of an unidentifiable accent.

Sarah frowned. Only her clients had this number, and this voice was unfamiliar. “This is Sarah Miller.”

“Sarah Miller of Pine Grove, Crawley?”

“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

“You bravely came to the assistance of an elderly woman yesterday. A Judith Walker. You then proceeded to her home in Bath—”

“Just who exactly is this?”

“She gave you something rather important that belongs to me. And I would very much like for you to return home now and get it for me, please.”

“I don’t know what kind of prank you’re playing, but this is a business line. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

The line popped and crackled, the voice echoing slightly: “My representatives will call to your address at precisely noon. I strongly suggest you be there, with the artifact Walker gave you.”

“But she gave me nothing…,” she began, but the line clicked and went dead.

The phone immediately rang again.

“Look, Judith Walker didn’t give me anything—”

“Sarah, it’s Hannah. Seth…Mr. Hinkle would like to see you in his office immediately.”

“I’ll be right there.” Sarah took a deep breath: The repercussions of her actions had just begun. Dismissing the peculiar phone call, she hurried down the long corridor to her boss’s corner office.

Seth Hinkle would have once been considered attractive. Yet the fifty-year-old had spent so many years in his role as a corporate drone that his creative brain had all but atrophied. Now, in a six-hundred-pound tailored suit that barely concealed his bulging belly, nourished by too many late night pints at the local pub in an attempt to avoid going home to his shrill wife and needy twins, Seth Hinkle stood against the window and prepared to pontificate.

Sarah sat down silently.

“As laudable as I find your recent actions, I must remind you that I am running a business here.” Seth postured in a way that the backlight of the morning sun formed a disturbing aura around him.

He’d been practicing this, Sarah realized.

“If you cannot accommodate our rather simple rules, then perhaps it might be better if you were to look for other employment.” Mr. Hinkle was unable to meet her eyes. He looked away quickly when they both realized that his eyes were fixed in the center of Sarah’s chest. “In normal circumstances, I would be left with no alternative but to dismiss you. However,” he continued slowly, mouth twisting as if he’d tasted something sour, “Sir Simon phoned this office not six minutes ago.”

Sarah tried to suppress a giggle. With his sibilant speech, Seth Hinkle sounded like a sputtering snake as he mentioned the senior partner’s name.

“Are you all right, Miss Miller?”

“Fine, sir, just a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat. You were saying?”

“It seems a Judith Walker contacted Sir Simon this morning. She was
extremely complimentary
about you and your heroics as a selfless Samaritan.”

The words were coming more slowly now, the s’s stretching out to their maximum potential, and Sarah bit harder on the soft flesh of her inner cheek, keeping her face in an expressionless mask.

“Sir Simon is delighted with your fearless actions yesterday. He feels that it projects the correct image for the bank…” After drawing in a deep breath, he finished in a rush, “And asked that I personally convey to you his compliments and good wishes.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sarah stood up to leave.

Seth Hinkle glanced up sharply. “This woman you
saved
yesterday, had you ever met her before?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you by any chance know that she was associated with Sir Simon?”

“No, sir.”

Seth Hinkle straightened a row of unsharpened pencils on his immaculate desk. “So you mean to tell me that you came to the assistance of an old woman you had never met before, escorted her to her home two bloody hours away, and when you discovered it had been burgled, you generously brought her back to the privacy of your own house, where she spent the night.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you in the habit of picking up strangers, Ms. Miller?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what made this woman so different?”

“I’m…I’m not quite sure, sir.”

Hinkle laced his fingers together and slowly moved his gaze from Sarah’s breasts to a space above her head. “Do you want to know what I think, Ms. Miller? I think this whole business stinks to high heaven. You are fully aware that your position here is tenuous at best and your work has been lackluster to say the least. You have ignored the recommendations of senior staff. I believe you know that in the upcoming restructuring of this department, there may be no position for you.” The older man took a deep breath and ran a hand across his flaking scalp. The once rich chestnut hair was now peppered with premature gray. Hinkle was a bully, and it was common knowledge in the department that he liked nothing better than dressing down a staff member, particularly a female staff member. “I think you somehow knew this woman was connected to Sir Simon and you set it up with her to ingratiate yourself with him.”

Sarah was about to protest but decided against it.

“You can go. But I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”

Sarah bobbed her head and turned away quickly before the older man could see the broad grin across her face. She kept her face impassive as she strolled through the outer office, under the imperious stare of Miss Morgan, Hinkle’s niece and secretary. She was smiling as she strolled down the long, echoing corridor. Hinkle looked as if he’d swallowed a lemon as he’d passed on Sir Simon’s commendation. The first thing she’d do would be to source Sir Simon’s address and write him a personal letter of thanks…No, the first thing she’d do would be to contact Judith Walker and thank her for bringing her to the notice of one of the senior partners. She had said something yesterday about contacting her boss, but Sarah had forgotten all about it; obviously Judith hadn’t.

The cubicle Sarah shared with another junior account manager was deserted, computers humming softly in the silence.

She Googled Judith Walker.

There were dozens of entries. However, all of them involved her children’s books: young adult fantasy adventure stories along the lines of
The Enchanted Mountain
and
The Sorcerer’s Cloak,
which had made her quite a popular author. Naturally, her address would not be public. There were too many psychos out there who wanted to own a piece of fame. Perhaps it was one of Judith’s fans who had done that to her home. Yet why would anyone be that destructive? She could understand if Judith Walker were a rock star or a famous actress, but she was just an elderly children’s book author. Why would someone want to hurt her?

If she really wanted to make the effort, Sarah was sure she could find the address again, although the trip there was vague and confused in her memory. She thought she might be able to find it again…but she was not entirely sure. She could always contact Walker’s publisher, but they wouldn’t be likely to give out her address, nor would the library, where she had done her research the previous day. However, the library would have a copy of the register of electors, a database containing electors’ names and addresses, and Judith had said she’d lived in the same house for most of her life. Sarah decided she’d pop into the library during her lunch. The phone interrupted her train of thought.

“Hello?”

“I would like to speak with Sarah Miller, please.”

Sarah immediately recognized the same cultured male voice from earlier. “Look, I don’t know what kind of joke you’re playing, but I have an extremely busy day and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t keep bothering me.”

“Oh, Ms. Miller, I assure you I am not playing a joke. And I’m extremely disappointed that you’re still at work. As I said earlier, my representatives will be calling on your home at noon. I believe, if you leave your office immediately, you’ll still be able to catch them.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Sarah felt the first flickers of panic and found herself agitated by the creepy tone of enjoyment that had entered the man’s voice.

“I want what Judith Walker gave you.”

“I told you, she didn’t give me—”

“Please don’t disappoint me, sweetheart.” The threat was implicit in the eerie baritone voice.

Sarah Miller was sweating heavily as she bolted down the street in her sneakers, relieved that she had left her heels at the office. Squinting against the unforgiving noonday sun, she flagged down a taxi that quickly became enveloped in the standstill city traffic. After she’d sat in the cab on Oxford Street for ten interminable minutes, her frustration overwhelmed her and she abruptly paid the surprised driver, then leapt out of the cab and darted down the street into the Tottenham Court tube.

The endless journey on the tube was insufferable. The train was hot, airless, and stinking with food, stale perfume, and unwashed bodies. Although she was usually timid, she found herself glaring at a Rastafarian musician begging for a few quid and being positively rude to a Korean tourist in an ugly red vest who was trying to ask for directions in broken English. She changed trains at Victoria station and was forced to stand until the train had left the city behind and started out into the suburbs. When she finally got a seat, she pressed her pounding head against the cool glass and watched the countryside slip past. In the back of her mind, she had convinced herself that this was no more than a badly timed practical joke, perhaps even a perverse scheme dreamed up by her boss just to get her fired. And when Hinkle discovered that she’d walked out of the office without telling anyone, she’d certainly get the sack. Yet the voice on the phone had been so calm, so insistent, and so chilling that deep in her heart, Sarah knew this was no joke.

By the time the train pulled into Crawley station, she was in a breathless panic. Hurrying from the station, she was running as soon as she reached the road she’d grown up on. She slowed then, breath coming in great heaving gasps, a wickedly painful stitch in her side, before finally stopping in the shadow of the neighbor’s neatly trimmed hedges. She looked at her mother’s house. Everything seemed to be in order. All the windows were closed, the gate was locked, and Freddie’s bright blue racer was abandoned on the uncut and sunburned lawn.

Sarah glanced up and down the street, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. No strange cars, no strangers loitering. She glanced at her watch; the caller had said that his
representatives
would arrive within the hour, yet that had been nearly forty-five minutes ago. What sort of representatives? Had they come and gone? Were they waiting inside, even now watching her through her mother’s ridiculous lace curtains? What exactly did they want? Something Judith Walker had allegedly given her.

Sarah stepped out of the shadows and walked up to the gate. Something wasn’t quite right. She knew it was staring her in the face, yet she couldn’t see it.

She looked at the neighbors’ houses on either side, comparing them with her own. They were identical in style, shape, and size: four-bedroom detached redbrick houses built just after the war with large, generous rooms, high ceilings, and large bay windows.

She reached into her pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from her forehead…and then realized what was wrong. This year had been the wettest, coldest summer on record, but then, shockingly, surprisingly, the fall had been spectacular, with a high-pressure zone settling over most of the south of England, pushing temperatures into the unseasonably high seventies. All the houses on either side of her mother’s home had windows open in an attempt to circulate fresh air through the rooms. Yet the windows in her own home were closed.

They were all closed.

Perhaps James was trying to sweat out his hangover. Or her mother and brothers had gone out. But they wouldn’t have left the bike in the garden….

Sarah pushed open the squeaking gate and hurried up the driveway. Walking up to the front door, she was conscious of her own thundering heart, beating hard enough to nauseate her. She realized she was afraid. She tried to convince herself that everything was going to be fine. She was going to put the key in the lock and push the door open, and Martin would come barreling down the hall in his football kit, and then the kitchen door would open and her mother would appear, all grim and disapproving, surprised to find her home so early, and…

And Sarah would be relieved.

The key turned easily in the lock, the heavily lacquered door opening silently on well-oiled hinges. She stood blinking on the doorstep, squinting into the dim hall, and she had opened her mouth to call out to her family when the smell hit her with full force. Sarah covered her mouth and nose, trying not to breathe in the mixture of noxious odors, new smells that were completely alien to the usually flower-scented interior of her home. Some smells she recognized: the bitter stench of urine and feces, the sharper tang of vomit. But there were others—dark, meaty, metallic—that she couldn’t quite identify.

Sarah stepped into the hall. Liquid bubbled and squelched underfoot, and she jerked her leg back, rubbing it on the white step, smearing thick dark crimson across the alabaster marble.

Frozen in fear, Sarah began to hyperventilate. She tried to calm herself, pretending it was a prank, something her family had cooked up to get her back for inviting a stranger into their home. As she tried to make sense of the smells, she felt something dripping on her in a slow, repetitive rhythm. Something hot and thick. Sarah looked up.

And then the screams began.