We’re starting to get close to the end of the story now. Sorry it has taken so long. If you missed the earlier parts, this all started here. The previous part (Part 5) is here. The following part (Part 7) is here.
-—-
My eyes followed the footfalls across the floor above. Had they heard us talking? Had they heard the slap of the trapdoor against the floor? Would they come down and confront us?
We were trapped. There were two ways out of this place, this dungeon. Back the way we came and into the waiting arms of the two men who set fire to the cars and took Harvey prisoner, or up the industrial looking steel staircase and into the house to face the unknown people within.
The footfalls and the muffled voices stopped. They may not have heard us. Or they may have heard a noise and investigated possible sources that made sense, a gate slamming shut against the wind or a falling tree branch. Finding no answers, they write it off as a mystery and settle back into the couch and turn up the television.
I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. The black that invaded my head when I climbed the ladder was still there. The buzzing and vibration inside my body screamed like a jet engine. Something was here.
Juliet shuddered and turned to the back of the room, beside the trap door. The small strip of skin visible on her wrists prickled with gooseflesh.
“Do you feel that?” she said.
I followed her gaze. In the back corner of the room more than a dozen girls huddled together, their backs against the rough stone walls and their knees pulled tight to their chests. Each wore a mask matching the colour of their skin the same as Jane. They were all about the same age as her. They looked out through ragged and red streaked eyes. Each had their arms bound tight to their sides, and a single, thick rope bound them all together.
I leaned down beside the girl in the middle. Dark brown hair fell raggedly over her shoulders. I put my fingers below her ears and searched for the edge of the mask. Gently, I peeled back the layer and exposed a button nose and thin lips. She exhaled and whimpered.
At the sound of her voice, images played in my mind like a movie reel. It was a similar story as it had been for Jane.
A red car picked her up beside the road. The same car Jane saw parked below the oak tree. Her house was only six blocks from the school and she walked it with her older brother. That day he was sick and she walked alone. The sky was clear, the summer sun already above the horizon. There should have been nothing to fear.
A friendly female voice followed by a malicious hand. When they brought her to the dungeon, one of the other girls was already there. They gave them scraps for food and dirty water.
When the time for the ceremony came, they took the other girl first. She screamed and flailed with her emaciated limbs, but it was no use. Two of the men in robes lay her on the altar and fastened her down with leather straps. She sobbed, her chest jumping with each breath. Police Chief Crown reached into his robe and pulled out a knife, the blade long and curved, about the size of his forearm. Crown uttered an incantation and lowered the blade to the stomach of the girl. He let it rest there until the spell was finished. None of it was intelligible except for the last word, virgin. He applied just enough pressure to open a thin slit of red in the skin. The two men who had brought the girl up took a golden chalice each and used them to catch the blood pouring from her body. Crown cut her again and again, her pale skin smeared with dark red. The girl turned her eyes down to her body and watched the life drip out of her. Her life ended with a sob. The small man with the bent back shuffled forward and drank first. The rest followed.
I stood and opened my eyes and almost ran to the other side of the room. I could not bear to see any more. Beth grabbed my hand and I squeezed, unsure what else to do.
More footfalls from above. The regular thump of someone climbing stairs. The sound grew fainter. They were going up and away from us.
Parker shuffled towards the staircase. “Should we go up?”
I held up a palm. “Wait.”
I went back to the girl. She turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
“Who is up there?” I asked.
“Hugo lives there. The others come and go.”
“Is anyone with him?”
“He has a wife.” She choked on the last word. “I miss my mama.”
“Did you ever go upstairs?”
She shook her head.
“Are you here to arrest them?”
I shook my head. She cast down her eyes. In her mind she must have held on to a small sliver of hope that a saviour to come and make everything right. To punish those who had so viciously violated her. I couldn’t promise her that. I had no idea how I was going to get myself and my friends, the Séance Club, out of this.
“Get us out of here, please.” Her voice quivered.
“The one who put you here. The one who tied you up and put on your mask.”
“A girl wearing black.” Her eyes widened a little.
I nodded. “She is out there still. I can break the rope, but you have to hide. Go somewhere, anywhere but here.”
I didn’t know what else to tell her. Leon had walked into the forest. These girls could too. And if they could get that far, then who knows? There was still so much I didn’t know about how all this worked.
I removed the masks one by one and the pattern repeated. A car and a friendly voice. Girls walking alone. Sometimes the clothes and the make of the car looked like something out of an old-time movie. This had been going on for a long time. And then the dungeon and food and water, enough only to survive. Men in their robes come for the ceremony. The Police Chief. Kyle the sketch artist. Others whose names I did not know. And Hugo, an ageing man with a fat face and no conscience. The man who lived upstairs still with his wife.
The girls clambered down the ladder and into the tunnel. They were free from their prison, at least temporarily. Juliet’s bottom lip trembled. She felt it too. The pain and the anguish and the hopelessness.
The black clouds inside my head parted enough that I could think. We couldn’t go back the way we came. If Beanie and Ponytail didn’t know about the tunnel yet, it would not be long. They would come. We had to go upstairs. We had to find a way to sneak out of here and get help.
“What’s the plan?”
Parker’s whispered question hung in the air unanswered. I moved towards the steel staircase to the main floor and watched and listened. The house was silent again.
“We have to go up,” I whispered.
“Are you crazy? Who is up there?”
“A man called Hugo and his wife. The man is dangerous.”
“Then why go up there?”
“What are our options? Wait here? Go back? They don’t know we’re here or they would have come down already. We have to be quiet. Get up and out before anyone hears us.”
“Or they know we’re trapped and they’re waiting.”
The thought turned my stomach in on itself.
I climbed first, placing each foot carefully on the serrated grillage of the treads. My hand made a faint rustle as it slipped up the steel tube handrail. Each subtle creak and groan of the stair beat as a drum in my ears.
At the top was a thin door made of cheap particle board. The top corner had split and the thin facing had peeled away where the gash was the largest. I grasped the handle and turned and felt more than heard a muffled clicking of the latch. I let the door open inwards a crack. Unlocked.
“Lights out.”
The door inched open and I pushed my right eye towards the thin rectangle of light. A narrow hallway of plasterboard illuminated by a light somewhere further down. I breathed in a pungent odour of frozen pizza left too long in the oven. Silence.
I held onto a breath and poked my head through the opening. To the right a kitchen and the source of the light. To the left a staircase leading to the upper floor. We had heard someone going upstairs. If we were lucky no one was down here. There might be a front door by the stairs. There might be a back door in the kitchen. One or both these assumptions might be wrong. I chose the kitchen. The back door would give us the best chance of escape.
Soft footsteps followed me down the hallway. The kitchen was small and dirty. What looked like every plate and knife and fork in the house discarded haphazardly on the counter and in the sink. An empty can of tomato sauce lay upturned on the floor with a ring of red to one side where it had fallen only to be kicked away. A faded plastic tablecloth covered the small round table.
Where was the door? I had hoped the kitchen was in the back corner of the house, but I was wrong. To the right a dark room, a laundry. To the left a wide open space with the flickering light of a muted television. Socked feet at the end of a pair of crossed legs propped on a coffee table. Someone was in there.
Somewhere a car door slammed. The front of the house. Hurried footsteps and then a loud knocking noise. The feet stirred and slid off the table. We pushed ourselves against the back wall of the kitchen. All we could see off the living room was the large window on the rear side.
A man’s voice, agitated and fast.
“They found us.”
I knew the voice and my mind raced to place it. The second voice I did not know.
“What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t you hear me, they found us. We gotta get out right now. They’re about to light a fire under the whole thing.”
“Who found us? Tell your mate Crown to sort it out. He said he took care of it. That’s what we paid him for.”
“The call came from him.”
The owner of the voice came to me, I had listened to him banter with Harvey in a small backyard shed by the ocean. Kyle the sketch artist. The man Harvey had taken me to and who had drawn the image of the Chief. Vincent Crown. Kyle had come knocking to warn this man Hugo, the owner of the socked feet and the red car. The man who locked girls in a dungeon below his house.
“We have to get out. It’s over.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“They’re coming. They’re going scorched earth. The boss gave them carte blanche to make a mess and the cleaning crew will come in after. Get Marie and get out.”
“I’m not leaving Schwarz.”
Kyle Schwarz growled under his breath, a low and frustrated snarl. There was a soft knocking and then what sounded like a couch tipping over and thudding to a carpeted floor. The two men scuffled. From above came a hysterical shrieking, a woman’s voice. That must be Marie. Heavy footfalls boomed ominously down the stairs.
We looked at each other and Parker pointed to the dark laundry and the outlines of a rear door. My muscles tensed and almost sprang into action when three cracks rang out and sent us all to the floor. Someone was shooting. The sound intermingled with the shattering of glass. It had come from outside.
Inside my head an anguished cry and then in my ears a frightened yelp. The cry came from Kyle and the yelp from Hugo. I blinked hard and an image of Kyle collapsed against the back wall with two puncture wounds in his skull leaking blood. A sensation of pure fear flushed through my veins.
I opened my eyes and Hugo appeared in the doorway, short and fat and thinning, unwashed hair standing on end. The sight of the four of us crouched on the floor in his kitchen stopped him in his tracks. Three more cracks and Hugo lurched forwards, grabbing at a metal framed chair in an attempt to break his fall. Blood streamed from a hole in his chest and he writhed and spat a mouthful of blood into the air.
A beat of silence and then the sound of fracturing glass followed by the whoosh of fire. The bright light of flames licked at the opening to the living room. They had set the house on fire. Footsteps retreated up the staircase. Marie scampering away from the heat and smoke.
We had to get out. Parker was the first to move, crouching as he ran for the laundry. We followed as smoke filled the kitchen and choked our lungs. Parker fiddled with the lock, his hands shaking from the adrenaline until finally he made them work and opened the lock. We spilled out onto the back lawn. Juliet tripped over a knotted length of garden hose and skidded to her knees. Beth hauled her up and we ran for the rear and a waist-height mesh fence. Beyond was the forest and safety.
After I hurdled the fence I ventured a look back at the house. The fire had taken with speed, flames bursting free of the windows and reaching up into the night. In the flickering glow the back of the black van. It was them, Beanie and Ponytail. The men who had set fire to our cars and who had taken Harvey hostage.
We sprinted to the tree line and the deep and dark shadows it offered. I ran into the back of Parker who had stopped and he pulled me behind a wide tree trunk. We all panted and stole glances back at the burning house, now fully alight. It stood alone at the end of a lonely road.
Dark figures roamed around the perimeter. A body tumbled from the second floor and half-stood before collapsing back down, her legs broken and refusing to work. It was Ponytail who reached her first and we turned away as the gunshots rang out. We got to our feet and scampered deeper into the forest.
Our progress through the dark of the forest halted in an instant when I slammed into something hard and cold. I fell back at the shock and brought my hands up to a pain radiating from my nose. It was a wall. The ancient stone wall enclosing the grounds of Windhaven Manor.
We were far enough from the house now that the fire turned to a subtle glow between fragments of sky visible through the trees. In the silence of the night we heard the unceasing roar of the ocean off to our left.
Parker flicked on the light from his phone and swept it over the wall. “Is that what I think it is? Are we back at the Manor?”
Juliet watched the forest behind us. “Do you think they followed us?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “We would have heard them.”
“So what’s the plan now?” Beth asked thinly.
Parker played the light around and threw out his hands. “We can’t go back the way we came. If we go to towards the ocean we will be out of the trees and in the open. Even in the dark they will see us. And they burned our cars. We can’t call the police. I’d say we’re stuck.”
“We have to get Harvey back,” I said.
When the men in the black van had come for us, I was a sitting duck trapped in the small room off the pantry. He had gone out to head them off. He had bought us time.
“If he’s even still alive.” Parker groaned and leaned back against the wall. The gravity of his own words weighing on him.
“He’s alive,” I said. “I can’t say how or why, but I feel it. I’m sure of it.” I spoke the words knowing it may only be wishful thinking. “To find him we have to get to the bottom of this thing. Follow it down as far as it will go.”
“Meaning what exactly?” Beth said.
“Even if we get away tonight, they know who we are. You heard them. They’re going scorched earth on this. They’re not leaving any trace behind, and that includes us.”
Parker straightened. “So what then?”
“We need something to bring all this down. We need evidence. They murdered girls in that house back there. But Jane Laughlin escaped. She made it to Windhaven Manor. She is there still. Harvey was right, mediums talking to ghosts won’t be enough.”
“What evidence is going to be enough?” Parker hushed himself after almost shouting into the sky in frustration.
“Your evidence,” I said.
Parker tilted his head to the side, confused.
“You set your cameras up around the house,” I continued. “You have them on video burning our cars and taking Harvey hostage.”
Beth inhaled sharply. “Did you live stream it?”
Parker shook his head. “You all told me not to. The feeds are going to my hard drive.”
I peered up at the wall. “We need to get that hard drive.”
“And then what? You said it yourself that the Police Chief himself is in on this.”
I turned back to Parker. “Look, if we go into a police station with our story and no evidence, we’ll get laughed out of the room. With your hard drive we have a chance. And there’s something else.”
Juliet finished my thought for me. “The body of Jane. They buried her in the garden out by the big oak tree.”
She had felt it too. Something was there. The notion had been so vague I almost dismissed it. Now the puzzle piece fell into place.
Parker pulled at his hair. He bent double and put his head between his legs and groaned. “So instead of running away we’re going right back into the lion’s den?”
“You said yourself we don’t have anywhere else to go. We do this or we end up like them.” I pointed back into the depths of the forest and towards the orange glow of the fire.
“Well we can’t go back through the front gates.” Parker’s voice rose and almost broke.
We had to scale the wall. It was too tall to jump and grab the top, but in places the forest grew right up against it, tree branches spilling over the boundary. Parker watched as my eyes scanned the top of the wall. He looked up and started searching the darkness.
“We climb.” His voice came out strong this time. “We go in the back. Those goons are a bit busy at the moment.” He clapped his hands together.
Parker set off along the wall in the direction away from the ocean. Juliet followed and the darkness swallowed them both.
I set off to follow them, but Beth grabbed my arm. She rubbed her eyes and faked a small laugh that might have been a cover for tears. “We almost died.”
Her words gave me pause. We had almost died. They kidnapped Harvey. This was stuff from the movies. Why had we stayed in the Manor after that first night? We should have left then, and we should never have done the second séance. I shrugged and gave in to a sudden urge to apologise. “I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“Not to question your judgement, but I’m confident this time it was my fault. Come on let’s go and catch up.”
“Wait. You don’t understand, and if anything happens I want to say what I’m about to say.”
“What?”
“When I asked you to come to Windhaven, it wasn’t an accident. There was more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
She bit her lip and rested her chin on her chest. “I once went for a drink with Juliet at The Exchange. She felt the same thing you did down in that passageway in the basement. I saw it on your face, in your body language. I thought maybe you were like her. Only it seemed to be stronger in you. I’ve been looking for someone Sam, someone who can help me find out who I am. I never knew my biological parents. A few years ago I tracked them down only to find out they were dead. I thought that maybe..”
She trailed off and turned her back to me. It had been Beth who sounded a warning about Harvey, that he may be hiding an ulterior motive. All along she was doing the same.
She breathed in a deep sigh and continued, talking to the wall. “And now look at us. Running for our lives.”
I hovered a hand over her shoulder and then let it rest there. I didn’t blame her. How could I? This situation was so far outside what any of us had expected this weekend. “You couldn’t have known.”
Telling her the full truth of my childhood crossed my mind. Telling her about My own fractured relationship with my parents. Isn’t this what friends did? The rustling footfalls of Juliet and Parker pushed the words back down my throat.
Juliet paused a few paces short of us. “Is everything ok?”
Beth uncrossed her arms and sniffed and nodded.
Parker came up behind. “We found a winner.”
It was a stone’s throw further down the wall. A thick tree that had grown almost hard against the wall, its roots swelling up and cracking the stones at the base.
“Who is going to try first?” I said.
Juliet went, her movements surprisingly nimble. The small gap between the trunk and the wall allowed her to wedge in a foot and shimmy up. From there she tested the overhanging branch with her weight and it bent but did not crack. She flung her legs onto the other side and dangled for a moment before dropping into the darkness. We heard the thud of a soft landing.
“The girl is a cat,” Parker said. “You next.”
Beth took longer and was more ungainly, but spurred on by Juliet’s encouragement, she too dropped out of sight onto the other side of the wall.
Parked tapped his stomach before commencing the climb. “Why did I eat all that pasta?”
I blew some air out my nose and watched him climb. I half-turned at a strange feeling that someone was watching. Parker was atop the wall now and whispered back to me. I took a step back into the woods and lifted the light. It was her.
“What is happening?” Parker said.
“She’s here again. We have to go.”
The girl with the cropped black hair strode out from behind a tree.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
She held her arms behind her back and leaned slightly forward, staring at me with unblinking eyes. Dark irises blended with her pupils. She tilted her head to the side as she bridged the gap between us. She brought her face close to mine, scrutinising with those big black eyes. She could have been the Queen inspecting the Royal Guard.
She let a lung full of air out her nose and smiled. I took a deep breath in and my body tensed as if preparing to be tackled, though I had no notion of choosing to do so. It felt as if lukewarm water coursed through my veins. I clenched my fists and tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t work.
A bright light flashed in my eyes as if I stood on a stage beneath a giant spotlight. When my eyes adjusted, the inside of the forest and the stone boundary wall and Parker straddled atop it were gone and replaced with a visage of complete white. There was no floor or wall or horizon at all. An endless and seamless white. And the girl with the short black hair.
She said, “I never introduced myself and that was rude. My name is Ally, and your name is Sam.”
“Don’t pretend you know me.”
“But I do, now. You started out as a curiosity. And then I saw what you could do. There are people out there who have some of the abilities we share, but you Sam are rare indeed. I see you now Sam. I see you as a small child finding that dead boy under the table in the schoolyard. The boy no one else could see. I see your parents and the cruel things they said and did. You have spent your life believing you are alone, that there is no one who could ever understand. But I do Sam. You are not alone.”
My arm shook. A voice in my ear, distant and faint. It was Parker. He shouted but I could barely hear him.
“There is nowhere for you to go now Sam. But I do not want you to end up like Kyle or Hugo or his wife. Believe me when I say that. I too know the loneliness that comes with being different. Now we have each other. I can get you out of this.”
“What do you want?”
“I want us to be a team Sam. I want you to come and work with me.”
“Doing what? Locking up ghosts?”
“Secrets Sam. My job is to keep secret things secret. There are people out there who pay a lot of money to keep their worst transgressions hidden. Kyle and Hugo were bottom feeders. What happened to them was as inevitable as the setting of the sun. But their secrets will stay that way because it is in my client’s interests.”
“What client?”
She smiled. “It won’t be that easy Sam. I need you to come with me. Leave behind this rag tag group who call themselves The Séance Club. It’s cute, but it’s not for the likes of us. Come with me and together no one will ever touch us. And our clients will make us rich.”
A tug at my arm. Parker’s frenzied voice fought its way into my ear. We had to go.
I said, “I can’t do what you do. I can’t hurt people like Jane and those girls tied up in that house.”
Ally smiled. “They aren’t people anymore. They once were, but now are not. The dead cannot hurt us Sam. But believe me the men who put a bullet through Kyle’s head sure can. Your decision now will have a direct bearing on what those men do next.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“It is an offer Sam. An offer for a new life where you are understood and your unique talents are valued. And if the offer comes with some encouragement, then so be it.”
I shut my eyes. Parker’s voice was still in my ear and still distant. I tried to concentrate on the sounds from the real world, but they remained far off and muted and out of reach. I opened my eyes and the white persisted with only Ally for company.
“You have so much to learn Sam. I can teach you. I can make you stronger.”
“No.”
I met her eyes and she dipped her head forward condescendingly. She was toying with me. A vindictive bully bending me to her will.
Parker’s voice, thin on the air. “Fight it Sam.”
I concentrated, trying to break the spell and failed. I didn’t know where or how to start. She smirked. “You are outmatched Sam. It is over.”
Frustration rose up from the pit of my stomach and bubbled to the surface as anger. I focussed on her eyes. I had the sensation of wading through quicksand, only with my mind and not my body. The white of the bubble Ally put us in began to shake. Ally lifted her head and looked sideways.
There was a flicker, like a television screen losing signal and then regaining it. The white began to dissipate and Ally no longer stood, but sat in the rear of a car. The car drove down a busy road, streetlights sweeping past the window. In the corner, next to Ally sat a man, his face obscured in the darkness. Ally looked at me and then the man sat beside her.
She let out a high pitched scream that sent a shock of pain through my brain. I covered my ears and pulled my head down to my thighs. The sound stopped and I looked back up to find the room white once more, but Ally was gone. I squeezed my eyes shut. I listened for Parker. I focussed on my arm and felt for his hand.
“Come back to us Sam. Come back.”
In my head I filled in the blankness of the white. I started with the forest floor. And then the trees. The room of white rumbled, like far off thunder.
Parker’s hand clamped around my forearm. His voice grew louder and then the sound of smashing glass. I let out a cry from deep within my stomach. I strained against invisible ropes holding me down.
In a flash the last of the white disappeared and the forest came back. Parker shone his light on me, shaking my shoulders and shouting. I blinked up at him.
“Thank you for coming back for me,” I mumbled.
“You would do the same for me. It happened again, right?”
I nodded. “It happened again. But it’s alright now. We have to go.”
I followed Parker up the tree and over the wall.