The House on Everley Street (Death Herself Book 2) (20 page)

“No!”

“I was there.”

Elizabeth paused, her features flickering with memories of that moment.

“I was there,” Hannah explained. “There are rules about intervening, so I couldn't do anything to stop you. Nowadays things would be different, I don't stick to the rules so much anymore, but back then... Back then I just sat in the corner and sobbed as I watch what you were doing.”

“You're a dirty liar!” Elizabeth hissed.

“Am I?” As if to prove her point, a scream erupted from the corner of the room. Hannah and Elizabeth both turned to see two spectral forms shimmering in the dark: Elizabeth, a little younger than when she'd died, pouring a bottle into the mouth of a sobbing middle-aged woman. It was the same scene that Katie had witnessed earlier in the bathroom. “We both know I'm not lying,” Hannah continued, watching with stony-faced anger as the scene briefly played out, before the two spectral figures faded. She turned back to Elizabeth. “You murdered your own daughter.”

“I put her out of her misery,” Elizabeth whispered, looking down at Katie's terrified face.

“You gave up on her,” Hannah continued. “You decided she wasn't good enough, so you wanted to get rid of her and start again with her son, except he wasn't good enough either, was he? You warped his mind and you'd have killed him too if that stroke hadn't interrupted. And now what, is Katie the third try? Maybe you should just accept that none of these children can live up to your impossible standards. Your long, bitter life is over, Elizabeth. All that's left now is for you to go into the light and see what's waiting for you on the other side.”

“Leave me alone,” she hissed, causing Katie to gasp again as she began to crush her throat.

“You're holding her very tightly,” Hannah replied, watching as Katie struggled for breath. “You're actually causing several bones in her neck to bend slightly. Any more pressure, and they'll start to break. Is that what you want?”

“I want one of these children to live up to my expectations,” Elizabeth replied, squeezing harder. “I want them to stop being so weak!”

“No,” Hannah said firmly, reaching out and grabbing the old woman's hands. “You don't get to do that. Children aren't projects you can toss away if they don't work out the way you wanted.” Taking hold of Elizabeth's hands, she began to peel the old woman's fingers back one by one, forcing her to let go of Katie's throat. “You're dead Elizabeth,” she hissed, “and that's a big problem for you, because it means you're in my realm now, and you can't bully me. You're going exactly where I want you to go, and the more you try to fight back, the more you annoy me. Is that something you really want to do? Are you so stupid, so utterly idiotic, that you're going to annoy me on purpose? Because let me tell you, you're already well along that particular path.”

“Go to hell,” Elizabeth growled, turning to her.

“Funny,” Hannah replied, “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

Without giving Elizabeth a chance to react, Hannah grabbed Katie's shoulder and pulled the girl away, knocking her to the floor and then shoving her toward Sarah and John.

“Bring her back!” Elizabeth shouted, getting up from the chair and rushing toward the door. “She's mine!”

Suddenly able to see the horrific figure, Sarah grabbed Katie and pulled her out of the way just in time.

“Get out of here!” Hannah shouted, scrambling to her feet and hurrying over to join them. “I'll deal with everything, but you have to get your children out of this house! It's the children she wants!”

Grabbing Scott, Sarah began to lead the children to the stairs, before looking back and seeing that John was staring in horror at Elizabeth.

“It'll be okay!” Hannah shouted at her. “Just go! If you -”

Before she could finish, Katie screamed. Turning, Hannah saw that Elizabeth was standing in the doorway, her gaze fixed firmly on John.

“Come on,” Sarah said, scooping Katie up into her arms and carrying her down the stairs, with John hurrying after them. “I can't let you see this.”

“You're all grown up,” Elizabeth hissed, stepping toward John. “Maybe you're not as pathetic as I thought.”

John stepped back until he was next to the bannister.

“It's okay,” Hannah told him, “I'm going to get rid of her. This can't be allowed to continue.”

“Is it true?” John asked, staring at his grandmother. “Did you kill my mother?”

“I gave her life,” Elizabeth replied, stepping closer.

“And then you took it away,” he continued. “Everyone believed that she'd killed herself. You told me she was weak and I actually believed you! I heard her screaming!”

“She should have poured that bleach down her throat much sooner,” Elizabeth told him. “She threatened to do it so many times, I just helped her to get the job done efficiently.”

“Was it worth it?” Hannah asked, edging closer to them. “All the pain, all the screams? Then again, maybe it was easy for you. It's not as if John's mother was the first person you ever killed. I know about all the others, Elizabeth. All the people in your life who didn't live up to your expectations, so you ended
their
lives too. Your first and second husbands, your sister when you were both just little girls, even your own father. You went through your whole life like this, getting rid of people whenever you decided they weren't good enough. I wasn't able to stop you while you were alive, but now you're dead, you're in my world.”

“If only one of them had been good enough,” Elizabeth hissed, reaching a hand out toward John's face. “Just one, that's all I asked. One decent human being out of them all.”

“You told me she killed herself,” John said with tears in her eyes. “You lied about everything.”

“I thought it might toughen you up,” Elizabeth replied, “but I suppose that was a hopeless case. Still, I can always try again with your daughter.”

Before John could reply, his grandmother lunged at him, knocking him back and breaking through the old wooden bannister, sending the pair of them crashing over the edge. Hannah called out and ran forward, but all she could do was watch in horror as John fell down onto the floor below. Racing down the stairs, she found him on his back as his grandmother's ghost stood over him.

“I won't leave this family alone,” the old woman hissed, “until I finally -”

“No,” Hannah said firmly, stepping over to her. “You're going to leave everyone alone.”

As Elizabeth began to scream, Hannah placed her hand over the old woman's face and forced her down. Elizabeth's eyes were burning now as Hannah's fingers dug deeper, and a kind of cold blue flame was starting to ripple across the old woman's body, consuming her from within. The scream grew louder and more pained, but Hannah didn't even flinch as she stared down at her, and finally a vast white light seemed to open up in Elizabeth's chest, flaring briefly and then sparking through the air until finally Hannah was left alone, with her hand still outstretched as ribbons of fire danced across her fingers.

“When I said go to hell,” Hannah whispered darkly, “I meant it.”

Turning, she saw that John wasn't moving. She got down onto her knees and checked his pulse, before staring at his face for a moment. Hearing footsteps nearby, she turned to see Sarah in the doorway.

“You'd better call an ambulance,” Hannah told her. “And while it's on its way, you might want to think about how you're going to explain all of this, because I think people might have a few questions.”

Chapter Thirty

Today

“Is she gone?” Sarah asked as she sat in the hospital corridor, her eyes red and sore from all the tears. After a moment, she turned to Hannah. “I mean, is she
really
gone?”

“She's really gone,” Hannah replied.

“But she was already dead,” Sarah continued. “Doesn't that mean she could come back? If I hear a bump in the night or a scratching sound, how do I know it's not her?”

“Because I personally supervised her journey to the next life,” Hannah continued. “Trust me, there's no coming back from where she went.”

Hearing footsteps nearby, Sarah looked up, only for a doctor to hurry past without even acknowledging her. “They're not telling me anything,” she muttered with frustration. “Why aren't they telling me anything? John's father said he'd pay for the best care, but no-one's saying a damn thing!”

“It's going to take them a while to work out what to do with him,” Hannah replied. “I doubt they've had too many people like him before. Elizabeth really did a number on him, she tore his soul in two when he was a boy.”

“So the man I married was...” Sarah paused, trying to understand the enormity of what had happened. “He was, what, only half a man?”

“The good half. The human mind is a powerful thing. Sometimes the damage is too extreme, it spreads and destroys the whole mind, but some people find a way to compartmentalize that damage and split it off into a separate mind. That's what John did, except that his damaged half took control whenever he thought Elizabeth's ghost might be around. The good side of John genuinely believed his grandmother had died all those years ago, and the damaged side tried to protect him and maintain that fiction. It was a symbiotic relationship. Kind of cool really, apart from the context.”

Sarah paused for a moment. “I'm not ever going to get him back, am I?”

“I think you will,” Hannah told her. “In time.”

“But how could people not have realized Elizabeth was still alive?” Sarah asked. “How could people have lived in that house without realizing that an old woman was sealed-up in the basement, living off rats and rainwater for twenty years?”

“Like I said, the human mind is a powerful thing. People would have sensed that something was wrong, but fear would take over and kept them from investigating. They'd put it out of their thoughts. Of course, it helped that Elizabeth lost her voice in the stroke, and that she was barely strong enough to move. John's sound-proofing attempts were completely useless, but that didn't matter because Elizabeth couldn't make much of a sound at all. Still, people living in that house will have sensed her, and that's why they thought the place was haunted. It was a kind of referred fear, but on a grander scale. Children are less able to deceive themselves, though. They're more aware.”

“It still seems hard to believe,” Sarah told her.

“Well, that's the thing when I show up,” Hannah replied, getting to her feet and putting her hands in her pockets. “Thousands of people die every day on this planet, and the vast majority of those cases slip past without causing a problem. I'm only assigned the cases where strange, unlikely or improbable things are happening, and this one definitely qualifies.”

“You're
assigned
cases?” Sarah asked. “By who?”

“By my boss.”

“And who's that?”

“Someone who thinks people should suffer a little less than they do.”

“But -”

“And I'm not going to give you a straight answer,” Hannah added, interrupting her. “You can ask until you're blue in the face, but I'll just keep on being enigmatic and mysterious.”

Sarah stared at her for a moment. “Who are you?”

Hannah smiled.

“Really, I mean,” Sarah continued. “You seem to know so much about all of this, but... Who are you?”

“Do you want coffee or tea from the machine?” Hannah asked.

“Tea, but -”

“Then that's who I am,” Hannah continued. “I'm the person who's going to go and get you some tea. And I'm pretty sure that within the next few minutes, a doctor is going to come out of the door at the end of the corridor, he's going to be wearing a pink tie of all things and he's going to tell you the treatment plan for John. And at least then you'll have some idea for how things will improve, and they
will
improve. Slowly, but it'll happen. The human mind is capable of recovering from almost anything, given the right help.”

“But -”

“Tea,” Hannah added, turning and heading around the corner. “I'll get that tea.”

“Please be okay,” Sarah whispered, looking down at her hands for a moment. All she could think about was John, and the way that her husband's entire life and mind seemed to have unraveled in just a few days once he'd gone back to the house on Everley Street. She wanted to believe Hannah, to believe that there might be a chance of things getting back to normal, but at that exact moment she felt as if the whole world was crashing down onto her shoulders.

“Mrs. Myers?”

Looking up, she saw a nurse standing next to her, holding a cup of tea.

“Here,” the nurse continued, handing the tea to her. “Someone asked me to give this to you.”

Taking the tea, Sarah got to her feet and headed to the corner. Looking along toward the machine, she realized there was no sign of Hannah. After a moment, she turned to the nurse.

“The person who asked you to give this to me... Did she leave a message?”

“Sorry,” the nurse replied, “she just said you needed tea. Oh, and -” She held out her hand, passing a pile of crumpled pieces of paper to her. “She also said to give you these, and ask you to pass them on to your husband. She said she saved them years ago and that maybe he'd like them.”

“Thank you,” Sarah replied with a frown. As the nurse walked away, she set the cup of tea down and began to look through the pieces of paper, which turned out to contain some kind of handwritten story. She didn't recognize the writing, although it looked a little like John's while also seeming subtly different. The pages seemed to be out of order, and finally she found the first, which contained an underlined title. “The Curse of the Beast in the Shed: A Novel,” she read out loud, “by...” She paused, feeling a faint shiver pass through her chest as she realized she recognized the name. “Rachel Myers. John's mother?”

“Mrs. Myers?”

Hearing another voice, she turned, just in time to see a doctor making his way toward her from the door at the far end of the corridor. She couldn't help but notice that he was wearing a pink tie.

***

“You have got to be kidding,” the first medical examiner said as he and a couple of colleagues worked on one of the skeletons that had been found in the basement, with lights mounted on stands all around. “Twenty years? No way, that's impossible.”

“I know,” the second examiner replied, “but that's actually what happened. I didn't believe it at first either, but I checked the files and it's all in there. Crazy, huh?”

As they continued to work, neither of them noticed Hannah in the corner, watching them.

“Looks like a scoliosis patient,” the first examiner said as he carefully laid a section of spine onto a sheet, complete with a metal rod screwed into several of the vertebrae. “So the guy was, what, feeding people to his dead grandmother?”

“The doctors reckon his subconscious mind was taking over and doing these things,” the second examiner muttered. “Whenever there was a chance of his secret being discovered, he switched into a mode where he'd do anything to keep it hidden. I guess some people are just messed up and can't be saved. Goddamn psycho probably had no idea he was even -”

Hannah kicked a rock, sending it skittering toward the two examiners.

“What the hell was that?” the first examiner asked, looking at the rock and then turning to look toward Hannah, still not seeing her.

“What's wrong?” his colleague asked. “Worried about ghosts?”

“In a place like this? No kidding, man!”

“Let's just get on with the job. There's no such things as ghosts.”

They got back to work, but a moment later Hannah kicked another rock toward them.

“This place is freaking me out,” the first examiner said. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

“Fine, but don't get flaky on me. There's probably just a lot of rats down here, they probably move stuff as they scurry through the shadows.”

“Thanks. That makes me a feel a lot better.”

“It's better than ghosts, right? Face it, at least rats actually exist. Ghosts don't.”

“Of course not,” Hannah whispered with a faint smile, before kicking another rock toward them, this time freaking them out even more and sending them hurrying back up the steps.