A Shiver At Twilight (9 page)

“Disrespectful,” he said. “That’s what it was, bringing her here. Right to Sissy’s room.”

Carly kept going, past him, though it took every bit of grit to do it. At the landing on the second floor, they paused. JD looked to the ceiling, searching for the hatch.

“You’re sure there’s an attic?”

Up ahead at the entry to Sissy’s dark room, stood Sissy’s mother. Her face was whole now. No gruesome gashes or ghastly caverns of bone and flesh. Both eyes gleamed in that perfect china blue. She motioned them to follow.

“There, JD,” Carly whispered. Her voice shook, her legs shook. She’d never been so scared. But that steady thumping kept going, spurring her on.

Jillian. It had to be.

Carly reached for JD and he was there, beside her, holding her hand and helping her when she might have given up.

In Sissy’s room, lit candles lined the walls around the mattress, giving the room a romantic, flickering light. In the center of it all, Sissy waited. She looked young and innocent, her enormous eyes filled with hope. She quickly moved to the closet door which stood open, though Carly remembered JD closing it. Then, Sissy vanished.

“It’s in here,” JD said softly.

He braced himself against the wall, using the upper shelf to heft his body high enough to reach the fat eyelet screw poking from the wooden hatch door. He was just inches too short. He motioned Carly forward and he lifted her until she could grab it and pull. The door swung down and a folded stairway opened out. The thumping came louder now.

“You ready?” JD asked.

Carly nodded, but she wasn’t ready. Not at all.

Flashlight in one hand, he began to climb. Carly kept close, trying to keep her focus on that point of light, on JD.

“Careful,” he warned as he reached the top and stepped off the ladder. He helped her do the same. The attic ran the whole length of the house. A cold draft gushed by, parting air warmed by the rising heat from the fireplace below.

A plywood floor stretched out, covered by old boxes and broken furniture. A lamp stood in a cobweb shroud next to a mirror that caught the flashlight and sent it back. Slowly JD poked the beam into corners and shadows. They heard a muffled cry and he swung the light around. The beam landed on something that squirmed.

Carly bit back her scream as he put the light back to the cranny between a tall, busted armoire and the wall. Shoes, legs.

Without another thought, she rushed forward, JD right behind her, crouching beneath the sloping ceiling. There, crammed into a tiny space between the debris, bound at ankles and wrists, gagged and beaten but alive, lay Jillian.

Chapter Fourteen

Jillian shook so much she could hardly stand and JD had to help her. She’d been tied tightly, her wrists trussed and then looped through the binds at her feet. JD winced at the welts where the ropes had burned. The only thing she’d been able to move was her head. She’d pounded it on the wall until a lump had formed.

Gently, he carried her down to the first floor, setting her by the fire on their blanket. Carly had been silent since she’d shouted her friend’s name. With each horror they uncovered as they unbound Jillian, Carly became more stoic. He hadn’t known her long, but he already knew her well enough to guess that she felt guilty for not knowing that Jillian lay just over their heads, in agonizing pain.

“This isn’t your fault, Carly,” he said, after he’d settled Jillian in front of the fire. Carly’s eyes looked luminous with unshed tears. He pulled her to him and pressed kisses to her brow. “She’d still be there if it wasn’t for you.”

Carly knelt next to Jillian, smoothed her hair back and held her. Jillian still hadn’t spoken, but Carly asked her again, “Who did this to you, Jilly?”

In answer, the house began to rumble again and within the thunderous shaking, came another sound. Crying. The sobs carried in long and low wails. It seemed the very walls wept in deep, discordant harmony. The heart wrenching sounds seemed to emanate from everywhere. The house wept.

JD watched the two women huddled on the blanket. Jillian stared at the fire, oblivious to anything but the flames. Carly looked around fearfully.

“She told me—Sissy told me to think about the time,” Carly whispered. “What does that mean? She said I could figure it out, but I needed to think about the time.”

At last Jillian spoke and her voice came like a rusted hinge, deep and painfully thin. “He told me to meet him here at four.”

“Why here?” JD asked, though it hardly mattered.

“He liked it here and this is where we came all summer. It’s not so bad when the sun’s out.” She laughed sadly. “We didn’t have to worry about getting caught together or being seen by some nosy neighbor.”

Jillian took a deep breath and looked at Carly with agonized eyes. “You saw him run me off the road?”

Carly nodded. JD looked on, feeling that her next words would change everything he knew to be real, understanding at some deep level that what she said next would wound him like nothing else could, though he hadn’t a clue why. Still, he braced himself.

“I came here after I crashed,” Jillian said in her broken voice. “I walked right into his trap. I didn't know it was him. I never thought he’d hurt me. I came in, thinking I’d find him waiting. Thinking he’d probably try to go out and get the crazy person who’d run me off the road.”

“Who are you talking about,” JD finally asked.

“Bill,” she whispered. “Bill Dover.”

JD felt like he’d been punched—yes he’d been braced for it. Yes, at some level he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, he’d even expected it. But to hear his brother’s name spoken by this broken woman…to have it confirmed. The air left his lungs and his heart seemed to constrict in his tight chest.

Not Bill, not his brother.

“Is that who the article you sent me was about?” Carly asked. “Is that why you sent it?”

Jillian nodded, shook her head, then nodded again. “I knew he wanted to end things. I knew he would stay with his wife. But I thought he loved me. I thought…I thought it would be as hard for him as it was for me, saying goodbye. Then Marilee got in touch with me and told me horrible, horrible things. I didn’t want to believe her, but I sent that stuff off to you….I don’t know. Just in case. I thought when I saw Bill, he would be able to explain it all away. I thought Marilee had exaggerated. I thought she’d lied,” she said on sob.

Carly gently smoothed Jillian’s hair back. “What happened when you got to this house, Jilly?” she asked.

“He was keeping Marilee here,” she said. Her voice cracked and tears streamed down her face. “She looked like she’d fallen off a cliff or something. She was dead.”

JD looked at Carly, thought of the passenger in the wreckage of Jillian’s car and knew it must be Marilee’s body he’d seen there.

“I still didn’t understand so he explained it to me. Like I was an incredibly stupid child. Bill had run me off the road. He thought it would kill me. And then we’d both be gone. I don’t know how he thought he’d get away with it. He’d be the first suspect. Wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” JD murmured, but he was looking at Carly, remembering what she’d said. Think about the time.

Carly whispered, “Unless he had an alibi.”

And then it all became crystal clear. Bill had told Jillian to meet him here at four and he’d told JD to meet him at his office at five. He hadn’t wanted JD to witness his conversation with Jillian. He’d wanted JD to witness her never showing up. He wanted an alibi. If not for Carly, he’d have had one.

The horror of it washed over JD, but before he could react, a deathly silence gripped the house. He looked up to see something move and then come into focus. Sissy stood right behind Carly. The look on his face spun Carly around to face the dead woman.

“Don’t worry,” Jillian whispered. “She won’t hurt you.”

But how could they not be horrified by the sight that met their eyes? Sissy’s smocked top was bloody and torn. A hole in her head, right between her eyes, looked like a Bindi but for the trail that spilled down her face. She turned and JD saw that the back of her skull was gone. She looked real and solid, grisly and gruesome. Her fingers spread over her belly where a dark stain grew even as they watched.

“He told me he’d kill me,” she said, crying as blood spilled from that horrifying hole in her head. “‘Tell them it was Mike,’ he said. ‘If you tell the truth, you’ll be as dead as the dog.’” She looked at JD with sad, forsaken eyes. “I did what he told me, but he killed us anyway, didn't he?”

No, not his brother. Bill wouldn’t, couldn’t….

As Carly turned to look at JD, something zinged over her head and lodged in the wall. She screamed as splinters spewed back at her. JD stared at it with shock, but before he could react something else shot past her and hit Sissy’s chest. Blood sprayed from the wound, splattering his face in a warm wash that was somehow more shocking than the sight. He’d felt the whoosh of the bullet, the sting of splintered wood and the spray of blood. They may not have been real, but he’d felt them.

Feeling the danger all around them, JD pulled Carly to her feet, tucking her close to his body to shelter her then reached down for Jillian as he backed them out of the room. Sissy left a bloody handprint on the paint as she slid to her knees. He still didn't understand what was happening. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that someone had shot at them—couldn’t determine if it was real or illusion. Another bullet whizzed by, caught the corner of the door and shards of wood and paint exploded from the impact.

Jillian screamed and Carly made a terrified sound that was as frightening as the bullets. Keeping a hand on each woman’s head—holding them low as they crouched and ran—he raced for the front door which stood open and waiting. Through it, he saw the black night, frosted by snow that swirled in an angry white rage. The wind’s howling cry whipped through the branches of the laden pines and stripped oaks. The freezing cold gusted in as they drew closer. And then, just before they reached the door, it slammed shut with a finality that echoed throughout the house.

JD grabbed the knob and turned, putting all his weight behind the effort to open it again. As if sealed with cement, the door wouldn’t budge. In a rage, he tried to break the glass on either side with his flashlight, but the windows stood firm, repelling the effort without so much as a crack in the surface. The gunshots ceased, but the terror they’d inspired hung like the cold. Who had been shooting? Someone real? Or was it more trickery of the house?

Quickly, JD moved the women forward, through to the kitchen, past Sissy’s bleeding body and to the back door. It stood open until they drew near and then slammed with a boom he felt to his toes.

Taunting them. The house was taunting them.

He hurried to the window over the sink that they’d seen shattered in their earlier inspection. Now thick plywood covered the glass, hammered tightly to the frame on all sides. No draft, no way out.

Back in the front room, their fire still blazed merrily in the grate, but now chairs and a long green couch sat around it, nudged up to a cozy braided rug. To their right, six chairs circled a dining table with a lace cloth and a bowl of flowers on it. A china cabinet stood just behind with dark wood gleaming and china plates glistening in the dim light. A heavenly smell wafted from the kitchen.

Fried chicken….

Cautiously, they inched forward just as a shadow separated itself from the wall and became the solid form of a man. He was black, his skin so dark it shone like ebony. Well over six foot and as broad shouldered as a lumber jack, he dwarfed the room. He wore a dark suit and crisp white shirt. He held a rifle in his hands.

It took a moment and then JD recognized him—Sissy had accused Mike Maze of raping her and Mike’s dad’s face had been on the news for weeks before the trial of his son, as he’d declared Mike’s innocence and beseeched whoever would listen for justice. His picture and video clips had aired every night after the rampage that had left Sissy’s family dead. Mr. Maze had come straight from the hearing, still dressed in his somber suit, to slaughter Sissy’s family.

As JD stared, another form seemed to appear from nowhere and step forward. Sissy’s mother, the woman with the shattered face. Beside her, stood the old man who’d let Carly in—must be Sissy’s dad.

“They’re not real,” he said.

“Yes they are,” Jillian murmured. “Bill made them real.”

They heard footsteps again and then the loud report of a rifle. The china cabinet exploded in a burst of glass and porcelain. Another shot took out the flower bowl and blasted a hole in the wall. Carly let out a shout of pain. He looked down at her and saw blood soaking through the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She made a choking sound as she stared at her arm.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, grabbing her just as her knees gave out.

“He’s hiding.”

The voice came from behind him. Holding Carly, trying to protect Jillian, feeling like he’d fail no matter what he did, JD spun to find Sissy, standing there. Her top was saturated with blood, her hair damp with it. The bullet hole stood out in stark ridges on her forehead.