The Haunting at Grays Harbor (The River Book 8) (10 page)

“Come on,” Maynard said once he found the stairwell. “There’s
no point to spending time down here. It’s upstairs.”

Steven saw carpet tack strip on the sides of the wooden
stairs, the boards creaking under their weight as they ascended. Maynard and
Roy had gone first, so Steven was left without much light to see by. He noticed
dark stains on the walls of the stairwell.
Blood?
he wondered. They had
a splatter to them that made him think someone had thrown something at the wall
that had exploded. With each step they seemed to become larger.

“Guys,” Steven said. “You’re seeing this? On the walls?”

“It’ll get worse,” Maynard called back. “Just ignore it.”

The bouncing light ahead of him occasionally illuminated some
of the wall he was passing, and now Steven could see it glistening – dark, red.
He stopped and reached out, touching the large stain next to him. When he
pulled his fingers back, they too contained the stain. He didn’t want to wipe it
on his clothes, so he wiped them on a bare spot of the wall. They left a trail
of dark matter.
Definitely blood
, he thought.

 As he reached the second floor landing, Steven heard a
scream coming from the hallway to his right. He glanced down it, but again,
without his own flashlight, he couldn’t see much. There was an open door down
there, and he could hear a commotion coming from it, as though someone was
struggling. A metal screech filled the air, the sound of a rotary saw starting,
and then another scream as the saw bit into something.

“Ignore everything,” Maynard said, looking for the stairway
to the third floor.

Steven turned from the hallway and saw Maynard and Roy moving
away from him, further down a different hallway. He hurried to catch up with
them, noticing more blood stains on the walls.
My god,
he thought,
the
walls are practically covered with them!
Another scream came from behind
him, but he resisted the temptation to turn and look. He heard the saw becoming
louder, as though the person holding it had left the room behind him and
entered the hallway.
Following me,
he thought.

Maynard located the next stairway and began going up. Roy and
Steven followed. Steven felt his foot slide when he placed it on the first
step, and he glanced down – more blood. The stairs were covered in it.

“Guys,” Steven said. “There’s blood all over the stairs.”

“Not really,” Maynard said. “Just push through.”

Steven reached out for the handrail and felt a warm
stickiness. He wanted to pull his hand from it, but was afraid he might slip on
the stairs.

Maynard and Roy were several steps ahead of him. When he
looked straight ahead, he could see the stairs Roy was stepping on. In horror
he watched as a sheet of dark liquid fell from the step above Roy’s feet and
poured down onto the stair where Roy was standing, covering his shoes. The
liquid was moving rapidly and soon fell to the next step, and then the next.
Steven braced himself as he continued to walk, knowing it would reach the step
he was standing on within seconds. When it hit and he felt the warm thickness
of it, he yelled out.

Roy turned to check on him.

“Are you seeing the same things I’m seeing?” Steven asked
nervously, prying his hand from the sticky handrail and reaching further up to
take another step.

“It’s too dark to see anything,” Roy replied.

“It’s not real,” Maynard called back.

“Feels real on my feet,” Steven said, trying to secure a
solid foothold on the next step. “Real warm.”

“Keep moving, you two!” Maynard called from above. “Keep going,
no matter what you see!”

Roy turned and continued up. Steven followed, and after a few
more steps they reached the third floor landing, which was an open area. It was
dark, but Steven could sense movement.

The sound of a saw starting up once again caught Steven’s
attention. Roy happened to swing his light around and landed on its source. To their
right, a tall man wearing a blood-soaked apron stood in front of a table saw, shoving
pieces of small white wood through the spinning blade. When the wood hit, blood
spattered in all directions, hitting the man in the apron, covering his face.
Roy held the flashlight on the apparition long enough for Steven to see that he
was mistaken about the white pieces of wood – they had small hands on one end.
The man was sawing arms in half.

More screams came from down the stairwell behind him, and
Steven took a step closer to Roy, not wanting to be too far from the light
source. Maynard was walking into the open space, his light shining up at the ceiling,
looking for access to the attic.

“Jesus Christ,” Steven said. “I’ve never seen anything this
gruesome.”

Fresh splatters of dark liquid appeared on the walls of the
room, without any apparent source. Steven heard a growling coming from a corner
on his left, and he turned his head to see a man on his haunches, his hair
matted with blood, holding a severed head between his hands. There was just
enough light from the other flashlights for him to see the man raise the head
to his mouth and bite out a section of the cheek, pulling the flesh until it
snapped. Then he hungrily chewed it, snarling.

“Come!” Maynard called. “This way!”

Roy turned his flashlight toward Maynard, mercifully but
unnervingly leaving the haunched man in the shadows. Maynard had opened a
closet door. The walls inside were drenched in blood, flowing down from some
indistinguishable source at the top. A wooden ladder was affixed to the wall,
and it led up to a hole in the ceiling.

“Up we go,” Maynard said. With Roy’s light shining on
Maynard, Steven could see Maynard’s trucker hat was soaked red. Maynard reached
for the rungs of the ladder and began to climb up.

“Watch your step on this thing,” Maynard called back.

“You go,” Roy said to Steven. “I’ll follow you.”

Steven reached for the rung and felt the warm liquid under
his hand, making it hard to gain a grip. He held on and pulled, stepping onto a
lower rung and feeling his foot slip. Blood was pouring down the sides of the
ladder, and some of it was washing over to the rungs, keeping them slick. He
forced himself to climb.

Once he neared the top, he saw Maynard’s blood-covered hand
extended to him, and he reached for it. He felt himself pulled up.
That old
man’s got some strength
, Steven thought as he landed on the attic floor.

Maynard pulled Roy up the same way, and the three of them
stood next to the opening. Then they turned to examine the attic.

“Lights off,” Maynard said, and took a few steps into the
darkness.

Steven didn’t see anything, but then he realized that both
Maynard and Roy had dropped into the River. He joined them, and was greeted by
a menagerie of twisting blue and grey shapes, swirling slowly around them,
counter-clockwise.

This isn’t normal
, Maynard said.
A normal vortex doesn’t look like this.

Steven tried to wipe his hands on his pants, but the pants
were covered in blood and wound up adding more blood to his hands than they
removed. He glanced down at his shirt and saw it was soaked, too.

Maynard walked into the vortex, the blue and grey swirls
moving through his legs. They looked like streaks of a thin cloth, without substance.
It knows we’re here,
Maynard said.
It’s here somewhere.

Steven and Roy followed Maynard, but Steven stopped in his
tracks as suddenly the dark ceiling overhead was lit with thousands of specks
of light. They flashed once or twice, then remained on.

The night sky!
Roy said, looking up and marveling. The stars looked bright
and crisp, and almost as though you could reach up and touch them. Then they
disappeared, and Steven saw the roof of the house.

Completely unstable,
Maynard said, walking through a blue mist that had started
to form on the ground. Steven stepped forward, heading to where Maynard was
standing.

I think we’ve found it – her, that is,
Maynard said, looking down at
something hidden in the mist. Steven and Roy joined him.

Maynard removed a small object from his shirt pocket and
flipped it open – it was a small mirror. He asked Steven to hold it at a
particular angle, pointed down at the figure under the fog.

Looking for a signature?
Steven asked.

Right you are!
Maynard replied.
Roy, if you would, I’ll need this fog disrupted
so I can get a look. Would you take off your jacket and try to fan some of it
away, while I look through the mirror?

Roy sat the flashlight down on the ground. It disappeared into
the mist as it went below his ankles. He pulled off his jacket and held it over
the figure, and began to move it back and forth, causing the mist to slowly
disperse. Small drops of blood flew from it as he swung it.

The fog dispersed, and Steven gasped. The figure underneath
was a milky white woman, lying on her back. Her hair was white, tangled and
stretched in all directions, as though she’d been tearing at it with her hands.
She was so white that for a moment Steven thought she might be a statue, made
of white stone. But as they watched, she moved, twisting in agony on the floor.
Her eyes were closed, and she reached up to pull at her hair, her face
contorted with pain. She lowered one of her hands, and slowly reached down
below her waist, her arm disappearing into the fog. When it returned, it contained
a white mushy substance which she raised to her mouth, and her white tongue
emerged to lick at it.

Angle the mirror a bit more, please,
Maynard said, who was now sketching
a pattern onto a small notepad. Roy continued fanning at the mist, and he
shifted lower on the body of the woman.

The fog separated again, offering a view of the woman’s lower
half. It didn’t exist. She ended just below the navel, and as they watched she
again lowered her hand and dug her fingers into herself, scraping off part of
her white body, and raising it to her mouth, feeding the material to herself.

Steven stifled a gag.

Don’t move
, Maynard said.
I’m almost done.

Roy moved his jacket higher, allowing the mist to once again
hide the woman’s lower section, mercifully removing the self-cannibalization
from Steven’s view.

She twisted her body back and forth, and as she finished
feeding the latest fingerful to her mouth, she reached up once again to pull at
her hair. She was pulling so hard Steven thought it might come out at the
roots.

Done,
Maynard said. Steven lowered the mirror and handed it back to Maynard,
who slipped it back into his shirt pocket, and the small notepad slipped into a
pocket on his pants.

Can you hear me?
Maynard said to the woman, leaning down next to her, trying
to get her attention.
Can you hear me?

The woman moaned in response and opened her eyes. They were
entirely white, filmed over.

I don’t think she can see us,
Maynard said quietly to Steven and
Roy.
But she might be able to hear us.
He turned back down to the woman
and addressed her loudly.
Can you hear me?

Get out!
the woman hissed, and Steven felt a shock go down his spine. He saw that
Roy felt it too. Maynard stood up.

It’s time to go,
Maynard said.

But we haven’t found the other rods yet,
Roy said.

No time for that now,
Maynard said, walking to the opening in the floor where the
ladder led down to the third floor.
She gave us a warning. She could have
easily killed us with that shock.

Maynard stood over the hole and turned his flashlight back
on, dropping out of the River. “Down you go, both of you. Beeline down to the
bottom floor and out the door. Don’t stop.”

Steven placed his foot on the rung of the ladder, feeling the
slick surface once again. Carefully he lowered himself, then he waited while
Roy and Maynard came down, assisting them as they reached the bottom.

“Come on,” Maynard said, racing across the open space of the
third floor toward the stairwell. Steven and Roy followed. Steven could hear
the sound of the table saw somewhere in the darkness to his left as he ran. It
was chewing through another arm.

They went down the steps. Steven lost his footing at one
point and slipped a stair, but caught himself with the sticky handrail. They
continued down and Maynard led them to the next stairwell, not stopping to
observe any of the horrific menageries Steven could hear all around them.

As they descended the next set of stairs, the going got easier,
and the blood diminished. Steven was relieved when they reached the ground
floor and the simple, bare, unstained walls. Maynard led them to the door and
they all walked outside.

Clouds had rolled in and the sun was now obscured, but it was
still bright enough for Steven to shield his eyes. He glanced down at his
clothing, expecting to see gore – but there was none. He looked at Roy and
Maynard – they looked exactly as they had before they’d gone in.