Tymber Dalton (19 page)

“Hey, you.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “Hey, you. Did you eat yet?”

He shook his head. “Any minute now.” With perfect timing, a nurse brought in a tray.

“Here you go, Mr. Corey.”

Steve thanked her and looked at it, grimacing. Mashed potatoes, chicken soup, a roll, and green gelatin.

“They must have you on a bland diet,” Sami smiled.

He tentatively tasted it. “Trade you?”

“Not on your life.” Her pork chop wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t about to feed him something that might make him sick.

Fortunately Steve wasn’t up to talking, because Sami’s mind drifted back to Evelyn’s journals. She wanted to finish them tonight and maybe find out what happened to the family. Several times she started to tell Steve about the journals. Every time, an irrational fear set in, nearly a panic that he shouldn’t know.

It didn’t make any sense, but it felt better to keep quiet.

Nerves. Must be.

* * * *

It was ten o’clock when she returned home.

We really need some outdoor lighting.

Normally, Sami wasn’t skittish in the dark, but she couldn’t help rushing inside and locking the door behind her. Once she had all the lights on and the curtains closed against the night, she turned on the TV and returned to Evelyn’s last journal.

The journal entries grew shorter and more sporadic. Evelyn kept them hidden in the attic and wrote quickly so George wouldn’t discover them. He would spend hours locked in the basement. She was not allowed down there.

The few times she felt safe writing at any length, her focus was on the children—and George’s drinking. Evelyn wasn’t sure where he was getting the whiskey because she wasn’t buying it during their shopping trips, and she hadn’t seen any evidence of it in the house. But she smelled it on his breath and saw it in his actions. She surmised he must have it hidden in the basement. Yet the few times she snuck down there, she saw nothing but spare furniture.

It was a mystery to her.

By early June he was drinking heavily. Occasionally she saw him with a bottle. Whiskey, of course, but she was still unsure where he hid his stash. She thought about spying on him to figure it out so she could destroy them, even though she knew that would incur his wrath.

And he was changing.

He grew more vicious, lashing out verbally and physically. She taught the children to hide when their father yelled, partially to protect them from his temper, and partially so they couldn’t witness what she did to distract him.

As June slipped into July, she grew more fearful, even as her entries grew shorter and more furtive.

I swear tonight he had a reddish glow in his eyes. It is as if he is transforming into something from the very bowels of Hell. I don’t know how to get away from him. I might have to do something desperate, perhaps violent, while he is asleep one night.

I fear for the children…

Sami’s gut knotted. Evelyn’s fear leapt off the page from every pencil stroke.

Her final entry was dated July 22nd.

He is sick. I do not know what is wrong with him. He no longer shaves and claims he has stomach pain. He is constantly rubbing his right side. Last night, he accused me of trying to poison him even though I’ve been trying to get him to see a doctor for days. I begged him to let me hitch the team and drive him into town, but he refused. He growled at me—I know it sounds insane, but it was a growl. Perhaps the whiskey, perhaps his pain. I don’t know what is wrong with him—I wish I had the constitution of a murderess, I would have poisoned him for all his years of terror. But I cannot claim that, despite my most fervent desires to be free.

I am scared he will do something violent. He told me things were going to change around here. Change very soon. I do not know what he meant by that, but despite the heat his words chilled me to my very soul.

And that was it.

Blank pages followed.

Where have I heard that before?
Sami thought as she yawned. She rubbed her eyes—it was nearly midnight.

Sami froze at the noise upstairs. It sounded like a footstep.

After several minutes and no other sounds, she grabbed her cell phone and a butcher knife from the kitchen and slowly climbed the stairs. Rational thought told her no one was up there. Not to mention every horror movie she’d ever seen ran through her mind. How many times had she yelled at the screen for the heroine not to go up there?

But she’d feel stupid if she called the cops over a settling house.
Famous Writer’s Wife Calls Cops for Nothing
. Yeah, she could see that headline on TMZ.com.

She punched 911 into the keypad and waited. At the top of the stairs a chill caressed her, probably the air-conditioner kicking on.

She found nothing.

She checked the bedrooms, the closets.

Alone.

Settling. Old houses settle. They creak, they groan. They make noises.

Although she wasn’t sure she believed it.

Yawning, she cleared 911 from the phone and turned, coming face-to-face with a woman at the top of the stairs. Petite, auburn hair, sad-eyed and careworn.

And dressed in old-fashioned clothes.

Sami barely had time to let out a scream before the woman vanished into thin air.

Sami fainted.

* * * *

The property looked different. The barn was little more than a rustic wooden shed, not the modern sheet metal building standing in her yard. The barbed wire perimeter fence was gone. Only the corral, larger than its current size, was fenced in, with newly hewn posts and boards.

Mutt and Jeff were not there, replaced by a matching pair of bays, who whinnied over the fence. Three small, skinny milk cows grazed in the far corner of the corral, while a couple of free-roaming pigs rooted near the fence line. Chickens pecked in the yard.

An old—make that new—buckboard sat parked near the side of the barn.

Sami turned. There was a storm coming. Lighting flashed overhead, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder that shook the ground and made her jump.

Sami looked at the house. In the turret window, she saw an auburn-haired woman furtively glance out. She seemed to be doing something. Writing, perhaps?

She heard a noise in the barn. A man, his back to her and bent over something, muttered darkly. She couldn’t hear everything but recognized the voice.

“Damn bitch…poisoning me…I swear she’s gonna pay.”

He stood, grabbing his right side and moaning in pain. Sami didn’t have time to move, but he didn’t appear to see her as he stumbled past her toward the house.

He was the spitting image of Steve. Same height, same weight, and if it wasn’t for the age and stubble on his face, he could be his twin.

The woman in the turret instantly disappeared from the window. A moment later she met him at the front door and tried to help him inside…

* * * *

Sami came to lying on the hall floor at the top of the stairs. It was a miracle she didn’t tumble down them. Her cell phone lay by her side. She’d been unconscious for over fifteen minutes.

Her right hand hurt, her palm bleeding where the knife sliced her.

Counting herself doubly lucky she hadn’t landed on it and skewered herself, she picked it up with her left hand and carefully made her way down to the kitchen.

The knife clattered in the sink, and she rinsed the blood off her palm. The cut had almost stopped bleeding and wasn’t too deep. She poured peroxide on it, wincing in pain, and wrapped it with gauze.

What the hell happened? She figured she fainted, but the dream seemed so vivid—

The woman!

The woman in the turret window was the same one she saw at the top of the stairs.

The folder lay on the coffee table. Sami used her left hand to open it and rifle the contents, spreading them out to find what she wanted.

The article with a picture of a mother and her two children.

Evelyn Simpson. Even in black and white, there was no disputing the sad, mournful eyes staring back at her.

Sami brought Steve home the next afternoon. She didn’t tell him about her experience, explaining the cut on her hand as an accidental encounter with the barbed wire fence.

He quietly took over the couch, aimlessly channel surfing and napping all afternoon. Earlier she’d gathered all the papers and journals and locked them in the bottom of the filing cabinet. He chose to spend the night on the couch.

The next morning, she drove him into town. She didn’t want to sit in on his meeting or appointment with Dr. Raymond. It was his job to tackle his demons.

Instead, she spent two hours exploring the town square and surrounding shops. There was a quilt shop, a bookstore, and quite a few antique stores. The last shop she reached before she had to meet Steve was a new age store. The kiwi-green sign read
Many Blessings
in bright-pink, curly letters.

It wasn’t her thing, but the storefront looked inviting, and they had a coffee counter. She needed a cappuccino after her sleepless night.

Only the clerk was there, greeting her with a chipper smile. “What can I do you for?”

“Something strong to wake me up.”

“Gotcha.” The petite girl with a long mass of wild, curly red hair moved behind the coffee counter and rang her up. A minute later, Sami sipped the best cappuccino she’d ever had, which said a lot.

“Are you new in town?” the clerk asked.

“Yes, we’re renting a house for the summer.”

“That’s funny. People around here usually rent for the winter and go home for the summer.”

“I know. My husband wanted a change of pace. He’s a writer.”

“Oh?” The girl brightened. “Anyone I’ve heard of?”

“Steven Corey.”

The girl gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “You’re renting the old Simpson house!”

Sami wasn’t sure she liked the conversation’s direction. “Yes, why?”

She raced to the front door and locked it, flipping a sign over that read, “Be Back in a Few—Girl’s Gotta Do What a Girl’s Gotta Do!”

“Come here!” The clerk disappeared into the back room. Sami hesitantly followed.

The clerk pulled on a string, and a dim bulb lit the back alcove she used as an office. “I’ve got something you need.” She rooted around in a battered file cabinet, muttering as she searched.

At first, Sami thought the woman was in her early twenties. As she stepped closer, Sami realized she had to be in her early thirties, if not older. Her red hair looked natural, but upon closer inspection, Sami spotted auburn roots peeking through. For some reason, the woman looked very familiar. Short and petite, she had a presence about her much larger than her frame.

“Here it is!” The woman wheeled around and held out an old book.

Sami put her cup down and tentatively took it. “What is it?”

“It’s my great-grandmother’s journal. By the way, name’s Julie Prescott.”

* * * *

Mary Prescott had been three months pregnant when her husband was arrested. He hung himself in the county jail before he was brought to trial. Mary moved shortly after, never again talking about her experiences in the house.

When Mary died, she left a safe-deposit box filled with various papers, including the journal. By that time she had been remarried and widowed, but her only son retained his father’s last name. He passed the journal to his son, who had no interest in it, who in turn passed it to his only daughter.

“Mrs. Johnson wouldn’t sell it to me, told me the house had caused my family enough grief to last a lifetime. I tried to get her to let me go in with a group to study it, and she wouldn’t let me do that either. Have you seen anything?”

Sami stroked the book’s cover. Boy, had she.

“No,” she lied. “It’s been quiet. Peaceful, actually.”

“Well, anytime you move, it’s crazy.” Julie went to a shelf and pulled down a box, handing it to her. “I sell new home blessing kits—sage sticks, candles, sea salt. Here, take this.” She handed it to Sami, who had no choice but to accept. “Use it. It’ll make you feel better.” Sami noted the tiny wrinkles around the corner of the woman’s eyes. Mid-thirties, most likely.

“How much?”

Julie held up her hands. “Gratis! You can borrow the journal as long as you need it. I’ve got a copy of it scanned on my computer. I would like it back eventually.” She leaned forward. “Please, just promise me if you see or hear anything, call me. I’d love to study it, and I promise to keep your identity a secret. No paparazzi craziness or anything. I swear.”

Sami nodded. “Okay, thanks.” She juggled her cup of cappuccino and the box, stashing the journal inside to make the job a little easier. “I have to meet my husband. He had surgery. I need to get him to his follow-up visit.”