Eximere (The River Book 4) (6 page)

“What do you think the marchers are, exactly?” Steven asked.

“If they show up every night,” Roy said, “this is either
their natural home, which I doubt, or they were placed here for a reason, which
I suspect.”

“You think Percival placed them here, to keep us in?” Steven
asked, pulling down the sheets from his bed and inspecting them.

“No,” Roy said. “I don’t think Percival has any abilities at
all. He’s been indoctrinated by the writings of his grandfather. He’s little
more than a zealot, and a dishonest one at that. If it turns out we can leave
tomorrow during the daylight, he won’t have been very effective at keeping us
here.”

“Provided we
can
leave tomorrow,” Steven said. “And
what about the device? What if it completes its drain of your powers by then? Perhaps
all he needed was one night to get it done. Maybe we should be looking for that
device rather than sleeping.”

“You might be right,” Roy said, “but I think Percival was
telling the truth about it taking several days. I can still jump into the
River, can you?”

Steven tried – he slipped in without a problem. Roy joined
him.

See?
Roy thought.
Still works.

What about a trance?
Steven thought.
Can you still do that?

Roy concentrated for a few moments. From within the flow,
Steven could see the bubble slowly form around him as his trance deepened.
After a couple of minutes, Roy stopped and the bubble dissolved. Then they
exited the River.

“Trance seems normal,” Roy said. “And I’m not the only one
trying it. Several others were checking that they could still do it, too.”

“Well, I suppose that’s good,” Steven said.

“There is something,” Roy said. “Noticed it just now.
Remember how Percival said to avoid the room on the corner?”

“Yes,” Steven said.

“I believe that’s the room that the ghost woman came out of,
before she went down the stairs,” Roy said. “That’s where a lot of the energy
of this house lies,” Roy said. “The other part I’m more confused by.”

“Other part?” Steven asked.

“Where she went,” Roy said. “I couldn’t see them in the
trance, but I could feel them. The house is full of secrets.”

The group assembled an hour before sunrise in the dining
room. When Steven came down, he found all the rest except Jonathan sitting
around the table, drinking coffee.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

“No,” Myrna said. “Thought I might as well get up.”

“Beds were comfortable though,” Roy said. “At least mine was.”

“Did anything happen overnight?” Steven asked. “Anyone see
anything else?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Eliza.

“Me either,” Russell said.

Steven poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot on the
table. “How long until we can leave?”

“Well,” Roy said, “it’s still dark out there. Sunrise is in
an hour. We should be seeing things get lighter soon.”

Steven sat at the table and the group continued to discuss
their situation. They mentioned seeing each other trancing after having gone to
bed.

“I still don’t feel anything,” Eliza said. “If I’ve lost any
ability, I don’t know about it.”

“Maybe that’s part of how the device works,” Russell said.
“Numbs you to the loss, like a Novocaine shot at the dentist.”

“Then I’d feel that instead,” Eliza said. “But I don’t feel
any different at all.”

“It might be more subtle than Russell’s analogy,” Myrna said.
“I do know there’s more going on in this house than people can see.”

“I got that too,” Eliza said, “in my trance last night. Lots
of hints at things I could have gone into, but chose not to.”

“What do you mean, ‘things’?” Steven asked.

“Things that aren’t normal,” Eliza said. “In a trance, the
normal world looks a certain way. But things that have been constructed in the
River, that aren’t part of the normal world, look different. There were a lot
of those popping up in my trance last night.”

“Same for me,” said Myrna. “Very odd.”

“I didn’t want to pursue any of them,” Russell said. “I’m not
going to engage with this house any more than I have to. I just want to put as
much distance between myself and this place as I possibly can.”

“Can you give me an example?” Steven asked Eliza.

“Well,” Eliza said, taking a sip of coffee, “there’s the
corner bedroom upstairs, the one Percival warned us about. It looks over the
front yard of the estate. It’s not normal. A couple of the doors in that
hallway aren’t normal, either.”

“What, in that hallway, there?” Steven said, pointing at the
velvet wallpaper hallway.

“Yes,” Eliza said.

“There’s a couple of objects in some of the rooms,” Myrna
added. “Not normal.”

“And then there’s the basement,” Eliza said.

“There is no basement,” said Jonathan, entering the room.

“Then it’s the foundation,” Eliza said. “The base of the
house isn’t normal, either.”

“This place is rotten from the core,” Russell said. “The very
foundation is evil.”

“I didn’t say it was evil,” Eliza said, “just that it’s not
normal.”

“I’m saying it’s evil,” Russell said. “My sense is that the
people who lived here dabbled in dark arts, and it’s infected the building
itself.”

“Sounds a little melodramatic,” said Roy.

“Yes,” said Myrna, “this isn’t your television show, Russell.
We don’t need the extra drama.”

“Did you sleep alright, Jonathan?” Eliza asked.

“Yes, fine enough,” he said. “Sunrise should be soon, and we
can get out of here.”

“The sky is beginning to lighten,” Roy said, walking over to
the large windows at the other end of the room. “The stars are fading.”

“Can we leave now?” Myrna asked. “Or do we have to wait until
the sun is up?”

“Don’t know,” Jonathan said. “If the marchers are only out
when it’s dark, we should be good as soon as it’s light enough to see our way.”

“Give it another fifteen minutes,” Roy said, “and we’ll be
there.”

“Good,” said Russell. “The sooner the better.”

“Is everyone ready to leave?” Jonathan asked. “Nothing left
up in your rooms?”

“I’ve got to get changed,” Steven said. “My clothes are in
the kitchen. And my things are still upstairs.”

“I’ll go with you,” Eliza said, standing. “I’ve been sitting
in this chair too long.”

“Once you’re back, we’ll all go through to the side door and
prepare to leave,” Jonathan said.

“All right,” Steven said, “we’ll be back in a minute.”

Steven and Eliza retrieved Steven’s clothes from the kitchen
and then walked towards the archway and the velvet paper hallway. As they
passed the closed doors, Steven wondered which ones Eliza thought were abnormal.

“How could you tell some of these doors weren’t normal?”
Steven asked.

“They look distorted in the trance,” she said.

Steven slipped into the River as they walked, observing the
doors. They didn’t look different to him.

“You won’t notice in the River,” she said. “Only if you go
into a trance.”

“I’ve got to get that mastered,” Steven said. “I’ve been in
one a couple of times, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

“Roy hasn’t taught you how to initiate a trance yet?” she
asked.

“No,” Steven answered, “but to be honest, we haven’t really
had the time.”

“You need to learn it,” Eliza said. “There’s much more
available to you in a trance. It’s not as convenient as the River, because you
normally have to incapacitate your body while you trance, but you can go deeper
and see more things. He’ll show you soon, I’ll bet.”

“Hope so, I feel like I’m missing out on the party,” Steven
said.

“Well, in this case,” Eliza said, “be grateful. If you’re not
tagged by that device, that’s a good thing.”

They emerged into the room containing the stairs. Steven
stopped and grabbed Eliza’s arm.

“Look, on the staircase!” he said, pointing.

They both dropped into the River immediately. The dark woman
was about half way up the stairs, ascending. She floated smoothly above the
stairs just as she had done the night before.

Steven motioned with his head to Eliza that he intended to
follow the figure. He quietly walked to the staircase and began walking up,
several steps behind the dark woman. Eliza was right behind him with her hand
on his back. Steven was terrified that the woman might turn around to face him
at any moment, but she did not. Once the figure reached the top of the stairs,
it turned and glided down the hallway in the opposite direction of their
sleeping rooms. It was headed towards the corner bedroom.

Steven turned to look at Eliza, who nodded to him in
encouragement. They reached the top of the stairs and followed the woman.

The dark woman reached the closed door of the bedroom about
ten feet ahead of Steven and Eliza. The figure didn’t stop at the door, but
passed through it and into the room. Steven and Eliza dropped out of the flow.

“Do we go in?” Steven asked.

“No,” Eliza said. “You go get your stuff, and we’ll get out
of here.”

They turned and walked down the hallway in the opposite
direction. They passed the head of the stairs and eventually found Steven’s
bedroom. Eliza waited outside as he changed and retrieved his phone from the
nightstand, then glanced around the room to make sure he didn’t leave anything
else.

“I wonder what’s in there,” Steven said as he walked out of
the room.

“In where?” Eliza said.

“The corner bedroom, where we saw her go.”

“Are you kidding?” Eliza said. “We want to leave, not get
deeper into this.”

They walked back into the hallway.

“We could just open the door, take a look,” Steven said.

“Percival warned us about two things,” Eliza said. “That
room, and the marchers. He was right about the marchers.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Steven said. They walked down the
stairs to join the others in the dining room, but Steven knew that if he’d been
on his own, he would have opened the door to the corner bedroom and taken a
look inside.
Probably a stupid move,
he thought.
Glad she stopped me.

Once they reached the dining room, everyone rose from the
table and Jonathan led them to the kitchen and the side door. They walked out
into the yard. The light of dawn made the lawn and the front yard very visible.
“Let’s go,” Jonathan said, leading them towards the brick path. Steven shut the
door to the house behind him.

As they started down the path, Steven felt his heartbeat
increase. He glanced from side to side, looking for threats. He saw none. The
lawn looked as quiet and beatific as when they’d first arrived.
If they only
knew
, he thought.

His heart picked up again as they approached the spot where
he figured the attack had occurred. He wasn’t anxious to see Marilyn’s body.

After several minutes, Jonathan came to a stop, looking down
at the path. “This must have been it,” he said. There were dark splotches and
smears on the bricks.

“We were off the path,” Steven said, glancing to the left.
There was nothing there, where he figured Marilyn’s body must have landed.

“The body is gone?” Myrna asked.

“Yes,” Jonathan said. “Obviously the traces of what happened
are here. But no body.”

“Where could it have gone?” Russell asked.

“Wolves,” Roy said. “They might have drug her body across the
bricks like this. But who knows. Maybe some other creatures that haunt this
place carried her off.”

“What now?” Myrna asked.

“We continue on,” Roy said, “and get out of here. That’s
first.”

Jonathan started back down the path, and the group followed.
Soon they entered dense forest, the path twisting and turning. After several
minutes they came to the gravel parking area inside the gate. The area was
empty.

Jonathan and Roy walked to the main gate, inspecting the
lock. Then Roy returned to the others.

“Hadn’t anticipated the gate,” he said. “It’s locked, and
we’re not going to get it open. If we want to leave, we’re going to have to
scale the fence.”

“It’s ten feet high!” Myrna said. “That’s not going to work.”

“This wrought iron fencing can’t possibly go around the
entire estate,” Russell said. “I’ll bet it’s just along here, for show. We
could follow the fence and see if it becomes scalable somewhere else.”

“I’m fine with that,” said Roy. He looked at Jonathan.

“Fine with me,” Jonathan said. “Let’s go.”

They started off down the side of the fence. Whoever had been
maintaining the yard had kept growth away from the fence on either side of it.
After progressing a hundred yards, the fence disappeared into dense forest.

“I can almost guarantee you that fence stops just inside
there,” Roy said. “If we go in a little ways, I think we’ll find an opening.”

Steven looked nervous, but Myrna charged forward. “Let’s go,”
she said.

They walked into the forest, their progress now slowed to a
fraction of their former pace. Steven felt his fear rising as he twisted and
turned between the tree trunks, bending to avoid branches. He kept his eye on
the fence, and just as Roy had predicted, after thirty feet the iron fence came
to a halt and became a barbed wire fence. Roy held the wire open as each person
bent and passed through it to the other side.

“Now straight back the way we came,” Roy said. They walked
back out of the forest, emerging into the small clearing around the fence –
this time on the other side.

“We’ll just follow the fence back to the road,” Roy said,
“and then follow it out to the main road into town.”

Within a few minutes they had completed the trek and were
continuing their walk away from the estate. When they reached the chain
bisecting the road, they each stepped over it, Roy offering his hand to help
Eliza and Myrna with their balance.

When they reached the main road, Steven estimated how long
they’d have to walk to get back to town. He guessed twenty minutes.

“Doesn’t look like much traffic on this road,” Jonathan said
as they started down the side of the roadway towards town.

“We must look like a sight,” Russell said, “the six of us
marching along the road like this.”

“I only wish poor Marilyn was with us,” Myrna said. “Seeing
those blood stains on the path – well, it makes one think. Must have been
awful.”

“We tried to get her to stay,” Russell said. “She refused.”

“Please, Russell,” Myrna said, “let’s not speak ill of the
dead.”

They walked along the side of the road in silence for a
while. No cars passed in either direction.

“I think I need to eat some breakfast as soon as we reach the
town,” Myrna said.