Garden of Darkness (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

The wind blew out of the north, across and through Old Tuonela, bringing with it the scent of decay and the whisper of mingled voices. At first it was just a
sh-sh-sh.
But as he listened, he could make out a word here and there.

Come
back
to us.

Voices from the past, reaching into the present.

For so many years he’d felt trapped. Living in darkness, in a kind of limbo. Waiting. Always waiting.

Come back.

But limbo wasn’t a bad place to be. No pain, no cravings.

Now he craved.

He had the notion that if he could somehow shed his shell the world would open up for him. But he couldn’t sever the thread. It always pulled him back.

Wandering in his mind, he dreamed of the out- side. The harder he concentrated, the more concrete and real it seemed.

It was possible to travel without a body. He had a vague memory of doing it before, but it took focus. Deep concentration. And it didn’t last. He needed to find a way to make it last.

He concentrated . . . and suddenly soared upward.

He expected the display box to shatter. He expected to hit the ceiling. Instead, he shot through it to hover above the museum.

As he looked down, mesmerized, the wind caught him and gave him a push. He rode it, gliding along, floating over houses. And even though he couldn’t see the people inside, he could sense them and smell them.

Especially the children and women.

Sh-sh-sh.

The voices held him up and carried him along. They were the breeze that lifted him over chimneys and treetops.

Sh-sh-sh.

They were familiar. Old friends. Family. Women he’d loved. Children he’d loved and killed.

Sh-sh-sh.

He drifted over the Tuonela Bridge.

The flowing freedom was sensual.

This place.

God, how many times had he wanted to leave it? How many times had he tried?

But suddenly whatever had tethered him was gone. For a hundred years he’d stood at the thresh- old of another existence, unable to move forward, unable to go back.

But something brought about his release.

Float away.

Just float away. All the way back to the mother country, to England.

Get away from this dark, vile place of memories best forgotten. Of traitorous, vile people.

What about revenge? For those who had tricked him and betrayed him? Especially one person . . .

If only he could truly inhabit his body again. If only he could be whole again.

He drifted over a sprawling Victorian house—and paused.

Something snagged at his mind. Something tugged at him.

And they whispered:
Yes, yes, yes.

All he had to do was think of the direction he wanted to go, and suddenly he shifted and dropped.

He plunged straight down.

Instead of smashing against the roof, he moved silently through it. The shock and surprise caused his breath to catch, and it took him a moment to realize he’d passed the physical boundary of the roof.

He was in a chamber. The lights were off, and through the turret window he could see the Wisconsin River and the lift bridge.

She’s down the hall.

Yes.

He could sense her presence and he moved toward it. He didn’t have to worry about his feet making noise. He glided soundlessly inches above the floor.

He paused. To the left was a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. To the right, an open door.

He stopped in the doorway. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

Lavender. She’d always smelled like lavender.

Sweet girl. Sweet woman. Sweet love.

Oh, you hurt me. You hurt me so much.

Sh-sh-sh.

The whispers held him up. They’d brought him there.

True love.

That was what it had been. He would have done anything for her. She was his downfall. Some would argue he wasn’t capable of love, but everyone was capable of love. Even the most evil, heartless of men loved in some form. Even if it was only for a fleeting second. Even if it was a twisted love.

And love blinded even the strongest.

She made a soft, restless sound and turned in the bed.

Could she sense him in the room? Invading her dreams?

Sweet, sweet girl.

He was both fearful and curious.

He moved closer, stopping at the edge of the bed.

She rolled to her back, arms above her head. He could see her breasts outlined against the white fabric of her T-shirt.

He remembered her. He remembered touching her and holding her and making love to her.

His gaze tracked down, and he let out an involuntary gasp. The sheet had slipped and he could see her belly. It was swollen, the skin tight.

Had he been here before? Done this before? It was hard for the dead to remember.

So familiar.

A baby.

He put out his hands . . . and placed his palms against her stomach. The baby kicked. And kicked again.

As if it knew he was there.

Interesting.

He loved children. If he were capable of smiling, he would have done so.

They were holding him up.

His followers.

With their whispers and their invisible hands.

He leaned closer; he brushed his lips against hers.

The woman in the bed awakened with a gasp. She sat upright, hands planted on each side of the mattress, eyes wide in the dark.

She shifted and touched her belly. He could almost feel her hands on top of his. The baby squirmed in protest, and she let out another gasp, this one sounding as if she were in pain.

Ah, my love.

He could almost taste her. The air suddenly seemed tainted with the sickeningly sweet scent of almonds.

How many ways did you try to kill me? First the poison, then—
Recalled agony ripped through his chest and he jumped back. With dismay and regret, he felt himself dissolving and briefly wished he’d never come here, never floated through the roof to visit her room.

Don’t think about that,
the voices whispered.
Don’t think about how she destroyed you. . . . You can be strong again. Stronger than before. We can help you. He can help you.

The woman in the bed looked blindly about the room. “Where are you?”

Could she see him? What a delicious thought.

She turned slightly and reached into nothing. “
Who
are you?”

He felt himself fading.

One last sizzle before the spark went out.

She’d done it to him again. Killed him again.

He would answer if he could. He would tell her who he was, that he was her long-lost love, Richard Manchester.

Chapter Twenty-four

Evan dug.

He dug to find and forget. He dug to discover and escape.

The hole was so deep he had to toss dirt above his head. It spilled in his eyes and sifted into his hair. He could taste it on his lips.

He was driven by something internal and external; a sense of urgency overpowered his waking hours.

Hurry.

Dig.

Voices whispered to him, coaxed him, coached him. They felt it too. The urgency.

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Over here. Dig over here.

He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten. Didn’t matter. Food was unimportant. Sleep, when it came, wasn’t sleep but collapse. His body giving up and tumbling into unconsciousness.

That was what he truly craved. Those few hours when everything stopped. Those few hours of nothingness.

Don’t think.

Somewhere beneath the turmoil in his head he felt he must find the secrets buried in the past and possibly, if not a solution to his situation, an answer. He needed to know who the Pale Immortal had really been, and why he’d done what he’d done. He needed to know what Evan Stroud had become and was becoming.

The shovel hit something solid.

He dragged the metal blade across a wooden surface, pushing dirt away until the object was revealed.

A child’s coffin.

Working the shovel, he broke the box free, lifted and deposited it on the ground next to the hole, then climbed out.

It was held shut with a rusty metal lock.

He grasped the lock and tried to force it open. Pain lanced through the fleshy part of his palm. His fingers grew sticky. He raised the box to his shoulder and walked through the woods toward home.

Evan pushed open the kitchen door.

Someone sat at the table. Someone vaguely familiar. It took him a moment to remember the person’s name.

Graham.

The kitchen was dark except for the light of a weak bulb above the sink.

“What are you doing back this time of the night?”

Graham asked. “It’s not even close to morning.” A nice combination of resentment and sarcasm in the kid’s voice.

Evan lowered the box to the floor. It was a traditional shape. Not rectangular, but wide at the shoulders, narrow at the bottom.

Graham took note of what it was and jumped to his feet. “Is that a coffin?” He backed away.

“Find me a screwdriver.”

“No.”

Graham hovered in the doorway, looking as if he might bolt at any second, but unable to take his eyes off the wooden box. In the dim light, Evan could see that a cross had been carved on the top.

Evan pointed. “In that drawer.”

“What’d you do? You’re bleeding.” Graham grabbed a kitchen towel and handed it to Evan. Evan stared at it.

Blood hit his boots and the floor. He wrapped the towel around his hand.

“You have to put that back.” Graham pointed to the box. “You can’t keep digging up dead people.”

Evan crossed the room, jerked open a drawer, and pulled out a screwdriver. He held it to Graham. “Open it.”

He shook his head. “That’s desecration.”

“Open it.”

Graham moved reluctantly closer, his feet dragging. He crouched in front of the coffin and wedged the tip of the screwdriver under the metal latch.

“You should get a tetanus shot,” he mumbled, “if you cut yourself on this rusty, dirty thing.”

“I’ll be okay.”

It wasn’t locked, but the rust had fused the metal.

Using the screwdriver, Graham broke the latch so nothing held the box closed but two hinges.

Evan moved closer, the bloody towel pressed to his injured hand. Graham looked up.

“Open it,” Evan whispered.

Graham swallowed and shook his head.

“Do it.”

In the end, the kid couldn’t defy his father.

Using the fingers of both hands, Graham wiggled the lid until it loosened; then he swung it open, his feet sliding against the floor as he scrambled away like a spider. He stopped, the fear in his eyes changing to puzzlement.

Bent over like an old man, Evan shuffled closer to examine the contents.

No mummified baby. No body.

Books.

Not just any books—journals tucked among an infant’s yellowed gown, a dagger, and what looked like the dust of crumbled flowers.

Evan lifted out one of the journals. Reverently and carefully, he opened it.

Feminine handwriting in faded black ink.

The brittle, brown pages smelled like a mixture of lavender and sage. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

“This is it,” he whispered, his heart hammering. “What I’ve been searching for.”

Graham crawled across the floor, stopping a foot from the box. “What is it?”

No records had been kept of Old Tuonela, and the town’s history was shrouded in mystery and folklore. Tall tales that continuously shifted and changed. Nobody knew what had happened one hundred years ago.

“A box of secrets.” Evan clutched the leather-bound journal to his chest. They would finally know the truth.

He collapsed on the floor beside the coffin, reached inside, and picked up another journal, carefully turning the pages.

They’d been written by a woman named Florence.

Florence.

He’d heard someone whisper that name. . . .

Distantly he knew Graham was talking to him, saying something about leaving. About going to Tuonela and staying with his grandfather. Evan didn’t answer.

A door slammed. A car started and drove away. . . .

He was lost in the words.

The earlier journals documented the arduous journey from the East to settle in what was now called Old Tuonela. At first it seemed simply a story of typical westward movement so prevalent at the time. Richard Manchester and his followers had settled in a beautiful and remote valley in western Wisconsin, where Manchester hoped they could live in isolation and peace without interruption or intrusion from the outside world.

But the story quickly grew strange as Evan continued to read:
The women sleep in one building, men in another. When a woman gives birth, the child is taken and raised in a nursery. My sister, Victoria, was heartbroken for the first several months. And now years have passed. . . .

Another entry, the tone changed:
The children are disappearing! Oh, my God! We fear Victoria’s sweet darling could be next.

Manchester blamed the deaths on the coyote packs that could be heard howling just beyond the lights of the town.

The men began keeping nightly vigil. They organized a massive hunt and massacre, dragging dead coyote carcasses to the town square, where they set them on fire. But the human deaths didn’t stop.

Some people began to suspect Manchester, but it was an unpopular theory. He was their leader. The suspicion created dissent, with a few unpopular thinkers becoming the outcasts—the others.

Some say he is a vampire. Some say that is why he is never about during the daylight hours, and why he insists upon public worship being held after dusk. I don’t believe in such nonsense. My father was a physician, and I’ve seen diseases of the skin. Manchester has a disease of the skin. He also has a disease of the soul. The man is mad. As soon as the snow melts, my sister and I will leave this wretched place. We will steal away with her sweet daughter, return to Boston, and tell our story to whomever will listen. Victoria says no one will believe us. That we are the ones they will lock up and call mad. I fear she is right. For who in his right mind would believe that a man is drinking blood and devouring his own children?