The Haunted Heart: Winter (10 page)

“Only…you’re not wrong, you’re not mad, for
feeling as you do. If something happened to Stephen, I’d feel the
same. I’d probably make the same decision you did.”

“Uh…thank you.” No wonder Dr. Thorpe was
worried. I could feel a bubble of laughter filling my chest and
rising up in my throat. I was afraid it would burst out of me any
second.

“But it would be a mistake. Certainly for
someone as young as you.”

“Yes. I get that a lot.”

Apparently Mark didn’t have much sense of
humor. It was impossible to tear my gaze away from his unnervingly
bright scrutiny. “You’ll have to take my word for this, but I’ve
spent a great deal of time around the dying and the dead. I do know
about being bereaved and what I can promise you is, if you’ll hold
on, give yourself sufficient time, you’ll be all right. I don’t say
you’ll get over it. I don’t believe you will, but you’ll learn to
be happy again. You’ll even learn to love again. If you’ll permit
yourself.”

Any desire to laugh was gone. “No. I won’t.
Not ever.”

“Perhaps not. But the pain does ease, Flynn.
Humans are meant to survive and be happy. All one really has to do
is hang on long enough.”

“Well, thank you, Mark,” I said tersely. “I
appreciate the advice.”

“No, you don’t. Naturally you don’t.” He
smiled with unexpected charm, glanced past me and said, “And here’s
Stephen come to rescue you.”

I smiled brightly at Dr. Thorpe and devoted
myself to choking down the rest of my dessert. I’m sure there was
more small talk. Probably coffee. I don’t remember any of it. I
made my escape as soon as I could.

All I could think on the short drive back to
Pitch Pine Lane was what a horrible mistake dinner had been.
Despite the craziness of the past two weeks, or maybe because of
it, I had started to feel almost normal again. Well, maybe normal
was too strong a word, but now, in the space of a few hours, I was
back to despair. And it wasn’t Mark’s misplaced if kindly-meant
advice or the knowledge that I hadn’t had any choice in going to
dinner or that my parents were petitioning people to keep an eye on
me. It wasn’t any of that, though those were all good reasons for
feeling depressed. No, it was seeing Dr. Thorpe with Mark, seeing
how comfortable they were, how well they understood each other, how
much they loved each other.

I didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but
it was unbearable to watch.

Right now Mark would be confessing to
Stephen that he had butted in and done exactly what Stephen had
told him not to do, and Stephen would be yelling at Mark — well,
that was unlikely, impossible to imagine really, but Stephen would
be voicing his disapproval in that soft Virginia accent that
sounded so much like home, like my dad, like Alan...and later in
their hotel they would make up their argument and lie in each
other’s arms and talk quietly until one of them fell asleep. And
the other would hold him, and his heart would be filled with
contentment and a foolish belief that the world was a safe and good
place.

The rain had stopped again. The street lamps
grew small in my rear view mirror and then melted into darkness.
There were only the white beams of the headlights to illuminate the
empty road unrolling ahead.

I felt sick. Too much food and too much
wine.

It was a short drive but it felt like
forever before I turned off on Pitch Pine and drove on to the empty
lot at the end of the lane. The lights were all off in the house.
It looked abandoned in the pallid light cast by the crescent moon,
crooked and misshapen like a magical house in a folktale.

I parked in the shed, crunched across the
slushy snow to the front porch and started up the steps, only to
recoil at the vision of someone walking out of the darkness toward
me.

But no. It wasn’t someone. It was me. It was
my reflection.

The mirror stood at the top of the
stairs.

I watched myself stumble back and land at
the bottom of the steps. The black glass showed only me, none of
the yard. No trees, no stars, no snow. Just me framed in a swirling
black void.

Move. Don’t let it see you.

I got up, watched myself weaving, gaping
within the confines of the gold ornate frame. That crushing sense
of dread was back, a disturbing presentiment pressing in from all
sides.

Something horrible was going to happen.

That was animal instinct, not reason; but
all the same, I sidestepped, took myself out of the box created by
the frame. I stared wildly around the blanched yard.

Now what? What was I going to do?

I could leave. I could jump in my car and
drive to a hotel. In the morning I could come back and finish what
Kirk and I had started to do before the mirror had been stolen.

Kirk.

He was still in the house.

Well, but that was okay. He was safe inside
the house, right? He was the one who’d said the mirror didn’t want
him. He could take care of himself.

All these thoughts rushed through my brain,
but most clearly was
Go. Go while you can. Get away from
here.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just leave Kirk
sleeping with this thing sitting right outside his door.

I didn’t have the courage to edge past the
mirror on the porch. I had a clear memory of that pale hand
reaching through the glass. No damned way was I putting myself in
arm’s reach. I felt my pockets for my keys. There was a back
entrance to the house, and a door through the conservatory where
Kirk kept his truck.

I turned and started across the mushy snow,
looking through the tall, frost-crackled windows along the side of
the house. I had been wrong. There was a light on inside the house.
The chandelier in the main hall offered a feeble, dusty radiation
not strong enough to dispel the shadows — in fact, it only served
to highlight them.

My footsteps shushed through the snow. The
moon slid back into the clouds and the yard and its surroundings
grayed out.

I glanced through the next panel of windows
and saw someone staring out at me. A dark figure stood in the
entrance hall. Not Kirk. I saw that at once. The figure was too
small. Too still. It was a woman. A woman in an old fashioned black
dress, her face shrouded by a black lace mantilla.

My Irish grandmother used to talk about the
banshees and say their cries could make your “blood run cold.” For
the first time I understood what that meant, what that felt like.
She was out of the mirror. She was free. She could walk right into
Kirk’s room.

Who knew what she could — would — do?

I ran, my feet sliding and slipping, sinking
into the snow. I lumbered around the corner of the house and began
to bang on the window of what I believed must be Kirk’s rooms.
Particles of ice dusted down where I beat the glass, stinging my
face.

“Kirk! Kirk, it’s me! Kirk, wake up!”

It went through my mind that Kirk, being
ex-military, might have a gun, might even shoot me by accident. Or
maybe not by accident, given how he felt about having his sleep
disturbed. I kept pounding, but nothing happened.

I gave up, stumbling to the next window,
thumping my fist so hard I thought I would shatter the glass.
“Kirk! For God’s sake! Wake up!”

The windows were dark. I couldn’t remember
if he had blinds or drapes, but whatever was across the glass
formed an impenetrable barrier.

“
Kirk!
”

The darkness fluttered wildly and slid away.
A pale form filled the window. The next moment, the window sash
scraped up with a shriek to wake the dead — as if they weren’t
already up and making house calls. Kirk leaned out. He rasped, “You
gotta be shitting me.”

“The mirror is back. She’s in the house,” I
gasped. “You have to get out.”

“You lunatic. Do you have
any
goddamned idea of the goddamned time?”

“Listen to me.
She’s in the house
.
She’s right outside your door. You have to get out now. While
there’s still time!”

I
didn’t think Kirk
heard, let alone understood me, but mid-tirade his tone changed and
he lunged forward. “Give me your hand!”

I thought he wanted help climbing down, but
his fingers clamped around mine and in that very different voice he
said, “Get up here.”

“What? No. You’re not listening. She’s
in
the house. Now. Right now.”

“
Flynn
. Move your ass.”

“Kirk —”

He was looking past me. Even in the gloom,
the expression on his features alarmed me. His other hand locked in
my collar and he roughly dragged me toward him. “You just don’t get
it,” he panted.

I got it then and I quit arguing and
scrambled up and over the sill.

I spilled onto the floor, and Kirk slammed
the window shut. I rolled over and stared at him. He was watching
the window with as weird an expression as I could imagine ever
seeing on his craggy face. I turned to the window. At first I
couldn’t see anything, nothing to make Kirk look like that. But
then my vision sharpened.

A shadow pressed against the glass.
Indistinct, formless, no more substantial than a black mist…but it
was there. A shadow that somehow cast a pale, unnatural glow as the
apparition took form.

Brass rings jangled as Kirk yanked the
drapes shut, cutting off my view, breaking the spell. His words
were flat, almost shockingly prosaic. “That bitch gets a better
signal than my cell phone.”

I said faintly, “She was right behind
me.”

“Yeah.”

He turned on a lamp. I sat up, still staring
at the drapes. A chill rippled down my spine, my scalp tingled with
revulsion. Was she still out there? If we pulled the curtains back
would we see a black veiled woman floating in front of the window?
Or was she gone? What stopped her from floating right through the
wall? Ghosts could do that. Doors, windows, walls…none of those
mattered to a ghost. I’d read plenty of
Goosebumps
. I knew
these things.

I glanced at Kirk. He was still scowling at
the window. He looked more angry than frightened. Angry and
thoughtful.

“How do you know she’s not coming in here
after us?” I asked.

“I’ve ringed my rooms in salt.” He said it
tersely.

“I’m…did I hear you say you rang — ringed —
your rooms in salt?”

“Yeah.” Kirk directed his scowl my way. “Sea
salt. I’ve been reading up on this stuff. Ghosts. Hauntings. Salt
is considered the most effective barrier. Sage works too. I used
sage as well as salt in the living room. I figured that was the
most likely point of entry.”

I opened my mouth, started to speak, started
to speak again, and finally gave up and settled for staring at
Kirk. He stared back at me. His hands were braced on his hips —
once again he was not wearing anything more than black briefs. Nice
to be impervious to cold. And ghosts. The soft lamplight
illuminated a wrought iron bed with rumpled sheets and blankets, a
couple of chests of drawers, and a large brown painting of a
solitary house in the middle of barren hills.

He said slowly, “You really thought
I
needed rescuing?”

“Hell yeah, I thought you needed rescuing!
She was standing right there, right outside your door. How did you
know that mirror was going to be returned? Why didn’t you tell
me?”

“I didn’t know the mirror would be returned.
How would I know that? I just figured if Winston brought one
haunted piece of furniture into this place, maybe he brought other
things that might be a problem.”

Kirk was so matter-of-fact about it; I
didn’t know what to say. It had never occurred to me there might be
more than one haunted artifact in my uncle’s possession. Although
maybe it should have, given old Winston had been running a museum
devoted to “the arcane.”

“Do you think she’s gone now?”

“Probably. Do you want me to look?”

“No.”

He gave a short laugh. “See, that’s the
problem right there.”

I pushed wearily to my feet. It had already
been a long night. “What’s that? What’s the problem? Other than the
obvious problem, I mean.”

He said with that old bluntness, “Your fear.
Your fear is the problem.
You
are the problem. You’re the
catalyst. You’re the trigger for all this spooky bullshit.”

I didn’t think I could have heard him right.
But his face was dark and fierce with emotion. Anger probably, and
as Kirk’s words sank in, as I absorbed that he was serious, my own
temper blazed to meet it. “Excuse me? How do you work that
out?”

He pointed at the window like it was too
obvious to need explaining.

The nice thing about anger was it really
didn’t leave much room for fright. And it had a pleasant warming
effect, too. “You’re for real?
I’m
causing this? Me?
Me?
I’m the problem here?”

“The facts speak for themselves. I’ve lived
here for two years, just about, and nothing like this happened
until you showed up.”

“I don’t believe this. That’s it? That’s
your proof
I’m
to blame? It never happened before?” I
couldn’t get my head around it. How could he say these things to
me? Not only was he talking total illogical shit, this was so
unfair. I could have jumped in my car and driven away the minute I
saw that mirror sitting on the porch, but no. Idiotically, I had
imagined Kirk might need help, at least a warning.

Getting ambushed by someone who I had
stupidly started to consider a friend left me reeling.

“I didn’t say you were to
blame
,”
Kirk said in a now perfectly reasonable tone. “I said you’re the
catalyst. The conduit. I told you, I’ve been reading up on this.
You’re open to this negative energy, to psychic manifestation. Your
depression, your grief feed —”

“Oh, fuck you, Murdoch,” I managed to get
out, my voice shaking. I turned, but unexpected tears blinded me so
that I walked right into a chest of drawers. I heard a clatter like
a wooden bowl full of horse hooves hitting the floor, and I stepped
over whatever I’d knocked off the top of the chest. Sand, no, that
would be salt, crunched underfoot as I finally found the glass knob
of the bedroom door. I turned the knob, got the door open, and
started across the obstacle course of his living room.