The Killing Room (18 page)

Philip steered his Bentley up the long driveway outside Uncle Howard’s mansion. If he’d had his way, he wouldn’t have come to this depressing old place a day earlier than he had to. But Ryan and Chelsea had called a few days ago, all in a state. Uncle Howard had told them about the room and the lottery. Philip cursed the old fool. He should have waited until he was there before revealing the family secret. But apparently something had happened—some sighting of that crazy woman ghost—and Uncle Howard had felt he needed to tell them everything. It had taken Philip a good hour to calm his kids down.

He stepped out of the car and tossed the keys to one of the old man’s valets. “Be careful with that car,” Philip barked. “Don’t think I won’t check for dings or scratches, and I’ve noted the mileage. No joyrides.”

He strode imperiously into the house. “Hello!” he called impatiently.

A maid appeared, a big stupid grin on her face. Philip told her to let Uncle Howard know he’d arrived. And where, he demanded, were Ryan and Chelsea? The maid said they were out on the back terrace. Philip made a beeline there.

They have got to be careful,
he thought to himself.
They can’t give anything away.

He found his son and daughter stretched out on lounges sunbathing. Chelsea wore a polka-dot string bikini, and Ryan wore flower-print board shorts. Both of them had music plugged into their ears and so they didn’t hear him approach. He walked up between them, and with one tug from each hand, he extracted the headphones from their ears.

“You
idiots
,” he spit.

“Daddy!” Chelsea was sitting up, Ryan doing the same.

“You both are complete idiots,” Philip said. “Look at you! Lying around acting as if you haven’t a care in the world!”

“But, we
don’t
, Daddy,” Chelsea said. “You told us not to worry about the lottery.”

He wanted to strike her. “You stupid girl,” Philip said. “The rest of the household will be overwrought with stress and worry, thinking they might be chosen. And here you two are acting as carefree as jaybirds. Do you want to let your uncle—or worse, your cousin Douglas—suspect that we have an ace up our sleeve?”

“I suppose we
should
be acting a bit more concerned,” Ryan conceded.

His father glared at him. “I expected more smarts from the appointed heir to the family business. Would you run the company this way? You’re far more shrewd on Wall Street, you jackass, than you are here!”

“Oh, Daddy,” Chelsea said, in that voice she knew always softened his angry moods, “we’ll do better. It was just that it was so nice and sunny, and who knows how many more days we’ll have before winter will be here.”

Philip looked at her. She truly had no idea of the irony of her words. The rest of the family had no idea how many more days they had to live. But all Chelsea was worried about was how many days she had to sunbathe.

“Listen to me,” he told them both. “I want you to go in the house and get dressed. I want you to appear subdued. Quiet. Contemplative.” His eyes burned holes as he turned to glare at Chelsea. “Is that something you can even
do
?”

“Oh, sure,” she assured him. “It will be kind of like that acting course I took, remember? It’ll be fun.”

She kissed her father on the forehead, then gathered her things and scampered into the house.

“You’re brilliant, Dad, you know that?” Ryan said, preparing to head back inside himself. “When Uncle Howard told us about that room and all that crazy supernatural bullshit, I was like,
we are fucked.
But I should have know you had it all under control. The old bait-and-switch with the names thing. Brilliant. Truly brilliant.”

He gave his father a little salute and walked inside the house.

Philip sighed, sitting down on his son’s vacated chaise. He felt rotten. Oh, he had no misgivings about the chicanery he intended to work on the lottery. It had served him well, kept him alive. But it had come with some cost. Philip Young could rationalize most things, and most days he lived without any guilt about what he had done. But every once in a while, something would happen—seeing his brother’s children, for example—that would cause a flare-up of conscience. He wasn’t like his brother, so noble, so upstanding. Nor was he like his father, another good man. There were days that Philip Young almost admitted to himself what he really was: a coward.

His children, he realized, were even worse. They took it for granted that they should not have to face the same risks as everyone else. They had been raised that way. Their entitlement knew no bounds. Unlike their father, they suffered not even a moment’s compunction over their trickery. Not once did either Ryan or Chelsea experience even a flicker of guilt or remorse for their cousins. No, to them it was their right, their due, to be excluded from the messy realities of life and death.

Sitting there on his uncle’s terrace, Philip was not proud of his children.

Nor was he proud of himself.

But that didn’t alter the course he had planned.

“Philip,” came a voice.

He looked around. It was Uncle Howard, walking slowly, a little stiffly, onto the terrace.

“Welcome, nephew,” the old man was saying. “I wasn’t expecting you quite so soon.”

They shook hands.

“I came early because I knew Ryan and Chelsea would need me,” Philip explained. “They’re very upset after learning about the lottery.”

“Are they?” Uncle Howard asked. “They seemed to take it surprisingly in stride.”

“They are quite good at masking their emotions,” Philip lied. “I suppose I’ve trained them that way.”

Uncle Howard sighed, taking a seat in a large wicker chair overlooking the grounds. “Well, I have much faith in this woman that I have hired. She’s in New York right now making inquiries about possible solutions. I sense she may be able to finally uncover a way to end the curse.”

“Why do you have so much faith in her?”

“Because she’s a woman.”

Philip laughed. “You’ve said that on the phone. But I don’t understand.”

“The spirit that has controlled this family, that has wrought so much destruction, is a woman,” Uncle Howard said, his voice hard with resentment. “No man has ever been able to figure out what she wanted or how to control her.”

“And so Carolyn Cartwright has a better chance, you think?”

“Possibly. The spirit of Beatrice may allow her to see things that she kept guarded from the men. She has a weakness for her own kind.” He moved his yellow, watery eyes to meet Philip’s. “Remember, she didn’t kill Jeanette.”

The mention of his sister’s name stabbed Philip’s heart, as it always did. “One could argue what she did to Jeanette was even worse.”

“Still, she was disinclined to see her die, and that’s something.” The old man looked back across the grounds. Hummingbirds flitted around the rosebushes. The tall violet cleomes swayed in the soft breeze. “I have great faith in Carolyn. I will finally see an end to this madness before I die.”

And when will that be, exactly?
Philip’s mind raced with the thought.
And who have you decided shall get the bulk of your fortune?

Just then, as if on cue, a hand was placed on Philip’s shoulder.

“Hello, Uncle Philip.”

He turned. Douglas had come outside. As usual, the punk looked disheveled and unruly. His hair was straggly, his face unshaven. He wore an Obama
HOPE
T-shirt. He looked like a filthy hippie.

“Douglas,” Philip said, shaking the young man’s hand. “And what corner of the world have you blown in from this time?”

“My last address was in Syracuse, but I’m thinking of putting some roots down here in Maine. Come back to my roots, so to speak.”

The little sneak
, Philip thought. Douglas was implying that he was to be the chief beneficiary of Uncle Howard’s will. He probably expected to live in this very house.

“My little hoodlum has visions of opening his own carpentry shop in Youngsport,” Uncle Howard said with obvious affection.

Philip stewed. He hated when the old man called Douglas his “little hoodlum.” He had no such special nickname for Ryan.

Douglas sat down on the back step at Uncle Howard’s feet. The old man placed a gnarled hand on his shoulder.

Any flicker of guilt Philip had been harboring disappeared in that moment. When it came time to draw up the lottery, the names of himself and his children would not be entered. Instead, there would be three additional slips of paper bearing the name “Douglas.”

Standing there looking at the old man’s hand on Douglas’s shoulder, Philip did not feel even the slightest twinge of guilt.

Carolyn had expected there might be a curious reaction to Diana from the family, but she could hardly have anticipated Chelsea’s scream.

“Oh my God!” she cried. “What
is
it?”

“It’s only what you would look like, my dear,” Diana replied, “if you were thirty years older and had had your arms and legs chopped off.”

That shut the girl up.

Diana was strapped into a specially designed motorized wheelchair with a long lever that she could operate with her chin, if need be. But at the moment Huldah was behind her, her hands grasping the handles of the chair tightly, her hard German eyes glaring at Chelsea.

“I apologize for my niece,” Mr. Young said, bowing slightly at his waist. Chelsea, meanwhile, was slinking back into the parlor, whether humiliated, revolted, or chagrined, Carolyn couldn’t tell. Philip Young stood staring wide-eyed, his look matched by his son Ryan. Douglas stood beside Carolyn. She wondered what thoughts were going through his mind.

“Welcome to my home,” Mr. Young was continuing. “And thank you for your assistance with our terrible curse.”

“I’m here to do what I can,” Diana said. “And one thing that I cannot do is make any promise.”

“Understood,” Mr. Young said.

“Carolyn has told me of your experience,” Douglas managed to say. “Have you ever encountered anything like this?”

“No,” Diana told him. “Nothing. But I hope to learn something if I can be brought down into the room. I have a certain…knack.”

Carolyn turned as she heard Philip Young chuckle. “And what kind of knack would that be?” he asked.

Diana stared at him. “A knack that tells me who I can trust and who I can’t.”

Carolyn noticed the smile quickly fade from Philip’s face.

She didn’t like Philip Young any more than she liked his children. She’d known him for just a few minutes, but she’d already marked him as smarmy and untrustworthy. Even without Diana’s ability to read minds, Carolyn had known right away that she’d have to keep an eye on him. She’d have to ask Diana later if she had seen anything specific in Philip’s thoughts that she should be aware of.

It had been an unsettling few days. Ever since seeing David Cooke on the street outside her apartment, Carolyn had been constantly looking over her shoulder. She had called the police, of course. A massive manhunt was immediately enacted. Guards were stationed outside her house and followed her at a discreet distance for the rest of her time in New York. They had accompanied her and Diana and Huldah to the airport and were with them until just moments before they boarded Mr. Young’s private plane. There was no way David could follow them here. He had no idea where she was going. In a strange twist of fate, she suddenly felt safer coming back to Maine than she had when she left it.

They all dispersed to their rooms so they could clean up after their trip. Huldah wheeled Diana into a room on the first floor. Carolyn headed up the stairs to her own room.

“Carolyn, wait,” Douglas said behind her.

She paused. Her heart was racing. She turned and looked at him.

They were alone in the foyer. He approached her.

“I just wanted to say…” His voice faltered. “That I missed you.”

“Oh, Douglas,” she said in a small voice.

Before she knew it, they were kissing. They came together without consideration for who might see them and embraced each other tightly. His lips tasted sweet. It took some effort to break away.

“Not here,” Carolyn said.

Douglas took her hand and led her to the study. He closed the doors behind them. Once again they fell into each other’s arms with a hunger that surprised Carolyn.

“I wanted to do this so much before you left,” Douglas said, moving his lips off hers just long enough to speak.

She smiled. “Oh, Douglas, I’m so glad to be back here. Even with all of the terrors here…to be with you…”

He stroked her hair. “What is it, Carolyn? What’s happened?”

She told him about seeing David Cooke outside her window.

“Christ,” Douglas said, gripping her by the shoulders. “I wish I had gone with you to New York! Do you think he could have followed you here?”

“No, there’s no way he could have known where I was going.” She smiled wryly. “Even David can’t follow an airplane.”

She let herself take comfort in Douglas’s embrace, resting her head against his chest. Once again, the irony of feeling safe in a place that held only danger for Douglas struck her.

“I think Diana can help us,” she said, looking up at Douglas.

His reply was to kiss her again.

“All I want,” he said, moving his lips to her ear, “is to spend my life with you. Even if that life just lasts another week…”

“Don’t say that,” Carolyn said.

“But it may be the case,” Douglas said.

Their eyes held each other.

Without saying another word, they turned and left the study. They walked silently up the stairs to Carolyn’s room. Once inside, the door locked behind them, Carolyn unbuttoned Douglas’s shirt, She ran her hands over his chiseled chest. The light blond hairs there seemed to electrify at her touch. He kissed her neck, her ears, her throat. He unbuttoned her blouse, letting it drop to the floor. He kissed her shoulders. He reached around and unsnapped her bra, letting it, too, fall away. Cupping her breasts in each hand, he kissed them tenderly. Then they lay gently down upon the bed.

When they had finished making love, Carolyn sat up, cradling Douglas’s head in her lap. It had felt good. Very good. Douglas was a kind, considerate lover. He had made sure she was satisfied before thinking about any kind of satisfaction for himself. Now, in that dreamy state after sex, Carolyn realized she’d never had such an experience. She had thought David had been a good lover. He had been exciting. But she realized now she could never have called him considerate.

She reached down and kissed the top of Douglas’s head. He made a sound of contentment.

Once again, Carolyn’s thoughts turned to that room in the basement. She hoped fervently that Diana could help her find a way to put an end to the cycle of death.

And failing that…

She knew it wasn’t right.

But if the lottery went on as scheduled, she hoped it wouldn’t be Douglas who was chosen. Let it be any of the others.

Just not Douglas.