The Tutor (24 page)

unease grew. It was as if we drew closer to the source of all negative energy. The air grew freezing and the corridor darker, devouring the small light cast from the lamp. The hair on my neck rose like a dog’s hackles, and the primitive desire to run from danger vibrated through me. I glanced at Richard to see if he too experienced a feeling of impending danger. If he was sensitive to it, I couldn’t read it on his impassive face.

We entered the chapel. The simple stone cross was no more than two feet tall, but

the granite was so heavy, I could barely lift it from the altar.

Richard handed me the poker and hefted the cross in both arms. He cradled it

against his chest and glanced at me. “You’re certain we need this?”

“It couldn’t hurt.” I picked up the lamp in my free hand and clutched the poker

tightly in the other.

The moment we left the quiet sanctuary and approached the tower again, my

feeling of panic resumed. I recalled the swirling dark mist that had manifested when I was in the tower, the stench of rotten meat and the feeling of pure evil that had oozed from it. After that experience, I’d let myself forget, but now those memories rolled over me in waves. What could we do against a formless thing, an entity that seemed old and strong and too terrible to be a mere ghost? I was powerless and incapable of doing anything useful to save the boys.

On the heels of that thought, I understood this was the entity polluting my mind

again, filling me with self-doubt and hopelessness. I must cast off such debilitating feelings and be strong—for Clive and Whitney, and for Richard too.

I looked over at him. He smiled at me, and I drew strength from the warm feeling

that filled me.
Love conquers evil.
Madame had written something like that. I could only pray it was true and not a wishful platitude.

We rounded a corner to face the door to the tower, closed as I’d left it. Recalling that bleak darkness that had assailed me last time, the very last thing I wanted to do was confront it again.

“It’s unusually cold,” Richard murmured, the mist of his breath floating on the air.

I clenched my chattering teeth and held the lamp higher, but it barely cast a light in the gloom.

Richard set the heavy cross on the floor and turned the latch. The door wouldn’t

budge. He tried again, pulling harder. Still it wouldn’t open.

“It’s not locked. The same thing happened to me in the tower before, as if

someone held the door closed.”

Richard studied the door, then held out his hand. “Give me the poker.”

I handed it over, and he drove the tip up under the top hinge in the groove where

the door met the wall. He began to pry. A few tugs and grunts, and he’d popped the nails from the door. The hinge flopped open. He did the same to the lower one, wedging in the poker and prying it loose.

But two broken hinges made the door no easier to open. Richard began to whack

at the handle, then tried to pry the iron tip into the jamb. He cursed as the door defied all his attempts to get it open, and the sense of impending danger made every wasted second feel like an hour.

Footsteps approached down the corridor. Tom arrived, bearing a bundle of dried

herbs and a glass container of water. He’d come armed with matches and struck one to set fire to the bundle. Smoke rose from the flaming herbs. Tom waved the herbal smudge in front of the door. The scent of burning sage and lavender surrounded Richard and me, the smoke stinging our eyes.

If there was some blessing, prayer, or incantation we were supposed to chant,

Madame hadn’t shared it. So I extemporized, calling out, “By the power of God and all his saints, by the power of love and, um, humanity, I command you to open this door. I deny your power and refute your authority. Let go, you bloody wanker!”

Richard leaned all his weight into the iron poker wedged between the door and its

frame, and suddenly, the heavy wooden door popped loose. Both Tom and I jumped back to avoid it. Richard took a glancing blow to the shoulder and cried out with pain. The door crashed to the floor, and the black maw of the stairwell stood like an open mouth waiting to swallow us whole.

Clammy coldness rolled out from that darkness, making our breath steam. And

the cold was suffused with a sense of menace beyond any rational explanation.

Richard rubbed his shoulder and gazed into the stairwell. “How can the boys be

up there? We could scarcely open the door.” But he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

“You feel it, don’t you?” I asked. “That evil thing holds sway here. It allows in

who it wants and bars the way to others.” I put a hand on his sore shoulder. “Will you be all right?”

Richard grunted and handed off the poker to me. He bent to pick up the heavy

cross once more. “Tom, you needn’t come with us. Stay down here where it’s…safe.” He spoke the last word reluctantly, as if he still couldn’t believe he was buying into this ghost story.

Tom dropped the remains of the smoking bundle of herbs to the floor before they

burned his fingertips. He held up his jar of water. “For cleansing evil spirits, Gran said.

I’ll do it.”

“Very well.” Richard shifted the cross to lean against his good shoulder and also

took the lantern before walking into the stairwell. I followed right behind him.

It was like entering a butcher’s ice house. The stench of carcasses surrounded us.

The air felt thick as water. Each step forward was an effort as we slowly ascended the stairs, and the lantern’s light was swallowed in darkness. I could hardly see Richard right in front of me, or Tom when I glanced behind.

Time seemed fluid and strange the way it is when one is feverish. In what felt like days but was probably only minutes, we reached the landing at the top of the stairs and faced the second door. This one stood wide open like a challenge, as if the creature that dwelled there was toying with us.
You want to enter here? Come along in, then.

My throat was so tight, I could hardly swallow, and my chest ached from the

pounding of my heart. I suddenly knew exactly what we would find—two little boys

hanging from a rafter beam. A whimper escaped me at the thought.

But no. Even with the chair, they couldn’t manage to sling a rope over the beam

to hang themselves. The idea they might have followed the same course as their mother was impossible.

Richard stopped in front of me so abruptly, I ran into his broad back. I peered

around him.

The room with its single chair was not empty this time. Whitney stood perched on

the wide sill of one of the tall windows with Clive beside him on the floor. Rain pounded on the roof and streamed past the other windows, yet none entered the room. This space seemed isolated from the world outside, wrapped in cotton that deafened my hearing and fogged my vision. Although it was only a few yards across the room to where the boys were, they were indistinct shapes. A great black formless mass filled the room. We were flies buzzing straight into its web.

“Whitney, come away from the window,” Richard called. “Clive, come to me,

son.”

Whitney seemed not to hear and remained silhouetted in the window, but Clive

slowly turned to face us. His body pivoted in an unnatural way, and his eyes seemed to glow in his small, pale face. His mouth opened, and a man’s voice came from him. “Call me not your son, you vile perversion.”

I gasped at the shocking sound of that deep, adult voice emerging from a child’s

mouth.

“Performing your filthy acts, rubbing and grasping at each other. Copulating like

animals,” the voice sneered, and Clive’s features twisted in pure disgust. “And they considered
me
evil. I, who merely collected women.”

A hiccup of laughter escaped me. I couldn’t help it. My default reaction when

terrorized to the point of wetting my drawers was to laugh.

The thing inside Clive turned its blazing eyes on me, and every bone in my body

went liquid. I thought I’d collapse.

“You would laugh at
me
?” It growled—literally growled—with a reverberating sound that filled the room.

I shook my head. “No. You’re very formidable. I was merely thinking your

copulations ended in the demise of your partners. I imagine the ladies hardly found it satisfying.”

The thing in Clive’s body took a step toward me, its anger rolling over me in hot

waves. “I
never
had relations with either female or
male
. I wouldn’t defile my body that way.”

“Of course.” I swallowed hard and checked on Tom, who stood to my left,

clutching his jar of would-be holy water and gaping. On my other side, Richard set down the lantern as he stared at the Clive-thing. At the moment, neither of my allies was in any condition to help.

“So, you’ve taken a new body,” I said. “Starting over again?”

Could the evil thing hold Clive hostage indefinitely? Could it continue to inhabit Clive while keeping Whit in some sort of trance? Madame had given me no possession lore beyond the bit I’d learned about psychic channeling, but it seemed to me this would require a great draw of energy that would need to be replenished.

The creature perambulated Clive closer to us—awkwardly, as if controlling flesh

after so many years of incorporeal form was difficult. The boy’s jerky marionette steps were so horrifying to witness, I no longer felt remotely like laughing.

Richard recovered at last, lifted the stone cross with both hands, and thrust it

toward Clive. “Begone, creature! Release my son.”

The thing emitted a creaky sound meant to be laughter. It grinned, stretching

Clive’s mouth too wide. “My power is beyond your imagining. You cannot expel me. I possess this body and will dispose of the other.” He lifted an arm and pointed at Whit, who swayed in the window, no longer bracing his hands against the frame.

“No!” Richard yelled. He dropped the cross onto the flagstones with a crash that

sent bits of granite flying and lunged toward Whitney. But the very air held Richard back, and he moved in slow motion, as if mired in sticky mud.

In the face of this powerful evil thing that seemed to be much more than the mere

ghost of a killer, I felt like an infant. We’d come armed with a poker, a cross, and a vial of not-holy water. We were ridiculous.

“You are nothing,” the creature spat. “A pervert too weak to fight his sick desires, an imbecile fit only to scrub away shit, and a liar worth nothing at all.”

A thick rush of horrible feelings crowded me, useless, inadequate, powerless,

unworthy. I’d fought to overcome these adjectives all my life. Damned if I’d let them emasculate me now. I recalled something else Madame Alijeva had told me before.
Evil
will find weakness and strike there.
She’d said hidden flaws and secrets would be used against a person, a little truth intermingling with lies to make the victim doubt himself.

I still fought a daily battle against the sense of worthlessness instilled in me by Roger Dwyer, but I would not allow this creature to exploit it today.

“I
believe
I deserve love,” I declared loudly. “And I’ve found it with Richard and Whitney and Clive. I love all of them.”

Did I see the Clive-thing wince at the mention of love? I tested my theory.

“I
love
them, and they
love
me. We’re like a family.” I dropped the poker and threw an arm around Tom, who still stood beside me, clutching the jar of water. “I love Tom too. We’re all simply full of
love
, something an evil being can never fathom or vanquish.”

“Craven feelings! You lust after these boys’ young bodies. You’d love to touch

them in foul ways, wouldn’t you?” it sneered.

“At the moment, I’d like to punch Clive in the mouth, but only because you’re

inhabiting him.”

I darted a glance at Richard, who continued to move toward Whitney like a fly

stuck in jelly. He needed time, and I needed to distract the Clive-thing. I removed my arm from around Tom’s shoulders but not before giving him a squeeze to get him moving.

Tom finally stopped staring at Clive to look at me, and I flicked my eyes toward

the water jar.

“Why now?” I asked. “You’ve haunted this tower—this entire house—for

decades. Why choose now to manifest?”

Evil things apparently love to talk about themselves. Something Madame had

neglected to mention. The spirit didn’t hesitate to expound.

“The perfect opportunity arose, first with the woman, so weak and easy to

manipulate, as are all of her sex. Convincing her to kill herself was a pleasure. And this boy, as miserable as both his parents, so
easy
to make my pawn.”

Richard was only a few feet away from Whit now and still strained toward him.

His body pressed as if making headway in a strong wind.

“You tried it with me, didn’t you?” I continued to involve the thing in

conversation while Tom unscrewed the lid of the jar and dipped out water. “But you gave up when I wouldn’t crumble and went after Clive instead.”

“The purity of this vessel was preferable to the defiled body you inhabit.” Clive

flung up a hand, and the jar of water flew out of Tom’s hands. It shot up toward the ceiling, cracked against the same beam Lavinia had likely hanged herself on, and crashed to the ground. Shards scattered like bullets.

Tom dropped to his knees amidst the broken glass and tried to scoop water from

the puddle on the floor. He mumbled a prayer and flicked droplets of water mingled with blood from his cut fingertips toward Clive. He prayed louder. “Holy Father, protect us from evil, free us from darkness, cover us with your great light.”

It seemed Tom’s pitiful ritual couldn’t possibly do any good against something so

powerful. And yet, Clive hissed when one drop of bloodied water hit his cheek. He