House Of Reckoning Part 12

Every mark seemed preordained, as though the paper, with the image already hidden inside it, had been waiting for her to show it to the world.

Then it was finished.

There was not another stroke to be made.

The tingling began to recede, first from her fingers and hands, then her arms. Finally it seemed to drain out through her legs and feet, vanis.h.i.+ng into the floor like lightning going to ground. Sarah's cramped fingers relaxed, and the charcoal stick dropped to the floor.

She blinked, disoriented, as if awakening from a dream.

She looked at what she'd done.

On the easel she saw a charcoal drawing of a room.

A small, dark room, filled with skeletons.

But the skeletons were still wearing clothes-nothing more than tattered rags.

And they still stood, as if supported by some unseen force.

She looked down at her hand; her fingers were black with charcoal dust from smudging shadows and lines.

She looked over at Bettina. "Did I do that?"

Bettina nodded slowly.

Sarah backed away from the horrific image. "No," she whispered, her hands trembling now as much as her voice. "I couldn't have."

"Sit down and drink your tea," Bettina said. "We need to talk."

Nick Dunnigan fixed his eyes on the perfectly browned rib roast, and willed the voices in his head to keep silent. But even as he tried to deafen himself to them, he knew it was useless; they'd begun whispering before he even came downstairs, and though he tried to ignore them, their chatter grew steadily louder, demanding more and more of his attention. "Roast looks great, Mom," he said too loudly, but though his mother shot him a worried glance, his father seemed not to have heard.

Shep Dunnigan was gazing hungrily at the beef as he shook out his napkin and placed it on his lap while his wife sliced off a thick slab, placed it on a plate, and pa.s.sed it to him. "Smells as good as it looks," he said, scooping into the bowl of mashed potatoes, then ladling gravy over everything.

Nick was about to take the first bite of his own meal when a dark line-as thick and black as if it had been drawn with charcoal-slashed across the left side of his vision.

No, he thought. Not now. Not with Dad sitting right here.

He made himself stay perfectly still as he waited for the dark line to fade away, and after a moment or two it did.

But so also had his appet.i.te.

Nor, he was certain, was it actually over. How many times had he been given a flickering hint of what the demons were about to show him, only to be lulled into thinking the hallucination was over when it actually was only beginning?

"Honey?" His mom's face filled with concern. "Are you all right?"

"I'm okay," Nick said, but the words rang hollow even to his own ears, and his fork rattled against his plate as his heart began to hammer in his chest.

He carefully set the fork down and tried to will his heart back to normality. But it was no good-things were getting worse. The hallucinations had become so dark lately-so violent-that he was starting to worry about what he might do to himself.

Or to somebody else.

What if they got so bad he couldn't find his way back to reality?

What if he got trapped forever in some unspeakable horror that might not be real but might as well be?

But he already knew the answer to those questions: his father would take him back to the hospital, and they'd never let him out again.

And he'd never see Sarah again.

The thought came unbidden into his mind, and for a moment the voices actually fell utterly silent. When had the idea of never seeing Sarah Crane again become even more frightening than the thought of going back to the hospital? he wondered. Then there was another flicker at the edge of his vision-another great, thick, dark line.

The medicine! Take another dose of the medicine!

Even as the thought flashed into his mind, he was sliding his chair back. "Excuse me," he mumbled. "I need to go to the bathroom."

His mother frowned worriedly but nodded and didn't ask him any questions.

Nick ran up to his room, tore open his backpack, and retrieved the pill bottle. He shook out one of the pills, but before he could even put it into his mouth, let alone wash it down with a swallow of water, his vision narrowed, then darkened.

A moment later he could see nothing at all.

But he could hear the voices rising, hear the moaning and wailing growing louder.

So loud it would soon consume him.

His hands shaking uncontrollably now, he somehow managed to force the pill between his lips and to swallow it with what little saliva he could muster in his suddenly bone-dry mouth.

Now he began feeling his way toward the bed, knowing that if his parents found him on the floor, they'd call an ambulance. At least if he made it to the bed they might just let him sleep.

If he could sleep.

He found the bed, crept onto it and lay still. After a few moments, points of light began to appear, then spread. He was in a room, a dark, fetid, stinking room, with- "Help us!" The voices erupted in his brain and began to shriek. The voices erupted in his brain and began to shriek. "Save us." "Save us."

Nick whimpered, but his brain was no longer his to command, and he lay writhing on the bed watching helplessly as the visions rose before his eyes and the howling, pleading demons filled his ears.

Corpses!

There were rotting corpses everywhere!

Corpses that were still standing and gazing at him and- Nick shoved a corner of his quilt into his mouth to keep himself from screaming at the vision of the dead and the dying howling in their agony in the dank prison where they were mired in their own filth.

The visions grew more lurid, and the screaming rose, and now he could smell the putrefaction in his nostrils and taste the rot on his tongue, and all he could do was lie on his bed, listening, crying, mutely begging for them to stop, for the horror finally to pa.s.s.

But it didn't pa.s.s, and when he was finally exhausted, he lay still, trying desperately to hold on to whatever might remain of his sanity.

Or was it already gone?

Was he already lost forever?

Time no longer had any meaning, and he didn't hear the sound of his parents entering his room. But at the touch of his mother's hand, he jerked spasmodically upright and clung to her, his moans echoing those of the creatures in his head.

She held him and rocked him as he sobbed, and slowly he began to feel her tears on his cheeks.

But he never felt the needle that slid deep into his arm, and barely noticed his consciousness begin to fade away before a quiet darkness enveloped him and he relaxed into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Eleven.

I should make her stay, Bettina Philips thought as she stood at the front door of Shutters, watching Sarah make her slow way down the driveway, until finally she vanished into the darkness. But she'd tried, and Sarah Crane had brushed aside every argument she offered. should make her stay, Bettina Philips thought as she stood at the front door of Shutters, watching Sarah make her slow way down the driveway, until finally she vanished into the darkness. But she'd tried, and Sarah Crane had brushed aside every argument she offered.

She had seen how upset Sarah was by what she'd drawn, but just as she began explaining that an artist can't always know what's hidden inside them until the image finds its own moment of expression, Sarah caught sight of the clock and insisted that she had to go home, upset or not.

She wouldn't even accept another cup of tea, let alone the ride Bettina offered. But Bettina understood that: if anyone saw Sarah getting out of her car, there was no telling how her foster parents might punish her.

So Sarah had walked out into the wintry night wearing a jacket barely heavy enough for fall, and now she was gone, and as Bettina finally swung the heavy oak door closed she felt something she hadn't experienced in a long time.

She felt lonely.

Trying to shake off the feeling, she returned to the studio to gaze once more at the drawing that still stood on the easel. Perching on the stool in front of it, she studied the way Sarah had used a combination of light and shadow to indicate total darkness. And the angle of the beams in the dark chamber's ceiling perfectly indicated the tight proportions of the s.p.a.ce.

The beams ...

Bettina leaned forward, c.o.c.king her head.

There was something familiar about those beams.

A chill began to crawl up her spine.

Sarah had drawn Shutters sight unseen on her first day in cla.s.s. And not as the old manse currently was, either, but the way it had been when it was first built.

Was it possible this was another view of her house from sometime in the past? Could a room like this have ever existed within these walls?

No. Of course not. And yet ...

She knew those beams.

Bettina unclipped the drawing from the easel and took it out into the entry hall, scanning the ceiling and the way the walls joined, but knowing even as she gazed upward that the beams in the picture would be gone in the opposite direction.

Grabbing a sweater from the coat tree in the foyer and turning lights on as she went, she carried the drawing down the steep flight of stairs that led from the kitchen into the cold bas.e.m.e.nt that never seemed to warm up, even in the midst of the hottest summer.

Tonight it felt even colder than it ever had.

The musty smell felt choking in her throat, but she ignored it as she moved among the shrouded furniture and the old filing cabinets that held so much of her family's history. Tonight, though, she ignored everything but the beams overhead, eyeing not only the angles at which they ran, but the way they connected with one another.

The enormous timbers that had supported the house for nearly two centuries still held, now chalky white with age and cobwebs, but never painted or covered with plaster or drywall.

But nothing matched Sarah's sketch, at least not nearly as perfectly as the drawing of the house had hewn to the original. Still, there were probably areas in the bas.e.m.e.nt that she had never seen. The old coal chute and bin and furnace that took up so much room long ago had been torn out and replaced by the oil-burning furnace that was now installed in a tiny portion of the area the coal-fueled system had required.

How many other areas of the bas.e.m.e.nt had been reconfigured over the stretch of decades that had run their course since the foundation was laid?

And where to begin to look?

Furniture and ancient machinery were stacked high at the far end of the chamber in which she stood, blocking her from even reaching the pull chains on the series of ancient lightbulbs that someone had strung among the joists somewhere in the far distant past.

Nor could she get close to the far end without moving what looked like several tons of things past generations had consigned to the darkness, and she wasn't about to go fumbling through it until she could reach the lights.

But she could see nothing that looked even close to the small dungeonlike chamber Sarah had drawn.

But if there really were such a room down here, wouldn't it show on the original plans?

Of course! And when her parents built the garage forty years ago, they had found the original plans in her great-great-grandfather's study.

Yet as she took a final look at the huge timbers in the ceiling-timbers whose proportions seemed perfectly to match those that Sarah had drawn-Bettina suddenly realized that she didn't need the plans of the house to know the truth. Already she had little doubt that in the long-ago past someone had stored things somewhere in this bas.e.m.e.nt that they intended to keep hidden forever.

And Sarah had drawn them.

Bettina pulled the sweater close around her neck and hurried back upstairs, turning off the light and firmly closing and locking the door.

The kitchen, still smelling of warm spiced tea and filled with bright light, seemed a safe haven, but Bettina moved straight through it, across the inlaid marble floor of the hall, and pushed open one of the heavy mahogany doors to the room that had not been used since it was her thrice-great-grandfather's study.

Instead it had been left exactly as it was when Boone Philips died, the one room in the house that was always closed, and never used.

The one room that she herself had never played in as a child.

It had always been a cold room, but tonight it felt even colder than the rest of the house.

Bettina switched on the overhead chandelier and surveyed the gla.s.s-fronted cabinets, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with the bra.s.s library ladder on a rail, the leather chairs and ma.s.sive desk.

Where to begin to look for a set of two-hundred-year-old plans?

Where had her parents found them?

The desk was as good a starting place as any.

Bettina perched on the cracking leather of the big desk chair, and the smell of old leather, and even older books, enveloped her.

She opened the front drawer of the desk, glanced at its jumble of pens, pencils, and paper clips, and closed it again.

The top drawer on the right-hand pedestal held Boone Philips's personal engraved stationery, now yellowed and crisp.

The deep file drawer below that was filled with folders, but none of them thick enough to hold a series of house plans.

Still, she flipped quickly through them; they looked like old inmate files from the time when her ancestor was the last warden of the old prison. Maybe someday she'd donate these and the contents of the cabinets in the bas.e.m.e.nt to the historical society. At least she'd be rid of them, and maybe the historians would find some use for them.