Edge of Shadows (Shadows #1) (34 page)

“It is taken care of,” Linda replied. She jabbed a finger in Randall’s direction. “You worry about your part and let me worry about mine.”

Ellie moaned and closed her eyes. David looked at her with alarm. His thoughts were all messed up. He felt around at his memories of early childhood. They were fuzzy and if he was honest with himself, there was a sense of falseness in them. Like if he poked at them long enough, they would disappear.

“How?” he asked. He had to know.

Linda looked at him and smiled indulgently. “We were so proud of you. Wanting to become a doctor. It is very simple, darling. As I said, time has no meaning in this place. So we sent you out at the time we needed you. It has been so long since someone had been here. We needed you. The house needed you.”

“But my life, are you saying it’s all false?” he said.

“Oh, my poor Jack.” Linda came around the table and placed her hand on his arm. “I know this is confusing for you, but you did exactly what you were supposed to do. We picked a girl for you and you fell in love. True love.”

“No, no, no.” He whipped his head from side to side. “This isn’t real.”

“David,” Ellie said to him. “It’s okay. I love you anyway. And I’m supposed to tell you that Emma loves you too.”

Linda reached over David and slapped Ellie hard across the face.

Even as she felt the pain of Linda’s strike, Ellie heard a whisper in her head. It was a voice she had heard before, but had blocked out of her mind. The voice told her what Linda and Randall had planned for her. It told her what they had done to Emma and Henry. It was the voice of the Third, as it told her it called itself.  It was the voice of the figure she had seen in the basement with Lillian and Joseph the night they murdered Emma and Henry.  And then it offered her a deal.

Her chest heaved as she considered it. She had to make a decision quickly. Images flashed through her mind. No matter what Linda said, there was no way she was going to let Ellie live. They may let David live, but only to wipe his mind clean and use him again like they were using him now.

Ellie chose. Her binds fell to the side and she sat up.

“I told you to bind them,” Linda spat at Randall.

“I did,” Randall said. There was a note of fear in his voice as he studied Ellie’s face. “Lillian, I think we have a problem.”

Linda whirled and looked at Ellie, who had taken those few moments to swing her legs off the table and now stood facing them.

“I’m amazed my Jack ever wanted you,” Linda said. “You were so broken. So weak. You almost ruined everything because you were so self-absorbed. You don’t deserve him.” Linda rushed at her and hit a wall of resistance just a few inches from her. “What’s going on?”

“You are the one who is broken, Linda, or should I just go ahead and call you Lillian?” Ellie said.

Linda stepped back but Ellie could see the fear on her face. “You have the chance of a lifetime at your fingertips, you silly girl. Don’t pretend to think that you have the upper hand here. I’ve lived a century longer than you. Don’t make the same mistake Emma did.”

“She didn’t want anything but to live her life with her husband and her son,” Ellie said. “She had no use for your riches or grand schemes of wanting to live forever.”

“Everyone wants what I have,” Linda said, shaking her head. “Everyone wants to live forever.”

“This isn’t living, Lillian,” Ellie said. “In the end, you don’t have the upper hand either. You are nothing but a slave to the darkness of this place.”

“That’s not true,” Linda cried out and tried to rush at her again. Ellie put up her hands and Linda was propelled backward. She felt a rush of cool air that brought goose bumps to her arms, and she saw a dark figure step beside her. The Third had arrived. And Ellie knew now that this was the creature of evil who found her when Jake tried to shield her with the safety spell and who wiped her memory of the incident so its evil plan could be set in motion.

“It has no use for you anymore. You and Joseph are the weak ones. Your love is tainted and dark. That is why it convinced you to release David. You and Joseph weren’t cutting it anymore.” Ellie’s voice rose.

“No,” Linda moaned.

Randall slowly backed away from Ellie and bumped into the wall.

“It is releasing you now. Releasing you to hell, where you belong.” The Third’s hands flung out and a wave of energy hit Linda and Randall full force. Their shrieks were deafening and Ellie felt sick watching their bodies go up in flames. Ellie felt an intense wave of heat hit her and she stumbled backward, overwhelmed by the smell of burning flesh. Then suddenly they were gone and the room was silent.

David watched Ellie carefully as she released him from his bindings.

“What the hell just happened here, Ellie?” he finally said. After Linda and Randall’s spectacular destruction, he had watched the dark figure next to Ellie nod in her direction and then slowly fade away.

“It’s over,” she said. She looked up him and smiled.

Then she wrapped her arms around his waist, and David had to admit that felt great. He still couldn’t process that he had been born almost a hundred years ago, and had apparently been a captive of the house all that time. But it made sense to him now why he had always felt so comfortable there.

“What do we do now?” he asked. “I feel like my whole world has been ripped apart.”

Ellie’s words surprised him, and he felt the knot of fear return. “We stay,” she said simply.

“What does that mean?” He pushed her away, searching her eyes. He knew that something had transpired between Ellie and the dark figure that had banished Linda and Randall.

“This is where you belong, David. It is your home. And I’ll stay with you, of course.” She smiled warmly and tried to hug him again but he stopped her.

“I don’t belong here, Ellie,” he said. “And neither do you.”

Ellie looked frustrated. “You heard everything we said, David. This is where you came from.”

“I’m not staying here, Ellie. This is a bad place. Horrible things happen here. We’re leaving.” He grabbed her arm and started pulling her with him out onto the landing.

She struggled against him. “David, please. There’s something I need to tell you. Something you aren’t going to like.”

Her fevered speech made him move faster. “I need to get you out of here, Ellie. Away from whatever it is that lives in this house,” he said.

“No, David. You aren’t listening. You can’t leave.” And then Ellie dropped the bomb. “Neither one of us can," she said. Her smile had faded, and her eyes were haunted.

They stood on the patio with Skipper and watched the sun come up. It was cold, but they didn’t feel it. Ellie knew the time had come. Already things were changing. Everything around them was covered in heavy snow. The world was silent.

David had not spoken to her since she had finished telling him what had happened in those few moments before the Third banished Joseph and Lillian back to the depths of hell. Ellie explained all of the images of the future that the house had shown her, and how his parents had died. It sounded too fantastic to be real.

“You don’t know that was the truth, you know,” David finally said. He didn’t look at her.

“We were kidnapped by soul-sucking ghost monsters, David,” she argued. “I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen even if the Third hadn’t shown me what happened to Emma and Henry.”

“So you made a deal with the devil,” he said. “A deal for both of us.”

“Like it or not, David, this is where you grew up. It has had its hooks in you since you were born. It wasn’t going to let you just waltz out of here, even if we had somehow managed to escape from Joseph and Lillian. What we have is what it wants.”

“So we’re trapped here forever,” he said.

It frightened Ellie that he wouldn’t look at her. She stepped in front of him and gently reached up to touch his cheek. Finally his eyes dropped to hers. She saw a man in torment. She wrapped her arms around his torso, and after a moment she felt him put his arms around her. She was relieved.

“Don’t worry, David. This is just the beginning. We have time now. We’ll figure it out. Together.”

She heard a rumble inside the house. She knew she’d have to be careful what she said from now on. “We’d better go back inside.”

David took her chin and kissed her softly. “If you say we’ll get out of here, Ellie, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. I believe you.”

She nodded. She had to appear confident for him. Then she took his hand and pushed the front door open. Skipper scooted through the door first. David glanced at her and followed Skipper. It was like they were swallowed by the darkness on the other side of the threshold. Ellie took a deep breath and hoped again that she had made the right decision. Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

###

Thank you so much for taking the time to read Ellie's story! If you enjoyed
Edge of Shadows
, please consider leaving a review and sharing your thoughts. I'd also love to hear what you liked (and what you didn't!) if you'd like to drop me a line at [email protected]. As always, thank you for your support.

Shadows Deep
, the second book of this series, is available now (see excerpt below).

Cege Smith is a Minnesota based writer who is addicted to lattes and B-rated horror films.  She had been crafting spooky stories since she was twelve years old.   She lives with her husband, two adorable stepsons, and mini long-hair dachshund, Juliet in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/cegesmith

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Cege's blog:
http://www.cegesmith.com

Read this excerpt from
Shadows Deep
,
Book Two of the
Shadows
series available now!

            Letting go was one of the hardest things a person could ever do. Ellie knew that. What happened when she let go of the idea that reality as she knew it was merely a cover on a rabbit hole? She had willingly taken the cover off and fallen down into the unknown darkness. She’d surrendered. Somehow it felt easier that way. But the Voice kept picking at her even though she was deep in her hidey hole. It wouldn’t leave her alone.

            “What was it like for you when your parents died?”

            Ellie had answered some variation of that question what seemed like a million times over the years, but her response always paled in comparison to the effect of that one event on the rest of her life. How could she explain the depth of pain she felt when the two people who she loved most were ripped out of her life? Or the excruciating, almost debilitating sense of loneliness that followed when she finally comprehended that she was completely alone in the world?

            “I was eight,” Ellie replied. “I had no other family. One minute I was surrounded by love. In the blink of an eye I was an orphan. What do you think it was like?” No one could understand what she had been through, and eventually she gave up trying to explain. Her parents’ death was just something that happened to her a long time ago. Ellie preferred to leave that buried there.

            “I am sure it was difficult. But you obviously learned to cope, even thrive.”

            “Thrive isn’t the word I’d choose,” Ellie said. “I learned how to survive. Eventually I learned ways to be happy again, but I did that on my own. I never felt like I belonged anywhere again.”

            The Voice was silent for a while and Ellie was relieved. When it wasn’t poking at her, the darkness was peaceful. Ellie was used to being alone.

            “Tell me about your ability. You’ve linked that to your parents’ death.”

            Ellie was tired of the questions. They had covered the same ground over and over again. But it was like the Voice was missing some nuance, and so it all started again. Combing through her life. Looking for clues. “I noticed it the first time at the funeral. I was standing there in the cemetery, looking at their caskets, with the social worker beside me. I kept looking around for more people, but it was just the three of us: me, the social worker, and the minister. And then I noticed that the longer the minister spoke, the more these colors seemed to grow out of him. It didn’t make any sense at the time. The colors were deep purple and blue and they got more vivid every time he made eye contact with me. It scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what to do.”