Never Fear (33 page)

“
Ainsley.”

She closed her eyes and clenched her
fists.

“
Ainsley.”
The voice taunted in the darkness.

The air grew frigid and her teeth
began to chatter. Fear, unlike anything she’d experienced, coiled
around her.

“
Ainsley.”

The whisper came right beside her ear.
The warmth of the ghostly breath and the chill in the air forced
Ainsley to squeeze her eyes shut and pray.

Her grandmother was dead outside in
the elements. Ainsley was alone in the house, cut off from
society—thanks to the storm—with a malevolent entity taunting
her.

There was no one here to help her; she
was going to have to save herself. She shook off the debilitating
fear and frantically felt around for the flashlight. The cool metal
light resembled a lifeline to her and she grasped it tightly then
flicked it on. She panned the rather bright beam of light around
the kitchen. The light settled on an oily looking shape dissipating
slowly into the darkness of the corner.

Ainsley carefully crossed to the door
that led to the lighthouse. A laugh, blood curdling and childish,
wrapped around her before she found herself falling forward after a
deliberate push to her back. She caught herself on the door jamb.
The power of the spirit was unavoidable, and the danger
palatable.

Chapter 3

The climb up the two-hundred-and-seven
stairs seemed to take forever. The metal of the handrail burned her
hands with the cold through her grandmother’s gloves that she had
donned before heading to the beacon. The snow managed to drift and
pile in the short time since she’d been outside. Her heart seized
with the knowledge her grandmother was still out there and would
remain on the rocks until the ferry could get back after the storm
and the police could come out.

Her steps echoed in the empty tower as
she ascended higher and higher. Sweat, despite the cold, trickled
down her spine. Her breath wheezed in and out of her mouth, her
lungs burned. Her thighs screamed as she reached the second
landing. And the sound of the storm echoed in the empty tower
stairwell. The whistling and thundering of the surf was almost
deafening to her senses.

When she reached the floor with the
lens mechanism, she rested her head against the wall. She wheezed
with the effort to drag air into her constricted lungs.

The haunting laugh of a ghost filled
the air.

“
Ohhhhh,
Ainsssssssleeeeeeyyyyyy.”

Ainsley resisted the urge to cover her
ears and rush back down the twisting metal stairs.

She panned the flashlight around the
room. There was a desk and old file cabinet against the wall beside
it. The light now was fully automated, and this part of the room
was a throwback to a bygone era. She took a deep breath. Her
grandmother believed the painting that held the spirit of a ghost
was in this room. Somewhere. But where?

Ainsley had never been up here. It was
stark in its furnishing, and nothing adorned the walls. An old oak
desk sat under a small window. Ainsley went over, pulled the chair
out, and sat. She started to pull drawers out, looking for a secret
compartments. Besides it being a portrait, she didn’t know how
large it was or what the painting would contain. Oh, how she wished
her grandmother had talked to her sooner. She’d wished she’d not
been so stupid and stubborn and had spoken to her grandmother about
what she’d felt.

Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning
lit the room.

A thunderstorm during a
snowstorm?

The heavy oppressive feeling once
again settled over the room.

All at once, she couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t see. The fragrance of lilac coated her throat. Gagging,
she pushed away from the desk, desperate for fresh air.

She stumbled out onto the landing and
clung to the black-lacquered railing, gulping the stale, cold air
as a wave of dizziness assailed her. Overwhelmed, she slid down to
the ground and tried to draw in enough air to settle
herself.

A gust of wind, stale and warm, so at
odds with the tempest blowing outside, rushed over her. She gained
her feet and pushed away from the railing. Her body revolted,
weighing her down, as if dipped in cement.

Forcing herself back into the room, a
coat of darkness filled her. Not physical, but an evil
darkness.

Is this what grandmother
experienced?

At the thought, determination fueled
her.

It was time to get this done, do what
her grandmother asked of her—it was the least she could do after
leaving the old woman alone.

Ainsley began tearing through the file
cabinet. She yanked on the bottom drawer and the whole thing shook.
She managed to scoot out of the way just as the thing toppled over.
Had she remained where she’d been, she’d have received serious
injury.

As she gasped for breath, she noted a
part of the wall that seemed different—discolored from the rest.
Even in the dark, with only a flashlight for illumination, it was
obvious.

On hands and knees she crawled to the
wall. She tapped on it and noticed it was hollow
sounding.

A screeching came from down below.
Ainsley quickly hit the wall with her Maglite, and was surprised
when the wall easily gave away and left a large hole. She leaned in
and looked into the wall, shining the flashlight’s bright beam into
the space.

There in the dust and damp recess was
a rolled canvas.

She reached in and pulled it
out.

The wind swirled, yanking at her hair.
Lilac filled the space and she sat back and unrolled the canvas,
hands shaking as the colors were revealed, and so too was the face
of a woman. Her sober expression stared back at Ainsley.

A mirror image of herself.

She gasped and dropped the canvas. A
swirling gray mass raced around her like a tempest.

She watched, transfixed with horror,
as mist formed into a grotesque and misshapen form of a woman. Her
hair was long and dark, stringy and dull. Her eyes were sunken,
bruised under the eyes, and pure evil emanated from the dark
orbs.

Ainsley grabbed the portrait and
zipped it into her coat, since it wouldn’t fit in her pocket and
turned to leave. The door slammed shut. She tried to pull on the
door, turn the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. The sound of ghostly
laughter filled the air.

Before Ainsley could move or think,
something threw her across the room. She slid down the wall, the
air knocked from her lungs. Pain radiated through her. A hand
pulled her up by her hair and Ainsley resisted the urge to cry out
in pain. Although she didn’t see the ghost, the smell of her
perfume filled the lens room.

“
Ah, poor little Ainsley.
Thinking she could have a happy ending and destroy me. Tut,
tut.”

“
Why?” Ainsley, managed to
gasp out. “Why do you do this?”

“
Why? Because my happiness
was stolen from me, and I vowed before I died that no one, not one
single woman, would ever know true happiness.”

“
But my grandmother, she
was old, she…”

“
Was happy!”

The scent of decay now started to
permeate the room. The specter let Ainsley go. Panting, she crawled
on hands and knees to the center of the room while frantically
digging out the bag of rock salt. Quickly, Ainsley poured the salt
around her in a circle, remaining within the salty circumference.
Inside the circle, she knew she was safe.

For the time being.

Ainsley pulled out her smartphone,
noting it was after midnight. She considered calling for help, but
what would she say? “Help me, I’m trapped in a lighthouse with a
vengeful ghost?”

The door slammed open. A blast of
frigid air rushed into the tiny room, blowing her hair around her
face, sending the maps and papers, long forgotten on the desk,
swirling into the air. She looked down, horrified, as the salt ring
she’d poured began to part.

“
No!”

She watched, helpless, while the ring
protecting her disappeared. She ran toward the door.

“
You will die now,
Ainsley.”

Cold hands covered her shoulder blades
and pushed. Hard. Ainsley fell forward, toppling like a rag doll
down the twisting stairs. She tucked into herself, trying to
protect her head.

After what seemed like forever, she
came to a stop on one of the landings. Her head ached and her body
screamed. She’d underestimated the ghost and her power. Ainsley sat
on the landing, her flashlight gone. The cold blew up from the
bottom of the lighthouse numbed her fingers.

She couldn’t continue to fight this
ghost. And she knew she couldn’t wait to get the painting down the
stairs to the fireplace in order to destroy it.

She needed to do it here.

Now.

Before she could pull the canvas out
of her coat, another icy punch slammed into her, pushing her to the
edge of the stairs. Her hands, raw and sore from the first fall,
tried in vain to still the forward momentum. She tumbled down the
next flight of stairs.

Panic seized her.

She couldn’t fall down all two
hundred.

She’d die.

Screaming all the will and
determination she could muster. Ainsley shot her feet out in an
arms-out attempt to stop her downward momentum. A wretched crack
rent the air and she came to a stop. Her ribs, no doubt broken,
made breathing almost impossible. Unbearable agony ripped through
her hip all the way down to the leg and she realized she couldn’t
move. Blood dripped down her face and into her eye.

Pushing up to sit, she collapsed back
to the iron landing. Her shoulder, no doubt as broken as her legs,
was useless in the task of getting her upright. Ainsley prayed
while she tried to push up with her other arm. Succeeding, she
backed herself up against the last flight of stairs. Wincing in
pain, she forced herself to dig the painting out of her coat,
eventually using her teeth and dropping it in her lap.

Panting, exhausted, she used her good
hand to spill the rock salt on the canvas. She tossed them aside,
then doused the painting with lighter fluid. The stink of the fuel
made her eyes water. The cold liquid seeped through the canvas and
onto the fabric of her jeans.

It didn’t matter.

Ainsley knew she wasn’t getting out of
this alive. But she could take this bitch with her.

Her body trembled, going into shock,
as she felt around for the lighter. Her fumbling fingers took
several tries before she was able to get the light to flare. Crying
in pain, she used her good arm to scoot away.as the flames consumed
the old painting.

A ghostly scream filled the air, and
the flames began to consume the canvas.

The woman’s ghostly face appeared in
front of Ainsley’s. Flames licked at her cheeks, smoke billowing
out of her nostrils and eyes sockets. Cold hands seized Ainsley’s
arms, hoisting her above the ground. Broken and bloody, she could
do no more than watch as the burning specter tossed her over the
edge of the black iron railing.

Everything moved in slow motion for
Ainsley. Flames engulfed the ghost, just as the flames consumed the
canvas. Her screams, once full of menace and taunting, now shrill
and panicked.

I did it,
Grandma
, Ainsley thought, closing her
eyes.

The air pillowed her body as she
plummeted to the ground.

When she looked up again, the darkness
was replaced by a blinding, pure, white light. Her grandmother and
mother held out their hands.

“
I’ll be home for
Christmas,”
sang in the night.

“
Where the love light
beams, I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”
Ainsley smiled and reached for them, knowing in a moment, her
life would be over. But she’d be with the people who loved her
most.

For once the Christmas carol didn’t
leave her sad. Instead, it warmed her with love and ended her
fear.

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
TERROR

CHAPTER 10

“
I always thought
lighthouses were creepy,” Nancy said. “I wouldn’t have gone
there.”

“
Well, you know,” Grandpa
began, “Lighthouses were pretty helpful to me a few
times.”

Dan closed his eyes and put his head
back.

“
Way back when I was your
age, I worked on a fishing trawler off Cape Cod. There were a
couple of times storms came in, and if it wasn’t for that
lighthouse, things could have ended badly.”

“
Cool,” Nick said. “I
didn’t know that. That must have been awesome.”

“
It had its moments.”
Grandpa nodded.

“
Well, I’m grateful for
the lighthouse too,” Dan interrupted. “Otherwise, if you’d wrecked
your boat, I wouldn’t have been born. Now who wants to read the
next story?”