The Gathering Darkness (19 page)

The other four figures drew closer. I could almost see their faces. The pendant felt like an ice cube against my skin, jolting me, alerting me to move. With new found strength, I stood, and just as the clawed hands of the other four figures reached out of the painting, I bolted up the stairs, but not before one reached out and ripped my sleeve at the elbow. Shrieking and stumbling, I made it to the top of the stairs.

I didn’t look back as I ran down a hallway, not knowing which direction I’d taken, until I slammed into something solid. I screamed again. Someone held me forcibly by the arms. I fought to break free, but couldn’t.

Through my screams I heard a soft, comforting voice say, “Brooke, it’s me.”

I stopped fighting and looked up to see Marcus.

His grip on my arms didn’t loosen. “What is it? What happened?”

I found my voice. “Come on.” It was just a squeak, but it was audible enough. “We have to get out of here.” I grabbed his arm and started to run past him, but he didn’t move. I stopped and looked back at him. “Come on!” I cried and pulled at his wrist.

He looked down the hallway, where I’d come from then back at me.

“Please.”

Whether he believed there was danger or not, he kicked it into high gear and pulled me along by the hand. We ran as fast as we could down the narrow hallway. We ran past the room Evan was painting in, down a back staircase, and into another hallway.

“In here,” Marcus said, pulling me into a dark room.

He closed the door behind us, quickly finding the light switch. I pressed my hands against my beating heart and tried to catch my breath. My chest hurt from all the pounding inside. I wiped my eyes with the back of my other hand and turned to look at the small room.

All the furniture was covered in white sheets. There was no window. I felt the weight of Marcus’ hands on my shoulders.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

“You won’t believe me,” I said in between breaths and sobs.

His arms went around me. I turned and flung myself into them and held on tightly, burying my face in his denim shirt, breathing in the fresh paint-splattered scent, as a silent sob shook my body. He patted the length of my hair, as one would pat a puppy.

“I’ll believe whatever you tell me, Brooke. Remember, I’m a part of this mystery too.”

With a shaky breath, I let the nightmare I’d just witnessed spill out of me. When I was finished I took a step back and out of his embrace.

I looked at him feeling desperate. “Will you take me home?”

His body went rigid. His eyes widened. “Jesus!”

“What is it?” His horror-filled expression shot cold fear through my body.

He lifted a hand and rubbed his thumb against my forehead. I flinched under the sting of his touch. He held his hand out behind my head and looked at it. I whirled around. Next to the smudge of white paint on his thumb, was a smear of bright red blood—my blood. With a shaking hand, I touched my forehead where he’d just touched. Fresh blood had seeped out of the wound, staining my fingertips.

“Ow.” It came out as a whimper.

Suddenly, as they had on the stairs, every wound over my entire body stung as if they had been re-opened with jagged razor blades. I lifted a pant leg up. Fresh blood oozed from every cut and ran down my leg. I pulled the neck of my tank top down, exposing more flesh than I would normally dare. Every laceration over my entire body was spilling fresh blood.

“No, no, this can’t be happening.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking out loud or not. The room swirled around me making my head feel heavier and heavier. Light dissolved into darkness.

The next thing I remembered was the lower half of my body lay on something hard. The upper half was cradled in someone’s arms. The cool sensation of blood rushing through my veins brought me back from wherever the darkness had taken me. Marcus’ voice sounded far away, gradually becoming closer, until my ears were fully unplugged and I could hear once again. The muted sound of thunder made my body jerk.

“It’s okay, I’m right here. You’re safe with me,” Marcus soothed, rubbing a hand down the side of my face.

I opened my eyes to a white T-shirt smeared with fresh blood. Its softness was soothing against the side of my face. I took a deep breath, hauling in the scent of fresh laundry mixed with a splash of paint and the rusty smell from the blood.

He was kneeling on the floor, holding me against him, rocking me like a child. I unfurled my fingers from the hand that lay between us and latched onto the front of his shirt. With my other hand, I touched my forehead again. There was no need to look at it; I felt the wet smear of blood on my fingertips.

“I can’t handle this,” I whispered into his chest. “I feel like I’m in a horror movie that won’t end.”

“I know.” Instead of trying to make things sound better than they were, he agreed with me. “This is insane.” He raised his voice. “If it’s someone’s sick twisted idea of a joke, it’s not funny.”

I attempted to push myself up.

“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding concerned.

“I’m okay now.”

He looked at me not fully believing that I was alright, but helped me to get up anyway.

I held up a hand. Blood trickled down my fingers and dripped off my wrist, forming a small puddle on the wooden floor.

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” he said.

“And tell him what? That I had a fight with the neighbor’s cat? I think you know as well as I do that I can’t take these injuries to a doctor.” I looked down at the crimson lines that were now soaked through the front of my tank top. “Where are we anyway?”

“We’re in an old office in back of the Inn, on the main level,” he said.

As tempted as I was to run out of the front door, I suddenly had an urge to explore the trunk. “Marcus, take me to the attic.”

He looked at me as though I might be losing my mind. “But—”

“I’m fine now, well except for a few dozen scratches covering my entire body that are bleeding for no apparent reason. Seriously, I need to see the trunk.” As if to affirm my decision, I felt the pendant turn from ice to soothing warmth against my chest, and I knew then that if he wouldn’t take me, I would go to the attic alone.

“Okay, if that’s really what you want. We’ll have to be quiet so Evan doesn’t hear us.”

So, with me tucked under Marcus’ arm, we left the room. When we came to the narrow staircase in the back section of the Inn, I turned to go up.

“No, we can’t go that way,” Marcus said. “We’d have to walk past the room Evan’s painting. He might see us.”

“But, we came down that way.”

“We were just lucky he didn’t hear us.”

“Okay, then which way?” I had a sinking feeling.

“The main staircase.”

“But, that’s where … .” I couldn’t speak of the horror I’d just witnessed there. I gripped his shirt with both hands.

He tightened his arm around me. “It’s okay, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The front door was closed. And as if it had never happened, the tray I’d dropped had been cleaned up, along with the mess.

With my gaze lowered to the stairs, I squished myself into Marcus’ side, ready to scream at the slightest sound and, reluctantly, began the ascent. When we came close to where the painting hung, I closed my eyes and let him guide me along. Marcus assured me that the painting looked perfectly normal—to him it probably did. Once I was at the top, I let out a deep, shaky breath, but didn’t let go.

“I wonder where Beth is. Didn’t she hear me scream?” I whispered as low as I could.

“Beth’s kind of strange. Always gives me the creeps,” he whispered back.

“Seriously? I thought you really liked her.”

“She’s kind of pitiful. I can’t help but feel sorry for her when I see her, but I still think she’s weird.”

I shuddered.

We came to the attic stairway door. Marcus opened it carefully, cringing when its hinges squeaked. I could hear the ladder squeaking not far down the hallway.

“Evan must be wondering where you are by now. Didn’t he hear me scream?”

“Yeah, but he probably figures you saw a spider, and by now he knows I’m not coming back.”

“Oh.” I could imagine Evan visualizing Marcus and me making out in some dark room in the Inn.
As if.

A
s I clung to Marcus’ arm like static, the two of us stepped into the frigid coldness of the attic. Breath clouds expelled from our mouths. When my teeth started chattering, I had second thoughts. “Maybe we should just get out of here while we still can.”

Marcus opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

“I know, I know, you’re here.”

“Actually, I was going to agree with you. Do you want to leave?”

The nagging feeling won over my better judgment. “No, come on. You do have a flashlight though, right?”

“Right here.” Marcus picked the flashlight up off the floor and turned it on. He also picked up a hammer and stuck the handle in his belt.

As soon as we left the glow of the dangling light bulb behind, a series of bright flashes lit up the edges of the attic, followed by a sharp crack of thunder and a loud rumble. A squeak flew from my mouth. Outside the dormer windows, tree branches slashed violently against the panes of glass. The whole scene looked like something from a horror movie. But it was real, and I had the lead role.

Marcus’ hand closed over mine and our fingers locked together. I situated myself as close to him as possible. Despite everything that was happening to me, I was very much aware of the chemistry between us.

As if the path had been laid out for us, we found the trunk in no time at all. It was the oddest thing; our footprints from last time were gone. A fresh, untouched blanket of dust covered everything except the trunk. It was as if we’d never been here.

“Here, hold this,” Marcus said handing me the flashlight.

With a cold and bleeding hand, I reached out to take it. Marcus gave my hand a pained look, then wrapped his fingers around my wrist. He passed the flashlight over to my other hand, and proceeded to wipe away some of the blood off my fingers using his shirt tail.

“Does it hurt a lot?”

I shook my head while watching him dab gently at the cuts, and lying said, “It doesn’t matter.” Then I took my hand form him and shone the flashlight on the trunk.

Marcus took the hammer out of his belt and gave the old padlock a whack. Sparks flew into the darkness. The crack echoed loudly through the attic. I froze, waiting for a reaction. Nothing but the echo. The lock didn’t budge either.

He looked at me for approval. I nodded giving him the go-ahead. I braced myself for the next sharp crack. The hammer came down harder this time, breaking open the padlock with another array of sparks. It fell to the floor with a loud clank. We both cringed at the noise. I held my breath; sure that someone would have heard it this time. When nothing happened, we looked back at the trunk. Marcus pushed the leather straps off the top.

“You take that end,” he said.

By now, I was stiff from the cold, and the wetness from my blood-soaked clothing wasn’t helping matters.

We both knelt in the dust in front of the trunk and put a hand on the bottom of the lid. Instantly, a shimmer of energy passed from the trunk into my fingers and up my arm, stopping where the pendant lay against my chest. By the surprised look on Marcus’ face, I knew he’d felt it too.

Together, we lifted the heavy lid, easing it back on its hinges.

“Oh! Do you feel that?” I asked.

My fascination was mirrored on his face. As if someone had turned on a heater, the area surrounding us grew warm, dissolving our breath clouds. I waited for the smell of must and oldness to come from within the trunk, but there was no scent, just comforting warmth.

As I knelt in front of the trunk feeling almost peaceful, I heard Marcus suck in a sharp intake of air. Afraid of what I might see, I glanced at him warily.

“Brooke! Your cuts … they just disappeared in front of my eyes.”

Overwhelmed by the warmth, I hadn’t noticed that I didn’t hurt anymore. I looked at the smooth, blood-free skin on the back of my hand and then reached up and touched the spot on my forehead where another freshly bleeding scratch had been. There was no blood. The scratch was gone. I looked down at my chest. The crimson lines had disappeared from the front of my tank top, and when I pulled the neck out to look inside, skin that had looked freshly massacred moments ago was now completely healed, as if the scratches had never been there.

“They’re gone!” I heard the elation in my voice. “And look!” I pulled the pendant out by its chain. As if it was newly polished, it gleamed, brilliant silver. Mesmerized, I turned the warm metal over in my palm.

“This is twisted,” Marcus said, staring at the pendant. Thunder sounded overhead, but no lightning reached us here, in the middle of the attic.

“My life’s been twisted since I moved here,” I replied. “But you know that.”

“I wish there was something I could do.”

I looked at him incredulously. “You’re kidding, right? You’re here with me now. And you believe me. We’re figuring this out together. You’re already doing all you can.”