The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) (27 page)

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

B
laire gasped when she laid eyes on Ivan. He was wearing the same ragged gown that she had found him in when she first arrived.

“Why are you here?” she asked Dmytro.

“The same reason as you,” he answered.

The boy stared at her blankly. A scream from somewhere inside of St. Sebastian made her gulp.

“You can’t escape.” Ivan’s eyes narrowed as he stared through the woman. “You can’t escape the curse.”

The lights flickered out, and Ivan was gone. Blaire raced out the door and down the stairs. As she ran, she heard the playful song of the children coming from some unknown place in the building.
Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies…

Blaire burst into the
fire
-lit game room where Anya was trying to calm a handful of children.

“Dream A Little Dream” skipped and sputtered wildly on the record player. “What’s happening?” Blaire asked.

“I think the power went out,” Anya said just as a freezing wind ripped through the room, snuffing out the blazing fire. They all turned and watched the smoke from the extinguished blaze rise up into the air as if hope had literally been blown out of the room leaving only a thin fog behind.

“Where is Vesna?” Blaire asked.

While I’m alone, blue as can be…
the music played.

“Some of the children scattered when the lights went out, and Vesna went after them,” Anya said.

Dream a little, dream a little, dream a little
…the record skipped.

“Who screamed?” Blaire asked.

Anya shrugged nervously.

Blaire stepped back into the hall.

Another scream rang out followed by a faint chattering on the second floor. “Get all of the children in one room and lock the door until we figure out what’s going on!” Blaire ordered, as she ran up the stairs. An obedient Anya immediately began gathering the remaining kids.

Blaire’s first thought went to Travis, because she had not locked the door behind herself after leaving. She raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and was breathless by the time she reached the third floor. She stood in the hallway and looked out the window. Snow continued to fall relentlessly, adding more layers, closing them in tighter and tighter for the night with each maddening speck of white. Blaire ran down the hall to her room to find that Travis was untouched. In her top drawer, Blaire found her keys and flashlight.

She locked the door behind her and was back in the hall in less than a few seconds. Blaire raced back down the corridor, but stopped just before descending the steps as a paralyzing chill ran through her. At the far end of the hall, a small shadow loomed just in front of the window. Blaire could feel them there, dark and panting from their work. She turned, but it was gone.

The second floor seemed deceptively empty. Blaire peered through the window of the door of each room until she found the children. After unlocking the door, she stepped inside where the kids were scattered about. Some of them huddled in corners, while others cuddled together in their beds. She bent to see that a few were hiding underneath the clumsy bed frames.

“Are you okay?” she asked one of the boys, who nodded ferociously. “Anya?” she called.

Blaire noticed that the door of the closet at the back of the room was slightly ajar. Walking over, she swallowed the bitter fear that lodged in her throat as she ripped the door open. Andre stumbled out and wrapped himself around Blaire, his crown still atop his head. Blaire hugged the boy tightly.

“Where is Anya?” she asked.

“She left,” he answered. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing, the power went out, and we just have to make sure that everyone is safe, okay? There is nothing to worry about.” Although she had a terrible feeling that the boy, same as all of them, had everything to worry about. Neither Natalka nor Ivan was in the room, but they had to be found.

“Everyone stay calm and stay here. It’s just the power. I’ll be right back,” Blaire said to the children as she made her way to the door. She peeked out the small square window into the hall, and when she didn’t see anything, she stepped out, locking the door behind her.

“Anya?” Blaire whispered. Whipping around to search out an odd creak, Blaire shined her flashlight in the direction of the noise, which trampled over the walls under the shoddy guidance of her trembling hand.

“Anya?” she whispered again as she tiptoed toward the bathroom. No one spoke back to her, but the creaking continued. It was a steady rhythm every other second without fail. Blaire pressed the bathroom door open, walked inside, and flashed her light around. In the middle of the room, Vesna’s limp body swung from a chord that hung on a thick pipe. As her knees buckled, Blaire reached for the wall in an attempt to soften her fall. She turned away and scrambled out into the hall where she collided with Anya.

“I can’t find Vesna, and some of the children are still missing!” Anya blurted out. Blaire pointed toward the bathroom. A hesitant Anya disappeared into the door, and in the next moment, Blaire heard her scream.

“What happened? Who did this?” Anya said, staggering back into the hallway.

“Natalka,” Blaire responded, leaning against the wall still trying to steady herself.

“No! She couldn’t have. She’s just a little girl.”

“It’s her. I know it is.”

“What are we going to do?” Anya asked.

“Marko,” Blaire said.

“He’s in Kerchaviv.”

“No, he isn’t. He’s here.”

“You saw him?”

“The lights are on in his cottage.”

“It’s freezing out there, Blaire.”

“What else can we do?” Blaire snapped.

Every part of Blaire’s body was covered in preparation for her journey. She wore thick socks, boots, a heavy sweater, a puffy coat, scarf, gloves, hat, and even a pair of plush earmuffs that Anya found. Raging winds knocked at the building from every angle.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Anya asked as they stood by the front door. Anya was bundled up almost as heavily as Blaire just to withstand the chill that would push itself inside the front door of St. Sebastian.

“I don’t have a choice. As soon as I get out of this door, go into my classroom, I have a pair of scissors in my desk drawer, get them, and get back up to the room with the kids as fast as you can and stay there until I get back. I know you don’t believe it, but Natalka is dangerous.”

“I’ll watch you from the window.” Anya told her.

Blaire unlocked and opened the door. Blowing furiously, the wind pushed the women back several feet as it swept through the hallway, knocking down a plant and disturbing all of the pictures along the wall. An odd break in the clouds allowed a brief ray of moonlight to spill in as if a spaceship were landing. Both women threw up their arms to shield themselves from the elements. Blaire felt Anya’s hands in the small of her back, pushing her out. Blaire grabbed the frame of the door and pulled herself the rest of the way. As she faced the
never
-ending landscape of white, she realized that she had never felt so alone.

Blaire fought the wind to get down the stairs. She positioned her back against the brick siding of the building and inched along. The same dreadful freezing sensation that she felt earlier that day when she went for her phone crept back into her, freezing each part of her body, inch by inch, down to the core. At the end of the wall, Blaire took a deep breath. She clutched the corner of the building and pulled herself around to face the sea, where the winds grew more intense and felt like tiny needles, pressing into every pore of her body. Blaire threw her forearm up in front of her and pressed all of her weight into the opposing force, moving forward one cautious step at a time. Despite the fact that she could hardly see through the curtain of silvery snow, she continued to put one heavy foot in front of the other, pushing toward the soft golden light of Marko’s living room. Her chest was cold now, and every breath that she took pained her. Her lips were frozen and cracking, little white dots flaked on her lashes, blinding her even more. By the time she made it to the tree that marked half her journey, everything was beginning to blur. She leaned up against its massive trunk, and then spun around, lost in the whiteout. Blaire caught delusional glimpses of shadows playing and shifting in the snow. She closed her eyes and laid her head on the tree in a desperate attempt to make everything stop moving. Upon opening her eyes, she saw the light once again and dashed toward it without thought. Blaire struggled against the inclement storm until the cottage loomed just in front of her.

“Marko!” Blaire shrieked as she collapsed on the first step of the porch, but her cry was completely consumed by the raging screeches of the storm. Blaire scrambled the rest of the way up the stairs where she finally got to her feet and beat on the door.

“Marko!”

Blaire turned the knob and the door growled as it flew open. Light from the living room spilled out unto the porch, and Blaire hopped inside quickly, pushing the door to a close and locking it behind her. She immediately went to the fireplace to warm herself, removing her gloves and placing her hands close to the fire. It took several moments for the heat to break the layers of cold and for the warmth to flood her skin.

“Marko,” Blaire said in a broken whisper as she shoved her gloves into her coat pockets. The sight of Marko’s travel bag still sitting only a few feet inside of the door filled her with an odd despair.

“Marko,” Blaire called again, her voice shaking now. The home responded with complete silence. Blaire studied it, and despite its warmth, it was surprisingly eerie. Had Marko ever invited her over for coffee, the place would have seemed perfectly lovely, but she didn’t like this place now. This place was too quiet, too still, and the femininity of the décor, with the faux red roses in a small vase over the mantel and the colorful but cheap works of art on the walls, made this place look fake, a grand ruse. Suddenly, she wished that were true, that this whole place and everything about it was just one big trick. Blaire entered the small galley kitchen where the light was on, but still there was no Marko. There were only two rooms left in the cottage, the bathroom and the bedroom, and Blaire didn’t want to look in either. She could see straight back through the house to the small bathroom and it seemed empty, which left only the bedroom.

“Marko,” she said again, barely audible now.

The bedroom door was cracked open, and her eyes floated up and down until she spotted Marko’s foot, limp and leaning to the side. Blaire removed her gloves and tried pressing on the door, but Marko’s body was in the way. She slipped inside the bedroom and had to turn away from the gruesome sight. Marko was beaten so badly that Blaire could hardly tell who he was, and if she hadn’t known whose house she was in, she would have never recognized him. His face was a badly contorted mask of raw, fleshy features under a layer of
blood
—and faceless. One of his eyes was missing and the other stared out of his head wildly. He had been finished off with a fireplace poker, still lodged into his torso. Next to his head was a broken telephone receiver, which told Blaire that he was trying to get help when his lifeline became the weapon with which his face had been smashed. The handle of the phone was nestled under what was left of his chin and covered in a mosaic of bloody fingerprints. The bottom of the receiver hung out of place, revealing a bundle of wires, but Blaire had to try. Carefully, Blaire stepped into the pool of blood and reached out for the phone. As her hand got close, she pulled back and turned her head away, fighting her gag reflexes. Blaire closed her eyes and reached out once again. Marko’s bloody mask moved back and forth slightly, as if telling her
no
as she tried to remove the phone from under his chin. The sticky feeling of the blood on the receiver made her knees weak, and she prayed that they would stay underneath her. Blaire pulled the phone close to her ear with one hand and used the other hand to push the wires back into the phone using the receiver, but she heard nothing. She found the base of the phone and pressed the button down several times, waiting for a dial tone that never came.

Marko moved his mouth to speak, and Blaire shrieked as her knees collapsed. Her bottom fell into the puddle of blood, and the phone clanked to the floor. Blaire sat, cemented in terror, her mouth open wide, waiting for the corpse’s stringy breath to form words. Blaire pushed back and slipped, bathing herself in the thick blood once again. She fumbled to get her wobbly feet under her, while her
blood
-coated hand found a wall to hold her up.

“Marko?” she whispered, but he did not respond. She realized that he was not trying to communicate at all, just that removing the phone had caused his jaw to release, and her imagination had run with it. Blaire shot up, fumbling for the gloves in her pocket and slipping several times before she was able to get her feet under her. Running straight through the front door, she burst back into the storm where the freeze again penetrated her instantaneously.

The windows of St. Sebastian were filled with eerie chaos. Shadows frolicked up and down the halls, and little figures crisscrossed the rooms, running, leaping, ducking, and dancing. Flashlights cast their wandering beams through the rooms and windows.

Up and down the coastline, hardly anything could be seen, but she knew that there was a house, just a ways up the shore.

Blaire forced herself down the porch steps into the snow and started in the direction of the house.

With coldness numbing her body, Blaire became unsure of whether she was moving backward or forward as everything was beginning to look the same. She could hardly make out the edge of the cliff, and she feared stumbling over it, then there would be no help for any of them. She couldn’t go any further. Blaire’s movement slowed until she was completely still, and she felt herself sinking into the snow. She was no longer shivering. The sky continued to shower down specks of snow that covered the earth and were now beginning to cover her. The white on the black of the earth and the moon’s silver light on the white of the snow combined to make her feel like she was in a shimmering fairytale, a beautiful but dark fairytale. Blaire could not hear the torrential winds anymore, as the only thing filtering in to her was the sound of her own shallow breaths, in and out. She leaned back in preparation to close her eyes, and she could hear the soft chorus of the Frightening Four.