I nodded, even though I had no intention of heading anywhere until I found out what’d happened inside the mansion. Once Daddy’s car was comfortably rolling down the drive, I turned on my heel and set my sights for Sheriff Kogan.
He was over with one of the firefighters, patting him on the back as the man turned toward the truck, presumably to be on his way.
Before I could reach the sheriff, however, I was stopped in midtrack by the most horrible bloodcurdling scream coming from deep within the house. Everyone turned to look through the open door, but I was the first to fly into action. Tearing up the steps and into the front hall, I headed for the back of the house, following much the same path that Heath, Gilley, and I had used the day before.
Behind me I heard Heath call out, but I was motivated by the fact that that scream had sounded so desperate, as well as the fact that most of my torso was covered in magnets, and I was at least somewhat protected from the unseen evil in the house.
Reaching the end of the corridor, I stopped abruptly in front of the only open door.
There was a large swath of blood across the threshold.
The scream sounded again, only this time it came from practically right in front of me. Pulling my gaze off the floor, I realized it was coming from a deputy who was pointing to the opposite wall and screaming bloody murder. From my angle I couldn’t see what he was pointing to, so I stepped over the line of blood to look, and . . .
“Oh, God!” I gasped. “Oh, my God!”
The deputy screamed again. Clearly he was having his own nervous breakdown. Diverting my attention away from the wretched sight on the far wall, I moved quickly to him and grabbed his arms, shaking him. “Hey!” I yelled. “Deputy! Focus on me!”
The second I grabbed him, he seemed to settle down just a bit. Well, actually, he still looked terrified, but at least he’d stopped screaming.
“Holy shit!” I heard Heath swear behind me. I knew he’d seen the awful scene too.
“What in hell is going on here?!” Sheriff Kogan roared from the hallway, and the sound of additional pounding feet could also be heard getting closer.
“Deputy,” I said firmly, still holding tight to his arms. “Can you hear me?”
He nodded, but was trembling so violently that his teeth were clicking together. The bronze name tag above his left-hand pocket read BRESLOW. “Deputy Breslow!” I said loudly. “You need to come out of this room.” I tried pulling him toward the door, but just then the sheriff and another deputy arrived and they crowded our exit.
“Beau!” Kogan yelled. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Feebly, Deputy Breslow lifted his hand and pointed toward the opposite wall, where the bloody corpse of a man who’d been crucified hung limply. “It moved, Sheriff! It moved!”
I blinked. So the corpse wasn’t new information to the lawmen? And then I remembered what Daddy had said about not wanting me to go into the house to see a terrible scene. Was this what he was talking about?
“Beau,” Kogan growled, his face a red, sweaty, furious mess. “Scoffland’s dead. The medics checked him, I checked him, and Levi here checked him. He’s got no pulse. He’s dead, son.”
Beau shook his head vigorously. “Sheriff, I swear! I was standing over here taking my photos and I heard a noise behind me, and when I turned . . .” Beau paused to gulp loudly and close his eyes against the memory of whatever he’d seen. “He was staring at me. And he was smiling. All evil-like. And then, Sheriff, I swear to God, he laughed at me!”
We all looked from Beau to the corpse of Mike Scoffland, which was sagging listlessly, his head bent forward, almost completely obscuring his face.
At that moment a chill filled the room. It was a familiar kind of chill and I tensed. Heath edged close to me and caught my eye with a meaningful look. He’d felt it too.
Sheriff Kogan appeared a bit rattled by Beau’s story. I had a feeling he’d known the young deputy long enough to know he wasn’t the type to make up wild stories, because I’d heard enough eyewitness accounts from people who’d claimed to see something terrifying to be able to pick out the truth tellers. I was absolutely certain that Beau wasn’t making up the story, nor did he seem to be exaggerating.
“Maybe you should check him one last time, Sheriff?” I suggested, nodding toward the dead man.
Kogan narrowed his eyes at me, but instead of telling me to butt out, he sighed heavily and moved stiffly toward the corpse. I tensed when he reached up to feel for a pulse on the dead man’s neck, and we all waited with bated breath.
“Beau,” the sheriff said.
“Yes, sir?”
“He’s dead. Hell, he’s even cold and rigor has set in, son! There’s no way this corpse could’ve smiled or laughed at you.”
Beau sagged a bit against me and in a flash Heath was there to help support him, and the other deputy also stepped forward to hold him up. “Easy there, Beau,” said the other lawman.
Heath nodded at him and motioned with his chin to the doorway. “Why don’t we take him outside for some air?”
The other deputy nodded and they began to shuffle with Beau over to the exit, but then the frightened man seemed to think of something. “Wait!” he said, planting his feet. “I think I took a picture!” With trembling fingers the deputy lifted the camera he was still clutching and fumbled with the viewfinder. He then pushed the whole camera at me. “Look! Look!”
I took the camera and moved over toward Heath, holding it so he and I could look at the screen. Meanwhile I heard Kogan’s bootheels beginning to cross the floor toward us. I ignored him and focused on the image, and it was so terrifying that I almost dropped the camera.
The photo was at a bit of an odd angle, but I could clearly see the body of the dead man, tacked to the wall, still limp and lifeless; however, obscuring his head was the smoky black face of a demon with fangs and red eyes. It was wearing the most wicked smile and my blood ran cold at the sight of it.
“Jesus!” I muttered, my eyes flickering to Heath, who looked just as alarmed and rattled as I felt.
The other deputy leaned way over and said, “I can’t see it at that angle. Tilt it toward me.”
I began to when Kogan snapped, “Let me see that!”
I handed him the camera and watched his face closely. If I’d been frightened by that image, then Kogan, who’d probably never seen anything like it, was gonna be downright terrified.
He surprised me by saying, “Looks like a dead man to me.”
Kogan showed it to the other deputy and he agreed. “Beau, there ain’t nothin’ here.”
“Wait. What?” I asked, reaching for the camera, which Kogan handed to me. I looked again and mysteriously the image of the demon was gone. “How is that possible?” I said, angling the viewfinder toward Heath.
Beau leaned in too. “Where’d it go?!” he exclaimed, grabbing the camera out of my hands and fiddling with the image tabs. “What’d you do?” he then demanded, glaring hard at me.
“Nothing!”
“You had to!” Beau looked desperately to the sheriff. “Sir, I swear! It was there, just like I said!”
“Beau,” Kogan said softly, as if he were speaking to a frightened child. “Why don’t you head on home and let Levi and me finish up here? Get some sleep, son, and we’ll talk about this in the morning.”
Beau was still trembling. I couldn’t blame him. I was a little shaky too. What I felt Beau needed more than anything right now, though, was someone to believe him, so I moved over to the other deputy, whose name tag read COOK, and eased Beau’s arm away from him. With a squeeze of support to his biceps I said, “Hey, Deputy, come with me and Heath. We can talk about it outside.”
At first Beau looked like he wanted to protest and stay to argue with the sheriff about what he’d seen, but as he looked around t
he room, he seemed to understand that no one but us was going to believe him. With a small nod he allowed me to lead him away.
We passed the threshold on our way into the hallway when the sheriff said, “Come on, Levi, let’s get this poor son of a bitch off the wall and loaded into a bag.”
I grimaced. Murder was such grisly work; I’d never know how anyone could become desensitized to it.
Heath was still supporting Beau’s other side, and once we were out in the hallway, the deputy seemed to settle down a little as we got closer to the front door. I knew that he’d be safe between us, what with all the magnets zipped into our fishing vests.
We stepped onto the front porch and I saw Gilley wave and get out of the SUV. He looked anxious himself, and I thought he was probably wondering what was going on inside. I waved back and was about to lead the deputy over toward Gil when a loud crash from inside the house echoed out to us.
Everyone froze.
And then there came a sort of sickening scream. Heath, Beau, and I all turned as one and went running back into the house only to hear more crashing and more screaming, but this time there were words mixed in. “Levi! Levi! Stop! Dammit, STOP!”
Heath was in the lead this time, but I was hot on his heels, and although we raced down the hallway, it felt like we couldn’t move fast enough. I knew that the screams were coming from Kogan, and I couldn’t imagine what he was begging his deputy to stop doing. Ten more quick strides brought Heath to the door and I saw him pause in the doorway, his trajectory brought nearly to a halt by what he saw there, but then he launched himself into the air and I heard myself cry out. “Heath!”
Pouring on the speed, I rounded into the room, only to find Sheriff Kogan bleeding and pale on the floor, his hands pushing hard on his belly as his feet kicked at his deputy, who was also on the floor, holding a knife and currently fighting for control over it with my boyfriend.
If I’d had the extra air in my lungs, I would’ve gasped. As it was, I reacted on instinct and threw myself at the two men, landing on the deputy’s legs so that Heath could have the advantage of staying over him.
But one look at Heath told me he was in the fight of his life. The deputy was very strong and he had the most grotesque expression on his face. It was as if he’d shed all vestige of who he’d been three minutes earlier, and what was left was something more carnal. Dark. Evil.
“Damn you,” Heath grunted as he struggled with the deputy. Then he yelled, “Em! Get out of here! Can’t . . . hold . . . him!”
Panic-stricken, I saw the knife pushing toward Heath’s chest even though my sweetheart was leaning all of his weight on the deputy’s arm. I tried to think what to do and I looked around for a weapon and that’s when I saw Kogan pulling his gun out of his holster with feeble fingers. In a move driven by desperation I let go of the deputy’s legs and launched myself at Kogan, grabbing the gun right out of his hands, and turning with it to hold it by the muzzle, I brought it down with all my strength on the deputy’s temple.
He went out like a light.
For long seconds Heath and I simply sat there, panting and unable to catch our breath. Still, I held the gun high, ready to strike again if the deputy fluttered so much as an eyelash.
“Beau,” Kogan gasped, and I lifted my gaze to the doorway where Beau stood, pale and shaking again as his wide eyes surveyed the scene. He jerked at the sound of Kogan’s voice, and his wide-eyed gaze focused on the sheriff. “Call for an ambulance.”
Beau nodded as if in a daze and lifted his phone from his pocket, only to stare at it and say, “The battery’s dead. How can that be? I just charged it in the car on the way over here.” My attention was currently focused on the gravely wounded Kogan, and I ignored Beau and moved over to the sheriff, who panted out, “Use . . . your radio . . . boy!”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Beau lift the mic of his radio to make the call, but it gave a loud squeal, as if it were getting feedback from something. Heath and I were fully loaded with magnets, but I suspected there was still evil afoot in the house, hovering at the edge of the room, trying to mess with us any way it could. “Beau, take that outside and make the call,” I barked, while I tried to help Kogan. “If for some reason you can’t get your radio to work, use Gilley’s phone.” Beau’s footsteps clunked loudly out of the room.
Meanwhile I was pulling apart Kogan’s shirt to get a look at his wounds. “Oh, God,” I whispered, realizing he had more than one stab wound. “Sheriff, he got you good.”
“I know,” Kogan wheezed. It looked like he was having difficulty breathing. I wondered if Levi had nicked a lung. “I’m bleedin’ like a stuck pig!”
I then searched around for something to cover the wounds and apply pressure, but there wasn’t much in the room.
“Here,” Heath said, and I looked up in time to catch his shirt. “Push hard on the wound, even if he doesn’t like it, and don’t let up until the paramedics get here.”
“Okay,” I told him, then nodded to his bare chest. “Put that vest back on.”
“You . . . ,” Kogan gasped weakly, and my attention was drawn back to him, “need . . . to . . . cuff . . .” I leaned forward to apply pressure to his wound when I saw that he was attempting to turn on his hip so that I could lift his handcuffs off his belt. I did so quickly and handed them to Heath before reapplying pressure to Kogan’s wounds.
And then I thought of something. “Heath?”
“Yeah?”
“The deputy is still breathing, right?”
“Yeah, Em. You didn’t kill him. Just knocked him out cold.”
“That . . . son . . . of . . . a . . . ,” Kogan rasped, a look of fury in his eyes.
“Shhhh, Sheriff,” I told him. He winced as I pressed hard on the wound that was bleeding the most. “Don’t talk, okay?”
He ignored me. “He just . . . turned on me,” Kogan said. “I’ve known . . . that boy . . . all his life.”
“Sheriff,” I said a bit more firmly. “Don’t talk. Save your strength. I mean it.”
But Kogan merely turned his gaze to me and said, “Why . . . Mary Jane? Why?”
I knew he was asking me why Levi had turned on him, and I had my suspicions but didn’t want to voice them at the moment. The sheriff really needed to focus on calming down and getting him excited with my theories was sure to be counterproductive. “We’ll figure that out later, Sheriff. For now, you have to focus on just staying with me, okay?”
There was an alarming amount of blood still leaking out of the large man. My hands were covered in it and it’d started to form a small puddle on the floor. Kogan was also getting paler by the second. “Here,” Heath said, coming up behind me. “Let me take over.”
I waited for his hands to cover mine before letting up on the pressure and then I sat back on my haunches and surveyed the room.
The dead man who’d been nailed crucifixion-style on the opposite wall was now facedown on the floor, for which I was actually relieved. I didn’t want to see his face, and I certainly didn’t want to experience anything that Beau had suggested happened earlier.
And then, something on the opposite wall caught my eye. When the deputy had freed the dead man, a chunk of the drywall had come away with it, and now there was something silver and round sticking through the hole. I got up and edged closer to the wall, pulled by a gut feeling that I needed to take a closer look. “What’s up?” Heath asked.
“Not sure,” I said, edging closer still and mindful not to get too close to the body. I bent over at the waist to get a better look. When I realized what I was looking at, there came a slam from somewhere upstairs. I stood up rigid and tall again, waiting tensely as the seconds ticked by. But no other slamming door sounded, and I prayed that it was an isolated incident.
Heath said, “Let’s hope there aren’t any more of th—”
&n
bsp; SLAM!
My breath caught, and Heath and I locked eyes. “Oh, no!” I whispered.
“Wha’s tha?” Kogan asked, his words thick and slurred. He was losing too much blood.
“We have to get him out of here,” I said to Heath.
My sweetheart looked pointedly at the sheriff, who had to weigh 250 pounds, or more. “How? I can’t let up on this wound.”
“I’ll get Gilley and Beau,” I said, and began to hurry toward the exit, but suddenly the door slammed shut right in my face.
I gripped the door handle and tried to turn it, but my hands were slick from all the blood still on them. Frantically I wiped them on my jeans and tried the handle again, but it wouldn’t turn.
SLAM! came another door. SLAM! SLAM! SLAM-SLAM-SLAM-SLAM-SLAM!
“Can you open it?” Heath yelled, his voice rising above the noise.
I shook my head while I pulled on the handle again and again. Doors were slamming all over the house, just like the day before, and my heart was beginning to race with fear.
Now, I’ve been in a lot of really scary situations, but for some reason this house came with an extra dose of spooky, and as the doors all over the manor continued to slam, all I could think about was getting the hell out. “What do we do?” I cried. “It won’t open, Heath!”
“Come here!” he said. “Switch places with me and let me try!”
With a growl I let go of the handle and moved back toward Heath and the wounded sheriff. Meanwhile the entire manor was now shaking from all the slamming, and none of us could talk above the noise. Kogan’s eyes were wide, but he looked like he was fading fast, and I had no doubt that increased stress was only making his condition even graver. “We have to get him out of here!” I shouted as loudly as I could, kneeling down on the other side of the sheriff.
When Heath looked at me like he didn’t know how to make that happen, I pointed at the window. It was wide-open, as all the glass had been knocked out the day before. Heath eyed Kogan and his bleeding wounds, then bent close to him and spoke right into his ear. Kogan nodded weakly and lifted his own free hand to wind his arm around Heath’s neck. I hurried over to help, but just as I got to them, something even spookier could be heard above the noise of the slamming doors.