Out of the Darkness Read online

  She checked on him an hour later, after the meds had time to work, and found his temperature back to normal.

  * * * *

  Sami tried to push past Matt, but he held her back. “Let me go first.”

  He stepped forward to the entrance. Obviously, the bookcase had been recently opened. He shined the light on the hinges and found them well oiled. He leaned forward and smelled the fresh, and distinctive, odor of lubricant. He didn’t need to point this out to Sami. She correctly read his face.

  Steve had been here.

  Sami went to the shelves over the washer and dryer where she stored various chemicals, and cleaners. The spray can of penetrating oil came from one of the shopping trips with Steve. He’d dropped it in the cart, along with a few other assorted items. At the time she hadn’t thought anything of it because the kitchen door needed it.

  But hadn’t been oiled yet.

  She looked over to Matt and Julie, then picked up the can and hefted it.

  It was half empty.

  “Dammit!” she screamed, lobbing it into the mop sink.

  How long had Steve known about this secret room and not said anything? How had he found the room in the first place? To the best of her knowledge, he’d only been down to the basement a few times, and most of those were with her, helping her move furniture.

  Matt watched her pace, muttering, swearing, kicking old furniture.

  Julie stepped forward to talk to her, but Matt touched her arm and shook his head.

  It took Sami several minutes to pull herself together. Before Matt could object, she grabbed the flashlight from him and stormed into the secret room.

  The room wasn’t finished like the rest of the basement. About fifteen feet long and eight feet wide, the room stretched toward the back of the house. It contained a rough-hewn table, an old chair, and some makeshift shelves holding maybe a dozen boxes. On the table sat an old oil lamp, an opened bottle of whiskey, a pencil, and a piece of paper.

  In one corner, fifteen unopened whiskey cases had been neatly stacked. Next to that, six more cases of empty bottles, all covered with dust. Scattered across the floor lay a dozen or so empty bottles.

  Dust-free.

  Matt and Julie squeezed through the door beside her. Matt put a hand on Sami’s shoulder, reaching for the flashlight with the other.

  Julie produced a small flashlight and ran the FLIR camera, advancing on the table.

  Suddenly, the room filled with a smoky, campfire odor, mixed with a sickly smell, like rotting meat.

  Julie gasped. “Look at this!”

  They gathered behind her to view the small screen. The camera was pointed at the table, where a huge ball of color exploded in the viewfinder, coalescing and becoming a human-shaped mass. They all looked up, saw nothing, but felt a hot breeze sweep past them. On the screen the form raced toward, through them. Then it returned to normal and showed nothing out of the ordinary.

  They nearly tripped over each other backing through the door into the basement. Julie wheeled, trying to see if the form was in the basement, but nothing supernatural appeared on the screen.

  Julie’s eyes widened. “Okay, I’m going to say that’s the most intense thing I’ve ever seen!”

  Sami couldn’t tell if Julie was excited or scared. “What the hell was that?” Sami asked, her sanity fraying.

  Julie traded the FLIR for a digital camera and took several pictures of the secret room from the doorway. “I don’t know, but I can’t wait to examine that footage. That was amazing!”

  “That’s all fine and well,” Matt interjected, “but what do we do about it?”

  Julie looked up from her camera, remembering she was here to cleanse the house, not simply record activity. “Right. I need to get my things set up.”

  It took her ten minutes to prepare. She started a variety of the sage ritual. Sami and Matt followed her instructions. Matt wasn’t sure if he believed it would help, but he knew it wouldn’t hurt. Sami, on the other hand seemed convinced Julie’s methods were the answer, and participated wholeheartedly.

  Another rush of warm, foul air poured from the room as they entered and lit candles. Sami went through almost an entire book of matches before the air stayed calm enough to keep the candles lit.

  Matt looked around. “Damn! That does feel different!”

  Sami closed her eyes and inhaled. The smoky smell had disappeared, replaced by the slightly sweet smell of sage and candle smoke.

  Julie walked around the room. “I think it’s clear, but we’ll have to do the entire house again to make sure it’s completely gone.”

  Matt focused on the paper on the table now that the ritual was complete. He read it and Sami watched the blood drain from his face.

  “Matt, what is it?”

  He handed her the flashlight. Then he bolted from the room and puked in the mop sink.

  The paper was old and fragile but still legible, barely. Not because of the age, but because of the rambling scrawl.

  I showed them. I taught them all a lessen nobody could forget. If anyone want to know what I did with those kids, they have to go to hell to find out cuz thats where I sent them. There momma is next too. Got her upstairs now waitin on me. Got her waitin real good. That fire pit is where them old spanards are buried. No one will know thats where the kids are too. I took em out, told them we going hunting and they believed me. I shot em both so quick they didnt know what happend. Fire burned em real good too.

  That momma of theres tryd to poison me. My gut feels like its on fire. Im teachin her a lesson, Ill see her in hell. Gonna have a little more fun before I do to her what I did to them kids. Then Ill go to the doctor and see if he can fix my gut, tell him I think I been poisoned.

  Sami backed away from the table, her head spinning. She wheeled around and slammed her forehead against the door frame, the flashlight bouncing from her hand and hitting the floor. Stars blossomed behind her eyelids as she grabbed her head and howled in pain.

  The scene before her played like a horror movie, and she had a front-row seat. The petite, auburn-haired woman tied spread-eagle to a wrought-iron bed, frantically working at the ropes, trying to escape. Footsteps up the stairs and George’s voice, coarse and loud. He moved toward the bed…

  * * * *

  “Sam, wake up!” Matt shook her, yelling, his voice frantic.

  Julie pressed a wet cloth against Sami’s forehead.

  Sami tried to sit up, felt a wave of dizziness, and lay back in Matt’s arms. They’d moved her out of the room and into the basement.

  “Call 911,” he said.

  “No!” Sami yelled, stopping Julie in her tracks. “No, I’m okay. I just smacked my head.”

  “You might have a concussion,” Julie argued.

  Sami took the washcloth from her and held it to her head, sitting up. This time the world didn’t spin, although she’d have one hell of a goose egg over her left eye the next morning. “No, I’m okay.” She told Julie where the zip-top bags were in the kitchen. “Please make me an ice pack. Dish towels are on the counter, wrap it in one of those.”

  Julie nodded and bounded up the stairs.

  Sami lay back against Matt, and he took the washcloth from her, gently pressing it to her forehead. “What did you see?”

  “What?”

  “You saw something. When I read the note, I had to run for the sink. I saw him. Like I was there. I had some sort of sick vision. I watched him shoot the kids and rape his wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to tell Julie.”

  She shuddered. “I know.”

  Julie reappeared with the ice pack, and Sami gratefully accepted it.

  “What happened?” Julie asked.

  They told her about their visions, and Julie frowned. “We have to cleanse those areas, where he killed them and the well.” She paused. “My great-grandfather confessed he strangled my aunt, but she wasn’t dead when he threw her down the well. He thought she was. There were marks on the wa
lls and stuff under her fingernails. That’s not part of the original reports, but a few years ago, before he died, I interviewed one of the deputies who found her. He was the one who went down the rope and found her, and George. Her back had broken from the fall, they said. It looked like she lived for at least a little while.

  “As long as that well isn’t cleansed,” she continued, “or the clearing, things might keep coming back. Not as bad as they were, but we need to release that energy once and for all.”

  Matt retrieved the flashlight and returned to the secret room. The bottle on the table looked over half empty. Fresh fingerprints marred the thick patina of dust. Matt noticed a sediment line inside the bottle higher than the current level, where it looked like the whiskey had sat for many, many years.

  Before someone recently started drinking again.

  Steve.

  The very thought of drinking out of the same bottle George Simpson drank from was nauseating, to say the least.

  George Simpson had been crazy, drunk, and in a lot of pain from some sort of ailment. But why leave a note like that? Especially in a room where he never expected anyone to go but himself?

  Matt turned his attention to the wooden boxes on the shelves. He pulled one down and found it filled with several cloth drawstring bags. He opened one. Inside lay bundles of currency, mostly silver certificates, but also dollars in different denominations, much of it looking like it had never circulated.

  The other three bags bore similar contents.

  He pulled down another box and nearly dropped it, it was so heavy. The bags in this one were full of coins—silver dollars and half-dollars. A third box contained more currency.

  He returned them to the shelves and selected another box. This one was full of loose papers. Hesitant to touch them, he realized from looking at the top sheet they were more of George Simpson’s ramblings. Apparently Evelyn wasn’t the only one in the family keeping a journal.

  Matt put the box away and looked at the shelves. He was no expert, but there had to be tens of thousands of dollars in face value in old currency.

  And Sami didn’t own the house.

  He returned to the women. “Sami, you need to get on the phone first thing tomorrow morning and talk to the real estate office and close on this house.”

  “What?”

  He wasn’t sure how much to say in front of Julie. By all rights, the money in the room belonged to the house’s owner, but it would make a nice nest egg for Sami to start over with.

  While he tried to figure out how to say it, Julie spoke. “How much money is in there, anyway?”

  Both Matt and Sami gaped at her.

  Julie shrugged. “Everyone knew George Simpson was rich. When he died, there wasn’t much in the bank. Some people assumed he drank it all, or spent it on the house. He was too smart for that. So I figured he probably hid the money somewhere, not pissed it away, drunk or not. It’s in those boxes, isn’t it?”

  Matt nodded. “A lot.”

  “Sami has to own the property to claim the money.”

  He nodded again. So much for subtlety.

  Julie smiled. “Guys, let me fill you in on my family history…”

  Julie told them the story. Tom Prescott may have taken Mary’s reason for living, but he left her and his unborn child well-off. When he died, Mary inherited several hundred thousand dollars. She was smart enough to invest it wisely and keep it from her new husband. When she died, she left her only son an estate worth over ten million dollars.

  “No one knew she had that much money,” Julie said. “It surprised everyone. My grandfather was his mother’s son, and invested it wisely. I’ve been living off the interest of my trust account since I graduated. I only run the shop because it’s my passion, not because I need the money.”

  That explained a lot, Matt thought. Including how a small-town shopkeeper could afford the latest high-tech ghost hunting gadgets.

  “And don’t worry about Ms. Johnson,” Julie continued. “Her husband had an insurance policy for a half million dollars, which was a hell of a lot of money back then. He worried if something happened to him that she needed to be able to take care of the baby. That’s why it was so rough on her at first, besides losing him. The insurance company wanted to make sure it was an accident. They investigated several months before paying out. Her son has done very well for himself. Civil law.”

  “So,” Matt said carefully, “it would seem even though this place has destroyed quite a few lives, the people who survive do quite well.”

  Julie chewed on that. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I guess it would be a kind of karmic restitution, wouldn’t it? So much good coming from so much bad? Don’t tell Ms. Johnson you’ve let me in here or she’ll never sell you the house. That’s another reason you don’t have to worry about me saying anything. I’ll gladly ignore what you found, but please, let me keep studying this place.”

  Matt smiled and held out his hand. “Deal.”

  None of them had the energy to do more that evening. Julie agreed it was getting late, and emotionally they’d all been through a lot. “I want to go through the video footage and other data tomorrow and see if there’s anything else.”

  Sami was content to let Matt make the plans. “Steve might be home from the hospital tomorrow. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “We need to deal with him, too,” Julie said. “I need to research the best plan of attack.” She looked at the secret room. “I suggest closing it and replacing the books. Don’t tell him you found it, see how he is when he gets back. We might have done enough to help him by getting rid of that desk and cleansing the room.” She swallowed hard. “And we need to find the clearing where George killed them. And the old well.”

  Sami finally put two and two together. “The clearing, it’s where the cairns are, right? The old graveyard?”

  Julie nodded. “Finding it might be easier said than done.”

  “I can show you exactly where it is,” Sami said. “I’ve already been there.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “You have?” Julie asked, surprised.

  Sami nodded. “It’s just southeast of here. Steve went there the first night he sleepwalked. Didn’t I tell you?”

  Julie stared at her for a moment and closed her eyes. “Goddess, I am such an idiot. I totally forgot. You did tell me. Can you find the clearing again where you heard the Indian girl crying?”

  “I think so. We were moving pretty fast, but I bet I can find the trail.”

  “I’ll need a few days. I want to find the plat maps anyway, see if anyone kept records on who was buried where in the cemetery. I can do a ritual over my great-grandfather’s grave then, too. Otherwise, we’ll have to blanket the entire area.”

  They agreed Julie would come back Thursday morning. That would be enough time to get Steve home, hopefully start paperwork on the house, and maybe Sami and Matt could locate the well.

  They helped Julie pack, and she hung another black onyx charm around Matt’s neck. “Humor me, even if you don’t believe, okay?”

  He nodded, looking at Sami’s swelling brow. “Doesn’t protect against everything, does it?”

  Julie followed his gaze. “No, that would take a crash helmet.” She gave them her home and cell numbers.

  They watched her taillights disappear into the woods. Sami remembered something. “Oh! The digital recorder in the attic, I forgot all about it.”

  “Don’t worry. She can get it when she comes back.”

  It was late. Sami felt she’d been awake for weeks because of the emotional roller coaster from the day’s events. Had it only been this morning she’d been convinced Steve wasn’t drinking?

  She needed a long soak. “I’m going to be a while. Feel free to use my shower.”

  “I’m going to run to the store. I want to get a couple of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a quart of orange juice and a bottle of vodka.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, but we have our own stockpile of antique whiskey here,” she quipped. “Let’s break into that and go to town.”

  He immediately picked up her sarcasm, returning it like a well-timed backhand. “What, and cut into our profits? Never. That stuff would be worth a fortune if we sold it.” He grew serious. “I’d rather drink gasoline.”

  “Probably healthier, too. Hey, while you’re out, buy condoms. I feel like getting shit-faced and laid,” she only half joked.

  He laughed, not meeting her gaze, and found his keys.

  She went upstairs and heard him leave. Pog followed her and curled up in the bathroom.

  We. If we sold it, he’d said.

  She left the guest bathroom door cracked open.

  It was the first time she’d been able to reflect on their earlier embrace. Truth be told, she hoped Matt would come into the bathroom. Then maybe she could talk him into bed.

  Oh come on, Sami, you’re not divorced yet. That’s not right. Steve’s in the hospital recovering from surgery, and you’re thinking about seducing Matt?

  When she found the whiskey bottle in the desk, if Steve had been there, she would have been tempted to use the axe on him. He was drinking again, without a doubt. Whether there were more secrets remained to be seen.

  She remembered finding Steve on his knees in the office after he banged his head. What had he been doing on the floor?

  Stashing the bottle, obviously.

  After wrecking the desk, she wanted nothing to do with Steve, wanted the smell of the whiskey off her clothes, wanted no part of him anymore.

  What she wanted were Matt’s strong hands catching her…

  She sank lower in the hot water, trying to relax, a fresh ice pack over the bump on her head.

  It was a reflex action, kissing Matt. She wanted Matt to take her right then, no turning back. To pull her away from Steve once and for all and give her every reason in the world to leave. To wrap her legs around him like she used to and…

  God, his body felt good. The way it used to feel. Judging from his reaction, he wanted her, too.