The boys seemed to gain courage from her. They both stood as well, and were each about an inch shorter than she was. One of them held a copper dough roller. The other was clutching a deep dish pan. Strange weaponsgained from the racks that stretched out over the brick island in the center of the room. Liam was surprised that none of them had grabbed the fire poker.
Sir! Theres something awful in here! one of the boys said.
Awful! the other repeated.
How did you get in here? Liam asked.
The door was open, the girl said. She was shaking. Pleaseplease get us out of here. Well never come back, never!
You can take us to jailit will be okay! the boy with the roller clutched in his hands told him, his eyes still huge and panicked.
Look, just stay here, and Ill check out the place and
No! The wail came out of the three of them in a chorus.
Liam sighed. Look, if the door was open, someone was in here ahead of you. Ive got to find whoever it is and
No, oh, God, oh, no! You cant leave us here! Please? the girl begged.
Liam pulled out his phone and called the station. Jack, on the desk, answered the phone.
Get a car out to the Merlin place for me, will you, Jack? Ive got some teenagers.
Sure. Are you arresting them? Jack asked.
No, I just want them taken home. But I think theres still someone in the house. The lights are down. I need some backup.
The three teens were still huddled in front of him. He hung up and asked their names. The girl was Jane Tracy, the boy with the roller was Hank Carlin and the last was Joshua Bell. They had just come in as a prank.
You know, its likeits like a haunted house. Like at Disney World, Hank said. We just wanted to have some fun. We werent going to steal anything. Please, can we get out? It can kill you, too, Officer, you dont knowits terrible!
The Addams familythe Munsters, Jane said. We just wanted to see. They said he had all kinds of treasuresCan we just get out? she begged again.
He didnt blame them. There was something creepy about the house. The hanging utensils cast strange shadows in the glare of his flashlight, while a rocker by the fire seemed to move. Dust motes seemed like misted forms in the artificial light, as well.
All right, come on.
He turned, and the three came running up behind him like metal drawn to a magnet; he thought hed trip, they were so tight against him.
Scared. They had scared themselves in the place. Theyd wanted a spooky challenge; they had found one in the Merlin house.
They went out to the porch. Liam hoped the patrol car would hurry. If the door had been unlocked, someone else had gotten in. That someone might have provided the shadows and touches that had scared them so badly.
He wanted to find the trespasser before it was too late.
The three remained stuck to him like glue while they stood on the porch. Hey! he said. Youll be home in a few minutes. Look, theres someone still in there. That person was trying to scare you out. But its a good lesson. No trespassing. It can be dangerous.
They werent just trying to scare us, and it wasnt any person, Jane said. They wanted to kill usthey would have killed us. They were ghosts, evil spirits!
Jane, its just a house, Liam said.
Then the house wanted to kill us.
What makes you say that? he asked.
Because we heard it! she whispered. We all heard it! It was horrible, a horrible whisper in the darkness saying, Youre going to die. Im going to kill you.
And he was there, Joshua said gravely. I saw him. I saw old man Merlin. His eyes were burning in the darkness. I felt him, felt him put his hands around my throat.
He shoved me, Jane said.
Just then the patrol car arrived and Art Saunders and Ricky Long emerged. Art, get these three home, Liam instructed. Ricky, come with me. Lights are out, and I want to search the place.
Yessir, Art called. You three, get your little juvenile-delinquent butts into the car, he said to the kids.
Ricky Long had been with the department about three years. He was a good cop. Hed seen some bad things in his brief stint.
He looked sick as he walked toward the house.
You want me to search it with you, sir? he asked.
Ricky, its a house. If theres something in it, its flesh and blood. Yes, were supposed to guard lives and personal property. Ill take the upstairs, you take the downstairs.
Ricky nodded slowly.
Liam left him to search through the ground floor. Upstairs, he went methodically from room to room, aware that Bartholomew was at his back.
I dont like this place, Bartholomew whispered.
Liam stopped. Bartholomew, you are a ghost.
I still dont like this place. There is something here. Remnants of evil and pain. Maybe its in all this creepy stuff. Mummies, coffins, shrunken skulls. Evil spirits, the memories of pain and sacrifice and human suffering. Miasma on the air. Lets get this done and get out.
Bartholomew, someone human was in here. Doors dont unlock themselves.
What if evil spirits unlock them to lure in the innocent? Bartholomew asked. I may be a ghost, but we both know that evil isnt something that dies easily.
Liam wondered if Kelsey Donovan was going to have Joe Richter sell the place for her, or if shed come to Key West herself. Hed have to ask Richter. If Kelsey was going to come down and move back into the house, he had to stop whatever the hell was going on.
Cutter Merlin wasnt an evil man, he said.
Bartholomew sniffed, sidestepping a huge stone gargoyle probably procured from a medieval church somewhere in Europe.
The gargoyles huge shoulders hunched and the eyes seemed to stare at them with malice.
They say he practiced black magic! Bartholomew told him.
People make up whatever they wish regarding an old hermit, Liam said sadly.
He was some kind of a wizard. Or a witch, maybe. Men can be witches, right? Yeah, thats right. They hanged men as witches in Salem, Massachusetts. And in Europe, too, Bartholomew said.
They hanged a bunch of innocent people caught up in hysteria or a land grab, Liam said firmly.
As he did so, he heard a scream again. Male this time, hoarse and curtand somehow just as bloodcurdling as the first he had heard that evening.
The sound came again, a scream of abject terror.
Then, it was broken off. Midstream, as if the screamer had
As if the screamers throat had been slit.
Ricky. Ricky Long, screaming from the ground floor
And thennot.
Liam forgot Bartholomew and the idiotic imaginations of the masses and went tearing down the stairs.
Chapter Two
Liams call had opened the door to the past.
Oddthat was actually what she had done in her mind, she realized. Closed a door. And as if that door had been real and tangible, she had set her hand on the knob and turned it.
Cutter Merlin, her mothers father, had been so many things. He had doctorates in history and archaeology, and he had been the best storyteller she had ever known. His beautiful old house in Key West had been like a treasure trove, filled with things, and each thing had offered a story. She had loved growing up with the exotic. While her friends could be easily scared, she loved the idea that she lived with a real Egyptian mummy. At campfires she had told great tales herself, describing how she had awakened once to find the mummy standing over herreaching out for her.
Cutter Merlin, her mothers father, had been so many things. He had doctorates in history and archaeology, and he had been the best storyteller she had ever known. His beautiful old house in Key West had been like a treasure trove, filled with things, and each thing had offered a story. She had loved growing up with the exotic. While her friends could be easily scared, she loved the idea that she lived with a real Egyptian mummy. At campfires she had told great tales herself, describing how she had awakened once to find the mummy standing over herreaching out for her.
It had been great. The others had squealed with fear and delight.
Except for Liam, of course. She could remember the way he would scoff at her stories. He was two years older than she was, but in their small community they often wound up at the same extracurricular events, and even when they were in grade school, they had battled.
Yeah, sure! Liam said, mocking her story. Like the mummy really got up. The mummy is old and dead and rotten, and if you let me in the house, Ill prove it! he would say.
Ask my grandfather! shed dared him.
Ill be happy to, hed assured her. But he never did. He didnt want to prove his words, because her stories made her popular.
And they were good stories, of course.
Hed been so elusive; that little bit older, somehow, even for a boy, more mature.
And sometimes, when they were grouped together out on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor, she told stories that were true about the aboriginal tribes her grandfather had known, getting a little bit dramatic by adding the fact that Cutter had barely escaped with his lifeand his own head.
Liam listened, rolling his eyes at her embellishments.
She had been tall, since girls did tend to grow faster than boys. But Liam had grown quickly, too, and by the time they had reached their early teens, he had stood at least an inch over her, and when she would talk, he would lean against a doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, that amused and disbelieving look on his face.
But when her mother had died, he had been like the Rock of Gibraltar, telling her to go ahead and break down when she had tried so hard not to cry in public, and he had held her while she had sobbed for an hour. He had been her strength that night, smoothing her hair back, just being there, never saying that it was all right that her mother was dead, just saying that it was all right to cry.
And then
Then she hadnt seen him again. Her father took her away from Key West, hurriedly, one night. She had left most of her belongings, taking only one suitcase, because her father had been in such a rush.
Shed told no one goodbye.
And no matter how real her life in Key West had been, everything about it had faded away. She had enrolled in a California school. She had acquired new friends. She had played volleyball in the sand, and she had finally learned to surf in cold water. Everything in their apartment was brand-new, and her father never even watched old movies.
There had only been one time when she had asked him about Cutter. She had never called him grandfather, grandpa, or even grampshe had always been Cutter to everyone. And so she had asked her father, Do you hate Cutter, Dad? Do you think that he hurt Mom somehow?
He had hesitated, but then shook his head strenuously. No, no. Cutter is a good man. Dont let anyone tell you anything different, ever.
Then why did we run away from him? shed asked.
Because bad things can follow a good man, and thats that, and please, I dont want to talk about it anymore.
And that had been it.
Key West had faded away, like a scene out of a movie, one she had seen long ago. Until her father was dying, and he had talked about Cutter again.
Cutter wasnt safe.
Shed loved him. She thought about it now, and she knew that she had really loved him. Hed had such a wonderful sense of adventure. His eyes had been brilliant while hed described the pyramids in Egypt and the temples in ancient Greece. He talked about places like the Vatican, St. Pauls Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame with great awe. Hed talked about the catacombs in Paris, and about marvelous, creepy grottos in Sicily.
His talent as a storyteller had been amazing. And, of course, hed turned her into one, she thought. No one had ever really known when Cutter was telling the truthand when he was spinning a very tall tale.
She called Joe Richter, the attorney, to let him know that she would come in person, and then she called Avery Slater, her creative partner, to let him know that she was leaving and why. And naturally, Avery appeared at her door within twenty minutes.
He was seriously one of the most beautiful people she had ever seen, and she used his image for one of her characters, Talon, an angel who had come to live among men. Avery was tall, and he spent his free time at the gym, so he was lean and muscled, as well. He had luxurious, thick, almost black hair, his eyes were chestnut and his features might have adorned a Greek statue. He was a skilled animator, her partner and one of her best friends. She knew that people often thought they were a romantic pair, but Avery was gay, not in the closet in the least, but someone who was very private as well, unless he was among close friends.
He burst into her home with the ease of a best friend, heading straight into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and finding the chardonnay. He poured himself a glass, didnt offer her one and swallowed it down as if it were water, staring at her all the while.
You cant just up and go to Key West, he told her, setting his glass down firmly on the counter.
Im not moving to Key West, Im just going down for a few weeks. My grandfather died, she said.
Yes, yes, you told me that. But you werent closeyou hadnt seen him in years, Avery reminded her.
I owe him a decent burial, she said.
Send money, he said. He frowned. Oh, waitwill you inherit money? A lot of it?
She laughed. I dont know. Maybe. He had a number of artifacts, but I knew, even as a kid, that hed willed a lot of his things to various museums.
Thoughtfully, Avery nodded. Yes, yes, a will. Of course. There you go. Theres no need for you to go to Key West.
Yes, there is.
An attorney can arrange for a funeral.
Avery, he was my grandfather.
But we have work to do! he said.
Avery, I will bring my computer. And my scanner. And I will send you the strips, and you will set them up for animation. It will all be fine. Seriously. Were ahead.
You can never be ahead in this business. We have to keep the Web stuff going dailythats the only way to really acquire an audience. The bigger we get on the Web, the more the advertisers will pay, he reminded her.
I have to go.
He frowned. I dont think you should go.
Why?
Im seeing a guy who reads tarot cards, he told her.
Okay?
He warned me that a friend would want to go on a dangerous journey, Avery said, his expression somber and grave. Its dangerous.
The danger is in getting a serious sunburn, she said. Avery, I lived there, remember?
And your mother died there, remember?
She felt a chill, and it was almost as if she knew the words would haunt her later.