Angel Manor (Lucifer Falls Book 1) (13 page)

“Who’s there?” she whispered. “Oliver?”

The darkness remained silent, but a chill had enveloped the room. The heat wasn’t nearly as oppressive as it had been only seconds ago. She crawled back to the foot of the bed and pulled on the blankets lying on the floor. Her eyes scanned the dark, and she did consider running to the living room where Freya and Oliver were probably still watching TV.

Something moved again in the black, and she yelped, pulling the covers up to her chin with a jerk and sliding back towards the headboard.

“F… Freya?” her voice trembled as she covered herself with the blankets, hoping they would somehow magically protect her. “This isn’t funny, guys, I’m really scared.” There was a whine to her tone, and she could feel the tears sting behind her eyes. The blankets were twisted in a knot, and no matter how hard she kicked and squirmed, she couldn’t get the fabric to cover her.

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement to the right, and she heard strange hollow footsteps around the room. A tear escaped the corner of her eye while a taste of bile climbed her throat into her mouth. Floorboards creaked.

“Why are you doing this to me?” More tears spilled from her eyes, and she sat curled up tight against the headboard, still fighting to get the covers in place.

“Shhhhht.”

Bam wasn’t sure if she’d heard a voice or if it was the wind playing tricks on her, but the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

“Bambi.”

She was sure it was a voice now, and to her horror, she realised who it belonged to.

“No.” The word came out of her mouth as a moan, and she pulled her knees tighter to her chest, the blankets now forgotten. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes with such force that her eyeballs stung. “No, I’m dreaming and you’re not real.”

“Have… you… missed… me?”
The voice was slow, sounding as if each intake of air was a struggle, each word a battle.

“You’re not real. You died. You can’t be here.”

But she knew her words were empty, because her brother’s place was at her side. Wasn’t that something he had always stressed? How connected they were?

A figure stepped from the shadows. Not a person… he was too frayed at the edges to be real. Instead, he looked like a reflection peering up from dark, muddy waters, rippling in the current.

A sob, the kind that made her throat feel like she’d swallowed nails, escaped from somewhere deep in her soul, and the tears flowed freely now. “Chuck.” The word came out in a wet heart-breaking lament. Grief pulled her shoulders and head down as if gravity had increased, and her mind was drowning in a flood of memories and emotions. “Oh, Chuck.” She rested her temple on her knees and gazed at the shape of her dead brother through her tears.

The figure floated closer, the temperature in the room dropping a few degrees. Goosebumps rippled up Bam’s skin in a flash. Her whimper was barely audible, but her body was immobilised in a combination of terror and fascination. Seeing her brother again tugged at her heartstrings. Her relationship with Chuck had not been a healthy one in his lifetime, but it had been a familiar one. Seeing him brought forth a longing she’d forgotten she had, the feeling of being part of something. Of being important.

“Bambi.” The whispering voice was gentle. Invisible fingers stroked her cheek with a touch as light as breath. “You brought me here, Sis. I can exist here. I can be with you again, if you let me.”

She shook her head, her fists clenched into balls. “No, you’re dead, and you don’t have any power over me anymore. I’m free from you now, and I can live my life the way I want.” There was no real strength behind her words, though.

A shimmer shook through the figure, and its features became more defined, enough to resemble a living person, albeit a translucent one. The image of Chuck ran his hands through his hair in the same way her brother had when he was aggravated, and he paced the floor by the foot of her bed.

“I don’t understand, Bambi. You brought me here, you pulled me to this house, and now you reject me?” He stopped moving and looked at her, his eyes dark and deep in his head as if he hadn’t slept for months. “Do you know how cold and lonely it is here? How much I miss you, how much I long for your warmth?”

“I’m sorry, Chuck.” Her strength and resolve cracked like a thin sheet of glass at his display of grief. “I’m so sorry.” She moved to the middle of the bed, her heart beating so heavily that it made her feel queasy. She had never been able to disappoint her brother or deny him anything he wanted. His presence stirred those same feelings, along with a terrible guilt, because she hated herself for wanting him dead. She had felt relief when he’d died, and that had stung. He hung his head, and it looked as if he was weeping. He seemed so real, not like a ghost at all, but like a projection of her brother. There was something about his presence and his sadness that was almost palpable. The temptation to reach out to this broken creature who once had been her brother led her to crawl further along the bed. His head rose and he looked at her, his eyes pleading with her the way they had in life when he’d wanted something she hadn’t wanted to give him.

“I love you, Bambi.”

She gave in… as she always had. Old habits die hard.

“I love you too, Chuck.” Her knees peeked over the rim of the bed, and she clutched her elbows with her hands. Her breasts pushed against the sheer fabric of the nightgown.

“Have you missed me?” he asked again, and he leaned forward so that his face was close to hers. Cold flowed from his very being. She closed her eyes and tears stung her corneas.

“Have you missed me touching you?”

“No.” She opened her eyes, and she felt her resolve harden. “That was wrong, Chuck. You took advantage of my love for you.” Her mind raced back to all the times her brother had visited her bedroom at night, the times when he had manipulated her into touching him, and into letting him touch her. She could still feel his eager fingers on her skin, and the duplicity of the abusive relationship weighed heavily on her mind. The price she’d paid for his love had been too steep.

“Damn it, Bambi. Don’t you talk to me like that. You know I’m the only one who loves you.” Chuck’s eyes widened and his mouth twisted in a cruel sneer, one that Bam also remembered too well.

“You don’t get to do this to me again. You’re dead.” She hissed the words through clenched teeth. “You’re dead, and I’m alive. I’m going to live my life without you… and you know what? I’m
glad
you’re dead.” Her hand shot out, grabbing one of the pillows on her bed, and with all her might, she threw it at the figure. The pillow went straight through him, and Chuck’s spirit exploded in a burst of tiny luminescent particles just as if she’d thrown a stone into a pond filled with duckweed.

“You can’t hurt me anymore, Chuck. I’m not going to let you. I’m going to let you go. Be at peace brother, and let me be at peace too.” She yelled the words, a song ringing in her heart.

I’m free,
she thought,
for the first time I’m really letting Chuck go. I needed to cast him out of my life, I needed to let go of both my hatred and my love for him.
She felt elated, and so very strong.

Something touched her hair and, before Bam had a chance to look round, she felt a tug followed by a rough pull. Her body flew back against the bed and an unseen force dragged her further upward. Bam screamed.

Her scalp burned and a cold fear clutched at her heart. She struggled to get up, but invisible hands pinned her down. Above her, Chuck’s face materialised, only he appeared different now. He looked dead. His body was no longer transparent, and the weight of it crushed her. His skin was greyish, possessing a waxy quality. His eyes lay deep within his thin face, skin pulled tight across the skull to reveal long, broken teeth. Rot had set in on his left cheek, and a cluster of maggots wriggled from the dead flesh.

“You think I can’t hurt you, little sister?” Maggots and dirt fell from his mouth when he spoke, and he waggled a black, shrunken tongue at her. “You are oh so very wrong. I have power here, little sister. And you are still mine, as you always have been.”

“You’re scaring me, Chuck.” Her words were a high-pitched whine, similar to the one she’d used when she was younger. “Please, stop.”

The face above her changed, becoming once again the handsome face of her brother, and he looked at her with curious eyes. There was nothing ethereal about him now; he was a normal human being, the way he’d been in life. His hand touched her cheek, and he furrowed his eyebrows.

“I scare you?”

“Yes.”

He blinked at her, his head cocked and his fingers stroking her cheeks and lips. The weight of his body made it hard for her to breathe. Then he forced the fingers of his left hand into her mouth. Bam tasted the rot, and she gagged. The dead man’s skin was as cold as ice. His other hand pushed up against her thighs, against the thin fabric of her underwear. She felt his fingers press against her pubic mound, the pressure bruising her soft skin. A sharp breath whistled against her teeth as the fabric of her underpants cut into her flesh.

“I’ll do a lot more than scare you, Sister. I will claim you.” Two fingers slipped past the fabric of her underwear and pressed between the warm lips of her vagina. The cold digits burned against her hot, slick insides. Bam screamed again, past the dirty fingers in her mouth, in the hope that someone would hear her. Chuck’s left hand forced its way across her face, stifling her yells, as his right hand pushed deeper inside her. Bam fought against her dead brother, but ghostly hands grabbed her wrists and legs. They pulled at her limbs until she lay sprawled, weak and defenceless. Her brother sat up, his legs between hers. He looked normal, but she couldn’t chase away the image of his rotting skin and maggots. His eyes glanced over her, the way they’d done that first night he’d visited her room, when she was thirteen-years old. The night she’d got her first bra.

Chuck had entered her room in the boarding school that night wanting to see the bra. There had been a look in his eyes which had frightened her even then. Her brother was two years older than she was, and to Bam, he was the world. With cold fingers, he had touched her nipples. Soft at first, he marvelled at the reaction they had from his touch, but then his fingers were cruel and hard. He pinched her until she cried, and even then he wouldn’t let up. That night, she’d got off lucky, but after that his visits became more frequent, and he hadn’t stopped at just touching her breasts.

“I like what you’re wearing.” Back in the present, the tips of his fingers touched the material of her nightgown. “Did you put this on just for me? Or were you trying to be a little whore? Did you mean to seduce someone else?”

“No.” She sobbed, terrified of angering him even further. “I did this for you.”

Chuck nodded in approval, and he lifted the material of her nightgown between his thumb and forefinger, a lascivious smile on his face.

“I’ll fuck you, sister. Because I know you want me to.” He pushed aside her underpants, exposing her pink vagina to the moonlight. Every muscle in Bam’s body tensed, and she shivered with panic. Her brother’s image changed again to the rotting cadaver, and he pulled at his pants to reveal his erect, maggot-coated penis.

“Please, no.” The soft plea built up to a scream, and suddenly the lights went on. The image of her brother disappeared with such abruptness, it was as if he had never been there in the first place.

“Are you okay?” Freya’s voice sounded like an anchor of sanity in a sea of madness. The room instantly returned to stifling summer heat, and the smell of rot was replaced by Freya’s gentle perfume. Bam screamed again. She thought she would never stop. Freya rushed to her side and wrapped her in her warm arms, and Bam clung to her while she wailed and cried salty tears.

“Bam… stop screaming.” Freya pushed her face into her neck. “Please, just stop.” Eventually Bam calmed down and the two girls sat on the bed, rocking back and forth.

“Jesus, what happened?” Oliver stood in the door opening, his face drawn with fatigue. “Why is she like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you need my help?”

“No, best you just go. I’ll talk to her alone. She probably had a bad dream.”

Oliver retreated, and Bam heard him walk away. She felt grateful; she didn’t want him seeing her like this, but she couldn’t stop crying. After what felt like an eternity, she finally calmed down enough to speak.

“He was here.” Her voice was strangled and raw.

“Who?”

“Chuck.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you had a nightmare.”

Bam pulled away from her friend and furrowed her brow, her eyes flaming with anger.

“This was
not
a nightmare. Chuck was here, and he tried to rape me.”

“Bam…”

“Don’t you
Bam
me. I know what happened. I felt his fingers inside me, Freya. This was no dream.”

“I didn’t see anything.” Freya insisted, but Bam’s throbbing groin didn’t lie.

“There’s something wrong with this house. I knew it as soon as the fucking brown slime disappeared. I don’t know how it happened, but it brought Chuck here.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Fuck you. Don’t you say that to me. There’s something weird going on in this house, Freya. And you can feel it too. I can see it in your eyes. Even Oliver knows it, but he’s too busy putting his head in the sand to acknowledge it. We made it worse. We took away your crazy aunt’s protection shit, and we let some bad things out.”

Freya got to her feet and spread her arms in despair. “Bam, listen to yourself. This is nuts. What do you want me to say? I’ve invested my life savings in this house. This was going to be my salvation, and now you want me to what? Walk away? Because you had a nightmare. You realise how unhinged that sounds, right?”

A gentle breeze brushed across her skin, and a pang shot through Bam’s heart when she looked at Freya’s sad expression. She buried her face in the palms of her hands, the tips of her fingers digging into her hairline.

“I don’t know what I’m asking you, Freya. I just know that I can’t do this anymore. Your mother was right.” Her words had an instant impact on her friend, she saw the hurt in Freya’s eyes.