Echoes of the Dead (20 page)

“Just ahead, Kels,” Johnny said between labored puffs of breath. “I think the drive is just past these trees.”

The trees, black and ragged marks against the late evening navy sky, were the same which hid Wayne and Nick hours before. Kelsey imagined they must have ended their search for Howard while they were gone. The two cameramen would be inside, warming themselves with the others: Erin, Daniel, Ben…

And the dark figure she saw in a second floor window before leaving. The memory turned over in her stomach, cold and hard like a chunk of pond-ice. Her feet slowed.

“Johnny?”

He glanced over his shoulder, his face puffed and red. “What’s up?”

“The house—do you think something’s wrong there.”

He turned to the left, following snow-covered ruts from the RV. After a moment, he stopped and held out a foot to catch the sled. “We drove through here about an hour ago. Look at this. Damn snow is coming down faster if anything. If it keeps blowing, the drifts could be several feet high by morning.”

“The house, Johnny. What do you think is going on?”

He shook his head. His hands went to his thighs, and he bent slightly, shoulders moving up and down under his heavy coat.

“I don’t know, Kels.” He pulled the glove from his good arm with his teeth and blotted his forehead with the bare hand. “I thought the bathroom—the second floor bathroom—was one of Ben’s gimmicks. Something to stir us up.”

“You thought? So you changed your mind?”

“Shit, Kels. I don’t know what to think. Do you?”

Kelsey shook her head. She imagined telling him about the figure on the second floor or the man at the roadside. Shadows. That’s all.

“Let’s get Sarah inside, okay? We’ll all get warmed up and figure out what we can do about getting some help. I doubt mom and pop came out with dinner tonight.”

“There’s a little food in the pantry, I think. Ben said so.”

“I hope so.” Johnny pulled on the glove and turned down the drive. “I’m half-starving.”

As they came to the house, Kelsey kept her eyes on the ground, facing away from the windows, especially the second floor window in which she’d seen—or thought she saw—an unidentified figure. She hurried up the porch to open the door and find help for Sarah, but the door opened before she touched it.

Erin appeared. Her long blonde hair was pulled up and away from her face in a ponytail. She frowned as she read the look on Kelsey’s face. Her attention shifted to the lawn, and her mouth dropped open.

“My God—what happened to Sarah?”

Johnny puffed a big breath. “Wreck.”

“The RV lost it on the highway. Johnny did his best, but it just sort of spun.” Kelsey pushed a strand of mousy hair from her face. “He’s hurt. We both hit our heads.”

“Sarah?”

“She’s out cold.”

“Just a sec.”

Erin vanished from the doorway, returning before Kelsey thought to move. Daniel was with her this time.

“Let’s get her inside,” she said.

Within a few minutes, they were in the living room and peeling away the wet and snow-crusted layers they’d worn on the trek from the wreck. Kelsey had on a man’s coat, too big by two or three sizes, which had kept her upper body warm. Her legs felt like cold Jello in her jeans, but she loathed the idea of climbing the stairs to the second floor for a clean, dry pair. Daniel, Ben, and Erin managed to move Sarah onto the couch.

Ben dropped into the chair opposite Johnny, his face drawn and pale.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

Johnny leaned on his good arm, his face still red and damp from the exertion of pulling Sarah on the sled. He closed his eyes, tilting his head back slightly. “I don’t know. We were doing okay but only a mile, maybe a mile and a half down the way. Kelsey—” He cut off and eyed her where she sat, knees pulled to chest, on the floor. “Kelsey said something to me, and then the whole damn RV sort of skidded out from underneath us.  There wasn’t anything I could do.”

Ben rubbed his face. “Sarah. Is she?”

“Fine, I hope. Pretty serious concussion. We should check her eyes and keep watch.” Johnny rubbed his sore arm. “As for this… I think this is just a sprain.”

“Your head,” Erin said from behind the couch. “It looks like you’ve lost some blood. You too, Kelsey.”

“What about the camera guys?” Johnny asked. “Did they make it back?”

Ben’s face went still more pallid. He shifted in his chair. The quick glance he shared with Erin and Daniel made the ice-thing in Kelsey’s gut squirm.

“Ben… What is it?” she asked.

“The radio. The two-way… We were getting nothing but static, and then something. I suppose it was Wayne. It sort of sounded like Wayne.” Ben began shaking his head. “He kept saying there is no house. No house. That’s all we could make out through the white noise.”

“No house? They must have been lost,” Johnny said. “They could have gotten turned around in the trees out there. It’s dark.”

“No.” Ben looked up. “I tried to answer them, but it was like they couldn’t hear me. Maybe they couldn’t.”

                Johnny slumped back, his eyes focused on nothing—or better yet, something
beyond
the wall upon which they were focused. They’d lost him to memories; Kelsey had seen the look before—not on Johnny’s face but her father’s, a man who experienced a tour of duty as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The thousand-yard-stare.

“What now?” Erin asked. Her face, young and smooth and beautiful, took on a childlike simplicity, a frightened expression. “They sound lost. Maybe we should go and look for them.”

“No.” Kelsey spat the word. “Not tonight. Not with the storm.”

“But that’s just it, isn’t it? The storm. They could need help.” Erin was almost pleading like a child begging a piece of candy from a parent.

No, Kelsey thought, they don’t—or at least not any help which could be given by anyone inside the house. She studied Erin and shifted her attention to Daniel. They were the only outsiders left now, the only two inside the house who hadn’t been there five years before. The house—or something inside the house—had eliminated the crew. In a matter of time, she imagined, it would target the other two as well. Best not offer them as willing lambs to the slaughter.

“We should stay together,” she said, trying to comfort Erin with a smile.

“But the snow. You and John were almost frozen.”

Johnny stood up and moved to the window as though he was in a trance. He brushed aside the curtain and peered into the darkening landscape. Kelsey moved away from him, uncertain of the far-away look in his eyes.

“Kelsey’s right. We stay together,” he said. “Especially you and Daniel.”

“Why us?” Daniel asked. “I don’t understand. Is this something to do with the show?”

“The show? God no. You’re new. You weren’t here before.” Johnny didn’t turn around as he spoke. From her vantage at his side, she could still see his eyes, the far-away look. He was somewhere else, lost in memory; she suspected five years ago.

“What do you mean?” Erin said, leaning against the couch.

“He means you weren’t one of the original four. That the house is trying to—” Kelsey paused, surprised at herself for such an outburst—surprised at Johnny for speaking what she’d been turning over in her own mind. “Eliminate you.  At least separate you from us, like the crew.”

Erin’s face twisted, Kelsey assumed from a blend of confusion and frustration. “Mr. Wormsley? Do you buy this? What do you know about this?”

Ben shook his head. His face remained pale and drawn, a tired, worn-out face. “Nothing,” he muttered. “I didn’t know anything about the bathroom upstairs, either. Now we’re here… We have nowhere to go.”

“Erin?” Kelsey touched Erin’s forearm. “Please stay with us.”

“You’re all talking like a bunch of scared rabbits. Lunatics. You’re suggesting the house wants to kill me. I can’t believe that. It’s nonsense.”

“Of course it’s nonsense. Any other time, any other place, I’d feel like you do. But something’s different here. Remember what you told me in the basement?”

Erin’s face was blank.

“About fear—about what you feared?” Kelsey squeezed Erin’s arm.

Erin nodded.

“You know something,” Kelsey said. “Tell me.”

Tears started to well in Erin’s eyes. She pulled her wrist away from Kelsey and shook her head. “It’s all nonsense. This is part of the show. Part of the show.”

“No,” Ben said. His eyes had taken on the far-away look of Johnny’s. “No… I didn’t… I wouldn’t have left those men out there. Or the accident. Sarah. I’m lost…”

Erin began backing away from the others, groping with one hand behind her back as she moved toward the stairs. “I’m getting my coat and I’m going outside. I can’t leave the crew—not after how they sounded on the radio.” She turned and jogged up the stairs, her footfalls vanishing after she was out of sight.

“I’m going with her. Upstairs at least,” Kelsey said. “I don’t think she should be alone.”

“I think that’s a very good idea, Kels.” Johnny turned to Daniel. “Help me grab the couch from the other room. We’re all spending the night down here, together, and sorting this out in the morning.”

Each step which led to the darkened second floor hallway weighed on Kelsey’s shoulders. She swallowed hard, thinking of Brit and Caitlin, ridiculous memories of Tremors and boys in shiny silk shirts, anything which could transport her away from the house and the snow and the image of a strange shadow shifting across the second floor window as they left in the RV. Her memories faltered. The hallway dark was complete. Her fingertips tightened on the stair rail until they went numb.

One more step, Kels.

A light glowed from Erin’s room; the door sat open a few inches.

“Erin?”

A shape shifted in the room, casting a shadow across the light from the doorway. Kelsey held her breath, biting her lip. It was just Erin, of course. Just Erin. She released the rail and walked down the hall, all too aware of her own footsteps, tiny stocking-muted thumps on the hardwood. She forced her eyes to steer clear of the hall’s opposite end, the stretch of darkness leading to the bathroom—the now empty room which memory held as a bathroom.

“Erin?”

“Yes.”

Kelsey pushed the door open and found Erin on her bed, head in her hands. Red blotches covered her cheeks, and her eyes were blotted with tears.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be so damn stubborn. I can’t seem to get the image of those men out of my head.”

“Wayne and Nick?”

Erin nodded. “Howard, too, but different.  Wayne and Nick are blue, buried in snow. They’ve frozen to death, or at least they will. I see it, Kelsey, just like anything else. Like a memory which has already happened.”

Kelsey stepped into the room and approached the bed. “But it hasn’t. They were on the radio.”

“An hour ago. Maybe more. They’re lost out there, and they’ll die, Kelsey. I know it.”

Kelsey sat on the edge of the bed, her hands shaking—fighting fear which burrowed deeper into her gut. “You saw Howard, too?”

“It’s dark where he is. Very dark.”

“Is it cold?” Kelsey asked.

“Not exactly.  Just dark.” Erin wiped her eyes. “I don’t mean to be all melodramatic. I’ve been able to do this—this thing,” she touched her temple with one finger, “since I was a little girl. I’ve had dreams about people and events which were true. Stuff I wouldn’t—couldn’t have known about any other way.”

“Do you mean like—”

“Like I’m psychic, I guess.” Erin took a deep, shuddering breath. “I didn’t want to talk about it or anything. It’s pretty lame, I suppose. I don’t want the attention really.”

“Why did you agree to come here?”

Erin pulled a pillow to her chest and crossed her arms over it, squeezing tight. “It seemed like a chance to find out, you know, something about what has been happening to me my whole life. I’ve tried to talk with my advisor about it—about parapsychology and psychics—and he just laughed.”

“I know the type,” Kelsey said.

“Yes. Well I’ve done some research—there are labs all over the place, Princeton, MIT, places with solid reputations which study psychic phenomenon.  Anomalous mental experiences or whatever they like to call them.”

Kelsey nodded. In the blue room, under the bright lamplight, the house didn’t seem as threatening. She patted Erin on the shoulder, hoping to offer what comfort she could. “We can’t go outside tonight, Erin.”

“Do you really think something—this house—is trying to hurt us? Trying to separate us?”

“I did.” Kelsey’s gaze drifted toward the lamp on Erin’s bedside table. “I guess I do. It’s crazy really, but out there, in the snow, I saw a man on the roadside. Just before the accident, he came up toward the highway…”

“Is that why Johnny swerved?”

“I grabbed his arm, Erin. It was my fault.” An empty pit opened in Kelsey’s stomach. “I did it.”

“It was an accident.”