McCann's Manor (27 page)

"You expect me to tell you that? You are either very brave or very
stupid
, woman. I shared my secrets once and it cost me my soul. It shall
not
happen again.” he said with a glowering look.

She waited until his anger subsided a bit, edged a step farther away from him and leaned on the wall. Then she noticed it; the low ceiling, the windowless rooms off the corridor. They were in the secret second floor of the house. It was very like Ben's house, but it differed in that the walls hiding the octagonal room from view in Ben's abode were missing from this dream-scape house. She peered into the darkness that would have been the library in Ben's manor, but perceived only an endless black abyss surrounded by massive supports that spanned the distance between the top of the house down into the blackness.

"Not everyone is like the one who stole your soul, you know,” she whispered.

He turned from her, but she thought she saw the trace of a tear as it flowed down the side of his cheek. “Be still,” he told her.

"I want to help you if I can; you can trust me,” she said.

"Hold your tongue. Say no more; I will not hear it!” he pleaded.

"What are you afraid of?” she asked.

He drew a fist into the air, whirled to face her and would have brought it crashing against her face, but she stilled him with a meek smile. He stood looking at her with a deeper hurt in his eyes than she had ever seen before, then crumpled into a pile in the floor at her feet, sobbing. “There is no help for me; do you not understand that? No one can change what happened and it cannot be repaired."

"How can you be so sure of that? Just because you know magic and have a lot of power, it doesn't mean you know everything. I believe there is an answer to every problem,” she assured him.

"Then you are a fool and a dreamer. Many problems have no answers,” he said.

She nodded, touched the top of his head and ran her fingers through the silken strands of his dark hair. “I have had problems I felt that way about, too. Give me some time; that's all I ask. If my friends and I can't come up with a solution to your dilemma, we will all leave and no one will bother you any further.” What was she saying? How could she make that kind of promise? The man she was talking to was a murderer by his own admission. What solution could there be for him?

He looked at her with doubt and then a wicked gleam came across his eyes. He grabbed her around the ankles, pulled her to the floor and began to strangle her. She struggled, but soon found it useless. She called in her mind to her angels, but they seemed to her to be moving in slow motion. As she saw the light becoming darkness, she gasped for breath, pleaded to her tormentor with her eyes, found only a blackened, cold piercing gaze, watching the life drain from her. Soon she ceased her struggle and lost all consciousness of her assailant's clutches. Death had come easily; she would never have imagined it would be so.

The light of morning was bright; much brighter than Liz had remembered it even could be. Then she remembered she was in Kim's room, which proudly faced the east with its mammoth bay window wide open to the rays of the morning sun. Her head pounded fiercely, shooting pains coursed her arms and it occurred to her; she was still alive and in full possession of her faculties. Had it been only a dream? It had seemed so real. Had
any
of it been true?

"Well,
good morning
. Here's your tea to help you wake up. You have about twenty minutes before John and Joel arrive,” Kim told her as Liz rolled onto her back, tried to stretch the stiffness out of her body.

"Twenty minutes? You should have wakened me,” she said wearily, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

Kim rose from the chair across the floor, walked to the side of the bed, looked down at Liz. “You were slumbering the sleep of the dead,” she said.

"You can say
that
again,” Liz agreed.

"What? Why do you say that?” Kim asked.

"I had a very strange dream about our friend, Tarrh—he choked me to death,” Liz said.

Kim stared at Liz, sat on the edge of the bed; she waited.

Liz sat up, took a deep breath and shook her head. “I don't think we have time to talk about it right now,” she said, “the guys would be here before we even got started. I need to take a shower and try to shake the images from my mind."

"All right, but we need to talk about it later. I want to know the whole thing,” Kim ordered.

Liz shoved the covers back, nodded in agreement. “Believe me,” she said, “I fully intend to tell you all about it—only I'm pretty sure most of it was just hogwash."

Kim cocked her head. “You dreamed of Tarrh; he killed you in the dream and it was all hogwash? I don't think so. If you really believed it was hogwash, you wouldn't have mentioned it in the first place."

"That's what I thought you might say,” Liz confessed. “Okay, I'm off to throw myself into some kind of condition for our session this morning. If they get here before I make it down, I will be there in just a few minutes. All right?"

"Sure,” Kim said, “but how much time should I give you before I come to check on you?"

Liz inhaled deeply once again, shrugged and said, “If I'm not down in thirty minutes, you can come see if I drowned in the shower."

"Ha-ha, very funny. But I had better at least hear you coming down the stairs within thirty minutes or I
will
be up to check!"

Liz smiled, pulled her robe on and left the room. She didn't want to admit how shaken she still was from that dream. She had never dreamed anyone had choked her before, much less had she ever felt the pain associated with having her trachea being crushed until the life was gone from her. In her own bathroom, she pulled off her robe and nightgown, stared in the mirror at her throat. Her neck was stiff, but there was no visible bruising, even though she was having trouble swallowing and she thought her neck might be a tad swollen.

"Don't be silly!” she ordered herself as she turned on the shower and stepped in. “If he had actually choked you, you would
actually
be dead, you know. And how could someone choking you in a dream really make your neck swell? Probably just coming down with a sore throat and that must be what spurred the fantasy of being choked."

The remnants of the fear and pain she had felt in the dream gradually drained away as she drenched herself in the hot water, allowed it to wash over her in the gentle waves of relaxation and peace she had learned to visualize whenever she took a shower. “It was just a dream,” she told herself, “a really
scar
y dream, but just a dream.” She closed her eyes, instantly saw the cold, hard stare of the man from the dream. No, the passionless stare was that of the eyes that went with the woman's face—and that
scar.
How could it be? Was the entity Tarrh or a woman, pretending to be Tarrh? Was it both?
Was it either
? Something in her felt a presence even more ancient and menacing was involved in this somehow.

Her eyes snapped open, simultaneously filling with soap. She let out a little yelp, shoved her face under the torrent of water to flood the soap out and stop the stinging. “Great; just great!” she said through gritted teeth. “Okay, that's enough relaxation; shower over!” she growled.

Downstairs, Kim was looking over the printout of the writings they had input the day before. Joel studied Tarrh's seventh and last handwritten manuscript while John perused a Latin volume from the collection. Liz entered the room still a bit disgruntled, her wet hair pulled tightly back from her face and knotted into a secure bun on the back of her head.

"You look like you had one rough night,” John said, looking up as Liz walked in munching on a granola bar.

She made no comment, but walked straight to the large desk in the middle of the room, booted her computer and plopped down in the big chair.

Joel crossed to where she sat, eyed her, “Are you all right?"

"Oh, I just scrubbed my eyeballs with deodorant soap; that's all,” she said. “I'll be fine once the tearing subsides a bit."

"Ouch,” he sympathized, “I can identify. It hurts like hell, doesn't it?"

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, grimaced. “Should you be talking like that,
Father Murchison
?"

He smiled at her, patted her shoulder. “No, I shouldn't, but at least I got your attention,” he commented.

She laughed, “Okay. Sorry, I just had a bad dream last night then I took the shower from hell and I guess it sort of got to me. I broke my toe when I stumbled out of the shower with soap in my eyes. How are
you
, Joel? John?"

"Broke your toe?” John echoed, “Are you sure?"

She gave him a slight frown, nodded and said, “Yes, I'm relatively sure. See, when I looked at my little toe, it was at a forty-five-degree angle to my other toes and when I taped it, I had to tape it all the way across the other four toes to get it to stay parallel to them, instead of sticking out like a
sore thumb—er, toe
."

John gave her a pained look, shook his head. “I take it back. You look
great
to have been through all you have this morning. Can I have a second chance?” he asked.

"No problem,” she told him, “some days it just takes a while for me to smile and be cheerful, even
without
the soap and broken toe. Basically, I'm not a morning person. Sorry for coming in here like a sourpuss."

"Hey, you guys,” Kim said, “we have all been putting in some pretty heavy time here, between the books, Missy's records, the dreams and the tension. Maybe we should take the day off and do something different."

The others looked at her in silence. “Okay, it was just a suggestion. You don't have to look at me like I said we should go to the moon. I just thought maybe we could use a break."

"Thanks for the thought, Kim,” Liz said, “but I, for one, would rather get this finished as soon as possible. Then we can all go to Tahiti, for all I care."

"Tahiti is nice this time of year,” John agreed, “but I also would rather finish this first."

Joel raised his hand in a gesture of assent. “We're making significant progress here; should be able to wrap up a lot of this in another week or two."

Kim eyed Liz a moment, then said, “You're right. We
should
finish this before we talk about breaks; it's just that I'm really tired of these books. Then every night I reread Missy's records and it's all starting to look like so much gibberish to me. Am I the only one?"

"Of course not,” Joel comforted, “some days I get up thinking I will go mad if I have to look at one more manuscript, but then I think if we don't finish soon, I
certainly will
go mad."

Liz wondered what the others would say if she told them she halfway thought she was
already
mad; decided it best to keep
that
part to herself. She sighed, opened the book she was transcribing into the translator program, hoping Kim wouldn't press for her to try to channel Ben with John and Joel there. She started typing as fast as she could and tried not to think—about the dream; about the others who were staring at her—or was that just her imagination? She cleared her throat, tried to swallow the painful lump that seemed permanently stuck there. Was it getting bigger, or was it her imagination?

Kim looked at John, then at Joel. They both were staring at Liz who was now busily typing on her keyboard. Joel motioned to Kim to follow him to the desk he was using at the side of the room on the guise of sharing his manuscript findings with her.

"Her aura is a mess of helter-skelter colors mixed with dark spots; not at all her usual,” he said in a hushed whisper. “What's going on?"

Kim looked at Liz to see if she was paying any attention to their mumbles, found her to be still typing and apparently oblivious to their whisperings. “I'm not sure,” she confided. “The dream she had last night was about Tarrh, but we didn't have a chance to talk about it yet. It might just be all the time we're spending with these books. Maybe he's trying to mess with her mind. I don't know."

Joel considered her statement before asking, “Should we do another binding?"

"It couldn't hurt, Joel,” Kim said.

"All right; before I leave today, we will work another binding and I would like to anoint Liz with holy water,” Joel said.

"Is that normally something you would do to a Protestant?” Kim asked.

"It isn't unheard-of, for protection—unless you think she would object,” Joel answered.

"No, I don't think she would object; I think she's pretty worried, even though she hasn't told me as much. I think she would welcome any and all help at this point,” Kim said.

"It pleases me that you responded with that answer,” Joel said, “because I would like to use a little holy water on each of us before we leave here today. I already spoke to John about it. He is concerned about the two of you; and he's a long way from being immune to the influences of the spirits in this house himself."

Kim nodded. “Probably a very good idea. We could all use as much help as we can get. Is that the last of Tarrh's manuscripts you have there?"

"Yes, it is. I'm glad to be finishing with those, I'll tell you here and now. We should be done with them this week and it won't be one day too early to suit me,” he said.

"Have you learned anything from it, though?” Kim asked.

"When compared with the other writings, I think we may find it to be very illuminating as far as Tarrh and his powers are concerned,” he assured her. “Were you aware he seems to have built a house almost exactly like this one in Scotland?"

"What?
Ben's house
, only a hundred years earlier?” Kim questioned.

"Yes, well, it would seem to have been Tarrh's house, wouldn't it, since he erected one with the identical floor plan more than a hundred years
before
Ben came here and built this one? He had some very remarkable plans for the house, apparently. It was, according to his writings, a kind of portal through time and space,” Joel said.

Kim's eyes narrowed, “A portal? To what purpose?"