The Sisters: A Mystery of Good and Evil, Horror and Suspense (Book One of the Dark Forces Series) (19 page)

Nathan found Sarah in the dark kitchen by shining the boxy old flashlight in her eyes. For a moment it startled her.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Don’t worry,” he said.  “It’s just the storm. The lights will be back on in a moment or two.”

But they didn’t come back on, and Sarah made hot tea, which they carried back into the parlor before the fire. They settled down onto the sofa and listened to the nor’easter raging outside. 

“I wish now I had bought some candles in town,” Sarah said. “Remind me to do that tomorrow.’

Nathan tinked his mug to hers and said, “I’ll be sure and do that.” He took a sip and looked at the flames of the fire. “I wonder what he’ll do next.”

“Who?” Sarah asked, snuggling closer to him.

“Tipton. He said he’s known our families a long time and I guess that’s why we’re the only ones whose houses he hasn’t bought—no one would sell to him. But why buy the houses at all? It doesn’t make sense.”

Sarah took a sip of her tea. “Maybe he’s just gotten old and tired of all these horrible things that have happened over the years—maybe he’s even had a hand in them—and he’s ready to stop, but can’t for some reason.”

Nathan squared himself on the sofa and looked at Sarah. “You know, I’ll bet you’re right. And somehow he thinks we hold the key to making that happen. That’s the only explanation. Although if he wants our help, he has a hell of a way of going about it.”

They both fell silent and the wind blew relentlessly against the panes of the big old house, which moaned and sang around them.

“What next, then?” Sarah said.

“I don’t know,” Nathan answered.

And they both fell quiet, huddling closer together in the dark gloom of the house.

January, 1914

Moira is waiting.

She wears a thin, shapeless housedress and reclines on the stone altar in her secret room. She knows he will be along soon, and she is just waiting. She wears no underclothing.

A smile plays on her lips and gaunt features, which never could have been said to be pretty. She has a nice figure, though up to now she has only shared her body with one man, and that beginning at a very young age.

Always bestial in coupling—because that’s how Tipton prefers it—Moira has never known a kiss or any tenderness in the relationship, if one could call it that. But as of today the relationship will change. Moira has memorized a dark incantation carefully and will speak it slowly and quietly, under her breath as he takes her in wheezing gasps, spending himself in a hunched frenzy.

And so she waits, like a dark spider in a baggy old housedress, draped over the stone altar, waiting for the Keeper.

Sarah nodded off to the pleasant buzz of three glasses of chardonnay in her ears. She was fit like a spoon in a drawer next to Nathan, who had just built the fire up and was himself draining the last of his glass. They had finished making love on the parlor sofa and, wrapped snugly in an old quilt, they had resolved to ride out the night’s storm as best they could in front of the fire.  With the electricity off, even the furnace had stopped working.

Nathan struggled to keep his eyes open, despite the chill that had begun to wrap around them. He knew that if he let the fire die, the house would quickly drop in temperature and they would be in danger of hypothermia. He had insisted, after making love, that they get dressed again in their clothing layers and jackets before climbing under the quilt in front of the fire. Sarah quickly assented and, having done so, dropped into a sound sleep. And now, listening to her even breathing, Nathan fought his own desire for sleep—

—sleep, sleep. Nathan’s eyes flew open and he found that the parlor was gone, but not Sarah. Instead, they were both still on the sofa, but on the beach across from his house just down the block. It was mid-day, and it was hot. Their layers of clothing and jackets clung to them. Sarah was just waking up.

“Nathan?” she asked sleepily. Gulls cried overhead and the surf crashed and thundered off to their right. She sat up abruptly. “Where are we?”

“We’re in one of Tipton’s dream-states,” Nathan answered. “But at least it’s warm.” He rose from the sofa and took off his jacket. He looked up and down the beach and over toward the long row of houses and saw no one. A car was cruising slowly down Ocean Avenue—but it was not from the 21st century. It appeared to be about a 1934 Studebaker, as nearly as Nathan could tell.

“Nathan, I don’t think we’re in our time frame anymore,” Sarah said, peeling off her jacket and wishing she could take off more. The heat was oppressive.

“Well, we’re not going to get any cooler out here on the sand. Let’s go across to my house and see what we can find out,” he said.

They left the sofa from Sarah’s parlor on the beach—along with their jackets—and walked across the boulevard to Nathan’s house, which looked much the same as it did in the times when he had first begun coming to the shore. The paint was a little fresher, and the plants in the garden were more well-tended, but everything was the same, right down to the Adirondack chairs on the front porch. Instead of going in the front door, he thought it would be a good idea to knock.

A young man with broad shoulders and a brown cowlick covering one blue eye came to the door. Nathan recognized him immediately from old family photos as his grandfather Jonathan, who would later be killed in the war. The young man in the front hallway looked at the couple on the front porch with a questioning gaze.

“Um, hello,” Nathan said. “We’re new in town and were wondering if you could tell us where the library is.”

Nathan’s grandfather opened the door and stepped onto the front porch. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt over pegged trousers and was smoking a short cigarette. He looked at their clothing with a curious eye—both of them had on long sleeved sweaters and jeans—but he said nothing about that. “Sure. The library’s over on Ocean Street, about three blocks from here.  Go up to this street corner and turn right, walk two blocks and you’ll see it.”

“Thanks very much,” said Nathan. Sarah nodded her thanks, and the pair turned and made their way up the front walk and down the avenue.  Nathan’s grandfather went back inside.

“Well,” said Sarah. “What did you learn from that, except where the library is?”

“That was my grandfather, who was killed in the war, which if I have the right time period we’re in, is about ten years from now. Boy, that was creepy.”

“Great. So what do we do now? And why are we here?”

They had walked about a block or so and were almost to Sarah’s house.

“Maybe we’re supposed to meet Moira,” Nathan said.

Sarah stiffened. “Oh, no, Nathan—I don’t think so. What would we say? She probably wouldn’t even come to the front door, much less give us directions to the library.”

They had continued walking until they stood in front of Sarah’s house.

“Nevertheless, I think that’s one reason we’re here. There’s a clue here and we’re meant to find it.”

“Nathan, I don’t know.”

“Well, what else are we going to do? We’re here until Tipton transports us back anyway.”

“You’ll do the talking?” Sarah asked.

“Of course,” Nathan said.

Sarah took a deep breath and opened the gate. “All right. But this isn’t a good idea.”

when the cat died that should have been their first clue, darling.

but they had so many clues to follow, didn’t they, like the one that

finished up the pail of blood left over from the sacrifice. They weren’t sure what to do with it, so they just left it to sour in a corner for several weeks, gathering flies until

one of the children decided the beatings should stop and took the shotgun from its perch over the hearth and loaded it with double-ought buckshot and chased his parents down the hall, screaming and pleading, until they were both dead in a tangled heap.

that’s when the shadow and the keeper are most pleased, when the dark frenzy passes over someone close by and turns reason to madness and light to darkness.

They stood on Sarah’s front porch. Nathan took a deep breath and knocked.  There was no answer. Sarah looked at him and clung to his side.

“I don’t think she’ll come to the door. And even if she does, what are you going to say? ‘Hello, Miss Claymore—could you tell me what it is you do down in that secret room of yours?’”

“That’s very funny. I just might. I’ll try knocking again.”

But before he could do that, the door opened inward and Sarah gasped. She saw that it was her own hallway before her—and standing just inside the door was a woman about sixty years old. She was taller than Sarah, and built square, like an antique icebox. Moira had gained a lot of weight in the years since she took Carlos Androcci’s life in her ghastly subterranean room. Her face was puffy and bloated, like a freshly-kneaded pile of pizza crust dough. Her eyes were set close above her nose and they were rheumy. Nathan thought she looked a bit like a corpse freshly dragged from a mire. Her skin was the color of a cantaloupe, the mouth set in a hard line. She was dressed in a quilted housecoat of the deepest red they had ever seen, and her hand on the doorknob stuck out from inside one of the long sleeves. She stood there, her glassy eyes staring at them.

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Are you Miss Sarah Claymore?” Nathan asked in a tremulous voice, suddenly unsure of himself.

“Aye, that’s me. And who might you be?”

Sarah took a deep breath and said, “Aunt Moira, it’s me—Sarah—your niece; or, rather, your grand-niece.”

They settled inside on the sofa in the parlor—though Moira had to move several piles of newspapers and other stuff that had been piled there. Sarah looked around the room, which looked almost as it did in 2014—same overstuffed furniture, same oval rug, same fireplace—same floor to ceiling windows which curved out onto the front porch. They were framed in stained and beveled glass.

Moira seated herself with a wheezing groan into one of the armchairs set to one side of the fireplace.

“You say you’re my grand-niece, and you’ve got the Claymore facial features—that’s plain to see. But my brother Charlie died with only a daughter to survive him ten years ago. Are you her daughter?”

“That’s right,” Sarah lied. “We’ve come to pay our respects and to meet you. This is my friend Nathan.”

Moira looked keenly at them both.

“Well, you’ve seen me—and I see you. Now, what do you want?”

Nathan cleared his throat. “My family owns a house down in the next block and when I met Sarah, she said you lived here. How are you?”

Moira sat up straight in the chair and glared at them. “Well enough. Not that it’s any business of yours.”

Nathan smiled while Sarah fidgeted next to him. “Of course. We just wanted to see if you were all right. Does your husband—“

“Don’t have one. Don’t need one. I keep to myself and my neighbors do the same.”

Sarah leaned forward, her hands clasped in front of her. “Aunt Moira, what can you tell me about my father and what it was like growing up after your father died.”

“Why should I tell you any of that?” she snapped.

“It’s important to me,” Sarah said.  “Please?”

Moira looked at them both for a long moment and then her shoulders slumped. “It was fair hard, it was. All we had was this house. My mother took in laundry from the rich folks to keep food on the table. Then she died and I took over her work, to keep me and Charlie alive.”

“Did you ever meet the man who killed your father?” Nathan asked. “He was a construction worker, we heard.”

Moira’s eyes grew wide, dilated within a half-second, wide as a cat’s on a dark night. She looked past them and out the windows. Her breathing grew ragged. “No, I never did,” she said. “But if I had, I’d have killed him where he stood.” Her eyes returned slowly to their normal size and she went on. “It was his fault, murdering my father and leaving us with nothing. Pa’s money was mostly tied up in get-rich-quick schemes and soon we had nothing. They never found the bastard, though they looked high and low. He was Italian, and his family probably took him far away.”

She sat very still and rigid in the armchair, balancing on the edge and seeming to almost levitate. Suddenly she looked at them keenly.

“Are ye going to get married?” she asked.

The question startled them both.  Nathan was the first to find his voice.

“Um, well, we haven’t known each other long,” and he cast a sideways glance at Sarah, who sat with her mouth open.

Moira smiled for the first time. “I only ask, for it would be a fine thing if you had children. They would be in my bloodline, you see.” She waved an arm around her. “I’ve no one to leave this fine house to.”

“Well, that’s a wonderful gesture, Aunt Moira,” Sarah said. “We’ll certainly consider it.”

Moira smiled again, revealing uneven teeth. “I hope ye do. For I’ve not had dealings with any of my relations in some years, as you may know.”

“Yes, my grandmother told me. Frankly, I didn’t know if you would see me.”

“Oh, happy to make your acquaintance, dearie. Very happy indeed.”