It was starting to feel as if she was in the house alone ... alone with Boris, that was. Daphne shuddered.
She turned down the hallway when suddenly she was startled by someone coming around the corner.
It was Abigail, looking down her nose at her, as usual.
“I assume you’re looking for him, too?” the older woman asked.
“Looking for who?”
“Christopher. He’s disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“I mean precisely that. Do you think I play word games?”
Daphne frowned. “How long has he been gone?”
Her question was answered by Ben, who at that moment came from the other direction of the corridor. “For about four hours,” he said. “When Dr. Duane arrived, Christopher wasn’t in his room. We’ve all been searching ever since.”
“Well, what makes you think he’s still in the house? He could have left.”
“I don’t think so,” Ben said. “The snow is pretty deep out there. There were no tracks outside any door or window. Even still, I did manage to get over to the stable, and he’s not there.”
“There are dozens of places he could hide in this house,” Abigail said. “But I’ve looked in all of them, and I’m beginning to run out of ideas.”
Daphne sighed. “Has anyone looked in the tower room?”
“First place I checked,” Ben said. “Nobody there.”
“Well, I’ll help look,” Daphne said.
“You sure? After what happened?”
She smiled at him. “Especially after what happened.”
Daphne made her way up to Christopher’s room, looking for any clues. She thought it was odd that wherever he’d gone, he’d left his iPod behind. That thing seemed permanently affixed to his ears. She looked in his closet, the place where she had first seen the clown in this house. It had been no toy, she was convinced now. It was the clown. Ghost or human, it had been a clown to look back at her, no child’s toy.
And had Christopher known she’d see it there?
Daphne had started to wonder if somehow Christopher was in on this. Gregory’s question wasn’t unreasonable. That first day, Christopher, Daphne was sure, had lured her into his room by calling her name. Then she had seen the clown in his closet. Yesterday, he’d lured her into the crypt, where she had seen the clown again. The boy hadn’t been involved in the other episodes, but twice was enough to get her to consider the possibility that he was somehow a part of all this.
After searching the boy’s room, Daphne headed back downstairs. She found Ashlee and Gabriel in the parlor.
“Any luck finding Christopher?” she asked.
Ashlee shook her head. “He’s just vanished.”
“There are lots of hiding places in this house,” Gabriel said. “I know when I was a kid, if I didn’t want to be found, then no one could find me.”
“Like where?” Daphne asked. “Ben’s looked in all places he used to hide in.”
“Oh, there’s lots and lots,” Gabriel told her. “There’s the crawl space under the front staircase, the old cedar closet in the attic, the storage room in the basement ... I mean, I can’t even think of them all.” He smiled sadly. “I wish I could help you all look.”
Ashlee was looking out the window. “This storm is only getting worse.” She turned around to look at them and shivered. “I was just reading online that it’s expected to dump up to five feet of snow by the end of it tomorrow afternoon. Five feet! I mean, that’s like as tall as me!” She laughed. “I’ve never seen so much snow. Remember I’m from Florida!”
“The roads are going to be impassable,” Gabriel commented. “Especially the road up to Witherswood.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t lose power,” Ashlee said, shivering again.
Daphne thought of her trusty little flashlight. It wasn’t in her purse when she’d looked inside after she’d gotten back home. No doubt it was still on the floor of that terrible underground chamber.
“Well, I’m going to keep looking for Christopher,” Daphne said.
“I admire you, sweetie,” Ashlee said, smirking. “Between you and me, I’d send the brat to the funny farm if I had the chance.”
“I understand why you feel that way,” Daphne said, “but it’s exactly that attitude that has made him so disturbed today.”
Ashlee smiled. “You’re a better person than I am, sweetie.”
“Daphne,” Gabriel said.
She turned to look at him. He seemed to be struggling with what he wanted to say to her.
“Listen,” he said at last. “Be careful. There’s something going on in this house. It’s not just Christopher. I think you know what I mean.”
“I do know,” Daphne replied. “Something—someone—some force ...”
“Yes,” Gabe said. “And I just wanted to say, be careful.”
She smiled at him. “I will. Thank you.”
She decided she’d start looking for Christopher in the basement and work her way up. She might look in places the others had already searched, but maybe she’d see something they didn’t. Maybe, in fact, Christopher would show himself to her when he wouldn’t show himself to others.
The basement was a cobwebby collection of old furniture, boxes, and books. The boy could be hiding under any one of the overturned sofas or inside an empty cabinet.
“Christopher,” Daphne spoke in a calm voice. “If you’re here, come out. We have some talking to do, don’t we? I’m not going to flip out on you. Don’t worry about that. I just want to know why you did it. And I’d like to help you, too.”
No sound, no movement.
She moved deeper into the basement. She could hear the wind rising in pitch and strength, whistling through the wooden beams of the old house. The snow had piled up against the narrow windows that were carved high in the walls of the basement, casting an eerie white glow over the dim interior.
“Christopher?” Daphne called.
The basement was mostly open space—cluttered, packed open space, but not broken off into separate rooms. Yet Gabriel had mentioned a storage room down there. Daphne looked around, but saw nothing that seemed to lead to any storage room.
“Christopher, come out, please,” she called again. “Let’s talk.”
As she passed the massive, trembling furnace, hissing and shaking as it struggled to heat the enormous house, Daphne noticed a door. Could that be the storage room? She opened the door and found herself in a long dark corridor. This part of the basement must be under one of the house’s wings. She took a couple of steps inside, grateful to find a string hanging from a single bulb overhead. She pulled the string and the bulb came to life, casting the dusty corridor in a dim, amber light.
At the far end of the corridor was another door—a big, iron door.
She approached it, fully expecting the door to be locked. But although there was a keyhole, indicating it could be locked with a key, the door was unlocked at present. Pulling it open—no easy task, given the weight of the iron door—Daphne peered inside. Another string dangled from a bulb on the ceiling, and she pulled it, filling the small room with light. Right away she noticed that the door had a heavy bolt on the inside, meaning whoever came into this room could keep others out. What business did someone have in a storage room, Daphne wondered, that they’d want to keep so private? Why would a storage room have locks on both the inside and out?
A room that held important secrets
, she told herself.
The room was indeed used for storage, but not for furniture or boxes, as Daphne had assumed. Instead, it was used to store records and documents. In the center of the room was a large wooden chest, so heavy that Daphne couldn’t budge it. All around her, shelves held long cardboard file boxes, all carefully labeled. Daphne glanced at some of them. Most were inscribed only with dates: 1951–1955. 1956–1960. 1961–1965. And so on. Some had descriptions written on them:
TERRACE CONSTRUCTION. EAST WING ADDITION.
But one box, on the lowest shelf, near the floor, caught her eye more than any of the others. On its front was written just one letter: M.
A box marked M would not normally have made Daphne look twice, but this one did, because of what was sticking out of the top.
A blanket.
Purple brocade.
She withdrew from her blouse the locket she always wore around her neck. It never left her. She opened the locket and removed the small piece of fabric she kept inside. The fabric of the blanket she had been wrapped in as a baby.
It matched the blanket sticking out of the box marked M. Perfectly.
Daphne lifted the box off the shelf and set it on the chest in the center of the room. Carefully she looked inside.
Under the blanket were letters. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. They were all addressed to Peter Witherspoon Junior, and sent to a post office box. The postmark on every envelope Daphne checked was Boston. And the dates—she looked closer in the dim light—twenty-two years ago, she determined, some twenty-three.
She opened one letter and read. It was brief. No salutation.
She has taken her first steps. Thought you would want to know. She is already a very smart girl.
It was signed merely
M
.
A second letter was equally perplexing.
Just a fever. Doctor says not to worry. Common at this age.
Again signed
M
.
Another was even more terse.
Donation received with thanks.
No
M
even this time.
Finally, a longer message.
She has your smile. It breaks my heart to see it. I know we vowed to put all of the feeling behind us, but sometimes it breaks through. I hold her in my arms, I watch her as she plays, and I cannot help but think of you.
There was no signature on this letter either.
Daphne looked again at the blanket. Where it was folded underneath, she noticed a pin. And the pin held a photograph. She looked at it. A baby, in someone’s arms. She couldn’t see who held the baby, but she could tell that the photograph had been taken outside the front door of Witherswood. She recognized the swallowtail engravings.
Did
M
stand for Maria? Mr. Witherspoon’s long-lost love?
Yet before she had a chance to consider what she had found any further, Daphne was distracted by a sound.
“Daphne.”
Someone was calling her name, very quietly, from some place nearby.
“Daphne.”
She stood and peered out of the storage room. It seemed to come from beyond the corridor, from back in the main part of the basement.
“Daphne. Daphne. Daphneee.”
She recognized the voice.
It was like the voice she had heard her first day here.
“Christopher?” she called.
“Daphneee ...”
She stood, turning off the light in the storage room but leaving the box out so she could finish her investigation later.
“Daphneeeeeee ...”
She was certain it was Christopher, taunting her the way he had done her first day in this house. She headed out of the storage room, back into the corridor, but as she did so, she heard—and felt—a huge gust of wind hit the upper part of the house, and the little bulb lighting her way was snuffed out.
Daphne was left in darkness. Maybe it was just that one bulb, but she had a feeling the entire house had lost power.
Suddenly she felt something run past her. A small bundle of energy that she was certain was Christopher. He scooted around her and toward the storage room behind her.
“Christopher!” she called after him.
She could hear his footsteps running away from her, across the concrete floor of the corridor. Then, suddenly, the footsteps ceased—followed by the scream of a little boy.
“Christopher!” Daphne shouted, rushing forward in the dark, back toward the storage room. Had he tripped over the chest in the middle of the room?
But the scream hadn’t been one of pain.
It had been one of fear.
At that moment, the lightbulb above her came back to life.
And there, in front of her, stepping out of the storage room she had just left, was the clown—grinning, laughing, and moving toward Daphne.
But worst of all, in its arms, it carried what seemed an offering to her: a terrified, immobilized Christopher, the boy’s face as white as his captor’s.
SEVENTEEN
“Let him go,” Daphne said, in a meek, almost inaudible, voice.
Christopher was silently crying, too terrified even to struggle.
The clown winked at her. Jostling the boy in one arm, it reached inside its shirt with its free hand, and withdrew the long blade, much as it had in the crypt.
“Let him go!” Daphne demanded again. “Look, it’s me you want! I’ve been the one you’ve been chasing for weeks. Come get me!”
The clown put its head back and laughed, as if Daphne had just made a really funny joke, and exposed those awful teeth. Christopher whimpered in fear.
“Let him go!” Daphne demanded for a third time, in a loud voice now, fearless and defiant. “You monster! You child-killer! Come after me, you bastard!”
And without even stopping to think about what she was doing, Daphne charged the creature. Its eyes widened, its teeth gnashed. It dropped Christopher just before Daphne made contact with it.
“Run, Christopher!” Daphne shouted. “Lock yourself in the storage room!”
The boy did as she said, bolting into the storage room and pulling the heavy iron door shut behind him. Daphne had no idea if there was a lock on the door, or even if there was, if a locked door could keep this creature out. After all, she’d just been in that room. It had not been in there with her. There was no place it could have hidden. How did it appear in there—unless it really was a ghost?
The clown hissed at her, gnashing those teeth.
And the power went out again, leaving them in blackness.
Daphne turned to run, braced for the creature to lunge at her. But it never did. She ran out into the main part of the basement, calling for help.
“Daphne!” came Ben’s voice, flashlight swinging through the dark. “Daphne, where are you? Are you okay?”
“Over here, Ben!”
He found her.
“The storage room,” she managed to gasp, and Ben turned his light toward it. The door was now open. Christopher was on the floor, crying and covering his hands with his eyes.
“I told you to lock the door!” Daphne shouted.
“I couldn’t reach it!” the boy sobbed. “He came in here after me! I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Who came in here?” Ben asked, hurrying to his cousin.
“The clown!”
Ben exchanged a look with Daphne, who nodded solemnly.
“The clown came back in here?” Daphne asked Christopher. “Then where did it go? It’s not in here now.”
“I don’t know,” the boy cried. “I was too scared to look!”
Daphne looked around the room. No windows, no second door. Just the shelves with all the file boxes.
Suddenly Christopher was leaping onto her. At first she was ready to push him back, not trusting the boy. But then she realized he was clinging to her neck, sobbing.
“Daphne saved me! Daphne saved me from that clown!”
She could feel his small frame heaving with sobs.
“I’m sorry I locked you in the crypt, Daphne! I’m so, so, so sorry!”
He cried even harder.
“It’s okay, Christopher,” she said quietly.
Ben attempted to peel the boy off of her. “Come on, buddy, let’s go upstairs.”
“I want to go with Daphne!” he shouted.
“I’ll stay right next to you,” she promised.
She held his hand as they walked through the basement back upstairs, Ben leading the way with his flashlight.
They found Abigail, Suzanne, and Axel sitting by candlelight in the parlor. Although it was now dark outside, it was clear from the drifts along the windows that the snow was still falling, and heavily.
After Daphne and Christopher related their account of what had happened downstairs, the three who sat listening to them reacted with some skepticism.
“You’ve been seeing clowns since the day you got here,” said Abigail. “Now you’ve got the child seeing them, too.”
“Really, Aunt Abigail, it’s true,” Christopher insisted.
“Ashlee saw the clown as well last time,” Daphne pointed out.
“Well,
Ashlee
,” Abigail sniffed, turning her face away and rolling her eyes, as if that was all that was needed to prove her point.
Suzanne sidled over toward her. Daphne felt she still somehow blamed her for Donovan’s death. “It does seem odd that none of us has ever seen anything unusual,” Suzanne said. “Don’t you think it’s odd?”
“I can’t explain it,” Daphne said. She looked around the room. “Where’s Boris?”
“He must be rustling up some more candles,” Axel suggested.
Either that
, Daphne thought,
or changing out of his clown suit
.
“Ben,” she said suddenly, turning to her friend as a thought came to her, “there was a secret way out of the tower room. Might there be a secret way out of that storage room downstairs as well?”
“There are secret doors and passages all through this house,” Ben replied. “A whole labyrinth really. I used to explore some of them as a kid, but I wouldn’t know about the storage room. That’s been largely Uncle Pete’s territory. Before today, I don’t think I had been down there for years.”
Someone came into the parlor behind them.
“Did I hear you asking for me, Miss May?”
It was Boris. In his hands, the butler carried a small portable radio. It was buzzing and wheezing with static.
“I was searching for this,” Boris said, as Daphne watched him closely. “I thought we might get an update on the blizzard.”
He set the radio on the coffee table in front of the fireplace and began fiddling with the knobs. “It’s an old radio, probably dates from the nineteen eighties,” Boris said, as the crackling static filled the room. “As you know, Mr. Witherspoon has preferred to keep all televisions and radios out of the house, but I thought I remembered this was still down in the basement somewhere.”
“Were you just in the basement?” Daphne asked.
He looked at her and gave her a half-smile. “Yes, miss,” he said, “I was.”
The butler turned back to the radio and kept adjusting the knobs. Finally, a voice broke through the static.
“Ah, here we are,” Boris said, pleased with himself.
“Severe storm alert,” came the voice of a man from the radio. “The National Weather Service reports power and telephone lines down all across the northeast United States. Reports of snow, hail, sleet, and ice are coming in from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Roads are closed throughout the region. The Coast Guard is advising any small craft on the water to make for safe port until the storm passes. Maine state officials are urging residents to stay off the roads and stay indoors until further notice. Temperatures will continue to drop throughout the night, which will freeze any water on the ground. We will keep you updated on conditions of this dangerous storm—the worst nor’easter, according to meteorologists, in more than a decade.”
“Gee, and here I was thinking I might take a drive down to the beach,” Ben joked.
“We won’t get power back for a few days,” Abigail predicted. “I’ve been through enough nor’easters to know what we’re facing.”
“Jesus Christ,” Suzanne grumbled. “Why did I have to pick this week to come back to this godforsaken house?”
“You didn’t find it so godforsaken when you thought you might be marrying into it and getting a piece of it,” Abigail snarled.
Suzanne ignored her and went over to sit by the fire, sighing dramatically in frustration.
“Where’s Mr. Witherspoon?” Daphne asked.
“I believe he’s in his study,” Abigail told her. “Being sensible, as Pete always is, staying put during this blackout and not running all around the house.”
“Well, we ought to at least let him know that his son has been found, don’t you think?” Daphne asked, looking around at the group.
Ben told her that was a good idea.
Of course, Daphne also intended to ask Pete for blueprints of the house. She wanted to see just what secret passageways there might be that would make it easy for a killer to move around from one part of Witherswood to another.
She glanced over at Boris. She was certain he knew all the passages like the back of his hand.
Daphne started to leave the parlor when Christopher jumped up and latched on to her arm. “Don’t leave me, Daphne!” he begged. “That thing might come back!”
She smiled, gently removing the boy’s fingers from her arm. “I’ll be back, Christopher. You just wait here with Ben. Don’t worry about anything. Everything will be fine. I just have a couple questions I want to ask your father.”
She headed out of the parlor into the foyer, carrying a small candle to light her way. It flickered against the wall, casting strange, eerie shapes that Daphne preferred not to look at for very long. No need to further enflame that imagination of hers.
But she hadn’t imagined what she had seen downstairs. She was certain of that now. Nor had she imagined anything else since coming to this house. There was a lunatic loose, a real live flesh-and-blood lunatic. And the reason he seemed to appear and disappear was because there were secret passages that gave him the power to do so. There may have been one in the crypt that they had yet to discover. Their menacing clown wasn’t a ghost. He was someone who knew this house and its secrets very well.
More than ever, Daphne thought Boris was the culprit. Proving it, however, was going to take some work.
She heard whispering as she approached the study, and saw the soft glow of candlelight spilling from the room into the hallway.
“Darling,” she heard Ashlee say.
Daphne paused before turning into the doorway. Through the shadows, she caught a glimpse of Mr. Witherspoon sitting in his chair. It appeared that Ashlee was sitting on his lap, facing him, giving him a series of quick kisses. Daphne backed up, not wanting to intrude on their moment of intimacy.
But as she backed up, she saw Mr. Witherspoon stand. He was gently urging Ashlee to get off his lap. “Come on,” he whispered, “not now.”
And Daphne knew from his voice it was not Mr. Witherspoon.
Watching from the slit in the doorframe, Daphne saw the man, whoever it was, take Ashlee in his arms and kiss her. They were both obscured by shadows, with only a small candle on a nearby table casting any light. But it was obvious the man Ashlee was kissing was not her husband. He was much taller than Mr. Witherspoon, and clearly more strong and vital.
Daphne, shocked, turned to hurry away. But as she did so, she dropped her candle. It snuffed out once it hit the marble floor.
It also made a sound. Before she get away, Daphne’s arm was being gripped by Ashlee.
“Daphne! What are you doing?”
“I dropped my candle... .” She tried to stoop down to retrieve it, but Ashlee, holding another candle in her free hand, kept her grip tight on Daphne’s arm.
“Were you spying on me?” Ashlee asked.
Daphne faced her. “Who is that in there?”
Ashlee’s face tightened in the glow of the candle. “Come with me!” she demanded, and pulled Daphne down the corridor toward the library, which she practically pushed her inside. Still, her fingers dug into Daphne’s arm.
“Ow,” Daphne said. “You’re hurting me!”
Ashlee let her go. She closed the door behind them, then turned to face Daphne. Her face had softened.
“Oh, Daphne,” Ashlee cried, “please don’t judge me!”
“Who is that man you were kissing?”
“He’s ... a friend of mine.”
“How did he get up here?” Daphne asked. “In this storm?”
“He has a snowmobile,” Ashlee explained. “He brought us up some rations. Some bread and canned goods. He was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get out to get food.”
“You were kissing him,” Daphne said again.
Ashlee looked as if she might cry. “Yes, I was. Oh, Daphne, please try to understand and don’t pass judgment on me. Try as I have to be a good wife, Pete has never really loved me... .” The tears started flowing then. “He’s never gotten over his first love. She’s who he thinks about. Soon after we were married, I found that he still kept her photograph. It broke my heart.”
“Her name is Maria,” Daphne said.
“How did you know?”
“I heard stories.” She smiled sadly at her friend. “I’m sorry, Ashlee. I really am. But to kiss another man in your husband’s house ...”
“I know, I know, it was wrong.” Ashlee ran her fingers through her hair. In the dim light of the candle, which now sat on the table, all the pain and heartbreak was clear on Ashlee’s face. “I put up a good front of saying that Pete loved me. I think I was trying to convince myself. But it was always Maria. It got so that he wouldn’t even kiss me, wouldn’t even hold me. He married me because he wanted a mother for Christopher. But Christopher rejected me, too.”