They had moved out into the dark corridor, passing in single file down the hall, Ashlee leading the way with the kerosene lamp, Pete hobbling alongside them with his rifle.
“Donovan always liked to play the man of the house,” Gabe whispered to Daphne. “He had father issues.” He chortled. “I guess I can understand why!”
Up ahead, the kerosene lamp went out, and they were left in total darkness in the corridor.
“Hang on!” Ashlee called, a voice out of the blackness. “It must have gotten wet. Let me try to relight it.”
There was the sound of striking matches, but no flame appeared.
Christopher gripped Daphne’s hand. “Here is where we all die,” he said, shivering.
“Christopher, stop it,” she scolded. “We are not going to die.”
But in the darkness, from not far away, came the tinny little tune.
All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel....
Abigail screamed.
“Everyone stay calm!” Ben shouted, and he lifted his cell phone. It might not have any service, but the light still worked. A small golden glow lit his face. “Let’s get into the study! Hurry!”
He held the cell phone aloft so people could follow, but the music was nearly upon them now. Daphne squeezed Christopher’s hand tighter. “Run!” she ordered the boy, and he obeyed.
The music was louder and closer than ever.
The monkey thought it was all in fun... .
Around Daphne, the others were running, too. They were halfway to the study when suddenly they were all stopped in their tracks by the sound of a scream. Daphne turned, for the scream had come from her immediate left, and all at once she felt a large body falling into her. She would have been crushed under it, knocked off her feet by its tremendous weight, if she hadn’t managed to jump out of the way in time, clinging to Christopher’s hand all the while. A terrible thud hit the floor beside her.
Ashlee succeeded in relighting the lamp and came running toward Daphne. She held the lamp aloft over the body.
It was Louella. Splayed out on the floor, a hideous circle of blood had been knifed across her neck.
Daphne screamed.
“I told you this was where we all die,” Christopher shouted.
The music continued, though it was moving away.
Pop! goes the weasel!
Ashlee turned the lamp toward the sound.
And there, only its face visible in the lamplight, was the clown, a few feet away and laughing at them, baring its awful teeth.
Suddenly, from behind them, Pete’s rifle boomed through the darkness.
There was a scream.
But it hadn’t been the clown Pete had hit. The clown danced out of the spotlight into the darkness, still laughing at them.
Ashlee moved the lamp toward the floor.
It was Ben who lay at their feet. He was bleeding from his chest.
NINETEEN
“Oh, my God, Ben!” Daphne cried, dropping to her knees and checking on her friend. “Ben, can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” he managed to say, though it was obvious he was in great pain. “I think he hit my shoulder, that’s all... .”
Daphne had learned a little first aid at Our Lady, and she tried to inspect his wound, with the pitiful amount of light coming from Ashlee’s lamp. Meanwhile, she could hear Pete blustering, “What? What? What?” in disbelief over what he had done.
“Damn fool,” Gabe’s voice came from the dark. “I knew the old man shouldn’t have that gun.”
Daphne heard the sound of ripping fabric, and suddenly she felt the wheels of Gabriel’s chair beside her. He handed her a piece of his shirt. “Wrap Ben’s wound in this,” he told her.
She accepted the shirt and got to work. “I can’t see it very well, Ben, but we can keep it wrapped tight to stop the bleeding,” she told him.
“We’re all going to die!” Christopher keened behind her.
“Shut that child up,” Abigail’s voice snapped from the dark.
“You all need to get to the study,” Ben said. “That maniac is going to come back.”
“We’re not leaving you here,” Daphne told him. “Can you walk?”
“I can try,” Ben said, and as soon as Daphne had tied a knot in the makeshift bandage across his shoulder, he got to his feet. He managed to stand up, though he seemed dizzy.
“Come on,” Daphne said, “hang on to me.”
He did so, with Christopher clinging to Daphne’s other side.
They had to walk around Louella’s dead body. She was so large that she took up most of the corridor. Ashlee actually had to lift the dead woman’s arm so that Gabriel could get his wheelchair through.
“We just need to barricade ourselves in the study,” Ben said, gritting his teeth through his pain. “Then we can wait out this storm.”
Gabriel had rolled ahead of them. The light from Ashlee’s lamp reflected off the chrome of his wheelchair as he got up close to Pete.
“I think you really ought to give me the rifle now, Uncle Pete, before you do any more damage,” Gabriel said.
The old man handed it over without any further protest.
Gabe accepted it, and held it in both his hands. “Looks like I’m in charge now, with Ben wounded and Uncle Pete admitting he’s incapable.”
Ashlee had stopped walking and looked down at Gabe. “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say you were in charge, Gabriel. After all, I’m still fully functional. And so are Daphne and Abigail for that matter.”
“Women,” Gabe said dismissively, rolling on ahead of them into the darkness of the corridor.
Daphne could see the annoyed look on Ashlee’s face in the backlight of her lamp.
“Where’s Boris?” Daphne whispered to Ben. “Any clue?”
“None.” He made a sound in pain. “I guess you’re right. I guess he’s the one in the clown suit.”
They had reached the study. Gabriel had positioned himself out front in his wheelchair, holding the rifle across his lap.
“Everyone go inside,” he ordered.
“My brother seems to have finally gotten what he’s always wanted,” Ben said softly to Daphne. “Power over the rest of us.”
“Are there any candles in the study?” Ashlee was asking, as she turned into the room, carrying the lamp. “This lamp is sputtering again. We need backup.”
Abigail rushed over to the cabinets and began pulling drawers. Ben handed his phone to Christopher and told him to hold up the light. “That’s a good man,” he said, giving his young cousin an encouraging smile as the boy did as he was instructed.
“I don’t see any candles,” Abigail said, in despair.
“Here’s one,” Daphne said, withdrawing one from a bookcase. “But we have no matches. They all got wet in the parlor.”
Outside the snow and wind whooped against the windows. Daphne prayed another one wouldn’t blow open.
Ashlee had set the lamp down on the center table. It gave off a weak glow, but it was enough for them all to see their way. Daphne helped Ben settle down on the sofa, and made sure his wound was wrapped tightly. Christopher stayed close by her. Pete sat in the chair that was usually reserved for him, a great wingback. He seemed beaten by all this, and was breathing heavily. Daphne noticed that Ashlee wasn’t as attentive to him as she usually was, not nearly so solicitous. She just stood looking out at the storm. Daphne wondered if she was hoping her lover might return and save them.
She had the same wish about Gregory, she had to admit. She kept hoping somehow that Gregory could arrive, like the cavalry in all those western movies they used to watch at Our Lady. Just in the nick of time, the cavalry would arrive to save the day. But Gregory was just one man. How could he get through this storm and make his way to her? And even if he could, what then? How did anyone fight a madman in the dark?
On the table, the lamp sputtered and died.
“Oh, no!” shouted Abigail.
“Don’t anybody panic,” Ashlee said. “I got it working before, I’ll do it again now.”
Daphne heard her moving across the carpet and discerned the sound of the lamp’s lid being removed.
“Everybody okay in there?” Gabe shouted in from the doorway.
“Yes,” Daphne replied. “But I really think you should come in and close the door behind you now.”
“I can’t see a thing,” Gabe said. “When Ashlee gets the lamp fixed I’ll—”
The sound of his voice ended abruptly.
“Gabriel?” Daphne called.
No reply.
“Gabe?” Ben shouted.
Total silence, except for the howling wind outside.
Christopher began to moan in fear.
It was utterly black. The only things Daphne could make out even in the slightest were the windows, but even these seemed to fade into the blackness of the night. Still, she stood, and took a few steps in the direction of the door.
“Gabriel?” she whispered.
“Daphne, get back here!” Ben called.
“Daphne!” Christopher cried.
Suddenly there was light. Ashlee had succeeded in relighting the lamp.
And in the doorway of the study they saw Gabriel’s overturned wheelchair. From the darkness of the corridor protruded one foot in a puddle of blood.
“Gabriel!” Daphne exclaimed, and rushed to help the fallen young man.
But as she did so, something else appeared in the doorway.
The clown.
Daphne recoiled.
It laughed, gnashing those sharp teeth. In the dim golden glow of the lamp, Daphne saw the terror that bloomed on the faces of everyone who had doubted her in the room. Abigail, Pete, even Ben.
The clown observed them all, rubbing its big mittened hands. Its red nose twitched, as if smelling their blood.
They were trapped. Backed into a small room, the clown blocking their own means of escape.
But together, Daphne realized, they could overpower him. He was just one old man, after all.
It was with that thought in her mind that Daphne watched events unfold over the next few seconds—events that she couldn’t quite fathom at first.
Suddenly, behind the clown, she saw the face of Boris.
Boris.
The butler.
The butler with the sharp yellow teeth.
Boris stood behind the clown, and he was raising something in his hands.
But how could that be possible? Boris
was
the clown!
Yet there was Boris, with a fireplace poker in his hands, and he was bringing it down now on the clown’s head!
“Boris!” Ashlee screamed.
Her outburst gave the clown just enough time to react. It spun around, grabbing a hold of the poker before it could hit him, and using it instead to knock the butler to his feet. Then, quick as a flash, the clown produced its razor blade, and—slash, slash!—cut Boris’s throat so deep that Daphne heard it scrape bone.
Ashlee screamed again as Boris’s blood shot up like geysers.
The music started playing then, and the clown jumped up in the air in a kind of giddy celebration, laughing and chomping its teeth, before it vanished in the dark down the corridor.
Daphne leapt forward and pulled the door to the study shut.
“That door stays locked now,” she shouted, “so that monster can’t get back in to get any more of us!”
She looked around. Where there had been twelve of them, now there was just six.
“Why did you scream?” she demanded, rushing up to Ashlee. “It gave the clown a chance to react.”
“I’m sorry,” Ashlee said, shaking. “I was so scared. I thought you said Boris was the killer.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Pete said, hunched down in his chair. “Boris wouldn’t have been able to hurt it. How could he hurt something that isn’t alive?”
Abigail shuddered. “Pete, what are you saying?”
The old man looked up at Daphne. “I owe you an apology, my dear. All your talk of ghosts ... I was too stubborn to listen.”
Abigail looked as if she might faint. “You really think ... that clown is the ghost of our father?”
“What else can I believe now?” Pete seemed to be shrinking in size in that large chair. “He told Louella that he would come back. Oh, I’ve always known the horrors weren’t over. That creature who called
itself
our father ruined all of our lives.” He looked over at Daphne and suddenly reached out and gripped her hand in his own. “All of our lives, Daphne. Do you understand? All of our lives.”
Christopher was sitting on the sofa, staring ahead, unblinking. He was almost catatonic in his fear. Daphne let go of the father’s hand to tend to the son.
“It’s okay, Christopher,” she said, kneeling down in front of him. “We’re safe here now. It’s gone.”
“But it will come back,” he told her plainly.
Ben was struggling to stand, but the pain now seemed to be overwhelming him. “I need to check on Gabe,” he mumbled. “He might not be dead.”
“That thing has killed everything it’s touched,” Pete said. “There’s no reason to believe he failed with Gabriel.”
“But we don’t know for sure,” Ben said, making it to his feet.
Ashlee positioned herself between him and the door. “If you open that door,” she told him forcefully, “that monster will lunge right back in here, and kill us all.”
“But the rifle is out there, too,” Ben argued, his voice getting weaker.
“It’s not worth it,” Ashlee insisted.
“No rifle can stop something that isn’t alive,” Pete groaned.
Ben clutched his shoulder. The wound was bad. Daphne saw how much blood he was losing. His whole shirt was sopped in it. She hoped he wouldn’t pass out from the loss of blood. Ben took one more step toward the door, then flopped back down onto the couch.
They were all silent for a few minutes, conscious only of their breathing and the gusts of wind and sleet and snow that were hitting the house. Daphne tried to think. The clown was not Boris. That much was obvious now. So it had to be the ghost of Pete Witherspoon Senior.
She hadn’t wanted to believe in a supernatural solution to this mystery. She hadn’t been raised by Mother Angela to believe in ghosts and the possibility of the occult. But what other answer now made sense? She had seen the ghost close up, right outside that window, soon after she had come here. That should have been proof enough. But if she needed more, all she had to remember was the crypt. Only something undead could have gotten out of that room without Gregory seeing it.
Again she longed for Gregory. Would she make it out of here? She had promised Christopher that they would live, but did she really believe that now, after seeing Axel, Louella, Gabriel, and Boris struck down, one by one? Would she really live to see the sun again? Would she really once again be in Gregory’s arms?
If only they had all left Witherswood with Ashlee’s lover ... piled on the back of his snowmobile, as many as could fit. Or at least given him a message to bring back help. Might he even come back, and rescue them yet?
But of course Ashlee’s lover—John was his name—had left without knowing the danger they were all in. He had thought the only danger they faced was running out of food during this storm....
All of this terror had begun right after Ashlee’s lover left, Daphne thought. From that moment on, the killings began....
“Well, I don’t know about everybody else,” Abigail suddenly announced, her shrill voice shattering the silence, “but I am not going to just sit here and wait for that killer to come back.”
“What other choice do we have?” Daphne asked her.
“We might be trapped here for days!” Abigail insisted loudly, her hands waving in the air. “The storm might finally let up by morning, but it can take weeks to get the power back sometimes. And it will be at least several days for the plows to get this high up the hill. We could be prisoners of this madman for a very long time!”