Chapter Twelve

The porch swing sat empty, the house silent, still and already covered in snow.

This is ridiculous, Carlo thought. There’s a snowstorm going on, of course she wouldn’t still be out here. Obviously, she’s gone inside.

He left the car and approached the house. None of the windows were filled with light, just dingy old curtains, all of them drawn, and the front door stood closed. A fresh layer of snow covered the porch, masking any tracks the old woman might have left as she hobbled back inside.

Carlo knocked on the door. It rattled in the casing with each blow, but even after numerous attempts and several minutes, no one answered.

She’s old, he thought. If she’s upstairs, she probably can’t even hear me knocking.

He tried to peek through the nearest window, but the curtains were too thick and filthy to yield even a glimpse of what lay beyond.

Carlo returned to the front door and knocked again, this time with more force. Still, no one answered, so he tried the knob, and to his surprise, found the door unlocked. He gave it a slight push with his fingertips, and the door swung open a few inches. He leaned closer. “Mrs. Covington!” he shouted. “Ma’am, are you here?”

A gust of wind caught the door, swung it open farther.

Carlo stepped through into a small foyer. The interior of the house was as worn and neglected as the exterior. From his position just inside the door, he could see a large staircase a few feet in front of him. To his left was the remainder of the foyer, and an open doorway leading to some other part of the house, most likely the kitchen. To the right lay a spacious front room that had probably been used as a living room or den, but the floors were bare, and he saw no furniture or signs that anyone lived here. In fact, from all indications, no one had lived in this house for quite some time.

“Mrs. Covington?” he called again, his voice reverberating through the foyer and along the dusty staircase before trailing off into shadows at the top of the stairs.

Josephine Covington. She’s deceased.

“Mrs. Covington!”

She died a year and a half ago.

Carlo approached the base of the stairs, put a foot on the first step and craned his neck in an attempt to see beyond the darkness on the second floor landing.

The shadows were too thick.

He stepped away from the staircase, and though he made a concerted effort to settle his nerves, couldn’t shake a sudden feeling of dread.

In the empty house, the sounds of the mounting storm intensified, echoed through the vacant rooms and across the high ceilings. Each tick of icy snow hitting a windowpane, each gust of winter wind coursing through the field and assaulting the house, each creak of the aging foundation, was more conspicuous and profound than usual, more ominous than it should have been.

What sounded like slurred whispers bled from the walls, swirled around him then just as quickly fell silent.

Only the wind, Carlo assured himself. But his sense of dread grew stronger and fell over him like a heavy blanket draped across his shoulders, weighting him down.

Forcing himself forward, he moved toward the open doorway to the adjacent living room. The windows were tall and narrow, dressed in faded curtains. The floor was old hardwood—probably quite beautiful once—and against the far wall was a fireplace, a dusty and empty mantel above it.

Along the left-hand interior wall sat a casket.

Heart pounding, Carlo tried to comprehend what he was seeing. It was so small, it—how could such a thing be so small?

My God, he thought. It’s meant for a child.

The diminutive casket was a high-gloss black color with ornate silver handles, the lid propped open to reveal a frilly satin interior. A kneeling stool had been placed in front of it, as if in anticipation of his arrival.

There was something inherently profane about a child’s coffin, something unnatural and obscene. Something wicked. But there it was, spitting in the face of nature, a gruesome shrine to premature death, mocking all that was decent and just.

The dread crawled deeper, burrowed closer to the bone, and Carlo was suddenly confronted with the overwhelming feeling that someone was standing behind him. He could feel them breathing on the back of his neck.

He whipped around, hands raised defensively and balled into fists.

Nothing…no one…

Carlo turned back in the direction of the coffin, but without moving closer he couldn’t tell if it was empty.

The wind whispered to him again, the words just beyond his comprehension.

His stomach twisted into a knot. He forced a swallow then very slowly crossed the large room until he was within a few feet of the casket. “God Almighty,” he said bleakly, his breath snared in the base of his throat. “What the hell is this?”

A young boy lay within the small black coffin, dressed in a little gray suit. A set of rosary beads were draped across his folded hands and entwined in his fingers. The same beads Carlo had seen Josephine Covington praying with on the porch swing earlier. The boy, obviously embalmed, looked more like a doll than a human being, but had not decomposed at all. Even if this was Josephine’s long-dead son Parker, it was impossible for the body to still be so well preserved after all these years.

Then what in God’s name is happening here? Am I—could I be dreaming? Carlo wondered. Could I be asleep?

His body shivered violently, reminding him just how awake he was.

As Carlo stepped back, his feet slipped out from under him, but just before he went down he managed to regain his balance and stumble to the doorway. He looked back. The floor where he’d been standing was wet. At first he thought it might be snow he’d tracked in on his shoes, but there was too much of it.

A dripping sound turned his attention to the casket. Water leaked in a slow but steady stream from the underside of the coffin, hitting the floor to form a rivulet that ran across the room into a small puddle on the section of floor Carlo had occupied just seconds before.

Something creaked behind him. He staggered out of the room into the foyer just in time to see a shadow moving quickly across the top of the stairs. Subtle sounds of movement scurried overhead, like the pitter-patter of little feet.

Carlo reached to his belt for his cell phone, but it wasn’t there. As he headed for the front door, he remembered angrily tossing the phone onto the passenger seat in his car after Reggie had hung up on him.

More garbled whispers circled him, this time emanating from the top of the staircase.

He nearly fell as he left the house in a frenzied rush, tripping across the porch and taking the front steps in one awkward giant step that planted him in the snow. His knees buckled on impact but he was moving so quickly he managed to stride right through it until he’d reached his car. As he fell against the side panel, he heard the front door slam shut.

Carlo turned back toward the house.

One of the upstairs windows facing him had changed. The curtains were open, and Josephine Covington, or something that looked like Josephine Covington, stood watching him with her milky eyes.

It’s not real, what he’ll show you.

The front door opened with a slow creak, drawing Carlo’s attention from the window.

The little boy in the gray suit stood smiling at him innocently, his bloodless skin pale and powdered lips creased but held closed, sewn shut in death.

What James will show you—none of it’s real.

Carlo felt himself coming apart, like someone had reached in through his chest and was slowly pulling the life out of him. The fear had grown to a point where he had become numb to it, his body relaxed now and embracing a desire to sleep, to escape. He could only wonder if this was what it felt like at the moment of death, when one finally succumbed to the reality of what was happening and no longer fought or ran, but instead quietly accepted destiny and whatever designs it had in mind.

Just like the lake itself, there is the surface, and there is what lies beneath.

Carlo slid to the ground, felt the cold snow against his legs as his eyes closed. But rather than darkness, he saw an image of himself climbing the stairs in the house, moving purposely up the old stairs and into a dark hallway. He saw himself follow it to a door, saw his hand reach out and open it to reveal an unkempt bedroom. He wanted to open his eyes, wanted to wake up, but the pictures in his mind refused to cooperate.

Josephine Covington’s brittle and decaying body lay atop a filthy bed in that horrible old house, soiled and rotting as flies buzzed about noisily, the rosary beads with the gold crucifix again wrapped about her misshapen fingers. And those eyes—blurred by cataracts and seeing only the darkness of a past still haunting her, forever etched in her mind and filtered through the milky film coating what little vision remained—now wide and gazing forever into the black void separating this world from the next.

The visions finally released him, and Carlo’s eyes fluttered open.

In the window, Josephine Covington began to rock back and forth, slowly at first, as if moving to the rhythmic beat of some slow distant song, then faster and faster still, until her body became a writhing blur convulsing about at inhuman speeds.

Something suddenly burst from her chest, something like bone—white and glistening—spraying the window with an explosion of blood and gore that concealed his view of her.

Carlo struggled to his feet, slipping through ice and snow as he frantically reached for the car door. Filtered through heavy snowfall, he could still see the little boy watching him from the front steps. But the innocent smile had become a demonic grin.

You don’t understand any of it.

With a crazed look in his dead eyes, the boy vaulted from the steps and started toward him at a full run.

Carlo fell into the car and pulled the door closed behind him just as the boy leapt into the air, diminutive embalmed hands reaching for him.

And then it was over, absorbed into the snow and carried away on the wind.

Carlo found himself alone, no longer in the car but standing near the front steps of the house instead, his inert form covered in a growing layer of snow. No one in the windows, no little boy on the steps, no open front door, no coffins or ghostly whispers, only the squeak of the empty porch swing swaying in the wind.

James isn’t here with us.

Trembling, Carlo slowly backed away.

We’re there, with him.

There. The lake. Where Katherine was right now. By herself.

“No,” he said softly. “Not by herself. You’re there too. Aren’t you, James?”

The house fell silent, harboring its secrets and concealing its ghosts. Only a relentless sense of foreboding remained.

Carlo ran for the car.