Текст книги "Within These Walls"

Автор книги: Ania Ahlborn

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

39

LUCAS SLID MARK’S Honda into park and leaned back in the driver’s seat of the car, his eyes fixed on Audra Snow’s old house. His mind reeled around the new information Marty had offered about Halcomb’s time in prison—the dead inmate, the guard who had killed his wife instead of taking her to a luau. Two hours of uninterrupted thinking had him feeling as though he’d dodged a bullet. Halcomb had spared him of something the moment he denied Lucas his interview.

Thank God, he thought. Because who knows what would have happened?

He didn’t like to think of himself as impressionable, but the proof was looming directly ahead of him. Halcomb had talked Lucas into moving. He had convinced a hardened criminal to commit suicide. He had, potentially, persuaded a prison guard to kill himself and his wife. What influence could he hold over those who willingly followed him? What about the people who sent him letters, the ones who loomed in the trees just beyond the orchard?

I don’t want to find out.

And then there was the cross. He’d shoved it into his desk drawer days before. Then, it seemed to have had no purpose, and the things Echo had brought over had wiped Halcomb’s parting gift almost entirely from his mind. But now, after what Marty had said about the weapon Schwartz had used to kill himself, Lucas couldn’t shake the dread. All logic assured him that it wasn’t the same cross Schwartz had used—surely, the police had taken that one into evidence. And yet, the mere idea of it sitting in his desk drawer gave him the creeps. Because what if? Maybe he wants me to stab myself to death just like Schwartz. Fat fucking chance, he thought, shoved the car door open, and moved toward the front of the house. You may have convinced me to move into this house of horrors, but suicide isn’t in the cards for me, Jeff.

When he stepped inside, Jeanie and Echo were sitting on the living room floor. The coffee table was between them, a game of Scrabble in full swing.

Jeanie was just about beaming, but the moment she laid eyes on him, her mood shifted to something darker. He watched as his kid shot a look at Echo, as if questioning whether she should greet him at all.

“Hey,” he said, raising an eyebrow at the pair. “Uh, everything okay here?”

“We’re just playing Scrabble,” Echo announced. “Vivi is beating me by seventy-three points. If we could just forget this whole game happened, that would be great.”

Jeanie said nothing.

His kid flashed Echo a smile as she slid around a few wooden tiles, but her grin did little to diminish the weird feeling clambering up Lucas’s throat. Vivi? Echo’s new nickname for his daughter made him feel queasy and violated, as though someone had come into his home and stolen something invaluable out from under his nose.

Echo was looking a little too comfortable lounging on the floor the way she was. And Jeanie—a girl who avoided strangers—appeared more laid-back around her new friend than she did around her own dad.

Something twisted deep inside his guts.

“Can’t play,” was the only thing Lucas could manage, his mouth gone dry, full of cotton. “Jeanie . . . you should wrap up. I still want to drive up to Seattle today.”

The drive would get them out of the house and away from Pier Pointe for long enough to let him get his head straight. The news about the inmate, the guard, and now Jeanie’s weird silence, the strange stolen glances between her and Echo . . . it was all too much.

He turned away from them and stepped into his study. Closing the door behind him, he caught his breath, sure he was on the verge of vomiting his lunch down the front of his jeans.

After a few seconds of standing there with his eyes shut tight, a gentle knock sounded on the door. Echo peeked her head inside and gave him an apologetic sort of smile. It was almost as if she knew what was bothering him without an explanation.

“Okay, I’m off,” she told him. “Have a good trip into the city.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said.

Echo turned to go, then paused. “If you need me to watch her again, I’d be more than happy to do it. Don’t hesitate to ask.” She gave him a conciliatory shrug, then stepped away from the door.

Lucas didn’t move from where he stood. He considered running out and apologizing. He was acting crazy, his jealousy bubbling up green and ugly from the pit of his guts. He couldn’t afford not to be Echo’s friendly neighbor, couldn’t risk her taking her stuff back. He needed those photos to fix his life.

It was only then that he realized what that sick feeling truly was. He was being held hostage. And while it would have been easy to tell Echo to never set foot near his rental house again, Echo wasn’t his captor. He was a prisoner to his own insatiable need, his own obsession. Because falling prey to desperation was easy when you had nothing left to lose.

That’s what had bothered him most about seeing Jeanie sitting there with Echo that way. It made him feel as though he’d screwed up one too many times. She’d finally given up on him. And if that was true, Lucas Graham was done. Nothing was all that he had left.

40

Monday, April 19, 1982

Ten Months, Twenty-Three Days Before the Sacrament

THE GROUP HAD taken to making biweekly drives into Pier Pointe, breaking into houses. Avis didn’t dare mention how uncomfortable the trips made her. She went along every time.

They now had more food than they knew what to do with. Cardboard boxes lined the wall of the kitchen, giving the place the look of an in-process move. When Avis offhandedly mentioned that they could take a break from their little trips, that they had enough food to feed ten people and a dog for at least a month, Jeff pulled her into the sunshine-yellow downstairs half bath and murmured scoldings into her ear.

“You’re not here to give advice,” he said, his fingers tight against her arm. “You’re here to participate.” She winced against his grip but kept herself from trying to wriggle away. “And if you don’t want to take part, then why are we here, Avis? Why are we here?” When she didn’t answer, he tightened his grip. “Why are we here?” he demanded.

“Because I want to participate!” She blurted it out, twisting away from him. “I’m sorry.” Her voice drew out into a whisper. “I want to participate.”

Avis had thought being part of things would be limited to walking along the beach, sitting around a bonfire, growing vegetables in the backyard. Now participation had escalated from a “Kumbaya” circle to breaking and entering. And it was becoming very clear that it wasn’t about the food. It was about the thrill.

Standing in the kitchen over a colander of freshly harvested rhubarb, Avis eavesdropped as Noah and Kenzie sat around the kitchen table. They laughed as they discussed plans to rearrange furniture in each house they hit.

“Everything is inside out,” Kenzie explained. “A couch against a right wall instead of a left. A TV on the opposite side of a room. Pictures reversed and backward. We gotta find a name for it.”

“A name . . .” Noah leaned back in his seat, gazed up at the ceiling, then snapped his fingers a moment later. “One-two switcheroo.”

“Switcheroo!” Kenzie howled with laughter.

When they told Jeffrey about their plan, he muttered something about how they were both idiots. They were going to get them all caught. But he failed to demand they not do it. Avis guessed it wouldn’t be long before they figured out how to glue furniture to ceilings and stick light fixtures to the floors.

But the switcheroos were the least of her worries. It seemed that the family had officially gained another member. Maggie was visiting almost every day now with Eloise in tow. “My mom is just . . .” Maggie shook her head, aggravated, when Avis had asked about Eloise’s standard babysitter. “She’s gone crazy, I think. I don’t want my kid around that.” And while Avis wouldn’t have minded had the group treated Maggie the way they had behaved toward the former Audra Snow in the beginning, Maggie certainly didn’t suffer the same level of rejection. She had nothing to prove.

Jeffrey loved three-year-old Eloise. He played with her every chance he got, giving her piggyback rides and playing “camp out” in one of the old red tents Deacon had pitched in the yard for them. Just the day before, Avis watched Jeff, Deacon, and a few of the girls dig a fire pit close to the decommissioned tent. They roasted marshmallows after dark. Maggie sat at Jeffrey’s right and Eloise was poised on his knee. Avis spied on them from inside the house like a woman scorned. They looked like husband and wife, as though they’d known each other for all their lives, not for the few months that had passed. For the first time since Avis had laid eyes on him, she felt a pang of disdain for the man she’d grown to love. And her best friend? Avis would have done just about anything to never see Maggie again.

What made it worse was that both Clover and Gypsy seemed to like Maggie more than they liked Avis. Like that’s a surprise. She watched the three of them huddled together like a trio of best friends—the wicked stepsisters—probably making life-altering plans that didn’t include her. Eloise took to calling Jeffrey “Uncle Jeff,” which set Avis’s teeth on edge. She thought about cornering the toddler and filling her head with stories of how Uncle Jeff ate little girls, how the entire family lived off the flesh of children. But she had yet to talk herself into it. There was no telling how Jeff would react if Eloise decided to rat her out.

She missed her pills, and was starting to resent Jeff for confiscating them every time she picked up her prescription from the clinic. There was also the germ of regret at putting all her trust in a single person.

The euphoria of her newfound family was wearing thin.

Yet again, despite being told that she was part of the family, Avis—no, Audra—couldn’t help but feel like she was on the outside looking in.

41

THE DRIVE INTO Seattle was quiet. After a while, the silence seemed to unnerve Jeanie. She fidgeted in the Honda’s passenger seat, turning her attention away from the window to scrutinize her father, then wrinkled her nose at him and spoke.

“You know,” she started, “if you want me outta the house—”

“I don’t want you out of the house,” he cut in, but she was undeterred.

“. . . I can just go to Echo’s.”

Just like that, opting to move in with a complete stranger rather than stay with her own father. The suggestion tasted like aspirin, chalky and bitter. It made him want to heave.

“I don’t know why you don’t like her. She’s cool. We went to the beach, which is more than you and I have done since we’ve gotten here, you know.”

Lucas clenched his jaw. Thanks for reminding me, kid. “I do like her,” he said, though he wasn’t sure just how true that was anymore. The way she had called Jeanie Vivi, the way the two of them had looked at each other as though he was an intruder in his own home . . . it was still eating at him. He couldn’t resent his own kid for it, so he directed his ire at Echo instead.

“What’s with the nickname?” he asked, shooting a glance at Jeanie before looking back to the road. “Since when are you Vivi?”

Jeanie lifted her shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. “Since when do you care so much?”

Lucas bit his tongue. His grip increased on the wheel and he squinted at the road. So he didn’t like the fact that Echo had given Jeanie a nickname. And their strange exchange of looks had made him feel insignificant. But nothing had happened while he had been gone. Echo had done him a huge favor by keeping an eye on her, and Jeanie was safe. Hell, she actually seemed happy when he had gotten home. But something was still keeping him from rolling with it.

What could have occurred in the space of a few hours?

“I don’t like her better than you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jeanie remarked.

Lucas nearly swerved into the GMC passing them in the right lane. The truck laid on its horn and Lucas righted Mark’s Honda with a jerk of the wheel.

“Jeez, Dad!”

“What?” He shot his daughter another look.

“You’re going to wreck Uncle Mark’s car,” she mumbled. “And kill us, too.” Going momentarily quiet, she continued with her original train of thought. “Anyway, I said some mean things and now you’re worried or whatever. Well, I’m sorry, Dad, but you don’t exactly make it easy these days.”

Lucas opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. He was too taken aback to put together a coherent sentence. Safety said he should have pulled over before he had a full-fledged anxiety attack, but he gripped the wheel harder and kept his eyes on the road.

“Besides, Echo gets me.”

“Ah. She gets you.” He was willing himself to stay calm, but the defensiveness was beginning to creep into his tone.

“Yeah, she gets me. She just wants to be my friend. Your friend, too, if you let her. That’s why she gave you those pictures, you know—so you could write your book and everything would work itself out. Isn’t that what you want?”

He furrowed his eyebrows at that. Jeanie wasn’t supposed to know about the photos. Had Echo brought it up? He couldn’t decide whether to be pissed off or let it go. Jeanie already knew about the house, so what difference did it make?

The difference is that Echo isn’t her mother. The difference is that she’s stepping on my fucking toes.

“I think you’ll be better off finding friends your own age,” he told her. “I’ll take you into town. I’m sure there’s someone . . .”

“Oh, whatever.” She breathed the word at the window. “It’s been over a week and we haven’t gone into town once. Kinda how like we haven’t been to the beach when it’s, like, two feet away. Either way, don’t ask Selma to watch me anymore. Echo is going to teach me how to make cherry cider from the trees out back. And I’m going to go over there—”

“Enough,” he snapped, cutting her off. “I’ve had enough, Jeanie. I said I was sorry. I know I’ve been nothing but a screwup, but I’m still your dad. I’m sorry, but you’re not going over there.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

Because I don’t trust her was poised on the tip of his tongue. Except he’d asked her to watch Jeanie, which made him look like a hypocrite. “Because I say so,” was all that he managed—a typical I’m-the-parent cop-out response he swore he’d never use. “Just drop it, all right?”

Jeanie frowned and rolled her eyes, then shifted her weight and turned away from him, her knees pointing toward the passenger-side door. “Whatever. Not like you can stop me.”

“Oh no?”

“No,” she muttered. “You’re too busy, remember?”

Jeanie went silent after that. She was done talking, and so was he.

Lucas would have done just about anything to drive straight to Mark and Selma’s and have a couple of beers. All he wanted was to sit on the couch, glare at a TV screen, and mull over the conversation he’d just had with his kid. He needed time to digest the tension that was threatening to eat him alive, that was urging him to lash out with a string of what-do-you-means and you’re-just-a-kid snubs. But rather than taking the off-ramp that would take him to his best friend’s house, he continued into the city with his silent, brooding daughter. It was only when he pulled into a mall parking lot that Jeanie abandoned her silent treatment and suspiciously peered at her dad.

“Where are we going?”

“Where all twelve-year-old girls love to go.”

She shot a glance at the huge building before them, then looked at her father again as if to judge whether he was screwing around. When Lucas pulled the Honda into a parking space, her annoyance melted a shade. But the happy girl he’d hoped would return didn’t quite make it back.

A Nightmare Before Christmas T-shirt and black stationery set later, she ditched him among the stacks at Barnes & Noble. “We still have to stop by Uncle Mark’s to grab the car,” he called after her. “Text me when you’re ready to go.” She lifted her arm and gave him a slight wave to let him know she’d heard him, but her aloofness stung. It reminded him of Caroline with her tight-lipped smile and tense shoulders. Caroline, who, the moment she turned away from him, walked toward another man. He could at least take some small comfort in knowing that Jeanie was still too young to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

He bought himself a latte at the in-store café and settled into a comfortable armchair with a few books in his lap. Nearly an hour and no text later, he rose from his seat, dumped his empty paper cup into a nearby trash can, and searched the two-story monster of a store for his kid. Jeanie wasn’t perusing the young adult books, and to Lucas’s relief, she wasn’t anywhere near Romance. It took him fifteen minutes, but he finally located her by New Age and Spirituality.

Sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a stack of books on her right, Jeanie’s face was half-hidden beneath a veil of goldenrod. Seeing her that way made him love her even more intensely than he already did. Moodiness and recent vindictiveness aside, he was incredibly lucky. She had come home on the last day of sixth grade with straight As and a triumphant grin to match. The girl was going places; he only hoped he’d be there to see where those places were.

Lucas sidled up to his kid and took a seat next to her on the floor. “What’re you exploring?” he asked, glancing over her shoulder at the thick volume she had open in her lap.

“Paranormal stuff.” She didn’t look up.

Lucas usually enjoyed the paranormal. He’d watched more than a few ghost hunting shows with his daughter, having sat down just to see what it was all about only to be sucked in for the entirety of the episode. But with the house they were living in what it was, the topic made him nervous. Had Jeanie not already been big into ghosts, had she not known about the history of the house, her interest in the metaphysical wouldn’t have been cause for alarm. But she did know. Had she seen something? He wanted to ask—but no . . . Pandora’s box, he thought, and kept his mouth shut. Despite his own trepidation, he gave her an approving nod anyway. He wanted just one evening without any drama, without Jeffrey Halcomb looming in the background. “Anything cool?”

She shrugged and slapped the book closed, then dropped it on top of the stack she’d already gone through. “How do writers like this make any money? You can find all this stuff on the Internet for free.”

That was a damn good question, one that resonated with him more than she knew. Maybe true crime was losing its profitability for that exact reason—why buy it if you could google it and learn the same thing? It was why Echo’s photographs were so important.

“I guess some people don’t like getting their information that way,” he reasoned, silencing the question that was balanced on the tip of his tongue. If none of the material in the books at Jeanie’s knee was new, it meant she was a veritable encyclopedia on the topic. Why was she researching ghosts so vigilantly? Was there something . . .

“Did you ever play with a Ouija board when you were a kid?” She derailed his train of thought, gathered herself up off the floor, then pulled the stack of books into her arms. Lucas rose as well, taking half the stack from her.

“No,” he said. “I was never into that stuff. But I think Uncle Mark used to have one.”

“Heidi’s brother, Tim . . . he has one hidden in his closet.”

Timothy Steinway. Jeanie hardly ever brought him up. Lucas liked the kid well enough, save for the fact that Jeanie was in love with him. During Heidi’s twelfth birthday party, Tim had come home with a few of his high school buddies and Jeanie had gone pale and silent, as if starstruck. Caroline had thought it adorable. All Lucas wanted to do was corner Tim in the shadows of an empty hall and tell him to not even think about it. Still two years away from high school herself, Jeanie was already giving him nightmares.

Pimple-faced teens with barely broken-in driver’s licenses showing up on his doorstep. Hi, Mr. Graham, is Virginia home?

There would be jokes about her name. Let’s take the virgin outta you, girl.

He’d buy a gun and mount it on the wall just to give the little pricks something to think about.

“Tim used it at his friend’s house once, and his friend said his house was haunted after for like a week.”

“Oh yeah?” Lucas gave her a skeptical look.

“You don’t believe that can happen?” she asked. Lucas raised his shoulders and let them fall in an easy shrug. “What about if you do the Bloody Mary thing?” He shook his head, not remembering the Bloody Mary thing. “Come on, Dad, you have to know what that is. You go into the bathroom and turn off the lights, look in the mirror, and chant her name three times?”

“And what’s supposed to happen? She shows up?”

“Yeah, and kills you,” she said matter-of-factly. “She used to drown kids in rivers or something.”

“Who said this?”

She gave him a flabbergasted look.

“I’m just asking,” he told her. “It sounds like a horror movie. Did you look up where the story came from?”

She blinked at him, and for a second Lucas was sure she was going to insist that he was an idiot. Of course she had looked it up. But rather than telling him he was totally dumb and out of the loop, she wandered back to the shelf where she had left a big empty space without replying.

“Have you talked to Tim recently?” he asked offhandedly. “Or Heidi?”

Jeanie didn’t reply.

“Is that a no?”

“What does it matter?” she asked. “They’re, like, a million miles away. Not like they ever text me . . .”

Lucas frowned. He really did need to take her into town; otherwise the both of them were liable to go nuts in that house. “Did you find anything you wanted?” he asked. She shook her head that she hadn’t. “You can find it all online, huh?” He gave her a faint smile.

“Duh,” she said.

“Okay, let’s jet then,” he said. “We need to pick up the car.”

“Fine, whatever,” she said. “But I’m not staying there, right?”

“Right.” Hopeful that their getaway had gotten him back into her good graces, he draped his arm around her shoulder as they left the paranormal section. “So what’s up with Heidi, anyway?” It didn’t sound like a long-distance friendship was working out for the girls. It was something to talk about, possibly something he could give his kid advice on. He and Mark had maintained a cross-country friendship for nearly twenty years. But Jeanie ducked out from beneath his arm.

“Nothing,” she murmured. “Like you care.”

She left him trailing her, the ghost and apparitions she had been researching left to scratch at his back.