Chill Of Fear

CHAPTER 17

Diana felt a deeper chill. "What do you mean?"

"I mean she isn't here. When you opened the door the last time, when she held your hand, she left the gray time and returned with you."

"Why?"

"Something she needs to do, I expect."

Slowly, Diana said, "I didn't see her. When I was back with Quentin, I didn't see her."

"Sometimes, we don't want to be seen, even by mediums. Besides, I expect you were upset. Remembering about your mama and all."

"You know about that?"

Becca nodded. "Uh-huh. Missy told me."

"Do you know—" Diana steadied her voice. "Do you know why our mother was trapped on this side of the door?"

"That's why you crossed over, isn't it? And why you crossed over all the way, in the flesh. You tried too hard. Because it means so much to you. Because you have to know what happened to your mama."

"Answer me, Becca. Do you know what happened to her? Do you know where she is?"

Becca turned and began walking down the long corridor.

Immediately, Diana followed. "Becca—"

"Don't get too far from the door, Diana."

Diana hesitated, glanced back. But the green door was still there. She continued to follow the little girl. "I've followed you guides most of my life," she said, not without a touch of bitterness. "Always following, always doing whatever it was you needed me to do. Dammit, this time I need something. Why can't one of you help me for a change?"

"We've been helping you all along, Diana."

"Oh, sure. Leaving me up to my waist in a lake, or driving my father's car down a highway—"

"That wasn't us."

"What do you mean, it wasn't you? I blacked out, and—"

"The drugs were too strong. They pulled you back before you were supposed to go."

Diana didn't find that terribly reassuring. "So just because I came out of most blackouts safe at home doesn't mean that's where I was the whole time, I gather?"

"Well, it's very helpful for us to have someone who can cross over in the flesh," Becca said. "Most mediums can barely see or talk to us, much less walk with us."

"Speaking of which," Diana said, "where are we going?" The words were barely out of her mouth when she stopped abruptly, momentarily disoriented, because she and Becca were no longer in the long corridor. Instead, they were standing in the garden outside the conservatory.

They were still in the gray time, which meant the garden was as motionless as a photograph and looked blurred and one-dimensional and colorless, and the landscape's lighting did nothing to change any of that.

Becca, who had also stopped, turned to face her. "Since you're here, we have to take the chance. There's something you need to see."

"Oh, God, not again." Diana frowned at her. "I told you, I have a question of my own this time."

"Then maybe he can answer it for you."

"He? He, who?"

Becca nodded toward the conservatory. "In there."

Diana would have protested again, but in a blink her child guide was gone, and she found herself alone. "Dammit." With little choice in the matter, she went into the conservatory.

For some reason, she wasn't surprised to see that the artistic workshop had left evidence of its existence on this side of the door.

There were the paintings propped on easels — except that there seemed to be an awful lot of them, a forest of them. Diana picked her way through slowly, looking at each in turn, feeling her scalp crawl and tingle unpleasantly.

These weren't the paintings she remembered from the workshop. There had been violence in those, images from troubled minds, but... not like this.

One after another, these images spoke of abject terror. Faces twisted in hideous grimaces. Bodies contorted into violent poses. Explosions destroying. Weapons tearing flesh. Disease, starvation, torture.

And symbolic as well as literal images of fear. Darkness slashed through with lightning bolts. Spiders. Snakes. Creepy alleyways. Lonely, deserted country roads. A broken window. A fly caught in a web.

Diana paused at last before the painting of an image that was terrifyingly familiar. A dark, dark space, tiny, airless, perhaps a closet. And in the back corner, her arms wrapped tightly around her up-drawn legs, sat a little girl with long dark hair and a tearstained face.

"Amazing how easy it is to identify her, isn't it? That tiny figure in that small, dark corner. She could be anyone. But she could only be Missy."

Diana stepped quickly to the side so that she could see beyond the painting. "You? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you," Beau said.

Nate knew he should go home to bed, get a fresh start in the morning — later in the morning — but he also knew he'd be too restless to sleep. There was paperwork awaiting him back at the station, but that held even less appeal, and he wasn't really surprised to find himself just casually wandering past Stephanie's slightly open office door.

She was sitting at her desk, frowning over what he felt was an uncharacteristically untidy jumble of papers spread out on the blotter.

"You're working late," he said from the doorway.

Stephanie looked up with a start, but then smiled. "Not exactly work. Or at least, not work I'm being paid to do. I wanted to keep looking through the old files, see if I could find something useful."

"I could have been anybody, you know," he told her, pushing the door the rest of the way open. "Sneaking up on you — " He broke off, rather sheepishly, because the door creaked loudly as it opened wide enough to admit him.

Stephanie grinned and moved a stack of papers to reveal a gleaming .45 automatic. "I'm fast, especially with the adrenaline rush. If I hadn't instantly recognized your voice, you would have been looking down the barrel of this before you could get anywhere near the desk."

Nate sat down in her visitor's chair. "Never mind fast — are you any good with that?"

"Yes. And I have a license for it. A license to carry it, for that matter." Soberly, she added, "I think our nighttime security is pretty good, especially with your people patrolling as well, but with a killer here somewhere, I'm taking no chances. Army brat, remember?"

"I remember. And I feel a bit better about you working late alone down here. But only a bit." He paused. "You do realize this killer is likely to be someone you know? Or at least that he'll wear a familiar face?"

"The thought had occurred. In a place like The Lodge, all dressed in its Victorian grandeur, it'd be easy to imagine that only the odd maniac wandering past could possibly have sullied our good name with something as distasteful as murder."

He lifted an eyebrow at her.

Descending to normality, Stephanie said, "Except that this place never really was unsullied, was it?"

"Not according to Quentin."

"And not according to what records I've gone over so far. Did you know that the first death recorded on these grounds happened while the place was being built?"

"Yeah, one of my people found mention of that in a historical database. Not so uncommon around construction sites, especially over a hundred years ago."

"Yeah. But this guy didn't fall from a scaffold or get crushed by falling stone, or anything like that. The local doctor at the time stated in writing that the victim was frightened to death."

"Frightened? Of what?"

"Nobody could say. They came to work early one morning, and there he was, just lying near the foreman's shack. No cuts, no bruises. Place wasn't far enough along to even have security out here, not that they needed much in those days. Bottom line, nobody saw anything."

"Frightened to death. Heart attack?" Nate guessed.

"The doc stated that his heart stopped — but that it wasn't diseased, wasn't enlarged, wasn't any of the things they believed in those days showed signs of trouble. And, apparently, he looked scared out of his mind. His face was frozen in an expression of absolute terror."

Nate was silent, frowning.

"That's not all," Stephanie continued. "Another half dozen men died during the construction of The Lodge and its stables. And all the deaths were...just a little bit strange. Surefooted men falling. Skilled men having accidents with tools. Healthy men getting very sick very suddenly."

"What about after construction?"

"Well, then the records get just a bit murky." She shrugged, frowning a little herself. "I know enough about record-keeping to know that the entries I've found so far concerning illnesses, disappearances, and deaths here were noted with an absolute minimum of detail, almost casually."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that from the get-go, any sort of bad news for The Lodge — especially of the death-on-the-grounds variety — was strongly downplayed."

"Wouldn't that be expected for a hotel?"

"To a certain extent, yeah. But your average hotel, when faced with the disappearance, death, or even murder of one of its guests, would have paperwork up the wazoo. Police reports, security reports, doctors' statements. Every piece of paper that could possibly be required to acquit the hotel and all its employees of any wrongdoing."

"Which The Lodge doesn't have."

"Like I said. If you ask me, somebody very early on made the decision of how bad news was to be handled. And whether it became habit or an ironclad rule, that's how it was done from that point onward."

"No paperwork."

"No paperwork, and only the bare mention of an occurrence. Name, date, not much more. Usually buried in accounts of the day-to-day running of the place."

Nate rested his forearm on her desk, fingers drumming absently. "I know how many deaths and disappearances we're talking about in the last twenty-five years, thanks to Quentin's obsession. What about before that? How many?"

"Oh, jeez, it'll be weeks before I can tell you that. I'm barely up to about 1925."

"Okay. How many up to 1925?"

Stephanie drew a breath. "Counting the deaths during construction, I have reported on the grounds of The Lodge more than a dozen deaths by 1925."

It took a minute, but Nate finally said, "Of those, how many were suspicious?"

"In my opinion? All of them, Nate. All of them."

"Are you dead?" Diana asked incredulously. Beau smiled. "No."

She took a step closer, uncertain. "Are you a medium?"

"No." Diana looked around her at the gray easels with their gray canvases daubed and stroked with varying shades of gray paint. She looked at the gray plants here and there in the conservatory, looked down at her own gray self and then up at him. Gray too. Everything was gray.

"Then I repeat. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I told you. Waiting for you."

"Beau, do you know where we are?"

"I think you call it the gray time."

"What do you call it?"

He looked around him, as though in mild curiosity, and said, "Your name fits. It's an interesting place. Or — time."

"Only the dead walk here."

"You walk here."

"I'm a medium." She stopped, startled, and Beau smiled again.

"Is that the first time you've said it?"

"I guess so. First time I meant it, anyway."

"It'll get easier," he told her. "Not so surprising. Even ordinary, after a while."

Diana shook her head. "Never mind that. I don't understand how you're here."

"It's a knack I have. My sister says I'm... very plugged in to the universe."

"Is that supposed to be an explanation?"

"Probably not. Diana, it doesn't really matter how I'm here. All that matters is that you see what I have to show you, and listen to what I have to tell you."

"You sure sound like a guide," she muttered.

"Sorry." He turned, beckoning her to follow, and led the way to the back corner where her easel was set up.

Her easel. Her sketchpad. Her drawing of Missy, there despite the fact that she knew it was in the tote bag in her cottage. But more astonishing, there was a brilliant scarlet slash across the sketch, glistening wetly and, in fact, still dripping onto some rags below the easel.

Scarlet. Not gray.

Like the green door, this was a color she could see.

"Why?" she asked, sure somehow that she wouldn't have to explain her question more fully.

"Signposts," he said. "The gray time has them as well. Things to pay attention to. Things to remember, so you can find your way. Only here they stand out a bit more."

Diana thought about that. "The green door I get; it's the way back. The way out. But this?"

Beau stepped back, gesturing for her to move closer to the easel.

She did so, looking at the sketch that certainly looked like the one she'd drawn. At the scarlet slash across Missy's delicate form. The scarlet that seemed to be... bleeding off the edge of the paper. Almost as if...

Diana took another step and bent slightly forward, looking more closely at the scarlet marring the sketch. It wasn't easy to see, because the scarlet (paint? blood?) had run, distorting the shape of the... letters?

"It wasn't clear at first," Beau said from behind her. "Just looked like a slash of color. Then, slowly, the letters began to appear. That's when I knew you needed to see this."

Absently, she said, "Why not show me on the other side of the door, outside the gray time? It's there too, isn't it?"

"It's there. Here. But it's only a slash of color, no letters. Someone suggested I take a look here in the gray time, in order to see what was really there."

"Someone?"

"Bishop."

Diana wasn't surprised. "I should have known you were a part of that team. He expected you'd see a warning, huh?"

"I think so. And said you needed to see it. He also said it would be tonight, which surprised me. After the day you've had, I didn't think you'd try this so soon."

Diana straightened with a sigh. "I don't suppose he offered any instructions for me?"

"No. Not something he often does in cases like this."

"What's really astonishing is that there are cases like this. All this time, I thought I was alone."

"You aren't."

"Yeah. I'm getting that. I just hope it isn't too late."

"If it helps," Beau said, "my window into the universe tells me that Quentin is your ace."

"I've sort of been getting that too." She drew a breath. "But he is not going to like what I have to do next."

"You know?"

Diana nodded. "I do now. Seeing this... I remember all the nightmares. All the messages Missy has been trying to send me since I got here. Even before I got here. She's been preparing for this all this time. Knowing I'd come. Knowing Quentin would be here as well. She's been... very patient."

"Some things have to happen just the way they happen. In their own time."

"Ironic that I learn that in a place with no time."

"As long as you learn it."

With a sigh, Diana said, "Anybody ever tell you that you sound a lot like a fortune cookie?"

"It has a familiar ring."

"I'm not surprised. And I don't suppose you can answer the one question I came here this time to ask?"

"Sorry."

"That too will come only in its own time?"

"Yes. Until then, you have other things to worry about, Diana. You've already been here too long."

"I know." The cold had been seeping into her very bones, and she felt stiff, almost sluggish. Even her thoughts were beginning to drift.

"Go back. Now."

Diana looked around her, frowning, and said, "I'm a long way from the door."

"Diana—"

"A long way. And I think..."

Tha-thum.

Tha-thum.

"I think it's looking for me."

Beau came awake with the suddenness of one leaving a nightmare, which was pretty close to the truth. He had to move quickly, and yet his body felt stiff and cold, and as he got himself off his bed and started toward the door, he was abruptly aware of a deeper appreciation of the colorful, three-dimensional world around him.

Stupid thing for an artist to need a reminder of, but one visit to the gray time had certainly cured him of any tendency to take this warm and living world for granted.

Even his Hyacinth Room, which he'd thought a bit too fussy for his taste when he first arrived at The Lodge, looked only pleasant and comfortable as he more or less staggered through it to the door.

Christ, he felt as though he'd walked up a mountain. With a Volvo on his back. Pounding heart, shaking legs, weak as a kitten. In thirty-odd years of psychic experiences, some of them truly horrendous, he'd never emerged from anything that had drained him this much.

He wondered if Quentin had any idea of just how strong Diana really was.

He had to traverse a long corridor and climb one flight of stairs to get to Quentin's room, and by the time he reached the door he felt he was only just beginning to function normally. He was still cold, though. Chilled to the bone.

He braced himself with one hand on the doorjamb, deciding that "normal" was probably stretching things more than a bit. Before he could rap on the door it was jerked open, and Quentin stood there. He was fully dressed, wide-awake and tense, and spoke to Beau as though the conversation between them had already started.

"She's in the gray time."

"Yeah. And I'm not so sure she can find her way out of it alone."

"Jesus. Why the hell didn't you—"

"Nothing I could do. I was just doing a version of dream-walking, not there in the flesh. And it's definitely her realm, not mine."

Quentin didn't even question that. "Where was she? Relative to our side, I mean?"

"The conservatory. But I don't know if she's still there. If her instincts are good, she's looking for a place to hide. Whatever's been doing all the killing here — I think it's after her."

"I knew I shouldn't have left her alone. Goddammit, she can't fight this thing without help."

"I don't think she even knew it would happen tonight; she just went looking for the answer to a question. But she's been in the gray time too long, especially here, and it's weakened her. Believe me, I know." He still had one hand braced against the doorjamb for support.

Quentin seemed to notice the artist's appearance for the first time. "You don't look so good."

"I'll be fine. Go after Diana. Your cop pal is still here; I'll get him to roust his people."

"What good will that do? I'm not even sure I'll be able to see her this time — I sure as hell didn't see her leave, and I've been up and wide-awake."

"Ellie Weeks, like all the other victims, was killed by a flesh-and-blood murderer. Whatever's pulling the strings from the other side, that killer's on our side of the door — and if he's hunting Diana, he's visible."

Quentin stared at him for a moment, then went back inside his room long enough to get his gun. Tucking it inside the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, he said, "And he's hunting Diana because only the mind of a powerful medium can give him something he's never had before."

Beau nodded. "A permanent way out, a means to live again in the flesh. And Diana knows it, thanks to a warning from Missy."

After working so hard, fighting her way out of the haze of medications and then struggling to come to terms with what she could do, hiding now was the last thing Diana would have chosen. But —

You have to. Don't let it find you. Not yet.

There was a plan and Diana understood it, if only in its bare outlines. What she understood even more, however, was that she was not strong enough to stand alone, not now, not on this side of the door. That would be a battle she'd lose.

Hide.

It was almost like her own heartbeat, that voice in her mind, as familiar as her own thoughts. And yet separate, distinctly apart. Something she'd heard, listened to, all her life.

Or tried to, through the medicated fog.

"Dad has a lot to answer for," she muttered, stumbling from the conservatory and toward the main building.

He was doing what he thought best.

"He was afraid. I get that."

He was trying to save your life. He'd lost me. And Mommy. He couldn't lose you too.

"There was a better way."

He didn't know that. He believed if you didn't know about me at all, it would hurt less than knowing I'd lived, and was stolen away — and died.

"So he came down here and bought a cover-up, right? And then kept me medicated so I wouldn't remember, couldn't learn about my abilities, much less consciously control them."

It wasn't that deliberate. The doctors and medicines. He never understood what happened to Mommy, but he was afraid it would happen to you too. He did his best to keep that from happening, Diana.

"If you say so." Diana hesitated, sticking close to the shrubbery that half masked one of the service entrances. "Now where do I go? Dammit, never a guide around when I need one." She crossed her arms over her breasts and shivered. She was cold. And getting colder.

You know why.

"Yeah. Your plan. Why didn't you try it sooner?"

Couldn't. I didn't live to be strong enough.

"And I did?"

Yes. It'll take your strength. Plus the others. The ones who're ready to move on.

"Waiting all this time for me?"

Yes. Waiting for a chance. A chance to stop it.

"You keep saying 'it.' All of you do. But Samuel Barton was a man once upon a time."

It was never a man. Not really. It was always evil. And when they killed its flesh, they set it free. Helped it grow even more powerful.

"So it could possess anyone not strong enough to fight it off."

Yes, sometimes. But if they weren't strong enough to fight it off, they weren't strong enough to hold it for long. They... burned out. And it was energy again, building up, looking for another host. A more permanent host.

"Me."

Once you discovered what you could do, once you began remembering and became aware, it was only a matter of time before it sensed your strength. Your abilities. But it happened much faster than we expected. I'm sorry, Diana.

"Maybe faster is better," Diana said, half to herself. "I've barely had time to think. Otherwise, all this would probably drive me back into a mental hospital."

No. That won't happen again. You're too strong now.

"I hope you're right." Diana looked around again, then slipped through the shrubbery and used the service entrance. Despite the blinking control pad indicating the presence of a security system, she simply turned the handle and opened the door.

Electronics didn't work in the gray time. Or maybe they just didn't exist. Diana had never known which.

Tha-thum.

"Oh, shit," she whispered.

Diana.

She realized she was pressed up against the icy wall just inside the door, palms flat on either side of her hips. She realized that her legs were about to buckle, that she was about to slide down the wall and end up in a heap on the floor, helpless.

Useless.

Diana! Don't let it make you afraid. That's how it catches us. That's how it wins.

"I can make a door," she whispered. "I can bring the door to me. I can — "

No. You can't open a door. Not here. Not alone.

She drew a breath, fighting to steady herself, trying to will the strength to return to her body. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, and she wasn't at all sure she was successful, but she tried her best. "Where is it?"

Near. But you have a safe place. The green door, Diana. Find the green door.

"I made one before."

You have to find the one that exists on both sides. In both worlds. Find that green door, Diana.

"Why aren't you here to lead me?"

Because there's something I have to do on this side. But I'll help you. Just keep going.

The plan. Diana pushed herself away from the cold, cold wall and started down what looked like an endless, featureless corridor, searching for a green door.