The Harrowing

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The rain had started in earnest, pounding into the railroad tracks at the edge of town, pooling on the boarding platform of the Ash Hill train station, the town’s gateway to the outside world.

Cain drove his dented Mustang across the iron tracks and turned into the parking drive of a drooping two-story railroad hotel across the street from the station.

He parked in front of the office and turned off the engine, looked at Robin briefly in the reddish neon light. They turned away from each other in the same moment, got out of the car without speaking, and ran through the sheets of rain for the door.

The Mainline office was as seedy as Robin would have expected from the hotel’s reputation on campus. She avoided the filthy sprung couch, hovered by the door, dripping water, as Cain put bills down on the battered counter.

The red-eyed, rail-thin night manager scooped up the twenties. He leered toward Robin, smirked at Cain, dangled the room key from a finger. “Happy trails.”

Robin’s cheeks were burning as they went out into the rain. The sagging screen door slapped closed behind them.

In the boxy little room, Cain pulled faded chintz drapes across the window. He turned, caught Robin staring at the lumpy bed.

She lifted her eyes from the bed to his face.

The room flashed with blue light. Thunder cracked, booming through the sky. Rain spilled down outside, another torrent.

Robin breathed out and sat shakily on the edge of the mattress. The box springs squeaked under her weight.

Cain sat on the windowsill, his face streaked with rain, watching her. “So what really happened—back there—in your room?”

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I don’t know.” She shivered, remembering. “I thought I was dreaming…but I woke up and there was something on top of me.” She nearly lost her breath again, feeling the foul dead weight, the black terror. “I was fighting it—and then I heard a crash and screaming…and when I went to the window, I saw her…I saw her…”

And then the thought that she had been fighting all night long to suppress finally bubbled to the surface, and she looked at him, stricken. “Oh my God. What if I really did kill her?”

The whole horror of it overcame her. She put her face in her hands and began to cry.

Cain moved swiftly to crouch in front of her. He took her arms hard. “You didn’t kill anyone. Robin.” He shook her slightly. “Was there something on top of you? Or someone?”

He touched her chin, made her look at him. “Listen. Jock boy yells at her. He follows her out. And then suddenly she’s dead.”

Robin pushed him away, her eyes suddenly blazing. ‘It’s not Patrick. You know it’s more than Patrick doing—”

“I don’tknow!”

She exploded to her feet. “God, why? Why? Why do you hate him so much?”

Cain wheeled on her, shouting back, “Because he cheats on everyone. The way he treated his girlfriend…and you—he’s got you waiting in line for it…and you don’t see. He has no idea who you are…what you are…what’s really there. He doesn’t care. And he never will.”

Robin stood still, looking at him in shock. “Oh,” she managed, in a small voice.

Cain walked forward and pulled her roughly against him, his mouth coming down on hers. Robin breathed in and kissed him back fiercely. Heat flooded through her body. She pushed her hands up under his shirt, feeling the skin of his back, the taut muscles trembling as he crushed her closer, kissing her mouth, her throat. Her nails dug into his skin.

He whispered into her neck, shaky. “I don’t want you to die.”

She whispered back, “I don’t want to.”

They kissed and kissed, mouths fused, hands slipping into wet clothes to find skin, arms and legs intertwining. Reason melted away and there was only her body and his, his breath in her mouth, the pulse of his blood through her skin.

Life…blood…body…warm…life…blood…life…

Their legs became too shaky to stand…and they were sinking on the bed…then falling, riding the waves of sensation and fierce, exultant heat.

She woke to pitch-blackness and the sound of the rain, and her heart pounding, and the all-too- familiar feeling of terror.

Someone was whispering in the room, a slithery, electrical sound.

Robin’s eyes went wide; the hair at the back of her neck rose. She sat up slowly, trying not to breathe.

A dark shape suddenly rose from the floor. Robin gasped, cowered back.

Cain’s face came into focus as he leaned on the bed, contrite. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s me.” He pulled off headphones connected to a digital tape recorder. The slithery whispering vibrated from the earpieces.

Cain put the recorder aside and lay back on the bed with Robin, holding her, burying his face in her hair. For a moment, the fear receded. She pressed her cheek against his chest, her heart racing again, skin flushed with the awareness of his body, the newness of him. She felt sore and deliriously alive. So this is what it is….

He held her tighter, but she could feel him tense against her. Immediately, the dread was back, like an icy wind. She whispered, “What were you doing?”

He pulled away slightly; his voice was reluctant. “I taped that attic séance, too. I had this feeling Martin was working on his own agenda.”

She sat up to look at him. He shook his head, but reached for the recorder.

“He’s been speaking Hebrew to—whatever it is, and it spoke Hebrew back.” He clicked the recorder on, rewound the tape to find Martin’s voice. He pulled the headphones out so the tape played aloud.

“Im ata Qlippah, tochi-ach et ze.”

Robin stiffened at the Hebrew. “There. That word. Qlippah?” She looked at Cain. “The board said something like that the very first night.”

“Yeah. But that’s not all.” He felt on the floor, pulled up a familiar box, yellowed with age. The cover had a graphic of the alphabet board, and the label: BALTIMORE TALKING BOARD.

The box, Robin realized. The box the board was in.

Cain nodded. “I went down and looked in the game cabinet in the lounge, after we left the attic. We burned the board but not the box.”

You burned the board, she thought, remembering Cain grabbing it, flinging it onto the fire while the walls pounded all around them.

Cain’s face was taut, as if he were remembering, too. “Look at this.” He removed the lid of the empty box and showed her the inside cover. Her eyes widened.

There was writing in the box—old and faded, but still readable, except the words were unfamiliar, spelled out in uneven capital letters. Then she caught a glimpse of a phrase that looked familiar: ADON OLAM. And another word jumped out at her: QLIPPAH.

She drew in a breath as she realized what she was looking at. Cain met her eyes.

“They took notes on their séance, right? Back in 1920? And it was saying the same things to them that it was saying to Martin.”

They looked at each other in the darkness. Martin’s voice spoke eerily from the tape recorder, like an ancient chant. “Ze ma she-uchal leharot lecha—”

Cain reached down to the floor for his pants, his face set. “We need to know what it means.”