The Kingdom

Fifteen

When I got home, I went straight to the back porch to see about Angus. He was waiting at the door to greet me. I gave him a little extra attention before I let him out, and he rewarded me with a tail wag, which I hadn’t yet seen from him. He was looking so much better, and I thought his coat even had sheen in the moonlight. That may only have been wishful thinking, but I wasn’t imagining his response to my TLC. He pressed up against me, those dark eyes shining with appreciation.

“It’ll soon be bath time for you, mister,” I told him. “I’ve mollycoddled you long enough. Who knows? You may even enjoy it.”

He responded by nuzzling his cold nose against my chin. “Enough of that now. Let’s get on with this so I can go to bed.”

I smothered a yawn as I followed him outside and stood at the bottom of the steps while he prowled the moonlit yard. He took his sweet time, sniffing at every bush and occasionally pawing at something in the dirt. I hated to rush him. From everything I’d read about dog fighting, he’d probably spent most of his life in cramped cages and filthy kennels before being dumped in the woods to starve. Now that he had the luxury of a full belly, I wanted him to enjoy his freedom. But the hour was late, and I was ever mindful of that lake. As I turned to skim the glimmering surface, the moon withdrew behind a cloud, shrouding the landscape in deep shadow. The night fell silent, so deadly still I could hear the whisper of a rising breeze through the leaves and the sudden hammering of my heart in my ears.

The ghost was there, somewhere behind me in the dark. I could feel the chill of her presence creeping up my spine. For a moment, I thought she might even have touched me… .

Freya.

The name came to me so sharply, I was jolted by my certainty. I didn’t move, of course, didn’t outwardly react at all. I remained rooted to the spot, my gaze fixed on the lake as my pounding heart sent a surge of blood to my temples. I felt a little light-headed from the strain of a suppressed shudder. Why such a strong reaction to this ghost? Why was she so different from the others?

Somewhere off to my left, Angus growled, and I knew that he’d seen her, too. Or at least sensed her. His reaction gave me an excuse to turn, and I whirled toward the sound of his snarl, calling to him in a voice steadied by years of ghost sightings.

“What is it, boy? What do you see?”

She was right there. Directly behind me.

So close, dear God, my breath frosted on the night air. The cold that emanated from her nebulous silhouette was almost unbearable. It took everything in me to silence my chattering teeth.

I wanted to ask why she had appeared here, of all places, and what she wanted from me. But I blocked those questions from my mind. I’d broken my father’s rules to dire consequences, so I knew better than to acknowledge the dead.

As if sensing my resistance, she floated closer. Was she drawn to my warmth? My energy? Like the other specters that came through the veil, did she crave what she could never have again? I desperately wanted it to be that simple, but I could feel the icy tentacles of that strange telepathy curling around me. She wanted to communicate. She was doing everything in her power to make me acknowledge her.

This, of course, was only my interpretation. She didn’t speak or try to touch me, but I suddenly had images in my head that didn’t belong there. Jumbled, dreadful visions that didn’t make any sense to me. And so much darkness. So much loneliness. It was like getting a peek through the veil. And that glimpse was terrifying…yet somehow seductive… .

I think I may actually have taken a step toward her when I heard Angus’s warning growl. I glanced past the ghost to where he crouched at the corner of the porch.

“Angus! Come, boy!”

He growled again, cutting a wide swath around her wavering form to come up beside me. I pressed against him because now I craved his warmth.

And still she drifted closer, hovering for the longest time right before my face. I no longer sensed confusion from her, but some darker emotion. The force of it, as she started to fade, was like a physical blow.

Leave now!

I sprinted up the porch steps with Angus at my heels.

Something awakened me that night. My eyes flew open, and I lay shivering under the covers, straining to hear whatever sound had roused me. All was silent in the house, but I rose, anyway, and pulled on a sweater over my nightgown as I padded down the hallway. The glimmer from the long windows guided me to the front door where I checked and rechecked the lock. Then I went through the kitchen to peer out the back door.

I could see the sparkle of moonlight on water and the feather-edged outline of the pines against the night sky. The forest beyond the lake was a solid blackness, blending seamlessly into the distant silhouette of the mountains. As my gaze skimmed those starlit peaks, something Catrice had said at dinner came back to me. You know as well as I do these mountains are full of secrets.

Secrets…and hidden graves, apparently.

Nothing seemed amiss outside, so I’d just decided to go back to bed when gooseflesh rose on my arms and at my nape, as if an icy draft had seeped in through a crack. I turned back to the window. Something was amiss. Angus would have come to the back door the moment he heard me stir. I called to him through the glass as my gaze went to his empty makeshift bed. Where was he?

I opened the door and stepped out into the chilly night air. “Angus?”

He wasn’t on the porch, but I told myself not to panic. He’d obviously found a way out. Dogs were good at that. But there was a quality to his absence that once again made the hair rise up at the back of my neck.

And then I saw the hole that had been cut in the screen, large enough for a hand to reach in and unfasten the latch. Someone had let Angus out—or taken him—and I hadn’t heard a sound.

Flinging back the door, I clamored barefoot down the steps, only to pause at the bottom, head cocked toward the woods. Something came to me. A faint, but chilling whimper. So tepid, I wanted to believe that I’d imagined the cry. It was only the wind riffling through the trees or the boat moored at the end of the pier scraping against the pilings. Then I heard it again, the high-pitched keen of an animal in distress. Angus.

I whirled toward the sound, my heart flailing like a startled robin against my chest, but even in that first moment of panic, I checked the impulse to rush blindly into the woods. Instead, I ran back into the house and grabbed my boots, struggling into them as I armed myself with flashlight and mace. I didn’t consider myself brave. I’d learned to live with ghosts out of necessity, not courage. But I moved through the house now with unhesitating determination. If Angus was lying hurt in the dark—and, oh, the images going through my head—I had to find him.

Hurrying down the back steps, I made my way across the yard and followed the footpath into the woods, using those desperate whimpers to guide me. But I didn’t call out to Angus again. I had no idea what might lie in wait for me in those trees. Stealth was my only friend. I kept the flashlight lowered to the ground as I slipped along the trail. Beyond the reach of the beam, the forest was a black, silent abyss. I would have welcomed the hoot of an owl or the patter of leaves to help mask my footsteps, but even the breeze had died away.

About a hundred yards in, the trees thinned, and up ahead, I could see the pool of moonlight in a small clearing. In the center of that circle, a dark form waited. I told myself it was nothing more than a shadow or a bush. When it moved, I stumbled in shock, the hard kick of my heart snatching my breath. Then I played the light into the clearing and saw the familiar gleam of soulful eyes.

“Angus.” I said his name on a gasp of relief. He’d been lying on the ground when I came up, but he rose when he heard my voice and rushed toward me, only to be jerked back so sharply he yelped in protest. An instant later, I saw why. He’d been tethered to a tree with a rope.

Icy panic stopped me in my tracks as if I, too, had been bound. My limbs went watery, and no matter how much I wanted to go to Angus, I simply couldn’t make my muscles obey. Because in that moment, I was as afraid as I’d ever been. Which might sound strange coming from someone who had seen ghosts since childhood and who had been the target of a killer not so long ago. I’d known my share of fear, but the terror I felt now wasn’t for my physical safety or even for Angus. I was afraid of something…inside me. Some unknown part of myself that I was only now discovering. The puzzle piece that connected me to this strange, disturbing place.

Drawing a shaky breath, I quieted my racing pulse and forced myself toward Angus, only to freeze once more, not in fear this time, but from the warning bristle of my every nerve ending. I didn’t know what had set off that alarm. Angus’s piteous whimper. Something in the wind. A dormant instinct come suddenly to life. Whatever the trigger, I paused there, one foot in front of the other as I slowly angled the beam along the path in front of me.

I almost didn’t see the thing, the camouflage of leaves and pine needles was so clever. It was only by pure luck that the light caught the gleam of metal. So complete had been my absorption in the metaphysical that I’d lost track of the real menace. Someone had taken Angus from my porch and tied him to a tree in the woods. This was no random act of cruelty. There was a very dark purpose behind the action.

Grabbing a stick from the forest floor, I swept aside the debris on the path to reveal the jagged teeth of a steel trap. An enormous one, much bigger than the size needed for a human leg. But in that first moment, I had no doubt about the motive. It had been placed at the end of the path directly between Angus and me. Someone had brought him here to lure me into the woods.

But why?

Instantly, I thought of that hidden grave and the reaction my revelation had provoked. I hadn’t imagined the tension at dinner, nor Hugh’s overly casual attempt to explain it away. I hadn’t imagined Luna’s response, either. I’d dropped a bombshell at that table and now someone felt threatened.

I eased toward the trap as if sidling up to a coiled snake. Using the sharp end of the limb, I poked at the spring until the metal jaws snapped shut with a clatter that shook me to my core. The sound reverberated through the woods like the shock of an unexpected thunderclap, startling roosting birds from the treetops. I didn’t glance skyward. Instead, I peeled my gaze on the clearing and the surrounding woods. Was the perpetrator nearby, waiting to hear that sound?

I felt vulnerable and exposed, armed with only that can of mace. The thought crossed my mind that I should take cover and wait to see who came out of the woods. But I had to get to Angus, and besides, whoever had set the trap might be long gone. For all I knew, the intent was to leave me until morning, giving wild animals a chance to pick up the scent of my blood.

Taking a deep breath, I aimed the light across the clearing where the path resumed to Tilly Pattershaw’s house. Nothing stirred on the trail, so I shifted the light, only to jerk my hand back, fixing the beam on a telltale mound of leaves and pine needles where another trap had been concealed. I stepped into the clearing and turned in a slow circle with the flashlight. The traps were all around us.

It hit me then. I wasn’t the quarry. Angus was being used as bait to lure something out of the woods. Something that could come from any direction. Something big enough to drag a body off without making a sound.

I felt it in the wind then, that terrible dankness. The bone chill of an ancient evil. All around me, the leaves began to whisper and sigh, like the release of a pent-up breath. Amelia…Amelia…

Everything went deathly still except for that whisper and the roar of rushing blood in my ears. And then the breeze gusted, swirling dead leaves across the clearing, and somehow I was released from the grip of my paralysis. I rushed to Angus and dropped to the ground beside him. He didn’t appear to be hurt, but when he pushed his nose against me, I smelled an odd chemical scent on his breath and wondered if he’d been drugged. That would explain how he’d been taken without rousing me.

But…no time to worry about that now. The wind brought a fresh terror. A howling from deep inside the woods. I saw the hair rise up on Angus’s back as he turned to growl at the darkness.

“It’s okay,” I whispered over and over as I worked to free him. The rope around his neck had been tied with multiple knots, none of which I could loosen. The wind was cold, but sweat trickled down my back from fear and tension, and I cursed myself for not having had the foresight to grab the utility knife from the pocket of my discarded cargoes. “Come on, come on.” I worked until my fingernails were in shreds, but I still couldn’t budge those knots.

Behind me, one of the traps sprang shut, and as I jerked around in shock, I lost my balance and went sprawling to the ground. I watched in terror as a shadow detached from the deeper darkness of the woods and rushed into the clearing. Angus whirled and crouched, but he didn’t try to attack.

As the shape took form, I thought the wraithlike creature before me must surely be a ghost. But as she moved into the moonlight, I glimpsed an aged face framed by a mane of unkempt gray hair and somehow I knew who she was. Tilly Pattershaw.

Like me, she wore boots and a white nightgown topped with a heavy wool sweater. She was slight—frail, I thought at first—but in her gloved hand she wielded a knife, some long, fearsome thing that she swung over her head as she simultaneously grabbed the tether and pulled it taut. The knife slashed, cutting clean through the rope. I was so astonished by her sudden appearance and behavior, I hadn’t moved or uttered a sound. But now I scrambled to my feet as the howling grew louder.

Her gaze went past me to the trees, and I thought I saw her shudder. “Get out of the woods, girl!” The wind whipped at her long, wiry hair and tore at the hem of her gown.

“What about you?”

Her eyes were luminous in the moonlight, her face like the wizened visage of an ancient shaman. But her speech was pure mountain folk. “It don’t come for me.”

I turned to follow her gaze, my eyes scanning the woods. Even the trees were shivering, and the air hummed with the oddest vibration.

“Go!” she screamed.

“Angus, come!”

He was right at my heels as I tore across the clearing.

“Keep to the path!” I heard her call after us, but the sound died away quickly in the wind.

I bolted blindly down the trail, tripping over a root that almost took me down. A nauseating fire shot up my leg, but I wouldn’t let a twisted ankle slow me. Not with that howling thing at our backs. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I raced along the path with Angus now at my side.

Something swooped across the trail in front of us—a bat, I thought—and then I heard what sounded like the flap of bird wings, hundreds of them, but I didn’t dare look up even as a cloud passed over the moon.

As we neared the edge of the woods, I grabbed the rope that still dangled from Angus’s neck, preparing for that final dash across the open yard. Instead, I drew up short and gazed in horror out over the water.

Whatever had been lured down from the mountains had stirred the restless souls at the bottom of the lake. I could hear the bells—that hair-raising chorus of the dead—tolling from those murky depths. The discordant peals were muffled by water and a thick, writhing miasma that crept shoreward, up the stepping-stones and into the yard where Angus and I stood trembling.

And from that wall of mist, diaphanous arms reached out for me. Exactly like the recurring nightmare of my childhood. Hands thrusting through walls to grab me. I knew in my dream, as I knew now, not to let them touch me. They would draw me into that mist, drag me underwater, pull me down, down, down to that sunken graveyard… .

The howls were getting closer. Over the frantic batter of my heart, I swore I could hear the ragged breath of some fierce creature racing up the path behind us.

Entwining the rope around my hand, I gave it a tug. “Run!”

I didn’t have to tell him twice. Spurred by fear and instinct, Angus leaped forward with so much power, the momentum nearly wrenched me off my feet. I found my balance and kept going. I didn’t glance back at the mist, but I could feel the abnormal chill as we sprinted across the yard, up the porch steps and into the house. Slamming the door, I slid to the floor and wrapped my arms around Angus, pulling him close as I waited for the cold to seep in through the cracks. But the house protected us. The hallowed ground on which it had been built gave us sanctuary. After a while, I got up to peek out the window. The mist had receded, and the trees were silent now that the wind had died away. The sparkle of moonlight on water was as lovely as I’d ever seen it.

Fetching the utility knife, I hacked through the rope around Angus’s neck and tossed it in the trash. Then I checked again for wounds, but aside from that odd scent on his breath, he appeared no worse for the wear. I gave him some fresh water but decided to wait until morning to feed him in case of an upset stomach.

“You’re sleeping inside tonight,” I told him.

He whimpered gratefully and followed me down the hallway where I grabbed a blanket from the closet and spread it on the floor at the end of my bed. He lay down facing the door. I kicked off my boots and climbed under the covers, but even with Angus keeping watch, I didn’t sleep until daylight.