The Restorer

Forty

I sat in my car for the longest time before I dared start the engine and drive off. My hands shook so badly I didn’t trust myself behind the wheel.

How could I not have known he was a ghost?

How could I not have felt the cold breath of death down my collar? The chill of his otherworldly presence?

A ghost masquerading as a man had entered my world and I had no rules to deal with such an entity.

I glanced at the sky. The sun was still shining, but that slow westward glide had already begun. Dusk would fall in a matter of hours. The light would fade, the veil would thin and the ghosts would slip back through. I had no protection at all now except for the walls of my home.

When I got there, I locked myself inside. Not that a bolt would keep them out, but I also had to worry about a killer.

How had my life come to this?

Trying to control my jitters, I made a cup of tea and walked through the silent house, alone and more lonely than I had been in years. Was this the way it would be from now on? Just me, here, locked away from the ghosts?

I thought of Devlin and wondered where he was. He hadn’t tried to contact me all day, but then…who could blame him? All he knew was that I’d pushed him away and run out of his house like a madwoman. He’d followed me home, begging for an explanation, and all I could do was keep him locked out, too.

As I allowed myself a wallow in self-pity, Clayton Masterson slipped from my mind entirely. And that proved to be a very grave mistake.

I’d gone to the front window to glance out, and as I turned, a dizzy spell struck me. I stumbled and spilled my tea. The house was completely still so I don’t know what made me look up. Daniel Meakin was there at the top of the stairs, a timid, wary shadow staring down at me. Behind him, the bolted door that separated my apartment from the second story stood wide open.

Something came back to me then—Macon Dawes in the garden telling me he’d just come off a seventy-two-hour shift when I’d heard footsteps in his apartment two nights before. Someone had been up there walking around that night. Someone else had loosened those bolts, opened that door, and now I blinked to bring that someone into focus.

The room started to spin and I clutched the wall for support. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t rush me, but eased down the stairs in a half crouch.

I knew I should turn and try to make it to the front door. Escape was only a few steps away. But I couldn’t walk without holding on to the wall. Now my gaze fixated on the spilled tea. Had I been drugged?

With an effort, I lifted my head. “What—”

“It’s just a sedative and a muscle relaxant. Nothing that will harm you,” Daniel Meakin offered helpfully. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

I didn’t want to obey him, but I had no choice. My knees folded and I collapsed to the floor.

“Oh, dear,” he murmured, hurrying to my side. “That was much faster than I expected.” I tried to get up but he placed his hands on my shoulders and pressed me back. “Lie still now. You’ll hurt yourself if you try to move around. I suspect that’s impossible right now, anyway.”

He was right. My arms and legs had gone numb.

I lay back against the floor, trying to still the rotating ceiling.

“Here,” he said. “Let me make you more comfortable.” He bustled about, cleaning up the spilled tea and fetching a pillow from the parlor, which he carefully placed beneath my head. “Better?”

“Why?” I tried to whisper, but the sound came out thick and garbled.

He seemed to understand what I meant. He sank to the floor with a deep sigh, cradling his legs against his chest and resting his chin on his knees. “You have no idea how much I hate this,” he said. “You were one of the few people who ever saw me…really saw me, but you saw him, too, didn’t you?”

I shook my head helplessly and tried to speak.

“Shush,” he soothed. “It’s okay. I know about you. I know about your ability.”

How was that possible? Unless…

I thought of Tula Mackey’s description of the other boy:

…quiet, scrawny little thing. I used to see him out wandering the streets at all hours. Or just sitting alone on the front porch. I reckon that’s why he took up with Clayton Masterson. Poor kid was lonely.

My gaze moved to Daniel’s wrist. His shirtsleeve hid the scars, but I could still see them in my mind, a jagged crisscross of agony.

Clayton bound their wrists together and forced the knife into the kid’s hand. Forced him to plunge the blade into that poor dog’s heart.

The ghost of Clayton Masterson had worn shackles last night. One end fastened about his wrist, the other end dangling free…because Daniel had been waiting for him in the front yard. The silhouette I saw at the end of the porch…

Still clutching his legs, Daniel began to rock back and forth, humming beneath his breath. He laid his cheek on his knees and watched me. “Do you know why this house is safe for you?” he finally asked.

I shook my head again.

“There used to be an orphanage on the property. This is where the chapel was located. Eventually, there were so many orphans, they had to relocate to another facility out of the city. That place burned down in 1907 and a lot of the children died.”

The angels, I thought. Papa’s angels had a connection to this house. No wonder I felt so safe here. Until now…

He lifted his head and glanced around. “I knew this place was special the moment I first set foot inside. You’re lucky to have found it. Though I’m not sure luck had much to do with it. Everything happens for a reason. Why else were you sent to Oak Grove if not to free me?”

“How…long…?”

“Have I been watching you? Since that night at Rapture. I came here to keep track of you. I needed to know your weak nesses, your routine. How best to approach you. It was easy because your neighbor’s schedule is so erratic. But then when he left on vacation, I got the idea that I could stay here. That I might be safe here, too. But it was only a temporary reprieve. There is only one way I can truly be free of him.”

He reached over and very gently checked the dilation of my pupils. “I saw your face that night at Rapture, you know. You spotted Clayton’s ghost in the garden. No one else would have noticed that look in your eyes, but I knew. I knew.”

He went back to rocking.

“All these years, no one else could ever see him. You have no idea how lonely that was for me.”

“You’re…wrong…”

He put a hand on my arm in remorse. “Forgive me. I spoke out of turn. You’re the only one, perhaps in the whole world, who can understand what I’ve had to live with.”

I heard both wonder and sorrow in his voice.

Then his eyes filled with tears. “You can’t get rid of them, you know.”

“I…know.”

“No matter how deeply I sliced, I couldn’t cut him loose. And then I saw you at Rapture and I thought maybe there was hope after all. I went home that very night and began to plan how it would end. It took some time and I had to be careful that Clayton didn’t catch on. I knew he would try to find a way to stop me, but this time I was too clever for him. I finished my last book, put all my affairs in order and then I sent you clues so the bodies could be found. I couldn’t go with that on my conscience. I tried to give most of them a decent burial with the proper respect but it wasn’t always possible…”

“How…many?”

He closed his eyes and shuddered. “I don’t know. I’ve lost count. I tried to be judicious with the selection…choose only those poor souls that needed freeing. The rest was Clayton. The shackles, the torture…” He said the last word on a whisper. “I was once foolish enough to think that I could stop him, back when we were young. I was so happy when the police took him away that time—like I’d been reborn—but eventually he got out of that place and showed up at Emerson. When he told me what he had done to my cousin Afton…that he had been plotting her death for years to taunt me, to spite me…I knew I would have to find a way to end it. He would never leave me alone.”

“You…”

“Yes, I killed him. And his ghost has been bound to me all these years. Still making me kill.” He stared at me through tormented eyes. Haunted eyes. “You have no idea the things he’s forced me to do. Those poor women…”

He rocked now with his eyes closed. “Time and again I tried to end it…take my own life, but he always found a way to stop me. And then one day I realized that even if I managed to kill myself, he would have been waiting on the other side…binding me to him for all eternity…” His breath caught on a little sob, and in spite of everything, I felt a rush of pity because I knew he spoke the truth. He had been driven to the very brink of madness by Clayton’s ghost.

He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “But it’s all right now because I know now how to finally end it. Every last obstacle has been removed.”

“Camille…?”

He drew a shaky breath. “I didn’t want that. If there’d been any other way…”

He had killed Camille. Not Clayton. Whether he wanted to believe it or not, there was a bit of that monster inside him.

“I thought you’d caught something with your camera that day, but you were never a threat. It was Camille. She saw me on the path one night coming back from Oak Grove. I told her I was researching my book, but she was too smart for her own good and started asking questions. If she could have just left well enough alone for a little while longer, it wouldn’t have mattered. She could have gone to the police, told them what she suspected and I would have still been free of Clayton forever.”

“How…?”

“By allowing him to come to you, Amelia.”

An icy shiver went through me.

“After tonight it wouldn’t have mattered,” he repeated sadly.

And then I understood. The moment Clayton’s ghost latched onto me, Daniel planned to kill himself. It was the only way he could be free of his ghost. For all eternity.

“Sleep now,” he said softly. “It’ll soon be over.”