John Manning - The Killing Room

But not until they were actually in the air did Douglas bring up the horrors he’d learned about his family.

“I want to say it’s all a bunch of superstitious hooey,” he said, closing his eyes. “But all those deaths…there’s no faking that.”

“No, there isn’t,” Carolyn agreed.

“And I saw her, you know.” Douglas opened his eyes and turned again to look at Carolyn. “I saw the woman. Beatrice. The servant girl who was killed in that room.”

“You did? When?”

“When I got here. She ran across the road, and I fell off my bike. Then she followed me up the cliff. I tried to tell myself she was just an illusion, but now it all makes sense.”

“How do you know it was Beatrice? Your uncle wouldn’t-or couldn’t-admit to me that Beatrice is the apparition that appears to family members.”

Douglas seemed puzzled. “He admitted it to me. When he told me about that ghost of a woman, I said I’d seen her-and he nodded and said, ‘That’s Beatrice.’”

“Odd that he was vague with me.” Carolyn glanced out of the window. They were high enough now that she had a grand view of the Maine coastline. “Did he tell you how she died in that room?”

“Yes.”

Carolyn was stunned. “He claimed to me that he didn’t know. Or at least-that he couldn’t say.” She looked at Douglas intently. “Tell me how she died.”

“She was murdered.” He was clearly uncomfortable speaking the words. “Impaled on the wall by an iron pitchfork.”

“The man…” Carolyn said.

“Yes,” Douglas said. “Family members have often reported seeing a vision of a man with a pitchfork.”

“It’s horrible,” Carolyn said, shuddering. “No wonder the room holds such bad energy. But why is your uncle withholding details from me and not from you? What possible reason could he have? It’s almost as if he wants to make it as hard as possible for me to find an answer to all this…almost as if he doesn’t want me to…”

Douglas looked at her with surprise. “Uncle Howie wants this horrible curse to end. He wouldn’t withhold any details unless there’s a reason. I’m sure of it. All the tragedy he’s seen…” He shook his head. “No, if he’s not telling you something, it’s because he can’t.”

Carolyn sighed. “Perhaps the curse will permit him only to tell outsiders so much.”

“Yes,” Douglas said. “It must be something like that.”

It might well be, Carolyn thought. But why did she feel that Howard Young had his own reasons to control the flow of information?

She shuddered again. That wall…where she’d seen the blood.

A woman had been impaled there.

Douglas was clearly becoming anxious. “I have to ask you, Carolyn. If you have no idea what goes on that room, why did Uncle Howie hire you? No disrespect, but you’re a private eye, not a Ghostbuster. You track down missing people, real live missing people. You go after insurance frauds-not avenging ghosts.”

She smiled. “Well, I have a bit more experience than that.” She related the paranormal cases she’d investigated, both for the FBI and on her own. Douglas listened intently, particularly intrigued by the zombie guy. Most people were. “But,” Carolyn concluded, “I can’t claim to be an expert on the supernatural. That’s why we’re going to see Kip.”

Douglas made a short laugh. “And that’s why I wanted to come along. Why should we care what he thinks? He failed last time. How can he help us now?”

Carolyn understood Douglas’s bitterness. When Kip had tried to end the curse ten years before, he had given the family hope-and it had been Douglas’s father, in a way, who’d been the family’s test case. Whatever Kip had done, they had hoped it would allow Douglas Senior to survive the night in that room. But their hopes were futile.

“Kip has trained with the very best psychic investigators,” Carolyn said, defending her friend. “He has witnessed some extraordinary things. I’m sure he did his best trying to help your family. Certainly he has some key insights into what goes on in that room. And he may be able to point us to other people who can help as well.”

Douglas seemed pessimistic. “The lottery is a month away. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“No, we don’t,” Carolyn admitted.

Douglas ran a hand through his blond hair. Ever since he’d learned the secret, he’d felt as if he were carrying around a heavy lead weight tied to his neck. He let out a long sigh.

“Uncle Howie said that for the last decade he’s spoken to dozens of people. No one could help. It wasn’t until the eleventh hour that he got a recommendation to meet with you. And now, he said, you’re our last hope.”

Carolyn understood that, and she felt the pressure. Perhaps she had no right accepting this job. What did she know? How could she figure this all out in time to prevent another death from occurring just a month away from now-especially if Howard Young was withholding information from her, willingly or not? She clung to the hope that Kip could help, that he could point her in a direction that might lead to an answer. But all he’d promised her on the phone was to tell her what he knew. “And that,” he’d said forlornly, “was clearly not enough ten years ago.”

Douglas had closed his eyes again. “In a strange sort of way,” he said, almost as much to himself as Carolyn, “learning the secret of that room was a kind of relief. It’s like I always knew that something was going on with the family, that there was some deep dark mystery that might explain my parents’ deaths.”

“It must be a horrible thing to live with,” Carolyn said.

She thought of her own family and the hardships they’d faced. Her parents, too, had died painful deaths. But they’d had their children around them. Friends. The goodwill and support of their community. There were no lingering questions after they were gone. Just grief and loss. On that much at least, she could relate to Douglas.

The plane began its descent over the long narrow arm of Cape Cod. Once they were on the ground, the pilot opened the door for them and guided them down the three steps onto the tarmac. Inside the small airport, a man wearing a crisp blue suit waited. He told them he was Mr. Young’s driver, and he would take them up to Fall’s Church, the tiny village where Kip Hobart lived.

For the entire half-hour ride, neither Douglas nor Carolyn said a word. Douglas gazed out the window, thinking back to the day his father died. He remembered being wakened slightly by his father’s kiss on the forehead. That must have been right after he’d been selected in the lottery, and right before he went down to the room. He was coming to say good-bye, Douglas thought, his eyes filling with tears at the realization, though he would not let himself cry. And Mom…so terrified, so grief stricken, that depression took over and caused her to end her life. She couldn’t bear to live with the thought that I, too, might someday have to spend a night in that room…

Carolyn sat looking out of the other window, consumed by her own thoughts. What if I can’t find an answer? They’ll hold the lottery again. Someone will go into that room… And what if it was the young man sitting beside her?

At last they pulled up in front of a small cottage along a marshy inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The sky had gone gray, and Carolyn felt chilled suddenly as she stepped out of the car. The air felt damp. Tall yellow reeds swayed along the soggy banks. A heron touched down into the water ahead of her, flapping its wide wings.

The driver waited in the car as Carolyn and Douglas headed up to the door. Even before they’d had a chance to knock, it was opened by a man wearing a beige cardigan sweater and blue jeans.