John Manning - The Killing Room

“For eighty years you have been a prisoner here,” Carolyn said. “Why?”

She dared to take a step toward him.

“You loved Beatrice, didn’t you?” she asked. “And in a moment of passion, you killed her.”

Finally a response from the dead man. His dull eyes flashed for moment as they looked up at her.

“No,” Clem said. “I did not kill her.”

“Then who did?” Carolyn asked.

But now Clem was silent again.

“Whoever killed her has made you do these terrible things, isn’t that right?”

But Clem just went on crying. Carolyn shone the flashlight in his face and continued her approach toward him.

“You can be free,” she told him. “Walk out that door, Clem. The love you searched for in your life…Douglas and I have it. You don’t want to deprive us of that. You’re tired. You have done too much that you regret. End it now. Leave this room, just as Beatrice did. You can be free, too.”

He looked up at her. There was no longer any malice in his face.

“You know you can’t harm us,” Carolyn said. “Our love protects us. But not only are you powerless to harm us, you no longer want to. Isn’t that right, Clem?”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

“Go,” Carolyn said softly. “Turn your back on the evil force of this room. We have shown that we can be stronger than it is. We came here to free you, Clem. Go. Go now!”

Douglas had come up beside Carolyn. He had placed a hand on her back. He feared at any moment that Clem’s rage might surge up again, like bile in his throat. He could pounce again, his pitchfork aimed at them. But he didn’t. To Douglas’s great surprise the dead man walked. He walked past them, opened the supposedly locked door, and disappeared into the darkness of the basement beyond.

It was only then that they noticed the first pink glimmers of morning filtering through the window.

“We’ve done it,” Carolyn said quietly. “We’ve survived a night in the room.”

“Is he gone?” Douglas asked, approaching the open door and looking out into the basement.

Carolyn came up beside him. “I believe he is.”

Douglas turned to her. “Then is it over?”

She looked up at him. “It’s over,” she said. “We showed that we were stronger than the evil force of this room.”

The shaft of sunlight suddenly flooded the room.

They heard a creak. They braced themselves.

But the figure that now appeared in the doorway was only Howard Young.

“Praise God!” he shouted. “Praise God! The curse is over! It is over! Praise God!”

“What I surmise,” Carolyn said, bringing her coffee to her lips with trembling hands, “is that Clem was being controlled by a force that made him do these things, and that once he was confronted with a greater force, he was finally free to rebel against it and find peace for himself.”

“And that greater force was the love between you and Douglas,” Paula said, near tears. “That’s so beautiful.”

“Remember that Beatrice was freed from that room ten years ago by Kip,” Carolyn added. “I believe that she exerted her own power to help free Clem, and therefore, save us. Before that, trapped in that room as he was, she was powerless to do anything. But now she could act.”

“Then perhaps I owe Dr. Hobart more gratitude than I showed a decade ago,” Mr. Young said.

He was seated again at the head of the table. Douglas and Carolyn were on one side, Paula and Dean and Linda on the other. They had been up all night, waiting and hoping. The children were asleep, and Philip and Ryan and Chelsea had retired in shame to their rooms. But Mr. Young had given them strict orders not to leave the house until this morning. He planned to speak to them about their treason and to make a decision about their place in their will.

“But what of the power that controlled that room?” Dean asked. “We still don’t know what it was.”

“Nor might we ever,” Douglas said.

“But how can we be sure it’s gone?” Paula asked. “Defeated?”

“They survived, didn’t they?” Howard Young barked impatiently. “They have broken the long chain of deaths. We did what the lottery demanded. We drew a name and sent one of our own in there. And he lived.”

“And the baby?” Dean asked.

“What about the baby?” Carolyn asked.

“Is it free, too?”

She paused.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

And suddenly the terror returned. The relief that had flooded through her body with the coming if the sun was replaced by a cold fear-the same that had gripped her in New York.

She turned all at once then and looked out the French doors onto the terrace.

Standing there, staring in at her, was David Cooke. His eyes were wild. The scar on his face seemed to be pulsing.

Carolyn screamed.

“What is it?” Douglas shouted, standing.

“Outside, on the terrace,” Carolyn gasped.

He bolted out the French doors, looked around, then came back inside.

“There’s nobody there,” he reported. “What did you think you saw?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said.

Howard Young stood. “You’re just jittery from the night in that room. It’s understandable. You just need to rest.”

He hobbled out of the room.

Paula reached over and covered Carolyn’s hand with her own. “What was it, Carolyn?”

“Perhaps…just my imagination,” she said. “It has to be my imagination.”

Paula looked from her to Douglas. “Is it really over? Or is there still more?”

“It’s got to be over,” Douglas said.

“Yes,” Carolyn echoed. “It’s got to be over.”

But she knew now it was not.

Philip had had enough. He was getting out of the house. Will or no will, family fortune or not, he had taken all he could from Uncle Howard.

Throwing his clothes into a suitcase, he was planning to walk downstairs and tell the old man that he was heading home. “Go ahead and disinherit me,” Philip grumbled, slamming the suitcase shut. “But I will no longer be treated like an errant schoolboy.”

The embarrassment of last night still rankled. To be treated like a common criminal by his low-class relations. He couldn’t get over the contempt he’d seen in Paula’s eyes. “The goddamn dyke,” he spit. “How dare she look at me that way?”

From the shouts of joy he’d heard from downstairs a short while ago, Philip surmised that Douglas had survived the night in that room. Perhaps the curse was finally over. Perhaps Uncle Howard would be in a forgiving mood. But no matter how he might find his uncle, Philip was tired of waiting in his room like a child being punished. He would not tolerate being treated this way.

He hadn’t slept a wink, of course. He had consoled Chelsea and Ryan, who shared their father’s humiliation. He told them they’d find some way to stay in the will. He wasn’t sure he believed it himself, but it was the only way to shut them up and get them to go to bed. He thought about tapping on their doors to tell them he was leaving, but decided against it. He couldn’t take any more histrionics. They could fend for themselves.

He glanced around the room one more time to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. Satisfied, he clutched his suitcase with one hand and opened the door of his room with the other.

And he let out a small sound of surprise when he saw a man was standing in the doorframe, blocking his way.

A servant, he thought at first, before remembering that Uncle Howard had given the servants the day off, not knowing what would be found in that room this morning.

“Excuse me,” Philip said loudly, officiously.