Late at Night (33 page)

Ernie searched inside his mind and tried to find a reasonable explanation for all that had happened, still not wanting to fully admit that the impossible was possible, the unreal real. But there was no such explanation. Trees did not topple out of nowhere for no reason. There hadn’t even been any wind in the clearing, nothing. Trees did not topple and kill a person only a short while after that person read about his being killed by falling trees in a novel!

Everything was true. Everything had to be true. Lynn’s story. Andrea’s story. Everything
true.

All the others were dead except Hans, Mrs. Plushing, and Betty, as far as he knew. Also Lynn and Andrea.

Anton had not been the necromancer, that much was certain. And if it wasn’t him …

Andrea was in the same house with the necromancer.

Ernie knew he
had
to get that book.

He ran across the field, his heart beating like a trip hammer. What was going to happen to him? he wondered. Surely the necromancer wouldn’t make it so easy? Would lightning soar down from the sky, scorching him to a crisp? Would the earth open up and swallow him? Would birds swoop down from the heavens and peck him to pieces?
Stop it!
he told himself.
It won’t do any good to think that way. Just get into that house and get that book.

The front door was only a few yards away.
Hurry. Hurry.

He felt like he was a character in one of those movies where the Anti-Christ came to earth in human form and killed off everyone in his way. He didn’t believe in Anti-Christs, and until a while ago hadn’t believed that any of this could happen. But Andrea had told him to think of it all in scientific terms. This necromancer had access to a science so advanced it seemed like sorcery.

The power of his mind could tap the energy of emotions and events that had happened years ago on this very island. And that energy could kill.

What did the necromancer have in store for him? Ernie wondered.

He was at the front door. He pulled it open. It did not resist as he had expected it to. Was the necromancer’s attention somewhere else? Was Andrea going to die next? No! He must not let that happen!

The library. Get to the library.

He turned right, found himself in the room he and Andrea had entered earlier in the day. The room of dusty books, volumes of history and literature that would fall apart if handled too brusquely.

He could hear Andrea’s voice. “The middle bookshelf against the wall with the windows has a cabinet below. Open the cabinet. The book will be inside on the shelf.” For a moment he swore he could actually hear her, that she was communicating with him psychically, that she was
with him.
And he felt less lonely, less frightened. Andrea would protect him. She wouldn’t let him down.

The middle bookshelf against the wall with the windows. There. The upper shelves were nearly empty; he had looked this one over before. Ernie bent down to the cabinet below the shelves. He took a deep breath, opened the door. Nothing jumped out. Nothing happened. There were no snakes or lizards or monsters inside.

Only a paperback novel entitled
Late at Night.

At last. He picked it up. It was the same book all right.

He resisted the impulse to put the book in his pocket and run all the way back to the guest house. He had to see, he had to
know
all the answers right now. He opened the book, flipped towards the back, looking for his name, “Andrew Tennington,” looking for Andrea’s counterpart, too. He had to make sure they would survive.

He had to know the name of the necromancer.

Wait a minute. This was it.

He read:
Andrew was bending down in front of the cabinet thumbing through the book when he heard a footstep.

Just then, Ernie heard a footstep. Someone was in the room with him.

Something was walking across the room from the hall, sneaking up behind him.

Something
was
walking across the room from the hall, sneaking up behind him.

“It’s really happening!” Andrew thought.

It’s really happening, Ernie thought. He could not move, could not turn around. He was frozen by fear.

“My God!”

“My God!”

Up on the wall above Andrew’s head, there was the shadow of an axe.

Ernie looked up from the book. The outline of an axe was on the wall above his head, lifting, lifting. Almost fatalistically, resignedly, he looked back at the printed page and read:

And the axe came down and with one fell swoop sliced Andrew’s head from his shoulders.

Ernie’s head flew through the air, rolling across the tattered green rug in the library and coming to a stop against a small brown table in the far corner of the room.

Betty Sanders dropped the red dripping axe on the floor, and waited for her one, her only, true antagonist to arrive.

Chapter 54

Lynn Overman had stepped out of her room a few minutes ago and had seen Andrea standing in the hallway, transfixed, her mind concentrating on something far, far away. Lynn had not disturbed her. But now, a look of shock and anger and disbelief had broken out on Andrea’s face. Lynn went over to her, reached out a tentative hand. “What is it, Andrea? What’s happened?”

Andrea put her hands over her lips. Her eyes were flooding, overflowing, thick streams of tears ran down over her face.

“Anton was killed a while ago,” she whispered. “And I forged a psychic link with Ernie, to make sure he was going to be safe. But he’s been murdered. I just felt it. Ernie’s dead. Oh God-now Ernie’s dead, too.”

She lifted up her hands, made fists, and began to pummel Lynn all over—hitting her in the face, on the arms, the shoulders. Lynn began to scream, tried to pull away. “Andrea!
Stop!
Why are you doing this? Leave me alone!”

“It was you.
All your fault.
If you hadn’t fooled around with that terrible spell—none of this would have happened. But no—like a petulant child with a new toy you had to abuse your power, not caring what disaster you might cause. I hate you. I HATE YOU.”

Lynn was crying also, stunned by her old friend’s outrage and accusals. “I didn’t mean any harm, Andrea. Please leave me alone.”

Out of breath, trembling, Andrea stopped her assault, and let the tears overwhelm her. “Dead. That good, decent man is dead. And oh God, I felt it. I felt it.”

“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t touch him.”

“I know you didn’t.” She stood still for a moment, trying to bring her rage, her desolation, under control. “The killer, the necromancer, is at the old house. She’s waiting for me. She’s finally dropped her guard, let me see her face.”

“Who is it?”

“Betty.”

“Betty!

“Yes, it seems you weren’t the only one who’s been practicing up in the dark arts all these years since graduation.”

“I mentioned my interests to Betty once,” Lynn said tonelessly. “But she said the whole business was too scary for her to want to get involved in.”

“Obviously Betty overcame her fear, and kept it to herself, more so than you did. You gave her the idea; she took off with it in her own fashion. I think she thought she might find a way to get back at everyone who laughed at her, who used her, who failed to return her love and affection. Well, she’s going to learn that there
is
a price for everything. Just like you did.” Andrea began walking towards the staircase, a determined, infuriated look on her face. She would mourn Ernest Thesinger later.

Now … now she would avenge him.

“Don’t go,” Lynn called after her. “Don’t leave me alone. I’m frightened.”

The only answer Lynn received was the sight of Andrea’s shoulders receding step by step down the staircase.

Chapter 55

Andrea moved across the threshold into the old house. She was surrounded by darkness and despair. There was no sight of her adversary—yet. The air in the house was cold tonight, ice cold, not hot as it had been this afternoon, yet Andrea still felt as if she were stifling. She had been wrong that the final battle would take place in the guest house, fatally wrong. In spite of that, she felt strangely calm, confident, as if she had been waiting for this day her entire life, waiting for something to test the limits and the range of her powers. It was as if she had sent a doppelganger forth to do battle, while she herself waited at home for the outcome, seeing and feeling through the duplicate’s eyes, but not really being there.

There was no way she could have avoided this confrontation. If she had not gone to Betty, Betty would have come to her. Perhaps not physically; perhaps she would have sent something in her stead, some pleasant little nightmare meant to bend Andrea’s mind in shapes and configurations no human brain was ever meant to go in. Andrea did not need to be near Betty to fight her either, but she wanted it that way. It would be easier—no, it would be more satisfying —if Andrea could see the look on Betty’s face.

Andrea stepped into the library where she knew her foe was waiting. She braced herself. She was sure Betty would have placed Ernie’s remains where she could see them—the first strike in their emerging war, a bold psychological blow that might cripple Andrea emotionally and therefore completely, before the battle had even begun.

But no. There was nothing there. Ernie had been moved. Andrea gave silent thanks to whatever gods were listening.

Betty stepped out of the shadows.

“Hello, Andrea.”

Andrea stood facing her, about ten feet away. “Why did you do it, Betty?”

Betty didn’t answer. Instead she lifted her hand.

“I could see Anton, after what he did to you, what he said to you. I could understand your hating him, although I can’t approve of what you did. But why Ernie?” She felt the tears welling up again, fought successfully to control them. “Why the others? What did they ever do to you?”

The hand was changing, growing, evolving. It was no longer human.

Andrea stepped back, appalled by what she was seeing, yet somehow relieved.

Betty’s form was transmuting into something else. A creature with claws and teeth, with crusty dark flesh and deep red eyes.

Andrea had been warned at the very beginning, been warned by her teachers in the psychic field. “Beware of travelers in the nether regions. Not all of them are human.” Call them devils, call them demons, Andrea knew that many believed in the existence of other lifeforms on what humans referred to as the astral plane, that higher level into which souls were said to ascend, in which intangible shapes and forms could float about unbridled by earthly constrictions. She was looking at someone, something, that also traveled through the endless space of the nether world. Another being, a non-human creature from an alternate dimension.

At least she wanted to believe that’s what had happened. Wanted to believe that Betty was still the same sweet innocent that she had always been, but that she had been possessed, taken over, by something far more powerful and experienced that she, something giving vent to her hurts and frustrations, someone who got revenge whereas Betty would only have whimpered. Perhaps Betty was not even aware that she had picked up this unholy traveler. Andrea could hear herself explaining it to Ernie, knowing he preferred good, rational, scientific explanations to supernatural balderdash.

“It’s another lifeform,
not
a devil,
not
a demon. A lifeform that lives on planes normally closed to the human species. Betty tapped into that plane, drew the creature out, sucked it into her. Perhaps she knew what she was doing and did it willingly, providing a host body for this parasite if it gave her the power she was craving. Perhaps Betty is culpable for all that has transpired. Perhaps not. Perhaps part of her knows part of the time, yet does nothing. Perhaps she doesn’t really care. I guess we’ll never really know for sure.”

She could see Ernie’s perplexed expression, see him nodding, trying to understand.

Ernie.

Andrea was renewed with the onrush of anger as if a thousand quarts of adrenaline had been pumped into her system. This terrible creature would pay for what it had done to them, to Ernie, to Betty perhaps. It would pay.

It stood there in the dark, glistening, emitting a putrid fragrance. The limbs were scaly, the back slightly hunched. It opened its mouth and snarled. It still had Betty’s face—though now it was grotesque, inhuman—and it began to step closer, closer to Andrea, its long-clawed hands outstretched.

This was how Betty had gotten around so quickly, gotten out of her room by the window, dragged those heavy bodies around. The creature was huge, muscular, strong. It could tear Andrea apart with very little effort.

Andrea knew if she was to defeat it it would have to be on a psychic level.

She held back.

What if Betty, the real Betty, was still in there somewhere, guilty only of having fooled with forces beyond her understanding, as Lynn had done? If Andrea destroyed the creature, she might also destroy her friend. Somehow she had to send the thing back where it came from without hurting its host.

But then she heard a voice in her mind and knew that it no longer mattered. She heard Betty’s voice, the real, true Betty, and what the woman said was enough to chill her down to the bone.

“I know what you’re thinking. But this is
me,
Andrea. Betty Sanders. I know what I’m doing and have known all along. I tried to keep my actions as the necromancer separate from my everyday existence, as if they were dreams only, not real occurrences. I didn’t want to admit to myself what I was capable of doing. For awhile it was as if I had a split personality. But, Andrea, deep down I always knew what my evil side did— and I did nothing to prevent it.”

Betty was not the innocent victim. The other-dimensional creature was. It had been called forth, enslaved by Betty, forced to a subliminal existence until Betty summoned it forth to do her bidding, to add its power to her own. Betty was really the one and only necromancer.