Grave Intent (30 page)

Just when he thought he had no other choice
but to drive back to the U-Pack-It, Michael spotted headlights
bearing down on him from the south. He ran out into the middle of
the road and began to wave his arms out wide. This driver wasn’t
getting away.

The lights drew closer—closer still, and for
one dreaded moment, Michael feared the vehicle wouldn’t stop, and
he’d have to jump to safety. He braced himself, tensing the muscles
in his legs like a sprinter awaiting a starter gun.

But the white Acura did slow and eventually
stopped alongside him.

The tinted driver’s window lowered a couple
of inches, and a man’s voice called from inside, “Hey, you’re going
to get yourself killed standing out here—whoa, what happened over
there?”

“Accident,” Michael said. “There’s a woman
down there, and from the looks of it, she’s hurt pretty bad. ”

The window lowered more, finally revealing
the driver, who was a dark-skinned man with a bulbous nose and
pointed chin. He frowned behind thick, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Ambulance on the way?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” Michael said. “I just
found her. My cell phone—”

“Yeah, I know,” the man said. “Doesn’t work.
No service area. Mine’s useless, too. But look, I can run back to
Dulac for help.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s only
about six, seven miles back that way, shouldn’t take me long. Oh,
wait . . . here—” He leaned over, dug through the glove
compartment, and pulled out a flashlight. “You need this?”

Michael took the flashlight from him.
“Thanks.”

The stranger gave him a dismissive wave. “No
need,” he said, already backing into a U-turn. “Be back as quick as
I can.”

Once the Acura sped away heading north,
Michael turned the flashlight on and hurried back down the side of
the curve.

The rain had slowed to occasional drips,
drips he heard patter against his tented jacket when he reached the
injured woman. He bent down, lifted a corner of the jacket, and
fixed the halogen beam near the side of her head so as not to blind
her. Her eyes were still open, barely, and dull green irises
shifted in his direction.

“Help’s on the way,” Michael said softly. He
wanted to add, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” but couldn’t. The
truth was she didn’t look like she’d be fine at all. A thicker
stream of blood flowed from her right ear, and when he moved the
light closer to her face, her right pupil dilated but the left one
remained wide and fixed.

She blinked slowly and whispered, “D-Don’t.
Can’t . . .don’t—” Her eyes widened suddenly, and she began to
swallow rapidly as if she’d been given a river to drink.

“Jesus,” Michael breathed, unsure of what to
do. Injuries or not, he couldn’t just sit here and watch her die.
He reached down, cradled the back of her head with a hand, and
lifted slightly, gently.

The woman’s spasms calmed immediately, and
her eyes slowly centered back on him. Her lips parted, and Michael
shook his head.

“No, don’t talk,” he said. “Just lie still.
They’ll be here soon.”

Small, bloody bubbles flowed from one corner
of her mouth, and she lifted a wobbly right hand. “C-can’t stay.
Y-you have . . .have t-to—”

“Please, lady, don’t talk.” Michael knelt on
one knee to relieve the cramp building in his thigh. He paid little
attention to the water soaking into his pants. “You won’t have to
stay here. Help’s coming, I promise.”

Her head shook ever so slightly in his hand.
“N-not me. You c-can’t stay. Sun c-coming s-s-soon.”

At the mention of the sun, Michael’s hand
tightened involuntarily around the back of her head.
No, not
sun
, he thought.
I heard wrong. Can’t be sun. She meant
some,
right?
Some
like in
some
body’s coming
soon
.

The woman groaned and closed her eyes. When
she opened them again, Michael nearly dropped back in alarm. Her
eyes were no longer green, but the darkest shade of brown, nearly
black. They seemed larger now, rounder, and clearly focused. She
licked the blood from her lips.

“You cannot stay here, Michael Savoy,” she
said, her words strong and accented. The voice belonged to Anna
Stevenson. Shocked into silence, Michael began to shiver
uncontrollably as she continued, “The time allowed for restitution
is nearly over. Their vengeance grows stronger. Your daughter is an
innocent, but there is little more I can do to protect her. It must
be returned. You must hurry.”

A gurgling sound rose from the woman’s
throat, and she blinked, swallowed, blinked again. Her eyes began
to change. They faded from dark brown to copper to the color of
wheat to their original green. She gave Michael a long, sorrowful
look, then released one final gasp. Her eyes opened wide in
surprise, then locked onto nothing, and Michael felt the weight of
death in his hand, and most of all—in his heart.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hell was not a place of fire and brimstone
and long-horned, red-faced monsters that sucked on human souls. It
was a place made up of fog so thick you could stretch out your arm
and not see your hand. It was blindness and a missing daughter and
a profound sense of utter uselessness. The kicker for Janet was the
realization that she didn’t have to die to get there. She already
stood in its innermost sanctuary. Its silent sanctuary. The
whirring noises had stopped.

“Ellie!” she cried. She gripped the back of
Heather’s shirt with one hand and groped blindly around with the
other. How could her daughter possibly be gone? Only moments before
she’d had her hand solidly locked around Ellie’s wrist. So tight in
fact, the child would’ve had to yank herself free, and there’s no
way she would have missed that.

Janet strained to hear movement, anything
that would give her direction to Ellie. All she heard was her own
voice echoing back and her niece’s sobs.

“Ellie, answer me!”

Heather howled. “I want my mama!” Her body
shook hard under Janet’s grasp. “I wanna go home!”

Janet knelt and pulled Heather close. The
child’s hands felt like ice. “Shh,” she whispered into Heather’s
hair. It took everything she had to hold her own tears in check.
“Just listen. Help me listen.” They huddled together for a moment,
and Janet prayed for any sound other than their breathing. Her
injured knee throbbed against the floor.

“I didn’t let go,” Heather whimpered. “I
promise, I didn’t let go.”

“Shh, honey. We’ll find her.” Janet breathed
in sharply and caught Heather’s soft, innocent scent. Her tears
surrendered to the smell and spilled over her face. She kissed the
top of Heather’s head, then wiped her cheeks with a forearm.

Heather clutched her aunt’s arm. Her dark
eyes seemed to consume over half her face. “Please,” she begged,
her voice soft, “don’t lose me, too.”

Janet squeezed her hand. “No way, kiddo. No
way.” She looked around for a break in the white mass. It was like
looking through the window of an airplane suspended in the belly of
a cloud. Bright white surrounded them, impenetrable to the eye,
intangible to the touch. She waved a hand through it, but instead
of parting with the movement, the fog simply swallowed her limb.
She snatched her hand back. “Ellie!”

When there was still no answer, Janet
examined her clothing for something to tether Heather to her. Her
pants were linen pull-ups with no belt, her blouse square cut and
not long enough to tie around the both of them. She stooped down
and inspected Heather. The first thing to catch her eye was the
child’s high-top sneakers. The extra height of the sneakers meant
longer laces, which would serve as a perfect tether. Janet quickly
untied the right sneaker and pulled the lace out of the
eyelets.

“You—you wanna wear my shoes?” Heather asked,
sniveling.

“No, honey.” Janet tied one end of the
shoelace around Heather’s right wrist. “I just want to make sure
you’re next to me all the time.” Tying the other end of the lace to
her own left wrist, Janet yanked against the tether. “See?”

Heather nodded, her face awash with worry.
“But what if it undoes?”

“It won’t.” Janet tucked the girl’s hand into
hers. “Besides, you’ll be holding my hand. This is just in case you
let go by accident.”

Squeezing her hand, Heather shook her head
rapidly. “I’m—I’m not gonna let go.”

Janet gave her a weak smile, then stood and
took a moment to collect her bearings. She knew the master bedroom
was straight ahead and to her left, Ellie’s room. The hall lay
behind her, and somewhere down that hall on the right was the
bathroom. Ellie could be in any of those places or in none of them.
Janet gritted her teeth, wishing more than anything that she could
divide her body into ten so she could search everywhere at
once.

Anxious over the time she’d already spent
debating about where to search first, Janet tugged Heather to her
side, stretched out her free hand, then limped forward. Barely ten
feet ahead, Janet felt the door of her bedroom. Her fingers traced
the smooth surface until she felt the doorknob. She twisted it,
then cautiously pushed open the door.

As Janet entered the room, the air
surrounding her went from stark white to gray. Before her eyes
could adjust enough to distinguish the shadows of the bed and
dresser, the white veil whirled about her and wiped everything from
sight.

“Oh, Jesus,” Janet whispered. She held out
her hand again and took a tentative step. “Ellie? Answer me,
please, baby. If you’re in here, make some kind of noise so I can
find you.”

Heather wrapped an arm around her aunt’s leg
and whimpered.

Slowly, cautiously, Janet moved forward. If
Ellie was lost in this stuff, she’d be scared and probably hiding.
Under the bed possibly, or in the closet.

Suddenly, something dark and weighty scurried
over the top of Janet’s foot. She clamped a hand over her mouth to
smother a shriek as she caught sight of a long, thin tail slipping
off into the mist. Heather, evidently seeing the same, screamed and
dug her fingers into Janet’s leg.

Terror drove icicles through Janet’s body,
and she trembled, still feeling the weight of whatever had crawled
over her.She stomped her foot to chase the feeling away, and pain
jabbed through her knee. Ignoring it, she plunged ahead.

“Ellie Marie Savoy! Answer me!”

A snicker sounded to her left, paralyzing
Janet. She listened until it pressed through the mist again, this
time harsh and sarcastic. The voice sounded old and croupy, and
Janet couldn’t make out if it was male or female.

“Ellie?”

No one answered, and nothing moved except for
Heather, who buried her face against Janet’s leg.

Janet leaned over to untangle herself from
her niece.

“No!” Heather cried.

“Just hold on,” Janet demanded, and clutched
Heather’s hand tighter. She swung her free hand wildly out in front
of her and stumbled in the direction she thought the snickers came
from.

Soon, Janet touched a wall, and if her
calculations were right, the closet was only a few feet away. She
kept one eye on the top of Heather’s head as she felt her way
along.

When Janet’s fingers tripped over a
doorframe, she walked them around it, expecting the closet door.
Her hand plunged into empty space, however, and she sucked in a
breath. She was sure she hadn’t left the closet door open.

Forcing her hand inside, Janet felt cloth
flutter across her fingertips and heard the scratch of hangers
against the metal rod stretched across the closet. She knelt and
bit her lip against the sharp pain in her knee. Her hand darted
into the white air but touched nothing, so she crawled forward a
few inches, inadvertently pulling Heather along.

“I don’t wanna go,” Heather whimpered, and
sat. She sawed her legs up and down fiercely, working herself back
until half her body disappeared into the fog.

Janet jerked on the tether, and the end tied
to her wrist came free. “Stop!” She cried out in pain as she spun
about on her knees and dove for Heather. By now the only thing
visible of the child was her feet, and both were sneakerless and
disappearing fast. Janet latched onto Heather’s ankles, and the
girl kicked frantically. Her niece’s screams vibrated through the
mist.

“Let me go!”

“It’s me!” Janet shouted. She held tighter to
the flailing feet. “I’ve got you. Stop fighting or I’ll lose you,
Heather. Do you hear me? I’ll lose you!”

The struggle stopped immediately, and Janet
quickly pulled. Heather’s legs came into view, then her body. The
tear-stained face that followed was silent and shrouded by a mass
of tangled black hair.

“Don’t—don’t do that again!” Janet sobbed.
“How could I look for you both? How?”

Heather blinked back at her, and Janet
lowered her head and cried harder. Feelings of helplessness and
unmitigated loss threatened to crush her. How would she ever find
her child this way? She couldn’t see a foot ahead of her, and
Heather fighting every step only slowed her progress more. What if
Ellie wasn’t even up here? What if she’d managed to get downstairs?
At this pace, and under these conditions, it would take hours to
search the house. And sweet mother of God, anything could happen to
Ellie by then.

With quiet resolve, Janet wiped her nose and
eyes with the bottom of her blouse. She
would
find Ellie, no
matter how long it took.
Just
please,
she begged
silently,
don’t let it be too late.

Janet sat Heather up, pushed the hair from
her face, then reattached the shoelace to her wrist. This time she
made a double knot and triple checked the end connected to the
child. Confident the knot was secure; she clutched her niece’s
arms. “Stay right next to me, okay?”