Addie nearly screamed when the woman came out behind him with what appeared to be a large sword in her hands. When the woman grabbed the man’s hair, Addie thought for sure that she was seeing if he was all right, but soon saw that she was wrong. His head was removed almost as soon as the woman got to him, and it tumbled across the yard to land looking up at her. Addie scrambled away from the window so quickly that she nearly fell off the short ledge.
Her heart was pounding so hard that she was sure that anyone going by the big barn could have heard it. When the door to the barn squeaked open, Addie moved with the utmost care. There was nowhere to hide up here, so she covered herself with the hay, hoping and praying that the woman wasn’t coming to find her as well.
“Hello?” Addie whimpered a little but didn’t move. The woman had seen her; that was all her mind could focus on right now. “Where are you? I know that you’re in here. I could smell you all over the house. It never occurred to me that you’d still be around, but here you are.”
Addie covered her mouth and nose with her shirt and closed her eyes as she tossed the hay over her. The creaking of the door didn’t fool her one bit. The woman was still in here with her. Addie decided that she’d lay here for days before she gave in and moved, if that was all it took to keep her alive.
The ladder was being used. The sound of it scraping the edge of the loft, where she was, gave her reason to believe that she’d be dead within minutes. Her family—well, her grandmother—would never know what had happened to her. Joel would be madder still at her. A small giggle started to bubble up from her belly, and she only just managed to stifle it when the hay near her head moved.
“Did you see my handiwork?” The voice was very close to her, but Addie didn’t move. “I killed Peter too. What a douche bag. Both of them really. They were going to find me out with their machines, and I just couldn’t have that. I have a great deal of work yet I want to do. Well, not so much work, but playing. I so love to play.”
A slicing sound had Addie holding her breath tighter within her. While she had no idea what it was, she knew as surely as she lay there that it would not bode well for her. As the noise echoed again, Addie knew what it was the moment that the pain in her arm caused her to be terrified. Not that she wasn’t already. But the woman was slicing the knife into the hay around her, looking, no doubt, for her or anyone that was hiding up here.
“You never know about people, I guess. Here I thought that I was the only one that knew about this place, and then these assholes put an ad in the paper asking for an assistant. I applied—they told me that I was the only one really, but I had to see if they could do it. Never in a million years did I think that they would. But they thought they could, and who knew? They were able to record ghosts on their little machines.” The noise was closer to her body now. Addie knew that something had cut her, and hoped that her blood wouldn’t give her away. “I guess we’ll never know now if what they found was just squiggly lines or a ghost that I had made the last time I was here. I got…I guess I got a little greedy in my need to draw more blood.”
This time the pain centered in her right side. The pain was so great that Addie screamed silently behind her hand. Whatever the woman had stabbed into her, Addie knew that this time it was deep. In her pain, she thought of the man at the cemetery.
Oh, how I wish you were here now, Nicholas. The connection to him was profound. And even if she didn’t actually know him, she felt comforted by him touching her mind. I’m going to die this time, and without you being a part of it.
Where are you? Smiling, the woman still talking above her, Addie told him that she had no idea but that she was in a barn. What state? Do you know the city?
After telling him what she could remember, he told her to wait for him. Yeah, well, I have nowhere to go, so that isn’t going to be hard. Will you contact my grandmother?
What’s her name? Addie didn’t think she told him, just thought of the grief her grandmother would feel when she was dead. I’ll contact her. Who else? Anyone else that I need to notify for you?
No. No one cares. But you can’t tell Joel, Joel Delaney, about me. He’s a monster of the worst kind. The woman said something, and Addie wanted to ask her what she’d said. Then as she moved by her, her foot stepping between her legs like she knew she was there, Addie talked to the man of her dreams. I’m going to die. This woman was here with two men and she killed them. I don’t know her name, but they were here to film ghosts of the dead. There are no such things as ghosts, and now because they’re stupid, I’m going to die.
You’re not going to die, and there are ghosts. I’m coming, Addie. I’ll be there soon. Just hang on for me. She told him she would try. Just hang on for me.
~~~