Flinging himself away from the desk, he dove toward the kitchen and heard the air split behind him. He waited for the sting of the blade in his back, but felt nothing as he slipped on a rug near the fridge and almost fell. His mind raced to find a way out. Lance stopped midway through the kitchen, looking first to his right and then to his left as he searched for movement. The smell of gasoline permeated the air and he blinked away the stinging in his eyes. For a moment he considered reaching down and plucking the lighter from John’s hand. He could set the place ablaze and burn the evil that lived within its walls. But would it stop when there was nothing but a smoking pile left? Would he awake somewhere else to see Erwin’s face inches from his and the cold smile of a knife-edge at his throat? No, fire wasn’t the answer.
Lance backed up a step while still scanning the two doorways, and felt his heel touch something on the floor behind him. The ax lay in the shadows of the counters, its head obscured beneath the foot space in the cabinets. Without thinking, he reached down and grabbed the weapon, hoisting it over his shoulder. The handle felt slippery with blood and gas, and he tried to dry his hands on his shirt for a better grip.
A dawning realization flooded his stomach with ice water—Erwin had gone upstairs after Mary. Any moment now he would hear her garbled scream and then a terrible heavy silence. The thought nearly made him bolt from the room, but then he saw the point of a blade slide into view above John’s body.
The ax weighed a thousand pounds as he drew it high over his head and sidled toward the doorway. The ghost edged into the opening and stepped onto John’s corpse. More congealed blood flowed from the wound in the caretaker’s neck, and it was this, more than anything, that fueled the rage that brought the ax down in a perfect arc toward Erwin’s grinning face.
The bit of the ax buried itself in the ghost’s forehead with a wet chunking sound that reminded Lance of a melon splitting open. The steel didn’t quit moving until it had cleaved Erwin’s head completely in two. His head hung open like a splayed phone book, an eye blinking rapidly on either side of the yawning canyon between them, shattered teeth scraping against the ax with a high, squeaking sound.
Lance released his hold on the handle and watched the ghost reel backward. The knife in its right hand clattered to the floor, and it grasped the ax handle and began to work it back and forth in a seesaw motion. Lance didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He ran back the way he came, slamming into the doorjamb with his shoulder and continuing on into the living room without breaking his stride.
The floor quaked beneath his feet and he fell against his writing desk. The storm still raged and the lake was even closer, but what he saw as he looked out the atrium window didn’t make sense and it sent a wave of sickening vertigo flowing through him.
An abyss sat just in front of the house. The churning water groped continuously at the few feet of ground that remained before the foundation, but everything beyond that dropped away and made him feel as if he were leaning over the balcony of a high building. The water went down into an utter blackness that looked complete. The sight was better suited to a plunging ocean trench than a freshwater lake, but what he saw was undeniable. The gazebo was completely gone, although Lance spotted a few boards floating in the undulating currents. The rest of the bay was also being consumed, its rocky border crumbling away beneath the insistence of the clawing liquid. There were shapes in the water too. Dark and indistinct, but they were moving incongruently with the throes of the storm.
A loud thud issued from behind him and broke the trance he had succumbed to. He turned his head just in time to see Erwin stoop down to retrieve the fallen knife. The ghost turned toward him, its features no longer split in half, its skull whole once again.
“Better than that. You’ll have to do better than that,” Erwin said, as he stalked toward the alcove.
Lance sprinted away from the desk, toward the stairs, and looked up. Mary stood on the landing, her hands clenched around the railing. Her eyes were saucers in the faint light.
“My room! Go!” He yelled, pointing as he leapt up the stairs.