She looked back at the figure coming for her, more quickly now. Weaving between the tombs. Past the statues of saints and angels and cherubs.
She started to run, but he was almost on her as she ran, blinded by the mist and the deepening darkness.
He reached for her, and she screamed, feeling the strands of hair ripping from her head as she somehow managed to escape. With no idea where to turn, she raced into the Flynn mausoleum and tried to slam and bolt the heavy iron door. It was almost closed, and she desperately threw her weight against it.
And then she realized she wasn’t alone.
Henry was with her. Henry, futilely attempting to throw his ghostly weight into the fray. She drew strength from him, but a crack remained, and her pursuer shoved a hand through and sprayed something at her. She staggered back and fell, the world spinning, no matter how hard she fought against the sensation.
Without her weight to hold it shut, the door opened, and Kendall backed away in terror, stumbling toward the altar, because there was nowhere else to go. Henry was gesturing frantically for her to keep away from the altar, but she had no choice, so she kept backing away, fighting the darkness that threatened to overwhelm her, as the hooded figure with the knife loomed ever closer.
She circled the marble altar, fighting desperately to stay conscious, to stay on her feet.
Her pursuer reached her, and she knew she was about to be stabbed.
But she wasn’t.
She was pushed.
And then she knew why Henry had tried to warn her away.
The floor behind her gave way with a loud scraping sound, and suddenly she was falling…
Falling, and landing hard in the sodden secret crypt that lay below the mausoleum. There was just enough light filtering down that she could make out the tombs, some single, some stacked, and some deep within the earth, just rotting coffins.
There was water on the floor, inches deep and seeming to flow around her.
Her eyes adjusted until she could see clearly, and a terrified scream escaped her lips as Sheila’s rotting, bloated head bobbed by in front of her.
The killer jumped down beside her then, and the soft laughter she heard was all too real.
As was the figure so very close to her now, wielding its deadly knife.
Aidan tried Kendall’s cell. No answer.
He tried the store, and Mason picked up. “Mason, it’s Aidan. I have to talk to Kendall right away.”
“She’s not here—try her cell.”
“I just did. She didn’t answer.”
“Try Vinnie. He’s with her.”
“With her where?”
“They were taking some stuff out to the plantation.”
“Shit!”
Aidan didn’t say goodbye. He sped past a Mazda on the highway as he dialed Vinnie’s number. No answer.
He hesitated briefly, praying that his instincts were right, and called Hal. Hal couldn’t be out at the plantation, because Aidan had just left him in his office.
It took him long seconds to be put through.
“Flynn, you’re really starting to get on my nerves,” Hal said.
“Hal, get some patrol cars out to my place now. Please.”
“What the hell is going on?”
I don’t know. But something is. A ghost just told me so.
“Just get them out there. There’s an intruder on the grounds, and I can’t find Kendall.”
“All right, all right,” Hal said, and hung up, but Aidan knew the man would do as he said.
He sped down the road to the house and jerked to a stop in the driveway, right behind Kendall’s car. She wasn’t in it, and neither was Vinnie.
He raced into the cemetery, pulling out his laser light. The fog was so thick that he couldn’t even see the lowlying markers.
“Kendall!” he shouted her name, then paused to listen for a response. That was when he heard a groan and, with renewed hope, tracked his light around the cemetery.
A cherub seemed to stare back at him, mournful and weeping. A trick of the light.
An angel looked despairingly toward heaven as Aidan searched desperately through the dense fog. Suddenly he spotted a black mass lying on one of the graves. He squatted down and touched it, and it groaned again.
Vinnie.
“Vinnie, what’s going on?” he demanded frantically. “Where’s Kendall?”
But Vinnie’s eyes didn’t open. There was a huge gash on his head, trickling blood.
Aidan stood, pulling out his phone again. He dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance, trying to maintain enough calm to explain the situation while searching frantically for any sign of Kendall.
The cemetery was empty.
“Mr. Flynn?”
The tentative, terrified voice was real. He trained his light in the direction of the voice and saw Jimmy, shaking like a tree in winter, standing there.
“It’s the ghosts, Mr. Flynn. It’s the bad ghosts!”
“Where are they, Jimmy? Help me. Where are they?”
Jimmy pointed, but it was unnecessary.
Because she was back. The woman in white. And she was standing by the family mausoleum, beckoning to him. But she wasn’t alone. Two men stood with her, one in a uniform of butternut and gray, one in deep blue, and all three of them were urging him to hurry.
He hurried.