The dead were no longer walking past him, with him.
They were strewn in front of him, like dolls. Dolls torn apart by a maniacal child, a head tossed one way, an arm, another. But the detached heads had eyes, and the eyes were looking up at him, beseeching him.
Their lips were moving in silent prayer.
He had to pass them to get to the woman in white, but he knew that he couldn’t, and that she couldn’t reach him, because those hands would reach for him, clutch at him, trip him….
Go to her. Help her.
He heard the words as clear as day. Though he couldn’t see her, he could feel the old woman behind him, trying to push him through the fog and past those poor dismembered dead.
She is the one with the strength, the old woman said, panting as she pushed him.
He turned to look at her.
“Amelia?” he asked, somehow knowing it was true.
The rest is legend, this is real, Amelia said. You’re a Flynn. Can’t you feel it? I felt it, when it changed. He came back evil, as evil as the one before him. And of everything that is bad, he is the worst.
“Aidan!”
He heard his name, felt someone shaking him.
He woke up—and found himself standing, stark naked, on the stairway landing. Kendall, her face lined with concern, was holding his arm, shaking him awake.
What the hell?
“Aidan, thank God! You were sleepwalking, and I couldn’t wake you,” Kendall said.
“I don’t sleepwalk,” he told her.
She stepped back, looking at him with a grin that indicated where he was standing and how he was dressed—or rather, undressed. She had thrown on his shirt, and he wasn’t at all sure why, given that he was a confident man, but he felt vulnerable and embarrassed.
“Wow. I guess I was sleepwalking,” he said, and offered her an awkward grin. “Thank heaven we don’t have kids, or that we weren’t spending the night with the relatives, huh?”
She nodded. She looked almost scared. Oh, God, a perfect night, and now this.
He took her by the shoulders. “Kendall, I’m so sorry I scared you. I swear, I’ve never done this before.”
She flushed slightly. “I’m not frightened. I was worried when I couldn’t waken you, but I’m not scared.” She was silent for a moment. “You were dreaming, I think,” she told him.
“Oh?” He gave her a half smile. “Tell me about it. But let’s go back upstairs first.”
When they reached the upstairs bedroom, Aidan realized the first pale streaks of dawn were just beginning to break in the east. He kept trying to shake the feeling of vulnerability; it was a new sensation, and one he didn’t like. And he didn’t want to talk about his dream yet, he realized; he wasn’t ready.
“Hey, I’m just going to pop into the shower,” he told Kendall, who was still watching him with concern. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. Do you mind if I go first?”
“You’re more than welcome to the first shower. I’ll run down and put some coffee on,” she said.
She seemed to understand that he needed to regroup, he thought, and found himself feeling closer to her than ever, even as he stepped away.
He turned the showerhead on full blast. He tried to shake the feeling that something about the dream had been real.
“Where the hell is Freud when you need him?” he asked himself aloud.
Kendall was perplexed. It wasn’t just that Aidan had been in the midst of a nightmare; everyone dreamed, and some dreams were bound to be bad.
But his eyes had been open. He had spoken Amelia’s name.
She’d been awakened by…something to discover that he’d gotten out of bed and was standing in the middle of the room. When she had touched his arm, he had shaken her off and started walking toward the door. She’d followed and seen him start down the stairs. She had called his name. She had touched him. Finally she had all but shouted in his ear, and had grabbed his arm and shaken it as hard as she could. Only then had he turned to her. Blinked. Awakened.
She measured coffee into the pot, knowing that Aidan’s dream wouldn’t have bothered her so much if Ady hadn’t come to her and warned her about her own dream. There was evil in this house. Ady had said so, had said that Amelia had said so, that the evil hadn’t always been there but now it was.
And that it was coming for her.
Rubbish. The house was just a house, and she and Aidan were the only ones there.
She still found herself thinking about Miss Ady’s words, though.
No one had died at the plantation in years. Amelia’s parents had both died in the hospital. No one had been buried here since then, until Amelia. So whose ghost was supposed to be the newly arrived evil entity? It just didn’t make sense.
She wished Sheila were home. Sheila knew all about the house, but she wasn’t due home until sometime this weekend. But maybe, with or without Sheila, she should head over to the historical society where her friend worked and see what she could discover on her own.