When she reached the top of the stairway, a long hall stretched ahead of her. Dim shafts of light cast their shadows from doorways to rooms that held more mystery. Ivy passed two of them, both opening into empty voids. A quick perusal showed bare wood floors and nothing else.
Ivy approached the third door. Its knob was clean, almost shiny in the night’s faint light. She reached out to grasp it, but her hand hovered. Clean. Shiny. A doorknob in an abandoned house should be grimy and dull. Here was another sign of life. Someone had been here before her. Her heart lurched with sudden hope. The clean piano keys, a smooth doorknob . . . if Gabriella was the one to have cleaned them, that meant her baby might lie beyond this door. Ivy closed her eyes. Please, God. She wasn’t afraid of death. Her journal was page after page about those who had passed on. Yet, there was something horribly different considering it might be an infant.
Not willing to let her fear become bigger than the moment, Ivy pushed the door open. The hinges offered a momentary creak before losing their voice. A lone bed was pushed against the far wall. Its curved wooden headboard held more evidence of spiders. But it was the scarlet velvet blanket draping off the side that gripped Ivy’s attention. Plaster from the ceiling had fallen to the floor, onto the mattress and blanket. She hurried to the bed, hope colliding with disappointment. Empty. She splayed her fingers over the soft velvet. Yes, it was empty, but it was further evidence to support that someone had inhabited Foster Hill House in secret.
On the other side of the bed was a closet. Ivy hurried to it and flung the door open. Her sigh of relief broke the stillness. No one was hiding inside to leap out at her. Just an empty, boxlike room.
Ivy cast a glance over her shoulder at the open doorway. The room, the bed . . . everything about it made her skin crawl. She didn’t know if the absence of Gabriella’s baby relieved her, or frightened her.
A book lay overturned on the floor beside the bed, its hard cover collecting dust. Great Expectations. Her fingers traced the inset black letters on the cover as she squatted beside it, her eyes now adjusted to the light that glowed through the bedroom’s lone window. She knelt and picked up the book, turning it over. Some of the pages were intact, others ripped from the binding and missing.
Ivy thumbed the pages still there. A musty smell tickled her nose, but the pages were clean. Old but clean. A tiny ink scribble laced the margins. She squinted to try to read it, but she couldn’t make out the words. The light wasn’t enough, and Ivy wished she hadn’t broken her lantern.
Still kneeling on the floor, she held the book up and turned it toward the window. She sucked in a breath, finally able to make out a few words in feminine script.
All houses hold secrets, and I am one of them.
Rough hands yanked Ivy backward and upright, and the book fell from her grasp. Her scream bounced against the windowpane and echoed in the room. Her shoulders slammed against a burly chest. Wool sleeves scraped her face as her assailant smothered her mouth with his arm.
“Scream all you want.” The words were a hiss, the voice unrecognizable but hot in her ear. “None to hear you. None to care.”
She wasn’t about to give in. Terror provoked her instinct to survive. The image of Gabriella’s bruised neck and face flashed before her eyes, and Ivy buckled her knees, slumping toward the floor. The movement caught her attacker by surprise and he tripped, crashing down beside her.
“Where’s the baby?” she demanded as she scrambled for her feet. But he was quick and grabbed at her ankles.
“What baby?” he growled.
Ivy sidestepped his grip, yet his hand caught the hem of her dress. It ripped as she struggled to get away. She managed to stumble to her feet, clutching at the doorframe for balance. His fingers clawed at her hair, dragging her back into the bedroom.
“No!” She would not die.
Ivy’s scalp stung as she jerked away. The man’s grip took hair with it as he lost his hold on her. She ran from the room to the stairway, and her foot caught on a warped floorboard. Her shoulder slammed into a framed portrait that tilted on impact.
For an instant her eyes met the black, empty gaze of a woman. She spun away from the portrait and sprinted for the stairs. Her hand gripped the banister just as her assailant grabbed her shoulders. He jerked her back against him, his arm around her throat, squeezing. Ivy clawed at his hold as spots floated in front of her eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” His words chilled her. Then there was nothing solid beneath her feet. He shoved her off the top stair, and she twisted as she fell. The blackness of Foster Hill House engulfed her.
Chapter 5
Kaine
Kaine stood in the parlor of the dilapidated house, staring up the staircase that disappeared into the second floor. She frowned and spun on her heel to face the front entrance and reassess the doorless frame. It was a sorry sight. Not to mention the walls. Ugh. Wallpaper that screamed 1960s peeled from the walls, its garish pattern providing splashes of mustard-yellow nosegays. Oh yes, and the cobwebs. Horrible, fluffy traps of eight-legged fiends. She blew a huge breath through her nose and looked up at the ceiling. It had been patched, the original plaster repaired with more plaster a few decades old now. It appeared there was an old fixture where a chandelier may have once hung.
“Probably full of asbestos.” Kaine stuck her tongue out at the ceiling, because sometimes she felt better when she acted juvenile. Who knew what other problems she would find?
Oh, Danny.
When they first married, she’d been fresh out of college and he was a dreamer. It was an attractive quality. He wanted to flip houses someday, old houses. With character, he’d said. Kaine hadn’t wanted to leave California, her job, the people she was ministering to, and of course Danny supported her. Like he always had.
I’m so sorry.
Kaine had cheated him out of his dream. Maybe not intentionally, but now that he was gone, it felt that way. As silly as it seemed, if she could make amends here, and start a new life, it would all be worth it. She needed to fix her eyes ahead, or on Jesus, as the Scripture stated. But it was so difficult when memories surfaced of Danny, of his suspicious death, and even of the events that shaped her into who she was by the time she married Danny. Events she had spent years learning to forget. All of it God could heal. Kaine tugged at the hem of her sweater. If she knew how to let Him.