The acrid smell was hardly discernible at first, but the scent grew stronger as the wind rose. I could see wisps drifting up into the sky, and a fresh terror seized me. I realized then why Owen hadn’t bothered to finish me off. He’d intended all along to come back and burn down the house, turning the evidence of his dark deeds to ash along with Rose’s numbers and keys. Along with any clues still undiscovered in her sanctuary.
I shook the fence in desperation and then lay on my back and tried to kick the supports loose. The enclosure held fast, and as smoke seeped down through the floorboards, hysteria bubbled.
Turning, I crawled along the edge of the house. The back porch lay straight ahead, but I felt certain Owen would have locked the gate. Still, I had to try.
Defeat bore down on me, and I could feel the entity slithering back through the haze of smoke as if attracted by a whiff of my vulnerability.
Think. Think. There had to be a way out.
The trio of keys had been left on my nightstand for a reason. Each served an important purpose in solving Rose’s puzzle. The plain door key had allowed me entrée into her sanctuary. The pointed teeth key had unlocked a secret compartment in Kroll Cemetery. The skeleton key had the power to keep the ghosts at bay, but might it also serve a real-world purpose?
Even as all this flashed through my head, I was already scrambling for the gate. With trembling fingers, I inserted the teeth into the keyhole. The rusty latch clicked open and I crawled out of my prison as the floorboards over my head began to pop from the heat.
Fifty
I took only a moment to relock the gate and then I was up, half running, half stumbling away from the house. I could see smoke rolling from some of the broken windows. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. If Rose’s house burned to the ground, would the entity still be trapped or would it then be free to go in search of another conduit?
I still didn’t understand how or why Rose had been able to confine the malcontent beneath her house. Somehow she must have used the skeleton key to contain it, but then Nelda had come along, hiding her own malicious nature beneath a vulnerable facade. She’d given the entity a way out once, but her death under the house had imprisoned it again.
I glanced over my shoulder as I ran and a dangerous thought came to me. Smoke billowed from the upstairs windows, but I couldn’t yet see any flames. Rose’s sanctuary might still be safe. All those numbers that she’d painstakingly scribbled on the walls...what if they really were map coordinates that could lead me to her long-lost key? To a future without ghosts and malcontents and those incessant voices in my head? How could I leave it all to burn? I needed to photograph those numbers, copy the map, do something, anything to preserve the clues that Rose had left for me.
Whether I would have had the nerve to enter the house, let alone Rose’s sanctuary, I would never be certain. As I slowed my steps contemplating the foolhardy move, Owen Dowling came around the corner of the house and stopped cold when he spotted me.
He had been carrying a gas can, but now he tossed it aside as he started toward me, slowly and deliberately at first and then accelerating as I backed away from him. I sensed no hesitation in him now. Gone was the reluctant man who had knelt at my side as his aunt had goaded him to violence.
Head lowered resolutely, he circled around to block me from the maze, where I might have been able to lose him. When I would have turned and darted toward the woods, he sprang forward with the same speed and agility that I’d witnessed from the intruder in my office.
I knew then that he had been the one to break into my home and attack me. Nelda had sent him to retrieve the stereoscope and card, and the adrenaline must have gotten the better of him. Or like Nelda, he knew how to hide his true nature.
I tried to dodge him, but shock and fear made me clumsy. I tripped over something in the weeds and before I could regain my balance, he lunged.
The momentum of his body knocked me to the ground and then he was on me in a flash, pinning my arms to my sides with his knees so that I could do nothing but thrash helplessly beneath him.
He was stronger that I would have guessed, or maybe my injuries had weakened me. No matter how hard I bucked and kicked, I couldn’t dislodge him.
His hands closed around my throat and tightened. The pressure against my windpipe made my eyes feel as though they might pop from my head. The pain made me struggle even harder, but only for a moment. A dangerous lethargy crept over me and my muscles went limp. I was barely conscious now, but I could have sworn I heard someone call my name and then Owen’s. A shot rang out and the pressure on my neck eased as Owen toppled backward.
The next thing I knew, Devlin was at my side. “Are you all right? Amelia, say something!”
I couldn’t speak at first. My eyes still burned, and I put a hand to my aching throat as I gulped in air and coughed. “I’m okay,” I finally croaked.
I tried to sit up, but Devlin pushed me gently back to the ground. “Take it easy. The police will be here soon and I’ve called for an ambulance.”