Instead there were more tall trees, reaching for the grey sky, and below them was a bench, surrounded by a rose garden.
On that bench was a girl, wearing an old-fashioned dress, her attention focused on her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was deathly pale, frail and short. She was also very pretty.
My blood ran cold before she even looked up at me. When she did, I saw half of her face was rotting off.
Leprosy.
Mary.
Oh holy fuck.
“I knew you’d come back,” Mary said in her sing song voice. “You can never really escape.”
I gripped the knife harder. “Where am I?” I asked.
“You’re neither here, nor there.”
“Have you seen my partner? Dex?” It was worth a shot.
She grinned at me with blackened teeth and I wondered why I ever thought her pretty. “Have you seen my daughter, Madeline?” Her eyes darted over her shoulder. “There she is.”
I turned around to see a little girl running down the path away from us.
“She’ll take you to him,” Mary said.
I didn’t know if I trusted that. In fact, I totally did not trust this woman. After everything that happened on D’Arcy island, I had no reason to. She was a murderer and a liar. And a fucking ghost.
But I also had no intention in hanging around her. I turned and ran down the path after Madeline, all my D’Arcy Island flashbacks hitting me with each step I took. I remembered what happened here and I’d be damned if I’d let them happen again.
Suddenly the path began to clear up and drop sharply to the left. I came to a stop and saw Madeline on a rocky beach below, running along it toward a lighthouse.
Not just any lighthouse. Of course not.
I sucked in my breath and watched as the burning sun in grey/blue sky began to plunge toward the sea. In an instant the sun was swallowed whole and the world around me was dark as night.
The lighthouse’s light came on, illuminating a path, just for me. By the top, where the glass went around the giant bulb, I saw the bulky shadow of a man. It wasn’t Dex and yet I knew he’d be up there, somehow. If I were to find him, that’s where I’d find him. I was seeing what I was being told to see, the Veil bending to fit my memories. I was being manipulated for a reason.
Madeline’s tiny body ran through the open door to the lighthouse and disappeared inside. I took one look behind me, afraid that Mary would appear and push me over the edge. But there was only blackness, the trees having come together so thick that they resembled a web of branches.
Only one way for me to go.
Using the silver light from the lighthouse, I picked my way down through the steep embankment, the fog clearing so I could see my feet. On the beach, the black ocean crashed close by, the sky felt wildly heavy and oppressive. I looked up, taking in what I thought were stars but weren’t stars at all.
They were eyes. Millions of eyes. All watching me from a black velvet sky.
I shuddered and quickly looked away. I jogged over to the lighthouse and could feel them watching my every move.
The minute I entered the lighthouse, the temperature dropped again and I was met with the musty old smell of rotted wood and sea-rust. It was dark with several doors leading to rooms that shouldn’t spatially exist. I glanced up the spiral staircase, hearing quick footsteps disappear. There were candles lit along the railing, illuminating the slick steps and the inky trails of kelp that slithered down them.
My throat felt like it had a piece of dry toast lodged in it. Every instinct told me not to go up them, that I knew what was at the top, waiting for me as he had before. Old Roddy had been banished from my world the moment the lighthouse blew up, but he existed here, in this realm so close to Hell.
This was his home.
I ignored the queasy butterflies in my stomach and began to ascend the stairs, careful not to slip. I’d face Old Roddy to get to Dex. I’d face anything.
As I walked up, I started to hear the sparse notes of a piano floating through the air. When I reached the first landing, I noted one of the doors was open and a faint glow was coming from the room. The trails of kelp went straight in there.
And so did I.
The room was large and bare, the walls covered in splashes of rust or blood. There was a grand piano in the middle and from where I was I couldn’t see if anyone was playing it. The notes were sad but dull at the same time, each one growing louder and filling the room with unease.
I carefully stepped toward it, prepared to be met with a gruesome site.
But there was no one there.
I came closer and stared down at the keys, all cracked and broken. Though the music kept playing, there was no movement, except for a wasp that was slowly crawling down them, from F to G to A.
The sight of the wasp struck fear in the very heart of me and I didn’t even have to turn around to know there was someone behind me. I could feel her.
No, no, no, please not her.
The door creaked, like breaking bones, and shut with a loud click. Fog rolled between my legs and the buzz of the wasp started to drown out the pianos’ haunting song. With my heart beating fast, vying for my throat, I turned around and saw…
Nothing. Just the closed door.
I let out a shaky breath, the handle of the knife starting to slip. I needed to get a hold on myself. For a moment there I was sure I was about to see someone I never wanted to see again. Wouldn’t that have been –
“You can’t have him,” a voice came from behind me. Metallic, raspy, like buzzing wasp wings. Utterly, terrifyingly familiar.
I whipped around to see Abby standing in the corner of the room, her head askew at an unnatural angle, blood pouring down her arms and legs and pooling on the floor. Wasps crawled out of her mouth, pushing her lips aside.
This really was hell, wasn’t it? Filled with the ghosts of people I’d only been too happy to be rid of. And here, in this place, they were no less scary and no less dangerous. Abby had the power to keep me here. She was certainly going to make sure Dex wasn’t going anywhere.
Although, that meant he was here to begin with. A rocket of hope jolted through me, battling the fear.
“I can’t have him,” I repeated, surprised to find my voice. “That means he is here, with you.”
She smiled at me, the grin of a mad woman, a dead woman. More wasps came out of her mouth, heading straight for me where they circled around my head. A few came out of her nose and ears. One of her unblinking eyes pulsed and moved as a wasp squeezed between the eyeball and the socket. I was having a hard time not throwing up.
“He is upstairs. With them,” she said. “They won’t let him go. He’s right where he belongs.”
I raised my chin, staring at his grotesque ex-girlfriend with defiance. “I’ll be the one who decides that,” I said, feeling strength and conviction when I thought I would have none. I’d come this far, I guess. There was nothing left to lose, no reason not to believe I couldn’t beat this.
Before I could even turn for the door though, Abby was flying across the room, her long, bony fingers wrapping around my neck like icicles. She threw me back, my head smacking against the door and we crumpled to the ground. She smelled like rotten meat and blood and death and I knew if I didn’t act fast, she was going to kill me.
I somehow managed to roll out from under her but she was fast and as I struggled to get to my feet, my soles slipping on her greasy blood, she grabbed onto my ankles, her nails slicing into my skin.
I screamed and she yanked me back down on my stomach, pulling me toward her by my legs. The air started to swarm with wasps, first a few, then more, until their droning buzz was all I could hear. They landed on my arms, my back, my face, crawled into my hair, stinging me again and again. The pain was unbearable and every time I screamed they made a go for my mouth.
Growls spewed out from Abby’s lips and I felt the back of my shirt lift up, her ice cold nails trailing over my exposed skin near my spine. I felt like any second she was about to slice on in and pull my spine out with her bare hands. Panicking, I flailed my arms, trying to buck her off me, but she wouldn’t budge. The wasps continued to assault me and the blood around me was rising, moving, as if it were a living thing, wrapping sticky rivers around my arms and legs.