Chapter Twenty-four.

I should have stayed with Nick should have stayed with Nick.

It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed Sarah's mind since the two of them left the library separately, neither one willing to risk being seen together. And Nick had insisted she couldn't miss the old graveyard-it was only two hundred yards off the road to Shutters, and the trail was both good and well-marked.

And the sun had still been high and the sky blue.

Now the sun was dropping fast and the sky had turned a steel gray, and the shadows of the forest fell across the road. Even though the trail was right there where Nick said it would be, the s.h.i.+ver that went through Sarah as she gazed at it was far colder than the afternoon. But she hadn't stayed with him, and it was too late to turn back now.

She stepped off the road and started along the trail, and with every step she took the path seemed to grow narrower, the forest denser. She froze as something moved in the brush off to the right, unconsciously holding her breath as she listened.

Silence.

Slowly letting her breath out, but still straining to hear every sound, she took another step down the path.

And suddenly the brush just ahead seemed to explode as a deer burst from the bushes, crossed the path in a single leap, and vanished into the forest as Sarah's body burned with the shot of adrenaline the fleeing deer had triggered.

Quickening her step until her hip would let her go no faster, she came to the old cemetery less than a minute later. A misty fog drifting in from the lake was settling into the low areas of the weed-choked potter's field, tendrils of it swirling silently with each tiny breath of air, like tentacles seeking something to grasp.

Sarah s.h.i.+vered and pulled her coat more snugly around her throat.

But where was Nick? If he didn't get here in the next few minutes, it would be too dark to find anything at all.

What had they even been thinking of? What were they hoping to find? "Don't worry," Nick had told her just before they left the library. "The voices will tell me. I'm sure of it!" Which had seemed perfectly sensible in the bright light of the library. But now, with the afternoon light fading, the sky darkening, and the fog drifting in ...

Bettina felt Pyewackett stiffen in her lap, and a second later first Rocky and then Cooper rose to their feet, their hackles rising.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's ..."

Her voice died on her lips as she felt the house tremble.

She rose from her chair as Pyewackett jumped from her lap and disappeared through the door to the great central hall, but instead of following the cat, the dogs ran to the French doors leading to the terrace, and Cooper began barking. Frowning, Bettina went to the doors, too, and peered out into the gathering fog and darkness. "What is it, Coop?" she asked again. "Do you want to go out?" The dog's body began quivering, and a series of excited yelps emerged from his throat as he rose up and pawed at the door handles.

"All right," she said, turning the handle. But before she could push the door open, Cooper had hurled himself against it, throwing it wide, then plunged across the terrace and down to the lawn, Rocky following after him. "No!" Bettina called, but it was too late. Cooper had already bounded off into the fog.

Pulling on a jacket, she set out after him, following the sound of his barking.

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"Sarah? Is that you?" It was Nick's voice, but it was no more than a harsh whisper floating through the swirling mist from the far side of the field. Then she saw him silhouetted against the gla.s.sy expanse of the lake beyond, and she started toward him, picking her way across the field. But the moment she was close enough to see him clearly, she knew they'd wasted their time, and his words confirmed it.

"I don't hear anything. No voices at all."

And suddenly the whole thing once again seemed like a terrible mistake. Even if she ran all the way back to the Garveys-which she couldn't-she'd still be so late they'd- She didn't even want to think about what they might do.

"What are we going to do?" she whispered, as much to herself as to Nick. "I can't go back to the Garveys' now."

"I don't know," he said, kicking at a frozen clump of gra.s.s. "I was so sure-"

He was interrupted by the howling of a dog, and an instant later they saw it-a great black shape charging out of the forest, coming straight at them. As Nick instinctively stepped in front of Sarah, the animal vanished into a patch of fog, but they could still hear its baying, and a moment later it reappeared, mouth gaping. The memory of Conner West's German shepherd rose in his mind, and along with it, the voices, too, came alive.

"Kill it!" one of them screamed. one of them screamed. "Kill it now!" "Kill it now!"

The dog was almost upon them, and Nick raised his arm, ready to strike down the lunging animal, when Sarah pushed him aside.

"Coopie!" she cried as the dog, its tail wagging furiously, nearly rolled over in its effort to stop before ramming right into her. Then it rose up, put its forepaws against her chest and licked her face.

As Nick stared at her in stunned silence, Sarah grinned, and gave the dog a quick hug before pus.h.i.+ng him back to the ground. "This is Cooper! One of Bettina's dogs."

Cooper dropped to his haunches in front of Nick and raised one of his forepaws. Without thinking, Nick took it, and found himself first shaking hands with and then being licked by the same animal he'd thought was going to kill him only a few seconds before. A moment later a much smaller dog came bouncing across the field, followed by a voice calling out from the direction of the house.

"Cooper? Rocky? Bad dogs! Come back back here." here."

"Rocky?" Nick echoed, looking down at the little mutt that was now scratching at his leg, begging to be picked up. "His name is 'Rocky'? What kind of name is that for-"

But Sarah was no longer listening to him. "Bettina?" she called as she waved to the figure now emerging from the hedge that screened the old cemetery from the house. "They're over here!"

"Sarah?" Bettina replied as she hurried toward them. "Nick? What on earth are you two doing out here? It's almost dark, not to mention freezing!"

Nick glanced uncertainly at Sarah.

"We-We thought this was where Nick's voices were coming from," Sarah began. "I mean, we found a book in the library, and there was a picture in it, and we thought-"

"It was me," Nick broke in. "It was all my idea. I thought the voices belonged to the people in one of the pictures. They were inmates in the old asylum, but they worked in the house and-" He abruptly fell silent as his mistake dawned on him.

The house! That's where he should have gone. Not the graveyard. And Bettina Philips was nodding.

"They're not out here," Nick breathed, speaking as much to himself as to anyone else. "They're in the house-they've always been in the house."

And in his head the voices once more spoke, uttering a single word in quiet unison.

"Yesss ..."

They started back toward Shutters, but instead of Bettina leading the way, it was Nick who strode ahead, Sarah beside him, with the dogs trailing along at their heels. And the closer he drew to the house, the more certain Nick became that the key to what had been going on in his mind ever since he was a boy lay inside the stone walls of the great house that now loomed in the twilight, barely visible through the fog, looking like something out of a nightmare.

Yet he felt no fear; rather, a great feeling of antic.i.p.ation was coursing through him, and the voices in his head were no longer screaming at him, demanding terrible things of him.

Now they were whispering to him, guiding him, leading him on toward ...

What?

Sarah, too, was gazing at the house, telling herself that the reason it looked different than the last time she was here was because the light was fading quickly, the darkness hiding much of its wear. And maybe the shutters on this side had never sagged as badly as the ones in front. But as she drew closer, her hand slipping into Nick's, the changes didn't seem to fade away; the paint on the shutters looked less weathered, and the mortar between the stones looked as if it had been pointed only months ago instead of a century and a half. But how was it possible? How could the house itself be changing?

Evil.

The word hung in Nick's mind, echoing and reechoing as he gazed at the house. He could feel a dark energy throbbing inside the ancient stone walls, as if all the terror and madness imprisoned here so long ago had never died at all, but was still contained inside the mansion, waiting.

Waiting for what?

Waiting for him ...

Above the terrace, the gla.s.s walls of the old conservatory glowed with the brilliance of a lighthouse beacon. But this was no beacon to guide s.h.i.+ps to safety. This was something else.

"A beacon to evil," beacon to evil," the voices whispered inside Nick's head. the voices whispered inside Nick's head.

And he knew Sarah and Bettina felt it, too, for they both hung back as he mounted the steps to the terrace. Only when he was at the threshold of the French doors did he finally turn back. "I have to go in," he said. "We all have to."

Sarah looked up at him. "What is it?" she asked. "What's happening?"

Nick shook his head. "I-I don't know. But I know that whatever it is that's been happening to me for as long as I can remember started here. And it's still here, and there's something I have to do-something we all have to do."

They heard a sound then-a low, nearly inaudible moan that slowly devolved into a trembling sigh. Nick turned away from Sarah and Bettina and gazed up at the house, and suddenly he knew.

He understood!

It wasn't just what had happened in the house, nor the people who had lived and died in the house.

It was the house itself, and everything and everyone within it.

"It's awakening," he said, barely aware that he was speaking out loud.

"Awakening?" Bettina repeated. "What do you mean?"

Nick shrugged uncertainly. "I-I'm not sure. I just ... know. It's like the voices are telling me."

"Maybe we shouldn't go in," Bettina said.

Nick shook his head. "I have to go in. If I don't go in ..." Once again his voice trailed off, but when he spoke again, it was strong. "It's all right. I have to do this."

A moment later they were inside the studio and Bettina had closed the door behind them, shutting out the cold and the gathering night.

And Sarah felt it. It wasn't just the outside of the house that had changed; now the whole house had an energy in it, an energy she hadn't felt before.

It was as if the very air inside it hummed.

The energy was everywhere. It came up through the soles of her feet. It made the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. Yet somehow it felt neither dark nor frightening. Rather, it felt more like some kind of strange renewal was taking place around her.

Like the farm in the spring when all the bees and insects buzzed in the light of the sun.

"It's in the bas.e.m.e.nt," Nick said, interrupting Sarah's reverie.

Staying close together, the three of them pa.s.sed through the enormous marble foyer and then the dining room until finally they were in the kitchen.

Two cats were perched on the ma.s.sive oak table, twitching their tails, but neither made a move to spring at Nick while Bettina dug through one of the drawers until she found three flashlights. When she pa.s.sed two of them to Nick and Sarah and started toward the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, both cats leapt to the floor and followed.

Bettina opened the door and switched on the light that illuminated the long flight of stone steps leading down into darkness.

Nick moved ahead of her, and a breath of something that felt to him like death drifted up from the vastness below.

"Ready?" he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he started down the steps.

At the bottom of the stairs Bettina reached past him and found a switch, the blackness filling the bas.e.m.e.nt ebbing as a few dim and ancient lightbulbs began to burn. They cast a yellowish glow onto the dusty oak file cabinets and piles of shrouded furniture and cardboard boxes.

Beyond that first room, though, lay darkness.

But somewhere in that darkness, Nick was certain, he could hear the voices urging him on.

Bettina turned her flashlight upward, playing it over the huge beams that supported the structure above. Even covered with dust and trailing a tangle of cobwebs, they looked familiar to Sarah.

"It looks like what I drew," she said. "Or at least what I drew had beams that look like this. But this one's too big."

Bettina moved the flashlight beam toward the darkness beyond the door in the wall to the left.

"That way," Nick said quietly.

"Why?" Sarah asked. "What's down there?"

Nick was silent for a moment. "I don't know. I just know this is the way we need to go."

With Bettina, Sarah, and the cats following him, Nick pa.s.sed through the door and into another room. This one was empty except for a stack of old trunks against the far wall. Following the whispers in his head, he began moving the old trunks.

Behind them was another door, its panels warped and cracked, what little paint was still on it covered with mildew. The k.n.o.b fell off in Nick's hand, but even had it worked, the door had swollen in the dank air of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

He put his shoulder to it, and on the third shove it cracked, then broke away entirely, only a few fragments still clinging to the rusted hinges.

If there had ever been electricity in this section of the bas.e.m.e.nt, it was long gone, and the three pale cones of illumination from the flashlights revealed only more pa.s.sages, leading off in three different directions.

Then they heard it.

A noise-a faint creaking sound, as if someone had stepped on the loose tread of a staircase.

Nick froze as Sarah slipped her hand into his, and though Bettina played her light over not only the beams above, but the walls as well, all of them knew the sound had come not from this room, but from somewhere else.

They were not alone.

They could all feel it now, as if something unseen were watching from the darkness.

Yet none of them turned back, and Nick led them through one chamber after another. But where was he going? Where were the faint voices leading him? The farther they went, the stranger the maze of rooms seemed to be. Somehow the geometry itself seemed completely wrong, as if each door were leading not to another eerily empty storeroom, but somehow into a completely different dimension. Then they came to a corridor at the far end of which was yet another room, and though there was nowhere else to go without turning back the way they'd come, Nick hesitated.

Yet he had no choice-whatever force was in the house was driving him onward, and the voices were louder now, urging him to move faster. With Bettina and Sarah right behind him, he stepped through the last doorway and s.h.i.+ned his light around.