Dark Inspiration Read online

  Laura made no pretense of distraction, feigned no schoolwork. She faced the room from her desk and closed her eyes.

  “Constance? Elizabeth? Are you out there?”

  Another sign the relationship has progressed, Theresa thought. She doesn’t wait for them. She calls them. But the room stayed silent save the hum and snap of the generator.

  “Don’t worry,” Laura said. “Theresa is my friend. She wants to visit with you.”

  A moment later, Laura grinned and mouthed “They’re coming.”

  Whatever comforting, benevolent force Laura felt approaching, Theresa felt the opposite. The air got viscous as motor oil. A fight-or-flight rush pumped though her veins. The room went ice cold in an instant.

  “They’re here,” Laura cooed. Her breath came out in a puff of steam.

  The static generator cracked like pine needles in a campfire. Sparks flew around the head of the unit and then coalesced on the side facing the room, pulled like iron filings to a magnet. The sparks braided into one beam that snaked outward. A few feet away it transformed into the shimmering shape of two little girls. They faced Laura, long hair streaming down their backs, high collars topping long dresses.

  The girls looked with longing at Laura and stepped up to her. They held hands and then stretched their two free hands out to Laura. Laura took one of their hands in each of hers and they formed a triangle with two glowing sides.

  The touching scene should have brought tears to Theresa’s eyes. Instead she was terrified. The scene was so wrong. There was something about the girls’ collars. They didn’t seem attached to their dresses. Even fuzzy and indistinct, the textural difference was clear. And there was an evil in the room, an evil at odds with the two angelic faces that gazed at Laura with adoration.

  Theresa pushed the base of the static generator forward with her foot. The arcing rope of sparks grew shorter until the generator touched one of the girl’s arms. The energy loss over distance eliminated, the two girls flashed into bright, though still opaque detail. Every eyelash, every stitch of lace on their dresses was crystal clear.

  But so were the collars. They were slave collars of pounded iron. Thick chains hung from them, running behind the girls like the support cables of a suspension bridge to hell. The other ends rested in the hands of a male spirit, thin, taller than the girls and in a suit coat and vest. He had a tangled mess of hair and eyes that glowed a dull red, though the rest of his translucent figure was a mixture of grays. His lips curled into a crooked smile. He seemed unaware that he was visible.

  Laura’s back stiffened when she saw the man behind the girls. She sucked in a breath to cry out.

  Theresa knew he’d vanish and take the girls with him when Laura screamed. He was the source of whatever horrible future this place held for her friend. If she wanted that secret unlocked, she’d have to touch him.

  Theresa fought through the fear and revulsion. She reached out and her hand passed through his shoulder. On contact, a look of shock registered on the spirit’s face. His head snapped toward Theresa. His eyes narrowed to two burning slits.

  Theresa’s final premonition arrived. A blinding, terrifying, overwhelming rush of thoughts and emotions. Alien memories flooded in so fast she could barely sort through them. But she saw the plan. Clear as she had seen the branch destroy the family van years ago, she knew the fate planned for Laura.

  “No!” she yelled.

  She scooped the generator base from the floor and hurled it into the wall. It shattered with a sizzle like lightning. Sparks flew through the room and the stomach-turning smell of burnt hair filled the air. Laura shrieked. The three spirits shuddered like Taser victims and vaporized.

  The link to the man broke and Theresa fell to the ground, drained as if the withdrawal of the alternate consciousness sucked some of the life from her. Laura dropped to her side and held her hand.

  “Are you all right?”

  Theresa nodded hazily.

  “What was that? Holding the chains?”

  Theresa rebounded fast, fueled by the panic her vision fired up. “It’s Mabron Hutchington. And he wants you dead.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  “Dead?” Laura said.

  “Worse, actually,” Laura answered. She jumped to her feet. “You know who Mabron was?”

  “The girls were his nieces,” Laura said. “They drowned in the pond behind the house. Their parents died soon after.”

  “You are missing a lot,” Theresa said. “Who told you that much?”

  “Doug.”

  Theresa shook her head. “Figures. The rest of the story is that the father died soon after, sick from trying to pull the girls from the frozen pond. Then months later, the mother commits suicide by hanging herself in the barn.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “But that’s just the official version,” Theresa said. “I just downloaded the real story through Mabron.

  “He lived in the house with the family, nursing an unrequited love for his brother’s wife. After the girls drowned, he saw an opportunity to get in her good graces, but in a horrible way. He had a book, a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that contained black magic to bind souls to the Earth. Before the undertaker took the girls away, he performed a perverted rite on them. He kept their spirits bound here at Galaxy Farm.”

  “The chains…” Laura said.

  “The chains keep them with him, but the spirits are still bound to their bones here,” Theresa said. “So with the girls’ spirits here, Mabron thought he’d started some twisted family. His brother had to go, then. The ‘heart attack’ the brother suffered was really suffocation, smothered by a pillow by Mabron.

  “Now in Mabron’s diseased mind, Sarah, the widow, should come running to him, the man she secretly longed for. She rebuffs his advances and he decides he will have her, dead or alive. He fakes her suicide and binds her soul here with the girls. When Mabron passes on, he doesn’t need any black magic to stick around. He wants to stay and spend eternity with the ‘family’ he’s ensnared.”

  “Where’s Sarah, then?” Laura asked.

  “Sarah’s gone,” Theresa said. “Mabron didn’t bury her in her grave. Couldn’t stand the thought of her being beside her husband, He buried her out by the pond, where he could sit by her grave under the shade of an oak without the rest of the headstones reminding him of the past. The lightning storm that fried the old oak and blew up the propane tank somehow freed her soul.”

  “Fire,” Laura said. “The ghost hunter website said burning the bones, preferably with a healthy dose of salt, releases the spirit to move on. The blast must have cremated her.”

  “And now Mabron wants you to take her eternal place,” Theresa said. “He’s duped the girls into making the idea enticing, to build up your relationship. He thinks you’ll join him willingly.”

  “Like hell I will,” Laura said.

  “As the generator exploded and the ghosts vanished,” Theresa said, “I sensed dizzying confusion, like getting a concussion. I think the overload sent Mabron reeling. That gives us a window to hit him while he’s out of it.”

  “If fire sent Sarah packing,” Laura said, “then let’s torch Mabron. Everything we need is in the barn. Let me get Doug.”

  Theresa grabbed her arm. “No! It’s got to be us. I’ve got a feeling it’s got to be us. I don’t know why, but trust my intuition.”

  Laura paused. She gave a short nod. “Nothing I trust more right now.”

  Theresa followed Laura out of the nursery. She glanced up the stairway at the closed door of the turret room. A fan of light spread out from under the doorway. A shiver ran down Theresa’s spine. She lied about going on intuition. She had seen Mabron’s plan. She knew who Mabron planned to complete his handiwork in this world. Laura didn’t need to know about that now.

  The low moon on the horizon wasn’t going to deliver much illumination. The air was crisp and a light breeze blew the compost-like stench of the pond up across the backyard. The open sp
ace felt good compared to how claustrophobic the evil had made the house. Laura flew to the barn with Theresa one step behind. Laura yanked at the sliding door and it grudgingly rolled right. She flipped the light switch on and screamed.

  The flayed skin of Vernon Pugh swayed from the makeshift clothesline. Flies buzzed in and out of the empty eye sockets. Stray bits of dried flesh hung from the grate over the tub. The barn reeked with the stink of coagulated blood and decaying flesh. Theresa’s stomach roiled and she covered her nose.

  “Jesus Christ,” Laura said. She stared at the skin unable to process this act of butchery hanging in her barn. “Who the hell…”

  Theresa blocked her view of the clothesline. She cupped Laura’s face in her hands. The stink of the barn swirled back up her nose and she fought back rising bile. She stared Laura in the eyes.

  “There’s no time,” she said. “We’ll worry about this later. Mabron first. Think, Laura. What is out here we need?”

  Laura’s eyes came into focus. “Salt,” she whispered. Then in a stronger voice. “Salt. fifty-pound bags by the water treatment system. Paint thinner. A gallon can on the shelf by the…” She pointed at Vern. “Shovels in the corner.”

  Theresa turned Laura away from the body and towards the pallet of salt bags. “Go.”

  Theresa went to the shelf. She reached for the square can of thinner and a puff of wind flicked Vern’s leg skin across her arm with a repulsive caress. She jerked her arm away and nearly dropped the can. She grabbed two shovels from the corner. Theresa met her at the door. A sack of salt teetered on Laura’s shoulder.

  “You okay?” Theresa asked.

  Any trace of shock or confusion was long gone from Laura’s face. Her green eyes blazed with determination.

  “That bastard’s toast,” she said.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  During the school shooting, Laura had been afraid, even terrified at some points. But as soon as that gun shattered the window in the door, her fear turned into fury. Her kids were threatened and she was going to take whatever steps were necessary to keep them safe. She would have twisted the barrel right off that gun if she had the strength.

  Mabron had pushed that same button. Enslaving those girls’ spirits, manipulating them. Assaulting their mother while she mourned the loss of her children, a loss Laura knew was near unbearable. Rage boiled inside her. The fifty pounds on her shoulder felt like nothing as she slogged through the field to the Hutchington graveyard. The uneven ground tried to throw her off balance at every step.

  Then there was Doug. What the hell had Mabron done to her husband that would make him skin a man? God knew what other sick crap was going on upstairs in the house.

  She entered the graveyard and the sensation was the opposite of her last visit. In the dark, what had felt like a cathedral now reverted to crypt. The stark headstones were bone gray. Furtive creatures scurried through the dead leaves, motions hidden by inky shadows. That light sense of the presence of the twins was gone. In its place was a thick, black malevolence that struggled to stir to consciousness.

  Laura and Theresa swapped a quick knowing glance. Theresa felt it as well. Laura guessed Theresa probably felt it more strongly with her gift. If that thing revived while they were out here, there was no telling what it would do. The girls had lifted the charm from around Laura’s neck and tossed around the blue ball. If Mabron could move things in the real world, what would he be capable of?

  “Let’s fry this son of a bitch,” Theresa said. She slammed the shovel into the ground in front of Mabron’s tombstone. She launched a spade full over her shoulder.

  Laura set up their defense. She tore a corner off the salt bag and poured a ring of white crystals around the gravesite. The website said this would protect them. Had the writer ever faced something with Mabron’s power? Had the writer ever even seen a ghost? Here she was placing her life in the hands of an anonymous internet source. Good plan. She dropped the bag by the headstone and grabbed the second shovel.

  “How much time do you feel we have?” she asked as her shovel bit into the soft earth.

  “Not as much as I’d like,” Theresa said. “This place is ripe with bad mojo. I’m afraid to touch anything but this shovel.”

  The earth gave easily, the top layer being mostly decomposed leaves. The original grave diggers had dug through the usual collection of Tennessee stones the first time through and had added them to the enclosure wall. Piles of dirt formed outside the ring.

  A low moan sounded from within the graveyard, a subdued bellow like an angry bear awakening from hibernation. A pile of leaves shifted outside the salt ring. The women were not alone.

  The women doubled their speed. Blisters rose on Laura’s palms. The shovel blade sang with each scrape of the earth. Laura’s back felt the strain.

  Footsteps sounded in the leaf clutter around the salt ring. One , two, three. Slow at first, as Mabron’s invisible spirit tested the salt ring perimeter. Then they came faster, a tangle of shuffled steps back and forth around the gravesite, as the frustrated spirit found his access blocked.

  Theresa drove her shovel into the ground and jumped onto the edge of the blade. It sank a few extra inches and there was the muffled hollow echo of metal hitting wood.

  “Got it!”

  Mabron’s spirit spun into a frenzy. It raced around the gravesite so fast that the footsteps became indistinguishable. He plowed through the leaves at whirlwind speed. The grave was like the center of a forming tornado. Some of the salt-covered leaves began to wobble.

  The women uncovered the center of the coffin. The wood was soft from years underground. Laura prayed there would be no metal liner and brought her shovel down at one sagging point. The blade broke through. She pulled the shovel out and tossed it aside. She dropped down on the coffin and yanked at the rotten wood. A wide strip came up from the center. Laura pulled a book of matches from her pocket, matches that she’d been drawn to carry and collect since her first week here. She lit a match.

  The weak yellow light barely lit the recessed space beneath her. Mabron’s bones lay in the coffin, white skull facing skyward. He wore a black suit that was years out of style when he was buried in it. Save a few wisps, his hair was gone but all his teeth were still in place. The lower jaw hung open as if he was mid-laugh. Laura looked at the gleaming teeth and had a flash of that strange crooked smile Doug had acquired lately. Her skin crawled.

  “Salt!” she said, but Theresa already had the bag on the way down. Laura grabbed the bag and poured pounds of it into the coffin, straight into Mabron’s gaping maw.

  Outside the ring, the tornado had become a hurricane. A rush of dry debris whipped around the ring. A low, furious roar rumbled from all directions. Salt crystals hopped on the vibrating leaves and threatened to disperse.

  Laura jumped out of the hole and Theresa poured paint thinner into the cracked coffin. The stream dissolved the salt crystals into a white lump that coated the skull. She ran the rest of the can up and down the exposed coffin top. Despite the maelstrom outside the gravesite, the air within the salt ring was dead still and the overpowering fumes from the thinner made Laura’s head reel. She lit a match.

  Outside the ring, the wind scoured free a buried tree limb. It grabbed the knotted end and the limb wiggled back and forth. Its other end ran under the salt ring. The salt-covered leaves on top of it bounced and slid to one side. The storm rushed the gap.

  “Now they’ll be free,” Laura said. She dropped the matches into the pit.

  The coffin burst into flames. A roaring scream of pain echoed through the grove and the churning wind stopped its clockwise spin and burst out in all directions like the blast ring from an explosion. The graveyard went silent, the only sound the crackling of the burning copse and coffin.

  Laura and Theresa looked at each other, afraid to say what they dared hope true.

  “Do you think we did it?” Laura finally said.

  Theresa reached down and touched Mabron’s tombstone.
She smiled.

  “Not a twitch here,” she said. “Where did we send him?”

  “The burning separates the spirit from the bones,” Laura said. “With no vessel to hold it, the spirit moves on to whatever is next after this life.”

  “Let’s hope it’s filled with just punishments.”

  The women watched the flames consume the coffin and the last remains of Mabron Hutchington. When all that remained were embers, they walked back through the field to the house, Theresa walked behind Laura.

  “So what do you think happens to the girls?” Theresa said.

  “Without him to hold them here,” Laura said, “I hope that they can pass on and be with their mother again.”

  “That would be—”

  A loud thunk cut Theresa’s sentence short. Laura heard a heavy thud on the ground behind her and whipped around.

  Doug lunged out of the darkness, black fireplace poker held over his head like a deranged samurai. His mouth was twisted into a lopsided smile and the pupils in his eyes burned ruby red.

  Before Laura could scream, the heavy globe at the poker’s end crashed down on her head and the world went dark.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Sensations.

  It had been so long since Mabron felt them. The stretch of air filling lungs. The comforting scent of decomposition wafting off the pond. The weight of Laura’s warm body across his shoulder. The sting of cold iron from the poker in his hand. None of this ever happened in the half-living state of being a ghost. Mabron reveled in the feelings.

  He’d been afraid when the two meddling bitches had brought the seeds of his destruction to the graveyard. When they vaporized his bones, he was sure his time on this plane of existence was over. But there was another vessel to enter. Dear old Doug was ripe for the picking. Mabron had rooted around in his mind more than enough to know how to successfully storm it. And now that he felt the quantum leap of power from influencing Doug and possessing him, Mabron wished the unconscious woman on his shoulder had set his remains ablaze earlier.