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.