‘The woods?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can sense that? What they’re…feeling?’
‘I can sense the wild wood, the trees themselves and the spirits in them. I don’t know what it’s feeling exactly but…it’s part of me. I feel it inside of me. The woods are scared. Not just of the storm. There’s something else.’
The image of the idol beneath them came vividly to her mind again. Too vividly. Something else indeed. And Nick…he hadn’t been himself since the cellar. Something was wrong.
‘Are they trying to warn us?’
A thud sounded from overhead, where her bedroom was, and then they both distinctly heard the sound of footsteps. Slow and steady, determined, they moved across the ceiling, heading for where the door would be. Footsteps on the stairs. Laughter, dark and terrible.
Alex threw open the door to the hallway. She hadn’t even been aware of getting up and running across the room, but the next moment she had the handle in her hand and she was looking out into the hall leading to the front door.
There was nothing there. Of course there was nothing there. The hall was empty. Wildewood Hall did so love to play games.
The lightbulbs flickered, dimmed for a second, then blazed with an incandescence which made her eyes burn.
An afterimage appeared, where she had been staring, Blaise Chambers, dark and beautiful and terrible, standing in front of her, one hand reaching out towards her, as if to touch her face. He wasn’t gone. She might have saved Sally but he was still there!
The house plunged into darkness.
Nick cursed loudly and Alex recoiled, bumping into him where he had followed her. They retreated, back into the warm and ruddy light of the fire.
‘Power cut?’ she asked, aware that her voice was shaking. There was no sign of Chambers now, but it still felt like he was watching her. Smiling that horrible smile. Laughing at them.
‘I’ll check the circuit board and get the generator going.’
A dreadful feeling twisted in her stomach. ‘Where is the generator, Nick?’
Don’t say the cellar, she thought, sudden fear clawing at her throat. Please don’t say the cellar.
‘In the outbuilding to the back of the kitchen,’ he said solemnly, as if reading her mind and trying to put her at ease. ‘It’s fine.’ Apart from him having to go out in the storm. ‘Here.’ He grabbed a couple of candles from the mantelpiece and lit them from the fire before putting them into two candlesticks. He handed one to her. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Is it safe out there?’
He actually smiled. As if having something to do, no matter how dangerous, was finally a relief.
‘I’ve a torch and wet weather gear in the boot room. It’s just a storm. A bad one but just a storm. I’ll be fine. Back in no time.’
She had to say it. ‘What if the house locks you out again?’
He fixed her with a more serious look. ‘You’re in here. It’s not going to stop me getting back to you, Alex.’
There was nothing she could think of to say to stop him. She clung to her candlestick, and watched the flickering pool of light around him make its way out to the hall and vanish.
The house seemed to close its arms around her chest and squeeze. It drove the air from her lungs and her heart lurched up in her throat.
‘You still want him,’the dark voice murmured from just behind her.‘Take him. He’ll only thank you for it. He wants you so desperately. He needs you. You know that.’
Alex tried to push the intrusive spirit from her, picturing a beam of light shining down on her, just like Daphne had drilled them all on time and time again. She had never taken it seriously before. Now it felt like the single lifeline she could cling to.
Her legs went from underneath her and she dropped to her knees, knuckles white on the candlestick.
‘Really?’Blaise chuckled softly. A ghostly hand, like the touch of the north wind, curled around her throat and squeezed until Alex’s mouth opened.‘You think you’re strong enough to withstand the two of us combined?’
The words snagged on her reeling mind.The two of us? What did he mean,the two of us?
