No, I must stay here and somehow battle on through the heartache. For them. For myself. They died here and so shall I…”
Karen gasped at the last sentence, her heart sinking, the strange event that had brought her to this room and to these notebooks completely forgotten. She stared at her brother’s handwriting for a long time before turning to the last page of the notebook.
There, scrawled in black ink as though written by a drunkard, the words screamed up at her and somehow she wasn’t particularly surprised.
“TWO MEN HAVE THE CARCASS!!! TWO MEN HAVE THE CARCASS! TWOMENTWOMENTWOMENTWOMENTWO-”
She slapped the book closed and gathered them all up in her arms, racing from the room as if chased by demons.
“Rory!” she shouted. “Rory!”
By the time she’d reached the bottom of the stairs, both Rory and Saul were there, expressions of alarm on their faces.
“Jesus, Karen!” Rory asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Panting, she held the notebooks out for him to see. “Why didn’t you tell me about these?”
He frowned, looking more confused than ever. “What? What are they?”
“Sean’s notebooks!” she barked. “Why would you keep this from me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
Saul came forward, reaching for the notebooks, but she pulled them away and burst into tears. “He was fucking insane! How could you have let that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No,” Rory insisted. “He was fine! Why would you even think that?”
“It’s all here!” She held the notebooks up once more. “Right fucking here! He thought he was your precious fucking Captain! Does that sound like a sane mind to you?”
“Let me see them, Karen,” Saul prodded gently, extending his hand once more.
Her eyes found his and she snarled. “Did you know about this too? You did, didn’t you? How could you not have? It’s right here!”
“I didn’t know anything,” Saul said in the same soothing tone. “Please. Just show us what you found.”
A moment passed, her cheeks flushed with anger and grief and then she shoved the notebooks at Saul’s chest before sinking to the bottom riser and sobbing freely. “He killed himself. He’s dead. He killed himself.”
“No!” Rory suddenly shouted. “Sean is alive! He never would have hurt himself! He loved me! He loved this house!”
“The Captain loved this house!” she yelled back.
Rory stalked to the other side of the room, breathing hard, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
With one of the notebooks open in his hands, Saul asked Karen where she’d found them.
“In the Captain’s office. They were on the desk.”
“I’ve never even seen those before,” Rory said, still clearly infuriated.
Saul rapidly began turning pages, his face darkening as he did. “Maybe you should, Rory.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Rory rushed over to his side and snatched the top notebook away from him. He couldn’t have read more than a few lines when he threw the notebook across the room. “This is bullshit! Those aren’t Sean’s.”
“It’s his writing,” Karen insisted.
Rory’s jaw worked up and down. He wanted to argue but she suspected he was out of words. Finally, when he spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “Sean did not kill himself.”
That said, he stormed through the living room and out of sight.
Saul carried the notebooks over to the sofa and sat with them on his lap, reading. Karen watched his face very carefully, looking for signs of…she wasn’t sure what. When she couldn’t stand his lack of expression for another second, she said, “He was crazy, wasn’t he?”
He looked up at her sadly. “I don’t think you should bring this up to Rory again. At least, not for a while. Let him read these when he’s ready, once he’s calmed down.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Sitting back on the sofa, Saul released a long sigh. He thought about his answer for a long time before replying. “My grandmother used to say that we’re all surrounded by spirits, all the time. She believed that they can affect our moods because we breathe them in and out, absorb them through our skin. That sometimes they can overcome us.”
She frowned at him, confused. “I don’t get it.”
“Well,” he said, and set the notebooks on the cushion beside him. “It basically boils down to this. Either Sean was crazy. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Remember I said don’t mention this to Rory.”
“Or what?”
“Or he was…I guess, for lack of a better term…he was possessed.”
Karen stared at him. “Possessed.”
He shrugged. “I’m just saying what my grandmother believed and it seems like those are our only two choices. Which do you prefer?”
But she didn’t know which she preferred. And, she supposed, she never would.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Saul smiled. “What do you say we go make a pot of coffee while the electricity is still on?”
Reluctantly, she said, “Okay. Just let me get dressed first.”
Saul waited in the hallway while she pulled on jeans, a white cable-knit sweater and her sneakers. She felt silly, asking him to wait in the hall when she’d seen him completely naked, but she was modest and couldn’t help feeling awkward about the tables being turned.
He knows you peed your pants, for crying out loud. Seeing your tits is probably not going to faze him.
Nevertheless, she felt better with him out of the room, though she wasn’t so brave that she closed the door. When she was finished, they went downstairs together and found Rory already in the kitchen making breakfast.
“Hope you like eggs and sausage,” he said, sounding almost friendly. “After all, it might be your last meal.”
“Very funny,” Saul said and somewhere out in the forest, not very far away at all, another tree fell.
The power stayed on just long enough for Rory to finish cooking, which they all agreed was a minor blessing, and they had to eat their meal by candlelight, listening to what sounded like a war going on all around them. Near and far, explosions shook the house and occasionally they could hear glass breaking somewhere above them.
“This is a bad one,” Saul said, looking worriedly up at the ceiling.
“Bad for my wallet, especially,” Rory said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Replacing all the broken windows is gonna cost me an arm and a leg.”
Karen couldn’t tell if he was trying to make light of the situation or if he really was worried about money. She just kept her thoughts to herself, concentrated on shoveling the food down as fast as possible and worried about the stray, Dusty, out in this ugly storm. The poor thing. She must be terrified.
Another bomb went off, so close she cried out and dropped her fork, spilling food into her lap. “Damn!”
“I think that was the garage,” Saul said. Rory looked like he might burst into tears at any moment.
“You have insurance, don’t you?” Karen asked.
“Yeah, but…” He trailed off and she knew he was thinking about Sean.
“What if a tree hits the house?” she asked.
“This house has stood through a hundred years of wind storms,” Rory answered. “It will stand through this one too.”
Saul didn’t seem as convinced, which didn’t make Karen feel any better.
The sun had risen now, though it was hard to tell that it had. The sky remained a dark angry gray and the daylight barely penetrated the windows. Karen was beginning to lose her enthusiasm for trying to get to the truck in this storm, but she still didn’t like the idea of staying in the house any longer either. She knew she couldn’t take another night here and when it came right down to it, thought she would prefer risking her life outside over suffering more of the nightmare visions she’d had only a few hours ago.