Believing (Lily Dale #2)(60)

The light is beaming off the blade of the knife her grandmother used to make the stir-fry the other night.

Later, she’ll wonder about the strange glow that brought her attention to that knife.

Later, she’ll realize it didn’t really have a source.

Not an electrical one, anyway.

Later, she’ll understand that it was a different kind of energy glowing in the kitchen and illuminating the knife.

Now, without stopping to consider the source, she finds herself reaching out and grasping the handle.

Even as she holds the knife, she wonders why she picked it up. Just some crazy impulse. Because she’s spooked herself into thinking she’s in danger.

If you’re that scared, she tells herself, you should just leave. Get out of the house, go next door, and wait for Gammy.

But another meow on the other side of the door reminds her that poor Gert is trapped in there—maybe by accident.

I have to get her out, Calla thinks. Then I’ll go next door.

She reaches out and turns the knob.

The door creaks as it slowly opens.

“Gert?”

Calla takes a step into the room.

“Come on, kitty, where are—aaaah!”

She cries out as a human figure looms in front of her.

She feels her hand clenching the blade handle, feels it jerking into the air, arcing the blade.

Later, she’ll realize that her arm seemed to move of its own accord. That if she had stopped to think about inflicting harm on another human being, she might not have been able to react.

The blade makes contact with a sickening thud.

A voice lets out an unearthly screech.

She recognizes it: a man’s blood-curdling scream. Only once before in her life has she heard that terrible sound.

It came out of her father when he found out Mom was dead.

Murdered, shouts a voice somewhere in Calla’s head. She was murdered.

The man, whoever he is, staggers through the doorway into the kitchen and collapses to the floor with a moan.

Even in the dim light spilling in from the dining room, Calla can see the purplish black bruise rimming his closed eye—a raccoon eye?—and realizes that he, too, is holding a weapon.

A cleaver whose deadly blade had undoubtedly been intended for her.





EIGHTEEN

Sunday, September 16

10:43 p.m.

His name, she learns later—much, much later, the next day—is Phil Chase. He’s from Ohio, in his mid-twenties, a store clerk described by his neighbors as a quiet loner.

“Isn’t that always the way?” Odelia muttered when they heard that phrase. “A quiet loner. Those are the neighbors to watch out for.”

Calla couldn’t help but think there weren’t many neighbors of that kind in Lily Dale. Here, people are involved in each others’ lives. They notice each other, care about each other, help each other . . . along with hundreds of people who show up here during the season.

Phil Chase was the one who had abducted and murdered Kaitlyn Riggs and tried to murder Erin Shannahan. When they searched his apartment, they found out that he’d also been stalking a girl named Hayley Gorzynski.

Who is currently rehearsing the role of Sandy in an Akron production of Grease.

That information blew Calla away.

Now she gets it. Now she has the answer to at least one question about what’s been happening to her. But there are still so many others . . . along with some new ones.

Phil would have undoubtedly killed Hayley and other young girls, Calla among them, if she hadn’t stopped him.

No, she didn’t kill him.

She was certain he was dead when she went barreling next door to Ramona’s, pounding frantically on her door and screaming for help.

Everything after that point was a blur: Ramona calling the police, the squad cars arriving with sirens wailing, the officers who asked Calla, again and again, what, exactly, had happened.

Finally, what seemed like hours later, they stopped asking questions and started answering hers.

That was when she found out she had inflicted enough injury on her would-be attacker to have left him incapacitated and unconscious . . . but alive.

Just like Erin was when they found her.

The police are sure she’ll be able to identify Phil Chase, who matches her description of her attacker. When she does, he’ll be going to jail for a long, long time. Maybe for the rest of his life. He isn’t going to hurt anyone ever again.

“But why did he do it, Gammy?” Calla asks now as she sits in the living room with her grandmother, trying to make sense of all that happened. Gert, purring contentedly, is snuggled on her lap as Calla strokes her soft fur.

“Who knows why he did it?” Odelia shakes her head. “Evil reigns in some souls. We can’t explain it. We can only beware. That’s why you have to be so careful, Calla. You need to learn how to protect yourself so that—”

“I protected myself pretty well,” she can’t help but cut in. “Right?”

The corners of Odelia’s mouth quirk a little, but she keeps her expression stern. “If you don’t think I’m completely alarmed at the thought of you fighting off an armed attacker who had a hundred pounds and at least six inches on you, you’re dead wrong.”

“At least I’m not dead dead. Because I protected myself.”