The Shape of Night(78)

    That railing was sturdier than it looked.

“You don’t really want to leave me, Ava,” he says quietly.

I swallow. “No. No, Ben, I don’t.”

“But you’re going to anyway. Aren’t you?”

“That’s not true.”

“Was it something I said? Something I did?”

Frantically I hunt for the words to soothe him. “It was nothing you did. You were always good to me.”

“It was the painting, wasn’t it? My painting of this house.” I stiffen, a reaction I can’t control, and he sees it. “I know you were in my studio. I know you looked at it, because you smeared the canvas.” He points to my hand. “The paint is still on your fingers.”

“Can’t you understand why that painting spooked me? Knowing that you’ve been watching my house. Watching me.”

“I’m an artist. It’s what artists do.”

“Spy on women? Slink around at night to watch their bedroom windows? You’re the one who broke into my kitchen, aren’t you? Who tried to break in while Charlotte was living here?” I’m finding my courage again. Preparing to counterattack. If I show fear, then he’s already won. “That’s not being an artist. That’s being a stalker.”

He seems stunned by my retort, which is just what I want him to be. I want him to know that I won’t be a victim like Charlotte or Jessie or any other woman he’s threatened.

“I’ve already called the police, Ben. I told them you’ve been watching my house. I told them they should take a good look at you, because I’m not the first woman you’ve stalked.” Can he tell I’m bluffing? I don’t know. I only know that now is the time to leave, while he’s off-balance. I turn and head down the stairs, not at a rush, because I don’t want to act like prey. I descend with the calm and measured pace of a woman in charge. A woman who’s not afraid. I make it down to the second-floor hallway.

    Still safe. Still no pursuit.

My heart is thudding so hard it feels ready to punch its way out of my chest. I walk down the hall toward the next staircase. I just have to get down those steps, out the front door, and climb into my car. Forget Hannibal; he’ll have to fend for himself tonight. I’m getting the hell out of here and driving straight to the police.

Footsteps. Behind me.

I glance back and there he is. His face is twisted in rage. This is no longer the Ben I know; this is someone else, something else.

I bolt toward the last set of stairs. Just as I reach the top of the staircase he tackles me and the impact hurls me forward. I am falling, falling, a terrifying swan dive down the stairs that seems to happen in excruciatingly slow motion.

I don’t remember the landing.





Twenty-Nine


Heavy breathing. Warm air huffing on my hair. And pain, great pounding waves of it, crashing in my head. I am being dragged up the stairs, my feet thumping over each step as I’m pulled higher and higher. I can make out only shadows and the faint glint of a wall sconce. It’s the staircase to the turret. He is taking me to the turret.

He pulls me over the top step and drags me into the room. Leaves me sprawled on the floor as he pauses to catch his breath. Hauling a body up two flights of stairs is exhausting; why has he gone to the effort? Why bring me to this room?

Then I hear him open the door to the widow’s walk. I feel the rush of cool air and the scent of the sea sweeps in. I try to rise but pain, sharp as the slice of a knife, shoots from my neck and down my left arm. I can’t sit up. Just moving my arm is unbearable. Footsteps creak closer and he stares down at me.

“They’ll know it was you,” I tell him. “They’ll find out.”

    “They never found out before. And that was twenty-two years ago.”

Twenty-two years? He’s talking about Jessie. The girl who fell from the widow’s walk.

“She tried to leave me, too. Just like you are now.” He glances toward the widow’s walk, and I picture that cold and rainy Halloween night. A teenage boy and girl arguing while their friends are downstairs getting drunk and making out. He’s trapped her here, where she cannot escape. Where murder requires only a shove over the widow’s walk. Even twenty-two years later, the terror that girl felt still lingers in this room, powerful enough to be felt by those who are sensitive to echoes from the past.

It wasn’t Aurora Sherbrooke’s death that had shaken Kim so deeply on the day she visited this room with her ghost-hunting team. It was Jessie Inman’s.

“That’s life in a small town,” says Ben. “Once they decide you’re respectable, a pillar of the community, you can get away with everything. But you, Ava?” He shakes his head. “They’ll see all the empty booze bottles in your trash bin. They’ll hear about your hallucinations. Your so-called ghost. And worst of all, they know you’re not from here. You’re not one of us.”

Just like Charlotte, whose disappearance raised no questions. One day she was here, and the next she was gone, and no one cared enough to investigate because she was an outsider. Not one of them. Not like the well-respected Dr. Ben Gordon whose roots run generations-deep in Tucker Cove. Whose father, also a doctor, had the power to keep his son’s name out of the newspaper after the Halloween night tragedy. Jessie’s fate was forgotten, and soon, so would Charlotte’s.