Lineage(121)

The phone jangled a few inches from her elbow, and she recoiled from it as if it had bitten her. She reached out a hand, and studied a number she didn’t recognize before answering.

“Stony Bay Books.”

“Mary.”

“Lance?”

“Yes. Could you come to the house as soon as you can?”

“Um, sure. Is something wrong?” Mary asked.

“No, I just want to show you something.”

“Okay, I can be there in a half-hour.”

The line went dead in her hand, and she stared at the phone as if it would expel an answer somehow. She hung up, the urge to call the number back almost irresistible. Her brow wrinkled as she sat back in her chair. His voice had sounded strange. At one point she thought she had heard a zipping sound, like someone closing a coat in the background.

Mary frowned as she made her way to the front door, stepped outside, and locked it. The wind around her felt warm and was peppered with drops of rain.

As she ran toward her car, she felt anticipation. Perhaps Lance had made a breakthrough in the investigation of his past. Or perhaps he just wanted to see her. She hoped that it was the latter, as she backed her car away from the curb and set off into the deepening dusk of the afternoon.



The same infuriating tone issued out of the phone and into Lance’s ear as he pressed it tighter, crushing the cartilage against the side of this head. There was a pause, and then Ellen’s voice began speaking in the casual way he had heard a hundred times. “You’ve reached Ellen. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you …”

Lance punched the end button and threw the device onto the seat beside him. Both hands gripped the steering wheel, and he glanced at the speedometer, not because he cared if he was speeding but to make sure he hadn’t dropped below eighty miles per hour. The needle hovered just under the ninety mark, and he braked to take the inside lane on a sharp curve.

He scanned the streets of Stony Bay as he tore through the sleepy town. Ellen’s silver Trailblazer wasn’t in any of the parking spaces along the narrow street. After passing the city limits, he hoped—foolishly, he knew—he would see her car on the side of the road around the next bend, a flat tire sinking its frame to one side or steam rising from its hood. Only the black glaze of wet pavement and an occasional lightning flash met his eyes after each turn.

Sweat trickled down the sides of his face, and every so often he could feel a drop fall away from the bottom of his chin. His eyes remained focused on the rain-slicked road, his concentration only breaking to check his speed.

Thoughts slithered to the edges of his mind. What if she’s already there and I’m too late? What if the things in the house that once were my father and grandfather met her at the door and pulled her inside? I locked the door on the way out, didn’t I?

The driveway came into sight.

As he turned in, water spraying from the wheels, he searched the mud for other tire tracks, but the rain had battered the soil into a meaningless jumble of puddles and divots. Dead leaves covered the breadth of the drive in a carpet of crimson and orange. The wind pushed the trees to their breaking points and then relinquished them, only to force them down again with a renewed vigor.

The Land Rover roared into the final curve, and Lance blinked at what he had glimpsed through the trees. For a moment he thought he’d seen two vehicles parked before the house, but the shafts of the swaying trees must have thrown his vision off. The last patch of oaks receded from his side view and his breath snagged in his throat.

Ellen’s vehicle sat just where he’d imagined it, the rain spraying off of its roof and sliding down its darkened windows. But the rusty pickup truck parked ahead of it should not have been there.

“Oh God, John,” Lance whispered as he drew even with the Trailblazer. There were no figures behind the glass of either car—he hadn’t expected there to be. His eyes landed on the front door.

It was open.

He waited. The Land Rover hummed around him and runners of water kept obscuring the view through the passenger window. Just leave, the voice said. Just drive away. This isn’t your fight anymore. You didn’t ask Ellen to come here, and John’s fate was sealed as soon as he laid eyes on you. Don’t go into that house and see what you know you’ll see. Put the car in drive and just go. Try to forget and maybe someday you will.

It felt as though an electric cable had been stripped and set loose inside him. He thrummed with indecision, but as his hand touched the keys and twisted the vehicle into silence, he knew that there would be no leaving what lay in the house behind. His imagination would never let him rest. Horrific vistas would appear each time he closed his eyes, blood-soaked corpses of people he once knew. Perhaps he’d eventually tell himself that he didn’t know them, that it was all a story he’d imagined. But figments don’t contain memories and ghosts always know how to find you.