The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller(48)

Cecil grimaced as though tasting something bitter.

“The day Allison fell into a coma, he had four men haul the clock up from the basement. One of them was my father. That clock ... No one wanted to touch it, for anyone could see it was an evil thing, unnatural and ugly even in the light of day. They placed it in Abel and Larissa’s bedroom, against the wall.”

“I saw where it stood, there was a shadow still there.”

“I don’t know what that is, but it is no shadow. That night the staff lay awake in their beds, with a storm roaring outside the windows and Abel’s voice coming from upstairs, chanting words that weren’t words. Near morning, the storm broke and a single scream came from the room—Larissa’s last sound on this earth. My father ran to the room, gripping a pistol, ready to do what needed to be done if Abel had finally gone too far, but when he burst inside, it was already too late. Larissa and Allison were dead, and Allison’s hair had gone completely white.”

The entire room seemed to shift a little, and Evan swallowed, trying to push away the image of the long, white hair in the dustpan.

“But what chilled his blood more than anything, my mother told me much later, was that clock, sitting there against the wall, all of its hands running backward.”

Evan blinked. “Backward?”

“Yes.”

“But what was he trying to accomplish with it?”

“Only he and God know that for sure, but one night when I was very young, I heard my father and mother speak of that morning in whispers they thought I couldn’t hear. My father said he was sure that Abel had tried to reverse Allison’s condition somehow with the clock.”

“Reverse? Like turn back time?” Evan said.

He noticed his voice sounded far away, like it came from another room in the house, and the words in Bob’s shaking hand kept surfacing from the deep tidewaters of his mind: IcangobackIcangobackIcangoback.

“Like I said, Mr. Tormer, he was a madman, and there is nothing more dangerous than a lunatic in love.”

“But how did they die? The article I read said there weren’t any marks on Larissa’s body and only a small pool of blood on the floor.”

“Of that, we know the same. There weren’t any weapons present, nor was there any trauma done to either of them. It seems Abel may have sliced himself on the center pendulum, for they found a small amount of blood on its edge and inside the clock.”

Evan let the information soak into him. The coffee had elevated his senses and sharpened his thoughts, but the harder he tried to assemble the facts into something cohesive, the more they swam into a blurry jumble like Bella’s painting in the room. As if reading his mind, Cecil spoke.

“She told me it was a field of flowers, daisies.” Cecil glanced at him. “The painting. She’d given it to Abel and Larissa before Allison arrived at the house, perhaps to put her and my father in better favor.”

“Did it?”

“No, but Abel knew talent when he saw it, and hung it in their room nonetheless.”

“It was glued to the wall—why did he glue it to the wall?”

Cecil cast her eyes downward, grimacing again. “It wasn’t, it was simply hung there. But the morning after my father found them, it was stuck in place like someone had welded it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Evan said, rubbing his forehead.

“Has any of this tale made sense, Mr. Tormer?”

“Please call me Evan—and no, it hasn’t.” He looked at her. “But I believe you.”


“I appreciate the sentiment, but I can’t say I’m glad you came calling today. I prefer to forget the things I’ve told you, and you would think I’d be able to at my age, but I don’t—I can’t.” Cecil stared hard into his eyes. “That abomination in your basement isn’t natural, Mr. Tormer. It is a man-made cancer that poisons everything it touches. My father was the first to enter that room, the first to see, only moments after, what happened there. I was seven when he died of some strange disease the doctors had no name for. He simply withered away, a black ichor spreading beneath his skin until he looked burned from within. I can still hear the agony in his voice as he died, intertwined with my mother’s cries.”

Cecil’s eyes jittered slightly, and Evan wondered, not for the first time, if he’d made a mistake coming here. The woman before him, so stolid moments before, now looked unhinged.

“She went insane after my father passed, slowly, one day at a time. I cared for her, and she told me these things before she lost her mind completely.” Cecil’s jaw stiffened, the muscles bulging beneath her thin skin. “And do you know what? She still painted every day, but the only thing that ever graced her canvas after my father died was that f*cking clock!”

Evan stood and bumped the glass table with his knee, spilling his half—empty cup of coffee. On the transparent table the liquid looked like blood, running in lines toward Cecil, who vibrated with a manic energy in her chair, watching him with blazing eyes.

“Destroy it, Mr. Tormer. Break it, burn it, do whatever you must before it takes everything from you like it did to me!”

Evan opened his mouth, but the only thing that came out was a small moan, barely audible even to his own ears. Then he turned and walked for the door; he had to get out of the house. His nerves were wound into a bundled heap of utter panic that urged him to run. He glanced over his shoulder, sure he would see Cecil following close behind him, her knurled hands raised like claws overhead. But the kitchen and archway were empty.