Wildest Dreams

7

The cold rain sliced my face as I trailed Lethe Whistler’s ghost across a beach shaped like the blade of a reaper’s scythe.

I did not follow too closely. I aimed the flashlight beam just short of Lethe’s bloody heels, sparing myself the sight of her. The wind off the water did the rest, banishing the sickening miasma that accompanied her.

The clean scent of salt air washed the darkness, but the bracing smell did nothing to clear my head. A foghorn sounded in the distance, and waves crashed against the shore, but it was the thunder of gunfire that rang in my ears.

My left hand stank of cordite. Back at the bridge, I’d emptied a pistol into the dark forest. I had no idea if I’d hit Janice Ravenwood. If Lethe’s ghost knew the answer, she wasn’t saying. Apart from the threat that had forced me to draw my gun, she hadn’t said a word.

That threat had been enough, because it was accompanied by an unspoken promise to take me to the girl. Still, I didn’t know if I could believe Lethe had the little girl, any more than I could believe that the child was indeed Circe Whistler’s ghost.

It seemed impossible. Circe was alive, and the little girl was dead. But if the little girl and Circe were indeed one in the same, that would explain why Lethe’s spirit had attacked the child. Even if I couldn’t understand the connection between the girl and the woman, Circe had admitted that she orchestrated her sister’s murder. That was certainly reason enough for the hate Lethe had directed toward the little girl’s ghost.

Golden sand sparkled beneath the flashlight beam. A gust of wind pounded against my back and knocked me forward a step, and the harsh light played over Lethe’s skinned calves. Stripped muscles danced against ribbons of tendon and naked bone.

The wind changed and the scent of Lethe’s pain caught me straight in the face like a stunning blow. But Lethe didn’t slow down. She moved forward. Whatever her motivation, it drove her like a slave master’s whip. Needles of rain stitched her shade, and the wind tore through her like an open window. She was nothing more than air, but the storm could not carry her away. She would not allow that to happen.

It was obvious that we were heading toward the bottle house. I didn’t know why, and Lethe wasn’t telling me. She never looked back once. She knew I would follow her, just as she knew that she could safely turn her back to me.

Lethe had nothing to fear from my guns or my knife. She was already dead.

She pulled ahead as we neared the cliff, the same way the little girl had. Through the whispering beach grass she went, and up the trail, and to the cracked concrete stairway that led to the bottle house.

I followed as best I could. Icy wind blasted the cliff. The storm lashed my wet body as I crossed the patio, but the bottle house was not an inviting sanctuary.

Lethe waited in the open doorway. The wind howled through her, sweeping across the black maw while screams and gasps and moans echoed behind its concrete lips.

The sound was only the wind in the bottles. I played my flashlight over the rain-slicked glass, and told myself to get a grip. But what I saw wasn’t half as powerful as what I heard. And what I heard were a thousand voices, as if a horrible party waited there in the dark.

“It’s a party for the dead,” Lethe said, as if she could read my mind. “But you’re invited.”

I stood in the storm, as cold as a corpse.

Lethe was trying to scare me.

For the first time in a long time, I hesitated.

Wondering if I was really as smart as I thought I was.

Wondering if I should be afraid.

Lethe smiled her red smile, and the black mouth swallowed her whole. Her voice joined the others, beckoning me inside.

A deep inhalation.

I stepped forward.

I crossed the threshold, welcomed by the cold.

Lethe pointed at a bottle in the wall. “Turn it,” she said.

I did. A hinged slab of stone rose from the floor like a fallen tombstone intent upon righting itself.

I stared at the trapdoor, remembering how I’d nearly lost my balance during my first visit to the bottle house. At the time I thought I had stumbled, but maybe I hadn’t stumbled at all. Maybe a stone had shifted under my feet, a stone that covered a hidden stairway.

Lethe descended into the dark pit. I followed, almost making a crack about forgetting my trick or treat bag, but it wasn’t the time or the place for jokes. I was too worried about the little girl.

At the bottom of the staircase Lethe indicated another bottle set in another wall. Again I was told to turn it, and this time the stone door fell closed.

Darkness swelled around us. The chamber was small, reducing my flashlight beam to spotlight exposures. A small table held a cobwebbed tangle of junk-empty wine bottles, corks, rusted scalpels and moldy bandages. All this we ignored. Lethe told me to take a box of wooden matches from the pile. It was a simple task, but one she couldn’t perform with spectral fingers.

Soon enough I found a matchbox, and we left the room for another. This one was bigger and somehow emptier, with wet stone walls and unlit torches set in wrought iron sconces, cobwebs and mold and a quiet, dripping echo somewhere in the dark.

Fat spiders sizzled in their webs as I lit the torches. I noticed that the wrought iron sconces were spiked and scaled, nearly the same design as the candlesticks at Circe’s mansion. Soon the torches flared alive and forked tongues of flame licked the darkness, revealing redwood pews heavy with inky mildew and a black stone altar alive with white mold. Behind the altar hung an inverted cross draped in a veil of tattered cobwebs. Mushrooms sprouted from the crosspiece and from an iron pulpit that stood before it, overlooking all.

I imagined Diabolos Whistler standing there, young and strong, torchlight painting his sharp features as he stared down at the oblong altar.

An altar large enough to hold an eager supplicant.

But no ghost lay upon the altar. Not a one.

And no words came from Whistler’s pulpit. But there was a sob. I heard it.

And then I saw her through a cobweb tangle. Behind the pulpit, below the cross. A little girl, hiding from the light.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I’ve come to help you.”

The little girl wouldn’t look at me. She stared through the billowing black smoke that rose from my torch, her eyes focusing on Lethe Whistler…or what was left of her.

“Keep that woman away from me,” the girl said.

I looked into Lethe’s leering eyes and I didn’t blink. “You heard her,” I said. “Get the hell away from us.”

“Anything you say.” Lethe laughed. “Have your talk. And then we’ll have ours.”

Lethe drifted away like a red shadow, and I turned to the little girl. “Are you okay?”

“I’m scared.”

“You’ll be all right, That thing won’t dare hurt you. Not while I’m here.”

The girl sobbed. “You’ve got to take me away. I don’t like it here. That woman…that monster…she says she’s my sister. But my sister isn’t a ghost. She’s not dead. She’s only a little girl. She’s three years old, and she lives with my mom.”

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Lethe. She’s named after a river from an old storybook my mom likes. It’s a river that makes you forget.”

I looked into Circe Whistler’s young eyes. A dozen questions sprang to mind. I wondered if she had any idea what had happened to her, or if she realized that she existed in two worlds at the same time. I wondered what she’d forgotten, and what she remembered, and how much of it could hurt her.

I didn’t want her to be hurt.

I kept my questions to myself.

But Circe had questions of her own. “Did I do something wrong? Is that why this is happening to me?”

“No,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Don’t worry, Circe. Everything’s going to be okay.”

It was the first time I’d called her by name, and she brightened at the sound of it. “Did you always know who I am?”

“Not always, but I know now.”

“I should have told you before,” she said. “I wanted to tell you at the bottle house, as soon as I heard that lady say she was taking you to my father’s estate. But she scared me, and I was afraid to come out of hiding while she was there. After you left, I was all alone again. I started wishing that I’d gone with you. I thought that maybe I could help you if you were going to meet my father. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the house. I knew the address, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to get there. I walked all the way to Cliffside, but everything was closed. Finally, I saw a map taped to the window at the gas station and-”

“It’s not important how you found me,” I interrupted. “What’s important is that you did, even though you were afraid.”

“So you really do know my father?”

“We’ve met,” I said, because it wasn’t quite a lie.

“You work for him?”

Now I did lie. I didn’t have another choice.

“Your father is a very important man,” I said. “He was worried that someone might try to hurt you, so he hired me to take care of you.”

“Can you do that?” she asked, glancing over my shoulder at Lethe’s ghost.

“I can,” I said, and there was no way I would let my words become a lie.

Circe believed me. Trust shone in her blue eyes.

That was good. I needed her trust.

“Can we leave now?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not yet.”

She started crying again. She couldn’t help it, staring at the cleaved face of the ghost who held her prisoner. “I know she’s not really my sister,” Circe said. “She can’t be-my sister’s only three years old.”

“I know,” I said, wanting to spare Circe from the truth. “But sometimes people lie, and ghosts are just people. Or at least they used to be. Ghosts can lie, too.”

“She is a liar, and she’s crazy, too. She told me all sorts of horrible things. She even told me that I was dead.”

The little girl nearly broke down. A hard knot of anger tightened in my chest. I took a deep breath, but I was shaking badly and I knew it.

Circe saw my reaction. “It’s not true, is it?” she asked. “I’m not dead, am I?”

“No,” I said. “You’re not dead.”

I think she believed me. I hope she did. But when she reached for my hand, I took a step back. She couldn’t touch me.

Not with her fingers. She couldn’t touch me that way. I wouldn’t let her try.

“It’ll be all right,” I said, but my promise was no more than a whisper in the darkness. Circe was afraid again. She retreated into the shadows and hugged the inverted cross.

Gooseflesh prickled my spine as Lethe came closer.

“Make her go away,” Circe begged.

I turned and faced Lethe Whistler’s deathgrin. “What is it you want?” I asked.

Laughter broke her bloodstained teeth. “You can’t give me what I want.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“To talk to the man who can.”

She turned and started up the staircase.

I knew I had to follow.

“Don’t go,” Circe begged.

“I have to.” I spoke the words as quickly as I could. “But I’ll be back.”

It was a promise I intended to keep.