The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall (Sherbrooke Brides 11.50)

Once again they heard the voice, and yet again it was low and blurred, enfolding them. “Ignore it.” Miranda pinched out the candle when they reached the head of the stairs, afraid the tremors would make her drop it. The thought of a fire was more frightening than the infernal shaking. They stepped off the bottom step into the entry hall and nearly fell into a gaping hole in the middle of the black-and-white squares, and it was spinning around and around. From where they stood, they could see no bottom.

Miranda whispered, “An abyss.”

She grabbed P.C.’s hand and ran around the black swirling hole to the front door. Both of them felt its pull, trying to jerk them in and go—where? To hell, Miranda thought, that black gaping hole went directly to hell. She unfastened the three locks and tugged. The massive door didn’t budge. Miranda pulled, and P.C. added all her weight, but the big lion’s paw knob wouldn’t move. The voice came again, behind them. No more gentle whispers, now it was loud, angry, but still they couldn’t understand what it was saying. Miranda looked over her shoulder. Was the voice coming from deep in that black hole?

Miranda pulled P.C. to the large window beside the front door and unlatched it. It wouldn’t push outward. It wouldn’t do anything at all.

“It doesn’t want us to leave, Mama,” P.C. whispered, so afraid, and the voice kept coming, so loud now their ears hurt.

Miranda screamed, “What do you want? What are you saying? We cannot understand you!”

Louder and louder, the same words or sounds over and over again, belching out of the abyss. Then the voice simply stopped and the tremors became great shudders and the black hole suddenly disappeared. Miranda grabbed the gilt Louis XVth chair in the entryway and slammed it against the window. There was a grunting sound, like she’d struck someone in the belly, then the window shattered, not outward, but insanely the shards flew inward, showering them with glass, and something hurtled them back, and Miranda would swear she felt breathing on her face, fast and harsh, and then a whisper, right in her ear, and she knew it was the same words, only she didn’t understand them.

Miranda couldn’t move, couldn’t think. She felt the pricks of glass shards, but ignored them. “P.C., are you all right?”

“Yes, Mama, maybe a small cut on my arm—I think that’s all. Whatever it is, it’s really mad at us.”

Miranda felt the welling of blood from a cut on her own cheek and wiped it away. The house seemed to tilt upward, throwing them back. Miranda grabbed P.C., pulled her tightly against her, trying to protect her, but the shaking hurled them into a table leg, and the vase of roses atop it went flying, striking the tiles, sending water and flowers everywhere.

“Hold on!” Miranda shouted. She buried P.C.’s face against her chest and closed her arms around her head. The mad convulsions went on and on. Miranda would swear she heard the voice shriek out a low moan and a part of a word—it sounded like hoos. What was a hoos? Or who was a hoos? No more, she simply couldn’t stand any more. She grabbed her daughter and staggered across the wildly swaying floor. She managed to lift her out the open window, climbed out after her, and they ran as fast as they could away from the shuddering house.

CHAPTER TWO

Belhaven House

Thursday, the next evening

Lightning slashed through the black sky and thunder rolled, so loud it shook the ground, sending rocks tumbling down the cliff in front of him. The wind whipped his hair about his head, and the rain pelted down on his black cloak, but he didn’t move, only stared off at the huge, dark castle bathed in clear, cold white light by yet another burst of lightning. Raven’s Peak—so old it should have crumbled long ago, but it hadn’t. It still jutted out proudly at the end of the distant promontory into the North Sea, the centuries-old sentinel to ward off enemies. It had festered with ancient mysteries and deadly secrets over the centuries, and too many deaths to be explained by the rational mind. But now at least one of those mysteries was solved, its secrets revealed.

Lightning burst wide, bathing Raven’s Peak yet again in daylight brightness. Only one final death tonight. He’d delivered the final blow himself, and the ancient evil was gone, hurled back into the depths of hell. The Ballinger family was now safe, at least in this generation. But the next? Who knew when evil would once again slither up from the deep crevices in the earth?

Grayson Sherbrooke laid down his pen, rubbed the ink off his fingers, and stretched his hands. He smiled. The Evil Within was done, and he was pleased. Thomas Straithmore had once again vanquished unspeakable evil, this time a demon from the bowels of hell unleashed accidently by the small son in the Ballinger household. Grayson’s publisher, Benjamin Hawkes, would be pleased with Grayson’s latest manuscript since he liked nothing more, he told Grayson, than a cup of hot brandy while Grayson scared him to his toes. The Evil Within, starring Grayson’s demon-killer Thomas Straithmore, should freeze all the blood in his toes at the gut-cramping scenes he’d written.

“Papa?” Tap, tap, tap on the library door. “Papa? Are you awake?”

Grayson wasn’t surprised. Pip always had perfect timing. Pip’s nurse, naturally, had no idea her four-year-old charge was wandering around Belhaven in the middle of the night since she slept the sleep of the angels. Grayson rose, stretched, and opened the library door to see his son looking up at him with his heart-melting smile, his small feet peeking out from beneath his white nightshirt, his arms held up. Grayson scooped him up, spun him around, and drew him close to his heart. “It’s midnight, you imp. Why are you awake?”

Pip pulled back in his father’s arms, studied his face, and lightly patte

d his cheek with damp fingers. Pip still sucked his thumb. He whispered against Grayson’s ear, “I heard my Mary Beth telling Mr. Haddock that you were finishing your next scary book tonight, so when I went to bed I told myself to wake up and I did. Mary Beth shivered when Mr. Haddock said that, Papa, and she knew it would frighten her right out of her stockings. Mr. Haddock said he wanted to see that. She called him saucy and hit him in the arm.”

So Mary Beth had called Haddock saucy, had she? Haddock was his butler and valet, since he’d confided in Grayson in a low, vibrating voice three months before that valeting was in his blood, his grandfather having taken care of the Duke of Devonshire way back in the olden days. Grayson had to admit Haddock had a fine way with ironing shirts. He’d also been giving Mary Beth, Pip’s nanny, interested looks for nearly three months now, but she was having none of it. He was too short, she said, too old for her. Both were true, Grayson thought, but Haddock was determined. Interestingly enough, Haddock’s hair had turned stark white when he was twenty-three. At thirty, he looked like Moses.

He looked down at Pip. “The book’s done, not two minutes ago.”

“What is the title, Papa?”

“The Evil Within.“

“At the end you saved everyone, didn’t you? You smashed the evil hard?”

“Thomas Straithmore saved the day again, and yes, the evil got smashed.”

“Grandmama said you always kicked evil in the dirt, and that buoyed her spirits. Grandpa laughed, said you were always a hero, even when you were as little as me. I told him that couldn’t be true since I’m not little now, Papa, I’m nearly five.”

“Four and a half.” His father believed he was a hero, did he? Grayson hugged Pip close, kissed his small ear, and breathed in that sweet child smell. He didn’t want fear or unhappiness to touch his young life. Thankfully, Pip had been too young when death had first knocked on their door. His mother, Lorelei, had been dead three years now, come next week. Grayson felt the familiar punch of pain, felt it recede into the past again. “It’s time for you to be in your bed, Pip. No, no arguments. That’s where I’m headed myself.”

“But you always have a glass of champagne when you finish a book, Papa.”