“But he’s left the bodies in very public places. So he could have gone anywhere. Why there? What does he need from it?” Evie was on the move again and traveling the room.
“You’re beginning to remind me of your uncle,” Jericho said. “And you’re making me a bit dizzy.”
“Sorry.” Evie sat at the long table with its perilous stacks of books, thinking. She took Ida Knowles’s diary in hand. “Ida Knowles’s last entry was made just before she went into the cellar, presumably. What was down there?”
“The police never found anything other than a basement full of bones.”
“ ‘Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses….’ ” Evie recited. She thought back to the day she and Mabel had gone to Knowles’ End. She’d noticed a fat chimney from the outside of the house but couldn’t seem to find the corresponding fireplace inside. And then later, in the basement, she’d felt a draft.
Evie was suddenly up and scurrying about the library, pocketing matches, gathering flashlights.
“What are you doing?”
“I think there’s some sort of secret room, a place that is special to him, and that is where he’s hiding whatever it is that’s keeping him alive.” Evie glanced at the clock. It was ten thirty. “We’ll need to hurry if we’re to make it in time.”
Jericho got to his feet, wincing at the pain from his wound. “Where are we going?”
“We’re not going to wait for John Hobbes to take his last victim. We’re taking the fight to him. We’re going to Knowles’ End.”
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
How do you stop a ghost? How do you sever a thread of evil once it has woven itself into the world? Those questions coiled tightly in Evie’s mind as she and Jericho drove Will’s car through streets crowded with revelers ready to welcome Solomon’s Comet. Flappers performed an impromptu cancan as they staggered along to the next party. Just ahead, a stilt-walker wobbled on long, spindly legs, blocking the way. Through the window, a drunken man in a harlequin hat blew a paper horn at Evie rather suddenly, startling a scream from her. “Got ya!” He cackled and reeled away, laughing like a devil. She honked the horn furiously at the stilt-walker until he clambered aside. A path opened and she honked the car’s horn as a warning to everyone else.
Farther north, the crowds thinned. Above them, shadows from the great metal cage of the elevated tracks washed over the hood of the Ford, light, dark, light, dark. Soon they were driving along the desolate banks of the Hudson, their headlights the only illumination. At last they came to the old Knowles house. It looked down on the street like a forgotten god, the moon fat and white behind it.
Evie slipped around to the broken servants’ entrance on the side where she’d gotten in before. The door swung open with a loud creak. The last time she’d been at the house, it had been in the full light of day, bright with sunshine. Now it was very dark, and every shape seemed menacing. Evie turned on her flashlight. The pale beam fell across a broken icebox, a Hoosier cabinet, a sink apron. It illuminated the hunchbacked form of a rat on a counter. The rat swiveled its pointed nose toward the light before skittering away into the comforting dark.
“This way,” Evie said.
She led Jericho to the butler’s pantry, and tried not to think about John Hobbes waiting inside one of those tall cabinets, ready to leap out as she walked past. She hurried into the hall that connected the kitchen with the rest of the house. “Careful,” Evie whispered. “There are traps throughout.”
There were many doors, and she couldn’t be certain which would lead to the cellar. She certainly didn’t want to go down the way she had the last time.
“What could be keeping him alive? What’s his conduit into this world?” Jericho asked.
“I don’t know, but it must be hidden somewhere in this house. I’ll tear down every wall looking for it if I have to,” Evie said. “What time is it?”
Jericho put down the cans of kerosene he carried and angled his wristwatch under Evie’s flashlight. “Twenty past eleven.”
“We don’t have long.”
The house felt different to her. She struggled to pinpoint what, exactly, had changed. Alive. Awake. Ready. Those were the words that came to mind, as if the house were a living organism, a great womb on the verge of some terrible birth. The beam of her light skimmed over the moldy wallpaper. The walls were slick with condensation. Sweat dripped down Evie’s back as well. The chill of her last visit had been replaced by an almost stifling heat. She opened a door and found only a shallow closet. The inside of the closet door was damp. They tried other doors and found a bedroom, an office, and a water closet.
“Why can’t we find it?” Evie asked. “I don’t understand why I can’t find the entrance. It was here before. It’s almost…” It’s almost as if the house is hiding it from us, she’d started to say. “Let’s keep looking. I’m sure I must be remembering it wrong. There’s a parlor to the right.”
They came to it, but the parlor’s pocket doors were closed. “These were open before.”
With effort, they slid them open. Jericho’s flashlight moved slowly around the room. But it was different, too. The sheets had been removed from the furniture.
“It wasn’t this way before,” Evie whispered.
“It’s like it was expecting us,” Jericho said quietly.
“Why did you say ‘it’?” Evie asked. Jericho didn’t answer, but they were both feeling it—the house. The house was waiting.
Evie’s flashlight beam crawled across the walls. They seemed to bow outward just slightly. Like lungs, breathing, she thought, and then chased the thought away. It was hard to see anything in the gloom. Her beam traveled to the broken mirror, blinding her with the reflection. She blinked, and in the afterimage she could swear she’d seen somber, ghostly faces. Gasping, she swung the light around, but there was nothing behind her. The house groaned and creaked.
“I don’t like this,” Jericho said.