Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she physically started. Retrieving her cell, she saw the anonymous text glowing on the small screen:
Get out. Get out now!
“What the hell?” Kara whispered, her breath clouding in the cold space. She was about to text back. “Tate—it’s happening again!”
“What?”
Before she could respond and demand to know who was on the other end of the connection, undulating bubbles appeared on the screen indicating that whoever was on the other end of the connection was typing into his or her cell.
“I don’t know, but they’re contacting me again . . . Oh, God.” The new message appeared in bold type:
Leave now! HE’S HERE!!!!
“He’s here? Who’s here?” she said, her fear congealing inside her.
Tate asked, “Who knows you’re here?”
“Besides you? No one. You know that.”
“The text says ‘here,’ as if whoever is contacting you—”
“Is here,” she finished for him, terrified. “In this house!” Dread and fear mingled. coiling her insides, as she glanced around the attic where she’d been trapped all those years before.
“And not alone,” he whispered against her ear. “Let’s go.”
“Someone is here? Up here?” she said desperately, shining her flashlight frantically, its beam jumping from piles of furniture to the rafters to the floor and toward the source of the faint whir.
“Oh, God.”
The beam of her flashlight had landed on a stain on the floor. A dark red pool of congealing liquid. Blood. Splattered everywhere. On old books, boxes and vinyl record jackets—Frank Sinatra’s face covered in blood drips, The Beatles’s album cover smeared in red. She bit back a scream and stared, her gaze riveted to the space beneath the old record console. “No . . . oh, no, no.”
“What the hell? Stay here.” Tate moved closer to the stereo, opening the lid of the record stand and gasping, his breath sucked through his teeth.
The beam of his flashlight had landed on the crown of a severed head slowly rotating upon an ancient turntable.
Kara swept her light over the front of the console. Through the thin, shredded fabric of the console she saw a head spinning around and around, eyes and mouth wide open, blood still visible on Jonas McIntyre’s ashen skin.
CHAPTER 35
Kara ran!
Like she’d never run in twenty years.
Heart racing, blood pounding in her ears, she flew down the attic steps and onto the second floor.
In her mind’s eye she still saw Jonas’s face slowly revolving, his haunted eyes visible through the tattered cloth covering the console.
Her stomach roiled.
Faster! Faster!
Down the stairs and through the living room, where, flashing through her brain, she saw her brothers as they had been, lying dead, in thick pools of their own blood, the embers of the fire hissing and seething a brilliant glowing red. All the while the grandfather clock in the hallway had loudly counted off the hours over the sound of the Christmas carol.
Bong, bong, bong.
“Silent night. Holy night. . . .”
The sights and sounds of that blood-drenched night thundered through her brain, and she nearly tripped as she slid around the corner and ran through the dining room.
Bong! Bong! Bong!
“Shepherds quake—”
Bong!
“—at the sight. . . .”
Louder and louder, over the sound of running footsteps following after her, chasing her down!
“Kara!” she heard, and she sped faster, seven years old again, racing out the back door, flying down the steps, frantically scrambling through the snow, her heart in her throat, tears streaming from her eyes. Dead! They were all dead!
“Mama,” she whispered, her lips frozen. “Daddy.” Through the trees she dashed, her feet slipping and sliding, but she plowed forward.
“Kara! Stop!”
Never!
“I love you, Kara-Bear. . . . I’ll come get you. I promise.” Marlie’s words came back to her, haunted her, and just like before, and as the frozen branches slapped her face, she saw the ghosts of her family through the trees, peering out at her through the snowy veil, their faces drawn and white. All crying her name over the howl of the wind, “Kara! Kara!”
Mama.
Daddy.
Sam Junior.
Donner.
And now Marlie, distorted, but peering around the rough bark of a fir tree, half hidden by the snow-laden branches.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God!
She glanced over her shoulder. Through the thick, ever-changing screen of the snow, she spied the man running after her, chasing her down. Tall and looming, his face obscured, he ran with purpose.