One was from Wyatt. Good night. I hope you can get some sleep, considering. If you need anything, if anything happens in the middle of the night, any scratching or . . . whatever, call me. I’m leaving my phone by my bed. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning with this guy. He attached a photo of Storm sleeping on Wyatt’s bed.
The other was from Jane. Hey, I didn’t want to say this in front of your parents, but did you notice how the energy changed when they came into the house? It all just shifted. I don’t think you’re going to have any trouble with the spirits tonight. If you do, call me. I’m keeping my phone by the bed. Tess smiled. Both of them, so concerned. But those spirits aren’t gone. I’ll come over tomorrow, and we’ll try to get some answers.
That had to be good enough for now. After everything that had happened that day, she was exhausted. Ghosts or no ghosts, she had to get some sleep. Tess plugged her phone into the charger and turned out the light. She drifted off, watching the flames in the fireplace dance and sway, comforted her parents were right down the hall.
But her dreams were sinister and foreboding. It was as though the world had become one of those paintings, with dark swirls and eddies in the sky. She felt a sort of manic obsession, a frantic need, a hunger. So she walked the streets of Wharton, in search of it.
Tess jolted awake, her sheets damp with sweat. The fire was out. She glanced at the clock—5:00 a.m. She groaned. Just enough sleep to be fully awake hours before she really had to get up.
She lay there for a few moments, eyes closed, trying to will herself back to sleep, when she heard her parents’ voices.
“Come back to bed, Indy,” her mother said, her voice a harsh whisper. “Before you wake Tess.”
“No,” her father said, “I have to do this. Now.”
Tess pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed. She walked into the hallway, and somehow she just knew she would find them in the studio.
She poked her head in and saw her mother at the door to the little bathroom.
“Mom?” Tess said. “What’s going on?”
Jill turned around and pleaded with her daughter with her eyes. “He’s in there cleaning.”
Tess rushed across the studio and into the bathroom, where she found her father holding a bucket of soapy water and a sponge.
“I need to get this blood off the walls, girls,” he said. “We can’t have that here.”
“Dad? Come on now. You’re not going to get it cleaned up after all of this time. We’ll have to paint over it.”
He held the sponge over the bucket and squeezed it. The soapy water dripped back down into the bucket from where it had come.
“Don’t you see? This is a bloodbath. Get it? A bathroom. Covered in blood. A bloodbath.” He laughed, then. A terrible laugh. Just like she had heard in this room hours before.
That was when Tess noticed his eyes. They had a wildness behind them, a quality that was definitely not of her cultured father.
Tess flipped on the light. “Dad!” she shouted. “Wake up!” She strode across the room and grabbed him by the arms. The bucket fell to the floor and spilled on its side.
He just kept laughing. It was as though he didn’t hear her at all. Or wasn’t there.
This was not her father.
Jill had followed Tess into the room and was standing there, wide eyed.
“Indigo!” she said, her voice harsh and low. “Indigo, my love.”
Tess shook his arms. “Dad! Wake up!”
Indigo slumped to the floor, moaning. “No,” he said, drawing the word out. “No, Daisy, no.”
Tess grabbed her mother’s hand. She had no idea what else to do.
Indigo cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. He shook his head and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Whatever had taken ahold of him was gone. He looked around the room. “What in the devil is going on?” he asked.
Tess helped him to his feet.
“You were sleepwalking,” Jill said. “Now, let’s get you out of these wet pajamas. Then you can curl back down into bed.” She caught Tess’s eye as she threaded her arm through his and walked with him out of the room.
“That’s the damnedest thing,” Indigo muttered.
There would be no more sleep for Tess, she was certain, so she stepped into a hot shower and let the water rush over her for a long time. She didn’t know what to make of her father’s sleepwalking. Was it the beginning of dementia, like Joe’s nightly episodes signified? Or was it something else? Tess’s own dreams had been disturbing, to say the least, ever since she had come back to this house. Maybe that was what was going on with her father as well.