Foster grabbed Nell by the arm and threw her at the bed, not bothering to watch whether she landed safely or not. “You just stay there!” he shouted at her. Nell pushed herself with her feet to the far side of the bed and cowered, shaking. Foster paced back and forth in what little clear floor space remained, clutching his head. “Okay, this can still work,” he muttered. “According to the last will anyone has a copy of – that would be me – Nell is the sole inheritor. I was still married to her at the time this happened so... well, it has to work. It’s the best we’ve got. Nobody will question. They respect me. I’m a successful businessman!” This last he spat, sneering, at Cally as if daring her to think otherwise.
He squatted in front of the old woman. “So I guess you’re Sofie. Hello, I’m your son-in-law.” She shrank back as he extended a hand she could not shake, even if she had wanted to. “I’m so glad you and your daughter had this chance to have a nice little reunion. And this certainly explains why Ian was always going ‘to bed’ early. What a sicko! What an entire family of sickos. I’m doing the world a favor, ending this lunatic genetic line. Here, Nellie, come sit with your mother and be quiet.” He stood up, kicking through the rubble. “Where did that pretty statue go?”
Nell did not move, except to shrink further back to the far side of the bed. Foster reached for her angrily, and while his back was turned, Cally rolled onto her back. In this position, she was able to put her wrists against the floor and push herself up into a sitting position, and from there she rolled onto her knees. The exertion made her sore head throb wildly, and she was not sure whether she was going to pass out again or merely throw up.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Foster returned his attention to her, his face so contorted with rage that he truly did resemble the monster he claimed not to be.
Fear gave Cally a sudden surge of strength, and she clambered to her feet, avoiding his clutching hands as he stepped on a broken Hummel figurine that rolled under his foot. She kicked her way backwards through the debris to the far side of the room, then turned and ran through the door that opened into the cellar.
It was difficult to keep her balance with her hands bound behind her, especially once she was in the dark cellar with no visual frame of reference other than the faint light from the top of the stairs. She knew if she fell now, she would never be able to get up again. Stumbling repeatedly, she headed for the stairs. Her hope was that Foster would follow her; she could think only that if she could keep his attention on her, he would not have time to hurt anyone in the room behind her. Maybe she could lead him away from them altogether, though she had no clear idea what she would do after that. Just as long as he followed, she hoped, she could buy them some time.
She was all too right: Foster did follow her, and he was fast. She heard something behind her in the cavernous cellar crash to the floor as he collided with it in the dark. His voice muttered continually as his footsteps scuffled closer. “No!” he said over and over. “No! You will not ruin this for me! No, God damn it, you bitch, get back here!”
Feeling with one foot in the dark for the bottom stair, Cally skinned her shin on its rough wooden edge. She held her breath, then, leaning carefully sideways, as Nell had done in her straitjacket, until she felt the pipe railing against her elbow. This she pressed hard against, sliding along it as she ascended one step and then another. She struggled to keep her breathing silent, hoping her footsteps on the stair treads would not betray her location to her pursuer.
By the time she reached the top, the sound of Foster’s muttering indicated he was near the bottom of the stairs himself. She heard him swear as he, too, barked his shin on the bottom step. She staggered through the door at the top of the stairs and turned, throwing herself against it to shut it. She knew she wouldn’t be able to lock it, but at least this would deprive Foster of even the dim light of the back hall. She took a moment to regain her balance, then took a deep breath and ran through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
Running to the middle of the room, Cally realized she was clearly silhouetted against the light from the coach lamps outside the back door; she ducked down into the shadows beside the work table. Then she heard the cellar door slam open against the wall, and Foster’s voice shouting a stream of obscenities into the back hall, but he did not come into the kitchen – his footsteps faded away into the east end of the hall. Cally sat down on the floor and worked her bound hands past her hips and feet until they were in front of her at last. Then she was able to use her teeth to work loose the knot in the drapery cord.
She breathed a sigh of relief, trying to rub the feeling back into her wrists, and dared to allow herself a glimmer of hope when the hall outside the kitchen remained silent. Then she panicked, realizing if Foster stopped pursuing her, he would go back to the white lady’s room where the others waited helplessly. She pushed one of the swinging doors open a few inches and listened. Foster had stopped muttering and cursing, but she could hear his breath and his footsteps at the far end of the hall near the door to the Captain’s room.
Taking a deep breath, she shouted “Monster!” She let the door swing shut as she made a dash for the back door at the other end of the kitchen, and as she ran through to the outside, she made sure to slam the door loudly behind her.
That worked. Foster had heard her, she knew, because as she ran around the corner of the house, she heard the swinging doors in the kitchen bang open, and then heard Foster resume swearing loudly in the kitchen. Leaning out carefully from behind the shrubbery, she peered around the corner of the house and saw him emerge from the back door to stand in the light of the coach lamps, looking around him into the darkness. She ducked back behind the corner of the house and headed down the hill toward the pond.
A light, misting rain had begun to fall and the grass was slippery, so that Cally’s feet slipped with each step and she seemed almost to be running in place. It reminded her of dreams she had had as a child, in which she would be running from a pursuer but her legs would simply not move fast enough. “Fine, then,” she muttered, and threw herself down feet-first in the wet grass. She slid much faster than she could run, bumping over the slick lawn, down the hill until she fetched up against the trunks of the little birches at the pond’s edge.
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She knew on some level that she had badly torn the skin of her elbows, but she didn’t feel the pain. Flipping over onto her stomach, she looked up toward the house. She could see Foster standing in the circle of lamp light just outside the kitchen door, arms spread wide as he turned one way and another, pushing up his glasses, trying to figure out which way she might have gone. Cally struggled to hold her breath, even though she knew he almost certainly could not hear her panting at that distance.
“Where the hell are you!” His sudden shout made her skin jump and almost succeeded in making her let out a yelp. She pressed a hand over her mouth and kept it there, urging herself to think. If Foster started to go back inside, she knew she would have to shout, after all, to draw him to her again.
Beyond him, beyond the gazebo in the garden, she saw a light go on in the window of Katarina and Ignacio’s cottage. Cally entertained a flicker of hope; she had no doubt Ignacio would be as good at subduing murderous maniacs as he was at everything else he did. She looked around her as a curtain of rain blew over her and across the lawn, wondering if there was enough cover of trees and shrubbery for her to be able to run back up the hill to the cottage before Foster could see and stop her. She realized she had made a serious mistake not running to the cottage in the first place. There had been no room in her mind for any thought other than getting Foster away from Ian and the others, and she wished now she could go back in time and do it differently.
Foster turned in the lamp light as if he were considering heading through the little side gate that opened onto Main Street. Then he hesitated, made a rude gesture, and growled a stream of what Cally was sure was profanity as he turned back toward the kitchen door.
Cally realized he meant to go back and resume his original plan of setting fire to the kerosene soaked papers on the bed. She dug her fingers into the wet earth and took a deep breath. With every ounce of air in her lungs she shouted “Help!” She hoped it had been loud enough to attract Ignacio’s attention, because it had certainly been loud enough to attract Foster’s. He turned toward the sound of her voice, and her only choice now was to flee even further from the house.
As Foster slipped and swore down the hill toward her, Cally ducked her head and crawled through the birches. She did her best to head in the general direction of the rock at the edge of the water. Her memory of it as Nell’s safe and comforting hiding place drew her like a beacon. “Please let me through!” she whispered, imploring the branches and roots impeding her.
The sound of Foster’s running feet hit the pier, away to her right in the darkness, and Cally realized he must have assumed she’d shouted from the Pirate Ship. She could hear objects falling and breaking inside the old boat, while Foster’s voice promised repeatedly that he would find her and that she would not die quickly once he did. She dragged herself the rest of the way through the mud and leaves to the rock by the water’s edge and curled up on it, sobbing silently.
The sounds of crashing and swearing inside the boat ceased. Cally swallowed her tears and listened as his footsteps returned along the pier and then fell silent. She strained to see through the branches to determine whether he had headed back up toward the house or had turned onto the path around the pond’s edge. The moonlight was only intermittently available, however, and patches of rainfall swept over more and more frequently, the drops becoming bigger and colder.
“You called?” said a voice behind Cally, and she let out a short, sharp scream. But the person standing behind her was not Foster – it was Rum, or Jerome, or whoever he was at the moment. She turned to him in exasperation as she heard Foster’s footsteps break into a run along the path toward them. “Someone needed help?” Rum asked.
“I don’t think you can help,” Cally whispered harshly. “Unless you think you can take that on?” She jerked her head toward the dark shape moving along the shore toward them, crouched over and looking for all the world like the silhouette of a stalking bear.
“No, I can’t interfere with any mortal’s free will,” Rum explained with infuriating patience. “But I can go and fetch someone who can. And you, what you need, my dear, is one more minute. Maybe two. That should be enough. I’ll see what we can do. You stay down.” He turned and began walking away through the birches, not even crouching or putting out a hand to brush them aside. Cally stood to follow him, but he turned sharply, hissing “I said stay down!” He extended his hands toward her and made a pressing motion with both palms. “Right where you are.”
Unladylike words went through Cally’s mind but she did not speak them aloud. After all, if anyone could make it to Ignacio’s cottage quickly in the dark and wet, she reasoned, an old earth spirit could. She watched him vanish into the shadows and, struggling to still her breathing, lowered herself down to lie flat on the rock. She didn’t know if Ignacio would come out of his cottage before Foster found her but, she hoped, he would at least find Nell and the others in time to help them before Foster returned to the house.
The footsteps on the path grew closer and Cally could see by Foster’s silhouette against the pond’s shimmering surface that he seemed to be carrying something clutched tightly in his hand – a knife, perhaps, or some other tool he had found on the boat. She closed her eyes as he drew abreast of her on the path. Her terrified mind retreated into the childhood logic that if she could not see him, he could not see her. She trembled so violently, though, she felt that alone must be as good as a beacon in the dark. She groped with one hand for a rock big enough to use as a last-stand weapon.
A heavy presence closed over her and her heart jumped in terror, but the rest of her body grew inexplicably still. Her trembling ceased. Her hand dropped the rock as her breath grew silent. She felt herself enveloped in warmth and she felt for all the world as she had as a child, hiding from monsters under the covers in the dark. Beside her, on the path, she heard Foster run by, muttering “Where are you, witch?”
Cally didn’t understand what was happening. She looked up and saw Foster clearly against the water as lightning sheeted overhead and a cold, wet breeze blew across the pond’s surface. He turned around and passed by her again on the bank, not five feet away, but he did not see her. She felt utterly warm and safe and invisible. Somewhere across the field, a dog began to bark, and then another.
Foster stopped and straightened up, shaking his head. “There’s nothing else for it, then,” he said, and turned and began to make his way back up the hill toward the house. He didn’t head for the kitchen door this time, but went around the front of the house and up the porch steps. Cally, still unable to move, heard the screen door bang shut. The sound of another dog barking, this one a higher pitch than the others, joined the cacophony as distant thunder rumbled overhead.
The strange, warm calm that had held Cally in stillness began to dissolve, exposing her wet skin to the cold breeze, and she stood up. The sound of barking was drawing close to her. She looked up the hill through the rain and saw something silver streaking down the hill from the house toward her. It was the Delaneys’ little dog Twilight.