I blinked at the diamond, a sudden realization flooding my head.
“No, no you can’t. You’ll take Sammy too.” I pushed against the restraints, pleading with Sarah.
“Sammy’s dead, Corrie.”
“No,” I insisted. “I brought him back. Sammy! Sammy!” I howled his name, searching for him in the damp chamber.
Sarah
SARAH CLOSED HER EYES, wishing she could blot out the sound, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She had to stay present for Corrie. Sammy would not want Sarah to abandon his wife.
“Spirit,” Mazur said, stepping close to the bed. “Show yourself.”
“Sarah…” She whipped around. Sammy had whispered in her ear. She’d heard it, as plain as Corrie’s cries,
“Sammy?” she asked, squinting toward the dark tunnel that led out of the chamber.
Mazur snapped his fingers at Sarah. “Don’t open yourself, Sarah. Stay focused, imagine a wall of impenetrable light surrounding you. You too, Will. Let nothing come through it.”
Corrie’s face shifted, her anguish draining out as if someone had pulled a plug in the back of her head. For several seconds she lay still, silent, eyes resting closed.
When she opened them, they looked sharp, and angry. A smile spread across her lips. She turned and locked her gaze on Sarah.
“Your brother begged for his life,” she hissed, jutting her tongue between her teeth. “He stood on his knees and wept like a child.”
Sarah watched Corrie and felt tears pour down her face, but she said nothing. In her mind, she imagined a bubble of light surrounding her. Let nothing in, Mazur had said.
“He suffered, it took an hour for him to die, laying there, writhing on the ground, blood seeping into the ground. 'Oh please, don’t.’” Corrie spoke in a voice eerily like Sammy’s. Sarah shut her eyes, unable to look a moment longer at Corrie’s hateful face.
Corrie shifted her eyes away from Sarah’s, locked on Will.
“When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we’ll see
No, I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.”
Corrie sang the words, but her voice had shifted again. Sarah didn’t recognize it.
She looked up to find Will, colorless, his eyes peeled open in shock.
“My little trooper,” Corrie babbled. “Why did you let me die?”
Her eyes looked dark, all the color gone, huge black pupils in a sea of white.
Will shook his head.
“He held my head under,” Corrie whined. “I called for you, Will. I begged for my trooper to save me.”
Will clamped his hands over his ears and turned away.
“Yes,” Mazur whispered. “Let it reveal itself, let it come into the light. Fear not, Will.”
Will turned back to Corrie, his blotchy face wrecked with grief.
Corrie’s eyes narrowed upon him.
“What do I see in those baby blue eyes? Fear? Or is it guilt?”
Corrie’s words hung in the air, and then her head jerked toward Mazur.
Mazur held the diamond into the light, a dazzling prism of color.
Corrie’s eyes found the diamond, studied it.
Mazur set the gem on a wooden stool. Walking back slowly, trying not to draw Corrie’s eyes from the crystal. He reached over and flipped the switch on his small laser. “Avert your eyes,” he shouted as a piercing red beam of light shot into the prism.
Mazur stepped up to the table, the defibrillator in his hands. “Hit it, Will.”
Will flipped the switch, and Mazur pushed the paddles against Corrie’s chest, shocking her.
Corrie convulsed on the bed, teeth snapping open and closed, eyes rolling back in her head. She jerked on the table so hard the leather strap on her arm broke free.
“Do it again,” Sarah cried as Mazur hovered the paddles over Corrie’s lifeless body.
“In three-two-one,” he murmured before resting the paddles back on Corrie’s chest.
Sarah looked up. Will no longer watched Corrie. His gaze had fixed on the diamond, where a swirl of black churned within the prism.
CHAPTER 41
Halloween Night into November 1st Morning
Then
Corrie
I held the knife in my hand, staring at Sammy through a pinhole. He sat beneath the oak tree, and I couldn’t remember having woken up, walked outside. The moonlit lake rolled in and struck the shore.
When I opened my mouth to speak, another’s voice emerged.
“I saw you,” the voice hissed. The voice spoke through me and yet I had not said a word.
Sammy rubbed his bloodshot eyes, climbed up to his knees.
“Corrie? What’s wrong?” he asked. He started to stand, teetered and fell back, bracing his hand against a root poking along the base of the oak tree. “I drank too much.”
“I saw you,” the voice snarled again through my lips, and I wanted to lift a hand to my throat, to argue with the voice, but I had no control over my arms and legs.
My body sauntered closer to Sammy, the knife slick in my wet palm.
Stop, I screamed, but no sound arose.
“You’ve been very bad,” the voice sang, now a child’s voice, a girl.
Sammy shook his head.
“That wasn’t what it looked like. She was drunk. I pushed her away.” He tried to stand again, but I shoved him down, hard.
I wanted to resist - force my body to obey me, but it ignored my commands.
He fell on his back, blinked through drunken eyes. For an instant, he found me, pressed within the folds of myself. He knew I was trapped.
His eyes opened wide, and then he swallowed, held up his palms.
“Ethel?”
My mouth curled upward.
“Ethel?” I crooned, mocking him. “How foolish, all of you, to believe a child holds this power.”
I held up the knife, stared in horror from my place of captivity as the blade glinted in the moonlight.
“Then who?” he asked, eyes darting toward Kerry Manor.
Had everyone gone home? Would no one save us?
“Please,” I groaned, and the sound slipped out.
I had regained a shred of control. I took a step away, grasping at the flimsy hold I had over my body.
“You can do it, Corrie,” Sammy murmured, again pushing up onto his knees.
And then a figure, a dark blur, shot around me, whipped the knife from my hand and plunged it into Sammy’s chest. The knife jerked out, slashed across his throat.
I lost the hold on my body, the scream inside me dying before it reached my lips. I struggled to reach Sammy, but my feet stood rooted in place. Shadows pulled at the edges of my vision.
Sammy fell back a final time, his words lost in the blood flooding his mouth.
The man turned, his face concealed by a black mask covering his jaw. He threw the knife at my feet, but I couldn’t direct my gaze downward. His eyes looked terrified, shocked as if he hardly believed what he’d done.
He glanced at Sammy and then back at me. I wondered if he’d kill me now, but I doubted I would feel it. I had no sensation. I was merely a witness, a visitor in my own body.
The man ran into the darkness at the edge of the house.
My eyes shifted back to Sammy, to the blood pooling beneath him. I slipped deeper into myself, plunging into unfathomable darkness.