And blacked out.
She awoke covered in blood. She was on the floor. The bloody floor. The room was dark again. Douglas was not beside her. She tried to stand and slipped in the blood.
“Douglas!” she cried out.
She found the flashlight, still shining, casting its lonely column of light across the floor. She grabbed it, almost dropping it because it was slick with blood. She swung the light around the room, but did not see Douglas. Once again she called his name.
The room was different. It was longer, wider. It stretched on for a great length, and at the far end she saw the window.
Jeanette had managed to climb out that window. Had Douglas done the same?
But he wouldn’t leave me here, Carolyn thought.
She began to run. The bloody floor was slick, but she managed. She ran and ran but seemed to come no closer to the window. As she ran she heard the baby crying again. It was killed in this room, she thought. By Clem. He must have killed Beatrice, too, then. Perhaps Clem was the force that controlled this room.
But, no. She had a heard a voice. A voice commanding him to show them what had happened.
Finally, after what seemed like many long minutes, Carolyn reached the end of the room. There, slumped against the far wall, was Douglas. His shirt was in tatters. The amulet was gone from his neck.
And there was a plastic bag secured around his head!
“No!” Carolyn screamed, lunging at him, ripping the bag with her fingers. Douglas’s face was gray. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
Getting him onto the floor she began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “Breathe, damn it!” she screamed, pressing her lips to his for a second time. “Douglas, I love you!” she screamed, trying it a third time.
Finally he hiccupped a breath, and she could feel the life start moving through his body again.
She looked around. The room was back to normal. There was no more blood on the floor. The far wall was no longer so far. It was just a few feet from where they had been sitting on the couch.
But it wasn’t over yet.
The baby continued to cry.
And in the shadows Carolyn detected movement.
She aimed the flashlight.
The spotlight revealed Clem. He stood there, tears running down his face.
Carolyn stood.
“You don’t want to do this, do you?” she asked.
The dead man made no reply. He was motionless. The only thing about him that moved were the tears running down his cheeks.
“Someone made you kill that baby,” Carolyn said. “Isn’t that right, Clem?”
Still no response. Behind her, Douglas staggered to his feet. Carolyn turned to him and asked if he were okay.
He nodded. “Something grabbed the amulet from around my neck,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Then there was a plastic bag on the floor in front of me. I couldn’t help myself. I put it over my head and tied it. That’s the way my father must have died, too.”
“But you didn’t die,” Carolyn told him. “Beatrice was right. Our love is going to save us. Isn’t it, Clem?”
They looked over at the figure, still motionless in the corner opposite them.
“For eighty years you have been a prisoner here,” Carolyn said. “Why?”
She dared to take a step toward him.
“You loved Beatrice, didn’t you?” she asked. “And in a moment of passion, you killed her.”
Finally a response from the dead man. His dull eyes flashed for moment as they looked up at her.
“No,” Clem said. “I did not kill her.”
“Then who did?” Carolyn asked.
But now Clem was silent again.
“Whoever killed her has made you do these terrible things, isn’t that right?”
But Clem just went on crying. Carolyn shone the flashlight in his face and continued her approach toward him.
“You can be free,” she told him. “Walk out that door, Clem. The love you searched for in your life…Douglas and I have it. You don’t want to deprive us of that. You’re tired. You have done too much that you regret. End it now. Leave this room, just as Beatrice did. You can be free, too.”
He looked up at her. There was no longer any malice in his face.
“You know you can’t harm us,” Carolyn said. “Our love protects us. But not only are you powerless to harm us, you no longer want to. Isn’t that right, Clem?”
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“Go,” Carolyn said softly. “Turn your back on the evil force of this room. We have shown that we can be stronger than it is. We came here to free you, Clem. Go. Go now!”
Douglas had come up beside Carolyn. He had placed a hand on her back. He feared at any moment that Clem’s rage might surge up again, like bile in his throat. He could pounce again, his pitchfork aimed at them. But he didn’t. To Douglas’s great surprise the dead man walked. He walked past them, opened the supposedly locked door, and disappeared into the darkness of the basement beyond.
It was only then that they noticed the first pink glimmers of morning filtering through the window.
“We’ve done it,” Carolyn said quietly. “We’ve survived a night in the room.”
“Is he gone?” Douglas asked, approaching the open door and looking out into the basement.
Carolyn came up beside him. “I believe he is.”
Douglas turned to her. “Then is it over?”
She looked up at him. “It’s over,” she said. “We showed that we were stronger than the evil force of this room.”
The shaft of sunlight suddenly flooded the room.
They heard a creak. They braced themselves.
But the figure that now appeared in the doorway was only Howard Young.
“Praise God!” he shouted. “Praise God! The curse is over! It is over! Praise God!”
Chapter Twenty-six
“What I surmise,” Carolyn said, bringing her coffee to her lips with trembling hands, “is that Clem was being controlled by a force that made him do these things, and that once he was confronted with a greater force, he was finally free to rebel against it and find peace for himself.”
“And that greater force was the love between you and Douglas,” Paula said, near tears. “That’s so beautiful.”
“Remember that Beatrice was freed from that room ten years ago by Kip,” Carolyn added. “I believe that she exerted her own power to help free Clem, and therefore, save us. Before that, trapped in that room as he was, she was powerless to do anything. But now she could act.”
“Then perhaps I owe Dr. Hobart more gratitude than I showed a decade ago,” Mr. Young said.
He was seated again at the head of the table. Douglas and Carolyn were on one side, Paula and Dean and Linda on the other. They had been up all night, waiting and hoping. The children were asleep, and Philip and Ryan and Chelsea had retired in shame to their rooms. But Mr. Young had given them strict orders not to leave the house until this morning. He planned to speak to them about their treason and to make a decision about their place in their will.
“But what of the power that controlled that room?” Dean asked. “We still don’t know what it was.”
“Nor might we ever,” Douglas said.
“But how can we be sure it’s gone?” Paula asked. “Defeated?”
“They survived, didn’t they?” Howard Young barked impatiently. “They have broken the long chain of deaths. We did what the lottery demanded. We drew a name and sent one of our own in there. And he lived.”
“And the baby?” Dean asked.
“What about the baby?” Carolyn asked.
“Is it free, too?”
She paused.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
And suddenly the terror returned. The relief that had flooded through her body with the coming if the sun was replaced by a cold fear-the same that had gripped her in New York.
She turned all at once then and looked out the French doors onto the terrace.
Standing there, staring in at her, was David Cooke. His eyes were wild. The scar on his face seemed to be pulsing.