gloom of the building held him in its rapture, and though there was nothing but darkness below, he knew he had no choice but to continue down the stairs.
He started down the steps, straining to see into a blackness that seemed to go on forever.
There was a mustiness in the air below, and something else—some faint odor he couldn’t quite identify, but that seemed oddly familiar.
He came to the bottom of the stairs, and stopped, terrified.
Again, he wanted to turn around, turn away from the evil he felt in the darkness, but he knew he wouldn’t.
Knew he couldn’t.
Then he heard a sound—barely distinguishable.
He listened, straining his ears.
Was it real, or had he only imagined it?
He heard it again.
Some kind of animal. It had to be. A rat, perhaps, or maybe only a mouse.
Or was it something else, something unreal?
A voice, whispering to him so quietly he couldn’t make out the words, calling to him, luring him on into the darkness and the unknown.…
The strange odor grew stronger, its acridity burning in his nostrils.
He stepped off the last stair, and began groping his way through the darkness.
He thought he could feel unseen hands guiding him, feel a strange force drawing him on.
And then, though he could still see nothing, he sensed a presence.
It was close to him—too close.
“Who—” he began, but his question was cut off as something struck him from behind. Staggering, he pitched forward, his balance gone, then tried to break his fall by throwing his arms in front of him.
But it was too late, and even as he fell, he knew it.
He opened his mouth to scream, but his throat felt choked, as though strangling hands held him in a deadly grip. No sound emerged from his throat.
In an instant that seemed to go on forever, he felt a coldness slide through his clothing, piercing his skin, an icy pain that slipped between his ribs deep into his chest.
The object—the thing; the unidentifiable evil—plunged into his heart, and he felt himself begin to die.
And as he died, he slowly recognized the familiar odor that had filled his nostrils.
Smoke.
For some reason, in that long-abandoned basement, he smelled smoke.…
Then, as the last vestiges of life drained from his body, he saw flames flickering out from beneath the stairway, and in the faint remnants of his consciousaess, he heard laughter.
Laughter, mixed with screams of terror.
The laughter and the screams closed in on him, growing louder and louder, mingling with the ice-cold pain until there was nothing but blackness. And for the boy, the terror was over.…
1
Rain at a funeral is a cliché, Carolyn Sturgess reflected as she gazed abstractedly out the window of the limousine that moved slowly through the streets of Westover. Though it was June, the day was chilly, with a dampness that seemed to seep into the bones. Ahead, through the divider window and the streaked windshield beyond, she could see the car carrying her husband, her mother-in-law, and her stepdaughter, and ahead of that—barely visible—the hearse bearing the body of her father-in-law. Carolyn shuddered, feeling chilled.
Barely visible.
The words, she realized, described Conrad Sturgess perfectly, at least in his last years. For more than a decade, he had seldom left the mansion on the hill above the town, seldom been seen in the streets of the village that his family had dominated for more than a century. But despite his reclusiveness, the old man had still been a presence in Westover, and Carolyn found herself wondering how the village would change, now that Conrad Sturgess was dead.
As the long black car turned left on Church Street, Carolyn glanced back at the small crowd that still lingered in front of the white-clapboard Episcopal church that stood facing the square, its sober New England facade seeming to glare with faint disapproval at the small business district that squatted defensively on the other side of the worn patch of lawn beyond the bronze statue of a long-forgotten Revolutionary hero that gazed out from the middle of the square.
“Will any of them come up to Hilltop for the other service?”
Her daughter’s voice interrupted her reverie, and Carolyn reached over to give Beth’s hand an affectionate squeeze. “The interment,” she automatically corrected.
“The interment,” Beth Rogers repeated, her brows furrowing as she concentrated on getting the word exactly right. She pictured the look of scorn she would get from Tracy Sturgess, her stepsister, if she mispronounced it later. Not, she told herself, that she cared what Tracy Sturgess thought, but she still hated it