Abruptly the slamming doors and whizzing planchettes halted.
And then something stepped into the hallway and I trembled anew. A huge shadow appeared from the doorway, and within its darkness I saw two red glowing eyes.
“Miss me?” I asked, fear now overriding all other emotions because I had no idea if my improvised plan would work.
The most horrible laughter filled the hallway and I found myself close to abandoning my plan and making a run for it. But I’d come this far, and if Mama could face down this demon as an eight-year-old, then, dammit, I could, too.
The Sandman considered me for a long moment, his beady eyes greedy with a deadly kind of lust. “What’s the matter?” I asked to taunt him, while holding the amplified energy of the planchette out toward him and willing all that anger and fear and anguish to ratchet it up a notch. I knew the old crystal and all my emotion were too much temptation for him to resist. “Are ya chicken?”
There was a roar and the shadow moved so fast, I was barely able to register anything more than a blur of darkness as he dived straight at me. In the second before he hit me, I clenched my jaw, closed my eyes, slammed the planchette against my chest, and in my mind’s eye called up the image of my mother cradling me in her lap, filling me with all of her love and protection. In the next instant, I felt the full force of the Sandman hit me dead center in the chest, exactly where I was holding the planchette.
The weight of the demon was beyond description. It felt as if my very soul were being crushed. I knew I was protected by a layer of magnets and the energy of my mother’s love, but his power was immense and I could feel myself fading under the pressure.
Gritting my teeth, I called out to her in my mind’s eye. Mama! I cried. In an instant I felt her. Like a beacon in the darkness, she was there, her energy joining with mine as we fought the Sandman together.
Still, the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life was to reach down with one hand and grab hold of the spikes I’d set next to me, then lift them and lay them flat against the planchette on my chest. Immediately the pressure lessened and I was able to weakly come fully to my senses and take a deep breath. I’d trapped the Sandman between layers of magnets, and as long as I could hold him this way, he couldn’t get out. But there was another force here in the house, one that I’d have to deal with as well, and I hadn’t yet figured out how to do that.
I lay there for a bit, panting, and then I managed to call out to the person responsible for bringing the Sandman back. “Sarah,” I gasped. “You’re in there, right?”
“So you’ve figured it all out, have you?” she asked, her voice so sad.
I was still so weak from the blow of the Sandman’s full force that I felt I needed a minute to collect myself. At the edge of my energy, Mama hovered protectively, but I could tell that her energy was dissipating too. It’d cost her to come from the other side and help me against the Sandman, and I didn’t know how long she could keep herself near me. Weakly I got to my knees, still holding the planchette at my chest, and shuffled down the hallway to the open door of Glenn Porter’s office. Thinking I could get a breather by having Sarah tell me her side, I said, “I haven’t figured out all of it yet. Why don’t you tell me and then we can see what to do about Everett?”
“He’s dead,” she said, and I wondered whether she meant Everett or Glenn.
“I see,” I said. “So, tell me what happened.”
“How did you trap the Sandman?” she asked me, avoiding the question.
“I’ve got him stuck between layers of magnets, but I’m not sure if I can hold him for long.”
“You’ll need to destroy the crystal,” she said, and I knew she meant the one she’d fashioned to fit into the planchette she’d discovered in the tree and was holding in her hands right that very moment.
“Yep,” I told her. “Tell me about what happened to make you go looking for it, Sarah.”
I heard her sigh, but then she said, “You have to understand, Mary Jane, growing up in that house, it was the worst kind of existence. My father was impossibly cruel, my mother was distant and cold, my older brother was a drug addict who died recklessly, and my sister was a self-absorbed narcissist. And my brother Glenn, well, he was in a class by himself.
“He was as cruel as Everett ever was, but far more cunning. Whatever Glenn wanted, Glenn got. The only thing standing in his way was me, and the only weapon I had to use against him was that I knew what’d happened to Everett, and I’d told my mother that Glenn had killed him.
“Glenn was locked away for several years because Mother believed him a wicked boy who’d nearly brought the worst kind of scandal to our door. I learned that he had no idea Everett was even sealed up in our house. How could he with his room so far from mine? Still, I managed to let him know that if he ever touched me again, I would lead the sheriff right to Everett’s body, and I would point the finger at him as the killer. I asked him whom the sheriff would believe, Glenn or me, and he seemed to understand that I was not someone to be trifled with.
“Still, a few years after Everett died, the doors in our house began to slam shut on their own. It happened a few times a week, but it got more intense over the years, and our family grew very afraid. The door to my room slammed most often, and I begged my mother to let me move down the hall. She allowed it, but then that door began to slam too. I think Mother and I both knew it was Everett, and eventually Glenn figured it out too.
“Not long after that, I discovered Glenn in the woods behind our house playing with a Ouija board, and after spying on him I realized he was actually communicating with Everett. It wasn’t long before our house became a constant source of violent spectral activity.
“Glenn used the planchette to control Everett, who’d become something so monstrous and powerful that for a long time I wondered if it weren’t the Sandman come back. I considered going to the police, but Glenn always threatened me by saying that if I ever went to the sheriff and told them that Glenn had killed Everett, he’d really let Everett loose.
“What Glenn did to us on a daily basis with Everett, however, was enough to keep all of us in check, even Mother. If Glenn were punished for something, my mother’s favorite china would smash to the floor. The day Molly was given a new car, she was tripped by an unseen force on her way out the door and broke her ankle. And me, well, Glenn and Everett tortured me most of all.
“My toys were routinely broken, my doors slammed incessantly, and my things went missing. One night my father actually attempted to intervene on my behalf—the only act of kindness he’d ever shown me—and he told Glenn that he knew he was controlling the ghost in our house and that if he didn’t stop it, he’d throw Glenn out. We found our father at the base of the stairs the next morning, the back of his skull smashed in and his neck broken.
“Glenn never said as much, but I know he had Everett kill our father.
“Then, after Mother died, Glenn moved out to start up his own company. Which failed miserably of course. And when he was nearly out of money, he came to me, but after all those years of torture, I wouldn’t lend him a dime. I’d been very careful with my share of our inheritance, and I still held a fifty percent stake in the family home. All of the taxes were paid out of my share, but I levied liens against the property for his share just to make sure he didn’t get off scot-free.
“Glenn, however, found a way to get to me despite my best efforts to keep him at bay. I’ve always had a bit of difficulty knowing what’s real and what’s not. Glenn used that against me and ratcheted up Everett’s activity. Everett became very violent, his power increasing as my brother funneled his hatred of me into the spirit. At last I moved out of the house, hoping that would give me some peace, but Everett simply followed me to my new home, and one morning I snapped. Glenn had me committed and while I was in the mental clinic he won a judgment for power of attorney over my
affairs. He then put our family estate up for sale, something I never wanted to have happen, knowing what evil and what skeletons lay within those walls, but I was powerless to stop it.
“And, perhaps it was out of desperation that I eventually concluded that I had to fight fire with fire. If my brother could use Everett against me, perhaps I could use something even more powerful against him. That’s when I got the idea to call upon the Sandman. That very day I happened to bump into Linda Chadwick at the grocery store, and I formed a little plan.
“DeeDee and Linda had been so close, I wondered if Dee had told Linda where she’d hidden Everett’s planchette. I knew she’d destroyed the crystal, but I wondered if I could repair the planchette. If only I could find it, perhaps I could use it to control the Sandman against my brother so that he never, ever thought of using Everett to harm me again.
“I took Linda out for lunch the next day. She was having a rough time of it with that divorce going on, and I slipped a little pill into her drink. By that time I was well familiar with pills. She told me everything, how DeeDee had confessed to her that she was terrified your daddy would know she wasn’t a virgin, and the ordeal we’d been put through at the hands of my wicked family. She’d told Linda where she’d hidden the planchette, and that she’d made sure it could never harm anyone again.”
I squeezed the planchette at my chest a little tighter. I’d remembered the e-mail from Linda saying she’d had lunch with a friend named Sarah, but that she’d had too much to drink and she’d had the most terrible hangover the next day. She’d specifically said she barely remembered the lunch at all, and she’d hoped she hadn’t embarrassed herself.
“I found the planchette rather easily, hidden in that tree, and because the old crystal had been broken by DeeDee, I began to experiment with new crystals I had made especially to fit the hole. It took a little while, but finally, I had the perfect flawless gem.”
I thought it ironic that Sarah didn’t realize the largest piece of the old crystal probably would have worked if she’d tried it. The chunk of crystal was broken, for sure, but it still held no inclusions within its depths, and hadn’t it just worked perfectly well for me a few moments earlier? Still, I didn’t want to comment and throw Sarah off track with her confession, so I kept quiet and let her continue.
“By this time of course my brother was well into his next scheme,” she said. “I discovered he was angling to buy back our family home at a significant discount from Christine Bigelow. He thought that by setting Everett loose upon the construction workers, Christine would be unable to renovate it, and Glenn could then buy it back for less than he’d sold it for, make a tidy profit, then parcel off all the land without having to include me in the deal.
“I, on the other hand, wanted Porter Manor back too, as I had never agreed to sell it. Glenn had done that while he’d had the power to do what he wanted with my affairs. I thought Glenn’s plan was actually quite bright, and if I acted quickly, I thought there was a way to get my brother out of my affairs once and for all and get Porter Manor back as well. If workers were scared off by Everett, imagine how terrified they’d be if the Sandman began to haunt the halls. So I called up the man who had originally sealed up the room and asked him to unseal it, let me into the playroom, then seal it right back up again. I discovered in playing with the planchette, which will work with any board, really, that all you have to do is say the Sandman’s name three times and, as long as your will is strong, he appears to do your bidding. At least initially. Like Everett I learned that after a time, you don’t even need to hold the planchette to summon or control the demon, but that is the place from where he emerges. Like a genie from a bottle he springs to life from the planchette.”
“So, knowing your brother would tear down that wall to get into the room to see what you’d hidden there, you planted the planchette in the playroom,” I said. “And had Scoffland reseal the room. Once Glenn entered the playroom, you’d unleash the demon. Was that how you planned it to go?”
“Yes. That’s it exactly,” she said.
“How’d you get Glenn to agree to go over there?”
“It was so simple,” she said with a sigh. “I called my brother and told him a lie, that I’d alerted the police to where Everett’s body was located, in a sealed room hidden in my old bedroom. I also told him that I’d planted evidence there to implicate him in the murder, and that if questioned, I’d point the police in his direction. I knew that would lure him to the scene, and then I could unleash the Sandman on him and he’d never, ever want to set foot on that property again. That is, if he survived the night.
“But the plan backfired on me. While I hid in the room across the hall, waiting for my brother to arrive, for some reason, Mike Scoffland came back to the manor. My brother found him there, about to pull out the drywall he’d tacked up the day before. I think Mike must’ve thought I’d put something valuable in the hidden room, and perhaps he wanted to take it before his workers showed up. Or maybe he was simply curious about what was hidden behind that door for all these years. Maybe he simply wanted to see Everett’s remains to be certain we’d done him in. Whatever the cause, when Glenn discovered him in my old room he became furious, and the two began to argue. Hiding in the room across the hall, I became very afraid that they’d discover me, and I think the Sandman used my emotions to make an entrance. Before I quite knew what was happening, the Sandman possessed Mike, who then attacked my brother. The pair struggled for a bit, and Mike was definitely winning when Glenn got his hands on a nail gun and killed Scoffland with one click of the gun. Mike hit the floor, my brother felt for a pulse, and then he simply panicked and fled the scene.
“Realizing what I’d done, I too fled the scene. It wasn’t until the next day that I had worked up enough nerve to go back to the house and retrieve the planchette and the board and get the Sandman back into the planchette. By that time, you had already discovered the hidden room and what lay beyond.”
“What about Everett’s body?” I asked. “Did you steal it from the scene?”
“Oh, no,” Sarah said. “That was Glenn’s doing. He didn’t want Everett’s remains to be connected back to him like I kept threatening, so, sometime after I retrieved the planchette, he snuck into the playroom and retrieved Everett’s body; then he buried him in my backyard, knowing I’m not physically capable of digging him up and moving him again. I guess Glenn figured it was only a matter of time before Beau did a search of our properties. He’d been working steadily to turn the tables against me ever since he killed Mike.”
“And what about what happened at the mental hospital?” I asked next.
“Oh, that,” Sarah said with a tired sigh. “Once the Sandman learned that you were DeeDee’s daughter, it was all I could do to keep control of him. The day after he killed Scoffland, Glenn sent Everett to attack me at my home and I broke down again. My maid checked me into the hospital, and I thought I’d be safe, but I made the mistake of bringing along the planchette. I didn’t want Glenn to get his hands on it, but they gave me drugs which weakened my will and let the Sandman loose again. Before I could get my wits about me, one of the patients attacked me and I was knocked unconscious. When I came to, the place was in chaos. At first I tried calling the Sandman back just by saying his name, but he was becoming too powerful. He wasn’t listening to my commands and for a time I couldn’t find the planchette to force him back, but I finally did. It’d been knocked under one of the beds.”
I realized that must have been the moment when all the chaos abruptly stopped. I had one more question for her, but it was a difficult one for me to ask. Still, I managed. “Why did you hurt Linda, Sarah?” I knew it’d been Sarah who’d attacked Linda, because my grandparents’ old house was a mere stone’s throw away from the hospital where we’d interviewed her. Hell, I even remembered that when she’d told us what happened the day Everett died, she’d been fully dressed, even wea
ring her shoes. “Linda came to see you this morning, didn’t she?” I pressed, knowing Linda had left Mrs. G.’s and gone straight to the hospital. “She must’ve realized that she slipped up and mentioned to you that she knew where Mama had hidden the planchette and that you were the only one who knew about the Sandman and how to control it.”
She didn’t answer me at first and the silence stretched out between us. At last she said, “Yes, she came to see me. She accused me of retrieving the planchette and using it to call up the Sandman. I denied it, but I knew she could tell I was lying. And then, from my window, I saw her get into her car and drive straight over to Loamlach. I knew she’d check the tree to see if the planchette was still there. It was easy to slip out of my room down the stairs and over to the river. I was back in an hour, and none of the nurses even knew I’d been gone.” I shook my head in disgust but didn’t voice my feelings. A moment later Sarah said, “Is she dead?”
“No.”
“Good,” Sarah said, and there was no trace of malice in her voice.
“But why?” I pressed. “Why would you hurt her? She did nothing to you and you already had the planchette.”
“She did nothing to me?” she repeated. “Mary Jane, she hurt me worst of all.”
“How?” I couldn’t fathom Linda ever hurting a single soul, let alone small, frail Sarah Porter.
“She took away my DeeDee,” Sarah said, a waver in her voice. “Linda stole the truest, best friend I ever had.”
Now it was my turn to be quiet, but then I was reminded that I didn’t have the luxury of waiting too much longer. Mama’s energy was quickly fading and the Sandman was pushing hard against the magnetic barrier I’d placed him in. “Sarah?”