I press my hands over my ears, trying to shut out the shouts, but two men grab my wrists and wrench them away from my head, forcing me to listen. Their hands are icy, not the warm flesh of the living, but the flesh of cold, dead men. I look wildly around at the closing circle and suddenly I do not see men. I see corpses, grim and hollow-eyed witnesses to the prisoner’s execution.

Above them all towers Brodie, and his eyes are a cold, reptilian black. Why did I never see this before? This creature that has stalked my dreams, who aroused me, who punished me—why did I not recognize him for what he really is?

A demon. My demon.

* * *

—

I awaken with a shriek. Wildly I stare around the room and find that I am back in my bedroom, in my bed, and the sheets are twisted and soaked with sweat. Sunlight streams through the windows, as bright and harsh as daggers in my eyes.

    Through the pounding of my heart I hear, faintly, the sound of my cellphone ringing. Last night I was so drunk I left it in the kitchen and I feel too drained to climb out of bed to answer it.

At last the ringing stops.

I squeeze my eyes shut and once again I see him, staring down at me with those black viper eyes. Eyes he’s never revealed to me before. I see the circle of men, all with the same eyes, surrounding me, watching as their captain moved in to deliver his punishment.

I clutch my head, trying desperately to squeeze out the vision but I can’t. It’s seared into my memory. Did it really happen?

I look down at myself, searching my wrists for bruises. I see none, but the memory of those bony hands grasping my arms is so vivid I cannot believe there is not a single mark on me.

I stumble out of bed and examine my back in the mirror. No scratches. I stare at my own face and see a woman I scarcely recognize looking back, a woman with sunken eyes and wildly tangled hair. Who have I become? When did I transform into this wraith?

Downstairs my cellphone rings again, and this time I sense urgency in the sound. By the time I reach the kitchen, the ringing has again stopped, but I find two voicemails. Both are from Maeve.

Call me as soon as you can.

Then another: Ava, where are you? This is important. Call me!

I don’t want to talk to her, or to anyone this morning. Not until I can clear my head and sound sane again. But her messages unsettle me, and after last night, I need answers more than ever.

She responds on the second ring. “Ava, I’m driving to your house right now. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

“Why? What is this all about?”

“I need to show you something. It’s on the video footage we recorded in your house.”

“But I thought nothing happened that night. That’s what Ben told me. He said none of your instruments recorded anything unusual.”

“Not in the turret. But this morning, I finally finished reviewing the rest of the footage. Ava, something does show up. It was recorded on a different camera.”

    Suddenly my heart is thudding. “Which camera?” I ask, and the rush of blood through my ears is so loud that I barely hear her answer.

“In your bedroom.”

Twenty-Seven

I am standing outside on the porch when Maeve pulls up at my house. She climbs out of her car carrying a laptop and her face is grim as she comes up the steps. “Are you all right?” she asks quietly.

“Why are you asking?”

“Because you look exhausted.”

“To be honest, I feel awful.”

“Because?”

“I had way too much to drink last night. And I had a terrible dream. About Captain Brodie.”

“Are you sure that’s all it was? A dream?”

I shove tangled hair off my face. I still haven’t run a comb through it. I haven’t even brushed my teeth. All I’ve managed to do is change into fresh clothes and gulp down a cup of coffee. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

“I’m afraid this video may not provide the answers you need,” she says, indicating her laptop. “But it might convince you to leave this place.” Maeve steps inside and pauses, glancing around, as if sensing someone else is in the house. Someone who does not want her there.

    “Let’s go into the kitchen,” I tell her. It’s the one room where I have never felt the ghost’s presence, never caught his premonitory scent. While Jeremiah Brodie was alive, the kitchen would have been a place only for servants, not for the master of the house, and only rarely would he have set foot here.

We sit down at the table and she opens her laptop. “We viewed the footage from all the cameras,” she says. “Most of our instruments were set up in the turret, because that’s where you’ve seen him before, and it’s the room where Kim had the most violent reaction. We also know that’s where Aurora Sherbrooke passed away, so we assumed that any paranormal activity would most likely occur there. In the turret.”

“But you didn’t record anything unusual in the turret?”

“No. I spent all day reviewing the turret recordings. I was disappointed, to say the least. And surprised, because Kim is usually spot-on. She can feel when something tragic has happened in a room, and I’ve never seen her react the way she did up there. It was genuine fear. Even Todd and Evan were spooked by her reaction.”

“I was, too,” I admit.

“It was quite a letdown when our instruments recorded no activity at all up there. I also viewed the footage from the hallway camera, and again, there was nothing. When I finally looked at the video from your bedroom, I wasn’t expecting anything unusual. So I was shocked when I saw this.” She taps a few keys and turns the laptop screen to face me.

It’s a view of my bedroom. Moonlight glows in the window, and I can see myself in the semidarkness, lying on the bed. The video has a time stamp, which slowly ticks forward: 3:18 A.M. It’s twenty minutes after I’d given up on the vigil in the turret and had climbed into bed. The time stamp advances to 3:19, 3:20. Except for that progression of time and the faint flutter of the curtains in the open window, nothing moves on-screen.

    What I see next makes me jerk straight up in my chair. It is something black, something sinuous, and it slithers across the room, moving toward the bed. Toward me.

“What the hell is that?” I ask.

“Exactly what I said when I saw it. It’s not bright, like an orb. It doesn’t have the misty quality of ectoplasm. No, this is something different. Something we’ve never captured on camera before.”

“Could it be just a shadow? Maybe from a cloud. A bird flying past.”

“It’s not a shadow.”

“Did Todd or Evan come into my bedroom to readjust the camera?”

“No one did, Ava. At this specific time, both Evan and Todd were upstairs with me in the turret. So was Dr. Gordon. Take another look at this footage. I’ll slow it down so you can see what this…thing does.”

She rolls back the video to 3:19 and hits play. Now the time stamp moves much more slowly, the seconds crawling forward. In the frame I sleep soundly, unaware that something else is in the room. Something that comes from the direction of the door and approaches me. It swirls toward the bed, a tentacled shadow that slithers closer and drapes itself over me like a shroud. Suddenly I can feel that shroud choking me right now, wrapped so tightly around my throat that I can’t breathe.

“Ava.” Maeve shakes me. “Ava!”

I gasp in a breath. On the laptop screen, the thing has vanished. Moonlight glows on the sheets and there is no shadow, no strangling blackness. There is just me, sleeping peacefully in bed.

“This can’t be real,” I murmur.

“We can both see it. It’s right there on video. It’s drawn to you, Ava. It went straight for you.”

“But what is it?” I hear the note of desperation in my own voice.

    “I know what it’s not. This is not a residual haunting. It’s not a poltergeist. No, it’s something intelligent, something that wants to interact with you.”

“It’s not a ghost?”

“No. This—this thing, whatever it is, moved straight to your bed. It’s clearly drawn to you, Ava, and to no one else.”

“Why me?”

“I don’t know. Something about you attracts it. Maybe it wants to control you. Or possess you. Whatever this is, it’s not benign.” She leans forward and grasps my hand. “I don’t say this to many clients, but I need to tell you now, for your own safety. Get out of this house.”

* * *

—

“It could be just a video artifact,” says Ben as I scoop sweaters and T-shirts out of my dresser drawer and stuff them in my suitcase. “Maybe it’s just a cloud passing across the moon, casting a weird shadow.”

“As always, you have a logical explanation.”

“Because there always is a logical explanation.”

“What if you’re wrong this time?”