Chapter Sixteen

Slumped over a mug at the kitchen table, idly stirring in her creamer, Ang thought back to last night, trying to sort out when it was that she climbed into bed with Richie. She vaguely remembered waking to pee and she must have been on autopilot and gone back into her room. If she hadn’t been so mortified, she would admit to herself that there were far greater hardships than waking up in the arms of a handsome man. She allowed herself a delicate shiver at the memory of his body pressed against hers. Ang couldn’t believe she was so out of it last night that she didn’t remember having a guest, and chuckled. She sobered quickly as she remembered just why she had an overnight visitor.

Kirstin. And her curse. Her damned curse. It was a wonder Richie wanted to be anywhere near her with all this spooky stuff. As her brain turned over everything that had happened at the Thompson Estate yesterday, the whispering started in the far corners of her mind. Resigned to helping Kirstin and Richie she tried to reach past her self-taught reluctance toward the voices, straining to hear them more clearly. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing her concentration on the wall in her mind. She visualized a small sliding partition on the wall. In her mind’s eye, she reached toward the partition and opened it just an inch. A swirling white mist seeped from behind the wall to envelop her. She struggled to remain calm as the mist transformed into a woman’s form. Slowly, Kirstin’s features became clear in her mind, and the ghost-thought smiled.

“Thank you, child,” Kirstin said softly. “Thank you for helping me.”

“What do we do first? Where do we look? How do I find you?” Ang murmured softly.

“Child, you already know. You dreamt it.”

Ang gasped loudly as her eyes flew open. She bolted upright in her chair and jostled the table, sending coffee sloshing over the rim of the mug and splashing onto the table. In her haste to get to her study, she upended her chair, oblivious to the loud noise it made in her otherwise silent house. At her desk, she grabbed a pad of paper and a set of charcoal pencils. Her hands were shaking as nightmarish visions swirled in her head.

Stifling a cry, she swooned, bracing herself against the wall as vicious images flickered faster and faster in her mind, making her dizzy. After several minutes, she was able to walk, albeit on shaky legs, and went into the living room. She settled into a comfortable armchair by the window. “I’m listening, Kirstin,” she said tearfully, as she started to sketch.

Her hand flew across the page, working of its own accord. Ang was staring sightlessly at the piece of paper, not seeing the markings her hand made. Slashes of color punctuated her black-and-white drawings, and as each page was completed, she’d tear it from the pad and drop it to the floor before starting on the next one.

In the bedroom, Richie smiled as he woke from a wonderful dream and only opened his eyes when the aroma of dark, rich coffee invaded his senses. He rolled out of bed, pulled on his jeans and t-shirt, and followed his nose. He frowned at the overturned chair. “Ang?” he called, but there was no answer.

He turned to check out the living room, and stopped short in the doorway when Ang caught his eye. She was sitting by the picture window; the morning light bathing her and making her glow. She was writing something and it had her full concentration. Richie watched as she tore a page from her pad, tossed it behind her, and started on another page. That’s when he noticed the papers strewn all around her chair. Squinting at one, he could see it looked like a drawing. He took a closer look at Ang, and she looked like she did last night when they were talking to Kirstin: there but not quite all the way.

A bit apprehensive, he cleared his throat softly and spoke quietly so he wouldn’t startle her. “Mornin’, Angel Rose,” he said.

Ang’s head cocked slightly to one side at the sound of Richie’s voice, but she didn’t acknowledge him, and her hand never stopped moving. Richie ventured closer, moving slowly across the room. He was more than a little worried for Angel Rose; she looked like she was in some sort of trance.

“Are you okay, Angel Rose?” he asked.

Ang’s head turned a bit to follow her ear. When her eyes caught sight of him, her vision snapped into clarity, and she dropped the pencil. She barely registered the fact that his bare feet poked out from the legs of his jeans and his hair was sexily rumpled from having been in her bed. She slumped against the back of the chair and gasped as her hand cramped up.

Richie sat on the ottoman at Ang’s feet. “How long have you been sitting here, Angel Rose?” he asked. He cast glances at the papers all around Ang’s feet. He bent to scoop some of them up and sorted through them.

He sat forward abruptly, his pulse racing. “What is all this?” he asked, horrified at what he was seeing.

He looked up at Ang, who had tears in her eyes. “I dreamed it last night,” she said. “I dreamed it, and I think this is what happened to Kirstin.

Richie looked from the drawings in his hand to Ang and back again. “Sweet mother of God.”

The first drawing was a close up of a very terrified woman. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, her pupils mere pinpricks in her eyes. Her mouth was frozen in a silent scream, and the way her hair was drawn, it was clear to Richie that she had whipped her head around and caught sight of something horrifying. Ang had perfectly captured a feeling of abject terror. The drawing made Richie extremely uncomfortable just looking at it.

The second drawing was of the back of a man’s form. He was drawn large and menacing; tall and muscular, and broad through the shoulders. His hair was wild and scraggly, and most of it was tucked under a watch cap. Just past him, Richie could see a flash of peach and a woman’s arm. It dawned on him that the arm belonged to Kirstin – and that she was wearing the dress she died in. This man looked like he was chasing Kirstin. He studied the drawing closely. There were no hints as to where the scene took place. No landscape or other background images. It was just the two figures, stark against the white page.

But it was the next drawing he flipped to that had Richie’s heart pounding and all the air squeezing out of his lungs. The perspective was from someone on her back. A delicate, dirty hand was held up, palm facing out, a woman’s hand, as if to ward off a blow. Between the fingers of the hand, Richie could see part of the angry features of a man. Even in this drawing, he could see the crazy in the man’s eyes. A shovel was flying through the air behind the man, and his hands were reaching for the prone person. Richie couldn’t make out the man’s face from the drawing; just one deep green eye.

Hands shaking with rage, he reached for some of the other drawings on the floor. They were pretty much just more of the same. Richie never wanted to burn anything as much as he did these papers right now. “What – how – does this happen all the time?” Richie asked Ang.

“Not all the time,” she said, wiping tears away, “not anymore. But I don’t know how. I just know that when I stop fighting my curse, they, those poor souls, leave footprints in my memories.” She shuddered, and started crying again in earnest. “I had a dream last night, a terribly vivid dream. It came back to me as I was stirring my coffee – and I knew I just had to draw. I had to get these images out of my head before I went mad.” For the first time, she realized how many sheets of paper littered the floor around her. “What are they? What did I draw? What memories did Kirstin leave for me?” With shaking hands, she took the pages from Richie. They burned her hand as if they were aflame, and she cried out, dropping them to join the others on the floor.

Without giving it a second thought, Richie knelt in front of her and gathered Ang into his arms. Ang curled up into herself while Richie’s arms wrapped around her. He rocked gently, murmuring nonsensical platitudes to her as he would a scared child. Ang’s tears finally dried, and she looked up to Richie. “Sorry about that,” she said in a small voice.

“Nothing to be sorry about, Angel Rose,” Richie said.

Ang leaned back gently, breaking Richie’s hold on her. She reached down to gather up some of the papers. With shaking hands, she flipped through them gingerly, afraid of the horrors they held. When she finished, she looked up and met Richie’s eyes. “We have to go back to your house,” she said. “We have to talk to Kirstin about this.”

Richie sighed. “Can you tell from these, or from what you didn’t draw where this all happened or who the green-eyed man is?” He reluctantly picked one of the drawings from the pile. This one showed a woman’s foot in a slim boot stepping on, actually nearly tripping over, a tree root. That could be anywhere.

Ang shook her head. “No, that’s why we need to talk to Kirstin. Now, while this is all still fresh.”

Richie sighed. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked. When Ang nodded, he said, “Alright let’s go.”