"They speak of...a bad energy..." Lady Anna said softly, eyelids fluttering.
Father Peters scoffed, but Magda shushed him quickly. We waited.
"An..energy..." she continued, as if repeating what someone was whispering to her "darker than.. the blackest night.."
A chill ran down my spine. I gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles white. I heard Casey shift next to me. It was utterly quiet in the room.
"A question without an answer.." Lady Anna continued, speaking slowly, almost cautiously. The Father scoffed,
"So, she can't give us answers, now? How convenient." he muttered, Magda shushed him again. Lady Anna jerked in her chair, drawing our focus back to her.
"Something else...." she murmured. Her brow furrowed, she sucked in a breath. "We will play..He will ask, and ask, and ask...But fear..the answer.."
Father Peters made an impatient sound.
"This is a waste of time!" he sneered, pushing back from the table and making as if to gather himself to leave. "All smoke and mirrors, utter nonsense-"
A loud slam startled us; Lady Anna's hands slapping down onto the oak table, palms flat, though her body remained rigid in the chair. She seemed to be having trouble speaking; she started to shake, her face twisting as if the words were being forced through her.
"We...want to play..." she said, "so much fun..when the darkness comes.." She shuddered and went still, breathing heavily.
We waited. After a moment, when she'd said nothing, Father Peters shook his head and sneered as he picked his briefcase off the table. "An utter fraud, wasting time. Trying to scare me, to impress me with these parlor tricks and acting-"
Lady Anna gasped, almost a scream, doubling over, her hair falling to create a curtain around her face, pooling on the table.
When she next spoke, my mouth went bone dry. Her voice was not hers at all. But I knew it so well. The voice from my nightmares.
"We want to play with you, Randall...Pe-ters." the voice- that child's voice over the deepest, venom dripping hiss melded together- crooned.
I forgot to breathe. I glanced over- the Father had frozen, staring at Lady Anna in disbelief.
"Father Peters...Where is Father now, Mr. Peters?" the voice said, a parody of sugar sweetness which was utterly abhorrent. It let out a short giggle that churned my insides. "Mummy wants to know...And what about Janice?" Father Peters drew in a sharp breath, the color draining from his already pale face. For a moment, he looked utterly lost and afraid; then he seemed to steal himself, drawing himself up.
"I take it we are not speaking to Lady Anna anymore?" he said, his voice shaking but determined.
"Annie can't speak now, sorry." The voice said. "Busy,busy, Father.."
Father Peters pushed back his chair and stood to face her.
"You must tell us more about this evil, this, darkness."
The voice snorted.
"The nonbeliever wants to hear the fairy tales.." it sounded amused "We will dance for him if he'll dance for us."
"The darkness." Father pressed, as if he hadn't heard. "The darkness, the evil that is coming. We must know what it is. The agreement was that you would help us prepare!"
A spasm shook Lady Anna violently.
"No." the voice was her's; her fingers grasped at the giant oak table, her back arching, shoulders rolling forward.
"No!" she repeated again, an agonized, fearful shout.
"Tell us, you agreed!" Peters persisted, his voice rising in volume.
"We said NO." the voice snarled. At that moment the giant antique oak table jerked across the room, slamming against the fireplace with a crash; all of us scrambled out of our chairs as Lady Anna fell to the floor on her hands and knees, her head facing down. The books along the walls started to shake until the floors seemed to vibrate. Casey grabbed my hand and pulled me close next to him.
.
"What is coming? Where is it now?" Father Peters asked again, louder. His voice was calm but his face was ashen.
"Won't give up the secret.." the voice said in a sing-song tone,
"Where is the evil now? Is it here?"
"Can Randy come out to play??" It whined. Then drummed it's finger tips on the wood floor, tapping a rhythm.
"Randy Peters doesn't know, something's coming from below..." it crooned, as if to the tune of a nursery rhyme.
"Where is the evil?! Tell me!" Father Peters shouted.
"The energy the evil black as night comes to play, run Priest run run.."
The Father's eyes were wild with fear - before any of us could stop him he had bent over and grabbed Lady Anna by the shoulders, shaking her as he yelled over the voice's chatter.
"Where is the evil?! Where is the evil in this house!?"
Several things happened in one moment. The books stopped jerking about, the floor stopped shaking. The utter silence seemed to swallow us all, seemed to suck away our very breath.
Lady Anna's hand shot out in a flash, wrapping around the Father's throat. Blood seeped down her fingers in the dim light. She looked up. She looked straight at me.
And she didn't look like Anna anymore. Her lovely raven hair which I'd admired so much hung in greasy strands around her face, and her face-- her eyes were white, her lips and chin red with blood which coated her teeth as she smiled widely and spoke into his ear, an eerie, breathy whisper..
"It's in the walls."
And then she laughed. Laughed louder and louder, releasing Father Peters and falling onto all fours again as he slumped to the side. With earsplitting crashes every window in the room flung open, the curtains jerking at their rings as icy cold air tore into the room, ripping at our clothes, stabbing our lungs like thousands of tiny needles. And the thing kept laughing, laughing and laughing as the cold and the blood and the darkness wreaked havoc on us all.
***
It was hours later, and we found ourselves at the local hospital closer to the city.
Casey and I had suffered the littlest physical damage; both of us had cuts on our faces and arms from one of window panes, which had shattered when the wind had crashed through, but the cuts were mostly superficial. I had acquired a few bruised ribs from when Casey bodily tackled me to the floor. He'd had a reason, and apparently paid a price for that; a wrought iron book end had ricocheted off his left shoulder, leaving horrible bruising and a deep, ugly gash which had needed several stitches.
Lady Anna, they wouldn't tell us anything about. Unfortunately none of us were in any shape to speak, let alone lie, when we were brought in, and it wasn't hard from the identification the paramedics found on us to tell that there was no way we were all related.
Father Peters had five wounds in his neck that blessedly hadn't hit any arteries, although he had lost a lot of blood and might not wake up for awhile.
Magda, unseen by all of us, had been slammed by the table as it flew across the room. She had a broken wrist, a torn muscle in her knee, and a fractured ankle. She'd also suffered some head trauma, which, the doctors assured us, was probably not too serious. They wouldn't let us see her, though- not even when Casey provided proof that he was family.
"She's in a very fragile state at the moment," the doctor tried to explain to a very pissed off, worried Case as I squeezed his hand in hopes the contact would help him breathe.
"The-" he hesitated "accident- really did a number on all of you, but your aunt was incredibly shaken, very confused, and in a great deal of distress. She's sleeping, at the moment - we had to sedate her so she wouldn't make her injuries worse than they are."
Case's jaw was locked tight; I could practically hear his teeth grinding together. I squeezed his hand again and glanced at the doctor, nodding as a silent 'thank you'. He nodded back, his eyes sympathetic.
"We'll see how you all are in the morning. Unless something turns up, and we need to do more tests, you can go home." He left quickly, shutting the door behind him, and Casey and I were alone in the matchbox sized, sterile hospital room.
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