Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 11

Cell phone reception in the house still stank and the signal he'd managed to pick up earlier in the breezeway had disappeared. Given the c.r.a.p radio reception, he didn't think he'd better move too far away from the building in case Adam needed him. Maybe the front porch. It was raining again, so he came back into the kitchen, closed the door behind him, and . . .

Was that three quarters of someone's head?

No.

A flash of bloodstained shirt sleeve?

He was imagining things.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

He grabbed a handful of marshmallow strawberries out of the bowl on the kitchen table as he pa.s.sed. Karen had started to move most of the food back out to the craft services truck, but the marshmallows remained. He wasn't having any problems a hit of sugar couldn't cure.

"Why can't he see us? He saw us before."

"There's more happening now; we can't get enough energy to break through his denial."

"What denial?" Stephen snorted, waving his hand back and forth to no effect. "He already saw us twice, once in the drawing room and once in the bathroom."

"He saw us in mirrors!"

"Okay, but then he just saw us."

"After the mirrors." Ca.s.sie closed her fingers around their quarry's arm, but he merely shivered and continued walking. "We need a mirror!"

"There's one on the wall by the kitchen door."

"Stephen! He's walking away from the kitchen door!"

"Hey, no need to get frosted; I'm just trying to help."

"The gla.s.s doors in the butler's pantry; you can see yourself in them!" She sped past their quarry and grabbed the pull on the last cabinet by the dining room door. "Help me get this open! It won't do us any good if he doesn't actually look."

"It's not going to make any difference to us."

"Fine. It won't do him any good. Now get over here!"

The gla.s.s door on one of the upper cabinets flew open with enough force that the gla.s.s rattled as it slammed back on its hinges. Tony jumped, recovered, and instinctively reached out to close it. His brain came on-line about half a second behind his hand, but by then it was too late. He could see himself reflected in the gla.s.s and, standing behind him, he could see the dead teenagers as clearly as he had in the drawing room. Okay, not his imagination. It was suddenly very, very cold in the butler's pantry.

He tossed the last marshmallow strawberry into his mouth, chewed slowly, and sighed. "What?"

The girl-What had Lee called her? Ca.s.sie?-made a spinning motion with one finger.

"You want me to turn around?" They were standing behind him. If he turned around . . .

Her motion became a little more frantic.

If he turned around, he'd be able to see it coming. Whatever it was. Which wasn't particularly comforting.

What the h.e.l.l. And with any luck, he thought as he turned, not literally h.e.l.l. After all, Lee had spoken to them earlier and nothing metaphysical had happened to him.

They were standing right where their reflections had suggested they would be. Large as life and twice as dead. Or dead twice anyway.

"So?" His voice sounded remarkably steady; given that his feelings about his current situation ranged between terror and barely suppressed annoyance, he was impressed. "Why'd I need to turn around?"

"Reflections have no voice."

"As a general rule-just FYI-neither do dead people."

Ca.s.sie rolled her eye, looking remarkably like Amy considering she was missing a quarter of her face. "Look, I don't make the rules."

"Hey!" He raised a placating hand. "I hear you. You wouldn't believe . . ."A moment's pause. "Actually, you might."

"It doesn't matter. You've got to get out of here!"

"What?"

"You've got to get everyone out of the house by sunset!"

Sunset? It was eight forty-seven. Sunset was at eight fifty-three. All those years with Henry had made sunset a hard habit to break. Six minutes. Oh, c.r.a.p . . .

The ghosts kept up as he sprinted through the dining room, fumbling for his radio.

"You believe us?" the boy demanded. "Just like that?"

"I've had some experience with sunsets and things going b.u.mp in the dark." And speaking of b.u.mp, his battery was dead. And one more time, oh, c.r.a.p . . .

"I'd worry more about splat than b.u.mp."

"You're not helping, Stephen!"

"Can anyone else see you?" he asked as he skidded into the foyer.

Zev looked up from his mini disk recorder and frowned. "Pretty much everyone, why?"

Ca.s.sie shook her head. "No, just you."

"Great." And to Zev: "We've got to get out of here."

"Well, I'm almost done, but you can't just bail on the job."

"Hey, job's almost done." He grabbed the music director's arm and gave him a little shove toward the door. "Why don't I meet you outside?"

"Why don't you switch to decaf," Zev suggested, twisting free. "It's raining, I'll wait here."

"That ballroom is incredible," Amy announced emerging from the hall that led past the library and toward the back of the house. "It's bigger than my whole G.o.d-d.a.m.ned apartment!"

"You shouldn't go into the ballroom," Stephen muttered. "There's too many of them in the ballroom."

"Too many what?" Tony demanded. Amy and Zev turned to stare at him. "Never mind. You guys get out of here, I'll get the others."

He'd gone up only half a dozen steps when the girls started down from the second floor dragging Everett behind them.

"We're going to get a facial in the trailer!" Ashley announced when she saw Tony.

"No, no!" Everett protested, struggling to keep up. "I said you needed to wash your faces!"

"Facials!" Brianna shrieked.

Tony got out of their way. If nothing else, the girls would be out by sunset. The girls and Everett. And Zev and Amy.

Except Zev and Amy were still standing in the hall! He made a shooing motion toward the door and continued upstairs, pushing past the grinning grip carrying Everett's makeup case.

How many people were still up there? Peter, Tina, Adam, Mouse, Kate, Sorge, Mason, Lee-and Brenda. Given the problems with the lamps, at least one electrician. Chris, the gaffer, had gone out to the truck to check his extra lights and Tony hadn't seen him come back in. One grip following the girls and Everett. Maybe one or two still up there. Hartley Skenski, the boom operator, and a sound tech-there'd been more of the sound crew around before lunch when they'd been dealing with the extras, but Tony could only remember seeing the one by the bathroom. Thirteen, maybe fourteen.

Under the circ.u.mstances, he'd rather it wasn't thirteen. He really didn't need anything that could be interpreted as an omen.

"I'm not going out there! It's raining and I'll get wet!"

Ashley's voice pulled Tony around. Both girls, Everett, and the grip were standing just inside the closed outer door staring out through the beveled gla.s.s into the twilight. Zev and Amy were standing just inside the open inner doors. It was dark enough outside that Tony could see all six reflections. At least there were only six. That was good, right?

Except they were supposed to be outside by now!

"You're running out of time."

"You know, Stephen, your sister's right." Shoulders against the wallpaper, he slid past the ghost and started back downstairs. "You're not f.u.c.king helping!"

He'd just stepped off the bottom step when he felt a sudden chill. The air grew heavy and still. The sounds of talking and laughter and cables being dragged along the upstairs hall became distant-wrapped in cotton. No. Given the way the temperature had plunged, wrapped in ice. "You're too late," Stephen murmured.

Tony snorted. "Quel surprise."

A door slammed.

And then another.

And another.

And another.

The sound of the front door slamming echoed through the foyer and as the echoes died, the world snapped back into place.

"The front door was already closed," Tony said to Ca.s.sie as he charged past.

She shrugged. "So were all the others."

The girls, actually looking a little scared, had backed into the hall with the grip.

Everett reached for the door handle.

Tony couldn't see his reflection in the gla.s.s. Nor could he see the porch, or the rain, or anything at all. It was as if the world had gone from dusk to dark in a heartbeat.

"Everett! Don't . . . !"

Too late. The makeup artist grabbed the handle, turned it, shook it, kicked the base of the door, and then turned back toward his audience. "It's locked. Or jammed."

The inner doors slammed shut, the blackout curtain billowing out into the foyer like a cliche villain's cloak.

It turned out the inner doors were also locked. Or jammed. Or held closed by the evil within the house grown more powerful with the setting of the sun-but Tony figured now was not the time to mention that.

Trapped between the inner and outer doors, Everett pushed while Tony pulled. Nothing.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on down here?" Peter's voice drew everyone's attention around to the stairs. Tony started to do a quick head count. . . . eleven, twelve, thirteen . . .

Which was when the lights went out.

"I guess I should have mentioned that was likely to happen," Ca.s.sie murmured under the high-pitched screams of the boss' daughters.

The caretaker's hand stopped about ten centimeters from the kitchen door, his fingers stubbing up against an invisible barrier.

"That's not good." He glanced down at the black cat. "Yep, you were right. I'm sorry I doubted you."

Fortunately, Tina had a small flashlight in her purse and Hartley remembered seeing candles in a drawer in the kitchen.

"What the h.e.l.l were you doing going through the drawers? Never mind," Peter continued before Hartley could answer. "I don't really care. Go with Tina and bring the candles back here. Everyone else, stay right where you are. We don't need to spend the rest of the night searching for someone who's wandered off in the dark."

The dark seemed a lot, well, darker after the small cone of light from the flashlight disappeared through the dining room.

"My cell phone isn't working." Amy's voice.

"Neither is mine." And Zev's.

After the incident in episode five, CB's announcement about cell phones on set had been succinct. "Next one I find, I implant." Afraid to find out just where, the entire crew had stopped carrying their phones although Tony was willing to bet that every backpack or bag in the AD's office held one. And that none of them would work.

He jumped about two feet straight up when a small hand grabbed his T-shirt.

"I don't like this!"

"Don't worry." Trying not to hyperventilate, he pried the fabric out of Brianna's grip and wrapped her fingers in his.

"It'll be all right."

"No, it won't." Stephen drifted into his line of sight, looking for the first time translucent and traditionally ghostlike.

"It'll be bad. And then it'll get worse."

"It's probably just a shift in air pressure." Adam's voice came from about halfway up the stairs. "One of the back doors blew shut."

"The back doors have been shut all day." That had to be Kate, Mouse's second, because it wasn't Tina or Amy or Brenda, the only other women in the house. Other live women, he corrected silently, wishing he'd taken the time to learn the Wizard's Lamp spell instead of the showier Come to Me.