AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Holy shit,” Zale whispered.
“What is this?” Eva gasped. “Who—?”
But I knew who. I knew the answer even before my eyes found the signature down in the corner. Knew it, because I’d already seen an almost identical painting, in which a little girl in a white dress had reached into the emptiness beside her to grasp the very hand the Gray Man now offered. If they’d been superimposed over each other, they would have been hand in hand.
“Bernadette,” I murmured.
Her name in my mouth was like a shot of adrenaline. I staggered back from the painting, all manic energy again.
“We need to find Bernadette, right now!” I cried.
Nova jumped down from the stool, her face aghast. “You don’t think Bernadette did something to your mom, do you?! She’s… she’s harmless!”
“She obviously knows something, Nova, look at that!” I yelled, gesturing to the painting. “We have to find her!”
“Do you know where she is?” Eva asked eagerly.
Nova hesitated, biting her lip.
“Nova, come on! You must know—” I began, but Zale’s tremulous voice cut me off.
“Um, I don’t want to freak anyone out more than they already are, but did y’all see the title of this painting?”
I followed his finger to read the typed caption that had been affixed to the wall beside the painting, which included its title.
“The Darkness Waits on the Beach.”
I turned to Nova, whose eyes had gone saucer-round.
“Nova. Please.”
Nova swallowed convulsively, then said, “She’s probably at home. In her studio.”
* * *
Rhi texted me several times as we practically sprinted across town to the Manor, but I ignored them. I didn’t want to read her empty platitudes about how it would all be okay. I’d just found out that the thing stalking me in my nightmares since I was a child was the Darkness itself. Nothing she could say would make me feel any better.
“They say the Darkness could take many forms,” Zale gasped as we ran.
“How can the Darkness take any forms if it’s bound by the Covenant?” Eva huffed.
No one answered because no one knew.
It had grown much darker since we’d entered the Historical Society—the late afternoon sun had been swallowed by a mass of iron-gray clouds, swollen with a promise of torrential rain. Even as the Manor came into sight, a few fat raindrops began to fall here and there.
We tore up the driveway, Nova in the lead, and burst through the front door and up the stairs before we knew if anyone else was even home, though Ostara’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which meant she was still probably at Lightkeep Cottage with the rest of the Conclave. When she reached the second-floor landing, Nova took off down a long hallway, and turned the corner down a second, shorter hall that ended in a door. She pulled it open, revealing a stone spiral staircase that led upward into the tower. I had just enough room in my brain to acknowledge that I would have found it all charming, if I wasn’t in such a panic. We climbed the stairs, which ended in a trap door. Nova shoved it open, and the top half of her body disappeared into the opening while we waited, breathless.
“Bernadette? Bernadette are you up—holyshit,” Nova gasped.
“What? What is it?” Eva cried.
I didn’t wait for an answer, shoving my way up the last few stairs so that Nova had to climb the rest of the way through to make room for me. As my head and shoulders emerged into the tower studio and I gazed around me, my heart seemed to stop in my chest.
The Gray Man stared, eyeless, down at me over and over again from hundreds of charcoal renderings, each one affixed to the stone walls, overlapping each other, fluttering in the rain-scented breeze that drifted in the window.
“What the actualfuck?” Zale murmured, as he and Eva emerged behind me.
“I didn’t know,” Nova was muttering hysterically. “I didn’t… she never lets anyone up here.”
