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  I avoided eye contact with my father, not really knowing what I could do or say. Finally, Dad collapsed in the chair beside me and uttered the words, “I’m so sorry, son.”

  “Sorry?” I sputtered, gaping at him.

  “I let you and your mother down,” he admitted, his eyes avoiding mine.

  “You’ve been the best father, I could have ever asked for,” I told him.

  Affectionately, he patted the back of my neck. I hugged him fiercely for one brief moment before taking the chair next to him. When we finally separated, I could see tears in Tracy’s eyes.

  Glancing around after a few moments of silence, Hank took a seat at the table and began to speak. “The girl I mentioned to you before, Erin… well, Erin and I shared a moment together one night.” His eyes were on the Bible in front of him now, but if he had looked around the room, he would have seen incredulous wonder in all our eyes. Only Tracy looked nonplussed.

  My uncle continued: “She… she told me that she was pregnant. Well, I did the only thing I could do and asked her to marry me, but she refused. She told me that she’d lost the baby and that she never wanted to see me again. And I never did.”

  I took a furtive glance at my father. His head hung down toward the table as if he himself were reliving his own personal tragedy instead of my uncle’s.

  “My life would be completely different today had I married Erin. Had that baby survived.”

  With his last observation, Tracy’s face broke. She dropped into the chair before her and began to sob with abandon. Hank reached out and touched her arm. “Oh, hon, don’t worry about me,” he consoled. “I couldn’t be happier with the way my life turned out.”

  “You don’t understand,” she exclaimed, her words pouring out between heaving gasps of breath. “The baby did survive.”

  Chapter 36 Friday, October 30th, (11:05 pm)

  Hank stared at Tracy in confusion. My father nearly rose from his seat.

  “I met Courtney Noble in a psychiatric hospital when I was nineteen. She was fourteen or fifteen. Her mother had died from a drug overdose when she was five, and she had been in and out of foster homes most of her life. We instantly took to each other because we’d essentially lived the same lives. Abusive drug-addicted mothers. No fathers. Her mother told her that her biological father had abandoned them both.”

  Staring at Hank with apologetic eyes, she awkwardly struggled through the story, her face ashen-colored. “When she told me who her father was—because to her credit, her mother had never hidden your identity from her—I decided that fate had joined our paths for a reason. Refusing to believe that the man who had given me back my life would abandon his own daughter willingly, I tried to convince her that she should contact you. Though by the time I’d left, she was still wallowing in self-pity.”

  Hank took both of Tracy’s hands in his and said, “What’s past is past? Whatever your reasons might have been for keeping this to yourself, there’s no forgiveness necessary. I’d just like to know, where is she now?”

  Tracy hid her face from Hank and tried to pull away from him but he held fast. “When I found the House, I contacted Courtney at the same time I did Ronnie. After we filled her with stories about how you and her Uncle Jack would be there to help us destroy it once and for all, she ran away from the hospital and met us a few towns over, eager to meet the family she never had.”

  Now she turned her tear-stained face to my father and continued in a hushed tone, “But you never came. When Ronnie started the fire, something called to her in there. Before we could stop her, she rushed inside.” Tracy raised her scarred arms in a grisly display, tears streaming down her face. “We couldn’t stop it once it started, but it burned like the fires of perdition! We tried so hard to stop it! We tried!” She folded against Hank, her entire body wracked with sobs, my uncle’s hand stroking her hair mechanically, but his eyes told a different story. He had a thousand-mile stare like a soldier that had just witnessed a horror so hideous that it would color his remaining days a darker shade.

  I couldn’t possibly imagine learning that I had a daughter and that she had died violently all in the same few minutes. It was enough to shatter the stoutest of hearts.

  It was father’s voice that finally broke the silence. “That was when you took her identity?”

  She pulled away from Hank, blinked back the remaining tears and nodded to Dad. “I could never be fingerprinted again.” She displayed her smooth reddened scars of her palms as evidence. “And it didn’t hurt that we were almost identical in height, weight, and eye color. She had darker hair but when my hair turned grey ten years later, I stopped dying my hair altogether.” She stared from my father to my uncle. “I meant no disrespect when I took her name. In fact, I did it in part so I could never forget her.”

  Hank stroked her head affectionately, his eyes profoundly sad.

  The room held its somber tone for several moments more before I could take it no longer. I cleared my throat and turned to my father. “Guess it’s my turn to come clean. Remember grandma’s crystal punchbowl?”

  He gave me a frown and a nod. “The one that turned up broken at a Halloween party when you were seven?”

  I gave a simple nod, and doing my best to hide the slowly building smile, I stated, “It was me. I broke it.”

  Tracy brought a hand to her mouth in an effort to stifle her laughter, but attempting to hold it in only made it worse.

  “That all you got?” Dad grumbled, his serious expression crumbling. “Not much of a confession, kid.”

  “Hey, it’s been really tearing me up for years,” I murmured in mock defensiveness.

  Tracy and Dad laughed openly now and a smile had finally appeared on Hank’s face as well. He flashed a look of appreciation over to me and said, “I think it helped. At least it did for me.”

  We all nodded in turn, our eyes shifting as if one body to the table. For the first time, I noticed that there was an object laid out before each one of them but me; the leather bag in front of Tracy, the Bible below Uncle Hank, and the gun beside Dad’s hand.

  Before I had even thought about doing it, I took off the friendship bracelet Claudia had given me and placed it on the table before me.

  “The greatest of these is love,” Hank proclaimed. He then pointed at the leather bag. “Do you have a Native American background, Tracy?”

  “Shamans aren’t indigenous to the Native American people.” She gave him a gracious smile. “This is a form of the traditional medicine bag adopted by followers of voodoo, though theirs became more of a symbol. The medicine bag of a Native American shaman might be compared to a laborer’s tool belt, the size depending on their age and experience. As you can see, though, my knowledge is still quite limited.”

  “Size can be very deceptive,” Hank offered, scooping the Bible off the table and holding it up before them. “The entirety of all of the world’s Judao-Christian belief system is contained in this five by eight inch book.”

  “Tracy, what does a shaman do?” I asked.

  “Traditionally, they are the human mediator between the earthly plane and the spiritual plane.”

  “Can you communicate with whatever’s here?”

  For the first time, I noticed that Tracy looked uncomfortable. “Yes, I believe that’s the part I was meant to play here.”

  Hank touched her arm. “Wait, what are we talking about here when we say communicate?”

  “I suppose I’ll simply open up the lines of communication,” she offered.

  “Doesn’t that depend on the cooperation of whoever’s on the other end of the line?” When Tracy gave him a simple shrug in response, he sighed heavily. “Tracy, please. I beg you not to do this. It could be very dangerous.”

  “I trust you to protect me, Father.” She touched his arm and took a seat at the table. Hank started to remove the grimoire still lying at its center, but she stopped him. “Leave it.”

  I happened to glance at my watch. “What time do the rest of
you have?”

  Tracy gasped. Dad tapped his watch a few times. “This can’t be..?” my uncle began. “I have eleven twenty-five.”

  We all did. At least we knew now that the passage of time remained relatively the same for all of us.

  “I’ve suspected for some time now that we might all be in a semi-trance like state—not unlike lucid dreaming--that precedes an out of body experience,” Tracy suggested. “Normally it takes intense effort, strong will, and rigorous mental conditioning to achieve this state, but as we discussed, this house may be situated on an axis between planes, especially tonight, on All Hallow’s Eve, the Celtic Festival of the Dead or Samhain, when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.” She gave my father a look. “If we’re going to attempt to communicate with whatever is here, I think you should restrain me.”

  She set her medicine bag on the table before her and took out several different items, a roughly hewn cave crystal, a sequoia tree cone that I recognized from a trip our family took to King’s Canyon National Park, and a small vial that contained what looked like dirt. Removing a pill case from her pocket, she selected a small tablet and placed it on her tongue, giving my father another one of her appraising looks.

  To his credit, he remained silent.

  “The rope,” my father said to Hank. My uncle sat completely still as if oblivious to the rest of us. Finally, his eyes slid over to my father, who just stared back with a look of indifference.

  With grave reservations, I snatched the rope off the floor at Hank’s feet and stepped awkwardly behind Tracy Tatum. “Figure I learned enough about knots in the Scouts to fill a small book.”

  Placing her arms down on the arms of the chair and her legs against its legs, Tracy cast a nervous smile up over her shoulder. I made a couple of loops around the ankles, thighs, wrists, then back around her waist and chest. As I started to tie her off in the back of the chair, she said, “Tighter. Don’t go easy on me, Paul. It may be my life you’re saving.”

  I gave it a good tug, yanking Tracy back against the chair. She grimaced and managed a simple affirmation. “That’s better.” I tied it off and returned to my seat, my father and I trading looks.

  “What should we expect?” Uncle Hank asked, placing the Bible down on the table between him and the grimoire.

  Tracy took a deep breath and gave Hank a wide-eyed look. “Not a clue. I’ve never tried this before.”

  Hank promptly took his glasses off and methodically began to clean them. “That’s just wonderful,” he grumbled under his breath.

  “Among the shaman, it’s a very secretive practice, unlike a séance where anyone can join in,” she replied. “I was once invited to view one.”

  My father gave an impatient sigh and I cleared my throat discretely. “And how did that one go?”

  “Unfortunately, Francis, my shaman friend from N’Orleans, said that the guy had performance anxiety from too many Shiner beers.”

  Once again, my father surprised me by keeping his tongue. He simply lifted his eyes to the ceiling and cocked his head one way then the other with a loud crack. “Actually a beer sounds really good just about now, huh,” he cracked, casting a look at me. “In fact, when we get out of here, I’m treating you to one, seventeen or not.” He gave my uncle a look and grinned. “Hell, I figure if you’re man enough to wade through shit this deep you earned some alcohol no matter how old you are, right Hank?”

  But Uncle Hank wasn’t smiling. He had opened his Bible up and was reading to himself. It was clear this experiment disturbed him to the core of his being.

  “I will attempt to contact anyone who remains here. Keep in mind that many of them will be unwilling or unable to assist us for one reason or another. Many of them won’t even know they’ve passed on. Others may have lost what was left of their humanity due to the circumstances of their choices, especially the choice to remain behind instead of moving on.” She took a deep breath and began to look from one of us to the other. “There is a chance that something else might try and take advantage of the situation. Be vigilant.” At the last two words, she looked directly at me.

  “What should we do if that happens?” I asked with a shaky voice I hardly recognized.

  She looked at my uncle, and he finally made eye contact with her in return. “Your uncle will make it clear that it is most unwelcome.”

  Uncle Hank gathered the Bible closer into his outreached arms as if he were swaddling a small child. Then he gave Tracy a single nod.

  Chapter 37 Friday, October 30th, (11:45pm)

  Lowering her head, Tracy stared down at the objects she’d taken from her bag and began to hum rhythmically. It was a low, throaty rumble, not unlike a Gregorian chant. This went on for ten or fifteen minutes before the hum began to fade in volume.

  Suddenly, I felt every exposed hair on my body stand at attention. A prickly heat like an electrical charge surged through the room. I could see from the way the rest of them shifted in their seats that they had felt it too.

  I knew without looking at my watch that the witching hour had arrived.

  All Hallow’s Eve was upon us.

  “He asks that we forgive him,” I heard Tracy say under her breath. “He loved his son. Only four years old. He would have taken his own life if it had allowed him.” She slowly lifted her head and looked at Dad, her lips quivering. “The boy was only four, one year younger than I had been when I first entered this place.” She sucked in one long breath and her eyes bulged in their sockets. “He bashed his tiny head against the fireplace bricks until it broke like a porcelain doll. They had demanded his sacrifice as a tribute to them.” Tears began to flow freely down her face.

  Dad and Uncle Hank both started to rise, but I put a hand on Dad’s arm just as Tracy said aloud, “No, I’m okay. He needs to say that he loved his son more than anything else in the world.” Uncle Hank removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed Tracy’s cheeks. She slowly began to smile again, then her smile dropped off. Her lips tightened. “He wants to tell us that we should leave here, now, if we’re good Christian souls, that we should flee this place, this place is evil.”

  I could hear a dim sliding sound from my right, and I peered over just in time to watch a book drop to the floor from the uppermost shelf of the book case.

  Her voice began to quicken as the volume increased. “There are monsters here. Devils,” she swallowed awkwardly, then croaked, “They will try and eat your souls.”

  Then she snapped her head up. The chair popped up off the floor and fell back down with a deafening thump. “You must leave this place!” she bellowed.

  Uncle Hank drew his hand back and Tracy gasped in a lungful of breath. Her eyes seemed to clear again, and she murmured in a tiny voice. “Water?”

  Dad leaped from his seat and rushed around the table with the backpack. He ripped the plastic bottle from the pack and knelt beside her, pouring a trickle into her open mouth. She nodded. He drew back again. Giving him a look of appreciation, she muttered, “Harder than I thought. So many just want a chance to be heard.”

  My father gave his brother a questioning look, but all of Uncle Hank’s attention was focused on the woman seated beside him.

  She closed her eyes then, her head rolling forward on her shoulders. “He wants to know what we’re doing here. He wants to know why we’re trespassing on sacred ground.”

  “Who?” Uncle Hank asked with defensive briskness.

  “He’s a priest and a leader of many men and women… and children,” her voice cracked then and her jaw tensed. She seemed to be staring across the table at my father’s the empty seat.

  So focused was her gaze that I felt the need to glance over. I started when I saw a figure seated in my father’s place. The man wore a suit fashioned in the style of the turn of the century, and a thin grey beard hung in a double point from his chin. I believe they call it a French Fork. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table with an air of casual confidence, a hint of a s
mirk on his thin, almost feminine lips.

  “You sick monster. How dare you call yourself a priest?” She seemed to pull forward against her bonds in an effort to rise. “They were innocent! They trusted you! You were supposed to protect them!” She began to shake from side to side as if invisible hands shook her by the collar of her coat.

  “Enough,” Uncle Hank snapped, rising to his feet, and the phantom beside me disappeared before my eyes, dispersing like so much smoke.

  Tracy’s shoulders dropped, and her whole body released its tension. She opened her eyes, bleary and red from tears. “Whew!” she exhaled, a dark smile on her quivering lips. “Harder than I imagined it would be.”

  “Let’s stop this,” I heard my father suggested in a plaintive tone, still kneeling at her side. “Please.”

  I awaited the pronouncement that enough was enough, that she had given it the old college try; that it was all she could take, and it was time to try a different approach. Instead, Tracy opened her mouth and barked: “Stop?” With a confused look on her face, she turned and looked at my uncle, who was watching her with a guarded expression, then down at Dad beside her. In her own voice, but with a completely different cadence, she exclaimed, “Goddammit, Jack, what the hell are you on your knees for? You beggin’ to go home to your mommy now?”

  My father and uncle just stared at her. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. Tracy wasn’t putting us on. It wouldn’t have been in her nature even if the circumstances had been different and a girl’s life wasn’t on the line.

  Tracy wasn’t just relaying information from the other side in her own voice. Now, we were in the presence of someone other than Tracy Tatum.