Blood in the Mirror (Haunted Collection Series Book 3) Read online

Mike nodded and added, “If you want.”

  “Do you want to?” Tom asked, bitterness thick in his voice.

  “I do,” Mike answered truthfully.

  “Sure,” Tom said with a shrug. “I don’t have a problem with it.”

  Mike grinned and said, “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  ***

  Tom watched the short, pudgy man’s face sag slightly, his eyes taking on a faraway look as the Ativan took effect.

  “So we’re all set?” Tom asked.

  “Hm?” Mike said. “Oh, yeah. We’re good. We’re real good.”

  A pleasant smile spread across Mike’s face and he turned around and left the room. When the door closed he relaxed, and allowed himself to consider what had been eating at him for days.

  How to get to Stefan Korzh.

  Chapter 9: Disheartening News

  “You’re driving back?” Victor asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Jeremy answered, sighing. “As I said, Leanne has asked that I escort someone to the house to assist with the removal of our mutual problem.”

  Victor hated the vague conversation, but he understood that Jeremy didn’t want to be overheard and he certainly didn’t want to text it. Neither of those made him feel any better about Jeremy’s sudden agreement in regards to a road trip from Louisiana to Pennsylvania.

  “When do you think you’ll get here?” Victor asked, shaking his head and dropping down into a chair.

  “Let me see, tomorrow is Wednesday. I’ll leave in the morning,” Jeremy answered, “and I’ll have to make frequent stops. I don’t believe I’ll be there any earlier than Friday evening. Possibly even Saturday afternoon if I have to stop again. My days of long road trips ended in Vietnam.”

  “I know, I know,” Victor muttered. “Well, anyway, be safe. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “Of course,” Jeremy answered. “I’ll call you tomorrow evening when I reach the hotel. You can let me know then if you have any sort of luck with tracking down all of Stefan Korzh’s properties.”

  “Yeah,” Victor said, nodding. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Safe driving, Jeremy.”

  “Thank you.”

  Victor ended the call and dropped his phone down onto his lap, closing his eyes and letting it sink back against the headrest. His patience had become thinner, and part of him wanted to seek out the assistance of his dead grandfather. But he had never unpacked the mug from his bag in Jeremy’s house in Norwich, and he hadn’t thought to bring it with him to Pennsylvania.

  He wasn’t thrilled with the continued, solitary quest for the current residence of Stefan Korzh. Victor had a desire to go, purchase a large amount of gasoline, some basic kitchen matches, and burn down every structure the man may or may not own.

  If he could, Victor would burn down the entire state of Pennsylvania to get to Korzh.

  No, Victor reprimanded himself. Erin wouldn’t want me to do that. Not at all. She’d hate it. Stop it. Get a grip.

  He took several deep breaths to clear his mind and bring his anger under control. His sorrow had transformed itself to rage, and each day the struggle was worse.

  As his mouth formed a hard line, Victor pushed himself up and out of the chair, his wounded hand throbbing with the rising of his blood pressure. He walked across the room to the battered kitchen table that served as a desk. From the scarred top, he picked up a single page. He had printed it out earlier, and he had hoped to go with Jeremy to the various houses to see whether or not Stefan was living in one of them.

  Jeremy, Victor knew, did not want him to explore alone.

  What he wants and what he gets are two different things altogether, Victor thought bitterly. He strode to the door, took the car keys down and left the house. The paper with the addresses was clenched in his fist. He needed to know if they were close to Stefan, or if the killer had gotten away again.

  Chapter 10: Borrowing a Pen

  Bob Gilmore cleaned offices. He scoured bathrooms. Vacuums trembled under his steady hand, and the world was cleansed as he passed by.

  And he hated it.

  Bob had done eight years in prison for armed robbery, and the best job he could get employed with using the skills he had learned there – was how to clean.

  Marilyn Whitmore, who ran the cleaning service, had hired him because he and her husband had been friends in high school, and that was the only reason. He had earned her respect eventually by always being on time and never calling in sick, and that was a source of pride for him. Most people assumed that since he had done time, he was worthless.

  Bob knew he wasn’t, and he made sure people understood it by observing his work ethic.

  These thoughts occupied his mind as he pushed open the inner office door to the insurance agency and entered the owner’s room. Bob flicked on the light, ran the vacuum around the edge of a filing cabinet and felt a tickle on the back of his neck.

  It was an old sensation, one that had sprouted up in prison. The feeling was of being watched; as though someone who meant to do him harm was close by, waiting to drive a knife into his chest.

  Bob straightened up casually and turned around, eyes roaming over the office, searching the small shadows for someone he hadn’t seen upon entering.

  No one was there.

  His eyes stopped, then drifted back toward a shelf. On a small display was a golden pen.

  It was beautiful.

  Bob turned off the vacuum, feeling as though the noise of the machine was upsetting the pen.

  Leaving the vacuum by the filing cabinet, he crossed the room to the pen and looked at it. It was stunning; a work of art with long, thin lines etched into the casing. Licking his lips, he lifted his hand, reached for the pen, hesitated, then lifted it up.

  The metal was cold beneath his fingers, but a thrill of excitement raced through him as he held it.

  I should write something, Bob thought, turning to the desk. He hadn’t written anything since high school, and even then, he had only done so while being punished in detention.

  Without thinking, he pulled the chair out from the desk, sat down, and found a yellow notepad. He dragged the pad to him, leaned over it and gently turned the pen’s lower half. The writing point appeared and he smiled, a soft, almost bitter scent rising up from the metal.

  Bob started to write, the pen gliding across the paper and leaving a trail of words behind it. The penmanship was magnificent, and nothing like Bob had ever written before. Sentences, long and perfectly crafted, flowed, and they made up his thoughts. His memories. He knew it, even though he had forgotten it.

  For several minutes, he wrote in a daze, not quite sure what he was writing. When he finished, his hand and forearm ached dully. Bob had covered the entire page and part of another. His mind thrummed, and he held the pen loosely in one hand as he flipped back to the first page. He settled back into the chair, picked up the notebook, and read what he had written down.

  I remember when I was eighteen years old. I had just gotten my license, and my father had allowed me to take out his 1958 Ford pick-up to take Kathryn Moltke on a date.

  Bob chuckled, nodding. Damn, he thought, I’d forgotten all about that.

  Still grinning, he read on, curious to see what else the pen had inspired him to remember.

  Kathryn and I got a little too tipsy that night. She had stolen some Kentucky bourbon from her parents and hadn’t been able to say yes or no when I was ready for her.

  Bob’s grin vanished and his stomach twisted. He wanted to argue with himself that what he had written wasn’t true, but he knew it was. His mouth went dry, and he continued to read on.

  I helped her up to her house, put her on the porch in the swing, and left her there to sober up on her own., I took the long way home, cut through Colchester and Cambridge, down through Putnam and over through Dell. It was late. Almost two in the morning. There had been a fellow out hitchhiking.

  Bob shuddered and shook his head, trying to take his eyes away from the words, but he couldn’t. H
e was locked onto them as if someone kept his eyelids pried open and his head straight.

  The words marched on across the page.

  I don’t know if he was drunk or sober, but I know I was drunk when I hit him, and I hit him hard. His body flew out into the middle of the road. I remember his sneakers, dark blue Adidas, on their sides at the street’s shoulder. The man wasn’t dead. He tried to get up, to his feet. I remember how white his socks were, how his right leg was bent wrong and how the left just wouldn’t hold his weight.

  He kept falling down, and I sat there, watching, the big old V8 engine of that Ford rumbling and thrumming. Then I dropped the truck into low, eased forward, and hit him again. I backed up, and he tried to get up. Three more times I hit him. On the fourth time, he didn’t move. That’s when I backed up a good fifty feet, did a brake-stand and raced out over him.

  I spent an hour at the high school gym, where the fire hydrant had a wrench attached to it for washing down the school buses. That hydrant blasted bits of skin and fabric, blood and bone right off the truck. I was even able to pull out a dent in the fender.

  My father was happy that I had washed the truck.

  And so was I.

  Signed,

  Bob Gilmore

  Bob looked at the confession he had written and knew it was all true. Every word of it. He had buried it in his heart, long ago.

  But there it was.

  Shivering, he reached forward to tear the pages free from the notebook, but cold hands gripped his wrists.

  He couldn’t see anything or anyone, yet there was no denying that fingers of ice were digging into his skin. The pain was hideous, and he bit back a howl.

  “Tell me,” a man whispered, “how do you feel about what you wrote?”

  “I didn’t write that,” Bob gasped, struggling to free himself. “Who are you? Where are you? Why can’t I see you?!”

  “You did write that,” the unseen man answered, “and as for who I am, call me Cody. And where am I, right here. Oh, and you can’t see me because I’m dead. Like the man you killed. You know, confession is good for the soul. Don’t you feel better, having written that down?”

  “No,” Bob moaned. “Let go of me! I need to get rid of it!”

  “Oh no,” the dead man whispered, “it doesn’t work like that. Not at all. You should know that. This is only part of your confession. Someone else needs to read it. That’s the only way to get the full benefit of your admission.”

  “They’ll put me in prison again,” Bob said, weeping, “I can’t go back there. Please, please let me get rid of it.”

  “No,” the dead man said. “I can’t do that. Perhaps you’ll only go away for a little while. Don’t you think you should? From what you wrote, I can see that you’re a killer and a rapist. Punishment is what you need. Do what’s right and bring this to the police. You’ll feel better.”

  “No,” Bob said, shaking his head. “No!”

  Again, Bob tried to free his hands, grasping desperately for the paper, yet the unseen ghost tightened his grip and squeezed mercilessly.

  “You don’t have to tell them,” the dead man said. “I can’t make you do that. But you won’t be able to destroy your confession, not at all. We wrote that together. You and I, and I promise you this, Bob, your confession will stand. Someone will find it, they will read it, and you will be forced to explain to them what has occurred and why you did not come forward.”

  Bob was thrown backward, tumbling out of the chair even as the piece of furniture came smashing into him.

  He struggled to get to his feet, but a force struck him in the chest and slammed him into the filing cabinet.

  “What will it be?” the voice asked. “Will you admit your transgressions? Shall you finish your confession?”

  “No,” Bob hissed.

  “Then out,” the voice said in a dull, uninterested tone, and Bob was hurled out of the office, the door rocking in its frame and locking him out.

  Bob threw himself at the door, pounding on it and trying to wrench it open. Yet neither the door nor the knob moved for him.

  Panic welled up, and he looked around the room frantically. He saw a fire extinguisher on the wall, ripped it free and hurried back to the door. Lifting it up to strike the knob, a blow struck him in the chest and knocked him into the secretary’s desk.

  Struggling to control his racing thoughts, Bob twisted around and tried to find something to smash his way into the inner office.

  I’ll leave, he thought, racing for the exit.

  The door he had left open slammed closed, and he ran into it headfirst. He staggered, pain shooting down his neck and into his lower back. The tips of his fingers went numb while a bright, painful light filled his vision. Sinking to his knees, Bob threw up onto the rug he had so recently cleaned and struggled to remain upright.

  “You can’t leave, Bob,” the dead man whispered patiently. “Accept it. You need to confess. There’s no other way out of the situation, I’m afraid.”

  There was a mocking sympathy in the dead man’s voice, a hateful, spiteful sound that ripped a scream of outrage from Bob’s mouth.

  With his head spinning and his entire body a throbbing, agonized mass of shaking muscles and quivering nerves, Bob used the secretary’s desk for support as he got to his feet. His legs trembled, and his eyes darted from the exit back to the inner office door.

  He was trapped in a room with a ghost and one who wanted him to confess to rape and murder.

  Bob’s eyes landed on the secretary’s desk caddy, and the bright, stainless steel letter opener standing amongst the pens and pencils.

  He flung out his hand, snatched up the letter opener, reversed the blade, and plunged it into his throat. The tempered steel pierced his flesh, punctured his carotid artery. He rushed to rip the improvised weapon back out of his flesh, and sent a spray of blood across the room.

  Bob dropped the letter opener to the floor and collapsed beside it, his blood gushed out. A dim shadow separated itself from the far wall, and he could only make out the faintest hint of a human shape. Bob’s flesh chilled as the shadow came nearer, then stopped only a foot away.

  “That,” the voice said, chuckling, “is always another option. A pity I’m dead. I always enjoyed the smell of blood. Something so rewarding in the bitter scent of hot copper, don’t you agree?”

  Bob couldn’t answer. He was already dead.

  Chapter 11: Daylight is Sometimes Best

  Stefan parked his car, scratched uncomfortably in the new clothes he had purchased, and continued to the porch. He had spent several days in the hotel room, recuperating his mental and physical energy after the harassment he had suffered at the hands of his father.

  When he reached the door, Stefan hesitated, hand on the knob. The metal was cool, but not cold.

  Something was wrong in the house. With his hand still on the old doorknob, Stefan closed his eyes and listened, trying to sense what was wrong. No strange noises greeted his ears, nor did any curious smells drift out of the gaps around the door.

  He opened his eyes and shook his head.

  A sense of worry settled over him, and he contemplated entering the house through the back door.

  Frustrated, Stefan reached behind him with his free hand and slipped his knife out of its sheath. Holding it with a loose, comfortable grip, he twisted the doorknob and let himself into the house.

  He left the door open behind him and moved ahead cautiously. His eyes roamed over the thresholds of the various rooms and the sills of the windows. None of the salt lines or lead barriers were broken. The house did not shake with his father’s rage, and the voices of the dead were not to be heard.

  Something was wrong.

  He had a moment of self-indictment, cursing his failure to establish something as simple as hardwired cameras. Stefan continued towards the kitchen. He had to make certain the house was clear before he recovered any of his computers and hard drives.

  And he hated the idea of runn
ing.

  From anything.

  It was bad enough he had to abandon the house because of his father, worse to think that someone, or something, had managed to get into the building while he was at the hotel.

  The kitchen was as he had left it and Stefan returned his knife to the sheath tucked in the small of his back. His hand trembled, and he had an unbearable urge to pour himself a drink.

  No, he reprimanded himself. Not here. Somewhere safe. I’ve been lazy.

  Instead of vodka, Stefan got himself a glass of water from the tap. The fluid had the sharp, mineral tang of well water and Stefan’s lip curled up in a sneer. He finished the glass and returned it to the counter.

  I hate well water, he thought.

  “Stefanushka,” his father said from behind a wall. “You’ve returned, my son.”

  Stefan rolled his eyes, turned around and leaned against the counter. “Yes.”

  “Will you be leaving again?” Ivan Denisovich asked, chuckling. “I do not know if I should be offended or not. You don’t seem to enjoy your father’s singing.”

  “That would be because I don’t,” Stefan snapped. “You need to leave me the hell alone. How am I supposed to do any work with you lingering around? And how the hell are you doing it?”

  “You should have studied, Stefan,” his father said, all of the humor gone from the dead man’s voice. “You should have accepted your birthright.”

  “Shut up,” Stefan snarled. “I’m tired of the garbage that comes out of your mouth.”

  “Shut up?” Ivan asked in a low voice. “Shut up, is it? My, you’ve grown bold, with these little barriers you’ve built.”

  “Yeah,” Stefan sneered, “I have. Go ahead and try to cross the salt, try durak.”