Chapter Twenty-Five
The room is familiar to me, as if I’ve been there before.
A large oak table is elegantly set with four golden dishes and sparkling crystal glasses, and a grand staircase soars towards the floor above.
I walk down the hallway, studying the paintings on the wall.
There are five remarkable portraits – four men, all of them strikingly handsome, and one woman, her expression stern.
The sound of voices drifts towards me, and I follow it, stepping into a drawing room.
Three men and a woman look up as I enter, and I understand immediately that these are the people in the portraits I was just admiring.
A fourth man is seated with his back to me.
When he stands and turns, I’m surprised to see it’s Callum .
‘Hey,’ he says, with a sweet smile. He takes my hand. ‘Come meet everyone.’
I shuffle backwards. Something doesn’t feel right .
‘What are you doing?’ he asks. ‘Why are you embarrassing me?’
‘Please let me go, Callum,’ I say, tugging my hand from his .
He looks down at me and his smile transforms into a sneer .
I recognise the sneer. I recognise the room. I’m in the Western house, and the man before me isn’t Callum anymore .
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ the man says. ‘You could have made it easy on yourself. Wouldn’t you like to be normal, even if only for a moment?’
‘I am normal,’ I say, still backing away .
‘You are anything but normal, Holly. You’re extraordinary.’
I turn and start to run, but the man trips me, and I hit the floor with a thump.
I scramble forward along the hallway, fighting for traction on the polished boards.
Someone grabs my shoulders and flips me onto my back.
The man who was chasing me drops to his knees and straddles my chest, pinning me beneath him .
When I stare into his face and his strange golden eyes, I finally understand. Callum has become Edward Western .
I hit him, punching his chest, my legs kicking, trying to fight him off. The others gather around, each grinning in a way that fills me with horror .
The woman puts her face near mine and sneers. ‘I told you you could not win, stupid girl.’
It’s the spirit I fought in the cellar, now alive and standing in front of me, her hair pulled back tight and her long dress swishing on the ground. I scream .
Edward Western wraps his fingers around my throat and squeezes tighter and tighter. I thrash against the floor, hips bouncing and feet skidding, fists lashing out, while the others loom above me, hissing unintelligible words. My pulse pounds in my ears. Then the room starts to dim .
I’m dying, I think, as my arms flop limply to my sides. Then I hear someone calling my name, and my body jerks .
My eyes snap open. Callum is hovering over me, his hands on my shoulders. I scream again and hit out, my fist connecting with the side of his face as I scramble away from him.
He yelps and lurches back, his hand flying to his injured cheek.
‘Holly, it’s me! It’s Callum. You were dreaming. You were having a nightmare.’
I look around the room, dazed and disorientated. ‘What?’
‘You were having a bad dream.’
I’m in my room at the bed and breakfast. I’m in my bed. ‘Oh,’ I breathe out, and slide back down the mattress as my body relaxes. I run a shaking hand across my forehead, wiping away the slick of sweat. ‘I – I was at the h-house,’ I manage to stammer.
‘What the hell was happening? What did you see?’ He looks as scared as I feel.
‘It was just the spirit,’ I quickly lie. ‘The one I exorcised in the cellar. I was reliving everything, I guess.’
He frowns. ‘You called out my name.’ He looks so worried.
I reach for the water beside my bed and hold onto it with two hands, but the liquid still splashes over the side of the glass.
‘Of course I did. You got hurt.’ I force a smile to my trembling lips. ‘What time is it? Did I miss dinner?’
Callum exhales deeply, shakes his head, and checks the time on my phone. ‘It’s five am,’ he says. ‘You’ve been out for about…’ He quickly does the math. ‘Fourteen hours.’
‘What?’ I push a shaky hand back through my hair. ‘I guess I really was tired. Go back to bed, get some more sleep.’
‘Do you want me to stay with you?’
‘No,’ I say, a little too hastily. ‘I’m okay. Go back to sleep. Sorry to wake you. Stupid dreams.’
He slowly nods, his eyebrows pulled tight. ‘Okay. Call me if you need me.’ He kisses my forehead.
I somehow manage not to flinch.
Morning brings with it a fresh perspective. Last night’s dream was just my brain’s way of processing everything that happened at the house and the unanswered questions bouncing around my mind.
If Jason was bait, then for what? The spirit mentioned something about enjoying the taste of my power.
Is that why Jason was here, to get me to the house?
Was that what Elizabeth and Richard were trying to warn me about?
What if Callum’s theory about the early-settler Western brothers, who instigated the witch trials, is right?
That they wanted to kill the witches not to destroy them, but to somehow take their powers, and the spirit who dwelled in this house was still trying to carry out their wishes in some dead, misguided way.
Then I remember Annie and the beautiful man on the hill.
What if the Westerns never actually stopped wanting those powers?
A shudder runs through me, but I shake it off.
We’re going home, the house is no longer haunted, and hopefully Annie’s spirit can rest now, too.
I can hear Callum moving around in his room, so I push open the door and say, ‘How long until we head off?’ He spins around, his face dark and his mouth taut. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Sit down,’ he says, and he sounds so serious I drop straight into a chair. He pulls another chair closer to me, sits and wrings his hands in his lap. ‘Before we go sign the papers, we need to talk.’
I manage a tiny nod and whisper a nervous, ‘O-okay.’
‘Before I start,’ he says, ‘I need to know you won’t be angry with me when I tell you what I’m going to tell you.’
That feeling I’ve been having that something’s not right starts barrelling up my spine.
‘I can’t promise you that,’ I say, ‘until I know what you’re going to tell me. But now I’m worried.’
He runs a hand over the back of his neck, then puts his palms on his thighs and breathes deeply.
‘I want to preface this by saying, like you and your dreams, I needed time to process this information before I spoke to you about it. But we said we wouldn’t keep things from each other, and with everything that’s happened between us, and everything that went down at the house, I know I should have said something earlier. ’
‘Okay. Now I’m scared.’
His gaze drops. ‘When Rosing sent me the photos, there was one I didn’t show you. It was a portrait of a woman. When you noticed there was a photo missing, I, ah… I lied about it. The portrait was of Margaret Western. Who, from your description, sounds like the ghost you faced in the house.’
‘Okay… But as we already thought the haunting might have been her, why would you hide that from me?’
He takes another deep breath. ‘Because I panicked. Because Margaret Western looked exactly like my Aunt Aideen.’ I frown. ‘ Exactly like her,’ he adds. ‘And… a hell of a lot like me.’
‘I’m confused, Callum. What are you telling me?’
His gaze lifts to my face and he stares at me for a long moment, then he looks down again, twisting his fingers anxiously.
‘As I told you, I don’t know much about my family.
My mom and dad were gone before I even knew who they were.
I didn’t know my grandparents, and Aideen never talked about family, even when I pressed her.
When she insisted that I learn everything about myths and legends and the paranormal, I thought she was just being her eccentric self, but now I think she had a different reason.
I think she wanted me to be prepared.’ He stops and swallows.
Fear prickles over my skin. ‘Prepared for…’
‘I think I’m related to the Westerns.’ The words leave him in a rush.
It takes a second for this to sink in. Then I shake my head. ‘No. That’s…’ He looks up at me, his eyes locking on mine. ‘That’s… ridiculous…’
I take in his face as if seeing him for the first time.
Uncommonly green eyes with flecks of gold circling the pupils.
Fair skin that I’ve always thought seemed to somehow glow.
A striking beauty so casually worn it’s easy to see past it.
But I know the man he is inside and… My pulse quickens.
Inside . I flash back to yesterday at the house and the dark stain I sensed within him after the possession.
Was it always there and I just never noticed it? Oh god .
‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure,’ Callum says.
‘Actually, that’s not true. After yesterday, I am sure.
I can feel my connection to the family. I think that’s why the spirit could show itself to me that first night.
Why I knew Jason was at the house. Why I sensed the spirit and felt its energy under my skin, as if it was part of me.
Because it was part of me. There was something when I shook Western’s hand, too.
I can’t explain it. It was like a knowing, an understanding. A link.’
‘But…’ I’m looking for something, anything to prove he’s wrong. That this is just as stupid as it sounds. ‘Then why did something try to scare us off on that first night? Why were you attacked?’
‘Maybe it wasn’t so much me being attacked as you being protected. The same spirits that were making you sick, stopping me going any further, stopping you from following me into that house.’
My heart thunders in my ears as what he’s telling me truly sinks in. ‘How long have you been thinking about this? How long have you suspected? We got those photos days ago, Callum.’