November 1, 1999

Angie settled in the chair beside Rollie’s hospital bed.  She stared at his unconscious face.  The last twenty-four hours had been filled with worry and a lot of unanswered questions.  The doctors had no idea what was wrong with the Aussie.  A barrage of tests had revealed extremely high levels of certain chemicals in his brain and body.  It was unlike anything the doctors had seen before.  No one could figure out what had caused it or what it would do to him.  Though they didn’t know what his prognosis was, the doctors were relatively certain that he wasn’t going to die.  The question of how long it would take for him to regain consciousness remained unanswered.

Angie sighed and closed her eyes.  Both Neil and the Parkers had stopped by yesterday and today to see how Rollie was and talk about what happened.

The house was completely gone.  The fire that consumed it had burned so hot that absolutely everything had either incinerated or melted, including metal and glass.  The person who investigated the blaze said that the temperatures must have reached somewhere in the vicinity of five thousand degrees, three times hotter than the usual house fire.  Usually, only the use of an accelerant, such as rocket fuel, would make a fire burn that hot.  The investigator had asked some tough questions of both Angie and Fred, but the lack of other evidence and the lack of a motive for burning the house down had somewhat convinced him that it was not a case of arson, though Angie wouldn't be surprised if there were more questions.

Strangely, even as hot as it was, the fire did not spread beyond the immediate vicinity of the house, even though the grass and brush were dry from the lack of rain.

Strangest of all, though, was the garden.  The heat from the fire was so intense that the rescue crews could not get near the entrance to the garden, yet, as they sat within the circle of that wall, Angie and the others had felt only a fraction of the heat that was in the air beyond.  In the end, the firefighters had to approach from the far side of the garden, climb over the wall, and pull Rollie, Angie, Neil, and Fred back over it to get them out.

A faint moan came from the bed.  Angie quickly turned to Rollie and saw his eyes slowly open.  He blinked up at the ceiling.  An expression of fear spread over his face.

“Angie!” he cried.

The blonde hurriedly stood and bent over him.

“Shh.  I’m right here.  It’s all right.”

Rollie’s gaze latched onto hers.  “I was afraid that you’d been hurt,” he said shakily.  He looked around the hospital room.  “What day is it?  How long have I been here?”

“Over twenty-four hours.”

“A day.  It feels like it just happened.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I was shoved inside one of those handy little food processors.  But, considering what happened, I guess I got off lucky.”  He noticed the bandage on her hand.  “What happened to your hand?” he asked in concern.

“Nothing serious, just a little gash.”  Angie searched his eyes intently.  “How much do you remember?”

“Almost everything.”  The Aussie eyes filled with tears.  “Oh, Angie.  I almost killed you.  I was him, I was Robert.  I had that poker and. . . .”  He turned his face away from her.

“Hey.”  Angie cupped his cheek and turned his head back toward her.  “You fought him, Rollie.  You fought him and won.  You were stronger than he was, just as I knew you would be.”  She wiped away the single tear that had escaped Rollie’s eye.

“I saw it all,” Rollie said in a low, husky voice.  “I relived everything.”  He looked up at her.  “It wasn’t his fault, Ange.  Robert’s mind was gone.  He had no control over what he did.”

“I know, Rol.  He was a victim as much as his family was.”

The Aussie nodded.  “Afterwards, when Robert regained a measure of his sanity and realized what he’d done, it destroyed him.  All he wanted was to die.  And I was him.  I wanted to die too.”

Angie grasped his hand in both of hers.  “I was so scared, Rollie.  I saw that gun in your hand, pointing at your head, and I kept thinking that, if you died, it would kill me.”

“But you saved me,” Rollie said quietly.  “Your words and the memory of us brought me back to myself.”

“He’s gone now, Rol.  Robert and all the others.  The ghosts can’t hurt you anymore.”

Rollie shook his head.  “No, Ange.  It wasn’t what you think.  There were no ghosts in that house.  There never were.”

“What are you saying, Rollie?  Of course there were ghosts.  What else would have been causing all the things you saw and felt?”

“It was the house, Angie.  The pain, the memories, the emotions.  They were all in the house.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s right,” said a new voice.  Rollie and Angie turned to seeing Neil standing inside the doorway.  He came the rest of the way in.

“I don’t understand,” Angie said.

The man smiled faintly.  “Have you ever heard of psychometry?”

“Um, isn’t that the ability to divine things about people or events by touching objects associated with them?”

Neil nodded.  “It is believed that people and events leave . . . ‘impressions’ on objects nearby, especially objects that have been touched by the people involved.  Someone who has the ability to feel those impressions can divine things that happened, perhaps even sense the emotions and thoughts of the people who touched them.”

“And you’re saying that Rollie can do this?”

“Yes.  What happened in that house left such powerful impressions that it awakened Rollie’s previously dormant abilities.  The problem was that his abilities were so strong that what he was sensing took control of him, ‘possessed’ him, in a way.  He actually took on the personalities of the Powells.”

Angie looked at Rollie.  The Aussie had raised his bed to a sitting position and was now staring down at the bedcovers.  He lifted his head and met her eyes.

“I became like Jimmy, Angie, like his alter ego, David,” he told her, an expression of anguish on his face.

“No, Rollie.  It wasn’t like Jimmy.  David was a part of him, something inside his own mind.  When you became Robert Powell and the others, it was from outside of you.  You are not like Jimmy, and you never will be.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” Angie stated with absolute conviction.  She turned back to Neil.  “I guess this is why your equipment never registered anything.”

“That’s right.  There were no ghosts to detect.”

Angie shook her head.  “You know, this all makes sense--except for one thing.  What about what happened at the end?”

“Well, it’s possible that Rollie’s abilities became so strong that he tapped into the memories of the land around him,” Neil suggested, “of the Native Americans who were there before.  That language he was speaking.  It could have been a Native American tongue.”

“And the house?  What caused it to collapse and then blow up?”

A small sound from the Aussie drew Angie’s attention to him.

“The house is gone?” he asked.

“Yeah, Rol.  There’s nothing left of it.”

“What about. . . ?”

Though Rollie did not finish the question, she knew what he was asking.  “There’s no sign of it,” she assured him.

“Thank God,” he whispered.

Neil looked back and forth between the two of them, clearly wondering what they were talking about.  Apparently deciding not to ask, he said, “I've been thinking about that.  The Powell house was quite old.  The ground beneath it could have been unstable.  It wouldn’t have taken much to bring the house down.  As for the explosion, the house had a gas furnace.  A spark could have ignited it.”

Angie looked at the ghost hunter, puzzled by the man’s mundane explanations for what happened.  Then she realized the reason for it.  He didn’t want to look for another explanation.  Though he spent his life hunting otherworldly spirits, he didn’t want to consider the possibility that there was some kind of power far more alien and dangerous than any ghost could ever be.  But then, he had not seen and felt what Rollie and Angie had in that house.  He had not experienced the evil and power of that . . . thing firsthand.  Angie chose to allow the man whatever rationalizations he needed to make up for himself.

Neil stood.  “Well, I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.  Rollie, it’s good to see that you're awake and doing well.”

“Thanks, Neil,” the Aussie said.  “I’m going to be fine.”

“I’ll be leaving this evening,” the ghost hunter announced.  “There’s nothing more to investigate here, and I need to get home.”

Rollie held out his hand, which the man shook.  “Thanks for your help, and thank you for helping Angie get me out of that house.”

The man nodded.  “It certainly was an experience, one that I won’t soon forget.”

Neil said goodbye and left.  There was silence in the room for a while after his departure.

“Rollie, what really happened?  It wasn’t what Neil thinks.  What was that thing?” Angie asked, almost afraid to know.

“I don’t know, Ange.  I don’t think anybody could really know what it was.  I do know it’s something that doesn’t belong here.  And . . . I know what it wanted.”

Angie watched Rollie silently, waiting for him to continue.

“When I took that nap, I had a dream,” he told her.  He shook his head.  “No, it wasn’t a dream.  It was more than that.  It, that thing, came to me, reached out for my mind.  I think it was trying to draw me to the house like it did before.”

“Before?  You mean when you drove there in your sleep?”

“Yeah.  It tried to take control of me then, but it couldn’t.  I managed to break free.  I didn’t realize what was really happening because the ‘impressions’ in the house, as Neil called them, were too strong.  When it reached out for me the second time, I realized the truth.”

“Why, Rollie?  What did it want?  And why did it involve you?”

“It wanted . . . out.  It wanted to escape from wherever it was.  It’s been there a long time, Angie.  It was there long before humans set foot on this continent.  All this time, it’s been waiting.”

“For what?”

“For the chance to get out.”  He met her eyes.  “But to do that, it needed help, it needed a . . . conduit, someone through whom it could channel its energies.  But not everyone has the ability to do that.  Most people don’t.  Others have some of what it takes, but not enough.  I think that Cecilia may be one of those.”

“What about Robert?”

“I’m not sure.  I know it tried to use him.  But, instead, it drove him insane.  Robert’s mind wasn’t strong enough.”

“But yours was,” Angie said.  It was not a question.

Rollie laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.  “Yeah.”  There was a wealth of meaning in that one word and in his eyes when he opened them.  “I had what it needed.  It knew the second I set foot in the house.  It probably thought that it was finally going to get what it wanted.  But I think that there were some things it didn’t anticipate.”

“What?”

“That its presence would wake up things inside me, like that ability Neil mentioned, for one.  It was that that awakened the ability, not the impressions in the house.  The . . . creature also didn’t anticipate that I would be able to feel it, sense its presence.  I think I felt it right from the start, but it was mixed in with all the emotions and other things from the Powells.  Most important of all, it didn’t anticipate that I could manage to fight back.  If I hadn’t been able to . . . I don’t even want to think about what would have happened.”

Angie laid her hand over her partner’s.  “You protected me, Rollie.”

The Aussie gazed at her.  “It was going to kill you, Angie.  I couldn’t let you die.”

“But you almost sacrificed yourself for me.  I could feel you dying, and I knew that it was because you were keeping that thing away from me.”

Rollie cupped her face in his hand.  “And if I had to do it again, I’d do the same thing,” he told her quietly.

Angie held his hand against her face.

“If it hadn’t been for the other one, I think we both would have died,” Rollie murmured.

“Where did it come from?”

“The garden.  That’s where she lives.”

“She?”

Rollie smiled faintly.  “I don’t think they have genders, not like we do, but there was something about that other one that had a feminine quality to it, perhaps because she nurtured life rather than taking it.”  He paused.  “She told me to call her Belilac.”

“She told you?”  Angie repeated, her brows lifting.

“Yeah.  Just before she began her fight against the other one.”  His eyes drifted away from her.  “I think Hannah sensed Belilac to a certain extent.  It’s probably why she put the garden there and why she loved it so much.  I know I sensed her.  Every time I was in the garden, my fears went away.”  He turned to look at Angie.  “It’s why I finally found the courage to let you know how I felt about you.  All these years, I was afraid to tell you that I loved you, afraid of what would happen if I did.  But, in that garden, I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

Angie smiled.  “Then I’d say we owe Belilac a big thank you.”

“For more than you can imagine, Ange,” he said, his expression deadly serious.  “When I went to the house yesterday, I knew she was there in the garden, and I also knew that she wasn’t like the other one, that she didn’t want to harm anyone.  In the end, when I thought that I was going to die, when I knew that thing under the house might get free, I asked Belilac for help, and she answered me.”

“I know.  I heard you, and I heard her.”

“She chose to stop the other one, but to do so, she had to use me like the other one wanted to.  The difference was that I let her.  I became the conduit through which she attacked the other one.”

“And doing that almost killed you.”

“There was no other choice, Angie.  I had to allow her to use me.”

“Rollie, why did you go there?  If you knew that thing wanted to use you to get free, why didn’t you just run away, go with me back to New York?”

“Because it wouldn’t have let me.  No matter where I went, it would have kept trying to draw me back.  It would have kept . . . haunting me, never leaving me alone.  And, eventually, it would have gotten me.  Sooner or later, it would have forced me to go back there, and I would have been too weak to fight it.  Either that or it would have found someone else.  So, I chose, instead, to face it head on.  I didn’t know if I could stop it, but I had to try.  And I had hoped that Belilac might help me if I needed it.”

“Is it gone, Rollie?  I mean, really gone?”

“I think so.  I don’t know if it’s dead.  I don’t even know if they can die.  But I don’t think it’s ever going to be a threat again.”

“What about Belilac?”

“I don’t know.  I hope she’s still there.  I’d hate to think that she was lost.”

“Well, I’m just glad it’s over.  That was one Halloween I am never going to forget.”

“Me neither.”

Angie smiled and ran her fingers through Rollie’s hair, happy that he seemed to be all right now.  “You know, we really should call a nurse in here to let them know that you’re awake.”

“So, what do the doctors have to say about me?”

“They’re totally mystified.  The tests they ran showed high concentrations of certain chemicals in your brain and body.  They couldn’t figure out what caused it or what it would do to you.”

The Aussie nodded.  “That makes sense.  Did you know that many mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain?  That was probably the physical cause of Robert Powell’s madness.”  He shook his head sadly.  “If only Robert had known what he’d be uncovering when he dug that cellar.”

“That’s something I don’t understand.  If that thing would have been strong enough to reach you no matter where you went, how could a few feet of dirt block it out?”

“It couldn’t.  I was wrong about that.  It wasn’t the earth alone that was keeping it from reaching anyone.  It was Belilac who had a hand in that.  A long time ago, it made an escape attempt through one of the Native Americans who lived in the area.  To stop it, Belilac told the others of the tribe to pour a substance over the ground that acted as a kind of suppressor.  She then caused the avalanche that buried the area.  When Robert Powell dug the cellar, he removed not only the dirt but also a good portion of that substance, allowing that thing to become active again.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I saw it happen.  When Belilac was working through me, my ability to see the history of a place was greatly expanded.  I saw what took place there, even though it was around a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“What about that rock that we found in the cellar?”

“It was a marker, a warning about the ‘curse’.  It was put there before Belilac stepped in and did something about it.”

“So, what are we going to do now?  Obviously, we’re not going to be filming here since the house is gone.”

“Actually, we still can.”

“How?”

“Well, as it so happens, one of the other houses that the location scout found was just five miles from here.  It’s not as big and not quite as perfect, but it has a huge advantage over the Powell house--it’s not in any way, shape or form haunted.”

Angie laughed.  “Well, that sounds perfect to me.”

Rollie laughed with her, then went quiet.  “But there’s something else we have to do first.”

“What’s that?”

“You remember Fred mentioning that there was a relative who never claimed the house?”

“Yeah.”

“I know who it is.  Nicholas Powell didn’t die.”

“What?!  But how can that be?  When you became him in his bedroom, you relived his death.”

Rollie nodded.  “He actually did die, but Belilac saved him.  She brought him back, healed him enough that he could live.  She couldn’t save the others.  The brain damage was far too severe.  There is a limit to what she can do, what any of them can do.”

“It’s a shame that she couldn’t have stopped it from happening in the first place.”

“Yeah.  As I said, they have limitations to what they can do, and one of those limitations is that they can’t reverse what another one of them has done.  She couldn’t heal Robert Powell’s mind.  And she didn’t know what was going to happen.  She didn’t know that he would end up killing his family.  By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late to do anything to stop it.”

“So, Nicholas is alive.”

“Yeah.  I need to go see him.  I need to tell him the truth about his father.  He should know that it wasn’t his father’s fault.”

The rest of the day was spent quietly.  Fred and Cecilia came to see how Rollie was doing and were delighted to see that he was awake and doing well.  Rollie promised to tell them what happened in the house after he was let out of the hospital.  He also asked Fred to arrange for them to take a look at the other old house.  He did not ask about Nicholas, deciding to wait until after he was released.

That night, as he lay in the darkness, he thought about what had happened over the last few days and how his life had been changed forever by it.  Now that his “gift” had been fully awakened, there was no way that he could put it back to sleep.  Throughout the day, as he touched things, he had picked up on some of the ‘impressions’ in them, though none of the feelings were even remotely as strong as it had been in the Powell house.  He would have to learn how to control his ability and how to live with it.

With a sigh, Rollie closed his eyes, glad that there was no more need to fear what dreams might come in the night.