Chapter 24 - THE WOMAN IN THE CRAWLSPACE
Before Charles could pull the trigger again, a sound echoed from the dark hole behind the wardrobe.
It was a wet, rattling gasp.
Two pale, emaciated hands, their skin covered in gray dust and liver spots, reached out from the void between the walls. Long, yellowed fingernails clawed into the frame of the wardrobe.
A figure dragged itself into the light.
It was an elderly woman, skeletal, dressed in the tatters of what had once been a white silk dressing gown. Her hair was a wild, matted mane of silver and gray, falling over shoulders that looked like bare bone beneath parchment.
Her eyes were sunken, milky with cataracts, but burning with a furious, unholy hatred.
Agnes Whitaker.
"Charles," the rasping voice hissed into the nursery.
Charles froze. The gun wavered in his hand. For the first time in his life, Evan saw absolute, paralyzing horror in his father’s eyes.
"You... you should be dead," Charles whispered, his voice failing. "The heating was cut off in that wing two days ago..."
"I crawled... through the cistern, brother," Agnes rasped, her lips pulling back over broken teeth in a grotesque mockery of a smile. "Just like you made me crawl when you took the deed forty years ago."
Vanessa took advantage of Charles’s distraction. She shoved Sophie violently forward toward Evan and lunged toward the open doorway with the straight razor raised.
"Sophie!" Evan lunged, catching his daughter in his arms and spinning his back to shield her, slamming onto the carpet as Vanessa pushed past.
Grace moved with terrifying speed. She didn't flinch. As Vanessa dashed toward the corridor, Grace swung the iron fire poker she had pulled from the hallway hearth.
The heavy iron struck Vanessa’s shoulder with a sickening thud. Vanessa screamed, the razor flying from her hand, crashing into the wainscoting and collapsing to the floor in a heap of tangled limbs.
Evan clutched Sophie against his chest, feeling her tiny heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "I have you, baby. I have you. You're safe. Look at me, Sophie, you're safe."
"Daddy," Sophie sobbed into his neck. "The lady... the lady didn't hurt me... she told me to hide under the bed..."
Evan looked up from his daughter.
In the center of the room, Agnes had reached Charles.
May you like
She did not strike him. She simply stood before him, her skeletal frame shivering, staring into the face of the brother who had buried her alive.
"Give me the gun, Charles," Agnes whispered. "It is time for the Whitaker covenant to end."
