The Guest House Hauntings Boxset by Hazel Holmes (novel books to read txt) 📕

will die, painfully, and then it will attack your children, who share his blood too. It won’t stop until we’ve all died. But if you can convince Christopher to come home, I’ve developed a plan. A way to save our family, to save our children. To save our souls.

If you love him, bring him back. Do whatever is necessary. I know what I ask is difficult, but his life, and the lives of your children, will depend upon it.

Sincerely,

Tobias Bell

Iris reread the letter a few times, and as she did, she was transported back to the small kitchen table at her and Christopher’s home in Virginia. And just like the first time she’d read it, purpose flooded through her veins. Because she knew that if she failed, the souls of her children, her grandchildren, and her husband would be lost; consumed by the devil himself.

“Grandmother?”

“Huh?”

Kegan stood in front of her, the medication gripped in his outstretched hand. He lowered the medication and then dropped to one knee, taking Iris’s hand into his own. “What’s wrong?”

Unable to hold back the tears any longer, Iris let them fall. “You look so much like your mother, you know?” She smiled and then placed her hand on his cheek. It was warm, smooth. “But you’ve always acted more like your father.” The thought of her daughter triggered another round of tears. “They would have been so proud of you.”

Kegan’s face softened, his expression worried, as he placed his hand on top of his grandmother’s. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, my dear,” Iris answered, drawing in a breath that helped revive her strength. She took the pills from him and then reached for the glass of water on the table beside her. She plucked two pills from the bottle and washed them down. Finished, she patted Kegan on the shoulder. “Everything is perfectly fine.”

“All right.” Kegan still looked worried but offered Iris’s hand a reassuring squeeze and suddenly looked tired. “I’m going to bed to try and catch a few hours of sleep before morning. If Dennis comes back or something happens, will you wake me?”

Iris smiled, her face wrinkling into a raisin. “Of course.”

And with the reassurances from the matriarch, Iris watched Kegan relax as he left the room. He did look tired. She knew he was worried. It had been the reason he’d come back home in the first place. That and because she had asked him to.

While Iris was confident in her ability to finally end this terror that had torn apart her family and taken the life of her daughter and husband, she couldn’t be sure that her own life wouldn’t give out before it was finished. And if she died, it would fall to Kegan to finish it. But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Because as much as she loved her grandson, he knew that he wasn’t like her. He wasn’t a murderer.

Iris fidgeted in the chair uncomfortably, her old bones tired. She was always tired. Sleep eluded her, and most of the night was spent tossing and turning in her bed, hoping to avoid the nightmares just waiting for her on the other side of consciousness.

No, not nightmares. They implied that the images she saw weren’t real. They were premonitions, visions of the future, past, and present. And they were gruesome sights.

She relived that violence and death had been her family’s legacy since Allister Bell settled this land and built this house.

The puppet strings that had controlled her family for generations had left Iris with little wiggle room. But she was so close to the scissors that would cut her and her family free. She just had to keep pushing toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

Iris had never been proud of the Bell family, but like most children who had grown up in her era, she believed a sense of duty was rooted in family, because before the age of high-speed internet and cell phones, people had been forced to get to know the people they spent most of their time around, which was family.

And while she took no joy in luring the unsuspecting souls into her home, there was no other way for her to save her family. Besides, they were loners, drifters with no other place to go. At least here their lives and deaths served a purpose.

The pain in her right leg returned, and Iris winced as she gingerly massaged her calf. A vicious spat of hacking and coughing came next, and she wiped away the bloody phlegm on a nearby white doily that she clenched in her fist. It was rare that she went more than a few hours without some ailment flaring up, and at her age, there was no shortage of options for her body to pick.

It was duty that kept her going, and the knowledge of what would happen to her should she die before the curse was lifted. Still, the void beyond called to her every day, taunting her to let go.

And every day, she was forced to tell the void no. Because as much as she loved Kegan, she knew that he wouldn’t be able to finish the job. The boy lacked that malicious instinct that so many Bells had possessed. Iris hadn’t been born with it either, but she had adopted it, and it had consumed her life.

Family, Iris thought. She turned to the picture frames on the table, three of the photographs of her family with one face scratched out.

Iris straightened in her chair and opened her eyes, blinking to try and rid herself of the fog of sleep. After a few moments of concentrated effort, a ray of clarity returned, and those doubts disappeared.

“One more,” Iris said, repeating it to herself like a mantra.

She had known that this last girl would be difficult, but she had failed to calculate just how troublesome she would become.

The farther Sarah wandered from Bell, the worse her condition would become. The outside world would start its assault on her