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

a pretty picture.” She hesitated and then stiffened with courage. “Sarah, what happened?”

Three quick steps and Sarah was able to grab hold of Faye’s shoulders. She was tall, made even taller by the heels she wore. “I need to speak with Dennis. I need to know what he knows about the house.”

Faye hesitated. “Are you sure about that?” She looked down a hallway and shivered. “He gives me the creeps.”

Sarah’s cheeks went pale, and when she saw that Faye had noticed, they flushed red again from embarrassment. “Talking to the guy who stripped me down to my underwear and then tied me to a chair in a basement isn’t exactly on the top of my list right now either. But I don’t have a lot of options.”

“Right,” Faye said.

Sarah followed Faye down the hallway and toward the interrogation room. Sarah remained three or four hesitant steps behind and crept up to the window that Faye was looking through.

Dennis lay across the table, feet hanging off the side, with his arms folded over his chest and his eyes closed. He looked like he was sleeping.

“You’re positive you want to do this?” Faye asked, fiddling with the key in her hand.

“He might know something, and if the troopers think that me and Dell are working some kind of conspiracy, then I need all the information I can get. And besides, I might get lucky with something he knows.” Something that could help him figure out how to get Dell back.

Faye walked over, fumbling with the keys in her hand, and slid the brass key into the lock. Before she turned it, she looked to Sarah. “Do you want a gun?”

Sarah spouted nervous laughter. “Maybe. No. No, I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll stay out in the window to watch. If anything goes wrong, you come out, and I’ll shoot him.”

“That works for me.”

Sarah’s heart rate spiked at the turn of the lock, and when the door opened, Dennis lifted his head from the table, squinting as Sarah stepped inside, and the door quickly shut behind her.

Dennis just stared at her in silence, and Sarah remained close by the door. She was glad to see that he was still wearing his cuffs, but she would have preferred to have him shackled to the floor.

“That’s not possible.” Dennis slowly sat up, shaking his head. It was like he was staring at a ghost. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Seems to be a popular opinion lately.” Sarah skirted the front wall, tossing a quick glance to the one-way glass where she knew Faye was watching. The fact that she knew she wasn’t alone boosted her confidence.

Sarah and Dennis circled the table, Sarah making sure the table remained a physical barrier between the two of them, and Dennis growing angrier in the silence.

“Why aren’t you with Mrs. Bell? Why aren’t you at the house!” Dennis screamed at her, spit dribbling down his chin, his cheeks flushing red.

Sarah did her best to remain calm. The last thing she wanted to do was trigger Dennis into an unstoppable rage. Even with the cuffs on, he was formidable, and Sarah wasn’t in the mood to relive her previous encounter with the groundskeeper.

“It’s not going to happen,” Sarah said, keeping her voice calm, which only agitated Dennis. “Your sacrifice escaped, and she’s not going back.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Dennis said. “There will be a reckoning for this, oh, yes. You will know what it feels to be tortured by demons. You will finally see.” He opened his eyes wide and exposed his yellow teeth as he smiled. “You will burn.”

Sarah pivoted to the left as Dennis started to walk around the table, mirroring his movements. “And how did you think it was going to work? What did you expect to happen?” Sarah knew that trying to ask Dennis directly wouldn’t get anywhere, but if she egged him on, tricked him into telling her what she wanted, then she might be able to pull some useful information out of him.

Dennis pulled his chin inward, and the crease of his lips grew thinner as the smile widened. “It would have been glorious. You would have been a piece of history, and your story would have been told through the ages.” He closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the ceiling, slowly swaying back and forth as if there was a melody stuck in his head. “The screams. The pain. The fire.”

It was like he was drunk on some sort of evil. Whatever poison that the Bells and that witch had funneled down his throat had rotted away reason and control, if he had any to begin with, but Sarah was hoping to use that to her advantage. “And this would have happened in the basement where you tied me up?”

“The house is sacred ground,” Dennis said as he continued to circle the table. “It is destined to be the fortress of the unholy and the damned.”

“What about the room?” Sarah asked, still mirroring Dennis’s movements. “Allister’s room.”

Dennis inhaled quickly and deep, a breath of excitement. “He is the surrogate father of the children he has helped set free and will be honored for eternity as the man who set the foundation for this future. His room shall act as the throne for the dark lord’s arrival.”

Sarah stepped around the end of the table, watching the expressions of elation spread over Dennis’s face. Just talking about the end of the world propelled him into euphoria. “And when does it happen? This opening of the portal?”

“When Satan’s connection is strongest to this world,” Dennis answered. “The Devil’s hour.” He stopped pacing, and so did Sarah. The joy ran from his face and his expression grew stoic as he slowly turned his head, that pair of dead eyes setting on Sarah and sending a piercing cold through her heart. “You have seen him.”

“How do you protect the portal?” Sarah asked, hoping to learn a weakness through one of its strengths.

“Mrs. Bell protects it.”

“What does the