The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

tried
backtracking and were able to go back to the original house just fine. Once we
realized the hallway door led to the kitchen entrance, same as the front door,
we wondered if it was the same instance of the new house regardless of which
exit you took. It wasn’t. The hallway door and the front door led to completely
different kitchens.”
    “Christ!” Winn muttered.
    “That’s when I got nervous, realizing it would be really easy
to get lost,” Deem continued. “So we tried dropping out, just to make sure we could
get back to our bodies. We left the River, found ourselves back in the original
house, sitting on the floor in the living room, just as we were when we started.
When we jumped back in, it’s like we were starting from scratch in the original
house.”
    “And when you went back through the duplicate houses, were they
the same as the first time you went through them?” Carma asked.
    “The exact same,” Deem replied. “We went maybe six or seven
deep. Who knows, it might go on forever.”
    “And what happened to David?” Winn asked.
    “We would separate in each house,” Deem replied. “I was
intrigued with the mirror, and I wanted to check how it appeared in each new
house. The mirror is on a vanity in a room upstairs, and David was tired of
following me up each time, so we got into a routine where I’d look through the
upstairs, and he’d look through the downstairs. We’d meet up at the base of the
stairs, and pick which door we wanted to leave through.
    “All the mirrors I was finding were just frames; the glass
had long ago been broken out and was missing. But I had just found a mirror
that still had a piece of glass in it when you pulled me back. Most of its
mirror backing was gone, but there was something there, some kind of power
within it. I don’t know how long I’d been looking at it when I felt the slap,
you hitting my face. Pulled me right out.”
    “David’s body wasn’t in the room when I got there,” Winn
said. “If he was pulled back here somehow, it happened before I arrived.”
    “How long did it seem you were in there?” Carma asked.
    “A couple of hours at most,” Deem replied. “But that couldn’t
be…we got there around one-thirty or two. And it was eight when you pulled me
out, Winn?”
    “Just after,” Winn answered.
    “So time is a little odd there, too,” Carma replied.
    “The question is, what happened to David?” Winn asked.
    “He’s no help in figuring it out, since he doesn’t remember,”
Deem answered.
    “You two will have to figure it out,” Carma said. “Whatever
caused him to show up back here has done something to him.”
    “What?” Deem asked. “What has it done?”
    “I don’t know,” Carma replied. “I only know something is
wrong, and it’s a big problem right now, that’ll become a much bigger problem
if we don’t figure it out and do something about it.”
    “What do you suggest?” Deem asked.
    “You two concentrate on finding out about that house,” Carma
answered. “Start with Lyman. I’ve never heard of the place, but then I was
never into the whole Spiritualism thing. He might know something of it, or he
might have some ideas. I’ll see what I can do about getting David diagnosed.”

Chapter Three
     
     
     
    Winn followed Deem as she led him downstairs, to the basement
of Carma’s house. Based on the moon that night, they had to meet Lyman at 3 AM.
Winn found himself groggily reaching out for the handrails to steady himself,
not quite fully awake.
    They walked through a large family room, to a closet near the
back. Inside, a second door at the back of the closet opened to reveal the
entrance to a tunnel. Deem reached out to flick on a switch, and bare-bulb
lights strung overhead popped on, illuminating the pathway that led
underground, to the caves hidden deep in the hill behind the house. The route
was smooth and clear, free from rocks and debris. Deem started down it, and Winn
followed. I wonder how