Angel Eyes: The Haunting of January House (Penny Wright Book 2)
Angel Eyes
The Haunting of January House
A.N. Willis
Copyright © 2021 by A.N. Willis
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Prologue
I. Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 1
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 2
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 3
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 4
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 5
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 6
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Video Interview with Dee Stephens - 7
II. Part Two
Letter from Ricky Rickman - 1
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Letter from Ricky Rickman - 2
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Letter from Ricky Rickman - 3
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Letter from Ricky Rickman - 4
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Also by A.N. Willis
About the Author
Prologue
October 2019
On the last night of her life, Dee Stephens did little out of the ordinary. Not at first. She filled Crosby’s dish with organic kibble, the bag promising free-range chicken and whole grains. Then she ordered her own dinner from her favorite restaurant, a place down on Ashton’s First Avenue. Chicken with roasted cauliflower and wild rice.
“If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me,” she said to the dog.
Across the kitchen, Crosby was a fuzzy blur of white-and-black, her teeth crunching. Dee pushed her glasses higher on her nose. Somewhere in the house, a beam creaked. January House always got more vocal when the seasons changed. All those empty rooms, and yet Dee never quite felt alone here.
While she waited for the food, she checked her email inbox. It had been over seven days since she last heard from “StephensFan82.” Had he lost his nerve? So far, he hadn’t made good on his threats. Dee had told him to do his worst. I’m not afraid of the truth, she had written.
But of course, that was a lie.
The doorbell chimed. Bryce had arrived with the delivery. He was a charming young man, more than happy to visit with her, though he must’ve had better things to do. But tonight the weather had turned, and snowflakes drifted down from the sky. And that damned email inbox kept calling. Had he written yet? What about now?
Dee took the container, said a quick thanks to Bryce on the porch, and retreated back inside. She sank onto the couch and put her dinner on the tray. The laptop waited on the cushion beside her, screen emitting its unnatural glow.
No new messages.
She had to get her mind off of “StephensFan82.”
She started with Twitter, where she checked the list of trending topics and weighed in with her takes. A grin snuck across her face as she crafted each tweet and its accompanying meme. Angry responses followed instantaneously, filled with misspellings and failings in logic. Lord only knew what they taught in schools these days.
Before she knew it, she was in the zone. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, her laptop now balanced mere inches from her face, its light turning her skin a greenish-blue. She finished a reply to a message board thread about the current state of art criticism. You think you can take something apart, dissect it, look for meaning by pawing over its insides. That’s an autopsy, nothing more. A click, and her post flew off into the ether.
Then Crosby ruined the flow. The dog started up with her whimpering by the back door.
“I’m busy right now,” Dee said. “Didn’t I just take you out?” With her thumb, she pushed her glasses back up her nose. Crosby whined again. Dee snapped her fingers, and the dog quieted.
But Dee’s concentration was broken. Sighing, she checked the time. Past midnight.
“Well, I’ll be.” Dee had assumed that only an hour or so had passed. Her almost-untouched takeout container sat on the tray, probably ice cold. She’d forgotten it. And miraculously, the dog hadn’t eaten it. But that’s what the zone was like—time and space ceased to exist. There, her past didn’t matter. She was free.
She used to get into flows like that while painting. Since her vision had deteriorated, though, the brushes didn’t do quite what she wanted anymore. She still slapped together the occasional landscape for her gallery in town; just tourist stuff. But the joy was gone. Her Dell laptop had become her outlet, with its MAGic magnification software and the instant gratification of social media. She had anonymous accounts on any number of sites, which she attended daily for maximum engagement. Sometimes, she had points she wanted to make. But just as often she liked to simply cause a stir. What artist didn’t?
She just had to be sure not to think too much about her own art—the pieces she imagined while daydreaming that she could no longer create. That was simply depressing, and Dee had no patience for wallowing.
She clicked over to her email inbox again. No new messages.
Crosby’s whines increased in pitch. She scratched at the back door. Dee groaned aloud. “All right, I’m coming.” Shuffling toward the kitchen, a muscle in her lower back clenched. She dug her knuckles into the knot. At the back door, her stiff fingers battled with the deadbolt, then flipped the smaller lock on the door handle. Cold air whooshed into the kitchen.
“Go ahead then, do your business.”
But now Crosby didn’t want to go outside. She still whimpered, hanging back near Dee’s legs.
“Get on with it.” She nudged the dog along with her sock-clad foot.
Dee walked outside, and the Australian Shepherd reluctantly trotted across the concrete and out into the grass. The patio light was on, and fat snowflakes drifted silently down from the dark sky. Maybe that explained Crosby’s hesitation. This was the season’s first real snow, the air so dry that Dee’s nasal passages itched.
While Crosby sniffed around, looking for a suitable place to pee, Dee searched her pockets for her Pall Malls and her Bic lighter. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, letting the smoke warm her chest and her fingers. She looked out into the dark.
Dee had lived alone at January House for almost forty years now. Well, mostly alone. She valued her independence more than nearly anything, which made it a bit ironic that she stayed in this place, with all its inescapable history.
That damned “StephensFan82.” Thought he was so clever with that name.
He’d seemed perfectly eager to speak to her at first. He’d used a subject line guaranteed to demand her attention: Angel Eyes. She didn’t know his identity, or even if he really was a “he.” But her uncle’s obsessive fans tended to be male. It certainly wasn’t one of her fans, as if any of those still existed.
Her uncle used to say, There’s no art without an audience. But that had just been his ego talking. Dee had experienced how quickly adulation could turn to scorn. Or outright rage.
The tip of Dee’s cigarette glowed red. Just a few feet away from the halo of the patio light, the darkness blurred and became absolute. Some people didn’t like the dark. Dee wasn’t one of them. In the dark, you could slip away and go unnoticed. It was comforting. Safe. In the light, she felt exposed. As if someone might be out there, watching.
Crosby was done peeing, but now she was staring into the woods, head cocked. “Enough already, let’s go in.” Dee opened the back door. Crosby bounded inside. The lock made a satisfying click when she slid it into place.
Dee stayed on her laptop until almost three in the morning. Finally, she yawned, ready to get some sleep. But when she turned around, Crosby wasn’t in her downstairs bed. Cursing under her breath, Dee glanced around. As usual, the doors of the hallway were closed. Her office, the laundry room, the half bath. The entrance to the basement.
“You come out here. What’re you up to?”
Crosby wasn’t upstairs in Dee’s bedroo
m, either. But her Smith & Wesson was under the mattress, right where she’d left it. Always fully loaded.
Maybe she was overreacting. But what if Crosby had smelled somebody sneaking around outside the house? Trying to peer into the windows? That was the other side of being so isolated. There was nobody to call for help. She’d learned long ago not to trust police types with their leading questions and innuendos.
Her heart was beating faster now, which she didn’t like. The rhythm felt off. Dee stepped out of her bedroom and onto the landing.
“Crosby?”
She heard a whimper. Damn dog had to be up on this floor. But she wasn’t in either of the spare bedrooms on this side—both doors were closed. That meant checking the other wing of the house. Where Dee preferred not to go. Crosby never went there either, far as Dee knew. But there was nothing else for it.
The floor creaked as she ascended the half staircase, then turned the corner. There was Crosby, growling.
“What is it, girl?”
At the far end of the corridor, something glowed in the darkness. A tall, narrow shape. Dee couldn’t make it out. She squinted, though that never helped.
She flipped the light switch, but it wouldn’t turn on. The bulb was probably burned out. Should’ve checked it, she scolded herself. January House had always been too big for a single person, and it had only gotten harder to maintain. She edged down the hall, still feeling uneasy, but unwilling to surrender to the feeling. The gun trembled in her outstretched hand, heavier than she remembered.
Crosby ran over to her, cowering beside her legs. The glowing shape became clearer. Brighter. It had the outline of a rectangle—faint on the left, top and bottom, a thicker vertical line on the right.
Suddenly, the image made sense. It was a door, cracked slightly open, with light spilling from inside.
A blue-green, unearthly light, like Dee’s computer screen. But far brighter. Wrong. The sight of it sent a jolt of fear along her spine.
Somebody was really here. In the house. She had to get help.
Panicked, Dee pulled out her phone and, using just her left hand, punched the first number she came to. But at the same time, her other hand—the one holding the gun—reached out of its own accord, completely divorced from the rational thoughts of her mind. The door inched inward.
Her breath stopped in her chest.
A man stood in the center of the bedroom. A vision from a dream, from one of her uncle’s paintings. Her heart raced so fast that she felt it stalling in her chest. Thumping like a fish desperate to get back to water. Crosby was barking and growling at Dee’s heel.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
The man’s mouth was moving, though no sound came out. He stepped closer. His face began to change. It started to swirl and melt and morph.
In her hand, her phone connected the call. A voice spoke. “You’ve reached Bryce Wright, please leave a…”
Dee screamed, the gun raising. The boom shook her frame, and she felt her joints tightening. She folded in upon herself. The floor came up to meet her. The rug abraded her cheek. A tingling sensation spread through her arms and sides.
Dee’s eyelids drooped closed. But in her mind, she still saw the door. The way out. She went toward it.
Then she saw the thing that waited on the other side.
Part One
The Artist
Chapter One
November 2019
Penny Wright closed her eyes, breathing in the cool breeze coming off of the ocean. She tasted salt at the back of her throat. Palm fronds waved lazily overhead.
She had exactly two minutes to stop and relax before she had to get back to the office.
Her phone buzzed, and she made the mistake of looking at it. Linden had texted, Where are you?? Need you, emergency.
So much for her break. Penny lingered a few more seconds, trying to soak in as much sun as she could. The really sad part? She’d have traded these moments by the ocean for a quick nap in a heartbeat. Last night had been a late one—again. She almost had enough points for another free latte at The Coffee Bean. Soon she’d need a straight I.V. drip of espresso to stay awake.
Her phone rang. She considered ignoring it, but her business partner would just call again.
To her surprise, it wasn’t Linden’s name on the screen.
“Hey Mom, I—”
“So do you think Matthew will want enchiladas for dinner on Sunday, or roasted chicken?”
Penny leaned her head to the side, trapping the phone against her shoulder while she shifted her bag of takeout to her other hand. She stepped off the sidewalk, dodging a rollerblader.
“Why don’t you ask him?”
Her boyfriend Matthew Larsen was in Colorado, just a few miles from her mother. Penny was a thousand miles away from them in Southern California. And she was supposed to be working. This was the reason that she had asked her mom not to call during regular business hours—not that her work responsibilities ended after five p.m. But Penny acknowledged that she had brought this on herself; she hadn’t returned any of her mom’s calls in weeks. She’d been putting everything off relating to her family until her next trip to Colorado. Which would be tomorrow. Finally.
“Oh, I don’t want to bother him,” her mom said. “It isn’t so easy as it used to be when he lived here at the inn.”
Penny started back toward the office, where her best friend—and now business partner—Linden Hao anxiously awaited her return. Penny had only gotten away by demanding proper food for lunch, not the baby carrots and potato chips that Linden could somehow subsist upon for days.
“Enchiladas,” Penny said, simply to end the discussion. “We’ll be there around five for dinner, so I’ll see you then.”
“But you’re arriving tomorrow, aren’t you? Why don’t you swing by the inn when you get into town? I’ll have lunch ready.”
She couldn’t stop the annoyance from sneaking into her voice. “Mom, we talked about this.” She had planned to spend tomorrow entirely with her boyfriend. She and Matthew hadn’t seen each other for months, not since his last visit to L.A. Hopefully, he wouldn’t mind if she snuck in a nap before anything more exciting. That was how tired she felt—even the thought of Matthew naked wasn’t perking her up.
Her mom giggled. “I was kidding, baby girl. I know you’re young and ridiculously in love. I’m just glad that we get to see you again so soon.”
“So soon?” This came from Penny’s little sister, Krista. It sounded like she had grabbed the phone away from their mother. “It’s about time that you came back to Ashton, after canceling last month. And after Matthew came to see you twice already. That doesn’t really seem fair.”
“I know,” Penny said to her sister. “You’re right.”
For years, Penny had kept her family at arm’s length. But last summer, her public relations firm had gone to Ashton to host a music festival, Devil’s Fest, in a nearby ghost town. She’d reconnected with Matthew and healed several rifts in her family. Unfortunately, Devil’s Fest itself had gone horribly wrong. The events of last summer were always right at the edges of Penny’s consciousness. Even here, in sunny Los Angeles, it was getting harder and harder to push the darker memories away.