Skirting the building, she tested the back gate and found it locked as well. Screw it. She was going inside. Climbing the wrought iron fence was a simple matter and she knew there were no cameras. Hadn’t Georgia Clovis admitted as much?

Though the fence itself was comprised of black wrought iron spikes, the top of the gate was decorated in scrollwork. Kristi pulled herself to the top of it and vaulted over, landing in a crouch on the inside brick walk. Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t noticed, she hurried up the steps of the porch and tried the back door.

Locked solid.

Damn. She’d never had any luck with the credit card trick that seemed to work so effectively in the movies, and she had nothing with which to pick a lock.

So now what?

A window?

She tried all of the windows on the porch but they didn’t budge, nor could she reach any from the ground. Maybe she could somehow squeeze through a basement window? She walked around the huge Gothic house, but not one window she reached, nor the front door, would budge. Unless she came back with a crowbar, she was effectively locked out.

And the flickering lights she’d seen?

Flashlights?

Candles?

Penlights?

The illumination had disappeared. The basement was now dark as a tomb.

Disappointed, Kristi climbed back over the gate and walked to her car. As she did, she felt those unseen eyes watching her every move. A bit of wind stirred, causing the wet leaves on the ground to lift and brittle branches of live oak to rattle.

As she reached her car she thought she heard a voice…a soft voice, the barest of whispers quietly crying.

She stopped short.

“Help me,” it called.

Kristi spun, searching the shadows. “Is someone there?” she responded, looking across the parking lot to the house. She strained to listen but heard nothing over the sough of the wind.

All in your head, she told herself, but she waited again, listening, skin prickling, feeling as if her every move were being scrutinized. Measured. Second-guessed.

“Is anyone there?” she tried again, rotating slowly, her heart hammering in dread, her fingers unzipping her purse and closing over her canister of mace. “Hello?”

Nothing.

Just the drip of rain from the downspouts as the chapel bells began to peel the hours. Goose bumps rose on her skin and she glanced up to the roof of Wagner House. Was someone in an upper window staring down at her? A dark figure in the shadows, or was she truly imagining it all? She half expected some deranged creatures with bloody fangs to swoop down on her. The vial at her neck felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.