Free Dead Man's Rain by Frank Tuttle Page A

the phantom.
    She let out a wracking, wordless sob that sounded louder than all the thunder, all the hex-cries still ringing in my ears. She sobbed and caught her breath, and her thin body shook.
    “He begged me,” she said, after a moment. “So much pain. I wanted to. I tried to. But. God forgive me. I couldn’t kill my Ebed.”
    I backed away, toward the door. The throbbing in my arm rose into my shoulder, crept toward my neck. Dark spots began to dance before my eyes. Poison , I thought, and heard laughter in the distant storm.
    Something wet stroked my good hand. Petey tugged at me, scratched at the door.
    Do what needs doing, boy.
    You’ll know what that is, when the time comes.
    I lifted the crossbar. The widow didn’t see what I was doing until she heard the latch click.
    “No!” she cried, but I opened the door.
    The hall was empty. Thunder grumbled. I stepped outside, turned.
    “Lock it again,” I said. “Lock it. And cover your ears.”
    “You can’t go out there!” she screamed. “You can’t!”
    “I’m not,” I said. I hesitated. Words were getting hard to form.
    “It isn’t vengeance,” I said. “It never was.” I licked my lips, panted a bit, forced it out. “The kids know about the will. Know you’ve got to have an accident before you make it legal.”
    Jefrey moaned, pawed at the air.
    “He only came back on the nights the kids had plans for you,” I said. “He came back to save you. Came back to rouse the house. It isn’t vengeance he’s after, Lady. And it isn’t you.”
    She wept. If she heard, I couldn’t tell.
    I reached, and pulled, and shut the door.
    I turned. Petey took his place at my feet. The hall tilted and pitched and I had to put my hand on the wall just to stay upright. If Elizabet and her brothers and their friends showed up while I was in that hall, I’d be joining the phantoms. The line of mourners still walked, but I pushed past them and stumbled back the other way.
    Toward the doors. Toward the big dark double doors. I reached the ballroom, slipped on my own blood where it smeared the tiles, crawled until I reached the stairs. Then Petey nipped at my butt, and I stumbled to my feet and followed the lightning-flashes to the door.
    I hid once, when the Merlat children came racing down the stairs, spilled onto the tile floor and went scampering off down the hall. I counted five—three Merlats and two angry henchmen, probably brothers to the man I’d just killed.
    I held my breath and prayed none of them had the sense to look down and realize what those smears on the floors meant. But they raced away, toward the pantry, not the widow’s safe-room. Fetching more tools, I decided. Chisels and hammers this time.
    I crawled toward the doors. Voices rose up around me. Petey clawed at the latch and whined and urged me on with yips and barks.
    I reached the door, rose up, took the latch, got blood all over it. The dark spots before my eyes swelled and spun.
    “I loved you,” cried the widow, and somehow I heard.
    “She did, you know,” I said. And then I pulled myself up, turned the latch and opened the right-hand door.
    The storm spilled inside, rain pouring, wind whipping, cold blast rushing. It blew the door back wide, caught the left-hand door, flung it open too, knocked me back and down on my knees.
    I let the cold rain spray my face. The voices and the shadows grew dim, Petey whined and I opened my eyes.
    At first, I saw only darkness. But then lightning flashed, Petey growled and there, on the lawn, was Ebed Merlat.
    Ten long strides away, grave clothes wet and whipping, face pale, eyes rotted away, mouth wide open in a frozen lipless scream.
    He walked for the open doors. Each time his grave-boot fell, thunder wracked the tortured sky. He lifted his stiff yellow hands and the wind howled and roared anew—and in the thunder, I was sure I heard the beginnings of a long, loud scream.
    “All them years in the ground, boy,” said the voices. “Savin’