For Heaven's Eyes Only Read Online Free PDF Page A

about the Hall that Walker couldn’t possibly know. Something I could use against him. The painted portraits on the walls caught my attention. The images were moving, changing, faces with crazy eyes and distorted expressions. Becoming nightmare images, glimpses into Hell, as though all my ancestors were trapped and damned and suffering. I turned my head away, refusing to believe that.
    Matthew and Alexandra appeared again, walking down the long hall towards me.
    “Go on,” said Alexandra. “Kill us again. You know you want to. But you can’t. Tell Walker what he wants to know.”
    “I didn’t kill either of you,” I said, and then stopped and stared at them both as that thought struck home. I hadn’t killed them; Jacob had. But these two hadn’t known that, so they couldn’t be who they appeared to be. Jacob and Uncle James had both said not everyone in this Hall was who or what they appeared to be. . . .
    “You’re not real,” I said firmly. “I don’t believe in you.”
    I glared at Matthew and Alexandra, and they faded away in the face of my certainty. I turned and looked at Walker.
    “Just you and me now, Walker. Or perhaps it always was. If you are Walker.”
    He considered me thoughtfully, as we stood facing each other. Two men in an empty hall, the prisoner and his inquisitor. Walker sighed briefly, and adjusted one spotless cuff.
    “There’s nowhere you can go, Eddie. And I have all the time in the world to break your will and learn what I need to know. Everyone talks, eventually.”
    “Use your Voice,” I said. “Go on. But you can’t, can you? Because you’re not really Walker. And this isn’t Drood Hall. Is anything here real? Is anyone? Or is this all just a clash of wills between me and whoever you really are? You can’t get anything out of me unless I offer it freely, and I’ll never do that.”
    “Never is a long time,” said Walker. “I can walk out of here, go about my business, and come back whenever I please. Might be a few days, or a few years, maybe even a few centuries. Or perhaps I’ll stay away until you’re so desperate for another human voice, for human contact, that you’ll beg me to come back. Beg to tell me everything you know, to relieve the awful solitude. Hell isn’t other people, Eddie. Hell is an empty house, forever and ever and ever.”
    “And I will always defy you,” I said. “Forever and a day. Remember the Drood oath: ‘Anything for the family.’ We mean it, Walker. That’s what makes us strong, not our armour.”
    “Anything for the family?” said Walker. “I think I believe you, Eddie. Ah, well.” He tipped his bowler hat to me and started to turn away.
    “Hold it,” I said. “Are you really Walker? Are you really dead? Am I?”
    He smiled vaguely. “Who can say, in a place like this?”
    “If I am dead,” I said, “and this is a place of the dead . . . why haven’t I seen my parents?”
    “Charles and Emily?” said Walker. “Whatever makes you think they’re dead?”
    He opened the doors, stepped through them, and was gone. I started after him, and then stopped short as a great blaze of pure white light swelled up before me. And out of that light stepped Molly: my sweet, wild witch, Molly Metcalf. She smiled widely at me, rushed forward, and threw her arms around me, holding me tight, so tight I thought she’d never let me go. I held her just as tightly, even as a terrible sadness stabbed my heart like a knife.
    “Oh, Molly,” I said finally. “How did you die? Who killed you, to send you here?”
    She let go of me immediately, and pushed me back so she could stare into my eyes. “I’m not dead, sweetie. Neither are you. Though you came bloody close.”
    “So this isn’t Drood Hall? Or some cold place in Hell?”
    “Not even close,” said Molly. “This is Limbo. And I am here to take you home.”
    She embraced me again, and the light blazed up, and finally I felt warm again.

CHAPTER TWO
    No Place Like Home
    A nd I