Kip nodded.

“When did my uncle approach you? How long did you investigate the room? What made you think you had ended the curse? And why do you think you weren’t successful?”

“Why don’t I begin from the beginning, and I’ll tell you as much as I can?” He settled back in his chair, and Georgeanne moved down to sit on the arm, seemingly as a gesture of support. “Mr. Young found me through an article I’d written about psychic phenomena. I had investigated a strange case of a woman who was apparently the reincarnation of an earlier self, and was compelled to do things that the earlier self wanted. I wrote about how we can distinguish between true psychic phenomena and mental illness, and I suggested ways in which we can corral the psychic energy, contain it, and if necessary, eliminate it.”

“I see why Uncle Howie might have thought you could help.”

“Unfortunately, I only had about a year before the lottery was to take place…”

Carolyn made a small, bitter laugh. “Try dividing that time in twelve, and you’ll see how much time I have.”

Kip gave her a sympathetic face. “Your dilemma is far more difficult, Carolyn, as I told you on the phone. Especially because it seems every route has been tried before. If not by me, then by others over the years. There have been a dozen exorcisms conducted in that house, by Roman Catholic priests and Hindu Brahmins and Wiccan practitioners. None of them ended the power of that room.”

“So there’s no hope,” Douglas said, giving in to despair. “No way to end the curse.”

Kip sighed. “There is always hope, Douglas.” He rubbed his forehead as he struggled for words. “I’m not even sure you can call it a curse, though certainly it feels that way. If it was a curse, we might have been able to end it-because there are ways of removing curses.” He looked over at the woman sitting beside him. “Georgeanne is perhaps the best curse remover on the planet.”

“He flatters me,” she said, a small smile on her lips. “This case was actually how we met. Kip had heard of my work and asked me to accompany him to the house in Maine.” She shook her head. “I have never felt such energy in one place before. The hold that woman has over that family is extraordinary.”

“Okay, hold up,” Douglas said. “What woman? Are you talking about Beatrice? Is she the one who makes the horrible things happen in the room? Because I figured her to be a victim. I figured the bad guy in all this was the creep that people have seen holding the pitchfork. Did he kill Beatrice? Was he the one that did it? Who was he? And why do you say it’s Beatrice who has the hold-”

Kip held up his hands as if to calm him. “Perhaps it’s best that I continue on with my narrative,” he said softly. “Carolyn has read my account. She knows the conclusions that I have drawn. Whether she accepts them or not, time will tell. But for your sake, Douglas, I will continue to share what I experienced and what I believe I discovered.”

Carolyn took another sip of the coffee. It felt good going down, warming her. But its effects were temporary. Within moments she was cold again. She began to think it wasn’t just the raw air coming in off the marsh that chilled her. It was fear.

“I conducted a series of communications in that room,” Kip said. “I did so by rather traditional means, at least in terms of psychic research. I held several séances and brought in two different channelers. I also communicated through untraditional means.” He stood and walked back into the cottage for a moment. They watched as he removed a small device that sat on the shelf of the bookcase. The device looked like an old-fashioned walkie-talkie.

“This was invented by a colleague,” Kip explained as he came back outside. “It transmits frequencies that are beyond the range of the human ear. It also allows our voices to penetrate that frequency. And as a handy-dandy tool, it also records the communication.”

He set the device on a wicker table. Douglas stared at it as Kip pushed a small button. The tape inside the device whirred. Then a piercing sound suddenly filled their ears. It was some kind of a whistle, extremely high-pitched. They all winced.

“What is it?” Douglas asked, covering his ears.

“Listen,” Kip told him.

The whistle continued on for nearly a minute, making Douglas want to bolt from his seat. Then it stopped abruptly and was replaced by a voice.

A woman’s voice.

“Love,” she said.

Even Carolyn looked perplexed.

“Love,” the voice said again. “It is love. Love. It is love.” The voice sounded sad, terribly sad, as if it might break at any time.

“Are you saying love?”

This was Kip’s voice, crackly and higher than the way he spoke normally, but clearly him. The device had recorded him trying to speak to whatever force was in the room.

“Love,” the woman’s voice repeated. “It is love.”

“Love,” Kip echoed. “Love. L-O-V-E.”

“Love,” the voice said once more, and then the whistle returned.

Kip switched off the device.

“That didn’t sound like a force intent on the kind of evil that has taken place in that room every ten years,” Carolyn said.

Kip shook his head. “Not at all. The voice was sad. Heartbreaking.”

“So she’s not the one who’s killing people then?” Douglas asked. “It’s the man with the pitchfork. The one who killed her in real life.”

“There’s no conclusive evidence that the voice we just heard was Beatrice,” Carolyn said. “Kip, I know you made that conclusion, but in the kind of investigations I’ve been trained to do, we can’t make any assumptions. We need direct evidence.”

“True,” Kip said. “The voice may have been another spirit, or force, or whatever we want to call it. But we held a séance after this communication. I’ll let Georgeanne take over from here.”

Georgeanne was quiet a moment before continuing the story. “I called upon Beatrice to appear to us. And she did. And she was crying. We asked her if she wished the killings to stop, if she wanted to release the room from her power. And she nodded that she did. So I used the words to invoke the ritual for ending a curse and asked Beatrice to follow along with me. She remained there, visible to both Kip and myself, and seemed to accept the words. Then I asked her to come with me out of the room. She did so. Kip and I walked up the stairs, and Beatrice followed us. I will never forget the experience. She was crying softly. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders. We walked through the foyer and out onto the yard. We walked all the way to the cliffs and turned to Beatrice and told her she was free now, that she was no longer trapped in the place where she had been killed. She smiled and continued walking-directly off the cliff. She vanished then.”

“So you can see why we had hope that the curse was ended,” Kip said softly.

“She was playing you,” Carolyn said. “She played along, let you think that she was really gone…”

Douglas put his hand to his forehead. They all knew he was thinking of his father again.

“Possibly,” Kip said. “Possibly she played us for fools.”

Georgeanne was shaking her head. “But I felt the energy in the room. When she appeared to us, there was no malevolence in her spirit. I, too, have been trained in my own kind of investigations. And I would recognize malevolence. The energy in that room that day was sadness. Grief. I believed her when she said she wanted the killings to end. But perhaps she is prevented somehow from doing so.”

“Yes,” Douglas interjected. “She’s prevented from doing so by that man with the pitchfork. He’s the evil force here! Why do you focus on Beatrice? He killed her. So he’s keeping her spirit trapped there and won’t let her go.”

“It might seem that way, yes,” Kip admitted. “But we focused on Beatrice because she was the only one who appeared when we summoned the forces in that room. The energy we felt there was feminine. The overwhelming presence in that room is Beatrice. And although we spoke with family members who reported seeing the man with the pitchfork, we never encountered him ourselves. We never saw him. We never felt his spirit. Only Beatrice responded when we called.”