The Dead Room

by Heather Graham

  He walked over to her anyway. “Melissa, good morning.”

  For a moment she stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost.

  “Oh, hi. Sorry. We’ve met…right? You’re Joe Connolly, the P.I.? You look so much like your cousin. I talked to you after the explosion, right?”

  “Right. And I’m friends with Leslie.” He didn’t see any reason to tell her that they’d just met a few days ago.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  He followed her inside, wondering why he felt that just being in the house would somehow help him.

  “Leslie is phenomenal,” Melissa said as they reached the kitchen.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Doughnut?” she asked.

  “I’d love one.”

  “Doughnuts get such a bad rap these days,” she told him.

  “Once in a while, they’re good for the soul,” he said.

  Melissa looked around the kitchen. “I do love this house so much. Oh!” She blushed, realizing how she sounded. “I’m sorry. I know that your cousin…well, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not the fault of the house, Melissa,” he said.

  She leaned toward him, a slightly faraway look in her eyes. “Maybe it is.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Maybe…I don’t know. This house makes me feel…weird. Can a house be jinxed…or…evil?” she asked.

  He arched a brow. “No,” he said firmly.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “And it’s not bad vibes I get here. In fact, I should get bad vibes, after what happened, but…I get good ones. If the place is haunted, though…it could be Revolutionary War ghosts, or Civil War ghosts, or Irish gang ghosts….” She got a faraway look in her eyes, as if she’d traveled back in time herself.

  Joe stared at her, feeling a strange creeping sensation along his nape. Hell. He was six foot three and two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle. He’d faced cold-blooded killers in his time, and he sure as hell wasn’t afraid of the dark. So how the hell had this tiny woman given him the shivers? But it wasn’t her, he realized.

  It was the house.

  Oh, like hell.

  “You weren’t at the party that night, were you?” he asked Melissa.

  “Me? No. I’m just the hired help.”

  “You’re far more than hired help,” he told her, and watched her flush. She seemed to thrive on the least compliment. Earnest and sincere, and not homely but also not a raving beauty, she had probably worked hard for every achievement in her life. She deserved a few compliments, he decided.

  “You weren’t here, either, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t.” A strange sense of cold suddenly washed over him as he spoke. He looked around, thinking there had to be an air-conditioning vent somewhere near, but he didn’t see one.

  Then, inexplicably, while he was just standing there, he lost his balance and stumbled.

  Disturbed, he frowned and strode past Melissa into the back servants’ pantry, where the explosion had happened. Everything was perfectly restored now, but even so, he walked over and stood by the hearth, wondering exactly where Matt had been standing.

  An odd sense of pressure filled his head.

  Leslie…

  He must be going crazy. He could have sworn he heard her name, but there was no one else in the room.

  He felt torn between the urge to stay and discover what was going on here to spook him and the irrational urge to run back to the dig site to see Leslie, as if she were in danger.

  He felt almost as if he were pushed to join her, as if a strange whisper in his head was urgently telling him to go to her.

  Ridiculous. She was working and perfectly safe.

  “What is it?” Melissa asked, looking at him from the doorway.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Thanks for the doughnut. I’ll be seeing you.”

  He was out of the house in a flash and found himself running down the street toward the dig.

  She blinked. There was a blinding light shining in her eyes, and for a moment she thought she was staring at a monster, then realized it was a man.

  Professor Laymon was staring down at her, the light from his electric lantern reflected in the lenses of his glasses, his gaunt face made eerie by the play of light and shadow.

  “She’s fine,” he announced to someone outside her field of vision. “She’s fine.”

  A monster? Or a man? Someone had hit her.

  She kept silent, suddenly suspicious.

  “We need to call 911,” she heard Brad announce worriedly.

  “No, no,” she said, waving a hand in the air, sitting up. The dark room swayed for a minute, but then her vision cleared almost instantly. She looked around and frowned. She definitely wasn’t alone anymore. And she wasn’t by the wall anymore, either. She was sitting in a pile of rubble, halfway across the room.

  “I don’t see—” she began.

  “You got a good clunk on the head,” Brad said.

  “A clunk on the head?” she repeated.

  “From the ceiling,” Laymon explained. “A chunk of plaster fell on you. We need to install proper safety precautions in here.”

  There was a commotion just outside, and suddenly Joe Connolly was pushing through the entrance. He rushed over to her, looking like a fullback ready to face the opponent’s starting line, and stared reproachfully at Brad and Laymon. She followed the direction of his accusing gaze to see Robert Adair standing nearby, looking acutely uncomfortable. And when she squinted toward the entrance, she saw a host of workers and more policemen, including Ken Dryer, looking in at her. Hank Smith was there, too, she noticed.

  “What the hell happened?” Joe demanded gruffly.

  “Time—and a weak chunk of ceiling,” Brad explained. He stared at Joe and apparently decided that he had some influence over her. “She should see a doctor. She took a real bump to her head.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Joe agreed.

  “No,” she protested, gritting her teeth as she got to her feet. Had she really been hit by a piece of the ceiling? Had she imagined the cold, and the sense of someone else being there? Whatever had really happened, she wasn’t about to protest their explanation. Not unless and until she had something to offer instead that wouldn’t make her sound crazy. Even so…“No,” she repeated. “I mean it.” She could hear anxious voices from outside, and she forced herself to take a step on her own. “I’m fine,” she insisted.

  “You’re not fine,” Brad said.

  “I am fine,” she assured him.

  “It’s better to be safe than sorry,” Joe warned. He looked seriously worried. What was he doing there? she wondered. He’d stayed in his car all night to keep an eye on her, not to mention he undoubtedly wanted a shower and a change of clothing. Plus, he had a missing woman to find.

  “He’s right, you know,” Robert Adair said.

  “It couldn’t have been all that bad,” Laymon put in. “She seems fine to me.”

  She looked at the professor. She knew that he cared about her. She also knew that he cared more about his work than about any human being. If she’d been hurt badly enough to require a doctor, the city might insist on shutting down the dig until their safety inspectors okayed it. Laymon would be fit to be tied. The ceiling undoubtedly had to be shored up, but he would want to supervise, to be in charge. He wouldn’t want his precious find contaminated in any way.

  “The professor’s right. I really am absolutely fine,” she repeated firmly.

  Robert shook his head. Laymon sighed. Brad stared at her.

  Joe took her by the arm, turning her to face him. “Fine, huh? So you say. Let’s take a little trip back to Hastings House, get some ice, keep you moving…and maybe stop by a doctor’s, quietly, just so he can take a quick look at you, check you out.”

  Brad spoke up in support of Joe.

  “Leslie, you were flat on your back, out cold, when we found you.”

  The light was blocked for a minut
e, and then she saw Ken Dryer—clearly not at all happy about what the dirt was doing to his clothing—slide carefully down to join them. “Leslie, what happened? Are you okay?”

  She knew she should be grateful, but everyone’s concern was starting to get on her nerves. And in the back of her mind was a question. What had really happened? Had she turned to look around, been hit on the head by a falling piece of plaster, and fallen this far away from where she’d been standing?

  For a moment, she once again felt that strange sense of fear that had prickled at her nape when she’d been alone in the room. She wasn’t accustomed to being afraid. The dark didn’t usually hold any terrors for her.

  After all, she didn’t just see ghosts. She carried on conversations with them.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Joe said gruffly. “And see you to the doctor.”

  “She needs her head examined,” Brad said. Leslie looked at him, frowning. The way he’d said it, it sounded as if he thought more was wrong with her than a possible concussion.

  “Guys…” she murmured uncomfortably.

  “Leslie, the site isn’t going anywhere,” Laymon told her, his voice unusually gentle. Apparently there was a soul somewhere beneath that academic facade.

  “You’ll have to go out the back or else face the music out front,” Brad said. He shrugged. “I don’t know how, but the minute anything happens, we get a flock of reporters.”

  “Dryer can handle them, I’m sure,” Robert Adair said.

  Brad grinned at her. “I’ll join him,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “Go to it,” Leslie told him, smiling in return. “I’ll see you all later.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll take the day off,” Laymon said firmly Brad halted at the exit.

  “Let’s go,” Joe said, equally firm.

  Maybe they were right. But she didn’t feel at death’s door. She had one hell of a headache, but she could handle that with aspirin. Mostly, she realized, she was angry at being unable to figure out what the hell had happened.

  “Leslie, I’ll bring in my own engineers, and I’ll sit on top of them like a fly on roadkill,” Laymon said.

  “Leslie, let’s go,” Joe repeated quietly.

  For a minute she was tempted to remind him that she wasn’t a child, and that even though he looked like Matt, he wasn’t Matt. They didn’t have a relationship that stretched back forever. But she knew they were probably right. An exam or an X-ray wouldn’t hurt. It would be the mature and sensible thing to do.

  As she headed for the exit, Robert set a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”

  As she emerged from the crypt, a group of workers backed away in a single body. She smiled and waved. “I’m fine,” she said reassuringly. “Go on back to work—we’ve got a lot to do.”

  With Joe holding her arm and Brad on the other side of her, they walked across the site in the direction of the back exit. Suddenly she stopped, pulling him to a halt with her.

  “Wait!” she demanded.

  “What?” Joe asked.

  She looked around. “Who found me?” she asked quietly.

  Brad frowned. “Laymon and I. You were flat on the ground, unconscious. We were really scared, Leslie.”

  “You were together?”

  “Yes, why?” Brad asked.

  “No one else was in there with me, right?”

  “No. Why?” Brad asked, looking puzzled.

  “Right. Of course.” She forced a smile, said goodbye to Brad as he joined Dryer and started walking again.

  Joe and Leslie departed via the rear and in a few minutes they were approaching Hastings House.

  The morning rush was on and the sidewalks were full. Odd. Around the site, she couldn’t move without someone stopping her. Here—even dirty and tousled—she was barely noticed. Serious, almost grim-faced businessmen and women were headed to their financial district offices. One man looked so depressed that she wanted to tell him to lighten up.

  She looked at Joe, who wore a frown, as well. She smiled. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t shower yet,” she told him.

  He glanced at her and seemed surprised by her easy grin. “What happened in there?” he asked.

  She frowned. “A chunk of ceiling fell. Hey, that place has been buried for a century. Not even the Pyramids have survived without some damage, and this place was nowhere near that well built.” She was trying to make him smile. No dice.

  “I wonder if you should be working that dig.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s what I do.”

  He shook his head.

  “In fact,” she said thoughtfully, staring at him, “how did you happen to be there?”

  He stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.

  “Joe?”

  “I don’t know,” he said at last, almost unwillingly.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I mean, I don’t know. I just…” He stopped speaking, shook his head again. “I just had a feeling I should go find you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Instinct, fluke—I don’t know.”

  “Well, that was really sweet of you,” she said.

  “Sweet?” He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “Yes, it was very nice of you to worry.”

  He didn’t reply to that, but his strides increased.

  “Hey, slow down. I’m a fast walker, but I’m practically running to keep up with you,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  Then they were at the house. It wasn’t officially open yet, but the door was ajar and Melissa popped out just as they started up the steps.

  “Leslie, are you all right?” she cried anxiously, hurrying out to greet her.

  “Fine,” Leslie said, frowning. “What—”

  “The news announced that there had been an accident,” Melissa said, then gave Joe a strange look. “You went from here to the site?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow,” Melissa said, looking at him in wonder.

  “Hey there, is everyone all right?”

  Leslie looked toward the entrance. Jeff Green, in complete Colonial grab, was standing in the doorway, his face wearing an expression of concern. Leslie had to smile. He could have been an eighteenth-century gentleman, standing on his porch to survey his domain. He reminded her a little bit of Ichabod Crane at that moment, rather than Washington, because, seen from below, he was so tall and lean.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said as he, too, stepped outside. He ruined the impression of historical perfection when he reached into his Colonial jacket pocket and produced a pack of Marlboros. He lit up, still frowning. “Melissa and I had the TV in the office on and we heard what happened. That policeman—Dryer—came on to say that everything was all right, but that’s what the cops always say. We couldn’t help being worried.”

  “Thanks for your concern. I’m pretty dirty and I’ve got a headache, but that’s about it,” Leslie said.

  “Well—” Joe began.

  She stepped on his foot. He looked down at her, brows lowering. She stared at him, and he smiled in understanding. She was grateful, but growing weary of constantly saying that she was fine.

  “Where’s Tandy?” Leslie asked, changing the subject.

  “Unless we have school groups or a major tour scheduled, she takes Wednesdays off and I have Thursdays, and we both take Sunday,” he explained.

  “We pull in our biggest crowds on Friday and Saturday,” Melissa explained. “We should be open on Sundays, too.”

  “The Sabbath?” Jeff protested, sounding convincingly Colonial. Then he grinned. “Hey, I like my Sundays off.”

  “I could work them. And we could make big bucks,” Melissa said.

  “Well, if you guys don’t mind, I’m going to go in and shower,” Leslie said. She looked at Joe. He was dirty and covered in plaster dust, as well.

  It occurred to her that, concealed in his strangely tinted shield
of grime, he could pass for the ghost of his cousin.

  “I’ll wait,” Joe said.

  “You could go home and shower.”

  “I could, but I won’t. I’ll take you to my buddy, Dr. Granger, first.”

  “Doctor! What’s wrong?” Melissa demanded, her voice full of concern.

  “Joe will explain,” Leslie said. He’d opened his mouth, so he could take care of telling them what had happened, she decided.

  She entered the house and rushed up the stairs. In her room, she quickly shed her dirty clothing, turned on the water and stepped into the shower. The heat washed over her deliciously, and she turned up the force of the water. She always tried to conserve resources where she could. At that moment, though, she was grateful that the Historical Association had installed modern plumbing and a really good water heater. She let the steam roll around her and the water beat down. Washing her hair, she felt the bump on the top of her head. Not really all that bad, she told herself.

  As she stood there, she began to feel the oddest sensation, as if she were being cradled by the steam and the water. Tenderly held.

  She stood dead still. Was it her imagination? Or…?

  “Matt?” she said softly, her voice almost lost against the rushing of the water.

  There was no reply.

  Just the sensation.

  So she stood, water and heat cascading all around her, barely breathing. Wondering. It was as if she were being held with such a gentle touch because she had just survived a great danger and returned home. As if she were a soldier who had been off to war and come home at last, despite the danger.

  A loud knocking on her bedroom door broke the spell.

  She realized that the water—no matter how good the heater was—had grown cold.

  She turned it off quickly, wrapped herself in a towel and hurried out.

  “Leslie?” Joe. And he sounded worried.

  “I’m okay—sorry.”

  She heard him swear. “I was about to break the door down! I’d thought you’d passed out in the shower.”

  “No…I got carried away enjoying the steam and the heat,” she replied. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right out, I swear.”