The footfalls came again, ahead of me or beside me, I couldn’t be sure, but definitely heading my way…and then a coughing growl, deep, resonate. Like a big cat.
Something moved against the wall at the end of the hall, a stealthy, billowing shadow was growing slowly larger. Something was coming up the staircase to my right.
Run back to the room!
I almost started to. “No! It will follow, endanger the children!”
I turned in a helpless little circle on the carpet, an inhuman whine starting in my throat, listening as the footfalls grew louder, the growl knocking against the narrow walls. The Animal People. Get out of there!
I sprinted toward the far wall, toward the black, billowing shadow, certain I was running straight into the jaws of an enormous leopard or panther. I could almost see the gleaming yellow eyes, feel the sharp fangs sinking into my throat as the beast dragged me down.
Just as I reached the wall there was a sharp scream—almost like a woman’s—that trailed into an eager animal snarl. An instant later I screamed myself, with so much inertia in my pumping legs that I nearly collided with the wall.
I fell against it, looked left and right with eyes the size of poached eggs, dripping sweat now under my shirt and jeans. The next hallway was empty.
Nothing moved. No sound was made.
My head kept snapping back and forth, ears pricked for the slightest sound above the rushing thump in my chest. Empty.
Which way was it now? The nursery was down to the left, wasn’t it?
Or was it to the right?
Nothing looked familiar suddenly: not the hall, the floor, the walls, nothing about the house itself. I may as well have been back in a condo hallway in Austin. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I was in a place I’d never been before…not a house at all but a foreign land. And I was lost.
I heard a whimpering noise close by, a pathetic sound, then realized in a moment it was me.
I turned and began loping down the hall to my left, the gesture like flipping a coin. Nothing about my surroundings looked familiar…someone had plucked me up and set me down in a completely different house. A big house. Bigger even than the Sandersons’ Victorian. A cathedral-like structure.
That smelled.
Of exactly what, I couldn’t be sure. Something half-familiar, half-forgotten. Was it musk? Mildew? No…tobacco. That was it. Very old, stale but cloyingly sweet tobacco. And something else. I couldn’t get it for a time. Then I thought I had it. Oil. Furniture oil. Rich and pungent. From the ornately Victorian balustrade and bannisters and paneling I was passing. Then I was still in the Sanderson place! But something deep inside kept telling me I wasn’t.
I was in an even older place.
A darker place.
A bad place.
Now the icy shards climbed into my head, assaulted my brain with freezing spikes of pain.
The vertigo came back to visit. Harder to fight this time.
You’re dying…
“Shut up!”
You’re dying…this is how your dying begins…
“Shut up, shut up!”
Best shut up yourself…they’ll hear you…
“Katie, the film crew--?”
The Animal People.
Another snarling growl now, right beside me.
“Please! Go away!”
Heavy paw tread at my heels.
“Please!”
I stumbled around the next dark corner.
A pale figure stood at the end of the hallway.
A small figure that seemed to beckon me without gesture.
“Nathaniel--?”
The mop of blond hair became more discernible as I approached. “Nathan? You should be in bed! Is this a dream? I don’t understand!”
The pale boy watched me, his hair a nimbus of light.
There was something terribly familiar about all this…
I stumbled toward him, nearly tripping, then caught my stride again, lumbering on. “You should be in bed with your sister, honey! Where is it? Where is your bed?”
The pale figure, still staring blankly ahead, lifted one arm, pointing toward the next dark corridor.
I staggered up, regarded the big eyes—cold now and distant—and turned to follow the direction of his arm. Another shadowed hallway of oak paneling, wine-colored carpet. Something lay down there at the other end.
The nursery.
I lunged toward it.
“Katie!”
Something sniffed the back of my legs. I launched myself at the open nursery doors, certain they’d slam shut before I could get there, before the hot stench at my nape bit deep…
The doors remained open. I darted inside. “Katie!”
The nursery was empty. Completely.
No crew, no cribs, no toys, no Katie.
Only the dark, silent mantle. Only the big face of the ticking clock above it. One minute to midnight, it read.
I stumbled about the abandoned room dizzily, eyes darting into every dark corner, skin crawling, legs vibrating with terror.
“Katie! I don’t understand…”
The room was barren. Even of odors but for the lingering scent of tobacco, the sickly smell of furniture polish. I spun about, hands stretched imploringly before me.
The mantle spun past me, the ticking clock above it: 30 seconds to midnight.
“Katie!” I called hoarsely. “Katie, I can’t do this! I’m not trained for this! You have to help me!”
The clock spun past: quarter to midnight.
“I…I…something happened,” I sobbed. “I-I’m opened up too much or something!”
I forced myself to stop but the room kept spinning, the big face of the clock flashing by: 5 minutes to midnight.
“Katie, I can’t do this alone! Where are you? I think…I think I’m dying! Sweetheart, where are you?”
The big clock chimed 12:00.
Something reared up on its legs behind me and struck…
* * *
“That is just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen!”
I recognized Donna’s distant voice.
Opening my eyes, I looked up into her smiling face bent before me.
“Why is there never a camera around when you need one?”
Katie’s and Byron’s smiling faces came into focus beyond the Sanderson woman’s.
Donna turned her head ruefully a moment to them—“And the two of you can just go away—I love this man!” And she bent closer and kissed me on the mouth, hard enough so I felt the pressure of her teeth.
Then she cupped my cheek and grinned into my eyes. “Forget about this bum behind me--will you marry me, Elliot?”
I blinked. “Pardon--?”
Donna pulled back and turned to her husband, who had one arm about Katie’s waist, pulling her close. “Too much paperwork, why don’t we just have a four-way and let it go at that?”
Katie smiled, put her arm around Byron in return. “No point, honey. Once you’ve tasted the Bracken grapes, there’s no going back!”
Donna, thankfully still smiling, turned and yanked her husband’s arm from my partner’s waist. “All right, you two, simmer down! And,” glancing down, “that piece of lumber in your britches better me for me, dear!”
“It is,” Byron assured her, all chipmunk-faced, “but I’ll be thinking of her!”
I turned to look beside me at what had started all this chicanery; my right arm was around Nathaniel, still asleep and nestled against my chest on the bed. Sister Natalie had somehow gotten to the other side of me and was snoring softly on her face, one arm flung across my shoulder. Apparently we all looked adorable.
I yawned as the other three adults broke into laughter and I lifted my watch hand gently so as not to wake Nathaniel. “If you guys think I’m that much of an easy touch, think again! What time is it?”
“Time for bed,” from Katie, easing Natalie from my left side and handing her to her mother.
Byron lifted his son away, beaming
, and left an empty cold form where Nathaniel had been.
Katie stood there above the bed with one hand over her open mouth. “Oh my God, look at his face! He’s devastated!”
“Uh-oh,” from Donna, already pulling her nightgown from the dresser, “looks like a father-to-be to me! Katie? You workin’ on that?”
Byron held his son out to me again with a look of mock soberness. “Gee, sport, if it means that much to you, you can rent him for a few weeks…”
Laughs all around except for me, hauling up with aching head, wrinkled shirt, dopey eyes. “I am not in the kid market, thank you!”
“Right,” from Donna, glancing askance at Katie, “whatever you say, sweetie!”
But Byron was frowning now. “Hey! What’s this--?”
He crossed to me, child in arm, and reached down and pulled the heavy carpet ball from my hand. “Ah, ha!” in pirate brogue, “me thinks we have a scoundrel among us, m’dear!” He shot me dagger eyes. “You any idea how much this priceless item is worth, bucko?”
I nodded an unimpressed yawn. “Yeah, twenty bucks.”
“What! Why, the sentimental value alone is--”
“Throw in your wife--give you fifty.”
“Highway robbery! Mutiny!”
“Won’t count, captain,” from Donna, yawning herself as she turned down the sheets, “I’d do that sailor gratis.”
Kate gave her a level look. “In which case I’ll double my investigation fee!”
Donna stuck out her tongue. “S’what you get for letting him run around free!”
“Neither of you could begin to afford me.” I looked around myself at the room. “Where’s our Hollywood producer? What the hell’s going on?”
Katie tugged at one arm, got me standing, smoothed the front of my shirt, pushed the hair from my eyes. “Mr. Rankin and company have departed for a lab in Tinsel Town which apparently stays open all night. He shall call on the morrow with word about the shooting.”
I looked around lamely, scratched my head. “I missed the whole thing? How did it go?”
Byron was unbuttoning his shirt. “It went. Two hours of retakes. I never realized how utterly boring the art of making movies is.”
I nodded. “Got that right. Try teaching it. Jeez…sorry I flaked out on everyone…”
Donna rubbed my back, nightie in hand. “You’re my hero! My new best friend!”
“Not friendly enough to watch you slip into that skimpy thing,” from Byron, jerking a thumb at the bedroom door. “Out of here, you two! Take thy faithless lubricious selves elsewhere!”
“You didn’t tell me he was a man of letters,” from Katie.
She hauled at my wrist. “C’mon, Romeo, you’ve curried enough favor tonight using innocent children! It’s the downstairs sofa for you!”
I turned at the door, looked back at the bed. “Earlier tonight, did you two hear any…Rankin wasn’t using animal recordings in the shot, was he?”
Byron clicked off the nightstand light, pulled his wife to him. “Say, what--?”
I shook my head. “Skip it.”
“Hey, Bledsoe!”
I turned back.
“Down the hall on your right, used to be a small sewing room. During a break one of the cast was watching TV in there, I think. Turn if off for me, huh?”
* * *
“What kind of animal?” Katie asked in the hallway.
I shook my head, tried to form word pictures with my hands. “I don’t know. Some big cat, I think. It was ungodly scary!”
She made a light scoffing sound. “More of the Bledsoe Family guilt. You’re dreaming about Garbanzo. Which is probably a symbol for Rita. Freudian.”
“It was not about Garbanzo! It was really big cat, like a…a lion or a panther. And it wasn’t a dream. It was as real as you standing there now, Katie.”
She mulled it over as we walked. “And this was after you put Nathaniel to sleep?”
“Yes. Right after he closed his eyes and mentioned the thing about the Animal People.”
“There you go. That’s what triggered it in your subconscious.”
“It was not my subconscious, Katie! It happened!”
“Well, what do you expect me to believe, Elliot, that you wandered around the house being chased by a wild animal? That you got lost somewhere in the straight line between the Sandersons’ bedroom and the nursery? It doesn’t make sense!”
I sulked. “I never said it made sense. Only that it happened.”
“Seemed to happen.”
“Happened!”
“You were drinking. Maybe—“
“Not unless our illustrious director spiked the champagne, and why would he? And if he did why didn’t you and the Sandersons feel the effects too?”
“He was trying to distract you so he could grope me?”
“Thanks, you’re funny.”
I shivered once visibly, remembering.
“You okay?”
I sighed. “The sound of those padding feet behind me…”
“You can’t hear a cat padding, Elliot, even an African one, especially across a carpeted floor!”
“Well, you could hear this one!”
Katie sighed, turned her head to a door coming up on our right. “Is this the sewing room? Where Byron asked you to check on the TV?”
The little room’s door was ajar. I pushed inward and found a small couch facing a small dresser drawer on top of which sat a small TV set, screen glowing.
“Shit!” I said.
“What--?”
I walked over, turned up the volume on the TV. It was a National Geographic Special. On leopards. One of them snarled from the screen. I snapped off the picture.
Stood there fuming.
Katie cleared her throat.
“It doesn’t prove anything!” I insisted. Lamely.
“But it creates a strong probability. You put the boy down in the master bedroom. You nod off for a few minutes. You hear the sound of the TV down the hall…the sound of leopards.”
I pushed past her, strode stiffly from the room.
“Excuse me!” from Katie, rejoining me in the hall.
I stood there in the corridor, pushing down the frustration, fists poked on my hips.
“Are we going to bed, Elliot?”
“There’s something I didn’t want to mention in front of the Sandersons a moment ago. Something else that happened after I put Nathan down…”
“What?” she asked, tugging me toward the stairs.
I dug into the carpet. “That sphere…the carpet ball. I didn’t take it down from the bookshelf. It fell down, all by itself, just like in the nursery. Loud enough so I heard the thump. I picked it up off the carpet.” I shrugged absently. “I didn’t say so in there for fear of alarming the Sandersons.”
When Katie didn’t answer I looked up at her. My heart hitched. Her face was like stone.
“Katie--?”
She looked up at me. “I was going to tell you…”
“Tell me what?”
“Before, shooting in the nursery we were all taking a break. I wandered over to the toy shelf, started looking through some of the toys and Byron’s collectibles absently until the next scene was ready…”
“And--?”
“There was an old toy monkey that banged cymbals when you turned the key. It was all in shadow, I was lucky to see anything, let alone the gleam sticking behind the monkey.”
“Gleam from what?”
“The carpet ball. Stuck up there behind it.”
I blinked.
“I don’t understand, Katie. We both saw Byron take the ball to the master bedroom. How could it be back in the nursery, in two places at once?”
Katie shook her head slowly. “It couldn’t be. There are two of them, there have to be. The one I saw in the nursery tonight was slightly smaller than one Byron stuck in his bedroom, the one we found you holding when we walked in tonight.”
I frowned, rolling it around. “Yeah, so—“
“So why did Byron never mention the smaller one? It’s nearly identical to the other. And he went on and on about how much he treasured it, would have paid triple for it.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He said they were fairly common. Maybe he forgot about the smaller one.”
She looked at me. “Byron? Forget about anything in his collection? Fat chance. And besides, if he was worried about one of them hitting someone on the head, why didn’t he move both of them to the bedroom? Why leave the small one in the nursery where it could hurt one of the kids?”
I was too brain dead to think. “I don’t know, you tell me.”
Katie turned and looked toward the master bedroom down the hall. “He wouldn’t. He’d remove them both. Which means he was never aware he had two of them. Thought he only owned one.”
I frowned. “So which one? And where did the other one come from?”
She looked back up at me with big eyes, nodded. “Yeah.”
TEN
“Hey…”
I shook her shoulder gently.
“Hey…” And a little less gently, until her eyes fluttered, closed, and then reopened half-lidded before I could shake her again.
Katie rolled her sleepy head to one side, off the bridge of my chest and into the crook of my shoulder. She blinked, rubbed matter from her eyes, yawned gigantically, sour-sweet breath against my cheek, and appraised her surroundings. “I’m on the downstairs divan…”
I smiled, tucked a curl behind her pink ear. “You are indeed.”
She tried to frown up some memory. “Is it morning?”
“It is indeed. Seven-thirty.” I pulled up my watch. “Seventy-thirty two.”
“Huh.”
She yawned again.
I moved a little against the wonderful heat of her body, the endearing pressure of her breast against my rib. Thinking: that is exactly where her breast should be, it feels just right there, the perfect size and fit…as if it were formed to be just there, only there; had maybe always been there and it was simply the case that neither of us ever realized it.
I turned my head so it was next to hers again, breathed the fragrant odor of her hair, her skin. Of her. “This is nice,” I murmured.
She adjusted a bit against me. “How long?”
“Pardon me?”
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 10
