In the Blink of an Eye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Julia?” she calls sleepily.

  “Hmm?”

  Dulcie wants to tell her what happened last night. About the person coming into her room. About the lady covered in blood. But she’s too tired. So tired that she’s not even afraid anymore. Not the way she was last night.

  After all, it’s the middle of the day. She can hear the birds singing outside her window. She can feel warm sunlight on her hair. And Julia is here to keep her safe.

  “Never mind,” Dulcie says with another deep yawn.

  She’ll tell Julia about everything later, she thinks, drifting off to sleep, glad nothing bad can happen when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and Julia is here.

  PILAR STARES OUT the window as the car creeps forward, inch by inch. There is nothing to see but the tiled walls of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and a string of red taillights in front of them.

  The driver mutters something about the traffic.

  Pilar murmurs a suitable reply, but her mind isn’t on the traffic.

  She keeps picturing Katherine Jergins’s blank stare when she told her about Rupert and Nan. She keeps hearing Katherine say that her parents are dead. That she’s never heard of the Biddles. That Pilar must have her mixed up with somebody else.

  Mortified, Pilar made a vague apology for disturbing Katherine. She fled without a backward glance, hurrying to the car waiting at the curb.

  Now that she’s had time to go over what happened, she’s left feeling even more unsettled than she did back in Katherine Jergins’s yard.

  If the woman has never heard of Nan and Rupert, why is her address in their address book?

  And why does she look exactly like them?

  She has to be lying, Pilar thinks, shivering a little in the chilly air-conditioning.

  Pilar leans her head back against the cool leather seat and goes over it again.

  And again.

  Each time, she comes to the same conclusion.

  For whatever reason, Katherine is unwilling to admit to Pilar that she’s the Biddles’ daughter.

  My parents are dead.

  Maybe they are, as far as she’s concerned.

  They must have had a falling-out, Pilar concludes. That must be why Rupert hasn’t called her about Nan. Or maybe he has called her. Maybe she knows what’s going on, and chooses not to come.

  But what could Rupert and Nan have done that was horrible enough to cause a rift like this? What could Katherine have done? How could families turn their backs on each other this way?

  Did the problem have anything to do with Rupert and Nan’s rejection of Lincoln? They sent Katherine away to boarding school in New York to get her away so that she wouldn’t be there waiting when he got back from Vietnam. But she obviously eventually came around to their way of thinking, or she fell in love with somebody else. After all, she sent Lincoln that Dear John letter. It doesn’t make sense that in adulthood, she would feel so much renewed anger toward her parents for manipulating a youthful romance that she would cut off all relations with them.

  Besides, if that were the case, wouldn’t she have contacted her lost love, hoping for a reconciliation?

  Lincoln said he never heard from her again.

  And both had happy marriages to other people, as far as Pilar can tell.

  “It’s about time,” the driver says in his accented English.

  Glancing up, through the windshield, Pilar sees that the end of the tunnel is finally in sight.

  It won’t be long before they reach the west side pier where the cruise ship is docked. Christina won’t be there yet, but she’ll grab some lunch or a cup of coffee and wait. Suddenly she’s anxious to hug her daughter.

  IN THE KITCHEN, Julia dials Andy’s number. She’s been meaning to call him all day. Lorraine’s accident is all anyone was talking about around town when Julia stopped to do a few errands on her way over here, but there’s a chance Andy hasn’t heard yet. He’ll want to know. He likes Lorraine.

  Everyone likes Lorraine, Julia realizes. Everyone except Bruce . . .

  “Hello?” Andy’s voice sounds harried.

  “Hi. It’s me, Julia.”

  “Julia! How are you?”

  “Worried sick,” she says. She tells him about Lorraine. Of course, he’s already heard. He says that the accident was a terrible shame.

  “If it was an accident,” Julia says.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She tells him what Laura said about somebody hitting Lorraine on purpose. “She thinks it was Lorraine’s ex-husband.”

  As Julia speaks, the mantel clock chimes in the parlor.

  Hearing it, Andy asks, “Where are you?”

  “I’m over at Paine’s—at Iris’s,” she amends, realizing this is the first time she hasn’t subconsciously referred to the place as belonging to its previous occupant.

  “Oh. What are you doing there?”

  “Baby-sitting Dulcie. Paine had to go to Chautauqua this afternoon, and Dulcie was exhausted, so I’m staying with her while she takes a nap.”

  “That’s nice of you.” Andy doesn’t sound thrilled about it. “Do you want to have dinner later?”

  Julia hesitates. “I can’t. I’m not sure when Paine will be back. It won’t be for at least a couple of hours, and then I want to go back to the hospital to see Lorraine . . .”

  “Okay.” Andy clears his throat. “I’m still seeing you tomorrow night, right?”

  “Tomorrow night?” Belatedly, she remembers. Iris’s ashes. He’s taking her out on the lake to scatter them.

  “Tomorrow night. Did you forget?”

  “Of course I didn’t forget. I guess I’ll see you then.”

  “I guess you will.” There seems to be a slight edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  Julia hangs up, uncomfortable. She can’t help feeling as if she’s using him, and wonders if he feels the same way. But she has to go through with it now. It’s too late to find somebody else to take her out to scatter Iris’s ashes on such short notice.

  I should check on Dulcie, Julia decides, walking into the hall. If she’s asleep, I’ll go down to the basement and spend some time working on the dresser.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs, about to go up, she feels goose bumps rising on her arms.

  She isn’t alone.

  Looking up, she glimpses a figure at the top of the stairs, her back to Julia. She has long blond hair.

  Julia gasps.

  And in the blink of an eye, she’s gone.

  Whoever she was.

  Kristin?

  Could it possibly have been Kristin?

  Shaken, Julia stands for a long time at the bottom of the stairs, willing her to come back, waiting. She can hear the clock ticking in the parlor, birds singing in the yard, and the clicking of bicycle spokes as somebody pedals past the house. There’s a session going on in the auditorium right now, and all is quiet in the streets.

  At last, realizing the apparition isn’t going to put in another appearance, Julia walks slowly up the stairs. Pausing outside Dulcie’s room, she opens the door a crack and peeks inside.

  The little girl is sound asleep, her even breathing audible from here.

  Good.

  She needs the rest, poor thing. She obviously had a restless night. Julia will ask Paine about it later.

  She closes the door quietly. Dulcie is bound to sleep for at least an hour, maybe longer.

  She might as well go down to the cellar to work on the dresser for a little while. She’ll have to see about having it moved to her place.

  At the top of the steps, she pauses in the spot where she saw the apparition. It’s empty now.

  She moves forward and grasps the banister with a trembling hand, listening.

  She half expects to hear something . . .

  The music.

  The scream.

  There is only silence.

  Yet Julia is suddenly filled with a terrible sense of foreboding.

  IN HER ROO
M, Miranda lies on her bed, a pair of earphones on her head. They’re plugged into the digital cassette recorder on the bedside table. She’s been listening to the tape for the past hour, hoping to distract herself from thoughts of Andy. It isn’t working. There’s not much to hear.

  It’s about time that she got around to doing this, though. She has several tapes, made at various times over the past few days, whenever she managed to sneak back over to Ten Summer Street and pop a new tape into the recorder she planted there.

  The first tape, which she just finished listening to, yielded nothing but the usual night noises: crickets, cars passing by, raindrops falling. With all the wet weather, she knew she was taking a risk with her equipment. Luckily, she managed to shelter the recorder well when she rigged it in the leafy boughs of the lilac shrub, keeping it dry but not muffled with a strategically placed plastic tarp.

  Miranda knows what Kent would say if he knew she trespassed on that property after the owner denied them permission to conduct an investigation there. They agreed, when they first launched their business together, that it was something they would never do.

  But somehow, Miranda couldn’t help herself. When Andy suggested that she place some equipment there to monitor the property, she concluded it was a brilliant idea.

  If she had thought of that herself, she most likely would have resisted temptation. But where Andy is concerned, there is no resisting temptation. As her therapist and Kent have so helpfully brought to her attention, when Miranda is infatuated—whether by a man, or a potential supernatural site—she is a woman with a mission.

  Though, truth be told, the yard of the Summer Street house seemed much more important a few days ago, before Andy turned her life upside down. Now that he’s ranked first among her so-called obsessions, it’s all Miranda can do to make herself lie here and listen to the tapes, just in case she picked up anything.

  She wonders idly what Andy is doing. Is he sitting in on the message service over in the auditorium? That’s where Kent is.

  Maybe Miranda should tell Kent what happened with Andy. She could use a shoulder to cry on—even if it means hearing Kent say “I told you so” for the gazillionth time in her life.

  Sooner or later, Miranda is going to get it through her head that when it comes to men, she has a knack for choosing losers. Maybe all men aren’t like Michael, but she can’t seem to resist the ones who—

  What was that?

  Miranda sits up abruptly, frowning.

  She reaches for the tape recorder and presses REWIND, then PLAY.

  There it is again.

  She barely noticed it.

  Music.

  The recorder has picked up the faint sound of guitar music.

  It must be coming from a car passing by, Miranda tells herself, listening.

  But no, that can’t be. She can’t hear a car, just the music. And it doesn’t fade in and out, as it would with a car passing into the distance.

  It simply spills out of nowhere, ghostly guitar strains for a familiar melody. It goes on for several seconds.

  What is this song? I know it.

  Miranda adjusts the volume, the balance, the tape speed. She presses REWIND again, then PLAY.

  She frowns, listening to the familiar music, trying to identify it. The name of the song is elusive, dancing on the fringe of her consciousness.

  Adjust the controls.

  Rewind.

  Play.

  Where was the music coming from the night the tape was made?

  An open window of a neighbor’s house?

  Adjust.

  Rewind.

  Play.

  But why, if it was coming from somebody’s house, did it start and end so abruptly, without the sound of a window or a door opening or closing? Why can’t I hear other sounds that might spill out into the night with the music, like people’s voices, footsteps, or a DJ’s voice?

  Adjust

  Rewind.

  Play.

  Okay, so maybe there’s no natural explanation for it. Maybe a spirit is responsible for the music being on the tape. But what does it mean? And what the heck is it? I know I’ve heard it before.

  Adjust.

  Rewind.

  Play.

  Come on, Miranda. Concentrate! What song . . . ?

  That’s it!

  Miranda smiles triumphantly, having placed the melody at last.

  It’s an old Simon and Garfunkel tune.

  “Kathy’s Song.”

  IN THE CELLAR, an old transistor radio of Iris’s plays staticky music from an oldies station—the only one Julia can tune in. That’s okay. The music reminds her of Grandma, who always claimed she was a jitterbug champion in her youth.

  Julia uses the corner of a small scraper to strip loosened, gummy clumps of stain from the dresser’s intricate antique scrollwork. It’s tedious, mindless work, not nearly as enjoyable as she originally anticipated.

  Oh, well.

  Soon the roof will be done so she can work again, and Paine and Dulcie will be gone, and things will be back to normal.

  Or will they?

  The thought of Lorraine weighs heavily on her mind. There’s been no word yet on her condition. When Julia last went up to check Dulcie about ten minutes ago, she called her own answering machine to check her messages. There were none. Then she called the hospital. All they would tell her was that her friend was in surgery.

  As soon as Paine gets home, Julia intends to go back over there. Even if she can’t see Lorraine, she’ll feel better just being nearby.

  Julia goes absolutely still at the sound of a muffled thump.

  What on earth is that?

  She waits, poised, listening.

  For a long time, there’s nothing but silence.

  Deciding it must have been her imagination, or perhaps a cat prowling around the cellar door, Julia uneasily begins to scrape the wood again.

  Minutes later, a more distinct sound reaches her ears: a floorboard creaking overhead, on the first floor of the house.

  “Dulcie?” Julia drops the scraper and hurries toward the stairway. She warned Dulcie not to try to come down the flight of stairs by herself. Maybe it’s Paine. Maybe he’s home early.

  At the bottom of the steep, cobweb-draped stairway leading out of the cellar, Julia stops short, looking up in disbelief. The angled double doors at the top of the stairs are closed.

  Fighting back a surge of panic, Julia swiftly mounts the stairs.

  It must have been the wind.

  Except . . .

  What wind? It’s a beautiful, calm day. There’s not even a breeze.

  And if the wind closed the doors, wouldn’t I have heard them banging shut?

  As she nears the top of the steps, Julia hurriedly reaches overhead to push open the doors.

  They don’t budge.

  Reality sinks in, and with it, numbing terror.

  Somebody has latched the doors from the outside, imprisoning Julia in the musty cellar.

  “PAINE!” STAN LOOKS up from an issue of the Chautauquan Daily, obviously surprised to see him. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Hi, Stan. I looked for you at your office and somebody said you were here.” Here being the wide porch that runs the length of the Athenaeum Hotel, a grand, wood-frame period structure with a distinct curved mansard roof.

  “Have a seat I’m just catching a break before my class starts.”

  Paine sits in one of the painted ladder-back rockers beside Stan and looks over the rail, admiring the view. The porch runs the length of the building, which sits high on a sloping lawn above the lake. Today, with the sky a brilliant blue and the sun dazzling overhead, the crystalline water is dotted with sailboats and speedboats towing skiers.

  “I wanted to thank you for letting me sit in on your sessions this week,” Paine tells Stan. “It’s been invigorating.”

  “I’m glad.” Stan looks thoughtfully at him. “Invigorating in the sense that you’ve changed your mind
about live theater?”

  Paine laughs. “I’ve got to make a living, Stan. Residuals from a chewing gum commercial pay more bills than being on stage ever could.”

  “Not necessarily. Not if you’re on top. On Broadway. And it’s not nearly as fulfilling.”

  Paine thinks about Margaret’s son, the actor. For her last birthday, he sent her five dozen roses with a note that read This is to make up for all the years I couldn ‘t even afford to send you a card.

  Paine says slowly, “I can’t afford to start over. I’ve got a daughter to raise.”

  Stan shrugs.

  “What are you thinking?” Paine asks.

  “That you’re making excuses. But feel free. We all do it. I’ve got a million of them for why I haven’t quit cigarettes yet. Speaking of which”—he checks his watch—“I’ve got to head back over to the classroom. I can smoke while I walk. Come on, walk with me.”

  Paine rises, and together they head down the broad wooden steps.

  “I won’t be back here again,” Paine tells Stan. “I’m heading back to L.A. in a day or two.”

  He’s made up his mind to go, no matter what’s going on with the house. He can’t afford to hang around waiting for the legal issues to be untangled. He’ll handle the real estate transaction from afar if it turns out the house belongs to Dulcie. And if it doesn’t . . .

  Well, the money would have been nice, but they’ll survive without it. They always have.

  “Somehow, I can’t see you living the rest of your life out there, Paine,” Stan says, pulling a pack of Salems from his shirt pocket.

  “Why not? L.A. is home for me and Dulcie. Everything is there.”

  “Everything. Huh. Good for you, then.” Stan lights his cigarette and takes a drag.

  They walk in silence up a steep, shady street beneath a canopy of old trees.

  Everything is there?

  What the hell is everything? A rented apartment? Uptight parents I never see? A couple of minimum-wage jobs and a half-assed teaching assignment?

  “You can’t think I should stay here,” Paine says, frowning.

  “Hmm? Did I say that?”

  “You didn’t have to. It’s what you were thinking. That I should stay here in the East. Keep the house in Lily Dale. Teach at Chautauqua during the summers. Maybe even get back on stage. Start auditioning in New York, spend the rest of the year there, the way you do.”