"If you want."
She followed right at my heels, almost leaning on my shoulder, as I limped down the west wing of the mansion for a second time this evening. Again, however, all but one of the doors were closed, meaning that one had to have been the culprit.
We stopped in front of it. "Isn't this the same room you were trying to get into earlier?" Melissa asked. "But didn't you say it was locked?'
"It is locked," I replied, rubbing my leg. The throbbing pain started up again. "You as sure as I am that the noise we heard came from down here?"
Melissa nodded.
We both stood silently a minute, thinking.
"The only other explanation," I said at length, "is that a closet door slammed in another room. Of course, then, we could never know which one it was. There must be dozens of closet doors in these rooms."
"Unless," Melissa replied as she grabbed hold of the doorknob of the locked door. The knob turned freely in her hand and the door clicked open. She looked quickly up at me in surprise. I, meanwhile, simply stared at the door.
"But . . ." I started, but didn't know what to say.
Melissa shrugged and opened the door the rest of the way. "Must have just been stuck before," she said as she turned on the light and stepped into the room. "Anyway, the windows are open in here."
“But, Melissa," I said, following her in, "this door was locked. Not stuck. Locked."
"I'm sure you thought it was," she replied, standing in the middle of what looked to be an empty bedroom. A strong gust of wind burst through the open windows, sending their curtains flailing outward.
Melissa went to one of the windows to shut it, and I, reluctantly, went to close the other. I allowed the wind to blow on me a minute first. Outside, sheet lightning flashed against the building storm clouds. Oh, great, I thought, just what we needed on our first night here.
Another gust of wind shot through my window, and the door slammed shut behind me. I jerked around, frightened.
Melissa must have seen the look on my face, as she laughed. "It's just the wind," she said, repeating what I had said on the couch. She walked up to the door, still giggling, and tried to open it. From where I stood, with the wind blowing my hair into my eyes, I could see the knob not giving at all in her hand. Her giggles stopped abruptly.
"It's stuck again," she said, straining a little bit.
"Somehow I knew it would be," I whispered to myself.
Melissa gave up and turned to me. “Well don't just stand there. Get over here and open the fricking door.” A slight frown replaced the smile of only a minute ago.
She stepped aside as I limped past her to the door to try. I didn't think it would work for me either, and I was not surprised. "This door isn't stuck," I said. I pulled a few more times on the knob just to convince her. "It's locked."
"Well, then, unlock it." Her voice cracked slightly with nervousness.
"Good theory," I replied, searching around the knob for any hint of a lock, and being unsuccessful. There was only a hole in the middle of the knob in the shape of a key. "Do you happen to have a key?"
"No, but you do."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys Mrs. Klaus had handed me right before she left. I had assumed they were duplicates to give to Tabby and Sly. The set of keys she had given to me at the Prices was resting comfortably in another pair of pants up in my room. Neither one of the keys I tried opened the lock. I explained to Melissa about the other keys.
Melissa simply stared back at me in silence. Lightning flashed through the windows, followed a few seconds later by a low rumble of thunder. The storm would be on us before too long.
"Maybe we should yell for Sly," I suggested, half apologetically. Melissa was staring at me as though I were responsible for this mess.
Her face relaxed. "Good idea," she said. And before I could say that maybe it would only scare the hell out of him, not to mention Tabitha, she yelled for Sly at the top of her lungs. I had to cover my ears.
"Think he heard?" she asked, smiling again.
I couldn't help but smile back. The image of Tabitha and Sly bolting out of bed in a fright seemed, at the time anyway, notably funny. "They probably heard you on the other side of Dodsville."
Melissa had to yell a couple more times before they finally found us. Nevertheless, I was amazed on how fast they reacted. They made it from the depths of sleep upstairs all the way down the west wing in about two minutes.
"We're here," I shouted as I heard them approach, calling out our names--panic on the edge of their voices. "We locked ourselves--"
Sly flung up the door and stared at us dumbly. "What, may I ask, are you two doing?"
"Yea," Tabitha added from his side, clutching the top of her gown. "You scared the hell out of us."
Melissa and I simply stared at each other, both our mouths hanging open in shock.
"Well," Sly said at length, after he realized we weren't going to respond to his first question, "what in God's name are you two up to?"
I motioned mutely toward the door. "It was locked," I said, finally. "We couldn't get out."
"It really was stuck," Melissa added, seeing their look of disbelief. "Honest."
Sly grabbed the inside doorknob and turned it back and forth with ease, the bolt sliding in and out like it was meant to do. "Not funny," he said coolly. "Come on, Tabitha. Let's leave these two to their fun and games." Then he looked at me and shook his head in disbelief.
Tabby simply smiled at Melissa as though she understood the entire meaning of this ploy, something a man could never possibly hope to grasp, and then followed Sly out of the room.
Melissa and I stood just outside the door and watched them disappear down the hall and around the far corner. A sudden bright flash of lightning lit up the outside and was immediately followed by a resounding clap of thunder. The lights in the mansion flickered briefly, but managed to hold.
"That storm didn't take long to get here," Melissa commented.
My mind was still on the case of the locked/unlocked door.
Melissa went back into the room and closed the window I had forgotten about when the door slammed shut in the wind. A steady strong breeze was blowing in now; the drapes stood almost straight out. As soon as Melissa closed the window, though, they limply fell back into place, as if they had just died suddenly. She then shut off the light and closed the door behind her.
"Come on," she said, grabbing my hand. "Let's call it a night."
"Wait." I reached out and tried one more time to open the door. It was locked.
Melissa shrugged when I looked to her for an explanation. "Forget about it," she said. "I already have."
I managed to make it most of the way up the stairs by myself, but Melissa saw me hobbling in pain that I couldn't hide, and helped me up the last few steps. We said our goodnights and went to our separate bedrooms.
As I lay in bed my mind, somewhere along the way, made the transfer from thinking about the case-of-the-slamming-door to thinking about the-case-of-my-old-best-friend's-girlfriend. I was definitely attracted to Melissa--and I was beginning to feel less guilty about it.
I woke suddenly in the middle of the night, sure that something had moved at the foot of my bed. I lay still, intently listening for the sound to repeat itself. Fear hadn't made its presence known yet, as I couldn't be sure that the movement hadn't simply been a part of a dream.
As I was about to say the hell with it and curl back up into the fetal position to drift innocently off to sleep, the door to my closet decided at that moment to creak. Although the closet was just out of reach to my right, the room was too dark to see anything clearly. My window shade was left open so I could make out outlines, but that was it. I sat up slowly, not taking my eyes off the outline of the closet door, and reached out to the table lamp beside my bed. The door creaked again, and I froze with my arm straight out. This time I saw the door move. Ever so slightly, it opened outward about an inch.
A flash of lightning
helped me out for a second--enough for me to see clearly that nothing was there that shouldn't have been. Nothing that could possibly open a door by itself.
The door opened again, but this time it didn't stop. Instinctively, I pulled my arm back to my side, under the blanket. The closet door continued to creak open slowly until it made an opening about two feet wide. Then it stopped.
I stayed frozen, waiting for whatever would happen next. My heart pounded hard in my chest, but I did my best to ignore it. With my bedroom window shut because of the rainstorm, there was no logical explanation I could think of that would explain the door opening by itself.
Turn on the light, a voice inside my head advised. Just turn on the light and you'll be able to--
Something moved from within the closet. Seconds later, as I felt my eyes grow to saucers, a disembodied head drifted through the space of the open door. My first reaction, however, was not of fear, but of fascination. The head was that of a beautiful young woman, white and translucent. Yet her facial features were stunning. I could not remember ever seeing a woman so attractive. Her white hair flowed back in an almost slow-motion manner, as though a slight breeze was blowing in her face. She floated by my bed. At one point I could have reached out and touched her, but, of course, I didn't dare. Her eyes didn't turn to meet my own, as if she refused to admit my existence. I found myself, ridiculously, feeling almost rejected. I wanted to speak, to say just the right thing for her to acknowledge me.
Accordingly, as though she had read my mind, she stopped at the foot of my bed and began to slowly, still in slow motion with her hair flowing back, turn toward me. I was amazed by the fact that I still wasn't afraid. Her eyes met mine. I remained perfectly still, not daring to even blink.
Then her face began to change. From the most attractive woman I had ever met, it began to metamorphose. Her smooth, high cheekbones vanished and wrinkled. Her nose lengthened and widened. A large wart appeared on her forehead. The eyes turned from peaceful to demented. Her hair crinkled and became scraggly--frizzy. The face that I looked upon now was that of an ugly old woman.
A bright flash of lightning lit up my room for a second, and when darkness ruled again, the head was gone. My heart had slowed to almost its normal pace when the head first appeared. Now I could feel it jackhammering in my chest. Instantly, I reached for the table lamp beside my bed and turned it on. The room was empty. Also, to my surprise, the closet door was shut.
"No," I said out loud as my heartbeat slowed once again. "She was here." Yet, logically, how come the closet door wasn’t open? My overactive imagination must have been playing tricks on my mind. Telling the story of Wickerman's earlier combined with watching the episode of Night Gallery had triggered the whole thing. Nothing had happened at all. The closet door being closed proved that.
But I saw what I saw, I thought. She was here.
I kept the light beside my bed on the remainder of the night.
The table lamp was still on when I awoke the next morning. The closet door was still shut, and I was beginning to believe wholly that I had imagined the entire episode. Maybe, though, I would change bedrooms before the day was over--just to be safe.
My leg was as stiff as I feared it would be, but I managed to hobble down the stairs and to the kitchen without much pain. A few dirty dishes lay at the bottom of the sink, proving once again that the pleasures of a good breakfast were not meant for me during this lifetime. Sly and Tabitha were not around, and I was sure that Melissa had left for work hours earlier. I rinsed out a frying pan and scrambled a couple of eggs. When I finished, I put my dirty dishes with the others. After all, didn't Mrs. Klaus say that her maid would be around sometime this week?
I found Sly and Tabitha on the tennis court. Cursing Randy yet another time, I limped up to the surrounding fence and leaned against it.
"It's about time you got up," Sly commented after hitting an overhead smash into the net. "I was told you were a late sleeper, but this is ridiculous. Half the morning is gone.
"Can't help it," I replied. "I was born this way."
"How's the leg?" Tabitha asked. She looked pretty good in her tennis shorts. I was willing to bet that Melissa looked even better.
"Stiff," I replied. "But I think it'll be all right after I loosen it up a bit."
Sly hit a winner to Tabitha's backhand side. "Think you'll be able to play some tennis today?" he asked as he returned to the service line.
"Doubt it," I said. "Though in a day or two for sure." Tabitha missed hit the serve. "Looks like you could use the competition."
"Shut up," was all that Tabitha said in reply.
I noticed a bench inside the court against the fence, so I hobbled inside and sat to watch for a bit.
"What happened to Julie?" I asked. "I thought she was going to drag me to the hospital."
"She was," Sly replied, hitting another winner. "But Melissa talked her out of it. Said you needed the sleep more."
"And Julie listened to her?"
"Surprised me, too." Sly hit a drop shot, but Tabitha reached it and returned it for an easy winner. "But, then, Julie looked a bit haggard. I doubt she was up to a bout with you this morning."
I watched them play in silence for a while. Sly was obviously the better player of the two, though Tabitha wasn't all that bad. I could probably keep up to her, but Sly looked to be a bit too talented.
"Did either of you notice anything unusual during the night?" I asked at length. "You know, like what Mrs. Klaus was talking about?"
"Just the stunt you and Melissa pulled," Tabitha answered, with a little chuckle.
Obviously, I thought, I was the only one around here seeing things. "I'm going for a walk around the grounds," I said, standing. "See you guys later."
Thoughts of relaxing in a hot tub sounded like just the ticket for my leg, so I headed toward the rec building. A few minutes later I relaxed in a swirling mass of warm water. I could almost feel the muscles of my leg sighing in relief. When I crawled out of the tub about a half hour later, I barely limped at all. The scratches still looked notably hideous to the naked eye, but I didn't think they'd hold me back for long. Yes, sir, things were beginning to look up. Tomorrow, I would even be able to play a set or two of tennis.
After toweling myself dry and dressing again, I proceeded on my tour of the grounds. The well-groomed grass of the backyard ended face to face with the front of a forest. The land sloped downward as soon as the trees begin. A path about the width of a car wound downward and out of sight. Since I had always enjoyed a walk in a forest, and didn't have much of an opportunity in Milwaukee, I proceeded down the path. The trees blotted out the sun immediately upon my entrance. Grasses infested the ground beneath me, reaching to my knees. When the slope leveled off at the bottom of the hill, the grassy path ran into a gravel road. I turned right and continued on a ways. The forest ended after a bit, and a cornfield took its place.
I was about to turn around and head back to the mansion when the distinctive smell of a rotting animal reached my nose. A brown lump was visible off to my left down a few rows of corn. I walked into the corn a little way just to see what unfortunate animal had met its demise out here in the middle of nowhere. Another lump of brown fur appeared just beyond the first one. They were German shepherds, I thought, as I got closer; though the carcasses had rotted enough to raise doubts in my mind. Even though I couldn't know for sure what had killed them, I surmised from the fact that it would be too much of a coincidence for the dogs to die at the same time right next to each other than that foul play was involved. Some of the owners of the mansions kept guard dogs for protection. These German shepherds, I thought, probably were just that. Maybe their owner had enough of them and took them out here to dispose of them. I would have to ask Mrs. Klaus about it.
Sly and Tabitha were still playing tennis when I got back. I told them about the dogs.
"I wouldn't worry too much about it," Sly said, wiping his forehead off with a towel. "People kill their dogs and
dump them out in the country all the time. I know it's sad, but it's a fact of life just the same."
"I think I'll ask Mrs. Klaus about it anyway," I said. "Can either of you give me a ride back to Julie's so I can get my car?"
"Going to visit Melissa at work?" Tabitha asked as she put her tennis racket in its cover.
"No," I replied, a bit laconically.
"Sure," Sly said, "I'll take you. I need to pick up a couple of things I had forgotten, anyway.”
"Thanks."
Fifteen minutes later, after Sly dropped me off, I arrived at the boarding house where Mrs. Klaus had told us she would be staying. A lady in her sixties greeted me at the front desk.
"Can I help you?" she asked, putting away a magazine.
"Yes," I replied. "I may be needing a room at the end of the week, and I was wondering if you would have any available." I was beginning to think I might want to stay a little longer than previously planned.
"There are two rooms available right now," she replied. "But I can't promise them to be when you need one."
"How much does a room cost per week?"
"Fifty dollars. And that includes one meal daily."
"How about if I give you twenty-five dollars deposit to hold a room for me?" I said. "And if it turns out I don't need the room, the money is still yours."
She agreed.
As I wrote out the check, I asked her about Mrs. Klaus.
"Who?" she asked.
"Mrs. Klaus," I replied. "You know, the one from up on the Hill."
She began laughing as I handed her the check. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You think that Mrs. Klaus is staying here?"
"That's right."
She laughed again. "That's a good one. Mrs. Klaus staying here."
"She's having some work done on her home, and she told me that she would be staying at this boarding house." Even as I spoke I began to realize how ludicrous that idea was. Rich people didn't vacation at boarding houses. "She also gave me this phone number," I said, pulling the piece of paper with the number on it out of my back pocket. I showed it to her.
The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville Page 13
