echristian-epub-ee8a4ba5-94c3-4982-ae55-299db4e26c11

by Unknown

  “Okay,” she whispered, gathering more nerve. “Think. Reason this out. If you can’t get to the window, it’s unlikely anyone would, could, get in over the boxes without making some racket. So, you’ll listen more carefully.”

  She eased off the box, trying to get her bearing in the lightning flashes. She could see a sliver of the flashlight’s beam. The steps were to the left … a few yards away. No problem. You can do this, Emma Mansi. You’re in your own house, after all.

  Putting her slippered foot on the floor, she slid off the box and hopped a couple of feet, hardly touching the toes of her bare foot to the floor. Pausing, she plotted her course. Four hops to the left and that should bring her to the railing.

  One hop.

  Two, three hops. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed. The window whipped back and forth. Bang! Something skittered across her foot. She froze, swallowing hard, praying it was her imagination. She was cold. Goose bumps rose on her skin. Maybe a mouse. Hoping it was just a mouse. She could handle mice. It was rats she couldn’t abide, but she hadn’t actually seen any rats.

  She was ready to take another hop when something definitely crawled across her foot and started up her ankle. This was not imagination.

  Screaming, she kicked out, trying to dislodge it. Something else was crawling up her leg! Then on her bare foot! Crawly things, clinging to her feet and legs, crawling under her housecoat!

  Stamping her feet, she stumbled toward the stairs. Dancing to dislodge whatever was crawling on her, she batted at her hair where she felt something moving. Something landed on the step in front of her. She screamed again, leaped over the step and scrambled awkwardly up the stairs, batting at her hair, shaking her feet, cracking both shins on the painted wood in her hasty flight. She burst through the door and slammed it, flicking the lock. Gismo leaped up, barking at her sudden entrance into the kitchen.

  Hysteria clawed at her throat as she leaned against the door trying to breathe. What was that! Rats? No. She’d heard not a squeak. There would have been squeaking. And rats didn’t leap—did they? Finally able to breathe, she opened her eyes. Dare she get another flashlight and go back? Anything could have come in through the window … but what was that crawling all over her?

  Sam. She had to call Sam!

  No. She needed to handle this herself. She wasn’t a child. She was a grown woman, a responsible woman. She didn’t need anyone to hold her hand.

  She drew a deep breath. Maybe it was her imagination. After all, it was a stinky basement with cobwebs. She expected to find creepy things down there. The mind could play cruel tricks.

  Emma sank onto a kitchen chair and ran her fingers through her hair to make sure there wasn’t anything there. How many times had Lully experienced this kind of fear? How many times had she sat up all night because something scared her, because she was afraid someone was either in the huge old house or would get into the house?

  This time she knew what the noise had been. Wind blowing through a broken window. That was all. The wind causing a draft to blow across her feet … and her hair. That was all.

  Taking another deep breath, Emma opened a drawer and got a second flashlight. With some determination, she unlocked the basement door again, easing it open … just in case. Holding her robe close so the hem wrapped around her knees, she stepped down one step. Then another. She flashed the beam one step in front of her … nothing.

  Imagination, Emma. It’s just your imagination. She went down another step, then another. Six, seven steps. Be careful. The steps aren’t too secure. Eight steps. She paused, running the beam of the flashlight across the concrete floor.

  The floor was dark. And moving! Her heart stopped.

  “No!” The word clawed from her throat.

  Spiders! Huge, black spiders. Crawling over each other, swarming at the bottom of the steps. At least … fifty? More. Furry legs lifting, seeking, probing the stair to get a foothold. Her skin crawled and she searched her hair again to make certain there wasn’t one still lurking there. She recalled the feel of their furry bodies on her feet, crawling up her legs, beneath her robe—

  She spun and bolted back up the stairs, slammed the door, and shot the lock firmly in place. She closed her eyes, struggling to catch a breath, her heart pounding, her skin prickling with fear.

  Maybe she wasn’t so adult after all.

  Sam was early. He and Ned drove up at eight forty-five the next morning, fifteen minutes before their scheduled appointment. Emma watched him stride from the patrol car toward the house. There was no Mrs. Gold, and maybe there wasn’t even a “special woman” in Sam’s life, though she couldn’t imagine it. But he did seem to work a lot of hours. At least he’d not admitted there was anyone in his life. But then, why would he tell her if there was?

  Buttoning the last button on her ivory blouse, Emma finished dressing on her way to answer Sam’s knock. She glanced at the grandfather clock on her way down the hall. She hadn’t had coffee yet … and she needed some after the night she’d spent curled up on the couch, making sure her feet didn’t touch the floor.

  “Get back, Gismo,” she admonished.

  The dog stayed at her heels, growling. Emma turned the dead bolt and pulled the sticky door open with a pop. Sam and another man, who wore a blue blazer with the name Rockies Realty stitched on the pocket, were giving the unkempt yard a good once-over. The other man turned and flashed a wide smile.

  When Sam turned, Emma’s breath caught. He was so good-looking; Sam Gold had become a lady-killer. When had that happened? At seventeen he’d been cute, with curling hair a bit too long to be fashionable but cute had evolved into rugged, masculine looks that could turn any woman’s head.

  Memory tugged at her.

  Give me a kiss, Emma girl.

  Stop it, Sam. Someone will see us.

  So? Let them. I want everyone to know that Sam Gold loves Emma Mansi.

  Really? You … you love me?

  Really. Always, Emma. For always.

  Always hadn’t lasted as long as she’d hoped. One school year. At fourteen she had reached out to Sam as her lifeline. He was the one person she could count on. The one person who loved her, really loved her. Momma loved her, of course, but she’d died. Dad loved her enough to stay for a while, but he’d left without a backward glance. No one even knew what happened to him. Lully was the only person in her world. So Sam had been her anchor, the thing that held her tightly together.

  Now she realized that she had become too emotionally dependent on him. But at the time she desperately needed someone to lean on. Everywhere she looked there were families—brothers and sisters, moms and dads—all part of a unit. They shopped together, went to movies together, attended school functions together. But she had walked snowy sidewalks at night, alone, peering into store windows at the holiday decorations, looking in the windows of houses where people lived, catching a glimpse of what families should be. Maybe she’d see moms and dads eating dinner together or watching television. At Christmas they’d be stringing lights outside or decorating the Christmas tree in the front window of the house. Sometimes she’d see a mother washing dishes in the kitchen with a daughter drying, or the father in the living room reading his paper.

  Envy. She knew what she felt. She had been envious of those people and resentful that her life could never be that way. She’d tried not to feel resentment. She told herself she was lucky to have Lully. She wouldn’t have wanted to go to a foster home where she wouldn’t belong. With Sam she’d found new hope. With him her dreams could come true. But then, it was all gone.

  “You’re early.” She pushed open the screen.

  “Sorry. Is there a problem?”

  Ned Piece smiled at her. “Rockies Realty at your service.”

  Emma smiled. “Thank you—come in. There’s no problem,” she said to Sam. No problem except she had this crazy urge to ask him to put his arms around her and hold her. No problem except a basement full of spiders.

  “Ned Piece, Emma
Mansi.”

  Ned stepped inside and extended his hand at the same time. “Miss Mansi, my deepest sympathy.”

  “Thank you.” She avoided Sam’s gaze. “Shall we go into the kitchen? There’s a table we can work at, and I’ve made a fresh pot of coffee.”

  The two men trailed her toward the back of the house.

  “Fine old house,” Ned commented, his gaze scanning the yellowed walls and fourteen-foot ceilings. “Used to be a funeral parlor, didn’t it?”

  “My great-grandparents ran a funeral home from this house. My grandparents lived here, then my parents.”

  “Can’t find that kind of workmanship anymore,” he said, nodding at the wide woodwork, the carved roses at the corners of each door frame. The Realtor pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, opening his briefcase to extract a file of forms. “You probably don’t know much about the time it was a funeral home.”

  “Only the stories I heard from my grandmother, who died when I was about eight or nine.” She didn’t elaborate.

  “Yes, well, it’s still a fine old house.”

  Sam opened a cabinet door. “Coffee, Ned?”

  “Yes, thanks. Black.”

  Emma watched Sam pour three cups. In one he added two teaspoons of sugar and added the right amount of cream. He set that cup in front of her, catching and holding her gaze for a long moment. Her mouth went dry. He grinned as if he could read her mind. She felt her face flush and pulled her gaze from his. He set a cup of black coffee in front of Ned, keeping the third for himself as he took a chair at the end of the table, adjacent to Emma.

  “You’ve been around a while. What do you think the place is worth, Ned?”

  Emma didn’t want to think about the details of selling, though last night’s experience should have made her reconsider. What Ned might think the house was worth might be vastly different from her opinion.

  “Needs some work,” he commented, his gaze sweeping the kitchen.

  “Some,” she agreed. A little extermination here and there.

  “You might think about that. Anything you can do will help; new paint, carpet.” Ned’s pen poised over the long form. “How many rooms?”

  “Fifteen.”

  He released a low whistle. “Baths?”

  “Four.”

  “There’s a bunch of porches, aren’t there? I think I remember—” Ned squirmed in his chair, peering out the window through the back door pane to get a better look at the service porch. A frown knitted his heavy brows. “This where they used to wheel ‘em out?”

  “That’s the service porch. There’s a sun porch off the parlor.”

  “Oh.” He seemed to digest the information. “Sun porch, huh. What’s it called now?”

  Emma glanced at Sam, who was concentrating on his coffee cup. “Sun porch.”

  “Okay. Fifteen rooms, four baths, sun porch.” He checked spaces on the form. “What else?”

  “Basement. Attic.”

  “Garage?”

  “Detached. Triple. Room enough for two hearses or a horse-drawn carriage. Maybe a caisson or two,” she said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  Sam gave her a cool look. “Oversized garage, Ned. Full-sized car and a pickup fit easily, plus space for a riding lawn mower and a workbench.”

  “Good, good,” Ned murmured, writing the information on the form. “I’ll do some measuring.” He took a tape measure and scratch pad out of his briefcase. “Be back in a jif.”

  Ned left, starting to work in the large dining room. Emma could hear him pull out the metal tape and flop it on the wood floor. He wrote down measurements, both length and width, then went on to the next room, nearly stumbling over a barking Gismo, who apparently wasn’t happy to have a stranger in his house. Sam refreshed his coffee and sat back down.

  “I’ll be glad when this is over,” Emma murmured. She shoved her fingers into her hair and rested her forehead on her palms.

  Just having the house appraised was going to be harder than she’d thought. For her, Lully was still here. Lully’s clothes hung in the closets; some were strewn here and there in her room. Her candles and incense were still on the shelves. Gismo was here, looking for Lully every night and every morning. What would she do about Gismo? She couldn’t take him back to Seattle. Her apartment building didn’t allow pets, and she couldn’t afford higher rent. Besides, he’d never lived anywhere else … not since he was a puppy. It wouldn’t be fair to take him away from familiar surroundings. He’d have an even harder time adjusting.

  Early morning sunshine dotted the old worn linoleum. Emma had scrubbed it on her hands and knees the day before, but the pattern was so worn and faded it still looked dirty. She wondered if Sam noticed, then wondered why she cared.

  “You look awful. Didn’t you sleep well last night?” he asked.

  Sleep? She hadn’t slept at all. Every time she closed her eyes she saw spiders crawling up her legs.

  “Thanks,” she muttered.

  A slow, mischievous grin spread across his face. “I didn’t mean you didn’t look good, just tired.” He sobered, his gaze touching her face. “You look great.”

  He sat forward, setting his cup on the table, and then reached out to brush his knuckles along her cheek line. Granite against silk. She liked the feel. “This has been hard for you.” His voice was soft, brushing against her senses. “Lully. The house. All these changes.”

  Changes. Yes. Changes in her. In him. Everything was changing, and that frightened her. Change meant loss, and she couldn’t stand more losses.

  “Why didn’t you sleep?” he asked gently.

  She shuddered and then met his gaze. Wishing there were no questions, no doubts, that he would just hold her, tell her everything was going to be all right. But it wasn’t ever going to be all right. “I had a bad night.”

  “Why? Did the storm bother you? You never liked them,” he remembered.

  “It did … at first.”

  He frowned. “Something happen? I told you to call me—”

  “No … yes …” She drew a deep breath. “Spiders.”

  The softness in his eyes changed. “Spiders?”

  “In the basement.”

  Concern darkened his craggy features. “What kind of spiders?”

  “Big ones. Hairy ones.” She rubbed her arms, trying to soothe the goose bumps.

  “What were you doing in the basement last night?”

  She drew a deep breath and picked up her coffee cup to warm her fingers. “I thought I heard something. Breaking glass. When I went to investigate I found the storm had blown open the basement window. The latch is broken. The window was banging against the wall, and one pane had shattered. There’s a ton of boxes down there in front of the window. The rain was coming in. So I tried to close the window. Shoved some boxes aside and started crawling over the rest to reach the flapping window.” She set the cup down. “I set the flashlight down, and in the course of moving the boxes, I knocked it off and it fell behind the carton. Then it was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, except for lightning flashes—”

  Irritation flashed across his features. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Emma shook her head. “It wasn’t necessary. I thought I’d come back upstairs but when I stepped back onto the floor, I felt something. I thought I’d imagined it. Then I could feel it … crawling—” she shivered—“furry things. They were crawling up my legs.” She closed her eyes. “I screamed and ran. I didn’t know what it was until I managed to get upstairs and convince myself to go look.”

  “You went back?”

  Emma knew that sounded stupid. She hated movies where after a close escape from a crazed man the heroine always went back.

  “Only partway down the stairs. I wanted to see if it was real or my imagination. It was real. Spiders. A lot of them. More than fifty, Sam. And I couldn’t see them all. Big, huge ones, furry, with those tiny black eyes. The kind you see crossing the highway.”

 
He frowned. “Tarantulas?”

  “Maybe. Big anyway. I shut the door and stuffed a towel beneath it. I called an exterminator first thing this morning and left a message.” She glanced up, hearing Ned moving about in the bedrooms. “Maybe we shouldn’t let him go down there until the exterminator gets here.”

  Sam pushed back and stood up and stepped to the cellar door.

  “No!” Emma hissed. “Don’t open that!” She could still feel the furry little legs on her ankles, the airy scurry across her feet.

  “I want to see what’s down there.”

  “You don’t believe me?” She sprang out of the chair and grabbed his arm. “Spiders are there. Lots of them.”

  “I believe you,” he said, glancing toward the front of the house. He reached for her hand.

  His touch was like electricity on her skin, but his soft voice was strong, protective, comforting. Her gaze left his mouth and moved to where his hand clasped hers before she looked up again.

  “I believe you, sweetheart. But I want to take a look at the situation to see what we’re dealing with. Tarantulas are not … usually … in a house, and certainly not in those numbers. It’s probably an infestation of those garden spiders, the kind with the gold zigzag on the back. Lully never sprayed for anything. Think you can keep Ned busy upstairs while I take a look?”

  “Don’t go down there,” Emma pleaded, clinging to his hand.

  “Em, we can’t list the house with spiders in the basement. It will lower the value. Trust me,” he said. He squeezed her hand comfortingly. “Now, get a fresh cup of coffee, get a grip, and go upstairs and help Ned measure. Point out the house’s assets. Keep him up there until I can see what’s going on in the basement. Okay?”

  He tipped her chin up with his hand and searched her face. Emma memorized every laugh line, every tiny crease fanning out from the corners of his eyes. This was the face that she would see in her dreams. This was Sam.

  “Okay?” he whispered.

  “I don’t want to sell the house.” Tears stung her eyes. “I know it’s in bad shape; it has spiders, bad memories, but …” There were a million buts and he knew them all by heart.