Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set

by James M Matheson

  “Uh, I suppose.”

  “Oh, but you must! People are capable of doing such horrible things if you let them. So I say, don’t let them.”

  He winked at her, and for a moment, a shadow passed across his features and brought the impression of a grinning skull into stark contrast.

  “I’ll still need to see the basement,” Katie insisted.

  “Ah, well.” Xavier took off his hat to scratch at his hair. “In that case I’ll have to get the key. Now, I know it’s in here somewhere. Might take me and Carlson a bit to find it, but find it we will. Why don’t you go ahead on up to the second floor and have a look see at what you can find up there?”

  Katie had been working at her profession for several years. She’d met all sorts of people, and she knew when someone was trying to shine her on. Xavier presented himself like a true gentleman, but there was something about him that made her uneasy.

  But she wasn’t going to let any man intimidate her. She’d made that decision a long time ago.

  She started up the steps without hesitation, not even bothering to look back to see if Carlson had gone with Xavier. She could walk through a house by herself without getting into trouble. She didn’t need Carlson’s help.

  A thought flashed into her head as she climbed the stairs. She wished, just for a second, that Riley was here. He was a general contractor, able to build anything, fix anything, make anything out of practically nothing. They had made a great team, him and her. She found the properties to flip, he directed the work crews to fix the places up the way they wanted. After that, it was always just a matter of waiting for the sale and the profits to roll in.

  They were a good team in every other respect, too. In life, and in bed, and...just everything.

  Or so she’d thought. What was that thing he’d said to her about feeling lost in her shadow?

  Whatever. He had a whole lot of explaining to do before she would think of them as partners again. A whole lot of explaining.

  Where was she?

  Katie stopped in the middle of a hallway, suddenly not really sure how she’d gotten here. She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts about Riley that she hadn’t been paying attention to the turns she was taking. She remembered stepping off the stairs, onto the second floor, and then there was a turn she’d taken into a room that had a door at the back, a smaller door, that led into another hallway...and then there might have been a door...or another right turn?

  She couldn’t remember.

  Chapter 8

  Blinking, Katie turned in a full circle, trying to remember how she got to this point. More importantly, how to get back.

  There were no windows in this hallway. No doors. The wallpaper was purple, with yellow flowers, and strips of it had started to uncurl at the top near the ceiling where the glue had dried out over the years. Old incandescent bulbs in wall sconces burned with a yellow, dull light.

  At the far end the hallway made a ninety degree turn to the right. At this end, there was a turn to the right as well, just a few steps away.

  That didn’t make any sense. She’d seen the house from the outside, and it wasn’t big enough to have this kind of second floor design. Granted, the second floor was bigger than the first, but still. She was expecting a central hallway, with rooms off to either side, like there was downstairs. Or maybe a hall that led around the outside of the floor plan, with all the rooms in the middle.

  There was no way for her mind to fit this hallway into what she knew had to be the reality of this space.

  Yet, here she was.

  All right. Well, every once in a while there was a house that managed to surprise her. Maybe this one was doing the same.

  So, which way to go? She wasn’t worried about her choice, because of course whichever way she went she would eventually end up back at the staircase and then she could go back down and meet up with Carlson, or she could go up to the attic and see what that was like. So, might as well take the right turn that was closest.

  When she did, she found herself in the same hallway.

  The light fixtures. The peeling wallpaper. That brown stain in the ceiling spackle. All of it was what she had just been looking at. It was like she’d just walked a circle.

  Which was impossible.

  Katie marched ahead and took the corner again.

  Right back to where she started.

  This time she turned around and went back the way she’d just come from because maybe if she took the turn at the other end of the hallway she’d end up somewhere else.

  The light fixtures. The peeling wallpaper. The stain.

  Katie felt her chest tighten around each breath she took. Her heart beat out a slow thumping in her chest. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real. She was spooking herself with all of the talk before about ghosts and Xavier’s mention of ‘fresh blood.’ Not the thing to say to a girl who was already on edge from waking up in a strange man’s bed with no memory of the night before.

  Carlson’s bed. Carlson’s club, and Carlson’s drink, for that matter. Did he put something in it, she wondered again? He’d promised her that he hadn’t drugged her but could she trust him? She didn’t even know him. This could be a residual effect of being roofied, or Xanaxed, or whatever.

  Swallowing back her fear, trying to make her thoughts move in a straight line, Katie put her hand against the wall on her left. This was simple. Even if her mind was playing tricks on her, all she would have to do is feel her way along the wall. That way, there was no chance of her accidentally getting turned around.

  Taking a breath, and then another, she started.

  Her fingers felt along the rough texture of the wallpaper, over each seam. Dust collected thickly on her skin. She felt the urge to sneeze and tried to ignore it, concentrating instead on counting her steps, of feeling the straight line of the wall, focusing her eyes on the end of the hallway, and the turn up ahead.

  Her hand felt something hard and irregular under the strips of wallpaper.

  Stopping, Katie turned to see what it was. Feeling her hand along the irregularity, she traced it up, and then over, and then down again. She knew immediately what she had found. It just took her another moment to accept it.

  Someone had pasted the strips of purple wallpaper right over a door.

  Curiosity outweighed her panic. Her fingernails felt into a seam, and peeled back a strip of the paper. It tore away from the wall reluctantly, from bottom to top, and she dropped it onto the thin rug next to her. Then another strip, and then another.

  And there was the door.

  It was a plain looking thing, dark grains patterned through the wood. The hinges showed her it would open into the hall. Only, there was no handle.

  Where the handle should be there was a blank hole. Obviously, whoever covered it up removed the knob first so it wouldn’t be sticking through the wallpaper. Why not just remove the door, though? Take the door out, fill in the space to make a wall, and then put up the wallpaper? Katie had seen the results of a lot of crazy renovations, though. Wood paneling covering up fireplaces. Electrical wiring that went nowhere. Copper water pipes threaded through heating ducts.

  So, someone leaving a door here like this shouldn’t surprise her too much.

  Except, wouldn’t someone from the other side see the door, and push through, tearing apart the wallpaper on this side?

  She shook her head. Maybe this place was in worse shape than she realized. Aside from the major renovations Carlson would have to do downstairs to set up his Spiral Club Number Two, he might be looking at several bizarre structural issues like this one.

  There was no way to know for sure until she checked. She would need to see what was on the other side of this door.

  Even though there was no knob Katie could fit her fingers into the empty hole where one was supposed to be. They slid through the other side, into whatever lay beyond.

  She could feel a cool breeze moving against her fingers. There was definitely a room or somethin
g back there. She had half expected to open the door only to find a brick wall. Now she was curious what kind of room she was going to find.

  With a gentle tug, the door creaked, and moved.

  It opened into darkness. Dust billowed up, coaxing that sneeze out of her.

  There was a smell, too. A smell of must and dampness and old things. She fanned an arm in front of her face as she wrinkled her nose.

  Then she took a step forward, into the darkness, blinking to get her eyes to adjust faster.

  Behind her, she heard the door close softly, shutting off the light from the hallway altogether.

  Chapter 9

  Everything was silent.

  Then a sound reached her ears. It was a low humming, like electricity running through wires, or like a refrigerator running at midnight when you’re supposed to be asleep. Katie turned in the darkness, trying to find where the sound was coming from.

  Gradually, as her eyes adjusted, hulking shapes appeared in the shadows all around. Katie concentrated on breathing while she felt behind her for the door.

  The shapes became objects in the gloom. Pipes as wide as her waist. Boxes stacked on themselves. Other things she could almost identify. Was this the basement?

  Her hand found the wall behind her, and she sighed in relief.

  She felt across, looking for the empty doorknob socket.

  What her hand was touching wasn’t wood. It was cinderblock.

  Her fingers found the grooves of mortar between the rough, rectangular blocks. She stepped to her left, and felt again without turning around. Then to her right. More to her right.

  Her shoulder bumped into a framework of metal shelves. Things on the shelves rattled and shook. She stepped away, still pressing her hands up behind her.

  There was no door.

  Katie whirled around and slapped her hands against the flat surface she had been leaning against. There had to be a door. It had to be here. She’d just come through a door!

  She slammed the side of her fist against the solid wall. It stung her flesh, and that was all. The wall didn’t break. It didn’t move.

  There was no door.

  Calm down, she told herself. Just calm down. She was just turned around. That was all. She just needed to find her way again.

  Reaching out into the shadows that were mow more gray than black as her eyes continued to adjust, she felt the shelves on her right, and an almost solid wall of filing cabinets and boxes on her left. The bulk of it all created a sort of hallway for her to follow, the only way she could go.

  This was impossible. Impossible!

  Swallowing back her fear again Katie took it slow, one step at a time, feeling the odds and ends stacked to both sides of her. Again, the little voice at the back of her mind kept telling her how the layout made no sense. It couldn’t be like this. The house wasn’t this big.

  It was only when those voices finally ran out of things to say that Katie heard her footsteps, and realized she was walking on a poured concrete floor.

  She felt her legs beginning to shake as she slowly looked down. It was too dark to see, but she could feel it with the soles of her sneakers. The smooth, solid feel of concrete. She stamped her heel, twice, just to be sure.

  That was impossible, too. Nobody poured a concrete floor on the second story of a house. The weight of it was too much for any structure that didn’t have a steel beam infrastructure. This building was wood and nails.

  Katie dropped down to her knees, and felt the floor with her hands, just to be sure. It wasn’t an illusion. Cinderblock walls. Concrete floor. Damp smell. Musty smell.

  With a gasp, Katie rose back to her feet, her hands held tight against her mouth. She wasn’t on the second floor. She was in the--

  Another noise rose above the hum of electronic machinery all around her. It was a chanting. A rhythmic, resonant repetition of voices saying the same thing over and over.

  “Pran fi sa a, fe l’pou ou. Pran fi sa a, fe l’pou ou."

  Katie was mesmerized by the musical nature of the voices. Men and women, speaking in unison. No, not quite in unison. As she got closer to it through the maze of junk and shelves stacked all around her, she realized there were deeper voices than the others who were saying something else. It meshed so well together with the other words that she hadn’t noticed at first.

  She did now.

  “Loa. Cheval. Manter la tete. Loa. Cheval. Manter la tete.”

  None of it made any sense to her. It was part French, part something else. Haitian Creole. It was spoken with a purpose that tugged at her soul and drew her closer, and closer.

  Suddenly there was light. Ahead of her candles flared in a circle, dancing in the air. The red glow illuminated a wide space on the floor, and designs painted in red and blue and yellow. Katie saw a five pointed star, and a cross with an open loop at the bottom end, and things that looked almost like letters, but weren’t.

  The designs blurred, and began to spin inside of the star...not a star...a pentagram...

  In the swirl of color, and light, and darkness, she saw the image of a face. She squinted, staring at the floor, moving closer, inexorably drawn toward the spot on the floor inside of that pentagram.

  Closer.

  And closer.

  The candlelight blossomed, rising high above their wicks.

  Now Katie could see the candles were in the hands of people wearing dark cloaks, with deep hoods.

  The hoods turned toward her.

  On the floor, the image of the face became clearer. It filled the pentagram. It rose up toward her.

  The eyes opened.

  It was her face.

  Katie screamed.

  She thought it was the image in the pentagram screaming.

  It was her. The scream was pouring out of her mouth, tearing at her throat.

  “Pran fi sa a, fe l’pou ou. Pran fi sa a, fe l’pou ou. Loa. Cheval. Manter la tete. Loa. Cheval. Manter la tete.”

  The pain in her throat grew, and she realized very suddenly that the scream wasn’t coming out of her. It was going in to her, poured in from outside of her. From the heart of that circle.

  Katie turned, and found a wall in her way, and tried to turn again, and then she was running. Any direction was okay with her, as long as it was away from the image of herself, and those chanting, hooded figures.

  Chapter 10

  When she finally found a door and shoved her way through, Katie found she was somewhere else again.

  She fell through the doorway under the stairs, into the first floor hallway.

  Into Carlson’s arms.

  “Ma chere?” he said, sensing her panic, or maybe panicking a little on his own. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She was having trouble getting her legs to work. They were weak and she felt like she was going to pass out. It was going to take a minute before she could answer Carlson’s question. As she clung to him, deep in his arms, she saw Xavier lowering his face over hers.

  “My, my,” he mused. “You look like you’ve had a fright, sure enough. You want to maybe have a lie down? I know women’s constitutions can be fragile at times.”

  She wanted to slap him for saying that. Her constitution was just as strong as any man’s. Only, maybe not right now. Right now she felt like a kitten who needed to lie down for a nap.

  What had she seen down there in the basement?

  How could she possibly have been there in the first place?

  It was impossible.

  But was it real?

  “I need to go,” she told Carlson. “Please? Take me out of this house. I need...to think. I need some time.”

  “Away from here?” he asked, seeming to understand without her having to explain.

  “Yes. Away from here.”

  Xavier’s grin was skeletal. “Ah, the lady had a fright, sure enough. There are spirits in this house. They don’t come out and wink at just anyone. Must be something special about you, Miss Katie Pearson. Yes sir. Must be something
very special about you.”

  Carlson put his hand around her waist and supported her on her feet. “Xavier, my friend, I’m sorry. Can we finish this another time? I think that would be for the best.”

  “Of course! Anytime you wish to return to my house, you are welcome.”

  Xavier said it so brightly. It was like he was happy to know that Katie had a bad experience here in the house--or like he knew it was going to happen.

  Katie shrank away from him as she and Carlson started walking toward the exit. She wanted to be away from him, and away from this house.

  Pulling away from Xavier put her closer to Carlson. She snugged into his chest, and let him hold her. She needed the comfort of a man right now, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Carlson was strong, and he was kind, and most importantly he was here.

  Sometimes you could find the right man under the most bizarre of circumstances.

  Katie hadn’t been looking for this. She wasn’t looking for a love to replace Riley. She just wanted to come down here to New Orleans and relax and have some fun. Coming to this house had been stupid. She should have said no. She should have gone to Bourbon Street like every other French tourist, had a series of meaningless sexual encounters and gotten herself draped in Mardi Gras beads.

  She should not have put herself in a position to walk into another haunted house.

  Her thoughts were dark on her way out of that house. She had to seriously think about giving up this line of work. It made her physically ill to even consider, but it was the truth. She couldn’t keep having this happen.

  Only, were those really ghosts she saw? Was it maybe a hallucination?

  Or...were those people real, living, psychopaths in robes chanting something satanic?

  Or ordering takeout. She really hadn’t understood a word of it.

  “Are you all right?” Carlson asked her when they were outside. “Can I take you to hospital? Xavier was being his usual self, but he was not wrong about one thing. You do look like you’ve had a fright.”