The bolt wouldn't catch.
"Come on," Kathryn whispered desperately, "come on, come on!"
The door turned icy cold under her hands.
Nausea rose within her.
"Close, damn you," she babbled, "close!"
The bolt snapped home.
A little sob of relief broke from her throat. She put her palm against her heart; it felt as if it were going to burst from her chest but she wasn't about to stand here, waiting for it to ease back to a gallop.
It wasn't until she was downstairs, safe in the relative brightness of the drawing room, that she figured out what had really happened in the attic.
The wind had played tricks.
It was playing them now, slamming shutters closed before she reached for them and rattling the loose windows in their frames.
A storm was sweeping in from over the sea. The warm afternoon breeze had become a gusty wind with the smell of rain on it. The changing weather, and her hyped-up imagination, had teamed up to scare her half out of her skin.
A storm wasn't anything to look forward to. Rain and wind, lightning and thunder, were stage effects she could have done without this night but it was lots better to know there was a rational explanation for the things that had gone on up in the attic than to think... well, not to think but to imagine she'd been the victim of something supernatural.
And the worst was over now. She'd checked all the rooms, peered in the corners, locked all the windows and doors. There was nobody in Charon's Crossing except for her...
... and the man. The one who'd vanished in a puff of smoke.
Kathryn straightened her shoulders. That kind of thinking would get her nowhere. The idea was to take a positive approach. Whoever he was...... whatever he was...
He was gone. That was all that mattered. He was gone, the house was secure, and by this time tomorrow, there'd be new locks on all the doors.
The wind was picking up. She could hear it rattling the palm fronds and tapping at the shutters. And the rain had started. She could hear it, too, pelting against the house.
But the house was brightly lit and as safe from intruders as she could make it. She'd change into something more comfortable and then she'd see to her supper—which would have to be soup and a sandwich again, since she'd never gotten around to doing any shopping in town.
And then she'd curl up on the settee and read Matthew McDowell's journal until she got sleepy because one thing was certain. She was not going to sleep upstairs. Not in that gloomy bedroom. She'd go up there just long enough to get what she needed.
"I'll be back," Kathryn said in her best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.
She headed for the steps.
* * *
Okay. Now she was ready.
She dumped her pillow, sheet and blanket on the floor beside the settee and put her hands on her hips. Her supper was on a lamp table, the remains of the console table her visitor had smashed was kicked into the corner...
And the damned wind was still moaning, the shutters were rattling, but so what?
Kathryn picked up the sheet, flapped it in the air, then laid it over the settee cushions and tucked it in.
The room was pleasant. It must have been really lovely at one time. She smiled, thinking of how incongruous an addition she was, in her sweatshirt, sweatpants, heavy cotton socks and sneakers. But this was the perfect place to spend the night. The settee would make a comfortable bed, and never mind that her feet would probably dangle off the end.
Dangling feet were a small price to pay for a cheerful setting and a telephone.
A shower would have made things just about perfect but only a jackass would take a shower in this house tonight.
"Welcome to the Bates Motel," Kathryn muttered, and tried to laugh.
There. Her bed was all made up, ready and waiting. She sat down, stretched out her legs and crossed her feet. She felt better than she had in hours. If only she had a roaring fire blazing in a fieldstone fireplace, things would be perfect. She remembered the house she and her parents had lived in when she was a child, the old Victorian back in San Francisco. The house itself had been close to falling down around their ears but there'd been a fireplace in almost every room.
She smiled a little, thinking of how she'd watched her father build a fire each night after dinner.
"Want to try it, Kath?" he'd finally asked.
Oh, the pride she'd felt when the first flames of that fire had licked at the logs.
Funny. She hadn't built a fire since that long-ago night. Would she remember all the little tricks that made for a good one? Could Jason build a fire? she wondered idly. He had a fireplace in his apartment but he never used it.
What was the point? he said. The radiators gave off plenty of heat. And it was true; she'd always agreed with him. It was impractical to build a fire when you didn't need one and Jason was always practical. That was one of the things she liked about him. Why, if he were here, he'd probably have figured out where this afternoon's intruder had really come from and what he really was...
Kathryn frowned. She didn't want to think about that now. And she certainly didn't want to doze off, not just yet, but she was getting drowsy. It was this sweat suit. And these socks. The outfit was silly, far too heavy and warm for the tropics, but what choice did she have? She wasn't about to spend the night in her skivvies, not when there was the chance some guy might come popping out of the woodwork...
"Damn!"
She stood up and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd almost managed to forget the reason she'd spent the past couple of hours locking windows and doors and preparing to camp out in the drawing room. Now, reality hit like cold water pouring out of an upended bucket.
If her visitor, the man who claimed he was Matthew McDowell, was really an expert at the game of now-you-see-him, now-you-don't, all her preparations—the locked doors, the locked windows—were a joke.
It was dark in the room now, dark enough so that glancing back over her shoulder made her realize she should have turned on the lights a long time ago. She went quickly from lamp to lamp, switching them all on. There. That was better. Now she could see—
Bang!
Kathryn screamed and spun around in terror.
"Ba-bang. Ba-bang. Ba-bang."
The wind must have torn a shutter loose. It was flapping back and forth and sending up an ungodly racket.
For that matter, so was her heart. It was going ba-bang, ba-bang right along with the miserable shutter.
She opened the window and grabbed for the shutter but the wind had gotten stronger and it almost tore the shutter from her hand. She hung on to it, dragged it closed, aid jammed the lock home. The wind came swooping down again, roaring like a freight train as it tore at the house.
The lights flickered, plunging the room into darkness.
No. No! The electricity couldn't fail. Not tonight. No electricity meant no lights. No telephone. No connection to the outside world.
The lights blinked, then came on. Even the telephone gave a quick, tinny shriek as if to prove it was still working.
But for how long?
Kathryn stared at the squat, old-fashioned instrument, the one Matthew had pretended not to recognize.
Maybe she ought to call somebody. The police. Or Olive. Or Jason.
No. Not Jason. He was half a world away. What could he do, except sit there in his apartment and worry and wonder if she'd lost her mind?
As for the police or Olive... what was the point? What could she possibly say?
"Hello, this is Kathryn Russell at Charon's Crossing, and I just saw a ghost? Oh yeah. She smiled tightly. Right. Make that kind of call in New York, the odds were good nobody would give a damn. Make it here, the news would be all over the island by breakfast."
"Crazy American says Charon's Crossing is haunted."
What a great tag-line that would make for a real estate sign.
Besides, she was a long way from saying she'd seen a ghost. There
was always a perfectly rational explanation for things like this.
What explanation, Kathryn?
Well... well, some kind of trick with mirrors. Magicians did stuff like that all the time. And they used hidden doors. Trap doors...
Kathryn sank down on the edge of the settee.
The last thing she wanted to think about right now was the possibility of hidden doors. Besides, she'd have known if he'd used one. Or if he'd used a mirror. After all, she'd been standing, what, six inches from Matthew when he'd disappeared.
But he couldn't have "disappeared." People couldn't do that any more than pigs could fly.
Another gust of wind tore at the house. The lights dimmed, blinked and went out. She held her breath until they flickered to wavering life.
That was twice. Three strikes, and you were out.
Kathryn sprang to her feet. There had to be candles in the kitchen.
There were. Three boxes of long, ivory tapers. She ripped every box open, stabbed the candles into anything she could find. Saucers. Cups. Jar lids. Then she set the candles on every flat surface in the drawing room and lit them all.
The room blazed with light. Kathryn stood back, arms folded, a look of defiance on her face.
Let the damned lights go out now!
She made a last quick trip through the house. She checked the front door. The back door. The French doors. Just for good measure, she checked the windows in the library and the dining room, the ballroom and the kitchen. Then, satisfied, she scooted back into the drawing room, shut the door after her, dragged a heavy wooden chair across the floor and jammed it under the knob.
"Ready or not," she said, and laughed. At least, she tried to laugh. The sound that escaped her throat seemed more like a croak.
Kathryn settled down on the settee with her sandwich and her tea. Her gaze fell on the splintered remnants of the console table. It really was too bad she didn't have a fireplace. At least, she could have given the antique a Viking funeral.
She smiled wryly. What a nasty display of temper that had been! Matthew hadn't thought twice, he'd just hauled back, given the table one good kick, and...
Kathryn blinked.
Matthew? Since when had she begun thinking of him like that? Just because he claimed he was Matthew McDowell didn't mean he was Matthew McDowell.
Because then, he'd be a ghost. And hadn't she just told herself she didn't believe in ghosts?
Okay. Okay, then maybe the whole thing had been a hallucination. Maybe she'd dreamed him up, complete with costume and...
"Hell."
The sandwich might as well have been rubber. Kathryn chewed and chewed before she could get the mouthful of bread and cheese down her throat.
You were in big trouble when you preferred thinking you'd had a hallucination to thinking you'd seen a ghost. Besides, her shoulders still ached, where his fingers had clasped them. She didn't know much about hallucinations but she doubted if they left bruises as calling cards.
So, what was she saying? That she'd changed her mind about ghosts?
Never. Never, in a thousand years.
So what if she could have read the New York Times through Matthew's hand, when she'd first seen him on the stairs?
So what if he could make the puff-of-smoke disappearances of a great illusionist like David Copperfield look pathetic?
So what if he stared at a telephone as if he'd just stepped off the shuttle from Mars and sounded like a refugee from a history book and wore an outfit that didn't look like a costume but looked real, and sexy, as hell?
"So what?" Kathryn said weakly, and she groaned and put her head in her hands.
All right. Just for the sake of argument, suppose... suppose she accepted the preposterous idea that Matthew was, in fact, a ghost?
Outside, the wind seemed to take a long, sighing breath, as if to say, Well! It's about time you came to your senses!
Kathryn rose impatiently to her feet. She stabbed her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants and paced back and forth.
It couldn't hurt to consider the possibility, could it? Of course it couldn't. There was nothing worse than a closed mind.
After all, once upon a time people had insisted the earth was flat. Where would the world be if nobody back then had ever said, Hey, wait a minute, let's try coming at this from another angle.
So, all right. She'd do just that, come at this from a different perspective. For the sake of argument, she'd assume that ghosts existed.
And that Matthew was one of them.
Why would he haunt Charon's Crossing? And what did he want from her?
The answers had to be in that journal. Where had she left it? Right there, on that table.
She plucked it up, then sank down on the settee and put her feet up. Where had she left off?
Here, a voice whispered, clear as a bell.
Kathryn looked up sharply, then stretched her lips in a humorless grin.
"No ad-libbing, please," she said in a giddy whisper.
She opened the journal, flicked the pages until she came to the next entry, and began to read.
October the twenty-first, 1811:
I have spent the last days preparing for our first foray in these waters. We have taken on every possible store, from ship's biscuit for the men to oil for the lamps...
Kathryn yawned. Boy, she was tired. It had been such a long day. She yawned again, blinked her eyes hard, and looked back at the page of the journal.
... oil for the lamps. Mr. Hauser, my first mate, has suggested we redistribute the shot for the Long Nines. I am not sure it is necessary, but have agreed to...
Kathryn stretched out on the chaise. Her eyes felt as if they were gritty with sand.
Maybe she'd just shut them for a couple of minutes. Not that she'd sleep. That was out of the question. Who could sleep in this crazy house?
But a minute's rest would be... would be...
The journal fell from her lap, and she was asleep.
* * *
The night grew darker.
The candles sputtered; burned down to stubs, then died.
The wind, moaning through the trees, snatched at the shutters.
And upstairs, high in the attic, something shifted and stirred in the darkness.
"Catherine," a voice whispers.
Kathryn's eyelids flutter. She doesn't recognize the voice. She doesn't want to hear it, or its summons.
But it is too late. She is already slipping into the dream.
She finds herself in a room. She can see little but she senses that the space is confining.
She is uneasy.
"Where am I?" she says.
A window flies open. Moonlight spills faintly across the floor. It paints an ivory swath across some old furniture, a rocking chair, and an open trunk.
Kathryn's breath hisses from her lungs. She knows where she is. She is in the attic at Charon's Crossing.
Her throat constricts. She doesn't like this place anymore. She wouldn't like it, even if she didn't remember what happened here earlier tonight. The air feels heavy and moist, almost like a weight against her skin. There is a smell in the air, too, one that is musty and unclean.
The faintest of whispers echoes from the puddle of darkness.
Kathryn's heartbeat quickens.
"Matthew? " she says.
Is he going to come to her?
After what happened today, she knows she should be frightened at the possibility. But she is not, even though she remembers everything of their encounter, his rage and his hard, crushing strength.
What she fears is something else, something she senses in the oppressive atmosphere of this attic.
The whispers fuse into sounds with more substance. Kathryn's hand flies to her throat. She can feel the swift race of her pulse under her fingers.
"Matthew? " she says again. "Please, if that's you, come out and show yourself."
There is no answer, but she hears the scuttle of tiny feet behind her. She swi
ngs around, heart clamoring, and sees something small dart into a corner. A spider? A mouse? She cannot tell but she has the feeling it is nothing so simple as a frightened fellow creature.
What is she doing here? Everything about this place unnerves her. The cobwebs. The sounds. The smells...
Kathryn shudders and suddenly, the moonlight is gone. She stands in total darkness.
The sound of her pulse drums in her ears. She takes a step back, feeling for the door she knows must be close by.
Something races across her bare toes. She cries out in horror and shudders. The feel of the thing was awful, it was feathery and altogether alien. She could hear it, too, making a high-pitched, chittering sound.
The smell in the air is stronger now. It is sweet, hideously so, and it makes her belly knot.
Kathryn starts to tremble. She can see nothing but she senses evil. Evil...
Something is here, moving in the blackness. Something terrible. And it is coming for her.
"No," Kathryn sobs, "please, no!"
She flings herself towards what must be the door but it isn't there. Her arms flail wildly, she runs her hands across a wall she cannot see...
There it is. She feels it. The door.
Her fingers close on the knob. She twists and twists...
It will not turn. The door is locked, and she is trapped.
Kathryn screams. She beats her fists against the wood.
"Matthew," she sobs, "Matthew, help me!"
"Catherine," a voice whispers, from behind her.
It is not Matthew's voice. It is a voice she has never heard before, and it strikes terror into her heart.
She bites down on her bottom lip. The coppery taste of blood fills her mouth.
"I'm dreaming," she babbles, "I'm dreaming, dreaming, dreaming..."
"Catherine."
She whirls around. The voice reminds her of leathery wings, flapping in dark caves. Of the papery whisper of thousands of insect feet sweeping across the dusty bones in a graveyard.
An eerie light is pooling in the far corner of the attic and, within the light, something is taking shape.
A moan bursts from Kathryn's throat.
It is a man, but it is not Matthew.
Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) Page 15
