Dead Sure?: A Paranormal Mystery (23 page)

“Yes, that’s correct,” Jack responded, setting the phone down briskly, “now where were we?”

The couple resumed making out. Moments later the phone interrupted again.

“Crap, I had better get it, and make sure they didn’t screw up our order.” Picking the phone up, he answered, “Hello,” with a slight hint of agitation.

This time no one answered on the other end. The silence greeted him heavily. It had been almost a week since the last time his crazy phone had rung with nobody there, and he was beginning to hope it was not going to happen again. It was very unsettling, and none of the call back options ever worked. He hung up the cell, thudding it down on the table.

“Who was that, Jack?”

“I don’t know, must have been a wrong number,” he said, trying to convince himself of the same.

Once more the phone rang, the volume sounding abnormally loud. He stared hard at it, letting it go a couple of rings while trying to decide whether to answer it or not. Rene made up his mind for him, picking it up and answering it with a very sweet sounding, “hello.”

There was a cracking noise on the other end, but no reply. A brisk breeze began to blow through the open windows, disturbing the warm night air.

“Rene, just hang it up, there is nobody there.”

She did not reply. She only sat there staring off into the distance; a completely blank look had come over her face.

“This happens all the time, but it’s not that shocking.” Gently he took the phone from her hand and returned it to the end table. The warmth of his hand touching hers seemed to drag her back from wherever she had gone.

Rene shivered, realizing the room had grown rather cold. A light wind continued to assault them from the open windows. “The weather sure has done a one-eighty.”

“It sure has,” he answered getting up and moving towards the windows. “It smells like it might even rain.” He slid the first window almost all of the way down.

“Where is the bathroom located?”

“It’s down the hall, two doors on the left.”
She sure seems detached all of a sudden. Where did all her sweetness disappear to? So, we had a couple of prank phone calls and a change in the weather, so what.

Rene got up, walking slowly and stiffly towards the hall, leaving Jack to ponder further what was wrong. She just didn’t look right all of a sudden.

“Rene, are you all right? Do you need me to get you anything?” Jack asked, trying to help.

“I’m fine,” she replied briskly. “Really,” she reiterated, softening her speech.

“Okay, if you say so. I’m going to run around and get all of my windows closed. If you’re thirsty, feel free to drop into the kitchen, first door on the right. Help yourself to whatever you want. I think I have some of everything.”

“Sure,” she answered in a distant voice, and walked out of the room.

Her head was starting to throb now. A sharp pain was pressing in on both of her temples. It was starting to feel like she might pass out.
Come on Rene, focus. What’s the matter with me? I was having a great evening, not stressing about anything, and then this fogginess and pain coming out of nowhere. I’ve got to stay focused. I don’t want Jack thinking I’m a nutcase or something.

She continued down the hall, nearing the bathroom door. She placed her hand on the door knob and began turning it slowly.

I’ll just go in here and collect myself. Maybe some cold water to the face will clear the fog. Another sharp pain shot through her head, causing her knees to begin buckling. Steadying herself against the doorframe, an overwhelming feeling kept telling her the evening was going to end badly, very badly.

She was about to enter the bathroom when she felt compelled to look down the hall. At the end of it was nothing more than a very ordinary looking door. Rene stared at it, puzzled, feeling drawn towards it. She forced herself to look away. At that moment it creaked open a crack. She looked back again. Darkness spilled from the slit into the brightly lit hallway, or maybe the darkness was in her mind. Everything suddenly faded to black.

*    *    *

Jack finished closing the windows and walked back into the living room. Rene wasn’t in there. Guessing she might have gone into the kitchen, he headed in that direction to lend a hand.
I sure hope her mood has lightened up. I haven’t seen here act this oddly since the time we had our first big fight, and she threw me out.

The soft patter of rain began to sound, hitting the roof.
Wow, I got those windows closed just in time.

Entering the kitchen, he was surprised to see no sign of Rene.
I hope she is feeling all right. I had better go and check on her. 

Down the hall he found the bathroom door standing wide open and still no sign of Rene. Something didn’t seem right at all. The hair on the back of his neck began to stand up. Lightning flashed with thunder booming hot on its heels. The surprise of it and the sick feeling in his stomach caused him to jump slightly. Jack whirled quickly, expecting to see something behind him, but the hallway remained just as it had been, completely empty.

He stood there for a moment, trying to determine what to do next. Where had Rene disappeared too? He started to walk back to the living room for another look. For a second time the sky lit up and was answered with a thundering rumble. This time it didn’t get the better of him.

My imagination is just getting a little out of hand. Everything is fine. I don’t know why I feel so jumpy, though.

He began to hear the muffled sound of voices, but whose voices and where were they coming from? Turning around, he tried to pinpoint the source. The sound of the rain and intermittent thunder obscured what he was trying so desperately to hear.

Then Jack heard the voices again, softly. They appeared to becoming from the end of the hallway towards the attic door. As he walked towards the door, the voices grew steadily easier to hear. He stopped next to the attic entry and listened. One of the voices sounded like Rene, but something wasn’t exactly right about it. The other speaker had a deep man’s voice that he had never heard before. All of this was not making any sense. He couldn’t find a context it fit in. Why was there a man in his house? Was he being robbed? No, that didn’t make sense, Rene wouldn’t be in the attic having a conversation with a burglar. She would have yelled for help. Should he rush up there? No, better to stay put and listen; assess the situation.

“What do you mean you don’t know where it is?” demanded the female voice.

“It’s not like I have the means to rifle through everything like you’re doing, or the ability to use it.”

“I always knew something was fishy about that night, and you have confirmed it for me. Now if I could only find the accursed object, things could be set straight.”

“There was some new stuff brought in over there just a couple of weeks ago.”

Jack could hear one set of footsteps walking across the attic floor. They sounded lighter, like a woman’s.

“Hah, there it is again, my beautiful painting. It just keeps turning up for me. What else was brought in?” the female voice asked.

“Open the top dresser drawer on the right.”

The male voice had a very chilling almost ethereal sound to it, and Jack shivered involuntarily as he continued to listen in. The voices were carrying clearly down the attic stairwell directly to him.

“A journal,” there was a pause followed by, “Tim’s journal, this could be useful.”

Jack could swear he heard pages being turned, and then an agonizing scream filled the air.

The time for action was now. Jack threw open the attic door and went charging up the stairs two or three at a time. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find or what he was going to do once he found it. He just knew that he had to protect Rene. The stranger must have done something terrible to her to illicit such a blood-curdling yell. He wished he hadn’t waited to act.

Reaching the top he spun around instinctively trying to take in the whole room in a glance. The attic was extremely large, and Jack wasn’t sure where the assailant might come at him from.

His eyes met with mostly darkness. The room was lit by a sole candle off to one side. Lightning flashed outside the windows providing a brief reprieve from the pitch blackness. In that moment Jack saw the lone figure of a woman standing off to his left.
Where is the man, why did she scream?

The woman moved towards him darkness covering her features. “Jack, pick up that journal for me,” she said, pointing. Her words were spoken commandingly, and in a voice that didn’t seem right for Rene. It was very smooth and cold. “Let’s get out of this creepy attic and have a look at it.”

He could swear for a moment the figure walking towards him wasn’t Rene. Something about the way she walked with an elegant swish, or the fact that her hair appeared longer and dark brown, not strawberry blonde.

As she walked directly past him, he had to admit to himself his eyes must have been playing tricks on him. Her hair was blond and the woman was most certainly Rene.

“Who is up here with you, and why did you scream?”

“Nobody was up here with me,” Rene replied nonchalantly. “And I didn’t scream.”

“If you were up here alone, than who were you talking to? I heard a man’s voice just a minute ago before you screamed,” he said insistently.

“You must be mistaken; perhaps you heard the storm outside. The rain and the wind can be rather noisy.” She proceeded to head down the attic stairwell, leaving Jack alone.

Jack walked over to the journal and picked it up. It was the one Sam had brought over with the painting just a couple of weeks ago. He was adamant about storing the two things together in a safe place, and what better place than Jack’s large roomy attic? He had pressed Sam a little about why he couldn’t store them at his place, and gotten some feeble answer about not enough space. He could buy that for the painting, but not the journal. He hadn’t pushed the issue any further and just shrugged, saying, “Suit yourself.”

Now he was feeling like there had to be more to it. This journal always seemed to turn up with trouble. He quickly remembered the first time he saw it, when Sam had pulled the book from its tomb in the bank building wall. That time things hadn’t gone well either.

Picking up the candle holder, Jack held the light up high and slowly walked around the room looking for the other mysterious stranger. Whose voice had he heard? Even in the dustiest spots in the attic, all he could find was one set of small footprints clearly not belonging to a man.

“Jack, will you get down here already!”

Now she was yelling at him. What happened to the girl he had started the evening with? The amazing woman he was falling madly in love with. Right now he felt like he didn’t even know who this person was. Even her voice didn’t sound correct.

“I’m coming,” he yelled back, irritated by the situation at hand. Taking one last look around, still trying to convince himself nobody else was there, he headed down the stairs.

Walking down the hall, he found Rene sitting in the living room.

“Quick, read me the last page of the journal, and do it right, it doesn’t seem like you’re hitting on all sixes.”

“What are you talking about, hitting on all sixes.”

“You know, performing well. Now, let’s get a move on, I haven’t got all night.”

Jack stood there for a moment, looking quizzical, before deciding to play along. He opened the journal and started thumbing through it to find the last entry. Finding the page, he was just about to begin reading when he noticed that Rene was holding a glass of whiskey on the rocks.

“I thought you hated the taste of hard liquor without a mixer?”

“Are you kidding, I love this juice, try to stay on track here will you?”

Jack was feeling a mix of rage and utter astonishment. He wanted to shake her and snap her back to reality. He might have tried it, if he believed it would work; instead he began to read.

Charles is growing angrier by the day. I think the man is literally crazy. He can act all charming and normal one minute and the next just explode into a violent rage. He has made it absolutely clear; he hates me for stealing Angela from him. Although I did nothing of the kind, he is the one that had driven her away long before I arrived. He’ll never admit that to himself, though. He is always blaming his problems on someone else and never looking inward. That type of thinking I fear is going to lead to some type of showdown that won’t end well for anyone.

I found out recently that he even paid a young child to follow me. I caught the child, and with some financial persuasion got him to spill the beans. I convinced the boy additional compensation would be paid to him if he started feeding Charles bad information. I thought he would be afraid, but this kid seems to have nerves of steel. The kid smiled at the idea, and his only concern seemed to be just how much compensation was involved.

He wants me to call him Lefty, that’s his gangster name according to him. I found out his real name is Sam Weston.

A look of astonishment crossed Jack’s face before he could dispel it. It wasn’t possible, he could hardly believe it. Sam Weston, nicknamed Lefty. He looked at the name again to be sure. It stared back at him from the page as plain as day. There was no doubt in his mind that this journal or story or whatever it was referred to his great uncle. Jack had met the man a number of times when he was growing up. He always enjoyed the meetings because Lefty was such a loud boisterous practical joker, and could sure spin a mean story. Jack had always thought all of the stories to be made-up, but now he found himself questioning that.