The Drifter (4 page)

“Any bruises?” Mom interrupted.

“I—no—I don't know,” Carolyn said crossly. “But I have a splitting headache. And yes, my arms are killing me. And my knees hurt.” She pushed up the sleeves of her robe and pointed triumphantly to her arms. “Yes! See there? Bruises!”

“You helped me do all that moving last night,” Mom reminded her. “You carried boxes up and down the stairs and rearranged some of the furniture.”

Carolyn pulled away and shook her head, eyes bewildered. “It couldn't have been a dream! She stood there touching her throat—”

“Oh, that Nora,” Mom muttered. “No more ghost stories. Look—I'll make you some hot chocolate, then I'll fix breakfast, and it'll seem like that bad dream never happened.”

“How could it not have happened? How could it have been so real?”

“How could you have ended up in bed again,” Mom teased, “unless you sleepwalked and dreamed at the same time?”

Carolyn put her hands to her face and sighed. “I don't know.”

“Well, there you are. Hot chocolate coming right up.”

Carolyn sat back, slowly shaking her head. She felt stiff and sore, drained and disoriented. She could still see that ghost by the widow's walk … those gouges and stains on the walls.… She could still hear those clawing sounds coming from the attic.
Mom thinks I'm going crazy. Well … maybe I am.…

“This is crazy!” Mom shivered as she scrambled eggs at the stove. “Middle of summer and I feel like we're in the Arctic. I guess we'll get used to it.” She grew quiet for a second, then gave Carolyn a sympathetic look. “We didn't really have a choice, honey. I hope you know that.”

Carolyn nodded distractedly and examined the hem of her nightgown. It didn't quite touch the floor, and there weren't any stains on it.

“Carolyn?”

“I know that, Mom,” Carolyn answered.

Ever since Dad's heart attack, Mom had held up amazingly, accepting with her usual grace their unexpected turn for the worse. But Carolyn knew how bad off they were financially—even though Mom tried to hide it—so when the letter had come, letting them know they'd inherited a house, it had seemed like a miracle.

“See? Your father's watching out for us,” Mom had insisted when the news came about Aunt Hazel. “A fresh start for you and me. It's what we need, Carolyn. I think we should go.”

Carolyn hadn't been convinced, but she'd have done anything to see her mother happy again. And now, sitting here in the kitchen, watching Mom smile over the scrambled eggs, Carolyn decided not to start the day out on a bad note.
Mom's right … I'm sore because of the moving … and I couldn't have walked around that much without waking myself up … and bad dreams
can
seem awfully real.…

“Spit and polish,” Mom said firmly. “Elbow grease.”

“What?” Carolyn snapped back and forced cheerfulness into her tone.

“I said elbow grease. You heard me,” Mom teased.

“Oh. In other words, you're going to work me to death.”

“A good cleaning will work wonders with this place. I know we can make it charming again—I mean, it has so much potential!”

“Well … it has
something
.”

“Think positive, Carolyn.”

“Like … positively awful?”

Mrs. Baxter walked over and set Carolyn's plate in front of her. “I was trying to decide … quilts on the beds … flowers on the nightstands … and every evening our guests could meet for hot cider and stimulating conversation in the parlor.”

“As long as I don't have to be the stimulating conversationalist who gets things going.”

“I really think this place could be a haven for people. You know … wind and cold out there in the world … warmth and comfort here inside our door?”

“I don't think Nora would agree with you,” Carolyn grunted, making a game attempt at eating.

“Nora wouldn't agree with anything,” Mrs. Baxter said. “She'd consider it unethical or sacrilegious or something. Anyway, I think Nora's interesting. It's natural for people in a small community to be leery of outsiders. And that's what we are, you know—outsiders.”

“Mom …” Carolyn put her fork down, choosing her words carefully. “If what Nora said was true … you know, about people not coming over here from the mainland—then—”

“They'll come,” Mom said firmly. She put her hands on her hips and nodded. “They
will
. We'll fill this old place with lots of love and”—she drew a deep breath—“they'll come.”

Carolyn stared at her for a long moment. Finally she nodded.

“Okay. If you say so.”

“Now, after you finish breakfast, you better get dressed. We have tons of work to do. Beginning with the dishes.”

“Can't we start instead with the heater?” Carolyn pleaded. “I feel like I've been preserved in ice.”

“Nora said it didn't work very well.” Mom sighed. “And by the way, where
is
Nora—I thought she said she'd be here this morning by seven. I don't even know why I bothered to let the realtors know we were coming. No one did a single thing to get the house ready for us. You're right. First on our list—find someone in the village who does repairs. Oh, why didn't I pay more attention when your father was fixing things around the house? But of course I never dreamed that someday he'd—”

“I'll be right back,” Carolyn cut her off and hurried upstairs.

She paused outside her room and looked at the end of the hallway. The attic door was shut, the latch in place.

She walked over and tried to turn it.

Locked.

“Sea air,” she muttered to herself. “Good for the imagination, obviously.”

She went into her room and pulled up the shades, frowning at the thick fog beyond the windowpanes. She had the strangest feeling that the whole house was adrift in some churning gray sea. When she'd first woken up this morning, she'd lain in bed listening to the wind and the surf, and it had taken several minutes for last night's horrors to come back to her. And then she'd thought about Captain Glanton again and the widow's walk and the shipwreck and the poor doomed sailors calling their own names …

“Come into the village with me.” Mrs. Baxter appeared in the doorway, and Carolyn jumped. “Sorry—didn't mean to scare you!”

Carolyn gave a wan smile and shook her head. “I think I'll hang around here. Check out the new surroundings.”

Mrs. Baxter glanced toward the window and nodded. “Just be careful; you heard what Nora said about the cliffs being so close. If I'm lucky, I'll bring back groceries
and
some gossip.”

“
If
you can get anyone to talk to you,” Carolyn said.

“Well, surely they can't all be like Nora.” Her mother looked alarmed. “Can they?”

She didn't wait for an answer. She waved goodbye, and several minutes later Carolyn heard the front door slam.

The house surged with emptiness.

Only the whine of the wind kept her company now … gnawing at every crack … scratching at every windowpane.

Carolyn tried to shut out the desolate sounds. She stood up and began pulling clothes from her suitcase.

“You've already talked yourself into a nightmare,” she grumbled. “Don't talk yourself into anything else.”

She groaned when she saw what she'd brought. Shorts, mostly, and sleeveless tops and her swimsuit and two pairs of sandals.
Well, we were going to the beach, weren't we
—
how was I supposed to know it was the beach at the end of the world?
Irritated, she crammed her clothes into a dresser drawer and slipped into the jeans and sweatshirt she'd worn yesterday. The movers wouldn't be here for a few days, but maybe there were some clothes of Hazel's that might fit her.

It made her nervous, walking past all the sheet-shrouded bedrooms. She half expected some ancient body to be laid out on one of the beds, and every time the house creaked, her heart skipped a beat. She went through every cupboard, every trunk and armoire and bureau in record time, but didn't find anything she could wear. Hazel's wardrobe consisted of frilly, spinsterish things, and each time Carolyn pulled something out to inspect it, she felt like a little girl playing dress-up. After much searching, she finally discovered a closet beneath the staircase, but to her annoyance it only contained empty handbags, bottles of medicine, and an overpowering smell of cedar chips and mothballs.

Wrinkling her nose, Carolyn stepped back and started to shut the door, when her sleeve caught on one of the rickety shelves. She twisted around to jerk free, when without warning the whole shelf pulled away from the wall and crashed to the floor at her feet.

Carolyn surveyed the mess in dismay. Broken bottles oozed syrupy liquids across the floor, and pills scattered everywhere. She picked up the broken glass, then leaned forward to study the inside of the closet. It was obvious the wood had begun to rot away, and as she dug one finger against the ledge where the shelf had rested, Carolyn felt something small and thin buried there beneath a heavy layer of dust.

She pinched it between her fingertips and pulled it out, holding it up to the light.

A key.

At one time it must have been tossed inside where it somehow managed to slip down between the shelf and the wall, finally ending up trapped upon the narrow ledge.
No telling how long it's been there … or what it was used for
. Carolyn was disappointed. She started to flip it onto another shelf, when a new thought made her stop and reconsider.

A key to the attic door?

With a little thrill of excitement, she hurried upstairs and tried to force the key into the lock at the end of the hall. The fit wasn't even close, and after a few minutes of trying, Carolyn gave up and shoved the key into the pocket of her jeans. She'd have to ask Nora about it later, but right now there was work to do.

Carolyn hardly knew where to start. For several minutes she stood in the back bedroom, and then she just as grimly began yanking sheets off the furniture, tossing them out the door and into a pile in the middle of the hallway. As more antique furniture revealed itself, she shook her head and glanced down ruefully at her filthy hands.

“Hope you still believe in miracles, Mom,” she grumbled, “because it's sure going to take a good one to get this house in shape.”

She couldn't imagine how Hazel had lived in this place—and it was even harder to imagine how guests might actually come here and pay for the privilege of sleeping in these dark, dank rooms. Carolyn gathered up the sheets and went downstairs, making a quick detour to the parlor on her way to the kitchen.

Here—more than in any other room—she felt as if she'd taken a step back in time. The shades had come down from the windows, letting in pale, filtered light, and someone had run a dustcloth over the heavy, old-fashioned furniture so that everything gleamed with a dull shine. The rug and floorboards had been swept, and a pile of logs was stacked neatly in the fireplace. China figurines stared with chipped, painted faces. The room waited expectantly, as though a visitor from centuries past might arrive at any moment.

And maybe Carolyn Glanton stood in this same exact spot I'm standing in now and looked over at her husband while he warmed himself at the fire and told her how he was sailing away, and promised her he'd come back to her, no matter the powers of heaven and earth … and sea
…

“Mom's right.” Carolyn's voice was unusually loud in the silent room. “You're a hopeless, ridiculous romantic. Maybe poor Carolyn had the right idea after all. Matthew was probably a rogue and a scoundrel, and he never had the slightest intention of ever coming back for her.”

With a sound of disgust, she leaned against the front door.

The pounding came right behind her head.

As Carolyn screamed and jumped away, her eyes riveted in on the upper half of the door—on a slow, dark shadow sliding across the panes of beveled glass.

Someone's trying to get in
—

The pounding came again—louder this time—echoing on and on through the gloomy house. The shadow leaned forward … hesitated … then pulled back as Carolyn held her breath and frantically tried to think what to do. For one horrible second images shot through her brain—the blurry figure she'd seen outside yesterday … the ghost she'd seen last night in the attic—

And as she watched in growing horror, the doorknob slowly began to turn.

5

“H
EY, ANYONE HOME
?”

Huddled against the wall, Carolyn wasn't exactly sure what she expected to see. Certainly not the door popping open or the grocery bag thrusting into the room—and definitely not the tall young man who finally stepped across the threshold.

“Hello?” he said again. There was a long pause as he peered cautiously around the grocery sack, and then he shouted, “
Hello!
”