Whispers at Midnight (8 page)

A wave of nostalgia hit her: She missed it. She missed her grandmother. She missed being a child in this house.

“So where’s the bathroom?”

Sandra was practically breathing down her neck. Hugo darted between her legs to disappear into the darkness with a wave of his tail. Beyond the porch, rain began to fall in shining silver sheets. From deep inside the house, she could hear a faint
plop, plop.
Some things never changed: The ancient tin roof had clearly sprung yet another leak.

Forget nostalgia, Carly thought with a grimace. Present circumstances were almost more than she could handle.

Just to make sure Matt had been telling her the truth, she flipped the light switch by the door. Nothing happened.

“This way,” she said to Sandra, surprised that her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper as she headed down the dark center hall. The hush of the house seemed to call for quiet. As if something inside lay sleeping and shouldn’t be disturbed—which was ludicrous, of course, and could be chalked up to too much imagination coupled with too many Stephen King books. Shaking off the feeling, she continued on, but left the front door standing wide open behind them. For the light it admitted, of course, and definitely
not
as a possible escape route. Granted, the light in question was gray and meager, but it was way better than no light at all.

As for the soft roar of the rain, it was soothing, not spooky, just like the sudden rush of cool air that blew through the screen was refreshing rather than ghostly.

So there.

“The bathroom’s behind that door,” she said, deliberately using her normal voice and pointing. Fortunately for the health and well-being of Sandra’s bladder, the door happened to be just inside the wedge of grayness cast by the open front door, because she was fairly sure that Sandra, who was edging cautiously along in her wake, would have balked at going any farther. The darkness turned black as the inside of a cauldron just a few steps beyond the bathroom door.

“
Shh!
Do you have to talk so loud?”

The house’s atmosphere was clearly getting to Sandra, too. Big surprise. Sandra had freely admitted to being creeped out while they were still outside on the comparatively unatmospheric lawn. If truth were told, right at that particular moment Carly might be experiencing some of those same chickenhearted pangs herself, but as their little expedition’s fearless leader she refused to give in to them. She wasn’t about to allow herself to be afraid of what was now her own house.

Her own pitch-dark spooky house.

A sharp click just behind her made her jump almost out of her shoes.

“Ouch! Crap. How’m I supposed to pee in the dark? I can’t even find the toilet.”

Having turned into the bathroom while Carly ventured ahead,
Sandra had shut the door. That was the sound she had heard, Carly realized. She sagged with relief, then caught herself up and deliberately stiffened her spine. Leaving Sandra to her own devices, she headed around the wide staircase and moved cautiously toward the dining room. It was next to the kitchen at the back of the house, through a set of pocket doors that opened off the hall. Feeling her way along, she discovered by touch that the doors were open. It was so dark, here in the bowels of the house, that she literally couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Her grandmother had favored heavy velvet draperies on all the windows. They were closed now, shutting out the faintest hope that any stray sliver of grayness might light her way.

It was the absolute darkness that was making her imagine things, Carly decided as she moved with increasingly tentative steps around the perimeter of the large dining room toward where the china cabinet had always stood against the far wall. Like the feeling that she was being watched. Like the faint, hard to place but somehow off-putting smell. Like the sudden rustling sound that seemed unnaturally loud in the darkness, as if a movement had been made by an unseen somebody or something, and quickly stilled.

Carly froze, peering blindly in the direction from which the sound had come. That part was
not
her imagination. She had definitely heard something move. For a moment she stood motionless as her heart accelerated like a race car’s engine.

She was not alone.
She was sure of it. Someone,
something,
was there with her in the dark.

Before she could totally hyperventilate, an imperative-sounding meow snatched her back from Jason/Freddy/Michael Myers land. With a rush of half-shamed relief, she realized just who was there in the dining room with her: Hugo, of course. His were the eyes she felt tracking her through the darkness. His fur was probably damp, accounting for the elusively familiar smell that, vaguely, she somehow associated with something unpleasant. As for the sound—perhaps he’d brushed up against something, or even batted something across the floor.

“Hugo, you scared me to death,” she said. The cat didn’t answer—
not that she had expected him to, of course—but with the eerie feeling of another presence now explained to satisfaction Carly was reassured anyway. Just knowing that Hugo was there in the dark with her made her feel better. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she went on about her business. Another step forward, then one more, a left turn—the china cabinet should be straight ahead. The drawer she sought was on the right front side beneath the glassed-in display shelves. In just another minute or so, she’d have her hands on a candle and matches, and then there would be light.

Blessed light.

The better to see you by, my dear,
she mentally cackled at Hugo in her best Big-Bad-Wolf-does-Grandma imitation, and then smiled at her own idiocy.

Still smiling, taking one more baby step forward, she stretched out a hand to make certain she didn’t bump nose-first into the china cabinet, but instead of touching the smooth wood she was expecting, she felt something soft. Cloth, covering something warm and resilient. Something warm and resilient that rose slightly as she touched it.

A human chest. A living, breathing human chest.

Time seemed to stand still.

Even as it dawned on her what it was that she was touching, a hand, meaty and warm and strong, clamped around her wrist.

Carly screamed.

6

T
HE SCREAM OF THE CENTURY
was still ripping its way out of her throat as Carly yanked her hand free and spun, ready to run like a rabbit with the dogs after it. A violent shove between her shoulder blades sent her careening into the table instead. Its sharp corner caught her hip painfully. Even as she gasped and bent double and clutched at her hip the intruder took flight. The sound of a body exploding into motion behind her was unmistakable. Something solid brushed past her protruding backside and then he—she was sure it was a he because of the size of the hand that had grabbed her wrist—was gone, feet pounding as he rushed toward the kitchen.

Another scream followed the first. Barely aware that she was the one responsible for the shattering sounds, Carly pushed away from the table and hurled herself in the opposite direction. Heart racing, cold streams of terror snaking up and down her spine, she made it into the hall in one piece, screaming all the way. Sandra, still in the bathroom, was yelling her name. Without answering, Carly torpedoed toward the open front door—and smacked into yet another warm, resilient object that grabbed her upper arms hard as she recoiled.

The scream that resulted could have deafened someone clear on the other side of town. Galvanized by fear, she fought desperately to be free.

“Carly! Jesus, Carly, it’s me!”

Matt’s voice. Matt’s hands. Carly quit struggling with a gasp. Her knees went weak, and she shuddered as she drew in great gulps of air. He hung on to her, his fingers digging into her soft arms. It was so dark she couldn’t see him, so dark she couldn’t see anything except the gray triangle that led to the open door, which beckoned like the gateway to the promised land some twenty feet away, but she would have known his voice anywhere. It was, she realized with a vague sense of chagrin, still hard-wired into the circuitry of her brain. Could it, by some miracle, have been Matt in the dining room? No. As certain as she was that it was Matt who held her now, she was equally certain that he was not the man who had grabbed her before.

“Are you all right? What the hell happened?”

“Matt. Oh, God, Matt.”

She was shaking, and it was hard to get the words out. Making an indecipherable sound under his breath, he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. Carly sagged against him, grateful for his solid strength. Matt. Thank God for Matt. He might be a no good dirty rotten son of a bitch in just about every way that counted, but he wouldn’t do her any physical harm. In fact, she knew as well as she knew that cinnamon rolls had calories that he would do his best to keep her safe.

“What?”
he demanded.

Carly took a deep breath. “It must have been the prowler. He was here—in the house—in the dining room. He grabbed me.” She shuddered anew at the memory. “He ran toward the kitchen.”

“Stay here.” Matt’s voice was sharp. Grasping her wrists, he detached her sudden death-grip with laughable ease and stepped away before she could stop him—and she would have stopped him, because the idea of being left alone in the dark now scared the pants off her.

“Matt…”
Under almost any other circumstances, the panicked urgency of her tone would have embarrassed her.

“Don’t move.” He was already out of reach. She knew because she tried to grab him. Switching on a flashlight she hadn’t known he had,
he was heading with swift purpose toward the dining room. She tracked his progress with instinctively held breath until the beam vanished inside the open pocket doors.

Just like that, she was on her own in the dark and terrifying hall. Exhaling, she looked warily around.

“Carly! Carly, what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Thumping around like a moose in a broom closet, Sandra was clearly still in the bathroom. “Ow! I can’t see anything! I can’t find the doorknob! Carly, can you hear me? Are you out there? Carly?”

A man yelled. Almost simultaneously, something crashed toward the back of the house, as if an object that was both big and breakable had hit the floor and shattered. Carly jumped what felt like six feet straight up, then whipped around, staring uselessly toward the kitchen, from which the sounds had seemed to come. Looking in that direction, she could see nothing at all; she might as well have been blindfolded.

Matt. Had something happened to Matt? Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest. Again she strained to see or hear. Nothing.

“Matt?” Calling him, her voice sounded all quavery. Matt didn’t answer. She broke into a cold sweat. Had something happened to him? How would she know if something had? The downstairs was a rabbit warren of interconnecting halls and rooms. Matt could be anywhere. So, in fact, could the prowler. Having dispensed with Matt, at that very moment he could even be circling back around toward
her.
…

Galvanized by the thought, Carly got her rear in gear and bolted for the exit.

“Car-lee-ee!” The pitiful-sounding wail was close at hand, and it jerked her attention away from the beckoning screen door.

“Sandra!” Carly realized that she couldn’t just leave her friend to the tender mercies of whatever fiend might answer her cries. Sweating, panting, she made a lightning detour to her right and yanked open the bathroom door. “Come on, come on, there’s somebody in the house!”

Sandra leaped out into the hall, trusty pan in hand.

“
Somebody in the house?
What do you mean, there’s somebody in the house?” Brandishing the pan, she looked wildly around.

“Come on!”

Explanations could wait. Carly took off again with Sandra, ignorant as to exactly what was going on but no fool, right on her tail. Carly shoved the screen door wide and ran out into the safer-feeling grayness of the night. Across the porch, down the steps, through the yard, into the truck, lock the doors—bingo, sounded like a plan. But before Carly could do more than barely begin to put it into motion, Sandra let out a startled cry behind her. Whirling, Carly watched through the closing screen door as Sandra went down in the hall with a crash that seemed to shake the house.

“Sandra!”

Dear God, had Sandra been shoved, shot … ? Pulse racing, Carly yanked the door open again, prepared to go to her friend’s rescue in the teeth of the monster lurking in the dark.

“Stupid cat,” Sandra groaned, rolling onto her back. As if on cue, Hugo shot through the open door in a blur of white, streaked past Carly’s legs and flew across the porch to disappear over the rail into the still-falling rain.

“Hugo!” Calling uselessly after him, gaze swiveling from the place where the escapee had vanished into the night to the fallen one left behind, Carly made the obvious connection: Sandra had tripped over Hugo.

The lights came on. Just like that. One minute Carly was gaping at Sandra sprawled on the floor through the shadowy darkness, and the next she was gaping at her sprawled on the floor by the soft light of the overhead chandelier.