Haunted

  “I didn’t suggest that you were,” Darcy said. “I was just curious about what you really wanted.”

  “Um, sure, because the house is Matt’s.” He laughed suddenly. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t have any plans to off my kin so that I’m the only Stone left to inherit the place. I’m not sure I’d want Melody House. The place can be a damned headache. The upkeep is exorbitant. But don’t worry about me. I have a few college degrees of my own—I taught for a few years, did you know that?”

  “No. What did you teach?”

  “English. Hey, don’t look now, but the sheriff has been watching us suspiciously. Want to make him jealous?”

  “No,” Darcy said, smiling as she shook her head.

  “Too bad,” he said, but lightly.

  “Well…what shall we do now? Want to order some food? I’m ravenous.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And there’s an empty table over there. Let me see if I can gather the forces.”

  They headed for the table Clint had indicated, gathering their group as they did so. Adam had been deep in conversation with Matt, but the two of them joined them. Whatever his anger had been earlier, Matt displayed none of it at the Wayside Inn.

  Neither did he come particularly near Darcy. When the conversation at the table started to veer toward the haunting at Melody House, Matt stepped in to ask Carter about some of his properties, and Adam kept the ball rolling, wanting to know more about the general area. The meal passed pleasantly, and when it was over, yawns around the table indicated that it was time to go home.

  Darcy drove back with Adam, Penny, and Carter. They reached the house first. Darcy went straight up to the Lee Room. Adam went with her, taking the video and audio tapes that had been running from the recorders, and resetting them.

  “You are all right in here?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” she assured him.

  “I can stay in the chair, if you want,” Adam said.

  “Adam, if I don’t let these dreams come, I’ll never see it out to the end.”

  He nodded. “But you’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes! Get out, Adam. Go to bed,” she told him.

  He kissed her cheek, and left her.

  Darcy had just started to doze when she thought she heard movement on the balcony. She lay in bed for several seconds, listening.

  After a moment, she got up and went to the French doors, but didn’t open them. She paused, and listened. Sound…movement. She moved the draperies, her heart seeming to pound in her throat.

  There was someone on the balcony. Matt. He was at the rail near the door to his own bedroom suite, looking out at the night.

  She hesitated, wishing she could go out. There was no reason to do so.

  Painfully, she turned, and went back to bed.

  The woman in white.

  That night, Darcy saw her, standing at the foot of the bed. She was in a haze; Darcy saw no details in her face, no colors, just the woman, in sheer white, standing at the foot of the bed.

  Then, she faded.

  And the dream came. Somewhere inside herself, Darcy knew that the woman was growing more desperate, determined that Darcy understand.

  Darcy slipped into the entity. Into the woman. And into the past.

  She ran.

  She made it out of the bedroom, and to the landing. And it was there that he caught her, falling upon her.

  She struggled briefly, aware of his heat and strength as he grappled her down.

  Once…

  It had been so different. But now, she knew.

  Still, she fought fiercely, struggled, desperate, aware that her life was at stake. The very urgency gave her a burst of power she might have never known that she possessed. She scratched, swore, kicked, punched, and fought to gouge out his eyes. She caught him with such a blow against the jaw that he went immobile, and she took full advantage, shoving wildly against his body, casting him off. She crawled to free herself from the sprawled weight of his limbs. She staggered up herself, and made the first step, but his fingers entwined around the hem of her gown, dragging her back down. She fell atop him, the breath knocked from her, and for a moment, they both lay panting. The pain in her temple dazed her; she realized she had hit her head on the second step. At her side, while she remained paralyzed, he rose up to a half-seated position beside her. And again, their eyes met. Something within his softened suddenly. He reached out a hand. She flinched, but his fingers felt as gentle as raindrops against her cheeks. “I did love you so much,” he said.

  She touched him in return. He came to his feet, reaching for her hands, drawing her up and against him, and it might have been as many another night, when they had melded together, when passion had reigned every thought, when she could not bear to keep her hands off him, or he her. The room continued to spin, the pain in her temple was deep…but it seemed that he was whispering now, the words that could so arouse…and his hands, they were on her, his lips…nuzzled those whispers against her throat.

  It was a fight, surely, nothing more. His eyes could not have been so deadly.

  His whisper came again, against her lips, throat, her earlobes, her mouth, hard then, crushing against her. And she was falling…into his arms. She was aware of the sound of his footsteps against the hard wood floor, aware of his movement as he bore her weight.

  They returned to the bedroom, and he set down upon the bed, tenderly. She closed her eyes, thinking that the affair was too passionate, ruled by the senses, nothing more, and yes, so totally wrong. But he moved away, and she knew. Knew that he had left her only to shed his clothing so that he could return, and flesh could burn against flesh.

  But…

  Silence. Nothing.

  The moonlight pouring into the room, but no touch of his warmth, no vibrance and heat as he crawled atop her for he did not do so.

  A dog howled, a cry to heaven, to the night, mournful, pathetic, prophetic.

  Perhaps a storm was coming, and there would be thunder outside, like the rage of desire that was all that had ever really been between them. But a storm could mean a tempest, and that would be fine, for she still felt the adrenaline racing in her veins, but what she had seen before could not be, for he had loved her, loved her more than she had loved him, wanted her first without thought of consequences.

  The wind blew…

  But his silence continued.

  A howl sounded again, eerie in the night. A rage of wind? The baying of the hound. She didn’t know. She merely felt her heated flesh began to chill.

  She came up on her elbows, searching for him.

  He stood still at the secretary. He had not moved, not cast off his clothing in fevered abandon.

  He was reading, reading what she had written. He stooddead still, his eyes riveted on the paper, and the words that she had written.

  Then he turned to her, slowly. She saw the tension build in his hand, and rock through his arms and chest. She felt his gaze fall upon her with fury, greater than that she had ever seen before, even when he had first come that night.

  Fear, like icicles, ripped into her.

  Terror curled around her heart.

  His eyes, oh, God, his eyes.

  “You wasted no time,” he said aloud.

  She had to escape. But perhaps, her only chance lay in playing a game. Pretending that she didn’t see the death in his eyes.

  “I was angry. You meant to leave me.”

  He walked slowly to the side of the bed. “A woman scorned,” he said lightly.

  She would never know what the outcome might have been if she hadn’t sat down to write that evening. Perhaps, no different. She had seen her own destruction in his eyes when he had first come;

  this look was only a compound of that, and when they had struggled in the hallway, it had been a reprieve and nothing more. She had seen him when he had first arrived, seen the way he had looked up at her from the first-floor landing, far below, staring up the stairway, to see
her at the railing.

  “A woman scorned,” he repeated. “Is deadly. Deadly, deadly…dead.”

  She didn’t scream. She didn’t bother. She cursed him as he came toward her then. Cursed him, and the house, for all eternity. Her hatred was deep. She was about to be silenced. No one would ever know the truth about him, what had really happened. The truth would die with her, and in time, she would be…

  Nothing more than legend.

  If that much.

  She started to spring to her feet once again.

  She didn’t make it. He fell upon her.

  His hands…those hands which had brushed against her with the greatest tenderness and ardor…now closed around her neck.

  Tightened, and tightened.

  She strangled out curses. Swearing. With the darkening of the light that was her life, she still swore that he would pay, that come hell and damnation, somehow, sometime, through all the powers of existence, dark and light, she would come back, she would find her revenge.

  Choking, gasping, lips turned blue, breath fading, blackness before her eyes…

  “You’ll pay,” she swore.

  “But no one knows that you’re here,” he told her.

  The vise constricted, thumb pressing into her throat. Black pinpoints joined together. Her lungs were bursting. She longed desperately to keep fighting.

  But light was fading…fading.

  And then….

  She was history.

  Darcy woke, drenched with sweat, gasping for air. She sat up. A late-night show was still playing on the television. A coolness hummed throughout the room, soothing to her flesh, for she had been so hot, tossing and turning, twisting the bedclothes into piles of knots.

  She had come to the end. She had seen the spirit die in the flesh. And yet…

  She’d seen nothing clearly. No detail of face or form. She had felt the hands around her neck, but she hadn’t seen the face.

  She smoothed back her hair, and stopped.

  She was there again.

  The woman in white. Standing at the foot of Darcy’s bed.

  Then, she turned and started for the door. Darcy slipped from the bed. The woman turned back in her unearthly haze of white and beckoned.

  She opened the door to the hallway and beckoned again.

  And Darcy followed.

  14

  Matt lay awake, the picture of Darcy, contorted and gasping, replaying in his mind, over and over again.

  She needed to be out of this house.

  So why didn’t he just make her leave?

  He couldn’t deal with it, he knew he couldn’t deal with it, so why let her stay? Figure it out. Because he couldn’t bear to see her go. So, what? Was he waiting to see if she’d wake up one morning and admit the whole thing was an act, their way of bringing the culprit to justice who was rigging the house to make it appear haunted?

  It wasn’t going to happen. And though it might be in her own mind, what she thought she saw and felt was real to her.

  He was afraid for her, and he didn’t know why. He didn’t like being away from the house when she was in it. He didn’t believe that ghosts could hurt people. But the living could. Why should he be afraid for her then when those she was chasing were ghosts?

  He tossed, and turned, and then…

  He thought he heard her door open.

  He lay still, listening for a minute. Nothing. Nothing he could hear.

  He rose anyway.

  The wraith moved out of the door, and along the landing, heading for the stairs. Darcy followed. The ghost misted down the stairway in a white haze. Darcy paused at the landing.

  The spirit stopped, looking back. Beckoning.

  Once again, Darcy followed.

  She scampered down the stairway, and became suddenly aware that she wasn’t just in pursuit of a spirit. She resembled the spirit. She was in a long white cotton nightgown, chasing a specter. They were both puffs of white, the ghost floating, she actually setting her feet upon the steps. Bare feet. She hadn’t bothered with slippers.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that the ghost would lead her beyond the house.

  But that was what the specter intended.

  She drifted through the foyer, straight to the front door, and then through it.

  From somewhere within the house, Darcy heard a door close. She hesitated, then hurriedly began playing with the alarm and the complicated locks on the front door, opened it, and rushed out.

  The spirit moved across the lawn and started drifting toward the stables and the outbuildings beyond.

  Darcy followed. There was a moon out, and floodlights illuminated the entry to Melody House. But once she passed the stables, the lights dimmed. The ghost was headed toward the old smokehouse.

  Suddenly, the apparition went dead still. Darcy, too, paused.

  The spirit began to fade, slipping behind the building. Darcy ran after it.

  She came around the side of the smokehouse and discovered that the wraith had indeed disappeared. As she stood there, puzzled and frustrated, she heard the snap of a twig. Something warned her not to make her presence known.

  She flattened herself against the smokehouse, listening, waiting.

  Footsteps fell…slowly, furtively. She held very still.

  Closer…

  She let her fingers crawl down the wood of the smokehouse door, seeking the handle. She gripped it, and tugged, but it refused to give.

  The moonlight was casting curious shadows. Shapes that formed and reformed, billowed and withered, like the rise and fall of branches from the neighboring trees. But then one shadow became distinct.

  It was that of a man.

  She heard a strange, soft, snapping sound.

  The man was carrying something. A cord…a strap…of some kind. An end was held in each hand and he tightened it, eased it, tightened it, eased it.

  She’d seen the motion before. In a dream. When a killer had been contemplating murder.

  He stood very still in the moonlight. Darcy ceased to breathe, watching, waiting.

  Then the shadow moved.

  And Darcy did, too.

  She shoved away from the smokehouse, coming around the other side of it. She ran as if all the demons of hell were after her, heading back toward the house. At first, she heard thundering footsteps as well, footsteps that fell in hot pursuit.

  The porch, blackened by shadow despite the floodlights, was directly before her. She raced up the steps, wincing when her bare foot fell upon a small pebble. She started to hurtle herself toward the door, then tried to halt her impetus, a scream rising in her voice as a massive shadow moved between her and the entry.

  She crashed hard into the rising shadow, gasping out rather than screaming, but in a frenzy and ready to rip away and scream.

  She couldn’t do so.

  Arms wrapped around her, fingers bit into her shoulders.

  “Darcy!”

  She froze. Matt.

  “Darcy!”

  Matt. Had he been behind her? Had he been the shadow she had seen? Impossible, he’d still be behind her. Unless he had doubled around, leapt the railing, and sped around the porch. She was fast. That didn’t mean that he might not be faster.

  She had heard footsteps, and then…

  Nothing.

  “Darcy!” He gave her a little shake.

  “What?”

  “What?” he echoed. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Chasing your ghost! She thought.

  “Sorry, I was just out on a moonlight stroll,” she said aloud.

  She was close to him, and yet startled when his palm fell against her heart, a touch far too intimate, and though platonic, an aching reminder of other nights.

  “Your heart is beating a thousand miles an hour.”

  “I thought I’d jog.”

  “In your bare feet and nightgown?”

  He was looking sterner than a turn-of-the-century schoolmaster.

  “Matt, what are y
ou doing out here?” she demanded.

  “Trying to find out what you’re doing. And don’t tell me about moonlight strolls.”

  “Why? I’m sure you’d believe that far easier than the truth,” she challenged dryly.

  “The ghost invited you out?” he quizzed skeptically.

  “Yep.”

  “And where did she go?”

  “She disappeared behind the smokehouse,” Darcy said. “Look, what good is any of this? You think I’m practically psycho, and it doesn’t matter what I say. So—will you excuse me?” He was still blocking her way. “May I go back in?”

  He hesitated. She was afraid for a minute that he’d tell her no, that he’d get her things, and drive her into town.

  Then, she felt an unwilling tinge of fear. Maybe he had followed her. And maybe he had leapt the railing and raced around to accost her on the porch. Maybe whatever it was going on in Melody House somehow related back to him.

  No.

  “Matt, please, let me by you,” she said softly.

  He didn’t budge. “I don’t want you running around here at night like this,” he told her.

  “May we go back in?”

  “Did you hear me? I don’t want you around here in the dark like this. Barefoot. Half-naked.”

  “I am not half-naked!”

  “In the moonlight, Miss Tremayne, you might as well be entirely naked.”

  “Sorry. I’ll try not to excite the bugs and bats too much,” she said. “May I please go in?”

  “Once you’ve listened to me!”

  “Fine, I understand. You don’t want me running around the place at night.”

  “I don’t care if the ghost sits down at your bedside and asks you out for a barbecue, do you understand?”

  “Your words are incredibly clear,” she assured him.

  He stepped aside, and opened the door. She slipped on in, hoping she could tear back up the stairs and elude his questions and orders for the rest of the night at least.