"How about all the way up to my room?" Jared countered. When Luke cast a quick glance at the house before answering, Jared asked, "What's wrong? You're not scared, are you?"
" 'Course I'm not," Luke replied a little too quickly.
"You ever been inside the house?"
Again Luke glanced at the looming shape of the huge Victorian. He shook his head. "I got an uncle who says he was in it once," he offered.
"You want to see it?" Jared put just enough of a challenge in his voice to be certain Luke would be unable to refuse.
"Sure," the other boy replied.
Together, the three teenagers wrestled the mattress up to the second floor, where they dropped it onto the box spring that Kim and Jared had already brought up.
"How many rooms does it have?" Luke asked.
Jared shrugged. "I don't know—maybe twenty, I guess. We're going to turn it into a hotel."
They were back out on the landing, and Luke gazed down into the vast entry hall below. "Who'd want to stay here?"
"Well, it's not going to look like this," Kim replied. "Dad says it won't be ready for at least six months."
"I still bet nobody'll stay," Luke said. "Not after everything that's happened." Jared and Kim eyed each other uneasily, reading each other's thoughts: Do we really want to hear? But before either of them could reply, Luke was already telling them, "Sometimes you can hear a baby crying. And lots of people have seen that guy who hung himself."
"That was my dad's uncle," Jared said.
If Luke heard the hint of warning in Jared's voice, he chose to ignore it. "They say he's still here. Looking for the baby."
Kim and Jared exchanged another quick glance, both of them remembering the words they'd overheard at the funeral that morning. "Father MacNeill says nobody knows if it was even true that my dad's aunt was pregnant."
Luke Roberts rolled his eyes scornfully. "Father Mack wouldn't even admit his own mother was ever pregnant! And he sure wouldn't ever believe a woman would kill her own baby."
Kim's fingers flew involuntarily to the cross that hung from her neck, clutching it tightly. "How do you know Aunt Cora did that?" she asked.
"Everybody knows it," Luke Roberts replied. "Just because they never found the baby—"
The cross suddenly felt hot, and Kim jerked her hand away. "If they never found it, how does anyone know she killed it? How does anyone know there even was a baby?"
For the first time, a look of uncertainty clouded Luke's face, but he answered: "If there wasn't a baby, how come you can hear it cry at night? And how come it cries if its ma didn't kill it? I'm telling you, everybody knows what happened. My uncle says—"
Kim felt a surge of anger. How could this boy know what had happened here? He hadn't been here! And how come he kept saying "everybody knows"? "I bet none of it happened," she cut in before Luke could repeat whatever his uncle had said. "What have you ever seen yourself? What have you actually heard? And if you were close enough to see or hear anything, what were you doing? Just because nobody was living here doesn't mean it wasn't private property!" Luke Roberts's face flushed scarlet, and Kim could see his right hand clench into a fist. "What are you going to do, hit me?" she asked, her eyes locking onto his as if daring him to raise his fist.
Luke, shocked into silence by Kim's outburst, lurched back against the balustrade, lost his balance, and tumbled over. As he screamed with terror, the fingers of his right hand grabbed on to the railing. For a second he hung suspended from one arm, his left hand groping wildly before closing on one of the posts that supported the banister, but he quickly began to lose his grip, and for an instant that seemed to stretch into an eternity, his eyes—glazed with fear—fastened on Kim.
She knew that if he fell, the image of his eyes, terrified and accusing, would be burned into her memory forever. The horror of the moment paralyzed her, but in her mind she screamed out to Jared to help Luke.
As if he'd heard her, Jared darted to the railing, his own strong hands closing on Luke's wrists before the other boy's grip gave way. Then he hauled Luke back over the balustrade.
"I—I'm sorry," Kim stammered. "I didn't mean—"
But now that he was safe, Luke's terror was transmuting into anger. "What the hell did I do? I was just telling you what I heard! Christ—I coulda broken my neck!" As he started down the stairs, he glowered back at Kim. "Maybe your aunt wasn't the only crazy one around here."
Before Kim could reply, he had slammed the front door behind him.
CHAPTER 8
The silence that fell over the old house that night was far deeper than any of its occupants had ever experienced before, and except for Molly—who fell asleep almost the moment Janet laid her in her crib—each of them lay awake for a long time. They listened to the silence.
No insects chirped.
No animals rustled in the darkness outside.
Even the ancient frame of the house itself uttered no sound to disturb the quiet.
Yet each of them heard echoes of voices in the silence; each of them found eyes watching them from the darkness.
For Janet, it was the eyes of Jake Cumberland, reaching out to her from the deep shadows of the magnolia tree outside the cemetery. They held her in thrall. And the voice was Alma Morgan's, telling her that Cora Conway had been perfectly sane. But Corinne Beckwith's voice, too, echoed softly in the night, whispering of a baby who would have been her husband's cousin—if it had lived.
If it had ever existed at all.
Her eyes open, Janet scanned the darkness, as if somehow the truth of what might have happened in this house forty years ago might be hidden in the black folds of the night.
But the darkness, like the silence, kept its secrets.
As the night crept on, and sleep continued to elude her, Janet felt an urge to reach out to Ted, to slip her hand into his if for no other reason that to feel the comfort of knowing she wasn't alone in the silence and the darkness. But it had been so long since she'd welcomed his touch that she could no longer bring herself to reach out to him. When sleep finally embraced her, she lay with her back to her husband.
For Ted, it was the darkly penetrating eyes of Father MacNeill that glowered at him out of the darkness, the priest's voice that echoed in the silence. "A hotel? ... I hope you're prepared for a fight on that one!" But far more than the threatening words, it was the look he'd seen in the cleric's eyes that kept Ted awake in the silence and darkness of the night. The look flared up the moment Ted told him he wouldn't be coming to his church, wouldn't be listening to him preach every Sunday morning, and though the priest only let him see it for a few seconds, it was a look Ted had seen before.
It was the same look he'd seen in Frank Gilman's eyes the day he'd lost his job.
The same look he'd seen in Tony's eyes just before he'd walked out of the bar to go to Gilman's office.
The same look he'd seen in the eyes of so many people.
All the men who'd ever fired him.
All the others who'd refused to hire him.
All the bartenders who'd poured him drinks.
All the men who once had been his friends.
He'd seen it in the eyes of his father.
He'd even seen it in the eyes of his son.
It was a look he'd learned to recognize long ago, when he was still a boy. A look that told him he did not belong, that there was something everyone else knew, something everyone else shared, that they would never share with him.
For a while, in the first years of his marriage, he hadn't noticed it in Janet's eyes. She'd hidden it well at first, but as the years went on he'd started catching glimpses of it. She tried to hide it, but he'd seen it clearly enough.
A look of superiority.
No understanding, nor pity, nor even sympathy.
Only superiority. And something else.
It rose up out of the darkness, and though he'd never let himself recognize it before, in the silence of the night he finally knew exactly what it was
he'd seen so clearly in the priest's eyes that afternoon.
And not just the priest's eyes, but everyone else's as well.
Contempt.
Their eyes had always said it all:
You don't belong here.
You're not part of us.
We don't want you here.
It had been that way all his life, for as long as he could remember. From the time his mother left him when he was only a baby, until his father died while he was still in school.
Through all the places he'd never fit in, all the jobs where they'd found reasons to fire him.
Never, ever, had he felt like he belonged.
But here—in this house—he did belong. This house had been his uncle's house, and his grandfather's house, and his great-grandfather's house. And now it was his house.
And he belonged!
A burning fury at the injustices he'd suffered began to glow inside Ted Conway. As he lay in the quiet of the house—his house—he swore he would never let it happen again.
This time, he would show them all.
He would restore this old wreck—make it more beautiful than it was when it was built. And he would have his hotel.
He would have it, no matter who tried to stop him, and it would succeed. It would succeed so well that no one—not the priest, not his wife, not his son, not anyone—would ever dare hold him in contempt again.
Reaching out in the darkness, he slid open the drawer of the nightstand. His fingers closed on the pint of bourbon he'd hidden away that afternoon.
Now, in the silence and darkness of the night, he opened it and held the bottle to his lips.
I'll show them, he swore to himself once more as the warmth of the fiery liquid fueled the rage inside him. I'll show them all!
It was Luke Roberts's eyes that kept Kim awake that night, for every time she closed her eyes, she saw them again. Saw the terror, and the accusation.
And heard his words in the silence that the darkness had brought: "If there wasn't a baby, how come you can hear it cry at night? And how come it cries if its ma didn't kill it?"
Could any of it be true? Of course not! He'd just been trying to scare her. But still she found herself listening, straining to hear....
What?
She didn't know.
As the night stretched on and the silence grew heavier, she strained to listen for the sounds that had always lulled her to sleep at night: crickets chirping, frogs calling for their mates.
Even the whine of mosquitoes or the bark of the dog next door—the barking that Scout had instantly echoed, waking everyone in the house—would have been welcome this night.
So would the droning of traffic in the street, or the eerie hoot of an owl hunting in the night.
But to hear nothing at all...
She tossed and turned restlessly until Muffin, curled on the pillow beside her, angrily swiped her, then moved to the foot of the bed. And finally, blessedly, she fell into sleep.
And heard it.
It was a scream such as she'd never heard before; an unearthly wail that tore the mantle of sleep from her with enough force to jerk her upright in bed.
Her heart was pounding and her skin was clammy with a cold sheen of sweat.
But the night was still so silent that she knew at once the scream she'd heard existed only in her mind.
She lay back down, curled tightly on her side.
And saw it.
A creature, blacker even than the night, crouched on the far side of her room, as if about to lunge for her.
She froze, too afraid even to breathe, and then, out of the silence, she heard the words whispered to her by her dying aunt: "It will protect you.... Don't ever take it off."
Her fingers closed around the cross, and she felt her terror begin to ebb.
A shadow, she thought. It's only a shadow!
Propping herself on her side, she saw that the moon was just beginning to rise, its silvery glow barely seeping through the windows, whose years of accumulated grime had yet to be washed away.
And on the windowsill stood Muffin, her back arched, her tail sticking straight up.
As Kim watched, the cat paced the length of the windowsill.
"Muffin," Kim called out quietly. "Come on, Muffin. Come back to bed."
The cat hissed in the darkness, then turned and stalked back the other way.
"What is it?" Kim asked, getting out of bed and going to the cat. "What's wrong? What's out there?" Kim pressed close to the window, straining to see through the heavy smudges that coated them, at the same time reaching out to soothe Muffin with a gentle stroke.
The cat hissed, and took another swipe at her. This time, its claws left three stinging welts on the back of her hand. Then, as if to make its desires crystal clear, the cat struck hard at the windowpane.
"Now?" Kim whispered. "Why do you have to go out now?" She reached out as if to stroke the cat again, but when Muffin hissed a warning, she quickly snatched her hand back. "All right," she said as she fumbled with the window latch, struggling to work it loose. "If it's that important—" The latch came free, and she jerked the window open.
In an instant the cat was gone.
Kim pulled the window wide and peered out into the night, searching for some sign of her pet. "Muffin?" she called. "Muffin, come back!"
But the silence of the night swallowed her words as thoroughly as if she'd never spoken them.
And then, just as she had when she'd awakened a few minutes earlier, she froze, her heart beating with cold terror.
Nothing had changed—nothing she could see or hear, at least.
The night was still silent, and even the light of the moon could barely penetrate the darkness.
But there was something out there.
Kim could feel it.
Something—or someone—was out there.
Out there, watching her.
CHAPTER 9
Every muscle in Jake Cumberland's body tensed. He hadn't moved in nearly six hours, not since nightfall had let him steal out of the woods on the east side of the property and move close to the old carriage house, where he hid himself so completely in the deep shadows that even someone passing within a few feet of him would never have known he was there.
There he'd remained, keeping his silent vigil, watching the house.
He hadn't really believed it when he'd first heard someone say people were gonna be moving back into the old house. After all, everyone knew there weren't any more Conways, not since the old woman had died. But it had turned out that everybody was wrong.
There were still Conways around—five of 'em, anyways.
Right after he'd heard the talk—the same day the old lady died—he'd made his way along the path through the bottomland to a place where he could keep a watch on the house, and sure enough, there they were. He'd recognized them the minute he saw them—'specially the man. Everything about him had Conway written all over it.
It wasn't just the dark hair and blue eyes.
It was the way he moved, too, and held his head.
Jake could practically smell it on him.
He'd watched while they all went into the house, never moving, just like when he was out hunting and had to hold stone-still for hours at a time, less'n the game would get scared off. He'd waited until they'd come back out of the house and gotten back in their car and gone away, but even as he watched the car disappear, he knew they'd be back, knew it the same way he always knew just where to set his traps, even on nights when it was so dark he couldn't hardly see a thing.
Then, when he'd gone to the funeral this afternoon, he'd seen them again. 'Course, he hadn't gone inside the church or the cemetery—his mama had warned him about churches when he was still so small he didn't even go to school—and he hadn't never liked cemeteries. Sometimes you had to go into them, though, but only when you needed something, and even then you only went in the middle of the night when the moon was high and its silvery light made everything look lik
e it was made out of pewter, like the mug his grandmama had left him. It still stood on the windowsill above the sink in the cabin. Though he didn't really remember his grandmama, he thought about her every time he used the mug, peering through its glass bottom while he drank.
"It's so you can see your enemies, even when you're drinking," his mama had told him. "Your grandmama always said it was important to keep an eye on your enemies, so they won't catch you by surprise."
Sometimes, when his mama was working her magic, Jake watched her peering into the mug, and knew that even when she wasn't drinking from it, the window in the bottom of the mug let her see what her enemies were doing, no matter where they were. "They can't hide, Jake," she'd said. "Not as long as you got the mug." Even now, whenever Jake drank from the mug, his eyes stayed open as he searched for any threat that might lie beyond the glass.
But never had he seen any Conways through the bottom of the mug. In fact, he'd almost wondered if maybe he'd been wrong before. But when he'd hung around outside the fence of the cemetery this morning, there they were, the man helping carry the old lady's coffin, and the rest of them following after.
He stayed and watched them bury the old lady, and tried to work some of his mama's magic on them, but knew it wouldn't work. You couldn't just work the magic—you had to have a lot of stuff first, but he'd still tried. And he was pretty sure the woman, at least, felt him give her the eye, 'cause she'd looked straight at him a couple of times. But he hadn't flinched. No, sir. He'd stayed right where he was.
Then, after they all left the cemetery, he'd come around through the woods and kept right on watching.
They'd come back here and started taking their stuff out of the truck and putting it into the house. Only then had he decided that it was true, they really were planning to stay.
Shoulda burnt that place down, he thought. Shoulda burnt it down years ago, Finally he'd gone home and waited for nightfall, when it would be safe to creep back to the house and search for the things he'd need to make his mama's magic work.