Chill Of Fear

CHAPTER 14

“Missy, where are you taking me?" The uneasiness Diana felt was increasing, building, and she had the sudden, frightened notion that this spirit of her supposed sister might be far less benevolent than Diana had assumed her to be. "There's something I have to show you."

"Why can't you just tell me whatever it is you want me to know?" Diana was looking around, trying to figure out where in the hotel they were. But the corridor was peculiarly featureless in the gray time — even more so than usual — and seemed to stretch ahead of them forever. "This isn't right," she added before Missy could reply. "This looks—"

"There's something Quentin's forgotten," Missy said, ignoring both the question and comment. "What?"

"Because of what happened to me, he thinks it's about children."

Diana only partly heard, because Missy had turned a corner as she spoke, and to her surprise Diana found herself looking at a green door. It was the only spot of color she had ever seen in the gray time.

"You have to remember this place, Diana. This door."

"Why?" Diana was doing her best to think clearly, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.

"Because you'll be safe here. When it's important, when you need a safe place, come here."

"I thought... all places were the same in the gray time."

"Not this place. It's a special place, in your time as well as here. It's protected. Don't forget."

Diana wanted to ask more questions, but before she could, Missy was going on.

"Diana, listen to me. Quentin always believed it was about children, but it isn't. Children are easiest because they're so often vulnerable, unprotected. Easy prey. It feeds off fear. You remember the terror of a child, don't you, Diana?"

Her lips felt oddly stiff and very cold when Diana murmured, "Yes. I remember."

"It isn't about the children. It isn't even about me. It's about punishment. It's about judgment. He was judged. And punished."

Again, Diana wanted to question, wanted to understand all this more clearly. But before she could speak, they both heard/felt it.

Tha-thum.

Tha-thum.

Tha-thum!

Missy's face changed, and she said quickly, "You have to go back. Now. It can cross over too, Diana, don't forget that. And a medium's mind can be the most vulnerable of all. If it finds you—"

"Missy, I don't understand."

"You will." Missy reached out and took Diana's hand, her small one surprisingly warm rather than cold. "Don't forget the green door. But go back now. Reach for Quentin."

Diana wasn't sure she could, because her mind felt sluggish and cold, and doing anything at all required too much effort of her. But the warmth of Missy's small hand seemed to chase away part of the chill...

Tha-thum!

Tha-thum!

She could feel the floor underneath her vibrate, as though under the steps of something immeasurably heavy, and the grayness around her seemed to be darkening, shading toward black. She tried to reach out mentally, thinking of Quentin, needing to be with him.

There was a bright flash of light, then another, and between them the gray was getting darker and darker.

"Hurry," Missy said. "It's—"

"—here," Diana said, opening her eyes.

"Jesus, don't do that to me again," Quentin said.

She turned her head and looked at him, a little dazed and more than a little confused. He was holding her hand, and his felt warm and strong, and she was once again conscious of that unfamiliar sense of security.

Safe. She was safe. Now.

"Are you all right?" he demanded.

"I think so."

He drew a breath and released it, clearly relieved. He didn't let go of her hand. "Another visit to the gray time?"

Diana nodded slowly.

"Another guide?"

"Missy."

That caught him off guard. "You talked to her?"

"Yes."

"And?"

Diana told him, about the green door and Missy's warning that "it" wasn't about hurting children but was about punishment and judgment.

"I don't remember a green door in this place," he said.

"Me either."

"But it's a safe place for you."

Trying to remember exactly what she'd been told, Diana said, "I think so. Something about it being a protected place here and in the gray time."

A bit grim, Quentin said, "If she offered you a safe place, it must mean she believes you'll need one."

A cold finger glided up Diana's spine. "I guess so."

"And she said it's about judgment, about punishment."

"Yes. Because he was judged and punished. That killer."

"Samuel Barton."

"Yes."

Quentin digested that for a few moments, frowning, then said, "What else?"

She didn't know if he was using any of his extra senses or if her face was an open book to him, but she knew she had to answer. So she did, telling him what Missy had said about her deepest fears of being unable to handle her abilities and becoming trapped between two worlds, about her terror over what had happened to her mother. And it was only then that Diana remembered something else.

"My God. She said 'when we visited Mommy.' That I was frightened by the people in the hospital, the people without their souls, when we visited Mommy. Quentin... Missy wasn't a half sister. We had the same father and mother."

Stephanie wouldn't have admitted it aloud, but the major reason she asked Ransom Padgett to accompany her down to the basement wasn't to help carry any files or boxes she decided to bring back upstairs. It was because she didn't want to be alone down there.

Not that he asked, of course.

He used one of the many keys on his ring to unlock the basement access door, then led the way down well-illuminated stairs, saying over his shoulder, "I'll give you fair warning, Ms. Boyd— it's hell trying to find anything down here. I told Management years ago that the place ought to be cleared out, at least of the junk, but they didn't listen to me. Don't have to, mind you, 'cause I just work here. But still."

Stephanie only half listened to him, looking around as they reached the bottom of the steps and feeling a bit sheepish now. The basement was as well illuminated as the stairs had been, and though the vast space was undoubtedly cluttered with what Padgett termed "junk," there was a kind of order to it all.

She could see a dozen big filing cabinets in a smaller, partially walled-off area near the stairs, the bulging cardboard file boxes stacked on top of them mute evidence that all of the cabinets were undoubtedly stuffed to capacity and that more storage space for paperwork had been required.

Great. That's just great. I'll be down here for weeks.

Sighing, she looked around the rest of the basement space visible from the foot of the stairs.

One section held unused furniture, presumably in need of repair or perhaps just abandoned due to changing styles and tastes, with chairs stacked atop tables and an occasional dust cloth draped over upholstered pieces to protect them. Another section was filled with boxes, most of whose big labels indicated old linens and draperies.

In yet another area, shelves held an amazing assortment of outmoded kitchen gadgets, cheek by jowl with what looked like stacks of old magazines and newspapers. And leaning against the shelves were dozens of large framed prints, again, presumably, moved down here due to changing tastes.

"My God," she muttered. "Did they throw anything away?"

"Not so's you'd notice," Padgett said in mild disgust. "Ought to, though. There's plenty of charities would love some of this junk, and God knows the textiles they saved are likely rotten or moth-eaten after so many years. There's a whole stack of rugs in one of the back corners that were probably worth a fortune in their day. Not much left of 'em now." He shrugged. "Anything's needed up in the hotel, they always buy new, so I don't get why the old and broken stuff ends up down here."

"Saving for a rainy day, I suppose."

They both listened to a rumble of thunder so low and long that they could feel the vibrations of it beneath their feet, and Padgett lifted an eyebrow at her.

Stephanie had to laugh, but said, "Well, I'm not going to be the one to tackle this, that's all I know. Or at least, I'm not planning to go through anything except the paperwork. I have to say, though, this space is a lot more inviting than I'd expected, even with all the clutter. At least the paperwork seems to be filed fairly neatly, and all in one place."

Padgett gave her a pitying look, then beckoned her to follow as he headed toward the section piled high with furniture. "Couple managers back, somebody had the bright idea to get all the old Lodge records and other paperwork in its own space, nice and neat and organized instead of just stacked wherever there happened to have been a bit of clear floor or an empty shelf. Most of it got moved, eventually, out of all the scattered corners of this place. But not all."

Stephanie followed him around the furniture, and bit back a groan when she saw a rather dark corner piled high with obviously old ledgers and file boxes and even several old banded trunks.

"Jesus," she muttered.

"The light's not great here," Padgett said. "Why don't I start dragging all this stuff back toward the stairs? At least then you'll be able to see what you're looking at. That's assuming you want to start in on this stuff." His face said clearly enough that he hoped she'd return to the file cabinets, which would obviously keep her busy for a long time.

Stephanie hesitated, then said, "I guess this stuff here would have contained some of the oldest records, right?"

"Yeah, probably. It all used to spill out a lot farther in this corner, with boxes stacked right up against the furniture, so I'd expect the oldest stuff to be back in that corner against the walls." He eyed her. "I've been here about as long as anybody, so if I knew what you were looking for, I might be able to shorten the search."

Briskly, she said, "Well, I don't really know myself. But since you offered to help, why don't you grab some of that stuff and start bringing it closer to the stairs? I don't know how much time I've got before the next crisis erupts, so I might as well do what I can in the meantime."

"Yes, ma'am."

Leaving him to it, Stephanie retreated to the "organized" area near the stairs and, drawing a deep breath and flipping a mental coin, opened a file drawer at random to start her search. She didn't have a clue what she was looking for.

But she had a hunch she'd know it when she found it.

"That's the last of this lot," Quentin said, setting aside the largest of the two boxes.

"Anything helpful?"

"Not as far as I can see. A few interesting letters from around the early 1900s, written to guests and staff, but nothing to indicate unsolved disappearances or other mysteries here."

Diana gestured toward the old photographs stacked on the coffee table before her and said, "Same here, more or less. I've gone through all the photo albums and all the loose photos we found. Interesting pictures, most without even a date on the back, but nothing that sends up a red flag."

"Well, the universe never makes things easy."

"So I've noticed." She shook her head. "Maybe there's nothing else here, and all I was meant to find was the one picture."

It lay alone on the coffee table within easy reach of Diana, and she glanced at it often. That picture of two little girls and a dog, a moment frozen in time.

"Could be," Quentin agreed. "Signs and portents."

"Is that what we're looking for?"

"God knows. Bishop calls them signposts, and says too many of us walk right by them without noticing. That's probably true. I mean, most people are too busy just getting through the day to pay much attention to hints from the universe."

"So what do these signposts look like, according to Bishop?"

Since Diana had asked him to talk about the Special Crimes Unit while they went through the stuff from the attic, Quentin had obliged. She hadn't wanted to talk any more about the experience the storm had triggered, obviously needing time to come to terms with it, and he was reluctant to push her even though questions and thoughts were still swirling in his mind.

Instead, he had talked about the SCU as the storm had gradually faded away outside and they had worked their way through most of the stuff brought down from the attic, offering thumbnail sketches of some of his fellow team members as well as a few of the more interesting war stories involving the unit.

He wasn't at all sure she had even listened to him, and half suspected she'd only wanted the sound of another voice in the room, the sense of another person, while her own thoughts were miles away. But he had jumped at the chance to talk about the unit, feeling it was important for her to hear about things that would make her own paranormal experiences at least sound fairly ordinary by comparison.

She had, it seemed, heard at least some of what he'd told her.

"Signs and portents. They can look like anything, that's the hell of it," he answered her. "The more ordinary, the more likely they are to be anything but. For instance—" He reached for the last box he had to go through, and from the jumble of its contents produced a very old cigar box. "—this. This is, what, the third lost-and-found box we've come across?"

"At least."

"And the same sort of stuff inside." He opened the box and inspected its contents. "Bits of jewelry, a cigarette lighter, assorted keys, hair combs and clips, a fountain pen, a rabbit's foot, nail clippers, coins — junk, mostly. Stuff the original owners have long, long since forgotten about. But who knows if there's a signpost in here? A sign or portent just lying in this ordinary little box for somebody paying attention? There could be."

"In a cigar box filled with junk?"

"You know what they say. One man's junk is another man's treasure." Quentin shrugged. "Though it's not intrinsic value that matters, of course. Like I said — any sign tends to be something ordinary. At least at first glance. Or even at second glance."

Diana held out her hand and, when Quentin gave her the box, began going through the contents almost idly. "I'd say this stuff was pretty ordinary, all right. How are we supposed to recognize signs and... portents... if they're just average, everyday things? What does your Bishop say about that?"

"Well, to me he said something typically cryptic. He said to pay attention to everything, and the important bits would make themselves conspicuous at some point along the way."

"I guess the universe doesn't like to be obvious."

"Apparently not." Quentin hesitated, then said carefully, "If you're right about your father coming here, he should be able to give us at least some of the answers."

Diana was frowning slightly as she continued to gaze into the box on her lap. "But will he? That's the question. And even if he does, will his answers be the truth?"

"You think he'd try to keep a lie going even in the face of this?"

"That depends on why he started the lie in the first place, doesn't it? And we don't have so much, after all. A photograph of two little girls. As far as you've known all these years, Missy lived here with her mother. We can't prove otherwise, can we?"

"No," Quentin admitted. "At least not with any information I've found to date. There was never a hint, from Missy or from anything I've found since her death, to indicate that Laura Turner wasn't her natural mother. In fact, in the police files of the original investigation is a photocopy of Missy's birth certificate. Supposedly, anyway. Born Missy Turner, daughter of Laura, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Father unknown."

"You never thought that could have been a fake?"

"About ten years ago I went as far as checking original hospital records, and there was a child named Missy Turner born to a Laura Turner on that date, just as the certificate noted. I had no reason to dig any deeper."

Diana nodded, but said, "The way Missy spoke when I was with her, when she said 'we visited Mommy,' was so natural that I'm positive she meant exactly what she said. That the two of us went to visit our mother."

"I believe you," Quentin said. "And I can't think of any reason why she would lie to you. But proving that you and Missy had the same father and mother won't be easy if your father has, for whatever reasons, covered up that fact. That is what you suspect, isn't it? That he did it deliberately?"

Choosing her words carefully, Diana said, "My father is a very powerful man. It's not just money, although he has plenty of that. It's real power. Political connections, even internationally; both his father and grandfather were ambassadors. And his company, the family company, has interests in everything from cutting-edge technology to diamond mines. And offices all over the world."

Quentin nodded. "So... if he wanted to hide a secret..."

"He could pretty much move heaven and earth to hide it. And it would stay hidden."

"Realistically, we wouldn't have much of a shot of digging up that secret, if he buried it deep enough."

"No. And convincing him to talk now won't be easy, not after all these years. He's hardly likely to listen to my... experiences... let alone believe them. In fact, if I tell him what's happened to me here, he's entirely capable of using it against me. The delusional ravings of someone in need of medical care, obviously. He wants me back under the thumbs of his handpicked doctors, medicated until I stop thinking for myself."

"Why?"

She looked up at Quentin, honestly startled. "Why?"

"Yeah. Why would he want that now? What secret would demand such extreme measures?"

"The one that kept me from knowing I had a sister, maybe?"

Quentin chose his words carefully. "Obviously, there's a lot we don't know about this. All I'm saying is that we can't assume anything until we have more information. That Missy's existence was kept from you and that you were under medical care for so many years may have been due to different situations completely unrelated to each other."

"You don't really believe that."

With a sigh, Quentin said, "No, I don't. But I still say we can't assume without more facts."

Diana looked back down at the old cigar box in her lap, absently fingering a rather gaudy costume earring. "Quentin... my mother died in a mental hospital, and if Missy and my own memories are right, both her illness and her death had something to do with paranormal abilities she couldn't control."

"We've always known it was possible," he admitted reluctantly.

"Abilities my father probably believed were simply... manifestations of mental illness."

"Also possible. Maybe even likely. Medical science, especially twenty-five or thirty years ago, tended to view anything it couldn't explain as an illness."

"So what am I supposed to tell him when he gets here? That I can... walk with the dead, and encountered the spirit of my sister on one of those journeys? How do you think he's going to react to that?"

Madison was glad the storm had finally died away. They seemed to bother her more every time, and as for Angelo, he just shook like a leaf, poor little thing.

"It's over now," she told her dog reassuringly.

He whined softly as he stood gazing up at her. Storms always bothered him, but his anxiety had been growing steadily for quite a while now.

"It is over," she told him. "The storm, anyway. And the rest... will be over soon. I promise."

Angelo sat down with a peculiarly human sigh, managing to express even more uneasiness along with his frustration.

Madison looked around the game room, where she and Angelo had waited out the storm and which was, except for them, empty. The whole place was awfully empty, really; it practically echoed.

"It's here," Becca said from the doorway.

Madison wasn't really surprised, but she was worried and didn't try to hide her shiver of fear. "You said Diana wasn't ready yet."

"She'll have to be, won't she?"

"But what if she isn't?"

"I expect he'll help her."

Madison bent down to pick up her little dog, and held him, stroking him to soothe his uneasy whining. "Still, if it's here... bad things will happen, won't they?"

"Usually do. When it's here, I mean."

"Will they find more bones, Becca?"

Becca turned her head slightly, as though listening to some distant sound. Softly, she said, "No, it won't be bones this time. It won't be bones."

"Diana, no one is going to haul you to a mental hospital or put you under medication against your will, no matter how your father reacts. I promise you that."

Her mouth twisted. "Are you going to tell him you're a seer? That the FBI has a whole official unit made up of psychics?"

"It's not a secret." He smiled faintly. "We do our best to avoid undue publicity, but plenty of people in this country know about the SCU. Some very highly respected, powerful people. If he doesn't want to believe you or me, I can offer your father quite a few unimpeachable references, people who will willingly talk to him about their paranormal experiences. Whether or not he believes what they say, he'll have to take it seriously."

"At least seriously enough not to call the guys with the butterfly nets to catch his daughter?"

"That is not going to happen."

"You sound so sure."

"I am sure. Believe me."

Diana almost did. But she knew her father, and her anxiety level hardly diminished. Still, she was able to push the question aside for the moment to ask Quentin another one.

"Anything of interest in that last box?" With nothing else to show for their efforts so far, she had to wonder if the only "signpost" either of them had been intended to see was the photograph of two seemingly ordinary little girls.

Though heaven knew that signpost was sending Diana in a completely unanticipated direction in her life, one she would have thought unbelievable even a few days ago.

Quentin reached into the box and produced what looked like an old journal of some kind, and began flipping through the pages. "Well, well. I'd call this of interest."

The very matter-of-factness of his tone alerted Diana. "What is it?"

"Unless I miss my guess, it's somebody's account of at least a few of this hotel's secrets."

"What?" Diana left her chair and went around the coffee table to join him on the sofa.

"Look at this. The dates aren't in any particular sequence; one page has an entry dated 1976, and the facing page is dated 1998." He indicated the former page, and read aloud, " 'Senator Ryan brought his mistress this trip. We're all under orders to call her Mrs. Ryan, but we know better.' And more of the same. Sounds sort of..."

"Bitchy," Diana supplied.

"I was going to say 'resentful.' "

"That too." Diana was studying the page dated 1998. "And more of the same on this other page. An actress came here to dry out... a senator with a cocaine problem... And what looks like an account of an overheard argument between a wife and her cheating husband."

"I'm guessing someone from the housekeeping staff wrote this."

"Or reported it to whoever wrote this." Diana reached over and turned a few more pages, pausing long enough for both of them to silently read the few lines on each page. "And these are the sort of secrets the housekeeping staff could easily know about just because maids and maintenance personnel are so often present and so seldom noticed. They'd see what was there, even behind closed doors. Mistresses, alcoholism, lovers' quarrels, gambling problems. The underage daughter of a politician sent here to secretly give birth. And look at this — a European prince apparently spent the better part of a month here twenty years ago while his parents worked quietly to extricate him from some very messy legal problems."

"Those were the days," Quentin murmured.

"Yeah, a lot of this sort of thing would hardly cause a ripple now. Except in the tabloids, I guess. But setting aside what's written here, look at how it's written. Look how the handwriting changes. What — it was a round robin kind of deal, with one person passing the journal on to another, taking turns to write what they knew? I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories, but what kind of sense does that make?"

"It doesn't."

"No, it doesn't. And here's a date of 1960. More than forty years? What would be the point of keeping this journal that long? Has anybody been here that long?"

"The housekeeper, Mrs. Kincaid, has lived here her whole life," Quentin answered. "Her mother was housekeeper here before her. In 1960, she wouldn't have been much more than ten, I'd guess."

"None of this was written by a child."

Like most of Bishop's team, Quentin had at least a bit of expertise in numerous diverse fields, and was able to say with some confidence, "I agree. I know enough about handwriting analysis to be pretty sure of that. Not written by a child and not written by a single individual. But at least some of these entries show some fairly clear indications of individuals with a few problems."

"You said 'resentful' before."

He nodded, frowning down at one page in particular. "I'd say so. Envious, resentful, judgmental."

After a moment, Diana said quietly, "It's about judgment. It's about punishment. Maybe whatever's left of Samuel Barton set himself up as judge and jury."