The Unseen

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Despite Katrina’s obvious displeasure, if not simmering wrath, at being assigned to Laurel for the house tour instead of Brendan, the girl threw herself into the assignment with an almost frightening zeal. They began at what Laurel was starting to think of as the Spanish part of the house, although that was surely a California quirk of her own; as far as she knew the Spaniards never came anywhere near North Carolina.

The two women stepped through the front door into the entry hall with its greenish tinge and glazed brick floors. Katrina turned to Laurel and said bluntly, “So do I have to actually tell you all of this? Or can I just write it?”

Laurel suppressed an urge to slap her and said neutrally, “Whatever works best for you.”

The first floor of the Spanish house was an amazing little warren of rooms, and there was no level floor anywhere. For each room they had to step up or down, sometimes several steps. There was no continuity to any of it: rooms blossomed off each other and then abruptly stopped, and nothing was in proportion.

Katrina headed straightaway into the little library off the second entry, and Laurel couldn’t blame her—it drew Laurel, too, with its dark-paneled walls and luxurious glassed-in bookshelves and Art Deco mantelpiece with carved peacocks, and large windows looking out onto the back gardens; Laurel could see all the way out to the white gazebo. The room enveloped her with a hypnotic sense of calm and warmth. Katrina stood in the middle of the room with a dreamy expression on her face, then began to move through the room with a proprietary ease, gliding her hand over the white marble tops of the tables, opening the glass doors of the cabinets to look at the books. She was almost overly diligent, taking an excruciating amount of time drifting around the room. She paused to gaze into a display case with an intricate model of a sailing ship, then lifted the top of a table to reveal a backgammon board built into the piece. She opened up a carved standing globe to reveal various brandies and liqueurs, emerald and amber liquid gleaming dully through dusty bottles.

I can’t believe all this stuff is just sitting here, Laurel thought. Wouldn’t it have been vandalized long ago?

Apparently Katrina had decided she would not deign to share her thoughts with Laurel, so Laurel was forced to stand watching as the girl made her slow revolutions around the room, stopping to industriously and ostentatiously mark her floor plan. Laurel had the strong sense of being an audience; twice already she’d caught the girl stealing a sideways look at her.

Katrina finally moved out of the study into the inner entry hall with the churchlike bench across from the fireplace and the strange family portrait above the hearth. She stopped still in front of the portrait and didn’t move for a long time. Laurel stood in the doorway of the library and looked up at it.

What an odd room: just the bench in front of the portrait, almost like—like a shrine, an altar to that painting, with the bench placed for contemplative viewing…

But the more Laurel looked at the portrait, the more she thought that the painter must have had serious mental problems. The parents appeared fairly normal, if crudely done, but the two children looked like adults dressed in children’s clothing, or children dressed in adult clothing: the girl in a demure blue dress with a Peter Pan collar and the boy in what was either a Boy Scout uniform or an army uniform. There was no possible way of telling how old they were from their facial features, which on top of the age disconnect were vaguely simian. Is that Paul and Caroline, then? Laurel wondered. The two sat too close to each other on the steps, though they did not look at each other. It’s a horrible painting, Laurel thought suddenly. I hate it.

And then she remembered that Paul Folger was a painter.

Katrina was scribbling industriously on her clipboard, as if Laurel weren’t there. Finally, she moved away from the portrait, over the glazed brick floor, through another archway into the third entry with the front door to the outside of the house and the archway into the main staircase, its huge bay window overlooking the overgrown gardens. At the end of the entry was the archway into the great room. And it was at the archway that Katrina had her first “hit.”

She stopped in the archway and froze.

“What is it, Katrina?” Laurel asked, forgetting for a moment that Katrina didn’t seem to be speaking to her.

“It was here,” Katrina murmured, and Laurel started. She’d said exactly the same thing when she’d crossed through the archway.

“What was?” Laurel asked, neutrally.

Katrina turned to her slowly. “What?” she said, sounding annoyed.

“You said, ‘It was here.’”

Katrina looked at her without expression and then bent to her clipboard and made a notation.

Fine, Laurel thought to herself. Don’t mind me.

Katrina stepped down the several stairs into the great room and drifted across the floor as if she were hearing inner music. Laurel glanced immediately to the middle of the floor, where they had seen the footprints—but the fine coating of dust was gone; the floors gleamed dully as if they had been swept, if not polished.

But by whom?

Across the room Katrina stopped to play a few notes of the piano—it was wretchedly out of tune. “Have you and Dr. Cody stayed in the house already?” she asked abruptly.

Why, whatever do you mean? Laurel thought, but answered calmly. “No, we’ve only been through it once, ourselves.”

Katrina narrowed her eyes and turned away.

At the other side of the room she paused, frowning at the spot where the footprints had been. Laurel watched her, holding her breath… but Katrina continued on, into the dining room.

More steps down, into the dark-paneled dining room (that bizarre unevenness of the house…). The sky had darkened considerably outside and the room was thick with the gloom of twilight. Katrina grimaced with distaste, and moved quickly past the long table and French doors and out. Laurel herself felt the same overpowering urge to get out of the room she had felt initially, and she noted that on her own clipboard. Then she flipped back to the first part of the floor plan and made a note about the family portrait as well.

Katrina barely glanced around the kitchen: it was obvious she “felt” nothing, or perhaps she was so unfamiliar with kitchens it seemed not worth the bother.

The women started upstairs via the servants’ staircase beside the kitchen. There was something appealing about the idea of a servants’ stairway; Laurel wasn’t sure that she’d ever been in one before, and she lingered, moving slowly up the steps. Then as she stepped onto the curved landing halfway up the stairs, Laurel felt her face flush and a rush of warmth through her body, a palpable sexual feeling spreading from between her legs, as if a hand had reached to stroke her there. She stopped with a gasp.

Katrina turned on the stairs above her and looked down, annoyed.

Laurel tried to summon control over her body. Her legs felt too weak to walk on. Get a grip. You haven’t gotten any in a while. Deal with it, Laurel told herself, and forced herself to take a step up onto the next stair. The sexual feeling instantly disappeared, leaving Laurel with her heart still pounding in confusion.

Katrina turned and continued upward without a word. Laurel climbed shakily behind her. What the hell was that?

At the top of the stairs, Laurel was suddenly aware of a soft murmur of voices. The two women stopped still, and looked around them, listening.

“Tyler and Dr. Cody, I think,” Laurel said. Katrina looked at her as if she were an imbecile and flounced on.

Katrina breezed through the first part of the upstairs with an indifference that fairly shouted, “These are just the servants’ quarters.” But she slowed again in the linens room with its surprisingly lush dark wood floors and intricately cut stairs leading up to the small study.

There was a rumble of thunder outside, and suddenly the sky opened, dumping rain on the gardens.

Laurel watched as Katrina sat on the divan in the linens room and looked out the window at the rain, even closed her eyes. When she opened them she marked something Laurel couldn’t see on her floor plan.

In the study, the girl stared out the windows over the garden, frowning for a time at the gazebo, standing still and white in the drenching rain. And then came the upper hall and the long row of bedrooms.

They walked past the bathroom… and then Katrina stopped in the hall so abruptly that Laurel ran into her from behind. Katrina turned on her with her face twisted in fury. “Don’t touch me!” she snarled.

Laurel was so startled that for a moment she couldn’t speak. “I’m sorry. My fault.”

Katrina’s face slowly lost its look of animal rage, and she turned blankly to the door they’d stopped in front of—the locked door to the right.

“It’s locked—,” Laurel began. Katrina reached and tried it anyway. To Laurel’s surprise, the knob turned for the girl, although when she pushed on it, the door refused to budge. Katrina stepped back, looking at Laurel expectantly. Laurel stepped forward and tried the door herself. The knob turned, but the door held firm. Laurel pushed her whole body weight on it, and then suddenly whatever was holding it released, and Laurel fell into the room, barely catching herself before she tumbled to the floor.

It was a little room with slanted rafters, a narrow antique bed, a closet door, and—inexplicably in such a small room—a fireplace across from the bed.

Katrina frowned into the room, stepped tentatively forward…

… then wrinkled her nose and shook her head, as if warding something away. She moved quickly out. Laurel lingered in the doorway after Katrina moved on. The one small bed in it seemed more like a prison cot than a bed, and it may have been her imagination, but the atmosphere was simply—thick. A hat stand stood in the corner beside the door. There was a dark O on the window, about three inches in diameter, painted, she thought, but when she stepped closer she saw it was not painted, but etched into the glass and then darkened in with ink. It gave Laurel a strong sense of unease. At the window, the filmy curtains stirred, trembling in some unfelt current of air, and Laurel felt the flesh on her forearms rise.

She remembered the clipboard she held stiffly at her side and lifted it, looking at her own copy of the floor plan. She hesitated about how to mark the room, and then put squiggly lines over it. Electromagnetic, she wrote; it was the only word she could think of.

She stepped out of the room, and experienced a palpable sense of relief. Katrina had drifted down the hall toward the next rooms. Laurel watched as she drifted through slowly through them, without comment and without writing anything on her clipboard. She didn’t stop again until the room with the faded animal wallpaper and the sleigh beds. Paul and Caroline’s room, Laurel remembered. But why would the room have been preserved as a nursery, obviously long after the children were grown?

Katrina was frowning and writing.

At the end of the long hall they moved into the perpendicular Spanish section again, with its larger rooms: the master bedroom, the two smaller rooms in the middle with their corresponding bathrooms across the hall, and the large library.

Katrina seemed to enjoy the master bedroom with its sweeping views of the garden; Laurel sensed that given the chance she would be moving out of her smaller bedroom forthwith.

They both turned at the sound of voices behind them.

Brendan and Tyler appeared at the top of the main staircase as the women reached the end of the hall.

“Nice timing,” Brendan remarked, and they all went into the big library together.

Brendan and Laurel stayed by the door as the two students wandered around the room under the watchful eyes of the rows of photographs. Rain blew against the windows outside in spatterings and lighting cracked across the sky, accompanied by the low rumble of thunder.

“Yeah, there’s some major heaviness here, all right,” Tyler drawled. “Almost feels like I’m being watched.” Laurel glanced at Brendan and he shrugged.

As Tyler turned back to the bookshelves, Brendan muttered to Laurel, “Actually he’s been pretty cooperative.” The warmth of his breath on her neck made Laurel flush, her ears tingle. “What about her?” he queried softly.

“Loving the attention,” Laurel murmured.

He smiled at her with sparkling eyes and she had to look away.

The two students were industriously making notes on their floor plans. Brendan waited until they were through and then spoke.

“Okay. Have we all gotten through the whole house?” Brendan looked to Laurel and Katrina, who nodded. The two students seemed more subdued than normal, almost as if they were drained by their experience.

“Great. Let’s talk.” Brendan indicated the center arrangement of small sofas and chairs, and they all took seats. To Laurel’s discomfort, Tyler joined her on one sofa, and Katrina took the opposite couch, looking to Brendan with clear expectation on her face. Brendan remained standing, and Laurel could feel the girl’s flare of anger.

“Just an overview first, and then we’ll get more detailed,” Brendan started cheerily. “Can we point to any hot spots? Specific rooms?”

Tyler looked to Katrina.

“The green entry hall downstairs,” she said promptly. “The archway between the front hall and the great room.”

Laurel noted she used the words “great room” as if she said them every day.

“That dining room,” Katrina continued, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Upstairs, the little room with the sticky door. The one with the sleigh beds.” She looked around her at the library. “And this one.”

Brendan looked to Tyler. “Mr. Bradford?”

“The stairs next to the kitchen,” he said, and shot a glance toward Laurel. “This room, yeah, but that could just be all the damn pictures staring down.” He smiled slyly and everyone laughed, which seemed to gratify him. He glanced at Katrina. “Gotta agree—that dining room doesn’t feel right. Don’t know why. And my own room is pretty hot—if anyone would like to come have a feel,” he added.

“Thanks, I’m sure we’ll all keep that in mind,” Brendan said. “Let’s talk about what you felt in the rooms, specifically.”

“The archway—a lot of pain,” Katrina said almost dreamily. “It feels heavy. The air.”

Laurel felt a wave of irritation even though she had to admit she actually had a sense of what Katrina meant. The air just felt denser, there. But Katrina was performing like a professional psychic, as if she’d been doing house readings all her life, when her preliminary questionnaires had not revealed any previous psi experiences.

“What about the back staircase?” Brendan asked Tyler. “You said you felt something there.”

Tyler smiled slightly. “Well, if you must know, it made me horny as hell. Don’t ask why.”

Laurel remembered the unexpected sexual feeling she’d experienced on the stairs and had to will herself not to blush.

“Thanks for sharing,” Brendan said dryly.

“Don’t mention it,” Tyler shot back. “That is my job here, right?”

The air fairly crackled between the two males for a moment, so manifestly that Laurel was about to speak, when Brendan suddenly stood down, although she could not have said exactly how.

He wrote something on his clipboard and said, “What else?”

“The dining room…” Tyler said slowly. “I don’t know. I just step inside there and I want to get out.”

Laurel felt a chill… and then a rush of annoyance—and skepticism. This is sounding a little too perfect. Everyone feeling the same things? Highly unlikely. And the chances of Tyler being serious? Even more unlikely.

“It’s bad,” Katrina announced. “Something bad happened there.”

Oh, great. They’re already making up things, Laurel thought. But that’s the point, isn’t it? she answered herself immediately. We want them to psych themselves out.

Katrina addressed her next monologue directly to Brendan. “And that little room upstairs is bad, too, the one with the sticky door. And there’s something very strange about the archway into the great room. I could feel it.” She put her hand on her chest, in case Brendan had somehow not noticed her lushly rounded breasts. Laurel was appalled to find herself tensing. To make matters worse, Tyler tipped his head back against the sofa and looked lazily from Katrina to Laurel to Brendan, as if he wasn’t missing a thing.

“Good,” Brendan said heartily, pointedly ignoring the unspoken dynamic that was like an electric charge in the room. “I think we’re off to a great start. Now here’s how it’s going to go. No Internet, no television, no phones, no music, unless one of you plays the piano, in which case knock yourself out. We do want you to carry these at all times, though.” He passed out a phone-sized walkie-talkie to everyone. “If there’s anything of note, or if anyone gets in trouble, you can hit ‘Page All’ and reach the whole group at the same time. I expect everyone to respond immediately to any page, is that clear?”

Everyone nodded, solemnly.

“We’ll be having you run card tests every day, and dice tests. We’ll also want you to record your dreams as soon as you wake up in the morning, anything you can remember, and do mood questionnaires twice a day. It’s fine to walk around the house and the gardens, and read or write, but no going off the grounds. We want you to immerse yourselves in the house, and simply—see what happens. Understood?” He looked around at all of them. “Just observe the house.”

“And let it observe us?” Tyler quipped.

Brendan smiled, and Laurel didn’t like the smile. “Exactly, Mr. Mountford.”

“Let the games begin,” Tyler said.