The Unseen

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It was too wet to tour the gardens, and the sky was going black behind the rain, so they split up, then—Brendan and Tyler to set up the cameras and monitors and infrared equipment and magnetic readers, Laurel and Katrina to make dinner.

Look at us, already time-warping back into the sixties, patented sex-role division of labor, Laurel thought—but she didn’t really mind. Let’s face it, I can barely program my own cell phone. Hooking up a poltergeist monitoring system? Forget it.

As it turned out, Laurel made dinner by herself while Katrina disappeared into the house, clearly used to having her meals magically appear for her.

And I’m fine with that, too, thank you very much.

It was vastly more comfortable not having Katrina around and the food they’d brought was mostly heat and eat—thankfully Trader Joe’s had recently opened several stores in the Research Triangle area. Laurel put a couple of spinach-and-feta pizzas into the huge stove and opened a carton of tomato basil soup.

They’d bought paper plates to keep the kitchen work to a minimum, but it just seemed wrong to use paper in such opulent surroundings, and the kitchen was well stocked with dishes, so Laurel decided to indulge. She found a large crystal bowl that was perfect for the salad, and turned on the water to wash it and some gilt-edged china plates for dinner.

It was odd how comfortable she felt, since she had never been in a kitchen this size. Big, yes, but the ceiling was surprisingly low, compared to the rest of the house. I guess because no one but the servants were ever in it—why bother with high ceilings? she thought wryly, as she swirled dishes in the sudsy water to wash the dust off. It was weird beyond words to be in a house that actually had full separate living quarters for the household staff, to walk through the small rooms in the back part of the house and realize just how many live-in servants there had been at Folger.

Not my world. None of this.

She turned to a cabinet to look for glasses—and froze—at the sound of loud thumping from the wall.

She knew there was a rational explanation, knew it, but inside her mind she panicked. A wave of primal fear washed over her and she literally could not move. The thumping continued, shuddering through the wall.

Then logic kicked in and she lunged to turn off the running water. The thumping stopped.

She took a moment to draw a breath, then reached slowly forward again and turned on the water.

Nothing but the sound of water rushing into the sink.

Then the thumping started again, slowly, then building to a frenzied pounding, coming from the same high spot in the wall above the sink.

Laurel turned off the water, laughed shakily at herself. And remember, that’s all a haunting probably is, ever: just the mind playing tricks on itself. Expectations creating an atmosphere in—

A THUMP came from the wall behind her. She gasped, whirled toward the doorway.

Brendan was in the archway of the stairs, looking in through the kitchen door at her. “Sorry—missed a stair…”

She stared at him, pale and speechless.

“What? What?” He crossed to her with concern.

She leaned back against the prep table and laughed shakily. “Shit!”

“Mickey, what?” He took her arms, steadying her.

She stopped laughing. “Nothing. I’m just managing to freak myself out completely and it’s barely past nightfall.”

He smiled, relaxing. “Well, fasten your seat belt.”

She became aware of the warmth of his hands on her arms, the touch of his fingers like a caress on her wrists. He must have realized it at the same time, that he was still holding her, because he released her slowly, with a reluctance that she found thrilling.

“Guess it’s time to feed the children.”

“But where?” she said suddenly, realizing that the logical place—the dining room—was the last place she wanted to spend time in.

He looked at her innocently. “The dining room, of course. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

The dining room was a mass of shadows, the gardens an eerie unexplored country outside the French doors with the arched windows above them.

Brendan was unabashedly going for atmosphere; he’d brought out candles to light the long oak table rather than use the electric lights. The grandfather clock stood silently in the corner, frozen at 2:59.

Aside from an unspecific nervousness, Laurel was not experiencing the discomfort she had expected to feel in the room. Maybe it’s just ugly in the day.

Katrina ate as daintily and sparingly as Laurel would have expected, barely touching the tips of her knife and fork to her food as she cut it. Tyler dug into the pizza, but used his silver on the salad in the European style. There’s one for the statistical analysis page, Laurel thought. Rich kids have higher psi levels than commoners.

“So who died here?” Tyler asked bluntly.

Brendan looked at Laurel. They had decided for the time being not to reveal the—so far unsubstantiated—rumors of the mad brother and the murder/suicide.

“It’s an old house,” Brendan said noncommittally. “Chances are a lot of people died. But that’s not necessarily what we’re here to investigate. It might not be a haunting at all. What we do know is that people in this house reported poltergeist-like activity.”

Tyler whistled the X-Files theme. Katrina turned up her nose—

A sudden loud knock reverberated from the middle of the table. Katrina gasped and drew back against her chair.

Laurel had one jolted moment—then looked sharply to Tyler. She could tell just by looking at him. “Very funny.”

Tyler raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry, I must have been possessed or something.” He stretched out a leg and tapped the toe of his boot against the underside of the table again, this time not concealing the movement. “But okay, seriously: ghost, poltergeist—what’s the difference?”

“Good question,” Brendan said, pointing his pizza slice at Tyler. “The classic theory about a traditional haunting is that it’s an imprint of violent or emotion or trauma on a house or location, that gets replayed, like a tape. Then there’s the family member or close friend who is visited by the spirit of a departed loved one at the moment of death or extreme trauma—known as a ‘crisis apparition’—or by a spirit who has a specific message to impart. Those are generally one-time occurrences and specific to a certain person, they often come in dreams, and once that message is received, the visitations stop.

“The word ‘poltergeist’ was coined in the mid-nineteenth century—by Martin Luther, no less—to distinguish a certain kind of haunting: one with very kinetic elements: loud rappings and other sounds, furniture and objects moving or flying, showers of rocks, breaking of household objects. For a long time investigators made a sharp distinction between those manifestations and the more traditional haunting apparitions: mist, phantom footsteps, the recognizable shade of a loved one. The theory that these were two very different kinds of manifestations was hot for a while, and the Rhine lab is famous for theorizing that poltergeist ‘hauntings’ are not hauntings at all, but manifestations of psychokinesis—the ability to move objects with the mind.

“Later researchers started to admit that there were almost always elements of both kinds of hauntings involved in so-called poltergeist incidents.” Brendan leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands. “So basically, we know nothing.”

He looked across the table in the flickering candlelight. “There may be a ghost in this house, there may not. There may be a poltergeist, there may not. We’re here to see what happens.”

Tyler slid a glance toward Katrina. “And we’re here because you think we might make something happen. Because of our ‘exceptional abilities.’ That’s what all the testing was about.”

Laurel saw Brendan jolt slightly in the candlelight, but she wasn’t surprised at Tyler’s guess. Neither of their young subjects were fools.

“It’s possible that you will be able to sense more in the house than subjects with less psi promise. As far as precipitating it?” Brendan shrugged. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

Both students expertly vanished after dinner, leaving Brendan and Laurel with the clearing and dishes. Slipping into the servants’ roles, already, are we? she thought to herself, but she was secretly, shamefully glad to have the intimate time with him by herself, doing the washing up together in the steamy kitchen, Brendan making Father Knows Best–style jokes about “the children.”

They laughed about the violently knocking pipes, and when they were through, they walked up the spiraling servants’ stairs to the second floor, and Laurel again felt her knees go weak with the rush of raw sexuality she felt at the curve of the stairs.

What is that? Why there?

Brendan walked behind her, completely oblivious, and she was grateful that he could not see the instant, telltale color rise to her face.

Out of the stairwell, they started the long walk down the crooked upstairs hall. Laurel was annoyed with herself to find that her heart was still beating hard, and she was far too aware of the heat of his body beside her. It didn’t help that he brushed against her going up the odd, steep stairs to the linen room and lounge.

“Any sleep preferences?” he asked, with no hint of innuendo.

“I was thinking anywhere but here,” she answered ruefully.

He stopped still in the hallway, to look at her. “Really?” The light was low, shadows in every corner; they had not brought enough light bulbs to supply every lamp.

She felt odd, defensive. “Yes, really. We’re not exactly in Kansas, are we? If ever a house was haunted, I can believe this one is.”

“Huh,” he said, and she felt a wave of annoyance.

She suddenly asked, “What about you?”

He turned and looked at her. “What about me?”

“Did you feel anything during the tour?”

“Ah. I see.” he said slowly. “Nope. Nada. I just must not be sensitive that way.”

There was an edge in his voice that might have been regret.

Laurel ended up choosing the small room with the single bed and the desk built in between the cabinet closets, with the door out onto the iron balcony overlooking the gardens, and the odd lithograph of the crow above the bed. It was by far the smallest of the bedrooms, the one that she’d thought of as the nanny’s room, and she couldn’t have said why she chose it, except that it was about as far from Tyler’s room as it could be, which under the circumstances seemed prudent. Katrina had already taken the best room, and Laurel didn’t like the feel of the children’s room, or the little bedroom; she had no intention of sleeping in either.

When she stepped into the doorway of the nanny’s room, Brendan looked at her questioningly, and she shrugged. “My governess fetish.” She was instantly mortified that she’d said it and felt herself blushing.

Brendan raised an eyebrow. “We’ll have to discuss that at length, sometime,” he said with such a suggestive tone that Laurel felt her legs go weak.

He turned in the hallway, and then just as she suddenly knew he would, he walked to the door of the strange little room, with the narrow bed and the hearth inexplicably set in a room so small, and that odd circle carved into the window. The door opened without trouble for him, but Laurel felt an instant wave of unease. “Are you sure?” she asked, without thinking, as he tossed his duffel onto the iron-frame bed.

“Why not?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

She shrugged, lamely. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

He broke into a grin. “Good. That’s what I want to hear. Maybe I’ll get some action tonight.”

Their eyes met and she felt shaky again. “Good night, then,” she said quickly.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” he said, and stepped through the door to the strange little room. She got a glimpse of the hearth, the monastic bed.

Then he turned back and added obliquely, “I’m right here if you need me.”

When she shut her door behind her, she had to force herself to breathe.

In her sleep shirt, the door of her small room closed, she stood at her window, arms crossed over her chest, and looked out over the dark garden. The gazebo was as white as bone under the slight moonlight, luminous, as if lit from within. The drapes of the willowy plants were pale nets, barely distinguishable against the sky. Beautiful… and alien. Let the games begin, whispered a voice in her mind that was not quite Tyler’s.

Laurel shivered and turned to the narrow bed.