The Unseen

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Voices.

Laurel jolted out of sleep and lay with her heart pounding, her eyes wide.

There. Voices. Talking, ranting, raging.

She felt a frisson of blind panic, wild, random thoughts. I should have left, I should have gotten out. Too late, too late…

Stop it, she commanded. Pull yourself together.

She strained to hear in the darkness. The voices had stopped.

She threw off her blankets and made herself stand, and fumbled for the light switch. The light went on… which instantly made her feel better.

She unlocked her door and looked out into the hall. It was dark, and silent, and still. Beyond the arched doorway was pitch black. She left her bedroom light on, but they had not put bulbs up and down the hall; it would have taken several dozen for the upstairs hall alone.

There was another short burst of voices, very faint, seemingly from somewhere in the Spanish part of the house. She felt a rush of fear unlike anything she’d experienced since the random nighttime terrors of childhood.

How badly do you want to know?

She almost turned back into her room, and then had the horrible thought that Katrina had found Brendan, and they were laughing together somewhere in the house.

She steeled herself and stepped forward. The light spilling from her bedroom lit her way for the first few yards, but then the hall jogged and she was plunged into darkness again.

In the dark, the unevenness of the floor was magnified. As she edged forward, she could feel the floor rising and falling underneath her bare feet; it rolled. The floorboards were smooth as glass, though, like satin under her feet.

She jogged right again and carefully descended a set of steps, feeling ahead with one foot at a time. This must be that little sitting room with the cabinets, she thought… then something soft and cool brushed her bare calf and she almost shrieked. She put her hand out and felt leather; the smooth green leather divan.

Another jog to the right, and the archway at the end of the hall came into view. There was a thin spill of light coming from somewhere in the perpendicular wing.

She stepped through the arch and looked instinctively right, toward the library. The heavy dark door was closed, but there was a sliver of light underneath it… and Laurel heard a muffled burst of laughter.

She breathed in and walked silently to the door. She put her hand on the latch, and depressed it, pushing open the door.

Brendan was in the room, and a quick glace around it revealed him to be alone, sprawled in one of the big leather chairs, with a bottle at his feet and a full glass in his hand. His head was lolled against the back of the chair and he was looking up at the portraits. It was them he was talking to, singing to, a growly rowdy tune which Laurel recognized as an Irish traditional song popularized by several punk rock bands:

As I was a-walkin round Kilgary Mountain

I met Colonel Pepper and his money he was countin’

I rattled me pistols and I drew forth me saber,

Sayin’ “Stand and deliver, for I am the bold deceiver!”

Musha rig um du rum da, Whack fol the daddy O

Whack fol the daddy O, there’s whisky in the jar—

He jumped up suddenly, spinning toward the door. His face changed as he saw Laurel, and he swayed, just barely catching his balance. Then he beamed at her.

“Ah, lovely. Company. That is, ‘Ah, lovely company.’” He corrected himself, bowing gallantly, with a little flourish. “Let me get you a drink.” He staggered toward the built-in bar.

Laurel swallowed. This was drunk in a way she’d rarely had to deal with. At least that hadn’t been one of Matt’s problems, she thought, irrelevantly.

“We said we weren’t going to drink while we were here,” she said lightly.

“Ah.” He pointed a finger at her. “But you see, I think we were wrong. This house was made for drinking. Much”—he slurred, so it came out Mush—“drinking was done here. The house likes it, that’s my conclusion.”

“I don’t need one, really,” Laurel said, trying not to let the alarm sound in her voice. “It’s awfully late.”

“Never too late,” he said gaily, and poured a frightening amount of what looked like whiskey into a short glass.

“Let me get that,” she said quickly, and crossed to him to take the glass before it could spill.

“Drink up, then,” he said, and took a deep swig straight from the bottle. He looked at her expectantly. Laurel sipped from the glass and felt the amber burn.

“How about bed?” she suggested, and he smiled at her.

“I’ve been hoping you’d ask.”

She blushed from her chest up, and he would not stop looking at her.

“Why don’t you let me have that?” She reached for the bottle and he yanked it away from her.

“Oh no.” He hugged the bottle to his chest and curled his arm around it protectively. “Oh no no no. Many before you have tried,” he snickered.

“All right, then,” she said carefully. “Let’s talk.” She sat on the wood bench of a window seat, watching him.

“Talk?” And suddenly his mood shifted, to something so dark she had no idea how she’d missed the transition. “What’s there to talk about? It’s over. You’re done, therefore we’re done. We spent the day measuring a pool of water. A fucking pool of water. That’s one for the books, all right.” He drank again, and she winced. “S’not working, not working,” he muttered agitatedly, and began a distracted prowl around the library.

He stopped, swaying, underneath the portrait of James Folger, and stared up at it. His eyes were hazy, as if he were seeing someone else. Father? Laurel wondered to herself. Is that what this is about? It almost always is, with men.

He laughed, harshly. “What’s another failure, though, hmm? What else can we expect?” He slipped into a thick, savage brogue. “There’s no belying birth, now, is there?”

He turned from the portrait abruptly. “Total failure. That’s what you think, too.”

“I don’t think it’s a failure,” she said, and realized she didn’t know what she thought. “I—just don’t think we can afford to risk…” Again, she was unable to say what she thought they were risking.

He suddenly turned and hurled his full glass at a blank spot on the wall, shattering it in a wide splash of amber liquid.

“Can’t afford? Can’t afford? Do you know how much is riding on this?”

Laurel stood in the middle of the floor, in shock. The glass had barely missed her; she smelled whiskey all around her. “No,” she said softly. “What’s riding on this?”

His face twisted, and for a moment he looked almost cruel. “You really don’t see, do you?”

For a horrible moment she felt tears sting her eyes. The photographs and portraits looked down from the library walls. “I guess I don’t,” she managed, and started blindly for the door.

Brendan put out an arm to stop her as she pushed past him… and then his arm was around her waist and he was pulling her against him. “Don’t leave me…,” he whispered, and then his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers and she was opening under him. His mouth moved down her neck and she nearly passed out, sagging against him. He pressed his groin into hers and she could feel him throbbing against her…. He was murmuring into her ear as he kissed along her jawline, “Oh God…” and then his mouth was on hers again, and she was on fire. The couches were too small for two adult people but somehow they were on one, and somehow there was room, and his weight was on top of her, her hands were under his sweater, and her nipples were straining against his palms, and they were melting into each other.

“We can’t, we can’t,” she said against his mouth but she was swooning. His tongue filled her again and his hand was between her legs and she was wet against his fingers, so wet… and she didn’t care.

Then suddenly, the room was plunged into darkness… and a thunder of crashes shook the house, staccato hail, like the downstairs windows all being assaulted at once. Brendan and Laurel bolted up from the couch, staring into the dark, stupefied, paralyzed. The crashing went on, accelerating, deafening, and ending with a crash that was dissonantly musical, like a piano being dropped from a great height.

Then silence… just the sound of their fast, harsh breathing.

Brendan was already reaching for his sweater, which had somehow come off, and Laurel pulled her sleep shirt back down over her breasts and her leggings back up around her hips, and they were running in the hall for the main stairs.

Brendan made it down first and was already disappearing through the archway into the great room as Laurel cleared the landing of the stairs.

She ran down after him… and halted in the archway when she felt a sharp crackle of energy, like static. She gasped aloud, not sure what she’d felt. She blinked to focus.

In front of her the great room was a vast stretch of empty dark space—there was not even moonlight through the windows. The piano was a black shape in the corner of the room, where it had always been—and perfectly intact. The room was darker than it should have been but she could not see why.

Brendan stood in the middle of the room, looking around him—at the piano, at the ceiling, at the walls.

“Was it in here?”

Laurel found her voice. “I… don’t know… I thought so…”

Brendan bolted across the room and disappeared into the dining room.

Laurel rushed across the floor after him, and gasped in terror at the sight of a white shape running beside her—then realized she was seeing her own reflection in the mirrors on the long front wall.

She stopped again in the door of the dining room.

Brendan paced the room beside the table, staring around in the dark at the clock, the mantel, the wood stove, the windows, the ceiling. “Nothing here, either.”

A shadow loomed up in the opposite doorway and Laurel bit back a scream. It was Tyler, sleepily mussed but eyes wide. “What the fuck?”

“Did you see anything?” Brendan shouted at him.

There was a sound behind Laurel and she whirled again, to see Katrina in a baby doll nightgown, looking groggy, only half-awake, standing in the middle of the great room. “What happened?” she said, her voice fuzzy.

They all stood, staring at each other. The silence was deafening.

Then Laurel gasped aloud, her hand to her mouth, as the frozen grandfather clock in the corner began to tick.

Simultaneously a beeping started in the dark, faint, muffled. Brendan shoved a hand in his pocket and pulled out an object that Laurel realized was his EMF reader. He held it up in the center of the room. It continued to beep steadily, louder. “EMF is nine,” Brendan said feverishly, reading the red numbers on the digital screen. He moved around to different spots in the room, the grandfather clock. “Nine… ten…” The beeping continued, shrilly.

“It’s high,” Tyler said warily. Laurel turned from the grandfather clock and came to a halt before the mantel, in front of the antique clock in the glass dome. Her heart plummeted as she saw it had started ticking as well, much more faintly. Both clocks…

Brendan darted back into the great room and as the others followed he paced the room with his EMF reader, monitoring the levels. “Eight, nine… eleven…”

Tyler grabbed another EMF reader from the table beside the monitors and switched it on. It immediately started beeping shrilly in counterpoint with Brendan’s. Tyler walked the room on the opposite side. “Nine… ten… the whole room is hot.”

Brendan crossed to the equipment caddy and they all crowded in front of the bank of monitors. The beeping continued from the EMF readers, and Brendan said harshly to Tyler, “Shut it off,” as he clicked off his own. Tyler followed suit. Brendan backed up the recordings for the cameras in both rooms and the group stood tensely, watching the double screens as the video recorders replayed.

Each showed a fuzzy picture of a dark room, the great room and the dining room, with faint video glow. After interminable minutes there was the sudden frenzied crashing through the speakers. The sound levels jumped crazily; but the video picture of the rooms didn’t change at all. Brendan leaned closer, staring at the screen. “I don’t see anything.”

“Nothing,” Tyler agreed tensely, his eyes glued to the screen.

Onscreen there was a sudden muffled pounding and Brendan ran into the great room, barefooted, hair mussed, his sweater hanging on him. After a moment Laurel ran in after him.

Watching herself on the screen, Laurel was absurdly relieved that she looked reasonably dressed.

One after the other, Brendan then Laurel ran across the great room on one screen and appeared on the next screen in the dining room.

Tyler ran in from the opposite side of the room and they all stood shouting at each other, Brendan looking up at the video screen. Katrina appeared onscreen in the great room.

Brendan leaned forward abruptly and backed up the recording. They watched the same sequence again, in slow motion. Aside from the crashing sounds, there was no other sign of anything going on.

Brendan hit Replay and they waited in silence for the recording to back up.

But no matter how many times they watched there was nothing to be seen.