The Unseen

CHAPTER FIFTY

When Laurel stepped back into the great room she found Brendan and both students were in their chairs in the center of the room again. The pool of water was back, exactly in the same spot, and the three were back seated in a circle around it, each holding a clipboard poised in their lap, just watching the pool.

“It started again fifteen minutes ago,” Brendan said to Laurel, without taking his eyes from the pool. “EMF levels are back up between nine and ten.”

Tyler spoke, also without looking away from the pool. “We’re wondering if it’s going to go through the same cycle again: the pool, the pounding, the rocks.”

“But it’s speeding up,” Brendan added. “The pool is growing at one-third again the rate it was yesterday. If it continues at this rate it should be complete in half an hour instead of forty minutes.”

Laurel looked around at them. They all were entirely mesmerized by the pool. That can’t be a setup, can it? They really believe this—whatever this is—is happening.

But before she could speak, she felt the tingling behind her ears, and a sudden jolt of adrenaline ran through her. The hair on her arms was standing up… and she had no idea why. She looked around the room in confusion. Fog drifted against the windowpanes…

At first Laurel wasn’t sure if she even heard it, it was so on the periphery of her consciousness. She saw Brendan frown slightly, no more reaction than that, as if he had a headache. What is that?

Then Katrina stood, dropping her clipboard to the floor with a clatter that made Laurel jump. “Don’t you hear that?” The girl demanded. And as if saying it made it so, the knocking was suddenly unmistakable, loud slow thumps, coming from the middle of the house, Laurel thought, the crooked corridor above the dining room and great room.

The thumps continued, building in volume, shaking the ceiling. Brendan was frozen in his chair, listening intently. Then he and Tyler both shot to their feet and were out the door, running through the dining room. Katrina was not far behind, but far enough to be delicate about her haste. Laurel could hear their footsteps pounding in the kitchen, up the progressive stairs and rooms and jogs.

Laurel stood in the center of the great room, her mind shouting Go at her… and she didn’t know if that meant after them or out the door or what.

Then inevitably she followed, running.

Upstairs they were all stopped in the hall outside the room, Brendan’s room.

Of course, of course… that room…

The three were very still, hovering in the hall, listening so intently they seemed about to shatter.

The knocking had stopped.

Laurel watched from farther down the hall as they waited, suspended… Someone said, “It’s stopped.” Laurel’s heart was pounding so loudly she had no idea who had spoken.

Brendan grabbed the doorknob and pushed open the door. Laurel cringed back against the wall. The other three crowded around the door to look in. The room was seemingly untouched: the bed unmade, papers strewn on the writing table—but a very human disorder.

“It was in there,” Katrina said, looking through the door at the room.

The knocking started again. This time it was downstairs, muffled… curiously the sound seemed the exact same distance away. Slow, steady thumps.

Listening to it, all of Laurel’s suspicions about a human source fled her. She could feel in her marrow—this was other. It was mind-shattering, soul-shattering. Her whole body was in revolt against the essential wrongness of it, the irrationality, the impossibility. She could feel the same reaction in the other three; they all stood still and poised in disbelief, in outrage, in awe.

Brendan was the first to break the paralysis. He and Tyler strode down the hall, in the direction of the main stairs, Katrina right behind. By the time they reached the doorway to the next hall, they were running.

Laurel stood and looked through the doorway of Brendan’s room at the white walls, the narrow, monastic bed. The knocks continued steadily downstairs. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, and she turned and ran for the hall.

As she reached the bottom of the main stairs, she realized that the knocking had stopped. Voices came from the dining room, a few sharp sentences, then silence. Laurel darted across the entry hall toward the great room.

She passed through the archway and again felt a shock of static electricity that made her gasp aloud. What is that? She halted on the threshold… but the tingling was gone. She forced herself forward, walked across the wide expanse of the great room.

The other three stood around the long central table of the dining room, heads lifted toward the ceiling, not moving… just listening in the stillness.

Katrina started, “I don’t—”

Brendan lifted a warning hand and she fell silent.

The thumping started again—this time in the library, upstairs and on the other side of the house. Again, Laurel noticed that it sounded exactly the same distance away, not any closer or farther than any of the other knocks had been.

No one ran this time. Tyler’s face tightened, and Brendan looked resolute. They all walked back slowly, even deliberately, out the doorway of the dining room, across the floor of the great room toward the stairs. Brendan held the EMF reader up as they walked.

Laurel braced herself as she stepped back through the arch, but there was no sting of static this time. She saw Katrina glance at her speculatively and wondered if Katrina had felt the shock, too—but Laurel was too keyed up to speak. The EMF reader began beeping steadily as they all headed up the main stairs.

Brendan, in the lead, paused on the landing and they all stopped behind him, listening. The knocks continued, the slow, heavy raps. “Is this recording?” Brendan asked Tyler.

Tyler glanced back toward the first floor. “I don’t know. I mean, the cameras are on, but I don’t know if we’re picking up audio.”

“Go back down and check—,” Brendan started.

“No,” said Laurel violently. “No one goes off on their own.” She didn’t know why but it was imperative that they stay together.

After a moment Brendan nodded curtly and they all continued moving upstairs toward the slow, steady knocking, Tyler taking two stairs at a time. “Slow down,” Brendan snapped at him.

Tyler instantly flared up. “What are we doing, sneaking up on it?”

Brendan grabbed Tyler’s arm, halting all of them. “Just slow down. I want to see when it stops—”

At that moment, it did.

All four of them were still, heads raised, holding their breath…

“It heard us,” Katrina whispered, and no one laughed. They followed Brendan up the remaining stairs and across the hall to the library.

The heavy wood door was closed. And that’s weird, Laurel thought. Who would have closed it?

Brendan reached for the knob—then rattled it. He pushed on the door. “Locked,” he muttered.

“Is there a key?” Tyler asked.

“Maybe. There were some extras on the ring.”

On impulse, Laurel reached to the knob and turned it herself. The door swung open. Brendan looked at her and she shook her head, mystified. Then they all moved into the room.

It took a moment to grasp—then Katrina gasped. The framed photographic portraits along the whole back wall were askew, as if someone had brushed by the entire length of the wall, or an earthquake had jarred the house and deranged them.

The electromagnetic frequency reader in Brendan’s hand started beeping louder and faster. “It’s reading twelve,” he said, excitement crackling in his voice. “That’s extremely high.” Tyler had the camcorder up to his shoulder and was shooting footage of the pictures on the wall.

“Is it still here?” Katrina whispered. Laurel knew exactly what she meant. It felt exactly as if they were chasing a presence from room to room, as if a child were playing hide-and-seek with them.

“Let’s see.” Tyler lunged for the heavy round table with the lazy Susan built in, and knocked his knuckles sharply on the wood surface. The sound was very loud in the room.

There was a pregnant silence… then the knocking started again, on the far side of the house.

“Goddamn it,” Tyler swore. He turned to the library door and took off running.

“No!” Laurel called behind him, but he was out the door, footsteps pounding in the hall.

Brendan and Katrina followed, and again Laurel found herself a beat behind, trailing, as they ran into the upper hall of the main house.

Running down the hall she was very aware of the pitches and tilts of the floor. It rolled, a feeling like a wave, like seasickness. One moment she was running down it and suddenly she was tripping, flying, and sprawled on the floor—right in front of Brendan’s room.

The door was closed again, though she knew it had been open when they left it. She stared up at it, and felt chills start from the base of her spine, a feeling of pure, black terror. She scrambled away from the door, and up to her feet, and bolted after the others.

They all arrived in the servants’ kitchen, breathless, to find Tyler standing in the middle of the floor. The knocking had stopped.

Tyler kicked the table.

A skillet jumped off the hook where it hung on the wall and crashed to the floor behind him. Katrina gasped; they all spun, staring… and waiting…

The knocking began again in the dining room, below.

Tyler tore out of the kitchen like a madman and pounded down the back stairs. The others hurried behind… down the stairs, through the house office. They had just bolted into the downstairs kitchen when the knocking stopped, followed immediately by a cry of rage from Tyler in the next room.

Laurel and Brendan dashed for the doorway. Tyler was in the dining room, shouting at the walls, at the ceiling. “Show yourself! Come on! Come out!”

There was silence… and then knocking began from all the places they had heard it before, except the one they were standing in.

“You made it mad,” Katrina said to Tyler breathlessly. The knocking grew louder, waves of it, pounding around them.

“It’s trying to get in,” Katrina said, and the blankness in her sweet, light voice was chilling.

“It is in. Isn’t that the point?” Tyler said roughly.

Brendan spoke, and his voice was very distant. “No—it’s trying to get over. Over, or through.”

He had his clipboard out and was writing down the numbers from the EMF meter, which had gone off again, beeping frantically. Now he strode to the doorway to the great room. “I’m checking the audio…”

He stopped just inside the door.

Laurel came up behind him to look, and felt her stomach drop, a vertiginous jolt.

The paintings hung on the walls in the great room were not crooked, but upside down.

“Whoa,” Tyler said behind them.

Laurel felt a sudden pressure in the air. She gasped for breath. Katrina cried out beside her, a strangled sound. “Oh my God!” The girl raised a trembling hand. And then Laurel and Brendan saw what she was pointing to. The screens of the monitors were shattered. Glass glittered on the table and floor around the table.

Brendan ran to the monitors.

“Did it record?” Tyler demanded.

At the monitors, Brendan’s back stiffened. He checked the power cords, jiggled switches. “Damn it. The equipment’s off. Completely off.”

Tyler strode to the monitors and checked.

“Look.” Katrina pointed again. The lamps on the mantel of the fireplace were shattered—the glass bowls lying in heaps of glass on the marble.

Laurel felt a wave of disorientation. But they weren’t broken when we walked in. I know they weren’t. And I didn’t hear any crashing, either….

Brendan started forward, holding up the EMF—but something had changed. The device was silent. Brendan stared down at it, flicked at the switch. “It’s gone dead.”

Tyler hefted the camcorder, checked it, and paled. “Camera’s dead, too.”

“But—that’s not electrical,” Laurel heard herself saying.

“It fried the equipment?” Tyler muttered, and Laurel thought in that moment that he looked more confused and vulnerable than she had ever seen him.

Brendan strode toward the archway. The rest followed. “Watch out!” he cautioned. There was more broken glass on the floor, and on the butler’s table under the lamp. Laurel could see bits of broken glass under the sconces on the stairs, and gleaming shattered pieces in the hallway. When did this happen? she thought wildly. Why didn’t we hear it?

And then all around them they heard the sounds—like lightbulbs popping and bottles shattering and glass cracking—all at once, a prolonged destruction… and completely aural. There was no movement, no sign of anything stirring or breaking, just a reverberation of sound. Katrina pressed her hands to her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block it out.

And then silence.