Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) (22 page)

The window, and the shutters, slammed shut.

Kathryn whirled around, her heart pounding with fear.

"Who's there?" she demanded.

There was no answer.

"Dammit, is somebody here?"

She forced herself to step forward and swing the light around the room.

It was empty.

Take it easy, Kathryn. Be calm. Be logical. There's got to be a simple explanation.

The flashlight shook as she swung the beam over the room again. With the sunlight gone, everything was changed. The walls seemed to have grown closer and to rise at a strange angle. She flashed the light up over the rafters. They seemed to rise forever, with no end in sight.

And the corners...

She swung the light again.

Moments ago, the corners had been filled with nothing more ominous than dust balls. Now, they overflowed with shadows.

Shadows that moved.

Kathryn felt the hair rise on her arms. She wanted to scream, to run, to fling herself at the door.

But she didn't. Anything like that would be a mistake. The thing to do was to walk slowly but steadily from the room.

Pick up one foot. Now put it down. Pick up the other...

How long could it take to cover the twelve or fifteen feet to the door? An eternity, Kathryn thought, oh yes, an eternity. And every step of the way, she fought the terrible urge to take just one quick look behind her and see...

What?

Something, Kathryn. Something. Something that was, even now, reaching out to clasp her shoulder.

With a cry, she threw herself through the door and slammed it shut.

The bolt wouldn't catch.

"Come on," Kathryn whispered desperately, "come on, come on!"

The door turned icy cold under her hands.

Nausea rose within her.

"Close, damn you," she babbled, "close!"

The bolt snapped home.

A little sob of relief broke from her throat. She put her palm against her heart; it felt as if it were going to burst from her chest but she wasn't about to stand here, waiting for it to ease back to a gallop.

It wasn't until she was downstairs, safe in the relative brightness of the drawing room, that she figured out what had really happened in the attic.

The wind had played tricks.

It was playing them now, slamming shutters closed before she reached for them and rattling the loose windows in their frames.

A storm was sweeping in from over the sea. The warm afternoon breeze had become a gusty wind with the smell of rain on it. The changing weather, and her hyped-up imagination, had teamed up to scare her half out of her skin.

A storm wasn't anything to look forward to. Rain and wind, lightning and thunder, were stage effects she could have done without this night but it was lots better to know there was a rational explanation for the things that had gone on up in the attic than to think... well, not to think but to imagine she'd been the victim of something supernatural.

And the worst was over now. She'd checked all the rooms, peered in the corners, locked all the windows and doors. There was nobody in Charon's Crossing except for her...

... and the man. The one who'd vanished in a puff of smoke.

Kathryn straightened her shoulders. That kind of thinking would get her nowhere. The idea was to take a positive approach. Whoever he was......
whatever he was...

He was gone. That was all that mattered. He was gone, the house was secure, and by this time tomorrow, there'd be new locks on all the doors.

The wind was picking up. She could hear it rattling the palm fronds and tapping at the shutters. And the rain had started. She could hear it, too, pelting against the house.

But the house was brightly lit and as safe from intruders as she could make it. She'd change into something more comfortable and then she'd see to her supper—which would have to be soup and a sandwich again, since she'd never gotten around to doing any shopping in town.

And then she'd curl up on the settee and read Matthew McDowell's journal until she got sleepy because one thing was certain. She was not going to sleep upstairs. Not in that gloomy bedroom. She'd go up there just long enough to get what she needed.

"I'll be back," Kathryn said in her best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

She headed for the steps.

* * *

Okay. Now she was ready.

She dumped her pillow, sheet and blanket on the floor beside the settee and put her hands on her hips. Her supper was on a lamp table, the remains of the console table her visitor had smashed was kicked into the corner...

And the damned wind was still moaning, the shutters were rattling, but so what?

Kathryn picked up the sheet, flapped it in the air, then laid it over the settee cushions and tucked it in.

The room was pleasant. It must have been really lovely at one time. She smiled, thinking of how incongruous an addition she was, in her sweatshirt, sweatpants, heavy cotton socks and sneakers. But this was the perfect place to spend the night. The settee would make a comfortable bed, and never mind that her feet would probably dangle off the end.

Dangling feet were a small price to pay for a cheerful setting and a telephone.

A shower would have made things just about perfect but only a jackass would take a shower in this house tonight.

"Welcome to the Bates Motel," Kathryn muttered, and tried to laugh.

There. Her bed was all made up, ready and waiting. She sat down, stretched out her legs and crossed her feet. She felt better than she had in hours. If only she had a roaring fire blazing in a fieldstone fireplace, things would be perfect. She remembered the house she and her parents had lived in when she was a child, the old Victorian back in San Francisco. The house itself had been close to falling down around their ears but there'd been a fireplace in almost every room.

She smiled a little, thinking of how she'd watched her father build a fire each night after dinner.

"Want to try it, Kath?" he'd finally asked.

Oh, the pride she'd felt when the first flames of that fire had licked at the logs.

Funny. She hadn't built a fire since that long-ago night. Would she remember all the little tricks that made for a good one? Could Jason build a fire? she wondered idly. He had a fireplace in his apartment but he never used it.

What was the point? he said. The radiators gave off plenty of heat. And it was true; she'd always agreed with him. It was impractical to build a fire when you didn't need one and Jason was always practical. That was one of the things she liked about him. Why, if he were here, he'd probably have figured out where this afternoon's intruder had really come from and what he really was...

Kathryn frowned. She didn't want to think about that now. And she certainly didn't want to doze off, not just yet, but she was getting drowsy. It was this sweat suit. And these socks. The outfit was silly, far too heavy and warm for the tropics, but what choice did she have? She wasn't about to spend the night in her skivvies, not when there was the chance some guy might come popping out of the woodwork...

"Damn!"

She stood up and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd almost managed to forget the reason she'd spent the past couple of hours locking windows and doors and preparing to camp out in the drawing room. Now, reality hit like cold water pouring out of an upended bucket.

If her visitor, the man who claimed he was Matthew McDowell, was really an expert at the game of now-you-see-him, now-you-don't, all her preparations—the locked doors, the locked windows—were a joke.

It was dark in the room now, dark enough so that glancing back over her shoulder made her realize she should have turned on the lights a long time ago. She went quickly from lamp to lamp, switching them all on. There. That was better. Now she could see—

Bang!

Kathryn screamed and spun around in terror.

"Ba-bang. Ba-bang. Ba-bang."

The wind must have torn a shutter loose. It was flapping back and forth and sending up an ungodly racket.

For that matter, so was her heart. It was going ba-bang, ba-bang right along with the miserable shutter.

She opened the window and grabbed for the shutter but the wind had gotten stronger and it almost tore the shutter from her hand. She hung on to it, dragged it closed, aid jammed the lock home. The wind came swooping down again, roaring like a freight train as it tore at the house.

The lights flickered, plunging the room into darkness.

No. No! The electricity couldn't fail. Not tonight. No electricity meant no lights. No telephone. No connection to the outside world.

The lights blinked, then came on. Even the telephone gave a quick, tinny shriek as if to prove it was still working.

But for how long?

Kathryn stared at the squat, old-fashioned instrument, the one Matthew had pretended not to recognize.

Maybe she ought to call somebody. The police. Or Olive. Or Jason.

No. Not Jason. He was half a world away. What could he do, except sit there in his apartment and worry and wonder if she'd lost her mind?

As for the police or Olive... what was the point? What could she possibly say?

"Hello, this is Kathryn Russell at Charon's Crossing, and I just saw a ghost?
Oh yeah. She smiled tightly. Right. Make that kind of call in New York, the odds were good nobody would give a damn. Make it here, the news would be all over the island by breakfast."

"Crazy American says Charon's Crossing is haunted."

What a great tag-line that would make for a real estate sign.

Besides, she was a long way from saying she'd seen a ghost. There was always a perfectly rational explanation for things like this.

What explanation, Kathryn?

Well... well, some kind of trick with mirrors. Magicians did stuff like that all the time. And they used hidden doors. Trap doors...

Kathryn sank down on the edge of the settee.

The last thing she wanted to think about right now was the possibility of hidden doors. Besides, she'd have known if he'd used one. Or if he'd used a mirror. After all, she'd been standing, what, six inches from Matthew when he'd disappeared.

But he couldn't have "disappeared." People couldn't do that any more than pigs could fly.

Another gust of wind tore at the house. The lights dimmed, blinked and went out. She held her breath until they flickered to wavering life.

That was twice. Three strikes, and you were out.

Kathryn sprang to her feet. There had to be candles in the kitchen.

There were. Three boxes of long, ivory tapers. She ripped every box open, stabbed the candles into anything she could find. Saucers. Cups. Jar lids. Then she set the candles on every flat surface in the drawing room and lit them all.

The room blazed with light. Kathryn stood back, arms folded, a look of defiance on her face.

Let the damned lights go out now!

She made a last quick trip through the house. She checked the front door. The back door. The French doors. Just for good measure, she checked the windows in the library and the dining room, the ballroom and the kitchen. Then, satisfied, she scooted back into the drawing room, shut the door after her, dragged a heavy wooden chair across the floor and jammed it under the knob.

"Ready or not," she said, and laughed. At least, she tried to laugh. The sound that escaped her throat seemed more like a croak.

Kathryn settled down on the settee with her sandwich and her tea. Her gaze fell on the splintered remnants of the console table. It really was too bad she didn't have a fireplace. At least, she could have given the antique a Viking funeral.

She smiled wryly. What a nasty display of temper
that
had been! Matthew hadn't thought twice, he'd just hauled back, given the table one good kick, and...

Kathryn blinked.

Matthew? Since when had she begun thinking of him like that? Just because he claimed he was Matthew McDowell didn't mean he was Matthew McDowell.

Because then, he'd be a ghost. And hadn't she just told herself she didn't believe in ghosts?

Okay. Okay, then maybe the whole thing had been a hallucination. Maybe she'd dreamed him up, complete with costume and...

"Hell."

The sandwich might as well have been rubber. Kathryn chewed and chewed before she could get the mouthful of bread and cheese down her throat.

You were in
big
trouble when you preferred thinking you'd had a hallucination to thinking you'd seen a ghost. Besides, her shoulders still ached, where his fingers had clasped them. She didn't know much about hallucinations but she doubted if they left bruises as calling cards.

So, what was she saying? That she'd changed her mind about ghosts?

Never. Never, in a thousand years.

So what if she could have read the
New York Times
through Matthew's hand, when she'd first seen him on the stairs?