GHOSTS: 2014 edition (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 1) Page 4

  In it, she saw herself on a stage somewhere in a distant, timeless place. Music was playing. Annette would remember the music very clearly because it was a type that she had always liked, a catchy syncopated rag-time melody from an upright piano. The vision wasn’t so strange because Annette Carlson was already a successful film actress, a name readily recognized both within the trade and—more importantly—by the public. She had performed on the legitimate stage in New York and Chicago. When she was a little younger, back in her twenties, before she was fully established in her profession, before fame and an Academy Award had been thrust upon her, she had performed summer stock in the Northeast and she had acted at some playhouses in California as well.

  But something started to tug Annette gently away from her dream. Something happening in the present time and place socked her back into the present, which was a warm, midsummer night.

  Something.

  The something was the touch of a woman’s fingers gently stroking her forehead and temple—the feeling of a motherly hand running across her hair.

  A voice inside her told her to cling to her dream. It was safer there. In her subconscious, in the mind’s eye within her dream, Annette gazed upon herself from a medium distance. She was on stage in a great music hall in the 1920’s. She was playing New York. There was a man on stage performing with her. He was to her left, and a step behind her. Annette couldn’t discern his face, but she had a comfortable sense about him, as if she were in love with him.

  Then the music began to fade. The fingers upon her face became more insistent. The music was all but gone. So was the vision of the music hall. She traveled through a tunnel of darkness. It was a sensation much like plunging in a free fall—and into the present.

  Fingers.

  Yes, definitely. Fingers and a soft hand were caressing her head. Annette opened her eyes.

  For a moment, she thought that her dream had switched gears and that she had been catapulted into a nightmare. Her eyes disbelieved, but they definitely focused.

  A woman in a white dress was seated at the edge of Annette’s bed. She was older than Annette and had a kindly consoling look on her face. There was a beatific cast to her eyes, almost one of concern. Annette would remember this very well. But the woman was transparent. Annette had the sense of looking through a veil of light, for she could clearly see what was behind the woman.

  “Poor dear,” the woman said. That’s when Annette bolted upright, too stunned and frightened to scream.

  “I came to warn you,” the vision said next. “Everyone on the island is in danger.” It spoke, or in some other way it conveyed that thought. Coming out of her hazy sleepiness, Annette took that message from somewhere, even though the spirit’s lips never seemed to move.

  Then Annette was awake. Wide-eyed awake. She lunged at the apparition, swiping at it, as if to drive it away. Her hand passed through it.

  The woman in white stood. She receded more than she walked, a hurt pouting look across her face. And there was an unnatural flow to her movement, a gliding more than a stepping, an evenness of motion that did not look real.

  The specter drifted backward toward the front of the room. It disappeared either out of the door or into a closet. Or maybe it just dissipated. Annette, looking right at it, couldn’t tell which. Somehow it was gone, faded into the air.

  Annette grasped the lamp at the bedside and turned it on.

  Harsh yellowish light flooded the room.

  The sudden brightness hurt her eyes. She blinked. She looked around. The lamp illuminated all the familiar furnishings, doors and windows. For several minutes she sat very still and studied her surroundings.

  Then she picked up a heavy flashlight—one that she kept at her bedside and which she could also use as a club—and rose from bed, clad only in a thin summer nightgown.

  She approached the closet door. Gripping the flashlight as a weapon, she stood by the closet and slowly moved her hand to the door. Then abruptly she flung it open.

  Nothing.

  She pulled a beaded chain that lit a closet light. Still nothing.

  Only her clothing on hangers. Her many shoes along the floor. A few purses and shoulder bags on shelves. Everything exactly the way she had left it. She turned off the closet light and closed the door.

  She walked of out the bedroom. To her left on the second-floor landing were the steps that led down to the ground level of the house. The stairs were old and wooden and creaked noisily upon even the lightest footfall. It was impossible for a human to walk upon them without being heard.

  Annette then realized: the woman—or the apparition, or whatever it had been if it had been anything at all—hadn’t made any noise on the stairs.

  Annette listened. Then she walked downstairs, preceded by the beam of her flashlight. She turned a light on in the downstairs landing. She swept the flashlight around. Annette had this terrible feeling—one that she really couldn’t shake this time: something horrible was imminent. She stepped into the living room and turned a light on there, too. More nothing. A little wave of relief washed over her. There were thirteen windows on the main floor. They were old fashioned and paned twelve-over-twelve. All thirteen were securely locked, except for two, which bore screens. The screens were undisturbed, bearing nothing more unusual than a moist film from the humidity of the previous day. The windows themselves were set in a position in which they could only open six inches. Too small for an intruder to slip through.

  The front door was bolted twice, just as she had left it before retiring. The rear door of the house was just off from the kitchen. It was locked tightly and the screen door beyond it was hooked from the inside. Annette had secured the doors herself shortly after nine P.M.

  Outside there was a ground-level bulkhead which led to the basement. But by shining a light from the kitchen window, Annette could see that the padlock upon the hatch was undisturbed. Further, the door that led from the interior of the old house to the basement was locked from the kitchen side.

  “See?” she finally said to herself. “There is nothing in this house. Except me.”

  She sighed. She was starting to feel foolish.

  She returned upstairs, but checked that floor, too. Two empty bedrooms, normally set aside for guests. An extra bathroom. A room that Annette hoped to use as a reading room but which now was empty. At the end, she arrived at a set of back stairs that led to an attic. But the attic remained sealed by padlock. She shined the flashlight up toward it. The beam from her light was upon the undisturbed lock. Then she walked back to bed and climbed in. For several minutes, until her tired eyes closed by themselves, she scanned the room. Annette waited for the woman in white to appear again.

  But the woman didn’t come back. And Annette slept.

  Chapter Four

  It was something else altogether that made Annette’s eyes open a second time that same night. This time it was a feeling, more than an actual appearance. Nor did Annette recall being pulled out of a dream. This time it was a sense of something, almost the way a feral animal has a sense of impending danger.

  All of a sudden, Annette realized that she was sitting up and awake, looking through the bedroom. There was only a dim light outside from the moon past the drawn shades. She saw only the outlines of tables, two chairs, two dressers and a desk. The familiar furniture took on no evil contours in the darkness.

  Only comfort and familiarity.

  She looked at the clock. It was four-thirty A.M. now. A real hour of darkness. A real hour of the wolf: Wasn’t that what Ingmar Bergman had called it? Curse her background in films! Why did she have to think of that? Yet in truth, as sleepy, half-formed thoughts danced before her, wasn’t this the time of the morning that spirits walked? That weakened patients in hospitals expired before they could welcome another dawn? That the dead would rise from their graves? That…?

  Abruptly, she grabbed the flashlight. She needed light. She needed a voice from an all-night radio station. Maybe a drink of someth
ing from the refrigerator. Maybe ten minutes of late night cable television.

  Anything rational. Anything to return her to reality or the light of day.

  She took the flashlight in hand and left the room. There was no ghost, no apparition, and no woman in white at the top of the stairs. She went down, the steps creaking predictably beneath her bare feet.

  She went to the kitchen, which was beneath the bedroom. She threw on the lights. She was reassured by the sink and the Formica kitchen counter and the table where she ate breakfast. The refrigerator hummed. She looked at the bolted door to the basement. It hadn’t moved.

  Tentatively, she went from room to room again on the ground floor, checking windows. Again, nothing had changed. She went back to the kitchen and sat down at the table. “So why do I have this feeling?” she asked herself again. Why this sense of… of… whatever it is?

  She turned on the radio. She tuned in an all-news radio station from New York. The radio played softly and she listened for several minutes.

  Then she realized. Whatever it was, whatever was disturbing her, was outside. She had an overbearing sense of it, a feeling that her world was somehow encircled. Whatever malevolent force was there, it was in a small evil orbit around her home.

  It made no sense, other than that she felt it in a way that she had never felt anything before. Very cautiously, she went to the kitchen window. She peered out.

  Nothing.

  Fact was, it was a starry night with almost a full moon. There was a bluish light across the lawn beside her home. It seemed creepy.

  “Why these weird thoughts?” she asked herself. What was happening tonight? Through the kitchen window, she used the flashlight to shine a beam across the lawn. Nothing caught her attention.

  She flicked off the flashlight. The moonlight dimmed very suddenly, then slowly brightened. It caused a flash of fear within Annette because she couldn’t see what had caused it. She looked at the moon and the sky around it. If there was a cloud scudding around the moon, she couldn’t see it. So why had there been a few instants of darkness?

  That feeling was back upon her. There was something somewhere. She couldn’t escape the idea of being encircled. It was as if the very thought of it held her in its grip.

  A foolish urge was upon her. Another one that she couldn’t explain. She wanted to know. She wanted to confront whatever it was.

  She went to the rear door of the house and unlocked it. She unlatched the screen door and stepped out. There was a brick landing for a few feet, then grass, which was cold and damp against her bare feet.

  She must have been an odd vision herself, she thought, wearing only a nightgown, bearing the heavy flashlight in her right fist. She turned first to her left, then to her right.

  She threw the yellow beam of the torch in every direction, as if to ward off the intruding presence. The scent of the air was sweet, but under the canopy of stars, the reign of the night was undisputed and unchallenged.

  Then, rallying her courage, she actually heard herself speak. “Okay,” she said softly but bravely. “Where are you? Let’s see you! Out in the open! Let’s go!”

  Annette did not have long to wait.

  She felt something slowly creep over her. Initially, it was like a feeling of nausea, but it quickly turned into a sensation of deep illness.

  She turned. She peered through the night. She was looking at something that was very dark and shapeless. It was moving slowly across the lawn in her direction. But she couldn’t tell what it was.

  If it resembled anything at all, it was like a small, very dense, very dark cloud. It crept slowly along the ground and approached her. She stood silent and riveted, the way one is transfixed in a nightmare—unable to scream, unable to move—until with heart pounding and face sweating, one bolts upright and awake.

  She found herself speaking. “What in God’s name…?” she began to ask. The Devil risen hot from hell, she would later remember thinking, couldn’t have scared her more.

  The dark mass approached her. Then it enshrouded her. She knew she wasn’t imagining it. She was caught in the icy midst of it. She shivered, despite the warm night. She couldn’t see the house behind her, the stars above her or the cast of light upon the lawn before her. Even the length of her arm seemed to disappear in the near darkness.

  Then the sensation began to pass. Gradually, the moonlight beyond became more clearly visible until she could see the whole lawn again.

  She turned.

  The astonishing presence was behind her now. A low, thick, amorphous black mass that was at her doorway. And she stood with mouth agape, watching helplessly, as it dissipated before her eyes, growing smaller and narrower.

  Annette realized what it was doing. It was entering her house.

  She came into the house after it. There in the kitchen, she thought she saw the tail end of it. It had massed toward the door to the cellar and seemed to be seeping under it, as if drawn by a strong draft. She watched it disappear.

  Annette closed her eyes in fright, then buried her face in her hands. She felt her heart pound.

  Then she screamed. Her hands moved away from her face and her eyes came wide open.

  Sleepwalking! She convinced herself. That’s what you’re doing again, Annie! Sleepwalking!

  She felt her heart face. A film of sweat was upon her neck.

  She looked around the quiet kitchen.

  Yeah! Sleepwalking! Not for the first time in your life. Probably not for the last, either!

  She blew out a long breath.

  What a dream! Wasn’t it?

  She looked at the cellar door. “Something went down there,” she whispered to no one. “Something not…”

  Something not human, she wanted to say aloud. Wanted to, but couldn’t.

  A presence, she wanted to say. Something evil lurks in my cellar.

  She stared at the door, trying to decide whether to venture past it. On the one hand, nothing good could happen by going down there. On the other hand, she was determined on another important point: she would never again allow the unbridled thoughts of her own mind to run away with her. To control her life. To push her over the edge, as they once had done so very recently.

  No, never again, she thought. It’s bad enough that I was sleepwalking.

  She paused, “Wasn’t I?” she mused.

  So she would prove to herself that there was nothing downstairs.

  That she had dreamed everything. That she, Annette Carlson, was back in control and not yielding to the subconscious wanderings of an overactive imagination.

  “And if there is anything there,” she said aloud to buoy her spirits, “I’ll pull it out by its hairy talons.”

  She shivered at the prospect.

  Then she unbolted the cellar door. She opened it. She reached into the cellar stairwell and flipped on the light. She looked down the steps and saw nothing.

  She took one step down, then another. On the fourth step she stopped. She stood perfectly still, waited and listened. Something? Or nothing?

  Nothing. She continued step by step until she stood on the basement floor.

  The cellar of the antique house was dark and musty. It was a warren of old furniture left by the previous owner and packing crates that Annette hadn’t opened. It was a domain of spiders and shadows, and, if the truth were known, too many mice. Then there was the “real scary stuff,” as the real estate agents had called it—the oil burner, the hot water tank and the plumbing system.

  Most of the floor was concrete, except for one stretch adjacent to the furnace, which was undisturbed earth, necessary, the real estate people had further explained, for the control of moisture.

  She reached above her and pulled a cloth string on an extra light. A bare bulb illuminated above her head. It threw her shadow in every direction. Annette stood on the cold concrete and looked around.

  She half expected something with claws to attack her. But nothing did. An uneasy moment of thought. Then, “Okay,” she
finally said. “Enough.”

  She turned off the extra light. She walked slowly up the stairs.

  She folded her arms.

  Abruptly, she froze. With a strange look on her face, she turned. She looked back down the steps. Something had alarmed her.

  “But there’s nothing here,” she spoke softly in reassurance. “Nothing at all.”

  Her gaze swept vigilantly in every direction, as if she had been certain that everything was all right, but…

  The antique house gave one of its habitual nocturnal creaks.

  Annette continued back up the steps and into the kitchen. She flipped off the light and closed the door. She finally bolted it.

  She sighed. “Come on! No question about it!” she reassured herself. She was very much alone.

  Annette moved into her living room and put a light on against the night. She sat up in a Queen Anne chair, a radio softly playing an all-night rock station from Boston. Her eyes wandered across the furnishings of the living room: an antique rocker by the old brick fireplace. A club chair. A second sofa. Behind her was the massive oak china cabinet that she would have preferred to have moved to the dining room. But the cursed thing was bolted to the wall, as had once been the custom to steady oversized cabinets filled with breakables. Annette and three moving men had been unable to budge it an inch. So there the cabinet had remained, out of proportion to every other piece in the room.

  On the radio, Paul Simon sang about a girl with diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Annette loved Paul Simon. Her thoughts instinctively settled with the sound of his voice. Then she looked around on the tables of the room. Somewhere, she recalled, she had left four new scripts that her agent Joe Fischer in Los Angeles had sent her to read. There were also two new hardcover novels that her ever-alert agent had shipped her by Federal Express. There were possible film roles in each of the six for her. She could have her choice probably, and could be working again in a few weeks. She could name her dates. All she had to do was decide what interested her, and—Well, actually, where were the scripts and books? She had left them nearby on an end table. She was certain.