Haunted (24 page)

“I can pick you up,” Clint told him.

“I'll just take a cab,” Carter told him.

“I don't mind coming to get you,” Clint said.

Carter stared at him, smiling over clenched teeth as he tried to make a point. “No, Clint, thanks. It's all right. I'll just grab a cab.”

“Oh. Oh!” Clint said, quickly lowering his head to hide a smile.

Liz yawned. “I'm exhausted. But so excited! Darcy, what you do is so incredible. Can you teach me?”

I don't do parlor tricks!
Darcy thought.
What I have can be a curse as much as a gift, and painful as well as rewarding!

“I'm not sure I know how, Liz. It's a matter of keeping your mind open, I believe. I'm sure you'll get there,” she said aloud. It was a lie. But there really was no truth to tell that could be understood. She rose. “Excuse me, I think I'll go up with Adam and take a look at the tapes.”

She made a hasty retreat up the stairs.

Adam was in his guest room, the Longstreet Room. When she tapped on the door, he bid her to enter absently. He was deeply engrossed in the tape when she went in.

Darcy watched it with him. She listened to the voice, and the fear in it.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

“I think it's strange, as we've all noticed, that a ghost can be so afraid.”

“Think it can be Arabella?” Darcy asked.

“I don't know. I haven't had a chance to do the research that you've done,” he said.

“I'll show you everything that I dug into tomorrow,” Darcy assured him.

Adam sat back, looking at her. “Matt is still convinced that there's a living human creating most of his problems.”

“I don't know,” Darcy said. “I heard noises one night and I have to admit, I was convinced myself that there was certainly someone living and breathing making them. But Matt was there, and he walked around the balcony, and found nothing.”

“Someone could have slipped back in the house, right?”

“Sure. But that doesn't account for the dreams, visions, and other phenomena.”

Adam grinned. “I know that, and you know that, but Matt is a skeptic. Still, it's an interesting situation. Why would someone pretend to be a ghost?”

“I thought that maybe Penny wanted a ghost so badly that she was helping to create one,” Darcy said. “Or maybe one of the guys was just having fun at Matt's expense.”

“Tell me more about those two—Clint and Carter.”

“Clint is a cousin from the wrong side of the blankets, as they say. Carter is a friend. Heavily into real estate, I believe.”

“And Clint? What does he do?”

“Hang around, mostly. Penny is often despairing of him,” Darcy said.

“What does he survive on?” Adam asked.

“I'm not sure. Maybe Matt's goodwill,” Darcy said.

Adam nodded. “I'd like to spend tomorrow doing research. Get some things settled in my own mind. After that…maybe hypnotism?”

Darcy was not fond of being hypnotized. But it often worked.

“We'll never do anything you don't want to do,” Adam said as she hesitated.

“Oh, I know. I guess, sometimes, still…” she sighed. “Adam, am I really such a freak? That's how people react to me, you know.”

He smiled. “Elizabeth Holmes is green with envy.”

“Yes, but I saw the looks in everyone's eyes tonight.”

“You saw the look in Matt's eyes,” Adam corrected softly.

She waved a hand in the air. “It's just the look…I get it from far more people than Matt.”

Adam sat back. “I think he's falling in love with you. What do you say?”

“I say that he's entirely repulsed.”

“I say that he's afraid,” Adam told her.

“Matt Stone? You know, his name fits. He's chiseled. He's like coming up against a rock. Hard. And unchanging.”

Adam laughed. “Even the hardest stone can be eroded. And maybe you've shaken him to the core, which always make a man or woman don a facade as quickly as possible. He's a decent man. Give him a chance.”

“A chance for what?”

“A change of thought. That's difficult to come by, you know.”

Darcy fell silent. Difficult. Impossible. If a ghost walked by in pure daylight, oozing ectoplasm, Matt would think he was seeing sunspots.

“By the way—he's worried about you. He doesn't think you should be here.

“I'm fine.”

“He says you woke up terrified last night.”

She frowned. “I just can't get a handle on this. I'm more frustrated than terrified, Adam, really. I see this event unfolding. I've taken on the persona of the man coming to the house, and that of the woman inside, waiting. I know that she's frightened, and I know that he has deadly intentions. When I have it,
the dream goes a little further each time. Then…I lose it. I know that I'm seeing the past, but something in the dream bothers me every time. There's something that I should see, but just don't.”

“That means that there is an end out there. We are getting somewhere, Darcy. You're seeing the event. We know that there is an entity, trying to tell us something. She's been reaching out, but she's still terrified herself. Poor thing. It's the depths of the fear she was feeling when she died. We have to make certain that we know who she is—you believe it's this Arabella. So, we're getting close, very close.”

Darcy smiled. “Adam, I actually believe that this place is swarming with ghosts.”

“Probably. But the rest of them seem to be happy ghosts. Just watching over the place. Arabella, or whoever she is, has the greatest power. And that's because she's so desperate to say something to us all. We'll get to it. By the way, I've asked David Jenner to set up a few of the cameras and some tape equipment in your room. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” she said. She's seen Matt's face that night. He wouldn't be coming back to visit her in the darkness of the night.

“I'm right here, not a stone's throw away. Call me if you need me. Call if you think you may need me.”

“I know, Adam.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Are you all right, Darcy? I haven't seen you this shaken since…since the beginning.”

“I'm fine,” she assured him.

She wasn't. She was hurt. But then she'd known better than to fall for Matt Stone, to become emotionally involved. The truth of it was that she
wasn't
normal, and there just weren't many men out there willing to deal with her circumstances.

Adam was still staring at her. He knew her too well. “Adam, I'm fine,” she said firmly.

“Maybe Matt Stone is right.”

“About what?”

“That's it's dangerous for you to be here.”

“Adam—”

“What about the library?”

“Adam, this I know—a ghost did not follow me into the library. I was alone when I stood on those boards. What happened was a coincidence.”

“Still—”

“Adam, I'm close. I know I'm close. There's some little thing there that I'm not seeing, and once I know what it is, the situation will be solved. I'm certain. Good night, and please don't worry about me.”

He nodded. Even as she left the room, he was rewinding the tape to study it once again.

Darcy walked to the Lee Room. It seemed very quiet. She didn't feel that the eyes watched her. Then she wondered if maybe the ghost was simply exhausted. Maybe the seance was as hard on their entity as it was on those living souls who had been involved.

“Let me help you!” she said aloud. “You don't need to hurt me or anyone. You have to get the courage together to let us know what happened.”

There was no response.

Darcy locked the balcony doors. There would be no one slipping through them to see her tonight.

Weary, she got ready for bed, and crawled in.

The emptiness around her seemed absurdly loud.

 

Matt arrived back at Melody House, but for several long minutes, he remained in the car, staring at the house. Brick, mortar, and stone. It was a house, nothing more.

It was living history.

He thought about it and knew that he loved his house, no matter what.

And he was falling in love with Darcy.

No.

They'd shared some time together. She should be perfect, soft-spoken, clear-eyed, dignified beyond belief, beautiful in her every movement. Kind to others…

And just plain damned weird.

Shaking him and everyone else straight down to their foundations.

He thought about Mae's words with irritation. Whether she meant to do so or not, Darcy was perpetuating ridiculous beliefs. Maybe she really believed everything she said. The power of the imagination was tremendous. He knew that. But to believe that ghosts could come back, or even that a ghost could be causing dangerous events, even come back as a killer….

He'd known killers; too many of them. Men who killed in the pursuit of gain. Men and women so hung up on drugs they'd stab their own mothers for a dollar. Even those killers who thought that God or dogs ordered them to kill. And then there were those who killed for the sheer pleasure of it.

Flesh, blood, real. More terrifying than anything imagined that could go bump in the night. And he had dealt with them so many damned times that to believe that brutality could exist in some fifth dimension was preposterous.

And yet….

How the hell had he known to go to the library the other day?

He swore softly and exited the car. He'd taken his time getting home.

And to his great pleasure, his house was empty.

He locked up and climbed the stairs to the second landing.

He paused there. Darcy's door…the Lee Room. She wouldn't be expecting him. He knew that. It had nothing to do with ESP or instinct.

He had seen the way that she had looked at him.

He went into his own room and closed the door.

 

The dream came again.

She had dreaded that it would, but she had been anxious as well, desperate to experience what had happened, and
see
. See clearly, know exactly what had happened.

She entered into the mind of the man in the past. Saw what he saw.

The woman.

She was, the man knew—beneath the rage that had risen within him—always urgent, obsessive, beautiful. He had seen in her again everything that he had desired when she had appeared at the upper landing. He had seen the structure of her face, the shadow and light of the night, enhancing the sculpture and curves of her body, granting moonlit magic to her hair. She could create a fire with a single glance, whisper words that could drive a man to pure frenzy.

She could touch a man….

And do so many things. Bring arousal to life in seconds, manipulate the senses, tear into the mind.

Ah, yes, and she could do so much more.

His head was spinning, torn with pain. And she was running, but it appeared she did so in slow motion. He rose in much the same way, seeing the wall, the bed, the clock, ticking away the seconds, minutes, hours.

Ticking away the night.

He staggered to his feet. She was running; he had to run, too. She was so gorgeous in flight. Her appearance so fragile, so innocent. She ran….

As if she could escape.

She wasn't so fragile, and certainly not at all innocent.

Still, he was far stronger. He followed her out the door.

And faster.

 

She was captured in the replay of the past, yet her own resources blindly guiding her, Darcy rose in her sleep, anxious to
catch up with the specters of time gone by. She moved like a wraith in the night, sliding across the floor, opening the door—that through which the spirit images had so easily drifted.

She came to the landing, to the rail, and looked down the stairway.

But a sound behind her startled her back to life. She felt a fierce shove, slamming her hard against the railing where she teetered precariously for several seconds.

She came to full wakefulness in a split second, realized her position, and instinctively fought to right it. She was strong enough herself, and quickly maintained her grasp and equilibrium, her mind working quickly and with outrage.

Someone real, alive and well, had been on the upstairs landing. She had heard a real noise. And real hands had attempted to push her over!

Righted, she spun around.