Читать книгу The Visitor - Amanda Stevens - Страница 10

Five

That night, I turned in early with a new novel, but exhaustion claimed me before I made it through the first chapter. Saving my place with a crystal bookmark my aunt had given to me years ago, I turned off the light and snuggled down in the covers as I tried to clear my mind of secrets, stereograms and the smell of old decay in the cellar.

I must have been dreaming about that smell because the phantom scent roused me from the first deep sleep I’d had in nights. I lay very still with eyes wide-open, trying to orient myself in the darkness. The odor was so fleeting and indistinct it might well have been a remnant of my dream. I wasn’t frightened. Not then. Not until I heard breathing.

The rhythmic sawing was low and croaky. Human but not human.

A thrill of alarm chased across my scalp even as I tried to rationalize the sound. It was just an old-house noise like all the other creaks and groans I heard from time to time. The doors and windows were locked tight. A human intruder couldn’t get in without making sufficient racket to wake me and it was a rare occurrence for a ghost to penetrate hallowed ground. I was safe here in my sanctuary. I desperately needed to believe that.

But as I lay there drenched in moonlight and dread, the sound came again, raspy and furtive. And close. Very close. Right behind the headboard, I was certain.

My own breath quickened as I slowly turned.

Nothing was there. Nothing that I could see. Because the sound came from inside the wall.

I wanted more than anything to leap from bed, put distance between myself and those terrifying rasps, but instead I lay there listening to the darkness as my mind raced back to the conversation with Macon. He’d said earlier that something was nesting in the cellar. An opossum or a rat, perhaps?

An animal would certainly explain the musky smell, but what of the breathing? The ragged exhalation suggested something larger than a rodent, a sentient prowler that could invade hallowed ground and maneuver its way into my sanctuary.

Slipping a hand from beneath the covers, I reached for the lamp switch. Light flooded the room, chasing shadows from corners and momentarily staunching my terror. Nothing stirred. I saw no evidence of a visitor, animal or otherwise. The rasping had stopped, but I still had a sense that something hunkered inside the wall. I could feel an avid presence behind the plaster.

Climbing out of bed, I plucked one of my slippers from the floor and then, taking a position at the end of the bed, I flung the shoe against the wall above the headboard. I heard a muffled squeal, followed by furious scratching that now came from the hallway.

Gooseflesh popped at the back of my neck. I had no idea what I was dealing with. Human, animal...something from another realm? I couldn’t imagine the space between the walls accommodating anything larger than a raccoon, but if the sound really had come from the hallway outside my bedroom... If something had found a way in through the basement...

Images spiraled through my head as I stood there trembling. The last thing I wanted to do was leave my bedroom to investigate, but what choice did I have? I needed to make sure nothing was loose in my house.

Oh, how I wished for Angus’s company at that moment. Ever since the battered mutt had adopted me during a restoration in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he’d been my constant companion, a guardian against intruders from this world and the next. But he was in the country with my parents because I’d thought, foolishly perhaps, that they needed his protection more than I did.

Grabbing a flashlight from my bedside drawer, I eased through the door and inched my way down the corridor, pausing now and then to track a new sound. Was that the scratch of a claw, the faint click of a door?

By the time I reached the kitchen, I’d almost managed to convince myself that nothing was amiss. I was just about to step into my office when a soft thud brought me around with a jerk.

My gaze went straight to the cellar door and I paused there with hammering heart. Then I tiptoed across the room, and I pressed my ear to the thick wood. All was silent in the cellar, but I could feel cold air seeping through the keyhole. Not for anything would I put my eye to the aperture, but I had to wonder if something was on the other side peering in at me.

I knelt and shone the flashlight beam through the opening. A high-pitched squeal—or was it a whistle?—had me scrambling back to the middle of the kitchen floor. Drawing my knees close to my chest, I sat there quaking, my gaze glued to that keyhole.

I still didn’t see how a flesh-and-bone intruder could have invaded my sanctuary. The only way in from the cellar was through that locked door...unless...

Could there be a hidden crawl space somewhere?

My gaze darted about the kitchen. The notion of a secret passageway was deeply disturbing, but I wasn’t about to go exploring for the entrance. For now, all I could do was seal the keyhole with a piece of duct tape and shove a table up against the door—futile precautions that did little to calm my nerves.

Leaving lights on all over the house, I went back to the bedroom and crawled under the covers, bracing myself for another long, sleepless night. Turning to the nightstand to retrieve my novel, I froze with a gasp.

The translucent husk of a cicada, perfectly preserved and still attached to a twig, lay on top of the book. The silver bookmark with the dangling crystals was gone.