Echoes of the Dead (21 page)

“No. I’d seen the man before—or at least his shape.” Kelsey glanced toward the door. Hallway shadows listened to them.

“Where?”

“Here. In the house.”

Erin shuddered. Kelsey pulled away her hand.

“You’re kidding?”

“No. Just like your visions, Erin, I’m not kidding.” Kelsey closed her eyes, opening them again as she looked away from the door. “I’m not kidding. I saw it—him—in a window on this floor.”

Erin stood. “Jesus.”

“I think I know who it—”

Kelsey’s next words caught in her throat. A pounding noise sounded from the floor above them. Both women stared at each other, their wide, white eyes revealing they’d heard the same thing.

“Upstairs,” Erin said. “No one is upstairs.”

“We would have heard one of the others if they’d gone up, wouldn’t we?” Kelsey realized her fingers were tugging at the bed coverings. She forced them into her lap. “They would have gone up the main staircase, right?”

“Right.”

“Should we—”

“Go up?”

Kelsey shook her head. “I don’t know if I can. It took about all I had to come up here and find you.”

“But if it’s Wayne or Nick or Howard…”

“It wouldn’t be Wayne or Nick.” Kelsey stood up and stepped toward the bedroom door. “We should go to talk to the others first, get Johnny or Ben or—”

The pounding started again,
thud, thud, thud
.

“It’s not footsteps.”

“No,” Erin said. “It’s not even close to footsteps. More like someone trying to get our attention. C’mon, Kels. We can do this without the boys.”

Kelsey’s back stiffened. She wanted to be brave and climb the final flight of stairs and flip on the lights and whistle for the thudding whatever to stumble into the hallway and join them. She wanted to walk through the darkness as brazen as a little girl exploring a monstrous cave. She wanted those things, but dread hung on her heart like a cold, damp cloth.

“It’s Howard.” Erin closed her eyes and nodded. “I’m almost positive. He’s gotten himself stuck on the third floor. Maybe in a closet. That’s why I’m seeing the darkness. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Why didn’t we find him earlier?” Kelsey asked.

“I dunno.  It’s a big house. The others got distracted before they poked around in every nook or cranny. But we’ve got him now.” Erin pulled her door open. Light spilled into the hallway and warmed the wall. “You won’t let me go outside, at least let me go upstairs. You can come with. I bet Howard was the man you saw in the house.”

Kelsey closed her eyes. “I don’t know, Erin. Something is wrong about this house. I came up because I didn’t want you to be alone—”

“Is just a house.”

“Just a house. How do you explain the bathroom?”

“Bathroom? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.” Erin stood in the open doorway. “Ben opened the door,” she said. “When you and Johnny and Sarah left.”

“The door?”

“In the bathroom. What used to be a bathroom.” Erin grinned. “It was a storage closet. Nothing but a few empty shelves. I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner. I wish Sarah could have seen it. Maybe she wouldn’t have freaked.”

“It was locked.”

Erin shrugged. “So he forced the lock. I dunno.  He just told Daniel and me it was empty. Are you coming?”

“A closet?”

“Yes. Are you coming?”

Kelsey moved away from the bed. Her head spun, and her eyes lost focus momentarily. “Yes. Yes…”

Erin flipped on the hallway light as they left the blue bedroom. “I thought I left this on, did you turn it off?”

Kelsey shook her head. “It was dark when I came upstairs.”

“Funny.”

Erin rounded the corner of the stairwell and started up. Kelsey paused before climbing from the second floor. The lights were off upstairs, too, darkness covering the third floor.  Whoever—whatever made the thumping sound did so in the dark.

“Erin?”

“Come on, Kelsey. He could need help.”

“Why hasn’t he called out? Why hasn’t he said anything?”

Erin paused at the landing between the second and third floors. Kelsey couldn’t see her face, but she imagined the younger woman thinking about her questions—good questions with important answers.

“He could be hurt,” Erin said. “His heart—he could have had a minor attack.”

Kelsey put her first foot on the step. “Okay. We’ll check, and then—”

“If it’s Howard, and he’s hurt, we might need help. I don’t think we could carry him.”

“We stick together,” Kelsey said as she took a few more steps toward the third floor. “If he needs help we both go down and get someone else, okay?”

“Good.”

Erin arrived on the third floor just ahead of Kelsey. The lights revealed a hall similar to the one below but longer. A window opened to the sky at either end, and the hallway wasn’t as tall as that on the second floor. From outside, the house’s roof slanted at the third story, indicating each room would be smaller and with a sloped ceiling. A musty odor floated in the air, an unpleasant staleness which accompanied old houses.

“Do you smell that?” Kelsey asked. “It wasn’t this bad down below.”

Erin tilted her head to one side. “This is more what I would expect. A good, old-fashioned haunted house smell.”

“It’s a little like my grandmother’s house.” Kelsey’s gaze traveled over the dark wood-paneled wainscoting and delicately patterned wallpaper upon which tiny brown pineapples lay in diagonal rows against a light yellow background. She pressed a finger against the wall, feeling the subtle texture. She’d seen the wallpaper before, years before, and tried to clutch the memory.

“Kelsey?”

“Yes?”

“I think we should take the rooms on this side of the house. The noise—the thumping was overhead in the blue room.” Erin waved to her right. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Kelsey said. “I’m fine. Just remembering. This wallpaper… Grandma had yellow wallpaper in her kitchen and dining room. I don’t remember little pineapples, but there was a pattern in brown.”

“So it’s the same paper?”

“Maybe. I can’t really be sure.” Kelsey pulled her hand from the wall. “It’s just funny… Same look, yes. My memories aren’t as crisp as the paper.”

The wall shimmered. Kelsey imagined it had, at least, like a mirage miles ahead on a highway, a glint of silver and then nothing. She thought of being a small girl, how she would ride on the bench seat in the front of her father’s truck and imagine they were chasing the bits of liquid silver on the road. Her ten-year-old self would lean forward, perched at the edge of the bench while the seatbelt pulled at her tiny chest. She imagined leaning forward would give her the advantage she needed in the chase, but she never caught the mirage, of course. When her father found her in the midst of her little game, he laughed and laughed, filling the cab with the hearty, full-throatiness of his voice.

Kelsey backed away from the wall. Her fingertips tingled. “Did you see that?” she asked.

“What?”

Kelsey rubbed her hand against her jeans. “Nothing. I must have blinked. I’m tired.”

“Howard?” Erin knocked against the wall, walking toward the first door. “Howard is it you? Please knock if it is.” She came to the first door and tried the knob. It gave, click, and the door tilted inward.

“It’s dark,” Kelsey said.

“Here.” Erin leaned through the rectangular opening. A click sounded from inside. A single, naked light bulb hummed and popped at the ceiling center. “Oh crap. Should have brought the flashlight.”

“Push the door open,” Kelsey said. “We can see well enough.”

The room was empty. The ceiling dropped in a rather steep slope toward the outer wall, more of an attic room than a proper floor. Enough hallway light spilled inside to reveal a dusty wooden floor, devoid of footprints, and stark window without a curtain on the outer wall.

“Nobody’s touched this room,” Kelsey said.

“But it’s directly above my room—the blue room.” Erin frowned. “Maybe the next?”

But the next room wasn’t locked either. They opened the door to find a suitcase, half-unpacked, and several items of clothing strewn about on the floor. A black t-shirt lay draped over a wooden chair. The plain brown curtains hung from a wooden rod above the window, and the walls were a subtle tan, pale enough that they once might have been white.

“Johnny’s room,” Kelsey said. She stood at the door, held back by a sense of intrusion into Johnny’s private world.

“How do you know? Isn’t Ben staying up here, too?”

“Johnny’s shirt.” Kelsey waved to the chair. “And there are no closets in these rooms. No hidden passages. It’s hardly big enough for the bed, let alone somebody hiding up here. Aren’t there empty rooms on the second floor?”

“You’re down there with Sarah… Me in the blue room… Daniel and Johnny are up here.” Erin moved into the room. “Where is Ben staying?”

“There wasn’t any space in the RV. No room for the crew, either. Not unless they wanted to move all their equipment every night.” Kelsey leaned against the door jamb. Fatigue hung about her shoulders thick and heavy.  “I don’t get it.”

“Me either. I should have checked into Mr. Wormsley a little better—I guess I saw stars.”

Kelsey shifted her weight from one foot to the next. Her fingers played at her sides, feeling the hem of her jeans. Erin needed to leave Johnny’s room, to show a little respect at least. She felt like she was ten years old again, digging through her older brother’s bedroom when he wasn’t home and finding a collection of
Playboy
’s in a shoebox under the bed. She’d stolen one—just an act of curiosity from a little girl—but when he found it missing—

“We should check the other rooms.” Erin rose and moved for the door.  “Kelsey?”

“Sorry. Just remembering.”

“Kelsey… I’ve been wondering. What’s the story with you and Johnny?”

Kelsey drew back into the hallway.

“Sorry to pry. I’ve just notice the way you look at him.”

Kelsey shrugged. “Nothing. Not between us, anyway. He used to date Sarah, but then the house happened. Sarah quit school—one semester left. Johnny joined the Army. I hid my head and kept moving forward.”

“Sorry.” Erin dropped her eyes and put on a sheepish expression. “I can’t imagine why the four of you—Mr. Wormsley included—would want to come back to this place.”

Kelsey looked down the hallway. Even with the lights on, darkness owned the third floor, the half-attic. “It was the money. Dad’s death… His funeral. It was just too hard to say no to that much money.”

“Money?”

“’fraid so. If I don’t have the money, I can’t finish my research.”

“With the rats?”

Kelsey nodded. “I know it sounds stupid. After my dad died, I wanted to make sure I made him proud. He was my biggest fan.” She held her breath.

Erin smiled. “I’m sure we’ll be okay, Kelsey. Let’s take a peek in the rest of these rooms and get back down—”

“Kels!”

The two women exchanged a startled glance. Someone—it sounded like Johnny—shouted Kelsey’s name from below. Her name. Kels. Johnny was calling for her.

“Get down here! We’ve found him!”

“Go,” Erin said, stepping toward the next door. “Go and see what’s going on. I’ve got to check these last couple of rooms, just in case.”

Kelsey hesitated. No one was to be alone in the house.

“Kels!”

“Go,” Erin repeated. “I’ll be fine. See you in five, okay? Nothing’s going to happen to me up here. You’ve seen the nothing for yourself, right? No blizzard in which to get lost—no heart disease.  I’ll be there in five.”

Kelsey nodded. Once she made the landing, she almost fell down the stairs as she bounded with such quick steps. Erin would come tumbling after. She promised. The dread of dark, quiet hallways, and phantom knocks chased her down. She should have never come back to the house and now, now they were trapped. The wrecked RV and Ben’s poor decision making doomed them—she shook her head to lose the word
doom
. Fear was not a rational thing. Neither were memories, even though most people spent their lives lying to themselves. Kelsey knew these things to be true, facts checked against dozens of research proposals and journal articles in the last ten years. Good solid research.

But she was scared.

“Who have you found? Who is it?” Kelsey’s voice bubbled over as she hopped from the bottom step.

“On the radio—”

“We haven’t found anybody,” Ben said. “John’s just being a bit melodramatic.”

“Melodramatic, Wormsley? I didn’t make this shit up. Howard called in on the radio.” Johnny glared at Ben. “He’s alive, at least. We know that much. Earlier, when we found his tools, the radio was missing, the two-way Ben had the crew use.”

“So he still has it with him?” Kelsey asked.

“Seems like it,” Johnny said.