Haunted (18 page)

She decided that it was time to set the record book aside and head up to see what else she could find.

At the top of the stairway she discovered that the flooring of the loft was really little more than scaffolding. The runner extended only up the stairs, then curved into an arch at the landing, while the flooring itself then became polished wood, apparently very well tended.

Darcy began to peruse the different books. Some would be of little interest to anyone other than people who found their own family names, and yet she thought that it was quite wonderful that so many people from the area might come here and find out about ancestors. There were books with nothing more than family names on them, or titles that explained their contents exactly, such as
Marriages among the Grangers of Stoneyville
, and
The
Murtons Who Attended Grace Church
. She smiled, slipping out a volume now and then, and finding most to be very old. It seemed that people hadn't kept such simple record books in a very long time. Or maybe, life just hadn't been that simple in a very long time.

A book on a high shelf caught her eye.
The Stones of Melody House
. She was delighted to see it, and once again, touched by the people of decades past who had found every little detail of life worthy of recording.

Deciding it was one volume she definitely needed to read, Darcy started to reach up for it. She was tall but she really had to stretch.

As she balanced on both toes, she heard a sudden creaking sound from the boards under her feet. Even as she frowned, the floorboard directly beneath her suddenly gave.

She grabbed frantically for the shelf in front of her. Too late, because it had all happened too quickly. For a second frozen in time, she staggered where she stood, knowing that the wood beneath her had failed, and that she was going to crash into a sheer drop. She was disbelieving, even as the simple rules of physics tore at the weight of her body.

She cried out, a whoosh of air escaping from her lungs as she felt herself suddenly plunge downward.

She grasped out desperately for any hold, all the while wondering,
How? Why? Mrs. O'Hara would never have sent anyone upstairs if it wasn't safe
—

The sound of wood crashing to the floor below came to her ears just as she managed to reach out and grasp hold of the nearest crosswise support beam. Her downward impetus was so strong that her desperate scramble for hold caused instant agony in her shoulder sockets, and yet, there was an instant of relief and incredulity when she realized that she had stopped herself.

For the moment.

For the moment, yes, only the moment, her grasp upon the
crossbeam was so tenuous, and it already seemed that her fingers were slick with perspiration and slipping.

Another scream sounded, and not from her own lips.

It was Mrs. O'Hara, crying out from beneath her.

And it was then that she fully realized herself that she was dangling from the crossbeam, her legs swinging a good twenty feet above the floor below.

She rued the long-ago wealthy plantation owner who had designed such a library.

“Hang on! Hang on!” Mrs. O'Hara cried out to her. “I've called 911. Books! I'll pile some books, the cushions from the chairs, just hold on dear, hold on!”

No other thought had occurred to Darcy, but even as the woman called out, Darcy could feel the terrible pressure on her arms and shoulder blades. She hadn't really realized her own imminent danger until that minute—she had only congratulated herself on catching hold of the crossbeam.

But how long could she hold on?

Mrs. O'Hara had dialed 911. Darcy wasn't certain that help could be there momentarily. And still….

It had been seconds, surely. No more than minutes. Her arms ached as if she had been stretched on a medieval rack. She wasn't a total weakling, but neither was she ready for championship wrestling.

“Darcy, oh, dear! Hang on, dear! There's help coming!” Mrs. O'Hara called to her.

Darcy looked down. She shouldn't have. The distance between her and the ground floor seemed gaping. Looking downward seemed to create a greater burden on her arms. She winced, grated her teeth, and began to fear that her fingers would slip no matter how she strained to hang on.

“I can't imagine how this has happened!” Mrs. O'Hara cried anxiously. “Please, please…hang on.” There had been no one else in the small library at that time. Too early for the school
children, and perhaps too late for any legal assistants or local researchers. Darcy felt faint, looking at the distance between her own dangling body and the puny little cushion Mrs. O'Hara was trying to arrange beneath her.

She closed her eyes, in agony, wondering if she would just break most of her bones if she gave up her hold, or if she'd break her neck and die as well. Despite the pain in her arms and the fear that any second they were simply going to wrench from their sockets, it seemed as if a haze of blackness was beginning to take over. She wondered desperately if she still had the strength to try to swing her legs upward and find a hold with her ankles and calves on the torn-up floor above her.

“Darcy?” Mrs. O'Hara called.

“I always knew I should have trained for Cirque du Soleil!” Darcy tossed back, wondering why she felt that she had to sound light and okay even though she definitely wasn't. She looked up at the hole in the floor. She'd have to kick through other boards to get back up. But if the one had given, then maybe…

Fingers, hands, and arms in anguish, she gave a swing, kicking at the boards above. She nearly broke her toes.

All the other floorboards were as tight as could be. The effort nearly cost her the tenuous hold she had on the crossbeam. Black dots were forming before her eyes. She clenched her eyes tightly, knowing she would lose her grip any second.

“Darcy!”

She was startled to hear Matt's voice. So much so that she thought she was losing her grip on reality.

“Darcy, it's me, Matt. Just let go. I'm going to catch you. Trust me.”

Trust him. Just let go.

“Darcy, I'm below you. Let go. I won't let you get hurt.”

Trust him…it had nothing to do with trust. She couldn't hold on any longer.

Her fingers were too stiffly wound around the crossbeam, but it didn't matter. They were slipping. She never really let go.

She simply fell, because her fingers lost their grasp.

And a scream of instinctive terror tore from her lips.

In the split second in which she fell, she anticipated her bones crushing, her blood splattering across the floor, her head…

“Darcy!”

M
att didn't fall, but staggered back as Darcy fell into his arms. The distance hadn't been so great, but she was naturally trying to resist the impetus of the fall upon her body, and she flailed wildly, desperately grabbing him as he caught her.

For a moment, they wavered, then he lost his balance, even if he did so with a certain amount of coordination. He went down upon his knees, cradling her against him. For several seconds, she had a death grip on him, and then her eyes met his, wide, those of a startled rabbit, and a shudder of relief went through her.

“You all right?” he asked quickly.

She nodded. Then her fingers went through his hair and she smiled. “You're covered in dust.”

“Your shirt is ripped and your arm is bleeding,” he told her.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” Mrs. O'Hara said, hovering over them both. They could hear a siren then. A car from the station. “This was all so impossible! We have building inspectors in regularly! I walk on that floor all the time and I know that it's sound. Was sound. Oh, my God, I had thought that it was sound. The schoolchildren go up there when they're studying. Lord, it could have been a child, a little boy or girl who couldn't get a grasp to save themselves…oh, Darcy! I am so sorry! Matt, thank God that you arrived when you did.”

Thank God that he had arrived when he did.

Strange chills ripped through him, and he stared at Darcy, still in his tense grip as they both lay sprawled on the floor.

Darcy eased her hold from around Matt's neck, stumbling to her feet, offering him a hand to rise as well. He took her hand, but stood up on his own power. She was still shaking. She might be smiling, ready to make light of the whole thing, but it wasn't an incident that could be dismissed.

“Go ahead and put a Closed sign on the door, Mrs. O'Hara,” Matt said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Mrs. O'Hara said, but still stood looking at Darcy. “The police car is coming but we need an ambulance.”

“No!” Darcy protested. “I'm fine.”

“Your arm is bleeding,” Matt informed her firmly.

“A scratch. I'm all right, honestly. I just hope I didn't break any of your bones, falling on you as I did.”

She, too, was covered in dust, or sawdust, whatever had given with the flooring. As he stared at her, Matt heard the car outside screech to a halt; Thayer Martin and Jimmy Tyson came bursting into the library.

“It's all right!” Matt called out quickly, still staring at Darcy.
But it wouldn't have been all right. By the time they would have arrived, Darcy would have been on the floor. Maybe not dead, but surely, severely injured.

“What the hel—heck happened?” Thayer demanded, staring at Matt and Darcy and the debris, and then Mrs. O'Hara.

“Flooring collapsed,” Matt said briefly. He turned to look at his two officers who were surveying the damage with amazement. “Get the building inspector in here right away.”

“Will do,” Thayer told him, pulling out his radio. Matt was dimly aware that Thayer was calling the situation in, and that Jimmy was walking carefully around the downed boards. He couldn't take his eyes off Darcy, and he was suddenly feeling chilled and strange himself.
What in God's name had suddenly convinced him that he needed to come to the library? If he
hadn't been here. But he had been. He never just drove to the library in the middle of the day. But despite being determined to head for the Wayside Inn, he had come here.

Another siren, and then, Jenkins and Smith from fire rescue were coming through the door. Thayer briefed them, and Smith headed for Darcy.

“We'll get you to the hospital, miss,” Smith said politely, looking her over with a trained eye.

“I don't need to go to the hospital, please!” she insisted.

“Show him your arm, Darcy,” Matt said curtly. Too curtly. He saw her frown, but then she opted to turn with Smith and allow him to take a look at her.

“Let's get you into a chair and take a look,” Smith said. Fifty-five, gray, bearded and bushy, Harry Smith was as competent a man as any to be found anywhere. He had a manner about him that was calming under the worst of circumstances, and Darcy accepted his pressure on her arm, taking a chair by the library desk.

Matt could hear them speaking softly as he strode the stairs up to the loft himself to take a look at the spot where Darcy had gone through.

Moving carefully along the floorboards, he got down on his hands and knees as he neared the faulty area. It looked as if a section of the boards had rotted right through.
Only a section
. The library was hundreds of years old, he reminded himself.

So were half the buildings in the town. They were also sound.

“Matt!”

He walked carefully to the railing to looked down. Smith was staring up at him. “Miss Tremayne refuses to come to the hospital. She says she's fine. We're going to drive her back to Melody House. She wants to drive herself. Penny's car is here. Can someone take it?”

Darcy had jumped up beside Smith. “I am fine!” she called up to him. “
I
fell on
you!
”

“You're still shaken up,” Smith informed her.

“Really, I'm just fine. My arm is just scratched!” Darcy protested.

“I'll get Penny's car back,” Matt said. “That's not a problem. Darcy, let them give you a ride. I'll be along in a bit. I want to be here when the building inspector shows up.” He offered her a grimace and a wave.

“Honestly, I can drive,” Darcy protested.

“I'm sure you can. Humor us all,” Matt told her.

Looking up at him, her shirt ripped, covered in sawdust, she was still stunning. Hair wild and eyes large, body stiff with indignity, she was more appealing to him than ever.

The girl is strange
, he tried to remind himself.

She was ethical, dignified, beautiful, and often remote, as well. There was something about her manner that cried out to him in a way that he had never known. Lust, sure. She was supple, sinuous, elegant, and entirely sensual in her every little movement. Somewhere under it all, she was also wounded.

He could only hurt her worse, he thought. And still…

He doubted that could keep him away.

“I'll be back to Melody House as soon as I can,” he said.

She set her jaw out stubbornly, looked as if she'd protest again, then accepted Smith's arm, thanking him for his care and concern.

 

Penny waited anxiously at the door, having received a call from Mrs. O'Hara at the library. She raced out the moment she saw Smith's rescue vehicle pull up by the front door.

“You poor, poor dear!” she told Darcy, slipping an arm around her shoulders before she had quite managed to exit the car door. “Come right in. We'll get you going in a nice hot bath. That will ease your muscles. Then I'll make you some tea with whiskey—the Irish swear that it's a cure-all. Thank God you weren't hurt worse! It's a miracle. You might have broken your
neck. Or every bone in your body. My God! How could we have let such a thing happen in Stoneyville?”

Darcy smiled at her. “Penny, I keep telling everyone that I'm absolutely fine, and no one wants to believe me.”

Harry Smith had come around the front of the emergency vehicle and stood in silence, watching the exchange. “Would you like some coffee or tea?” Penny asked him. “You're on duty, so I can't lace yours, of course,” she said, disturbed that she sounded so prim. She had always liked him. Such an incredibly kind man, always so calm and capable. Her heart had simply bled for him last year when his wife, just fifty-two, had succumbed to cancer.

“Thanks, Penny, I'm going on back. I left my partner at the library to take a quick look at Matt. I've got to get him and get back to work.”

“Matt is hurt?” Penny said anxiously.

“Not a bit. We just wanted to make sure.”

“Thank you,” Penny said, still standing there, her arm around Darcy.

“Well, see you both later,” Harry said. “Miss Tremayne, you get a headache, anything out of the ordinary—”

“I never hit my head on anything, honestly,” Darcy said.

He nodded, waved, walked around and got into the emergency van. Penny and Darcy watched him leave, then Penny collected herself. “Poor thing! Up, up. Clara Issy even went into the Lee Room to get your bath going. In fact,” Penny added, looking at Darcy wryly, “she was up there yelling at the ghost.”

“Yelling at the ghost?” Darcy said.

Penny hesitated, then said, “Yes, dear. We were both thinking that…well, we're thinking that the ghost should just be left alone. We know that the ghost has violent urges, and we're afraid, that for some reason, the ghost is now out to get you.”

Darcy shook her head. “The ghost is trying to tell us something, Penny. Not hurt me.”

“Come in, let's get you out of all that dirt and sawdust,” Penny said. She looked Darcy over. Mussed, yes, daunted, no.

“Honestly,” she said softly, leading Darcy into the house. “I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but…I think you should leave.”

“Penny!”

“Seriously.”

“The ghost is supposed to be in the house, not the library!” Darcy said.

“But maybe this ghost is so disturbed by you that it followed you.”

“And maybe the floorboards are just really old, and they gave.”

“Well, go on up. Everything will certainly be more logical once we've all thought about it a bit,” Penny said.

Darcy stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared at her. “Penny, weren't you the one who wanted someone to come here—to prove to Matt that there were ghosts, I believe.”

“Yes, I was. But that was then, and this is now.” Penny was exasperated. Darcy didn't seem to understand that she could really be in danger.

“Penny, honestly, I do believe there is a presence in the Lee Room trying very hard to make itself known, and understood. I don't believe it followed me to the library. What happened to me was frightening, but I'm fine, and it might have happened to anyone. It could have been a child, and Matt might not have been there in time.”

“Yes, that's strange, isn't it?” Penny mused. How had Matt managed to be there at just the right time?

“Strange, perhaps, but lucky,” Darcy said. Penny was startled when Darcy suddenly put her hands on her shoulders, drew her close, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I'm fine, Penny, and I'm not afraid of the ghost in the Lee Room. And I'm very determined. I'll run up and bathe, and be back down. That tea you were talking about sounds great. But don't
go treating me like an invalid. I have a scratch on my arm, nothing more.”

Darcy ran up the stairs and Penny watched her go. She stood in the foyer on the first floor landing for a very long time, still staring long after Darcy had disappeared.

She shook her head.

It would be terrible if something were to happen to Darcy.

Just terrible.

She really needed to talk her into leaving.

 

Dan Platt was the building inspector called into the library. Naturally, and with Matt's full agreement and support, they were closing the library until a thorough inspection could be made.

Still, Matt wanted a preliminary report.

Dan, midforties, with iron-gray hair and a muscled physique, stood in his hard hat, hands on his hips. “Right now, it looks like the boards just gave.”

“Why those boards?” Matt demanded.

“Leakage, maybe.”

“There are no leaks. I looked at the roof.”

“Sometimes, leaks can slip down the walls and into floors without being evident. There are other possibilities.”

“Like what?”

“Something spilled there, maybe. Who knows? Maybe kids came in with some kind of acidic drinks, spilled them, and were too chicken to let Mrs. O'Hara know what had happened. A spilled drink that wasn't wiped up would definitely damage this old wood. I'm not sure, exactly, Matt. But it doesn't look as if there was any tampering, though why anyone would tamper with the library to begin with is beyond me.”

“I'd still like an analysis done on the boards that gave out.”

“Sure. If that's what you want.”

“Definitely, it's what I want.”

Dan looked at Matt as if he was going off the deep end, but
he said, “We'll do a thorough investigation, and see that the rotten pieces are analyzed.”

Matt nodded. “Great.”

Dan started back up the stairs. Matt stood in the now empty ground floor, and waited. When Dan and his workers had finished, Matt headed back up the stairs himself. It wasn't that he didn't have complete faith in Dan Platt. Nor did he have the least suspicion that Dan wouldn't do a thorough job.