Harrison Investigations 1 Haunted (29 page)

' 'A woman scorned,'' he repeated. ' 'Is deadly.
Deadly,
deadly... dead."

She didn't scream. She didn't bother. She cursed him as
he came toward her then. Cursed him, and the house, for all
eternity. Her hatred was deep. She was about to be
silenced. No one would ever know the truth about him, what had
really happened. The truth would die with her, and in time, she
would be...

Nothing more than legend.

If that much.

She started to spring to her feet once again.

She didn't make it. He fell upon her.

His hands... those hands which had brushed against her
with the greatest tenderness and ardor...now closed around her
neck.

Tightened, and tightened.

She strangled out curses. Swearing. With the darkening of
the light that was her life, she still swore that he would
pay, that come hell and damnation, somehow, sometime,
through all the powers of existence, dark and light, she
would come back, she would find her revenge.

Choking, gasping, lips turned blue, breath fading,
black
ness before her eyes...

"You'll pay,'' she swore.

"But no one knows that you're here," he told her.

The vise constricted, thumb pressing into her throat. Black
pinpoints joined together. Her lungs were bursting. She longed
desperately to keep fighting.

But light was fading...fading.

And then....

She was history.

Darcy woke, drenched with sweat, gasping for air. She sat up. A
late-night show was still playing on the television. A
coolness hummed throughout the room, soothing to her flesh, for she
had been so hot, tossing and turning, twisting the bedclothes into
piles of knots.

She had come to me end. She had seen the spirit die in the
flesh. And yet...

She'd seen nothing clearly. No detail of face or form. She had
felt the hands around her neck, but she hadn't seen the face.

She smoothed back her hair, and stopped.

She was there again.

The woman in white. Standing at the foot of Darcy's bed.

Then, she turned and started for the door. Darcy slipped from
the bed. The woman turned back in her unearthly haze of white and
beckoned.

She opened the door to the hallway and beckoned again.

And Darcy followed.

______ 14___

Matt lay awake, the picture of Darcy, contorted and
gasping, replaying in his mind, over and over again.

She needed to be out of this house.

So why didn't he just make her leave?

He couldn't deal with it, he knew he couldn't deal with it, so
why let her stay?
Figure it out.
Because he couldn't bear
to see her go. So, what? Was he waiting to see if she'd wake up one
morning and admit the whole thing was an act, their way of bringing
the culprit to justice who was rigging the house to make it appear
haunted?

It wasn't going to happen. And though it might be in her own
mind, what she thought she saw and felt was real to her.

He was afraid for her, and he didn't know why. He didn't like
being away from the house when she was in it. He didn't believe
that ghosts could hurt people. But the living could. Why should he
be afraid for her then when those she was chasing were ghosts?

He tossed, and turned, and then...

He thought he heard her door open.

He lay still, listening for a minute. Nothing. Nothing he could
hear.

He rose anyway.

The wraith moved out of the door, and along the landing,
heading for the stairs. Darcy followed. The ghost misted down the
stairway in a white haze. Darcy paused at the landing.

The spirit stopped, looking back. Beckoning.

Once again, Darcy followed.

She scampered down the stairway, and became suddenly aware that
she wasn't just in pursuit of a spirit. She resembled the
spirit. She was in a long white cotton nightgown, chasing a
specter. They were both puffs of white, the ghost floating, she
actually setting her feet upon the steps. Bare feet. She hadn't
bothered with slippers.

It hadn't occurred to her that the ghost would lead her beyond
the house.

But that was what the specter intended.

She drifted through the foyer, straight to the front door, and
then through it.

From somewhere within the house, Darcy heard a door close. She
hesitated, then hurriedly began playing with the alarm and the
complicated locks on the front door, opened it, and rushed out.

The spirit moved across the lawn and started drifting toward the
stables and the outbuildings beyond.

Darcy followed. There was a moon out, and floodlights
illuminated the entry to Melody House. But once she passed the
stables, the lights dimmed. The ghost was headed toward the old
smokehouse.

Suddenly, the apparition went dead still. Darcy, too,
paused.

The spirit began to fade, slipping behind the building. Darcy
ran after it.

She came around the side of the smokehouse and discovered
that the wraith had indeed disappeared. As she stood there, puzzled
and frustrated, she heard the snap of a twig. Something warned her
not to make her presence known.

She flattened herself against the smokehouse, listening,
waiting.

Footsteps fell...slowly, furtively. She held very still.

Closer...

She let her fingers crawl down the wood of the smokehouse
door, seeking the handle. She gripped it, and tugged, but it
refused to give.

The moonlight was casting curious shadows. Shapes that formed
and reformed, billowed and withered, like the rise and fall of
branches from the neighboring trees. But then one shadow became
distinct.

It was that of a man.

She heard a strange, soft, snapping sound.

The man was carrying something. A cord...a strap...of some kind.
An end was held in each hand and he tightened it, eased it,
tightened it, eased it.

She'd seen the motion before. In a dream. When a killer had been
contemplating murder.

He stood very still in the moonlight. Darcy ceased to breathe,
watching, waiting.

Then the shadow moved.

And Darcy did, too.

She shoved away from the smokehouse, coming around the other
side of it. She ran as if all the demons of hell were after her,
heading back toward the house. At first, she heard thundering
footsteps as well, footsteps that fell in hot pursuit.

The porch, blackened by shadow despite the floodlights, was
directly before her. She raced up the steps, wincing when her bare
foot fell upon a small pebble. She started to hurtle herself toward
the door, then tried to halt her impetus, a scream rising in her
voice as a massive shadow moved between her and the entry.

She crashed hard into the rising shadow, gasping out rather than
screaming, but in a frenzy and ready to rip away and scream.

She couldn't do so.

Arms wrapped around her, fingers bit into her shoulders.

"Darcy!"

She froze. Matt.

"Darcy!"

Matt. Had he been behind her? Had he been the shadow she had
seen? Impossible, he'd still be behind her. Unless he had doubled
around, leapt the railing, and sped around the porch. She was fast.
That didn't mean that he might not be faster.

She had heard footsteps, and then...

Nothing.

"Darcy!" He gave her a little shake.

"What?"

"What?" he echoed. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

Chasing your ghost!
She thought.

"Sorry, I was just out on a moonlight stroll," she said
aloud.

She was close to him, and yet startled when his palm fell
against her heart, a touch far too intimate, and though platonic,
an aching reminder of other nights.

"Your heart is beating a thousand miles an hour."

"I thought I'd jog."

"In your bare feet and nightgown?"

He was looking sterner than a turn-of-the-century
schoolmaster.

"Matt, what are you doing out here?" she demanded.

"Trying to find out what you're doing. And don't tell me about
moonlight strolls."

"Why? I'm sure you'd believe that far easier than the truth,"
she challenged dryly.

"The ghost invited you out?" he quizzed skeptically.

"Yep."

"And where did she go?"

"She disappeared behind the smokehouse," Darcy said. ' 'Look,
what good is any of this? You think I'm practically psycho, and it
doesn't matter what I say. So-will you excuse me?" He was still
blocking her way. "May I go back in?"

He hesitated. She was afraid for a minute that he'd tell her no,
that he'd get her things, and drive her into town.

Then, she felt an unwilling tinge of fear. Maybe he had followed
her. And maybe he had leapt the railing and raced around to accost
her on the porch. Maybe whatever it was going on in Melody House
somehow related back to him.

No.

"Matt, please, let me by you," she said softly.

He didn't budge. "I don't want you running around here at night
like this," he told her.

"May we go back in?"

"Did you hear me? I don't want you around here in the dark like
this. Barefoot. Half-naked."

"I am not half-naked!"

"In the moonlight, Miss Tremayne, you might as well be entirely
naked."

"Sorry. I'll try not to excite the bugs and bats too much," she
said. "May I please go in?"

"Once you've listened to me!"

"Fine, I understand. You don't want me running around the place
at night."

"I don't care if the ghost sits down at your bedside and asks
you out for a barbecue, do you understand?"

"Your words are incredibly clear," she assured him.

He stepped aside, and opened the door. She slipped on in, hoping
she could tear back up the stairs and elude his questions and
orders for the rest of the night at least.

But the stairway lights were on and Penny was standing at the
landing. "What's going on?" she demanded, wide-eyed.

"Darcy felt like a stroll."

"The woman in white!" Penny said. She gripped Darcy's shoulders.
"I told you before-I've seen her, too."

"You might want to notice that Darcy is wearing a white
nightgown," Matt pointed out.

"Not tonight!" Penny said. "I'm not saying that I saw her
tonight. Matt, I've told you this before. I've seen her. She runs
down the stairway. As if..."

"As if she wants someone to follow her," Darcy
finished.

"Moonlight plays tricks on the eyes, Penny," Matt said, shaking
his head. His voice had a grate in it. "And I don't think you all
are crazy. I think you want this to happen so much that you do see
and feel things." He swore softly beneath his breath. "Look, it's
over now, right? Over for the night. Isn't it, Darcy?"

"Yes, it's over," she agreed.

Penny nodded, turned, and started up the stairway. "Good night
then. But you're going to eat your words, Matt Stone. Trust me.
You're going to eat your words."

"Good night, Penny," Matt called to her.

Darcy headed for the stairway. She was startled, and oddly
frightened when Matt's hand fell on her shoulder. He pulled it away
as she turned back to him.

"Darcy, I'm seriously afraid for you. I saw your face, at the
seance and this afternoon. What happens if you see this thing all
the way through? What happens when the murderer goes all the way,
and the ghost is strangled to death in your vision?"

He had the ability to speak with a tone that gave nothing away,
and to look at her with eyes as shielded as if clouds formed to
cover all emotion. She didn't know if he was mocking her, or
seriously concerned.

"I've seen the dream to the end," she said. "Tonight, before the
ghost led me down the stairs and then outside."

It seemed that he drew away from her. Not physically. And
yet...there was a new distance between them.

"So then, she's told you her story. Shouldn't this be like the
discovery of the skull? Doesn't it mean that she'll be at peace?"
He asked, and she thought that he wanted it to be over, he wanted
Harrison Investigations out of his house.

He wanted her out of his house.

"There's something more, Matt. There's something more she wants
us to know."

' 'And is she this Arabella you read about?''

"I don't think so."

"Then...?"

"I don't know. But I almost know. I
will
know." She
turned again with precision and started up the stairs. He stayed at
the landing, watching her for a minute. She had almost reached the
door to the Lee Room when she realized that he had come
behind her.

Once again, she felt his hands on her shoulders. She felt force
in them, and anger. But once he had turned her into his arms, she
saw his eyes again, and she was startled to realize that his anger
was directed more at himself than at her.

' 'Darcy, you can be the most incredibly stubborn fool. You're
playing with fire. You're going to wind up hurt!"

She opened her mouth to speak, but never did so. His fingers
left her shoulders, fell upon her cheek, and the tension left
his touch. He pulled her against him with a volatile emotion
that sent shards of shimmering crystal desire racing through her in
a matter of seconds. She wished she had the strength to know that
it was all a loss, to push him away, but she didn't offer so much
as token resistance, but slipped her arms around his shoulders,
opened her lips to his, and pressed her body close, savoring the
hard feel of muscle, heat, and life, and the extent of his arousal.
They clung together there, in front of the door to the Lee Room,
entwined in a building passion, kisses wet, searing, open-mouthed
and desperate, until Matt at last pushed at the door. He walked
into the room, his fingers then braided with hers, until he reached
the recording equipment and yanked the plugs from the walls.