A noise trebled below the squeal of the chair.
It's here. Flames hissed softly. It's here again. She twisted her body to the curtained windows, listening to the night.
The voice of the sea drifted on a low wind, grunting through the window, like the noise a wolf might make in its sleep.
"Where are you, poor dead thing? Are you right outside?"
The drapes swayed slightly in the draft, and she reached quickly for the phone on the table, but only let her hand rest upon it. No, I won't disturb Katherine with this. Laboriously, she turned the chair around, while the floorboards sang out their sad, ritual creaking. I will not bother her again so soon.
Guttural panting rattled the glass.
But the dead don't breathe. And surely they are silent.
Straining, she guided the chair adroitly to the windowed alcoves, until the wheels struck the single stair. She felt for the lock on the wheel, then braced herself with the heels of her hands.
Pain radiated through her. The delicate muscle cords of her arms quivered as, with a thin groan, she levered herself from the chair. But her legs didn't tremble, and she stood like a statue. In seconds, a film of sweat slicked her neck. Her foot faltered at the step. She swayed upward until her hands clutched at the curtain cord, and she hung on it for balance. Then she pulled weakly with numbed fingers, and the heavy drapes slid open.
Firelight glinted from the pane. Bulging eyes glared at her from the outer darkness.
The curtain cord whipped from her fingers, and she stumbled back. The room reeled.
...something deep...soft...
She lay on the carpet.
The fire had grown dimmer, plunging the parlor into gloom, the shadow beneath the coffee table as black as the sea. I saw it. A brittle soreness sputtered through one side of her body, and her right hand groped for the chair. And it looked right at me. With a moan, she caught at the spokes of a wheel, pulled herself to her knees. How did it get so dark? Was I unconscious? How long...? She shivered. Is the thing still there? Her vision twisted to the windowpane. A leafless china apple tree danced and skittered in the wind, and beyond the dead garden, whitecaps flickered around the rocks: silent, numinous explosions.
Above her head, wood creaked.
Her heart hammered painfully, and dying flames whispered. All around the room, windows shivered in their frames. At last, she sat heavily.
The board creaked again.
"So you're here." Faintly, her words rasped. "In the house." Her head sank forward as though in prayer. "Finally." The axles squeaked shrilly as she wheeled herself toward the doorway. "You've come back to me."
Firelight barely shimmered into the hall, but it danced the shadow of the banister high across the wall.
Her own shadow loomed, slumped and brittle. To her left, another doorway opened into a smaller sitting room, long since converted into the bedroom she'd despised for years. "I've waited such a long time." Her voice rose with tremulous indignity. "At first, I was afraid. You know how foolish I can be. I didn't understand. But I know what you are now." Her voice cracked. "Forgive me, that's not right. I know who you are."
Phantom movement flurried at the top of the stairs, like veils in the wind, and she stared upward, straining until she could just make out the window on the landing. Sheer curtains danced frantically. At first, she heard only the creak of a stair, so soft she could almost have believed she imagined it, but there followed the distinct thump of a footfall.
"Yes," she chanted. "Yes, dead thing, I'm here. Dear dead thing." She stared into nothingness. "Come down to me."
Another footstep creaked on the staircase, and Charlotte groped blindly for the light switch too far above her on the wall. She edged closer. Darkness spiraled up the steps. She reached out, her fingers waving like an anemone. Was there a form? Some shape motionless on the stairs? A tingling sensation crawled across her face. "What's that?"
A squeaking burble seemed to tumble down the steps, barely audible.
"What, dear? Are you speaking?"
She saw the hand first, the way it dug into the banister, sliding into the faint gloom. Then the stench poured over her. "I've gone mad. I always knew...knew this would happen. Alone in the dark and I've gone mad in the end, howling by myself in an empty house, imagining something has come to me."
It growled.
Why is it making that sound? Like an animal. It should be calm. Stately. Sad.
Like heat from a furnace, stench came at her in waves now.
It stepped down into the dim spill of light.
"No! No! Henry, help me!" The pain in her chest struck like a sickle, and a pool sprang up around her.
The parlor surfaced through swirling colors. Such a nightmare I've had. Somehow she must have fallen asleep by the fireplace. But I was in the hall. I'm sure I was. How did I get here?
Then she saw it.
It stood quite close, turned away from her, and she watched the way its naked shoulders bunched. She saw it lift one of the photographs from its place on the mantel, and her fingers closed instinctively over the poker. "No! That's mine! Get away from there! Monster! Put it down!"
The creature turned to her as though in astonishment, and she lashed out with the poker.
One hand struck like the paw of a great cat, ripped through her, sent her hurdling from the chair. She struck the wall. She felt things crack and snap within her, but still her voice stuttered. "...mine...leave them alone...you can't..."
A clawing hand lifted her by the hair, and taloned fingers buried themselves deep in her soft, old face.
XX
"The world gets more and more like science fiction every year." Tully tilted his chair back. "It's weird. Some nights I lie there in a sweat just thinking about it."
Ignoring him, Steve strained to discern the newscaster's words above the electronic buzz of the television set. Around the bar, a dozen patrons squinted up at the weather report.
"Three inches, they said," Stacey reported, setting down the plates.
"What?"
"Snow. Didn't ya hear?"
"You're kidding?" Steve flinched. Around him, the patrons buzzed in outrage.
"Did you hear what he said about the hurricane?" asked the younger man.
"What?"
"And snow tonight maybe," Tully continued while gazing into his empty glass. "Doubt it though. Too cold. My father used to say that. Too cold for snow. But there's a bad storm heading up the coast, not a hurricane exactly but..."
"Unusual time of year for something like that, isn't it?" Steve coughed. "I thought...I thought..."
"Never," a man at the bar called over. "Never happen." The tavern had suddenly grown raucous. "Never after the first snow."
"It's like the seasons are so weird anymore." Tully shook his head. "Like somebody shuffled the calendar pages or something. I never took a science course I didn't get an 'Incomplete' in, but storms have something to do with a mass of cold air meeting a warm front and..."