The Drifter

by Richie Tankersley Cusick

  Like he’s looking for something … but what?

  She heard him go downstairs.

  Holding her breath, Carolyn inched open her bedroom door and tried to listen as Joss made his way through the rooms below. Faint tapping sounds drifted up to her, and she could swear that things were being moved from time to time. At last his footsteps faded in the direction of the kitchen, and the cellar door opened and shut. And then the sounds stopped.

  Feeling guilty, Carolyn pulled her door closed and berated herself for eavesdropping. He’s probably just working on something down there that needs fixing. He’s probably just going over every inch of this old place like Mom asked him to, seeing what needs to be done.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. As time dragged on and he didn’t come back, Carolyn finally gave up and got ready for bed.

  She threw her jeans over the back of a chair, and the key fell out of her pocket, bouncing off the edge of the rug and onto the wooden floor. Carolyn picked it up and groaned softly. She’d wanted so much to ask Andy about it, but he hadn’t understood what she was trying to tell him. Slowly she placed it on her nightstand and made herself a mental note. Talk to him about it tomorrow.

  Her head swam with too many thoughts … too many unanswered questions. Faces and events ran together in a blur—Joss’s arrival … the trip to the village … Molly McClure … Mom’s accident … the trip home from the hospital with Andy … Joss’s comments in the kitchen …

  That key …

  Carolyn propped herself up in bed and stared at the key on her bedside table. If not a door key, then what? It was so small, it certainly didn’t look important … and yet something about it intrigued her.

  Had someone put it there on purpose and then lost it? Hazel maybe? According to Andy, Hazel’s behavior had been getting stranger and stranger toward the end of her life—had she been losing things, too? Hiding things? Or had someone from some other time, some other century maybe, put the key there for safekeeping and never come back to retrieve it?

  There you go again … you and your imagination …

  Carolyn turned restlessly on her pillow. Like a fast-forwarded movie, her mind went through the house, trying to picture every possible place for a key. Doors were out—but furniture? Armoires and bureaus and trunks? Frustrated, she shook her head and tried to think. No … she’d already looked through the furniture searching for Hazel’s clothes. And not only had everything been unlocked, most had been empty.

  Carolyn picked the key up again and turned it over in her hand. She started to put it in the drawer of her nightstand, then, on an impulse, slipped it onto the chain around her neck.

  She lay in bed, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. I’m not going to scare myself. I’m going to sleep tonight just like I did last night. I’m perfectly all right, and nothing’s going to happen.

  For a long time, nothing did.

  The wind buffeted the old house, whistling into cracks and corners, creaking the foundations and whining beneath the eaves. The sea swelled and broke upon the rocks, its angry thunder filling the night—her bedroom—her pounding head—and as something rattled against the windowpanes, Carolyn realized that it really was thundering outside—storming in fact—and she dived beneath her blankets.

  The rushing and roaring continued till she thought she’d scream. In desperation she groped for the lamp and turned it on, relieved when the room flooded with soft light. If I could just find some aspirin, maybe then I could sleep.…

  Flinging off the covers, she padded to her door and looked out, squinting into the gloom. Across the hall, Joss’s door was shut, no sound from the other side. He must be sleeping.… I wonder when he came back? She couldn’t remember where the light switch was, so she began feeling along the wall.

  Moving as quietly as she could, Carolyn made her way down the corridor, with only the faint light from her bedroom to guide her. As she neared the end of the hall, she could see the attic door ahead of her, dark and foreboding, and she forced herself to stop and touch the doorknob.

  Locked.

  Just like Nora said.

  I didn’t imagine it—I couldn’t have—and yet I must have—everything must have been a dream.…

  Carolyn stared at the doorknob, her heart lodged in her throat. Again the images flashed through her mind—the stains on the walls and floor—the scraping and clawing … the runny pool around her feet.… “And then he stole into Glanton House one dark, dark night and ripped Carolyn and her lover to bits.…”

  She hurried to the bathroom. She slammed the door and leaned against it, drawing slow, unsteady breaths. She felt hot again and sick to her stomach. Nightmare—just a nightmare—but I won’t have it again tonight—I’ll find that aspirin and sleep like a baby—

  She rummaged through the medicine cabinet, but didn’t find anything she could use. She splashed cold water over her face again and again. All that gossip and theorizing from Nora and Andy and Molly and Joss—well, she’d certainly learned her lesson, all right. In the future, she wouldn’t ask anyone anything, and she wouldn’t believe anything, either.

  “Oh, Mom,” Carolyn whispered, “I wish you were home.”

  The bathroom quivered as thunder burst close to the house. Quickly Carolyn let herself out into the hall again.

  She’d gotten halfway to her room when there was an eerie hum, and the light in her doorway disappeared.

  Carolyn froze, every muscle locked. Her ears strained through the brief silence, but then the wind and sea and storm rushed in, surging through the house as though the very walls were invisible and helpless to stop them.

  The lights have gone out again—that’s all—that’s all it is—just keep going the way you were going—your room’s right there—just at the end of the hall—go on—you can do it—

  But she couldn’t do it, not at first. The hall was so black that she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Groping blindly, she found the wall behind her and backed against it, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  And then she heard it.

  So slow … so faint beneath the storm, that at first she couldn’t be sure it was even real.…

  But then she knew it was real—the creaking sound—she could hear it going on and on and on—slow and stealthy and agonizing—echoing through the blackness—a door opening very carefully … very purposefully—as though someone didn’t want to be heard.…

  The attic …

  It was the attic—wasn’t it?

  In her terrible fear Carolyn couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from—ahead of her, behind her, or only in her mind. She gripped the wall with clawed fingers and held her breath, and the creaking went on … on … then ended abruptly, swallowed by the rage of the storm.

  It came to her then that maybe it wasn’t the attic at all—maybe it was Joss. Joss coming out to find the bathroom maybe, or to go back downstairs. Joss wakened and restless from the storm, Joss trying to turn the lights back on, Joss wandering around in the dark as helpless as she—

  “Joss!” she called.

  No answer.

  Against her back, the wall trembled like paper beneath the onslaught of the wind. Once more Carolyn inched her way through the pitch blackness, trying to find her room.

  The crash was loud and terrible.

  As a gust of wind swept through the hallway, Carolyn screamed and hid her face against the wall.

  “Joss! Joss, is that you?”

  But the crashing came again—and again—loud and terrifying and relentless, and the hall was cold and filled with wind, and somewhere in the back of Carolyn’s mind, a crazy thought began to form that maybe—somehow—the attic door was open, banging back and forth against the wall.

  “Joss!” she shouted. Why can’t he hear me—how can anyone sleep through this racket, but right now I have to stop that noise—that awful noise—have to latch the door before I go out of my mind—

  Carolyn didn’t need a flashlight now—
she just followed the icy trail of the wind. Yes, yes, the attic door—it must be the attic door—somehow the storm’s blown in from the widow’s walk and gusted down the stairs and opened this door, too—broken the lock after all this time—because the lock is so old and the door is so old and it wouldn’t take much to break it—

  But that other thought was in her head, too, nagging at her as she tried to find the door in the darkness—screaming at her even though she tried to make it stop—and maybe it wasn’t a dream after all, Carolyn—maybe the attic door was really open that night because ghosts don’t worry about locks, do they? Locks and walls and doors mean nothing to ghosts, they can do whatever they want—to whoever they want—

  “Joss!” Carolyn screamed again.

  But she’d found the door at last, found the cold, cold night whipping down the stairs. I’ve got to go up there—I’ve got to go up and fasten that other door.…

  She squinted into the darkness at the top of the stairs. She stood for a long time, trying to get up the courage to just move, and suddenly she thought she saw a light high above her—just a tiny pinpoint of light that flickered for a second, then disappeared.

  A candle? No, in all that wind, it was impossible.…

  A flashlight?

  “Joss?” Carolyn called. “Is that you?”

  And then it came again.

  A tiny, brief flickering … so quick that it was gone again almost before she even saw it.

  Swallowing a cry, Carolyn lifted the hem of her long nightgown and started slowly up the stairs.

  15

  IT SEEMED TO TAKE FOREVER.

  As Carolyn put one foot ahead of the other, she could feel her muscles cramping, could feel low sobs of fear in her throat. She wanted to run, to turn around and leave this house and never come back. She thought of her mother lying still and white in the hospital bed, of her mother’s hopes for this strange old house—she thought of her own promise to stay and make it work—

  “I can do this,” Carolyn muttered to herself. Back home if she’d heard strange noises in the night, she’d always been able to talk herself out of being scared. But this isn’t home … this will never be home—

  She stopped. She stood on the stairs and got a firm grip on herself and tried to blank the fear out of her mind. She tried to tell herself that it was just a normal old storm and a normal old door in a normal old attic, and that all she had to do was close that stupid old door and go back to bed. Simple as that, Carolyn. Piece of cake.

  She felt half frozen. She was shivering all over. Not just from the cold. From fear.

  “Go on,” she muttered again. “Go on!”

  She couldn’t see the light anymore. She must have imagined that, too, just like she’d imagined being up here that other night—just like she’d imagined the creaking sound in the hall just before the attic door had blown open.…

  “But I’m not imagining this,” she told herself fiercely. This is real.

  She’d reached the top at last. She kept one hand on the banister to steady herself, and she looked slowly around the attic, her eyes wide.

  The door to the widow’s walk was wide open. It had blown back against the wall and rain was lashing in, sweeping in sheets across the floor. There was no moon, and yet somehow she could see—could sense her way across the floor, to that other threshold that led out to the walkway beyond.

  Carolyn walked over to the door. She stopped and stood in the threshold.

  All around her the sky exploded with lightning, and she stared, transfixed.

  For just an instant she could see everything.

  Everything—the night, the world, the whole universe, it seemed—all from the rooftop of Glanton House.

  The panorama was frightening—and yet more beautiful than anything she’d ever witnessed in her whole life.

  Black clouds churned across an even blacker sky, boiling high above the house, shot through with jagged bolts of golden fire. The storm raged furiously, clawing and tearing at the night, and beneath its wild shrieking of wind and rain came the frenzied roar of the sea.

  Carolyn couldn’t move.

  Far below her, frantic waves crashed again and again, impaling themselves on razor-sharp rocks, gnashing and gnawing the sheer walls of the cliffs until they bled black foam. The whole world had gone mad.

  The sky plunged into total darkness once more. As from a dream, Carolyn roused sluggishly and tried to focus.

  And then she saw another light.

  It was very distant … very surreal, forming slowly through the rain. It hovered there, blurry and wavy, down, down, among the massive rocks at the bottom of the cliffs.

  She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.

  The light bobbed … faded … nearly went out.

  And then it began to grow—to throb—as though there were life inside of it, struggling to survive.

  “Have you ever seen ghost lights?”

  From some remote corner of her mind, she could almost hear Andy’s voice again, and she struggled to remember.

  “Weird lights glowing down along the water late at night … the souls of drowned sailors … can’t rest till they’re reunited with what they loved most in life.”

  The light went out.

  Startled, Carolyn stood there holding on to the doorframe, bracing herself against the rain. Her nightgown was soaking wet; her hair blew wildly around her face, and she put up a hand to brush it from her eyes.

  Yes … yes … there it is—the light again!

  Her heart quickened in excitement and fear. Slowly she moved out onto the widow’s walk, oblivious to the groaning of boards beneath her bare feet.

  And she could see it now—hovering in midair—fuzzy and indistinct through the storm—and it seemed to be moving—drifting into the rocks, drifting out again—but maybe it was only the rain distorting it, only the wind blowing it, she couldn’t tell. She only knew it was there and that it seemed to be struggling with the storm, and that suddenly—somehow—she wanted to help it, just as that other Carolyn must have wanted to help those poor doomed sailors that night of the storm—

  And maybe it is one of those sailors—maybe it’s one of those sailors struggling and dying down there—struggling all for nothing, because he’s doomed to drown over and over and over again until he’s finally reunited with the one he loved most in life—

  “Maaathewww!”

  Carolyn’s heart gave a jolt.

  She looked around wildly, trying to see, and then to her horror the sound came again.

  “Maaathewww!”

  It came out from nowhere, and yet she’d heard it before—she knew she’d heard it before—when she’d been exploring along the cliffs—a voice blown away on the wind, striking a chord deep, deep in her soul—

  “Maaathewww!”

  She stepped farther out onto the walkway, her hands in her hair now, trying to keep it from her eyes, trying to peer into the darkness where that strange hazy light bobbed and dipped among the deathrocks near the water—

  “Is anyone there!” Carolyn screamed. “Where are you?”

  And in her mind she saw the battered ship—the bodies tossed about helplessly by the waves—the captain’s face contorted in shock as he watched his hand being chopped off and he realized he was going to die—but you know it’s not really happening now, don’t you, Carolyn—you know you’re just dreaming—just imagining things—you don’t really hear Captain Glanton calling his own name—it’s just the shriek and howl of the wind—

  “Where are you!” she screamed again. “Is anyone there?”

  And she was sobbing now, because the call sounded so desperate, so pleading, and she felt its pain, its loneliness, as deep and as real as her own pain and loneliness—

  “Maathewww …” the voice mocked her, and Carolyn screamed back at it—

  “Stop it! You’re not real! You’re only in my mind!”

  She was as far as she could go now, standing on the widow’s walk, her hand
s around the railing, and she could feel the soggy weight of her nightgown whipping around her, and her hair streaming wildly in the wind, and she leaned forward, straining far, far over the endless abyss of the night—

  She didn’t hear the boards giving out beneath her.

  Didn’t hear the sudden groan and snap of old wood rotting through, the rusty creak of the railing swinging away …

  And in that last coherent second, Carolyn only felt a strange, slow surprise as the darkness rushed up to meet her.

  16

  “CAROLYN!”

  She could hear it, somewhere through the wind, a voice calling her, but a different voice this time, not the one by the cliffs, not the one from the storm—

  “Carolyn! Hang on!”

  Reality slammed into her with such force that she reeled from the impact. As she screamed and screamed again, she realized she was dangling in midair, wind and rain lashing her from all sides, and that someone high above was holding on to one of her hands.

  “Help!” Carolyn shrieked. “Oh, God, help me!”

  “Hold on!” the voice shouted again. “Whatever you do, don’t let go! You hear me, Carolyn? You hold on!”

  “I can’t! I’m slipping!”

  “No, you’re not—I’ve got you! Don’t look down!”

  But she did look down—before she could stop herself, she looked down and saw the stormy blackness around her, the sheer drop beneath her, and as she swung helplessly in the air, lightning ripped from the churning clouds, suspending everything in an eerie glow.

  “I’m falling!” she sobbed, and there were strong hands around her wrist, and she was flopping through the air like a rag doll as someone began pulling her up.

  “You’re not falling! Give me your other hand—reach up and hold on to me! Do it, Carolyn—do it now!”

  With a superhuman effort, she managed to twist her body and fling her other arm upward, crying out in terror as it swept uselessly through empty air and threw her off balance.