by Rick Hautala
But then again, a soft voice whispered inside his mind, you never, know, do you? … You never know!
A particularly strong gust of wind slammed against the house, making the ancient rafters groan with the sudden change in pressure. Outside, something slammed against the side of the house. Brian jumped, but before he could do anything else, the light dangling behind him started to flicker. He turned and looked at it, just in time to see it trail away to dull orange glow and then disappear like a slowly dying ember.
“Oh, shit!” he whispered.
His stomach filled with icy tension. He started moving toward the stairwell, but the darkness was too thick to penetrate. Bright afterimages of the fading light throbbed in his vision, confusing him. He resisted the thought that the two bright dots he saw floating in the darkness were the portrait’s eyes, following him. Nearly frantic with fear, he reached out blindly, amazed at how dense the darkness appeared. He almost expected to feel resistance from it as he swung his hands back and forth. Outside, the sounds of the storm seemed to magnify. The air in the attic felt suddenly much colder, as if the storm winds had found access and were clawing at him like frantic hands.
Taking short, shuffling steps, Brian moved forward, all the while batting at the darkness with both hands as if he could tear it aside. He kept bumping into things and then feeling his way around them until he was no longer sure if he was heading toward the stairwell or away from it. He considered calling out to Dianne, but as afraid as he was, he didn’t like feeling as though he needed her help. No, if he just stayed calm, he could get himself out of here. It wasn’t like he was a little kid or anything.
But no matter how much he tried to shore up his courage, the darkness of the attic seemed to generate cold spikes of fear as it pressed in close around him. His breathing came fast and shallow, burning in his chest. He had to force himself to go slowly simply because he didn’t want to step out over the edge of the stairwell and fall down the steps and break his neck.
But where are the stairs? Shouldn’t I have found them by now?
His pulse throbbed heavily in his neck. Blood whooshed in his ears like heavy breathing. Spinning blue lights still trailed across his vision as he moved slowly forward. The hissing sound of the storm altered, subtly at first, but then more clearly until he thought he heard something else—a light, raspy whisper of a voice—no, several voices, chattering like insects in the dark.
Brian froze, his eyes bugging from his head as he looked around, trying to pierce the solid wall of darkness. The sounds were too faint, maddeningly at the edge of hearing, but they seemed to be coming at him from several directions at once. He couldn’t get a clear fix on them, and he couldn’t tell for sure what—if anything—they were saying because the sound of blood rushing in his ears grew steadily louder with his mounting fear.
It’s just my imagination! he thought, but the voice inside his mind was nothing more than a trembling whimper. Just my imagination. Just please … please, let me find my way out of here!
His feet scraped across the old floorboards. The dull voices continued whispering all around him, grating his nerves and sending hot sparks shooting up his spine. He strained to make out anything they were saying, but it was like they were speaking a foreign language. He was frantic, trying to convince himself it was just the wind rattling against the house … or the terrified chattering inside his own mind.
They can’t be real! It’s impossible!
With every passing second, the voices rose and fell, fading in and out of his awareness like rushing storm clouds. He actually thought he could detect individual tones—some that sounded light and feminine, although angry; others that sounded harsher, more masculine. He kept shaking his head to clear it and had to struggle not to scream out loud whenever he caught particular words or phrases.
“… Dark Master … unrighteous … curse this man! … cleansing fire … just retribution … agony … servant of Satan.”
The words were no more than fleeting, feathery touches in the dark. The sound of the storm battering against the house all but drowned them out. Brian was almost overwhelmed with the urge to run, but the darkness held him tightly, like constricting arms. Only with effort could he keep moving forward, searching for the stairway.
He let out a sharp squeal of surprise and almost pitched forward when his foot suddenly slipped out into open air. Lunging backward, he grabbed for something—anything for support but missed and, thrown completely off balance, spun around and fell. His knee slammed so hard against the floor he couldn’t contain a barking yelp of pain.
“Hey! Brian! ’S that you?”
His father’s voice filled the darkened house like a gunshot. Still too frightened even to call out, the best Brian could do was watch in stunned silence as a dull glow of light filled the darkness at the foot of the stairs. He heard a heavy tread of footsteps. It sounded as if his father had come up the stairs and gone down the hallway to his bedroom.
“Hey! Brian? Where are you?”
“Up here,” Brian managed, his voice nothing more than a croak. “In the attic.”
The light in the hallway blossomed steadily brighter as rapid footsteps approached the attic doorway. Brian shielded his eyes with one hand when his father directed the flashlight beam up the narrow staircase onto him. He felt foolish, sitting there on the floor with his legs splayed out in front of him.
“What the hell are you doing up there?”
“I was—” Brian began; then he stopped and finished with a lame shrug and quick shake of his head.
“Well get on down here,” his father said, angling the light away from Brian’s face and waving him down. “We can light some candles until the power comes back on.”
Brian was thankful that he caught the trace of laughter in his father’s voice, but in his embarrassment, he couldn’t share in the humor of the situation. Behind him, in the dark corners where his father’s flashlight beam didn’t reach, he could still sense, still feel the cold pressure of hidden eyes … and whispering voices. His shoulders shook wildly as he stood up, brushed himself off, and started down the stairs. Halfway down, a sudden, choking panic filled him, and he jumped down the bottom half of the stairs to the hall floor. Once safely beside his father, he braced his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.
“You sure you’re all right?” his father asked. Looking at Brian, his face glowed with an eerie underlighting from the flashlight. For a panicky instant, Brian was afraid of him.
“Uh—yeah, yeah. Sure, I—I’m okay,” he said, terribly aware of the tremor in his voice. Just then, as if on cue, the lights in the attic and hallway flickered a few times and then came back on.
“Well, yeah—I can see where it’d be a little surprising, especially if you weren’t expecting it,” Edward said, “but I always thought she didn’t look so much angry as—well, I dunno—scared, maybe. At least that’s what I used to think when I saw her, back when I was a little kid.”
“It’s been up there all this time?” Brian asked, shaking his head in amazement as the realization hit home that his father had been a kid, just like him, in this very house.
“Oh, yeah,” Edward said. “That portrait’s been in the family—” He shrugged. “Forever. I figure two hundred years or more.”
“Whew!” Brian said, whistling between his teeth. “Two hundred years!”
He stared in amazement at the antique painting. His father had brought it down from the attic and dusted it off in the kitchen. The abrasion had knocked tiny flakes of old varnish onto the floor. The colors of the woman’s face and clothing now seemed pale and dry. Her face, even the glow in her right eye, was tempered by the bright kitchen light. It seemed ridiculous, now, that it had frightened him—that he had let it frighten him.
“Although I’ll admit, the way the shadow crosses her face there always did bother me—scared the crap out of me, actually,” his father went on. His voice had taken on a distant, almost dreamy tone as he stared
at the painting.
“If it’s so old, do you think it might be valuable?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It may be worth something to someone, but it certainly wasn’t painted by anyone famous. If you look at it carefully, it’s not a very good painting—I mean, technically.”
“So what’s it doing up in the attic? Why’d your mother put it away up there?”
Edward shook his head. “I have no idea. She probably just plain-old didn’t like it.” He sniffed with laughter. “Can’t say as I blame her. I mean, it’s certainly not the most pleasant face to look at, day in and day out.”
“Do you … know who she is?” Brian asked. He felt all shivery inside. It was late, a little after midnight, and he knew he should be in bed. “Is it just any old painting, or is she like a relative or something?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I told you this picture used to scare the bejesus out of me any time I went up there. Which wasn’t very often, believe me. I didn’t like going up there because of it, but to tell you the truth, I have no idea who she is. My broth—well, we used to wonder about her, but if my mother knew who she was, she never told me or anyone else. This house has been in my family since before the Revolution, and I always kind of assumed this was some ancestor from back in Colonial times.”
“But don’t you think she looks sorta like—” Brian cut himself off, hoping his father had been lost in his own thoughts and hadn’t been paying attention to him; but he glanced at Brian with raised eyebrows.
“Looks like … who?”
Brian withered beneath his father’s steady gaze. He folded his hands together and stretched them backward until his knuckles cracked. He had been about to mention his very first impression—that he had mistaken the painting for Dianne, thinking that she had been up there in the attic, watching him as if from a magic mirror in a fairy tale or something. He still couldn’t dispel the impression that the portrait was, in fact, a real person, trapped behind the cracking veneer of varnish. Suddenly flustered, he shook his head and said, “No, no—it’s nothing.”
“You were going to say that you think it looks like your grandmother, weren’t you? My mother, right?” his father said, leaning closer to him and frowning deeply.
Brian was still feeling so flustered he misunderstood and thought that his father had said stepmother. Focusing his gaze on the floor, he considered for a moment, then nodded. “Umm, yeah … kind of,” he said. “I don’t mean anything by it.”
He glanced nervously up at the ceiling, knowing that Dianne was sleeping in the room directly above them. Fortunately, even all the commotion hadn’t woken her up; but if she was awake now, she certainly would be able to hear everything they were saying, so he lowered his voice. “I just thought—you know, the way the left side of her face is shaded that it sort of—well … don’t you think she kind of looks like Dianne, at least a little bit?”
“Dianne—?” his father said, sounding surprised.
“Especially around the eyes,” Brian added.
His father covered his mouth with his hand and studied the painting in silence for a while longer. Then he sniffed, shook his head, and said, “Well, I certainly never thought about that before, but I suppose there’s a there’s—”
He sighed, then shook his head again and finished, “Naw—I honestly can’t see it.”
Good! Brian thought, feeling a sudden warm rush of relief. Then let’s pretend I never mentioned it, okay?
It wasn’t until much later, once Brian was lying in bed, listening to the rain still hissing against his windowpane, that another idea struck him.
What if there was someone up there in the attic? And what if it was someone who had nothing to do with Dianne or that old painting?
Several times over the past few days, he had gone out to the mill to look for Uncle Mike but hadn’t found any trace of him. The cellar room where he’d been staying had been stripped clean, and there was no sign that he had ever been there. He wondered if he would be breaking his vow if he told his father about Mike now. He was worried for the man and couldn’t stop wondering if he had tried to get back to the mental hospital or gone off somewhere in the woods and died or whatever. Now Brian was hit by a new—and scary—idea.
What if, with summer ending and autumn coming soon, Uncle Mike has decided not to leave the area just yet?
What if he’d snuck into the house and was hiding up there in the attic, hoping to stay out of sight and keep at least a little bit warmer than out at the mill?
What if it hadn’t been his imagination or the sound of rain on the roof whispering all those crazy-sounding things to him when the lights had gone out? What if it had been Uncle Mike?
He shuddered, remembering that once before he heard Uncle Mike talk like that, Out at the mill.
And what if it turns out that Uncle Mike is really crazy … dangerously crazy?
These and other disturbing thoughts shifted and blended in Brian’s mind as he finally drifted off to a thin, disturbed sleep. He awoke some time later to the sound of a thick, gurgling scream.
Chapter Twenty-Two
True Confessions
There’s someone in the room!
Dianne was lying in bed with her eyes wide open. Her heart pounded a thin, rapid drumbeat in her chest. She didn’t remember waking up; consciousness had blended slowly from sleep to wakefulness, but now that she was fully awake, she was absolutely convinced there was someone else in the bedroom—someone besides herself and Edward. She tensed, wishing she dared to move but knew she couldn’t. A low muscle tremor made her arms and legs vibrate.
Maybe I’m still sleeping. Maybe I’m just dreaming.
She recalled the vivid dream she’d had a few nights ago, when she had been out at the old mill. It had seemed so clear, so real at the time, even when frankly impossible things had happened-like the old Model-A Ford that had been chugging down the dirt road and the blossom of flames that had erupted out of the old building.
Yes, that’s it! I’m still asleep … I’m dreaming!
But she could hear the steady sawing of her husband’s breathing, and she could feel the cool night air that wafted over her face from the open bedroom window.
No, maybe she wasn’t asleep.
Maybe she had been dreaming, and that’s what had awakened her, but she was wide awake now.
She rolled over onto one side and sighed, smacking her lips, pretending to be turning over in her sleep just in case there was someone in the room.
She glanced at the window and saw the fast-moving puffs of clouds streaking across the night sky. She had slept through most of the rainstorm, and now it was breaking up, blowing away to the east. A thin wash of moonlight edged the windowsill like cold silver trimming.
What time is it, anyway? she wondered, but now that she had rolled onto her right side, she didn’t dare shift again to look at the alarm clock. Not yet. Give it a few minutes, just in case there is someone here!
But how could there be?
She wished to heaven she could force down the rush of tension building up inside her. If it isn’t Brian, who could it be?
Edward snorted like a pig in his sleep. Dianne wanted to reach out and take hold of his hand, but her fingers were frozen as though paralyzed. She lay there as tense and stiff as a rail, waiting for a sound or some other indication that she was right—that someone had crept into the room while she was asleep and was now standing at the foot of the bed.
As she lay there in the dark, the dream she’d been having came back to her in bright, flashing fragments. It had had something to do with the old mill again. She had dreamed she was out there, like a few nights ago, but this time there had been something else going on: there had been a small group of gray-clad, somber-looking men gathered in a circle around a woman. Yes—an old woman with stringy gray hair and flashing blue eyes that almost looked like—
“No,” she whispered in the dark.
She had looked a little like the face she had seen in the mill w
indow in her other dream. There had been something wrapped around her neck; it had looked like a thick, coiling snake, but then she realized that it was a rope.
Oh, my God, they’re going to hang her!
The thought popped into her mind so suddenly she jumped. The bedsprings creaked, and Edward snorted loudly again and rolled away from her.
Yeah, thanks a lot! she thought bitterly. Even when you’re asleep you can’t help me out!
But what had the dream been about? she wondered, trying her best to dredge up the fading memory. “What else had happened?” she whispered.
“It was about me!”
“And me!”
“It was about all of us!”
Voices hissed like a chorus in the surrounding darkness, sounding like escaping steam. Dianne didn’t know how she knew it, but suddenly she was convinced that there wasn’t just one person—there were several, maybe a dozen or more people in the room. Their faces were curtained by the thick shadows, but they were moving closer to her, crowding around the bed, whispering to each other … and to her!
Too frightened to cry out, Dianne thought about the group of people she had seen in the woods behind the house, the people she had followed out to the mill a few nights ago.
Had that been real, or part of the dream?
Could these be the same people? Had they come back for her?
Were they here to hurt her and Edward and Brian? Had they come to burn the house down—with all of them in it?
The soft glow of moonlight seeping in through the window wavered in and out as clouds scudded by in front of the moon. Dianne thought she could hear soft, subtle motions. Thin washes of shadow shifted against the darkness. A cold, choking fear took hold of her throat and wouldn’t let go.
“I wasn’t the only one to die out there!”
The voice that spoke this time was louder, clearer. It sounded old and tired, and had a strange, almost foreign-sounding lilt to it. For some odd reason, Dianne now calmly accepted the idea that an old woman and several other people were standing there in the darkness at the foot of her bed. She raised her head slightly and gasped when she made out several dark, slouched figures. One of them had its head cocked at a sharp angle to one side.