by Rachel Lee
He laughed quietly. “Cats do a good job of keeping it a secret. I had my last cat perfectly trained. I fed him when he wanted, played when he wanted, and…he never ever tried to get out the door after just a few attempts when I caught him and dragged him back in. He learned his limits. The same way he learned to stay out of the fridge when the door accidentally shut on him, catching him in the side.”
“Oh, my!”
“That only took one lesson.” His dark eyes danced. “One of the main differences between cats and dogs is that dogs are eager to please. More of a pack mentality. Cats…well, less so.”
Thunder rumbled again, this time louder. This time Mike glanced at the window, and Del noticed that the kitchen was definitely darker now.
He looked at her. “Are you going to be okay by yourself tonight?”
“Because of the noise, you mean? Of course I will. It’s just a noise. With my luck I’ll probably find out another wall stud just collapsed or something. I’ll be honest. I knew there was some rot in the place, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so extensive. And then down in the basement there’s this ridiculous brick wall that’s starting to crumble a bit.”
“A brick wall?”
“I know. Weird. I guess someone thought it would be attractive, like they started refinishing the basement and never got around to completing the job. But it’s just dark. The thing is, I keep wondering if, when I tear it out, I’m just going to find that there’s a big gaping hole in the concrete. That’s the way everything else in this house is going.” She gave a little shake of her head and a rueful smile. “At least the roof is solid.”
“Maybe you just need to bulldoze underneath.”
She laughed, imagining propping up the roof while destroying the house beneath it. “Don’t tempt me. But actually, there’s a positive side to all this.”
“Tell me.”
“I get to remake most of the place. The load-bearing walls so far seem to be fine, but since so much else is a mess, I can reconfigure the floor plan in lots of ways I wouldn’t have attempted otherwise. A work-through rather than a work-around.” She stared past him for a few seconds, envisioning it. “This may become the house I stay in. If I’m going to do all this work, I may as well enjoy the fruits.”
“What would you do differently if you decide to stay, as opposed to just selling it?”
“I’d make the kitchen more accessible to Colleen. And I’d do a complete finish-out of the bath off her bedroom so it would be perfect for her.”
“Then do it.”
She looked at him, surprised by his encouragement. “I’ve been seriously thinking about it.”
He hesitated just a moment then asked, “Is she always going to be in that chair?”
“Barring a medical miracle.”
“Then fix the place for her.”
She gave him a rueful look. “Only if I can find the source of the sounds that are scaring her.”
“True. How scared is she?”
“Scared enough. At first when I said it must be vermin in the walls or the attic, she seemed okay with it. But as time passes and I don’t find anything, I can tell it’s starting to frighten her.”
He nodded. “This calls for some thinking, then. I’ll put my mind to it and see what I can come up with.” He rose from the table and rinsed his coffee cup at the sink before tucking it into the new dishwasher. “Thanks for everything. If I come up with any ideas, I’ll let you know.”
She saw him out and closed the door behind him, catching glimpses of him through the front window as he walked back over to his house.
A nice guy, certainly concerned about Colleen. But at the same time, she felt he hadn’t been quite comfortable his whole time here.
She let out a heavy sigh and wondered if she was imagining things herself. Why should he be uncomfortable? No reason that she could see. And he’d certainly tried to be helpful.
The thunder rumbled again, like an approaching beast, and she realized she was standing all alone in a darkening house where even she, now, had heard an inexplicable noise.
For an instant she had that horrible feeling, the one most people referred to as something just walked over my grave.
Not good. As a single mom with a child, she couldn’t let her imagination run away with her.
Not even when she was alone.
She slept in Colleen’s bed that night, determined to hear whatever it was that Colleen was hearing. Or at least she tried to sleep. She kept waking from dreams that involved Mike Windwalker, and every one of them seemed to be sexy.
Man, she didn’t need that. She’d buried that part of herself ever since the accident, first out of grief, and then out of the necessity of caring for her daughter and building some kind of hopeful life for them.
Yes, he was a sexy man. Yes, he was eye candy. But that didn’t give him the right to turn up in her dreams, talking in that calm, deep voice of his, looking at her from dark eyes that seemed to be lit with some kind of inner flame. Nor did it give her sleeping brain the right to conjure images of him touching her, undressing her, kissing her…and waking her in a state of aching arousal.
Darn it!
Finally, sick of waking in tangled sheets, sick of waking to overwhelming need for a man’s loving, she kicked her way out from under the covers and sat up.
Last night’s storm still rumbled, though more quietly, and the rain seemed to have stopped. If not, it was falling so quietly she couldn’t hear it through the closed windows.
The room felt chilly, but that didn’t surprise her. It was still spring, nights cooled down fast and she didn’t have the heat on.
Not even during her teens had she experienced these kinds of dreams. What was she doing having them at the advanced age of thirty-four? Shouldn’t her hormones have quieted some?
Thunder growled again in the distance and a flash of faraway lightning brightened the room just a bit. She loved thunderstorms, and if all sleeping was going to give her was a taste of unrestrained libido, then there was no point in even trying.
Feeling grumpy—hardly surprising, she supposed—she shoved her feet into the sandals she’d kicked off before lying down in a T-shirt and shorts. When she was at this point of renovation, slippers weren’t allowed, only hard-soled shoes. You never knew where a nail or splinter might turn up.
Rising, she smoothed the covers on Colleen’s bed then turned to go get a drink and something to read. Maybe she could fall asleep on the sofa.
That was when she heard it.
A not very loud sound, but definitely a scratching, like fingernails on something rough.
She froze, straining her ears, and was rewarded with another rumble of thunder, one that now irritated her even more. Slowly it trailed away, as if reluctant to give up its voice, and silence reigned.
Again she heard the scratching. Faint. Weak. Impossible to say where it came from. Impossible to even be sure it came from within the room, it was so soft.
But she understood now why it disturbed Colleen so. It most definitely didn’t sound like a mouse scrambling through the wall.
No, it sounded like something that wanted to get out. Something that wasn’t strong enough. It was, she thought crazily, an almost plaintive sound.
And that was enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
Chapter 4
S omething woke Mike. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it brought him bolt upright in bed, not at all usual for him.
And the instant he awoke, he knew something was wrong. Not for one second did he question the instinct. A childhood spent at the knee of his uncle, a respected medicine man, had given him lessons no amount of time among science and Europeans could erase. Sometimes there was a knowing. Sometimes dreams whispered a truth, or the thunder spoke a message, or even the very molecules of the air carried a warning. He didn’t need to know its source to listen to it.
Rising, he stepped into his jeans and pulled on a sweatshirt. Then he jamm
ed his feet into the moccasins he wore around the house as slippers and began to move.
He let himself be guided, though he had no idea where he was going or why.
He was surprised, though, to be guided onto his front porch. The thundery night shimmered with distant lightning, nothing close enough to worry about. But in one of those flashes he saw a figure standing on Del’s front porch. He tensed immediately, then in another shimmer saw that it was Del herself standing out there.
Immediately galvanized, he jumped over his porch railing and trotted her way, forgetting everything life had ever taught him about getting involved with a white woman.
“Del? Del?”
She turned as she heard his call. In the uneven, flickering light her expression was hard to read. He trotted up her steps and went to her side. “What’s wrong?”
Her eyes looked like two dark holes until the lightning flashed again and he could see how wide and blue they were.
“I heard it,” she said.
“The door slam?”
“No. The sounds Colleen is complaining about.”
“You couldn’t localize it?”
“I couldn’t stand it.”
He stilled, unsure what she meant, but troubled by the way she said it. He wanted to offer her that culture-crossing gesture of support, an arm around her shoulders, to ease her distress, but he knew better. Even if she claimed not to be a bigot, life had taught him that even that could change in the crunch. After all, Livvie’s foot had kicked him, too, when he was down. Livvie’s voice had cried the same insults. He understood why, and he had forgiven her eventually, but he’d learned his lesson.
Finally he asked, “Why couldn’t you stand it?”
“Because… Oh, God, this is going to sound insane.”
“I’m the only one listening, and I don’t make that judgment. Out of my field.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, shook her head once, then said, “Oh, hell, why not? If I’m crazy I need to know it.”
“What exactly did you hear?”
“Scratching. But not like a mouse or a rat would do. It didn’t sound like that. And I didn’t hear anything moving. Nothing at all. It was just this very weak scratching. But…” She bit off the word and shook her head again.
“But what?”
She bit her lip, fighting with herself, he guessed. Then, “Honestly, Mike, it sounded like something was trying to scratch its way out of something. But as if it was too weak to do it. I swear it sounded almost like it was begging. And that’s nuts.”
Her gaze returned to his, vanishing and reappearing in the flicker of the distant lightning. For a second or two, he just absorbed her words, trying to add up her statements. When he did, he understood her discomfort.
He turned and looked at the house. Slowly he said, “I told you the place feels sad.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at her, drawing back emotionally, prepared for the worst. But the worst didn’t happen. Her expression was pleading, not accusatory.
“I’m going in,” he said. “Colleen’s bedroom?”
She nodded.
“I’ll sit in there and listen.”
“I’ll come, too.”
“No.” He reached out and made the mistake of touching her forearm. Skin as smooth as satin, and the shock of the contact headed straight for his groin. Not now. Not her. No way.
“Just wait here,” he said as he jerked his hand back. “Two people will make too much noise.”
She nodded slowly, accepting his reasoning. He didn’t tell her he was going to listen with more than his ears. Those were things you seldom shared with whites. At least in these parts.
He slipped through the open front door, his moccasins silent on bare wood and rugs both. He knew his way now and needed no more illumination than the occasional flash of the storm.
You feel so sad, he thought to the house. What’s your story? What happened?
But there was no answer, and he didn’t really expect one. The spirits seldom bothered to speak or explain, but his grandfather had taught him to respect them, to acknowledge them always. They were, after all, as much a part of this world as he was, seen or unseen.
In Colleen’s room, he sat on her desk chair, closed his eyes and waited patiently. The rumbling of thunder in the distance was a familiar voice to him, one he had been taught to always listen to, not so much with his mind, but with his heart.
And his heart kept saying that something was wrong, very wrong, in this house.
His people believed in the sentience of everything in the universe. Even the rocks, the water, the very air were aware. That storm in the distance was a living thing.
This house was aware. Not necessarily in the way of a human, but it was aware, and something made it sad. It had a story it could not tell, but it pierced his heart.
And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t only the house, for he could almost feel another whisper through that part of him that had been taught to listen for voices other than the human.
He sighed, trying to open himself even more, the scientifically trained portion of his brain fighting to get in the way of older teachings. If anyone around here ever heard him talk this way, he’d be out of work in a flash.
But he could not bury or deny the lessons of his youth. Nor could he quite open himself with the freedom he had known as a child, before life had gotten complicated with other philosophies, other thoughts, other beliefs.
Funny how he could go to the school on the rez, go to Mass in the mornings and hear of God, and saints and angels, and most of the folks around here held to similar notions, but if he mentioned that his own beliefs went one step farther…well. Had not the Creator created everything out of himself? Because what other materials could the Creator have used?
At least the teachers at his school had respected his tribal beliefs. Previous generations of his people had not fared so well in that regard, which until a few decades ago had driven the medicine men, like his uncle, virtually underground.
But his upbringing had benefited from more open minds, and he had managed a cultural and spiritual blending that didn’t feel oppositional, that fit with reasonable comfort in his heart and mind. Not that these ideas would be welcomed around here.
His thoughts continued to meander because it was virtually impossible to silence them. Even as he tried to listen with his “other ears” to the voices that regular ears couldn’t detect, his mind refused to settle.
Then he heard the scratching sound. He stiffened and waited, trying to determine where the sound came from. When he heard it again, it seemed to come from elsewhere. Weak. Distant.
Dying.
He waited longer, while the sadness of the house pressed in on him like a heavy weight, and then realized he would not hear it again. Some internal sense said whatever it might be, it had finished for the night.
He rose and went out to the front porch where Del waited. She looked cold, and he immediately felt guilty for taking so long.
“I heard it,” he said.
“So I’m not losing my mind?”
“Absolutely not. I’m sorry, you’re freezing out here.”
She shook her head. “I could have gone in. I just didn’t want to. Any idea what it is?”
“None. I thought I might recognize it, but I didn’t.”
“Well, okay, then. At least I know it’s something. Colleen heard it, I heard it and now you heard it. Nobody is going crazy. So now I just have to figure out what it is.”
“And we need to get you warmed up.” He hesitated just briefly, too briefly for her to notice, he hoped. “You want to come over to my place? I at least have my heat on.”
“Yeah.” She gave a small, mirthless laugh. “One of my economies, keeping the heat off at night when it’s not going to get that cold.”
“Well, like I said, mine’s on. Up to you. I can make us some coffee or some instant hot chocolate while you decide wh
at you want to do about this.”
She nodded then looked down at herself. “I’m not exactly dressed for a social call.”
Which, of course, caused him to notice how little she wore: a T-shirt and shorts, and since her nipples had hardened prominently, he knew she wore no bra. Sexy beyond belief. He had to drag his gaze back to her face. It wasn’t easy, considering the sight had caused an instant, unexpected pulse of need to head straight for his groin. In the blink of an eye, he grew hot and heavy.
He didn’t need this. At all. “Want me to run in and find you something?”
She looked from him to the house. “I’m no wimp. But something about that sound seriously disturbed me.”
“Me, too. Well, just come over to my place then.”
She arched a rueful brow at him, barely visible in the night. “I need to lock up. I have too many expensive tools and supplies in there. And my keys are in my purse. In the house.” She sighed. “This is ridiculous. I’m letting a sound drive me out of my own house.”
“Most things are more unnerving at night. And more so if you’re alone.”
“True.”
“I’ll come in with you. We’ll get your purse and at least a jacket.”
She looked his way again. “Thanks. I keep telling myself to tough it out.”
“How about you tough it out in daylight?” Then he made an offer that must have surely risen from some unconscious part of his brain, because he knew better. “I’ll help you look for a cause in the morning, if you want.”
“That’s a very kind offer. Okay, I’ll get some sweats and my purse, and then I’ll take you up on that hot chocolate.”
He followed her back into the house and waited at the foot of the stairs while she ran up to get some clothes. At least the sense of oppression had lifted, gone as if it had never been, leaving him to wonder if somehow his imagination had run amok and had created the whole impression out of nothing.
Judging by the speed with which Del returned wearing a sweat suit, however, he suspected she didn’t feel the same lifting of the atmosphere. Or was past caring.
Thunder still rumbled in the east, louder now as if the storm was growing. Lightning which had just a short while ago merely seemed to illuminate the clouds could now be seen forking down in brilliant bolts.