Stranger by the Lake

by Wilde, Jennifer;

  Retracing my steps, I moved back down the short passageway and stepped into the roomful of statues. It hadn’t been a fruitless search, I reasoned. I had discovered the letters, and that in itself was quite important. Aunt Agatha was sure to be elated when I told her about them. I paused to look at the statue of Diana, rubbing some of the dust from her cheeks and touching her chipped nose. The rain was making a dreadful racket overhead, clattering angrily, and the wind was raging. It was hard to realize that this morning had been so gloriously bright and sunny. Leaving the forlorn marble statues behind, I walked down the narrow hall to the corner where the hall branched off and led to the room with the letters. I was lost in thought, and I didn’t hear the footsteps at first. It was not until I was almost to the other room that I distinctly heard someone moving around.

  I stopped, peering through the open doorway into the dim room. I could see the dressmaker’s dummy leaning against the wall and the furniture piled up in the corner. I heard a board creak, then another, the sounds clear and distinct even with the elements raging outside. At first I was merely curious, wondering if someone had come up to find me, and it took me a moment to realize what that might imply. Icy fingers seemed to grip me, holding me rooted to the spot, unable to move. Another board creaked, and then there was a shuffling sound as though someone had pushed something out of the way. I saw a long shadow stirring, thrown against the wall by someone who was out of my range of vision.

  This can’t be happening, I told myself, almost cheerfully. Such things don’t happen, not in real life, not to real people.… I almost laughed aloud, hysteria welling up inside of me.

  Another board creaked. The shadow moved stealthily.

  Black wings seems to close in on me, fluttering, blotting out everything else, and there was a ringing in my head. I threw my hand out to support myself, steeling every nerve in my body and willing myself not to pass out. I stumbled against the wall and my head seemed to spin, but I didn’t faint. I leaned against the wall, limp. I felt as though all the blood had been drained from my body, and I had to close my eyes, catch my breath, and summon strength that had to be there.

  My throat was dry, but I managed to call out.

  “Who is it?” The words were a raspy croak.

  There was no response. The shadow was still against the wall, long and black, leaning forward. Someone was waiting for me to step into the room. It wasn’t a rigment of my imagination. There was an aura of evil in the air as strong and real as it had been in the east wing yesterday morning. Someone was waiting, and I had been a fool, a fool, a bloody fool to have come up here alone. I had been so sure of myself, so confident, and now … I realized I couldn’t panic. I had to pull myself together. I couldn’t give in to the hysteria that was like another being inside, fighting to break out and overcome me.

  Somehow I was able to move. I backed slowly down the hall, keeping my eyes on that dark doorway, expecting someone to come tearing out after me at any moment. It seemed like hours before I reached the corner, and then I fled down the hall, stumbling up the steps and through the room filled with statues, racing through the passageway and into the room that held the African collection. I leaned against one of the chests, panting, trying to catch my breath. Thunder rumbled and rain pounded, but there were no sounds of pursuit. I stared back the way I had come. The passageway was empty, the statues still standing stiffly in the room beyond, casting long shadows on the floor. There was another shadow, moving slowly, ever so slowly, and I caught a quick glimpse of something dark before I dashed out of the room, fleeing down yet another hall that twisted and turned, leading me through a series of dark, cluttered rooms.

  I stumbled against a wall and stood there panting. It was almost totally dark here, everything solid black, a faint gray light barely penetrating the gloom. Somewhere behind me a dark form was moving steadily foward, looking for me, and I realized it would be impossible to escape. I couldn’t go back the way I had come, and I had no idea where I was now. I was at the mercy of the darkness and the evil that stirred in the air. Tears slid down my cheeks, and the corners of my mouth quivered. I had no hope, no hope whatsoever. For one long terrifying moment I was resigned to whatever might happen, and then I rallied.

  I don’t know where the calm came from, but it was suddenly there, coming over me with cold deliberation and driving away the panic. Behind me, in one of those rooms I had stumbled through in haste, someone was moving. The sound of the rain was muted, a monotonous drumming, but the sound of footsteps moving stealthily was loud, boards creaking. Whoever it was was in no hurry, confident in the knowledge that I couldn’t possibly escape. I leaned against the wall, my breathing even now, that icy calm gripping me like a live thing, forcing me to think.

  I was trapped in the attics, surrounded by darkness and dust and cobwebs, unfamiliar with the rooms and passages, and I hadn’t a prayer of retracing my steps and slipping past my pursuer and getting back downstairs. But I could hide. I realized that that was my only chance. I could hide in the darkness and be very still and quiet and hope for the best. I inched my way along the wall, sliding my back against the wood, and finally I came to a corner and turned and sped silently down the hall.

  I found a tiny room no larger than eight feet square, one small window set high up making a wet gray square on the outside wall. There was a door opening onto the hall, but I didn’t dare pull it shut behind me, afraid the noise would give me away. The room was a nest of darkness, and I crept into a corner and leaned against a pile of boxes and waited, peering into the hall.

  Long minutes passed. The rain stopped pounding. There was a dripping sound now as wet rivulets slid off the eaves of various levels and splashed on other levels of rooftop. Inside there was only the sound of my breathing. I strained to listen, but there was no sound in the hall outside the room where I stood huddled. Not at first. Then I heard the slow, careful shuffle of stealthy footsteps echoing softly. It was distant and subdued at first, growing louder, drawing nearer. I clasped my hands together and bit my lower lip, every nerve tensed.

  The footsteps were only a few feet away from the open doorway now, and then they stopped. A floorboard creaked as weight was shifted. Someone was standing just outside, listening. I was screaming inside, and had the sound been audible it would have split the silence with shattering impact. I had to gnaw my lower lip to keep the scream from escaping. Someone hovered out there, and I could hear heavy breathing, and then a noise that sounded like a giggle. It was the most horrifying sound I had ever heard. It rose up and then stopped abruptly and there was a loud creaking and a bang and I realized that the door had been slammed shut, closing me up in the room. There was a loud click as a heavy bolt was jammed into place, then only the sound of my own panic.

  I flew to the door. I pulled the knob. I tried to turn it. I pounded on the heavy oak with my fists and screamed and pleaded and knocked and cried and finally fell back, realizing that it was futile. This was far more terrifying than anything else could have been. I had a horror of tight closed places, and now I was locked in and the walls would crush me and I felt sheer animal panic. There was no way out. The door was solid oak, three inches thick, and the bolt was iron and I could throw my whole weight against the door and it wouldn’t budge even the tiniest fraction of an inch.

  The terror I had felt in the maze yesterday was as nothing compared to what I felt now. It swept over me like a gale, blotting out all reason, all sanity. I trembled violently, and my knees were weak, unable to support me. Sitting down on one of the boxes, I let the panic sweep over me until it reached a crescendo and crashed and left me weak and empty of everything but the knowledge that I was going to die. I could scream until my lungs burst and no one downstairs could possibly hear me. If I didn’t suffocate I would die of thirst and starvation. Whoever had locked me in here had no intention of letting me out. The others wouldn’t miss me until morning and then they would assume I had gone exploring and wouldn’t grow alarmed until late afternoon and they w
ould start a search but they might not come up to the attics and … I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, smelling the sour smell of dust and mildew and listening to rainwater splashing off eaves.

  This would have every appearance of being an accident, too, just as Charlie’s death had. They would assume I had stepped into the room and the door had swung to behind me and the bolt accidentally clicked into place. It wouldn’t look like murder, but … Peter would guess. He would remember my call and he would guess what had happened. That was very little comfort to me at the moment.

  Perhaps an hour passed. Perhaps it was only a few minutes. I stared about me, my eyes accustomed to the darkness now. There were boxes and an old broken chair and a coil of rope and a huge old discarded mirror here in the room. The mirror was tilted against the opposite wall, and I could see a dim reflection of myself huddled on the box, my arms wrapped around me, my face a pale oval. Through the tiny square of window I could see a bleak gray sky. The air was fetid, and it was growing more and more difficult to breathe. I had to break the window if I didn’t want to suffocate within a few hours. The window was so small, perhaps a foot and a half square, surely no more than that.… I stood up and stared at that tiny opening.

  I pushed two heavy boxes over beneath the window and then climbed up on them, the window level with my shoulders. I could climb through it. It would be a tight squeeze, but I could wriggle through. Pulling off one of my shoes, I smashed the glass. There was a shattering explosion of sound, and pieces of glass clattered to the floor and onto the roof outside. Cold air blew in through the opening, caressing my cheeks as I carefully removed the jagged pieces still stuck in the window frame. I peered out. The roof sloped down steeply, the eaves overhanging another larger expanse of rooftop gleaming with wetness. I might slip and go crashing to the ground three stories below, but anything would be preferable to staying closed up inside this prison.

  The sky was wet and gray, and somewhere behind that gloom the moon had just come out, its weak silvery light seeping through and gilding the dark wet rooftops directly beneath the window. As I leaned forward to look out, the boxes I was standing on tilted back and shifted beneath me, and I fell tumbling to the floor, the boxes dumping down beside me. I was stunned by the impact of the fall, and I blinked, shaking my head to clear it. In the thin rays of moonlight now streaming through the window I saw something flat and dark on the floor beside me. It was the same shape and size as an envelope and seemed to be made of some kind of thin leather. It must have fallen out of one of the boxes, I thought, picking it up.

  I opened the flap and pulled out a piece of stiff paper with some sort of geometrical design in violet ink. There was not enough light to really examine it properly, and I wondered what it could possibly be. I folded the paper back up and put it into the pouch again and slipped the pouch into my hip pocket, promptly forgetting it in my eagerness to get out of the room. Climbing to my feet, I stared at the window, a little dizzy from my fall. The opening was so small, so very small.

  I was still wearing only one shoe, and I took it off, standing in my bare feet. The roofs would be treacherously slippery, and I would have a much better footing with my bare feet than with the leather-soled shoes. I shoved the boxes back into place under the window, lifting one on top of the other, and then I remembered the coil of rope and picked it up, tossing it out the opening. It might come in very handy a little later on, and I fully realized how fortunate I was to have had it in the room.

  Climbing back up on the boxes, I gripped the window-sill and tried to pull myself up. It wasn’t easy. Sitting in front of a typewriter for hours on end isn’t the best kind of physical exercise, and I was in sad shape. I strained and heaved, finally managing to get my head and arms out the window. The cold breeze stung my cheeks, and drops of rainwater dripped down on my upturned face.

  I was stuck. I twisted and turned, finally wedging my shoulders out, my waist resting on the windowsill, hips and legs dangling in the room behind me. I was utterly calm now, concentrating on the job at hand, all traces of panic gone. The fresh air revived me, and freedom was at hand. Twisting around until I was facing the sky, I stretched my arms out, placing my palms flat on the wall on either side of the window and shoving. I had been able to stretch and contort and get my shoulders through, but hips were another matter all together. I tugged and pushed and pulled, wincing with pain as the wooden window frame scraped against flesh.

  Squeezing my hips tightly together, I gave a mighty shove against the wall with my hands, pulling my body at the same time. Flesh scraped wood, straining, sticking, but I managed to pull my hips free, falling back on the sharply sloping roof, completely free now. I lay there for a moment, my cheek against the wet slate, breathing in great gulps of fresh air and savoring the wide open spaces around me. I finally sat up and peered down at the slope. I didn’t dare stand. I had a phobia about closed, confined places, true, but great heights weren’t among my favorite things. I admired Sir Edmund Hillary but thought he was slightly insane to go clambering over those mountain peaks. The rooftops of Gordonwood were not as high as Mount Everest, needless to say, but they might as well have been, judging from my state of nerves.

  I had no earthly idea how I was going to get down. There were thick strands of ivy growing along one side of the house, but I wasn’t about to try climbing down them. I had the rope, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I peered at the multiple levels of rooftops, dark and gleaming in the night, gilded with silver and spread with shadows from the many chimneys and stout black smokestacks. The level I was sitting on was the highest point, sloping at a much steeper angle than any of the others.

  I took a deep breath and said a silent prayer, thankful to be out of the attic room but realizing my peril was, if anything, greater than ever. The wind whistled and soared, blowing locks of hair across my face, and I felt sure it would sweep me off the roof and out into space at any moment. From this vantage point I could see the lake, a huge expanse of inky black water, bordered by trees, the mists just beginning to form.

  I couldn’t sit here all night.

  Reaching for the coil of rope and holding it securely, I began to move down the slope in a sitting position, scooting hands and hips over the wet slates in an undignified but highly successful manner. The drop from eaves to the next level was little more than five feet, and I managed to get down by twisting around and sliding my body over feet first, holding on to the rim of wood to keep from falling, rope looped over my shoulder. This level wasn’t nearly so steep. I was able to walk easily enough, although my knees shook and I didn’t dare look out toward the edge.

  I reached a tall orange brick chimney and leaned against it, catching my breath. I stared at the slanting, sloping, sprawling roofs and remembered those movies I had seen as a child in which Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Errol Flynn had gone dashing and leaping from rooftop to rooftop with great aplomb and remarkable agility. Frauds, both of them. I stood trembling, my back against the bricks, the wind tearing about and blowing up gusts of water. I finally had enough nerve to study the terrain and try and orient myself in respect to the rooms below.

  The chimney I was leaning against would service the fireplace in the library, I decided, and the main staircase would be approximately twenty yards to the right of it, while my bedroom would be a hundred yards or so to the left. For a while this information did me no good whatsoever. Then I remembered the balcony outside my bedroom windows. It would be less than a fifteen-foot drop from the outside edge of the roof to the floor of the balcony. If I could fasten the rope around a smokestack and drop over the edge.… I shuddered at the thought, but I realized it was the most logical plan. There would be great risk involved, naturally, and I wasn’t made of the same stuff as those movie heroes, but I could do it.

  I had to do it.

  Leaving the chimney behind, I moved slowly toward the left, hunching down, my bare feet slipping on the wet slate. I leaped down from one level to the next, although the drop
was only three feet or so, and finally arrived at a point that must be somewhere near the vicinity of my bedroom. I was twenty feet from the outside edge of the roof, and I had to make sure where I was before I could do anything further. I edged slowly towards the drop, knees shaking, body trembling, finally getting down on my hands and knees and crawling to the edge.

  I gripped the wood and slid my head over, lying flat on the slates. I peered down, and down, and down. The balcony was nowhere in sight, but I could see the ground below, a pool of light coming from one of the windows and making a yellow glow on that distant drop. I had miscalculated. Turning my head slightly to the left, I saw nothing but dark wall, but when I looked to the right I could see the railing of the balcony gilded with silver moonlight. It was approximately five yards to the right of where I was stretched out. I backed away from the edge, turning around and crawling on up to where I had left the rope.

  I would like to have been brave and dauntless, ready to attempt the feat with unshakable courage, but in truth I was absolutely terrified. I looped the rope around a smokestack, securing the knot and tugging to make sure it was sturdily tied, and all the while my hands were trembling and I was trying not to think of what I was about to do. The rope was old. It had probably been in the attic room for years. What if it broke? I examined it carefully. It looked sound enough, but I stood up and pulled with all my might to see if it was going to hold. It did. The smokestack creaked loudly from the strain. That was hardly reassuring.