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“I think I’ll explore some more,” Erik decided. “Want to come, Laney?”
“Oh, sweetie, no. I’m enjoying the fire too much. But let me know if you find a decent kitchen.”
“You know I feel like I’m trespassing in someone’s house.” Elise said, uneasily.
“Well then, let them come kick us out,” Laney replied.
“Yeah, they could have locked the door,” Jason added.
“It was more like we were invited,” Matthew suggested. “We’ll be back in a bit.”
The three men took off to explore the house, making their rounds of the first floor, finding a dining room sizable enough to match the living room, and what had once been a kitchen and pantry large enough to serve a household of dozens. There was a library still furnished with dusty leather-bound volumes and heavily brocade furniture, and what might well have been a music room, though the function of the room was unknown. Thick drapes covered the windows and half of the walls, though there was not a stick of furniture inside. But just as in the other rooms, there were more oddly placed O-rings fixed in both the walls and floor; and hanging from the ceiling was a strange apparatus of decaying rope.
“Makes you wonder what they did here?” Erik said.
“Like what kind of wild parties?” Jason wondered.
“Not sure. But it has a strangely erotic feel, don’t you think?” Erik answered.
“I’m not sure what I think,” he said, though his mind was moving forward briskly as his imagination reeled with pictures. “Could be innocent, but then it could be…”
“Be what?” Jason asked.
“Off shore island… belongs to no one but the owner?” Matthew answered. “You never know what people would do with no restraints from society.”
“That sounds pretty nasty, what’s in your head?” Jason asked.
Matt shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered vaguely.
Erik was silent contemplating, until he suggested they move upstairs.
The second floor of the old mansion revealed more than a dozen bedrooms, some styled with a breezy summerhouse decadence—mosquito netting still flying in drafts of air. Other more formal rooms were draped in heavy velvet and trimmed in fading gold leaf. Each room, however, had some curious feature that suggested unusual activities taking place inside the bedroom. There were more O-rings and several eyehooks bolted into the walls. A curious canvas sling. Rigging hanging from the ceiling, or inside the actual canopy of one great mahogany bed. And a strange tiled bathroom that had been equipped with several devices none of the three men could clearly identify.
“I think some guy was getting his jollies doing weird things to women,” Jason chortled.
“I think you might be right,” Erik agreed.
“Could go either way, you know,” Matthew said as he stared at the rigging inside the canopy bed.
“If you remember, the statue was of a woman,” Erik reminded him.
“So, it was,” Matthew remembered as he paced the room, hands in the pockets of his blue jeans, the curt features of his chiseled face seeming to contort oddly. In fact, all three me
n were strangely moved by the awesome house and the unknown implications of the innovative hardware and contraptions.
A sudden shriek hit the air like a bolt of lightning—Elise!
Tearing themselves from the room, the three raced down the staircase to the first floor, finding Elise sitting on a couch with Laney and Sandra on either side.
“I swear there was a man staring at me!” she was panting nervously, wringing her hands, her pale face white as a mainsail as she stared forward in shock.
“What happened?” Erik asked.
“She thought she saw a face in the window,” Sandra said.
“Then, we’ll have a look outside,” Matthew said moving toward the foyer with Jason at his heels.
“That won’t be necessary,” another, unexpected voice wrapped the room with an oddly sonorous quality of calm. The two men heading for the door stopped abruptly. “It was my face the lady saw.” An elderly but quite vigorous looking man was standing by the hallway door near the kitchen. His yellow parka was dripping with water, but there was a firm gentleness about his face that seemed almost mirthful.
