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It was, after all, a beautiful house. As I stood on the threshold a bit of moonlight struggled through the clouds and skidded across the newly varnished floors like a stone skipping across a pond. I stepped inside with the wind coming in on my heels, ruffling the lace curtains in the parlor and trembling the glass in the windows. The house creaked like a ship in a storm—maybe that’s how Silas LaMotte had built it. I even thought I could smell a whiff of sea air beneath the paint and varnish, but when I closed the door the house seemed to settle. The storm was clearing, letting in enough moonlight to make the new white paint glow like polished marble and casting a distorted reflection of the fanlight onto the foyer floor—the face of the pagan god elongated and distorted so that he seemed to be smirking.
I shivered at the thought…but also because I was damp and tired from the long drive. I needed a hot bath (assuming the hot water heater worked without electrity) and bed (assumingthe bed I’d ordered had come and been set up). The movers were coming early in the morning. Once I’d had a good night’s sleep and filled the house with my books and furniture it wouldn’t feel so strange…or echo so hollowly.
I climbed the stairs, my footsteps sounding loud as firecrackers in the empty house. I recalled what I’d said to Dory Browne about not having to worry about burglars and her reply: “No, you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone breaking in.” Why had she emphasizedinas if there were something dangerous already lurking in the house?
I was afraid that the upstairs hallway would be completely dark, but the moonlight had found its way here, too, through the windows of the smaller bedrooms, the doors of which had been propped open. Only the door at the end of the hallway to the master bedroom was closed.
I made my way down the hallway feeling peculiarlywatched. Looking down I spied the shadow of a mouse at my feet. I screamed and jumped a good two feet before realizing the shadow belonged to a cast-iron doorstop shaped like a mouse holding its little paws out.
Cursing Diana Hart’s love of animal tchotchkes (I suspected she was responsible for the mice doorstops), I turned the knob of my bedroom door, but it wouldn’t budge. It must have swung shut when the paint was still wet and had dried stuck. I leaned my shoulder against the door, cursing softly under my breath.Open up, damn it, I’m tired…The door swung open so suddenly I stumbled into the room. An angry gust of wind snapped the curtains at the window and ruffled the linens of the bed.
The bed.
I’d asked Dory Browne to accept delivery on the bed I’d ordered from Anthropologie and I’d hoped that the workman had assembled it, but I half expected to be sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor. But not only had someone assembled the pine four-poster frame, but someone had also made it up withcrisp white sheets, plump pillows, and a lofty feather-filled duvet. All of it white in the moonlight. It looked like it was meant for a bride—not for sweaty me in my scruffy shorts and T-shirt.
I should take a bath, I thought, but I was suddenly too exhausted. I walked toward the bed…and stubbed my toe on something hard. Cursing, I groped on the floor and picked up something heavy and cold. Holding it up in the moonlight, I saw it was one of the cast-iron mice. It must have fallen there when the wind slammed the door shut before I arrived. It had a splash of white paint on its chest—probably from when Brock painted the room—and it was missing the tip of its tail. Another glance on the floor revealed the missing appendage. I picked that up lest I impale my foot on it later and held it up in front of the mouse’s little whiskered face.
“Wounded in the line of duty, eh?” I said. “It’s all right, soldier. I’m giving you the night off.” I put the mouse doorstop outside in the hall with the rest of its companions and closed the door. Then I peeled off my sweaty clothes and crawled into the white virginal bed, sinking into its deep, pillowy embrace and into an even deeper sleep.
But not for long.
Someone was tapping at the window. I got up and walked across the dark room toward the lighted window. Moonlight was banked up against the glass like water pressing against a dam, but it wasn’t coming in. I was standing in the dark, on the threshold between shadow and moonlight, wherehealways waited for me. And someone was knocking. I walked closer to the window and saw that there was something metal hanging from the window frame, a round medallion with spokes like a wheel and three dangling keys. Although it was made of some kind of dark metal, it reminded me of a dream catcher. It was tapping against the glass, propelled by the wind whistling through a crack in the window frame. If I didn’t take it down it would break the glass. I grabbed it and pulled, snapping theribbon that held it. Instantly a crack appeared in one of the windowpanes, splintering the glass into a million jagged shards. They fell to the floor at my feet and the moonlight rushed in with the wind—a wind that smelled like honeysuckle and salt—and circled around me like an angry riptide. It slammed me up against the window, my back hitting the glass and shattering the rest of the panes. The moonlight was so bright I was blinded. I closed my eyes against it, but it was still there beneath my eyelids, still there pressing me up against the windowpane, a cold, hard surge that pushed my hips up onto the window ledge and spread my legs and poured into me…I grasped the window frame for balance and cut my hand on broken glass. I gasped and my mouth filled up with saltwater. I tried to push back but that only made the surge come again…and again, sucking me down into the riptide.
I’d heard somewhere that if you’re drowning you should relax and let the current take you. I did that now and the current turned warm and carried me down into the darkness, like a lover carrying me to bed, down into the darkness wherehelived.
