Chill of Fear (10 page)

designed by a thrifty original owner to be replenished by rainwater carried down from the surrounding mountains—increased pressure on the old pipes so they groaned and rattled and disturbed the guests.

This time, at least three guests on the main building's topmost occupied floor, the fifth, started complaining about noises almost as soon as the first clouds darkened the skies.

Ransom thought most of 'em had too much imagination and ought to be warned by Management when they checked in that old buildings made noises, there was just no way around that. But handling the guests directly wasn't his problem, thank God. He just fixed things.

In this case, however, he doubted there was anything to fix. He'd had trouble with squirrels nesting in the attic over the winter, and since he hadn't yet discovered how they were getting in, he figured a couple had just come back inside to take shelter from the approaching storm.

So he was mostly up here to check his humane traps—which hadn't, so far, been successful in catching any of the canny squirrels—and poke around a little so he could tell Management he'd checked it out.

He used his key to unlock the attic door and then opened it, flipping the light switch just inside. The lighting consisted of bare bulbs in metal cages scattered around the vast expanse, and there were a lot of them, but the medium-wattage bulbs didn't do much to brighten the attic. Nor did the several dormer windows or even the big ones at the north and south ends, partly due to age-darkened stained and leaded glass. And with all the old furniture, trunks, boxes, and various junk stored in the space, the clutter didn't help.

Ransom had suggested more than once that the hotel's owners have somebody go through everything and get rid of what was obviously never going to be used again. He just didn't see the sense of holding on to things like old clothing and ancient linens falling to bits, and old tools and broken furniture, but, again, he hadn't been listened to.

"I just work here," he muttered to himself as he picked his way among the refuse of time and people's lives, trying to remember exactly where he had left those traps.

He found one up under the eaves on the west side of the building, still empty—but with the dried ear of corn he had left as bait gone.

"Little bastards," he said of the squirrels, baffled as to how they'd managed to get the bait without springing the trap. This thing was
designed
to trap squirrels, after all. He tested the spring and found it in good working order.

"Now I gotta go all the way down to the garden shed and get more bait. Shit." He thought longingly of the days when a little poison did the trick, wishing he dared disobey Management and just eliminate the rodents permanently.

He set the unbaited trap back in place and began working his way toward the next one, again automatically cursing the jumble of discarded junk he had to wade through, climb over, or push aside.

He was back in the main section of the attic and facing one of the fairly large stained-glass windows at the far north end when there was a deafening boom of thunder and all the lights abruptly went out.

Not wanting to break his neck falling over something in the darkness, Ransom waited where he was, confident that if the power didn't come back on in a minute or two, the generator would kick on. He made a mental note to either start carrying his flashlight when he came up here or else leave one by the door so he'd have it handy.

A brilliant flash of lightning abruptly illuminated the window, the grime-covered glass seeming in that instant to glow incandescent with colors.

Somebody was standing in front of it.

He'd caught only a glimpse in the flash, and Ransom frowned as darkness surrounded him once again.

"Who's up here?" he demanded.

There was no answer, and as hard as he listened, Ransom could hear nothing beyond the rumbling of thunder and the scattered patter of rain on the roof above his head.

He waited, peering intently toward the window. And in the next flash he saw, as he expected, nothing.

"Trick of the light," he muttered. But he felt a building uneasiness, and not just because the lights had failed to come back on. It was normally fairly stuffy up here, generally on the warm-to-hot side this time of year, which it had been when he'd first entered the attic.

Now it was getting cold. Uncomfortably cold.

Not at all a fanciful man, Ransom had the sudden idea that if he put his hand to the nape of his neck, he'd find all the fine hairs there standing straight out in a primitive warning that something was wrong here.

Very wrong.

A nearby floorboard creaked, and he spun around, but it was very dark, and all he could make out were looming shapes.

Looming.

That was... strange. He'd just walked across this space, following a clear if narrow aisle down the center of the attic. Now, as far as his straining eyes could make out, there was some sort of barrier there.

"I'm imagining things," he told himself in the sort of loud, emphatic, I'm-not-afraid-at-all voice of someone walking through a graveyard after midnight. "I just moved without thinking, is all. There's nothing else up here."

It didn't occur to him until later that he should have said "nobody" else.

A loud boom of thunder made him nearly jump out of his skin, and Ransom started thinking about getting out of here, at least until the lights came back on.

Before he could move, lightning flashed again, and in the momentary brilliance, he could see what the barrier was.

As darkness surrounded him again, Ransom grappled with what he had seen. Three old storage trunks, stacked one on top of the other. Trunks he was almost positive had been, only moments ago and for donkey's years before that, shoved over underneath the eaves in the far west end of the attic.

Matter of fact, he was
sure
that's where they'd been, because they were a matched set of old steamer trunks, covered over with travel stickers the way people used to do, the sort of thing decorators were selling for a fortune these days. He'd taken special note of them there.

About thirty yards away from where they now were.

Thunder boomed, vibrating the plank floor beneath his feet, and he wished fervently that he had brought a flashlight.

A floorboard creaked again. Behind him.

He whirled around, the oath that escaped him a bit too high-pitched for his ego. Nothing looming this time, thank God, but wasn't that—?

He was facing the window again, and as he stared a flash of lightning backlit the stained glass radiantly.

Someone was standing in front of it.

Someone without a head.

Ransom took a panicked step back, coming up hard against the trunks that had been, surely, farther away from him just a minute ago.

And the lights came on.

He blinked as his eyes adjusted, stood staring, and after a moment uttered a shaken laugh. "Jesus."

Ransom walked closer to the stained-glass window, until he could reach out and touch the old dressmaker's form. The surface he touched was cracked with age, and the dress draped around the form was old, fragile lace and silk.

"I remember you," he said to the form, comforted by the normal sound of his own voice. "You've been up here for years." He paused, adding uncertainly, "I don't think you were in front of the window, though."

One hand still resting on the form, he half turned and looked back at the trunks now stacked neatly in the center of the attic space. "And you guys definitely weren't there," he added, hearing his own uneasiness.

He walked back to the trunks, studying them. Yeah, he remembered seeing these guys. He remembered seeing these guys over at the west end of the attic, with a jumble of other stuff nobody had bothered with in years. Old furniture, and a canvas-draped thing he thought was a mirror, and—

And a dressmaker's form.

Ransom looked back over his shoulder, half expecting the form to be back where it belonged. But it stood before the window, seemingly innocuous.

Until lightning flashed outside the window again, the multicolored glass giving the sudden, brief impression of a woman with arms and a head of flowing hair standing there.

Deciding that he'd check the rest of his traps some other time, Ransom squeezed past the trunks and lost no time in leaving the attic. And he didn't want to admit even to himself that he didn't breathe easy until the attic door was closed behind him.

Closed and locked.

The lights in the lounge flickered and dimmed, but didn't go out, and though the storm was clearly building in intensity, the sounds of it were muted in there and hardly interrupted conversation.

"So you believe dead is gone," Quentin said thoughtfully. "Which means you probably aren't religious."

"So?" Diana was trying to ignore the storm, ignore the prickly, tingling-skin sensation that had remained with her even after they'd left the veranda. She looked away from him, trying to appear casually interested in the room around them, and blinked when she saw a woman at a nearby table drinking tea.

The woman met Diana's gaze, smiled, and lifted her cup in a slight acknowledgment.

She was wearing Victorian dress.

"Diana?"

She started slightly and looked back at Quentin. "What?"

"We've found it's easier for some psychics to accept their abilities if they have a religious or spiritual background. For whatever reason, religion or spirituality sometimes helps the impossible seem more...

credible for some people."

Diana sent a quick glance toward that nearby table, only to find that both the woman and the table were no longer there.

All of a sudden, she wanted something a lot stronger than sweet tea. But she took a sip of what she had, vaguely surprised to see that her hand appeared steady. "So if you can't convince me with so-called science, you'll try mysticism?" Her voice was steady as well, she thought.

"Different things work with different people," he said, smiling faintly. "We all find our reasons for accepting what we have to accept, Diana. We all figure out sooner or later what we believe, what our philosophies are. Science doesn't make religion or spirituality less valid, it's just another option. All that matters is that we accept what exists."

"What you say exists."

"You have firsthand proof that the paranormal exists, we both know that."

She was tempted, but didn't look around the room again. She was afraid of what she might see. "All I know is that I have an illness that exists," she said, her voice flat. "I'm told insanity runs in the family."

"Who told you?"

"My father—in a roundabout way. He never talks much about my mother, but I gather from the little he has said that she was certifiable."

"Was?"

"She died when I was very small."

"Then you have no real idea what she was like. Only hearsay."

"My father wouldn't lie to me."

"I'm not saying he did. But since it obviously never occurred to him that you might be psychic, and he undoubtedly had the same ideas about his late wife, all you can really
know
is that she also had experiences he didn't understand—and viewed as mental or emotional problems."

Diana said, "My father has done everything in his power to help me."

Aware he was treading on tricky ground, Quentin said carefully, "Of course he has. Any father would.

And, like most people, I'm sure he sincerely believes in modern-day medical science. What he doesn't believe is that the paranormal exists. Which is why the possibility that you might be psychic quite likely never even occurred to him."

"Or to any of my doctors, highly educated though they were?"

"Especially them." He shook his head. "There are a few pioneers researching the paranormal—there always have been. But mainstream medical science can't prove to its satisfaction that psychic abilities are real."

"Why not?"

He lifted an eyebrow at her. "Can you prove what you experienced out on the veranda was real?

Even more, could you duplicate that experience in a lab?"

"No, I can't prove it. And I sure as hell couldn't duplicate it. Because it was all in my mind." It had to be. Surely, it had to be.

Ignoring her denial, Quentin said, "Much of science is based on the belief that the results
of
experiments have to be duplicated, again and again, under very controlled conditions, before anything can be
proven
factual. But psychic ability doesn't work that way."

"Yeah, right."

Quentin smiled. "Unfortunate but true. My boss says that if ever a psychic is born who can completely control his or her abilities, the whole world will change. He's probably right. He usually is. But until then, until a psychic or psychics come along who
can
consistently demonstrate and control their abilities, we're left out on the fringes."

"The lunatic fringes?" she murmured.

Unoffended, he said, "You'll find plenty to say so. But we're doing what we can to build a solid reputation in order to be taken seriously. We believe we understand how most of our abilities work, if only in a general sense, and those beliefs are grounded in science. We're working very hard to train our abilities to help us better do our jobs."

Quentin paused, then added, "And don't discount the fact that the FBI, not the most frivolous organization in existence, was accepting enough of the idea to allow our unit to be created in the first place some years ago."

Diana took another sip of her tea, more to be doing something than because she wanted it.

Quentin went on, "Diana, I know this is a possibility you've never considered. But what will it hurt to consider it now?"

"I'd be lying to myself. I'd be looking for an easy answer." Her reply was automatic after so many years of being warned by doctors not to justify, not to attempt to "explain away" her symptoms.

"Who says the answer has to be complicated?"

"People are complicated. The human mind and human emotions are complicated."

"Agreed. But sometimes the answers aren't complicated at all." He smiled again, ruefully this time.