The Unseen (26 page)

They moved through the kitchen, past the servants’ bedrooms, the linen room, and the lounge. Both students stopped in the hall outside the lounge and Laurel could see they were suitably impressed by the weirdness of the long upstairs hall. Tyler had stopped joking and was looking around him shrewdly, like a camera recording everything he saw.

“There are about a million bedrooms,” Laurel said. “Why don’t you both just choose one that feels comfortable for now and we can always switch later?”

Brendan added. “There are larger rooms in the next wing, but let’s stay close for the first night.”

“No doubling up, huh?” Tyler murmured, but somewhat lacking his usual swagger. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He half-bowed mockingly to Katrina (
Too practiced, that gesture,
Laurel thought wryly) and said, “Ladies first.”

Katrina unhesitatingly chose the best room in what Laurel had come to think of as the “upper hall”—the large one with the balcony and the hearth.

Then they followed Tyler as he walked deliberately down the hall, then back all the rest of the way, and then slung his Calvin Klein bag on the single bed in the room across from the kitchen and back stairs, without comment.

“Any particular reason?” Brendan asked.

Tyler shot him an oblique look, shrugged. “Bathroom, kitchen, quick exit. What more could anyone ask?”

Laurel noticed a definite charge between the two men, a masculine jockeying for power, but Brendan neutralized the moment by choosing not to respond. “First thing on the agenda is exploring the house. Why don’t you two take about fifteen minutes to wash up and compose yourselves, and then come back downstairs to the office at the bottom of those first stairs and we’ll explain your first assignment.”

Twenty minutes later, with the group assembled in the house manager’s office, Brendan handed out floor plans of the house, two clipboards with both blank paper and questionnaires, and two voice-activated microcassette recorders to the students.

“We’re not going to tell you much to begin with,” Brendan told them. “We’ll get into that later. We simply want you to walk through the house at your own pace and record anything you think or feel. There’s no right or wrong, here—we just want your impressions. If you come across a spot where you sense anything worth noting, then mark the spot on your floor plan and make notes about it, either with the recorders or by written notes. The questionnaire sheets give you a list of adjectives that may help you define your impressions; you can use those word sheets or not, that’s completely up to you.

“But we’d like you to start by filling out a checklist relating to your current mood—it’s the first sheet on your clipboard. Just take a few minutes to answer the questions and then we’ll begin the house tour.”

A silence fell in the small office as Tyler and Katrina bent over their clipboards to do the questionnaires. They were simple checklists that Laurel and Brendan had culled from books and articles about haunting investigations, mostly lists of adjectives to get at the subjects’ current emotional states, but Laurel knew the act of concentrating on the questions, of having to tune into your own mood, was a kind of meditation in itself, a preparatory relaxation and awareness exercise.

The two students finished their questionnaires and looked up at precisely the same moment, like unwitting twins.

“All done?” Brendan asked brightly. “Excellent. After you’ve been through the entire house, we’ll give you a break, and we’ll reconvene to talk about the walk-through and give you some more background information. Any questions?”

Katrina and Tyler looked at each other, then at their two professors. “Bring it on,” Tyler drawled.

“Okay, then.” Brendan propelled himself to his feet, in that familiar leap. “We’ll split up and work from opposite ends of the house, so that you two can have your own independent perceptions. Dr. MacDonald, you and Katrina can start at the north end of the house, and Tyler and I will work our way forward from back here.”

Laurel saw Katrina’s face darken and sighed inwardly, realizing it was going to be a long tour.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A prevalent theory of hauntings is the “imprint” or “recording” hypothesis: that in some way we have yet to understand, strong emotions or traumatic events can be imprinted or recorded in the place in which they occur, and from then on can be unconsciously or consciously felt or perceived by certain individuals, in the same way that they might respond to a film or audio recording.

—Dr. Alaistair Leish,
The Lure of the Poltergeist

Despite Katrina’s obvious displeasure, if not simmering wrath, at being assigned to Laurel for the house tour instead of Brendan, the girl threw herself into the assignment with an almost frightening zeal. They began at what Laurel was starting to think of as the Spanish part of the house, although that was surely a California quirk of her own; as far as she knew the Spaniards never came anywhere near North Carolina.

The two women stepped through the front door into the entry hall with its greenish tinge and glazed brick floors. Katrina turned to Laurel and said bluntly, “So do I have to actually tell you all of this? Or can I just write it?”

Laurel suppressed an urge to slap her and said neutrally, “Whatever works best for you.”

The first floor of the Spanish house was an amazing little warren of rooms, and there was no level floor anywhere. For each room they had to step up or down, sometimes several steps. There was no continuity to any of it: rooms blossomed off each other and then abruptly stopped, and nothing was in proportion.

Katrina headed straightaway into the little library off the second entry, and Laurel couldn’t blame her—it drew Laurel, too, with its dark-paneled walls and luxurious glassed-in bookshelves and Art Deco mantelpiece with carved peacocks, and large windows looking out onto the back gardens; Laurel could see all the way out to the white gazebo. The room enveloped her with a hypnotic sense of calm and warmth. Katrina stood in the middle of the room with a dreamy expression on her face, then began to move through the room with a proprietary ease, gliding her hand over the white marble tops of the tables, opening the glass doors of the cabinets to look at the books. She was almost overly diligent, taking an excruciating amount of time drifting around the room. She paused to gaze into a display case with an intricate model of a sailing ship, then lifted the top of a table to reveal a backgammon board built into the piece. She opened up a carved standing globe to reveal various brandies and liqueurs, emerald and amber liquid gleaming dully through dusty bottles.

I can’t believe all this stuff is just sitting here,
Laurel thought.
Wouldn’t it have been vandalized long ago?

Apparently Katrina had decided she would not deign to share her thoughts with Laurel, so Laurel was forced to stand watching as the girl made her slow revolutions around the room, stopping to industriously and ostentatiously mark her floor plan. Laurel had the strong sense of being an audience; twice already she’d caught the girl stealing a sideways look at her.

Katrina finally moved out of the study into the inner entry hall with the churchlike bench across from the fireplace and the strange family portrait above the hearth. She stopped still in front of the portrait and didn’t move for a long time. Laurel stood in the doorway of the library and looked up at it.

What an odd room: just the bench in front of the portrait, almost like—like a shrine, an altar to that painting, with the bench placed for contemplative viewing …

But the more Laurel looked at the portrait, the more she thought that the painter must have had serious mental problems. The parents appeared fairly normal, if crudely done, but the two children looked like adults dressed in children’s clothing, or children dressed in adult clothing: the girl in a demure blue dress with a Peter Pan collar and the boy in what was either a Boy Scout uniform or an army uniform. There was no possible way of telling how old they were from their facial features, which on top of the age disconnect were vaguely simian.
Is that Paul and Caroline, then?
Laurel wondered. The two sat too close to each other on the steps, though they did not look at each other.
It’s a horrible painting,
Laurel thought suddenly.
I hate it.

And then she remembered that Paul Folger was a painter.

Katrina was scribbling industriously on her clipboard, as if Laurel weren’t there. Finally, she moved away from the portrait, over the glazed brick floor, through another archway into the third entry with the front door to the outside of the house and the archway into the main staircase, its huge bay window overlooking the overgrown gardens. At the end of the entry was the archway into the great room. And it was at the archway that Katrina had her first “hit.”

She stopped in the archway and froze.

“What is it, Katrina?” Laurel asked, forgetting for a moment that Katrina didn’t seem to be speaking to her.

“It was here,” Katrina murmured, and Laurel started. She’d said exactly the same thing when she’d crossed through the archway.

“What was?” Laurel asked, neutrally.

Katrina turned to her slowly. “What?” she said, sounding annoyed.

“You said, ‘It was here.’ ”

Katrina looked at her without expression and then bent to her clipboard and made a notation.

Fine,
Laurel thought to herself.
Don’t mind me.

Katrina stepped down the several stairs into the great room and drifted across the floor as if she were hearing inner music. Laurel glanced immediately to the middle of the floor, where they had seen the footprints—but the fine coating of dust was gone; the floors gleamed dully as if they had been swept, if not polished.

But by whom?

Across the room Katrina stopped to play a few notes of the piano—it was wretchedly out of tune. “Have you and Dr. Cody stayed in the house already?” she asked abruptly.

Why, whatever do you mean?
Laurel thought, but answered calmly. “No, we’ve only been through it once, ourselves.”

Katrina narrowed her eyes and turned away.

At the other side of the room she paused, frowning at the spot where the footprints had been. Laurel watched her, holding her breath … but Katrina continued on, into the dining room.

More steps down, into the dark-paneled dining room (that bizarre unevenness of the house … ). The sky had darkened considerably outside and the room was thick with the gloom of twilight. Katrina grimaced with distaste, and moved quickly past the long table and French doors and out. Laurel herself felt the same overpowering urge to get out of the room she had felt initially, and she noted that on her own clipboard. Then she flipped back to the first part of the floor plan and made a note about the family portrait as well.

Katrina barely glanced around the kitchen: it was obvious she “felt” nothing, or perhaps she was so unfamiliar with kitchens it seemed not worth the bother.

The women started upstairs via the servants’ staircase beside the kitchen. There was something appealing about the idea of a servants’ stairway; Laurel wasn’t sure that she’d ever been in one before, and she lingered, moving slowly up the steps. Then as she stepped onto the curved landing halfway up the stairs, Laurel felt her face flush and a rush of warmth through her body, a palpable sexual feeling spreading from between her legs, as if a hand had reached to stroke her there. She stopped with a gasp.

Katrina turned on the stairs above her and looked down, annoyed.

Laurel tried to summon control over her body. Her legs felt too weak to walk on.
Get a grip. You haven’t gotten any in a while. Deal with it,
Laurel told herself, and forced herself to take a step up onto the next stair. The sexual feeling instantly disappeared, leaving Laurel with her heart still pounding in confusion.

Katrina turned and continued upward without a word. Laurel climbed shakily behind her.
What the hell was that?

At the top of the stairs, Laurel was suddenly aware of a soft murmur of voices. The two women stopped still, and looked around them, listening.

“Tyler and Dr. Cody, I think,” Laurel said. Katrina looked at her as if she were an imbecile and flounced on.

Katrina breezed through the first part of the upstairs with an indifference that fairly shouted,
“These are just the servants’ quarters.”
But she slowed again in the linens room with its surprisingly lush dark wood floors and intricately cut stairs leading up to the small study.

There was a rumble of thunder outside, and suddenly the sky opened, dumping rain on the gardens.

Laurel watched as Katrina sat on the divan in the linens room and looked out the window at the rain, even closed her eyes. When she opened them she marked something Laurel couldn’t see on her floor plan.

In the study, the girl stared out the windows over the garden, frowning for a time at the gazebo, standing still and white in the drenching rain. And then came the upper hall and the long row of bedrooms.

They walked past the bathroom … and then Katrina stopped in the hall so abruptly that Laurel ran into her from behind. Katrina turned on her with her face twisted in fury. “Don’t touch me!” she snarled.

Laurel was so startled that for a moment she couldn’t speak. “I’m sorry. My fault.”

Katrina’s face slowly lost its look of animal rage, and she turned blankly to the door they’d stopped in front of—the locked door to the right.

“It’s locked—,” Laurel began. Katrina reached and tried it anyway. To Laurel’s surprise, the knob turned for the girl, although when she pushed on it, the door refused to budge. Katrina stepped back, looking at Laurel expectantly. Laurel stepped forward and tried the door herself. The knob turned, but the door held firm. Laurel pushed her whole body weight on it, and then suddenly whatever was holding it released, and Laurel fell into the room, barely catching herself before she tumbled to the floor.