The Unseen (31 page)

Laurel was torn. The girl was clearly fabricating and yet …

Could there be someone else in the house? Who looked in on Katrina and then …

She forced the thought away.
Not possible. It was Brendan or it was your imagination.

“Hmm,” Brendan said neutrally. “All right, Katrina. Since that room seems to be active, I’d like to put a camera directly in your room.”

Laurel jolted a little.

“Now this is getting interesting,” Tyler said.

Brendan ignored him, focusing on Katrina. “You’d be able to turn it off when you want privacy—but when you’re sleeping … so that maybe we can catch some of this activity.”

“Anything that will help,” Katrina said breathlessly.

“Good,” he smiled at her. “Mr. Mountford will set up another camera.”

“Yaaas, boss,” Tyler drawled.

“Good; let’s get upstairs and do it.” Brendan stood and gestured, letting the two students precede him through the door, but he lingered, looking back at Laurel.

Ask him. Say something,
she ordered herself, but she could not.

“Are you feeling better this morning?” he asked suddenly, as she stood to leave.

“Just fine,” she said, and felt herself going crimson.

She rose to leave and he stepped in front of her. “You would tell me if there was something wrong? You were really out, yesterday.” He seemed completely guileless, merely concerned about a colleague.

“Of course,” she said, and fled, leaving the room with no destination in mind and no idea what was happening to her, moving blindly through the great room, past the main stairs.

And again, she found herself in the green room with the painting. That hideous painting. She sat on the bench to catch her breath. Her mind was racing.

Last night was a dream,
she told herself.
He obviously knows nothing. It was because of yesterday. It makes total sense. I was thinking of weddings. I was thinking of
my
wedding. My subconscious created a wedding night. Plus there’s enough sexual jockeying going on in here to fuel a porn movie. It wasn’t real.

“It wasn’t real,” she said aloud.

I’m just going to focus on something else.

She looked up at the painting, at the two figures seated too close to each other on the steps of the house.

And that’s where I’m going to start.

The Folgers, Paul and Caroline. What really happened here.

There’s the library, and those newspapers framed in the lounge. Maybe the stolen clip files are somewhere in this house, even.

“I’m going to find you,” she said to the painting.

The watched feeling was back as Laurel stepped into the library upstairs, but then of course there were hundreds of pairs of eyes staring out of the photos on the walls, not to mention the large portrait of James Folger above the bar. She looked across at it, the crude but powerful style.

She crossed to bar to look more closely at the signature—but the painted line was an indecipherable scrawl.

Well, if it was Paul Folger, he had talent.

Laurel turned from the painting and looked over the rest of the room, then stepped to the long wall opposite the windows to look at the photographs. As Laurel walked slowly along the wall, she noticed that most of the photos were professional studio shots, and of only one person, or two.
No family shots,
she realized.
These are celebrity guests.

Looking closer she also noticed that judging from the clothing there didn’t seem to be any photos taken past the 1940s.

Which means they’ve probably been up since James and Julia Folger were entertaining, and for whatever reason Caroline left the room exactly as it was, as if life stopped, or time stopped, inside the house. There’s no history past 1950.

She suddenly felt—not a chill, not anything so definable, and not static either. It was a
magnetic
feeling, in the most subtle of ways, and there was that faint tingling behind her ears. She turned to the wall and found herself directly in front of a photo of a slim and handsome young man in an army uniform, with dark curly hair and an aquiline nose. His elegant posture was more aristocratic than militarily rigid. And his eyes … deep set, almost sunken; there was a wariness about them and at the same time a profound sadness.

It’s him,
she thought.
Paul Folger.
She would have staked her life on it at that moment, it was so clear to her. She felt a thrill that was almost sexual—that
was
sexual.

There was no identifying signature or caption. She lifted the photograph from the wall to check, but there was nothing written there, either. She studied the face, looking for any sign of the madness to come: the flatness of affect, the absence of life force, the disconnect that often showed itself in schizophrenics. But this young man was alive.

She replaced the frame on the wall and now circled the room looking at all the photos, looking particularly for more of the young soldier. On the wall behind the door, hidden from view unless the door was shut, she struck gold: a photo of the young man with a young woman who had the same hair, dark curls pulled back from a high forehead with a band. They were sitting on the brick steps of the house, this house; Laurel recognized the white columns of the Spanish section. The young man’s knees were spread, his hands on his knees, and they did not touch each other, but the girl’s hair fell against his shoulder and they both gave the impression of leaning in to each other, though they did not look at each other. The same pose so weirdly distorted in the painting downstairs.

Laurel felt gripped by an uncanny sense that she was looking at herself. She knew the young woman in the photo looked nothing like her but she had a feeling of overwhelming familiarity, or really, empathy.

There was a palpable eroticism about the photo, as well.

Don’t read into it.

Alone in the house, for all those years …

You’re making up a story.

Paul Folger would have been only twenty-two when he got back from the war …

Just stop it—

Someone stepped into the doorway from the hall and she turned to see who it was.

There was no one.

Her heart leapt in her chest and her mouth went dry as a bone.

There was still a sense of presence in the room—she felt absolutely as if someone were standing in the doorway.

Impossible. You see there’s no one there.

But she was frozen, completely unable to move.

And then just as suddenly, the feeling was gone. She forced herself to take a breath in, and out, and then she could move again.

All right, look—you have got to get hold of yourself.

She turned away from the door and continued her walk-by of the photos, but found no others of Paul and Caroline. Then she remembered that there were photos in the other room as well, the fox room. She left the library with some relief and moved into the hall.

The fox room—
the trophy room is what it was probably called
—was painted a pale institutional green that evoked a hospital, even though Laurel could not herself remember ever seeing a hospital wall painted anything but some variation of white. French doors led out onto the round balcony over the front porch—again, with a distressingly low balcony rail.
Maybe people were just shorter, then,
she thought to herself.
A lot shorter.

The built-in shelves were crowded with silver hunting and riding cups; in fact, the lamps in the room were themselves made of silver trophies. The walls held paintings of the hunt and riders in hunting “pinks” (though the pink was as red as blood), and strange long-billed caps. Laurel walked along this wall as well, looking over sketches and old photos, of riders and horses and dogs—dozens of dogs. She stopped still, fascinated, in front of one grisly photo of a grandfatherly man with two small children, a boy and a girl no more than six or seven years old, impeccably decked in hunting costume—both with dark smears of what looked suspiciously like blood painted on their faces. The boy held up the severed head of a fox and the girl held the bloody tail.

Paul and Caroline?

They were avid hunters,
Audra said in her head.

What a way to raise children,
Laurel thought, and shuddered …

“The mask and the brush,” a voice said behind her and she spun around in shock.

Tyler was draped in a tall-backed armchair in the corner, one leg thrown casually over the armrest. He must have been there all along, but he seemed to have materialized out of thin air.

“God … ,” she gasped.

He half-smiled and nodded to the picture behind her. “That’s what they call the trophies, the head and the tail. ‘The mask and the brush.’ Nice photo, isn’t it? Kinda
Friday the 13th
.”

Her pulse was still pounding and she sat down hard at the table, the twin of one in the library, a round one of solid oak, with a lazy Susan built into the top.

Tyler watched her with those eyes, without moving a muscle, and she could hear her heart pounding, slow, steady thumps.
It couldn’t have been him, last night. He wouldn’t have dared …
And tried to make herself believe it.

He tipped his head back on the chair, without taking his eyes off her. “You’re not very comfortable here, are you?”

She half-laughed in spite of herself. “You could say that.”

He shrugged. “I could stay here a while, myself. I think it suits me. My plantation-owner roots and all.”

She felt an uneasy jolt at the thought.

He laughed. “Oh, now, that’s transparent of you. Yes, you’re in the bad ol’ South, now. Soaked in blood. You shouldn’t trust him, you know.”

The segue was nonexistent, but she knew exactly what he meant.

“Who?” she said stupidly.

Tyler didn’t even bother responding, but went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I really don’t think you should. I know guys like that.” He shot a veiled look in the general direction of the door. “Always scrambling for money ’cause they never had it and don’t know what to do with it when they do get it.”

She felt a chill as he said it—there was the unmistakable ring of truth, there. She heard Brendan’s voice in her head
: “A little problem with a loan shark …”

Tyler was watching her with a knowing look on his face. “Uh-huh,” he said, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “I’m telling you—you’re dreaming if you think he’s in this for science.”

“There’s not a lot of money in academic publication, Tyler,” she said.

“Maybe he’s thinking bigger than that,” Tyler said cryptically.

But what money is there in this?
she wanted to say. A movie? TV? Even if they did something more sensationalized with the book, she knew from her years in Los Angeles that the chances of getting anything going on that level were like winning the lottery, and Brendan certainly hadn’t said anything about it.

Exactly. He never
said
anything about it.

Aloud she said only, “That’s very interesting, Tyler; thanks for your input. If that’s the way you feel about it, why are you here?”

He looked at her as if at a slow but cherished child. “Full course credit for three weeks of this? Please. Who wouldn’t?” He thickened his drawl. “It don’t matter to me none if we see ghosts or not.” He dropped the country accent suddenly. “It’s a cakewalk for credit. Not to mention Miss White Sugar is practically panting for it. Plan A is to get myself laid.”

Tyler seemed unaware that Katrina wasn’t exactly panting for
him,
and for a moment Laurel envied his brash adolescent confidence. She was also profoundly relieved to hear she herself was not the object of Tyler’s intentions.

He eyed her speculatively. “No, the real question is, why are
you
here,
Chère
?”

She almost answered without thinking,
Because I have nothing else.
She barely stopped herself in time. “No matter what, it will be an interesting study in expectation and personality.”

“Is that what you call Miss Priss making things up?”

She fought a smile, lost, and somehow felt better. “We’re here to observe everything that happens.”

He tilted his head back against the chair, looking at her. “But you don’t really think this place is haunted. It’s all just some big mind fuck for science.”

She looked at him—the aristocratic features, the lazy indolence—and suddenly leaned forward on the table.

“Tyler, if you’re just going to play around, you should leave. It might not mean anything to you, but this is my job, and Dr. Cody’s job, and it’s pretty fucked of you to be here just for a laugh.”

He was still in his chair, gray eyes like ice, no expression at all, and then he half-smiled.

“But you’re wrong, Professor. I want to prove something’s out there, something real—just to see my father’s face. He might just drop dead on the spot.”

And for a moment his gaze was fevered; then in one of those instant, mercurial changes, he smiled at her. “That Freudian enough for you?”

So was all that a game, just now?
she wondered.
Do you ever tell the truth at all?
Aloud she said, “Not bad. I’ll make a note of it in your file.”

“Always happy to be of service.” His eyes gleamed at her and her stomach did an uneasy little flip.

No,
she told herself.
There was no one in my room last night. It was a dream.

She stood to leave, and could not resist a dig. “You’re right. This place suits you.”

She moved out of the library and through the hallway into the older part of the house. The conversation had left her queasy.

She walked the upstairs hall from the front side of the house this time, marveling again at the slow and sickening rise and fall of the floorboards.

Katrina’s door on the right side of the hall was closed, but the door next to it was open into the nursery, with the sleigh beds. Laurel paused in the doorway, frowning in.
Why preserve it as a nursery?
she thought again.
If Caroline Folger was a recluse, it’s not like they had children visiting that they would need the room for.