Simon held his breath when he came at last to a room whose closed door held the feeling of something different shut up behind it. When after tapping and calling he opened this door, he discovered furniture, including a made bed. But there was no one in the room.
He stepped in and looked around. To judge by the few items of clothing hanging in the closet, an adult couple was staying here, and logic said it must be Vivian’s and Saul’s parents. They hadn’t brought many things, so they weren’t staying long. So, if their important meeting was really in Blackhawk, why not a hotel there? It must have been important to them for some reason to establish a presence in the castle too.
Out in the hall again, Simon looked back toward the stair he had come up. He saw nothing, heard nothing, but there was… something… back there now, somewhere just out of sight in that direction. The shadows would be deepening on that stairway now, as the sun lowered outside. He’d take some other route when the time came to go back downstairs. He’d already looked for Vivian in that direction, and in that direction maybe Gregory…
Damn it, he wasn’t going to let himself be all that scared of Gregory. Sure, the man might yell at him angrily if he found Simon here. But he knew Simon and wasn’t going to shoot him for a burglar, so Simon wasn’t going to be scared… his hands were shaking slightly, and his knees. His mouth was dry, and he had to fight with himself to keep from running in the opposite direction from the stairs.
Come on, he told himself fiercely. This is ridiculous. He was fifteen, not the age to start having hysterics over nothing, over one little odd experience, like some little kid who’d just watched his first horror movie. And what had he actually seen? Not a ghost, not a skeleton. A man, lying on a cot. What was so bad about that?
He moved along the hall, walking normally, in the direction away from the stairs. The next room he came to also showed signs of habitation. Judging by the spare clothing visible, the occupant must be Saul.
The door of the next room after Saul’s was also shut. The pulse in Simon’s head came back as he called softly, and tapped on the door, then opened it and went in. Vivian wasn’t here, though the clothes indicated it was her room. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. She wasn’t even (and here Simon felt silly bending down to look) hiding mischievously under the bed.
What now? Having led him this far, his instinct seemed to have faltered. He could go out in the hall and search for her some more. He could wait in her room for her to come back. Neither of those courses felt right.
He’d left the door to the hall open. Out there it appeared to have got darker rather suddenly. Or had it really? Looking that way, Simon blinked. One thing for sure, he suddenly didn’t want to go out into that hall again. He didn’t want to because… there was a presence out there now.
Not Vivian. It could be Gregory, yeah, he thought it was Gregory, but… Gregory with something added, something taken away, something odd.
It was not that Simon, looking out from Vivian’s bedroom, could see or hear anything physical out in the hall. Even the greater darkness was perhaps not physical. But it was there. Whatever shadowy presence he’d awakened in the scorched circular room had followed him up the stairs, and was out there, in some form, now. If Simon were to stick his head out into the hall he might well see it with his eyes, and what he saw might well be more than he could bear, though he didn’t know just what his eyes would see.
Was it Gregory out there? Yes and no. Simon knew Gregory, to the limited extent he knew him at all, as a man, a human being, and this did not quite fit those categories. It felt like an it.
The it/Gregory out in the hall hadn’t followed Simon right into Vivian’s room. It wouldn’t, or it couldn’t. Simon thought he could see how, in some half-conscious way, it had thought that it had better not. But if Simon went out there now, he’d have to confront it directly and rather closely. It might be no more than twenty feet down the hallway, listening, trying to think, struggling against whatever power kept it from thinking clearly right now and acting forcefully…
Simon could, if he dared, if he hurried, rush right out into the hall this moment, without looking to his right, and then hurry along it to his left. If he hurried along, never looking back, then somewhere he’d find, he’d have to find, another way to get himself back downstairs. Although, as he thought about it, he got the distinct impression that in that direction there wasn’t a whole lot of hallway left.
Simon stepped forward, teetered on one foot for an almost paralyzed moment. Then with a sound like a sob he sprang for the door and slammed it shut. The moment of possible escape had passed, because he’d been too scared to seize it. There was a huge, old-fashioned bolt near eye level on the massive door, and Simon reached up and shot it home, then sagged in relief against the wall beside the door. The it/Gregory had moved forward suddenly. Simon was all right now, he was safe for the moment at least, but almost he had waited too long.
The presence he feared was now just outside the door. Simon could hear no sounds of breathing, he could hear nothing in fact, but he had not the least doubt that it was there. It moved, a little, and he sensed the movement by some means that was not hearing. It was waiting with great patience.
Was it waiting for him to come out?
The realization came to Simon that he was in a trap.
There ran through his mind, like the litany of some prayer memorized but never quite believed, all of the scientific, rational, logical opinions that he had managed to accumulate during his fifteen years of life. But to try to call on science and logic now was useless. Simon could no more open that hall door now than he could have leaped from the castle roof.
Maybe he could get out of the room through its window… but the window looked pretty small.
A quick check in the bathroom showed him that the window there was absurdly tiny, and filled with little stained glass panels. If he were a cat, maybe. Back to the one window in the bedroom.
Here, standing on a chair and pushing his upper body into the deep embrasure, he could manage to stick his head out easily enough. It was something of a surprise to see how full the daylight still was outside. Tall trees but not the horizon were covering the sun. Simon could have wriggled his body out through the window too, if there were anything at all nearby to offer a good grip, anyplace at all which he might reasonably hope to reach by climbing. Maybe, if he balanced on his toes on the sill here, then leaned far to the side, he might grasp that small ledge…
He could see, if he tried, that this wasn’t really the way out.
Standing on the floor inside the room again, the half-seen way to Vivian, to freedom, was as hard to pin down as ever. Once again Simon had the impression that it might be the window—but no. He could expect nothing but a fall to his death if he tried that.
If he couldn’t find any way to get out of this room, then he’d have to wait here. Sooner or later, Vivian would come back, or someone…
Unless it got dark first.
With the evil, infallible logic of nightmares Simon understood the worst in that one phrase. It was an axiom without support and needing none. When the sun had set, the room’s closed door would no longer hold.
Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus God. Some hand of human shape outside was trying the doorknob now. This was not only a feeling, Simon could actually see and hear it move. He stumbled away from the door and sank down on all fours on the thick bedside rug, stifling fear-whimpers in his throat. He could feel his bowels quivering, threatening to let go.