John Luft cleared his throat loudly. When the others turned to the young man with the blond hair, dark eyes, and thin face, he took his arm from around his ashen-faced, trembling wife and tapped his watch. “Uh, I really think Linda and I should be toddling off. It’s getting pretty late.”
Suddenly Madame Bellarossa’s head came forward and her eyes opened wide. “That could be dangerous!” she snapped. “They haven’t finished telling us what they want us to know!”
For the first time since the séance had begun, Elsie spoke in words not offered as a prayer. She seemed composed now, determined. She looked directly at John and Linda Luft and spoke in a soft but firm tone. “I understand now that this thing will have to be done if there’s ever to be peace in this house. They’ve spoken to Mary this time, not to me, but I sense that they won’t harm us — as long as they can finish their story. But they want the two of you here. If we listen to all of it, I think they’ll go away at last. God knows I need to sell this house, but in good conscience I can’t allow anyone else to move in here until this is resolved. Especially not a nice young couple like you. I certainly understand your fear — but if you don’t stay and continue, then I can’t let you have the house.”
“That’s just fine with me,” the young woman said in a quavering voice as she turned toward the living room. “I’m out of here.”
John Luft grabbed his wife’s arm, pulled her back beside him. His bright eyes reflected the flickering candles as he looked around at the others, then finally settled his gaze on Elsie. “You’re saying that this could be like a kind of exorcism? If the ghosts tell Mary what’s on their minds, and Mary tells us, then they’ll leave the house when you leave?”
It was Madame Bellarossa who answered. “That is correct.”
“Then let’s do it,” Luft said, virtually pushing his wife back down into the chair she had jumped out of when Mary had collapsed.
“Hoo, boy,” Harry Parker said, flapping the ends of his shirt in an effort to speed the drying of the blood that had soaked it, “I’ve been exposing phoney-baloney occult scams for most of my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t mind telling you I’d really like to see how it all comes out.”
“No,” Garth said as he walked back to where Mary was still sitting on the floor, looking dazed. He put a hand under her arm, helped her to her feet. “Let’s not do it.”
The others stared at him in stunned silence, which Mary finally broke. “Garth? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Elsie,” Garth said to the old woman. “It’s your house, and your ghosts, but it’s my wife they’re using as a mouthpiece — and they knocked her to the floor to get her attention. That’s a bit rough, and it’s not at all my idea of how to start a pleasant conversation. Neither is making Harry bleed. If they want to talk to me, that’s fine, but I’m not letting Mary sit back down at that table. The only hand she’s going to hold for the rest of the evening is mine.”
“Garth,” Mary said, a quiet urgency in her voice, “it’s all right. I want to do it — for Elsie, and for John and Linda. I want to help end all this. They don’t mean to hurt me; they don’t want to hurt anybody. They’re just very angry. They want to be heard.”
“That is correct,” Madame Bellarossa whispered.
Garth shook his head. “If they need a lawyer, then let them talk through me.”
“They won’t. They’ll only talk through me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mary replied, then put her arms around him and gently kissed him on the cheek the way she had when she’d drifted up from sleep and found him awake the night after he had discovered Elsie cowering outside their back door. “Who are you calling?” she had asked dreamily.
“Elsie.”
“Garth, it’s past midnight.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I’ve been trying to reach her for the last fifteen minutes. There’s no answer.”
“Remember she said she heard the phone ringing all the time. Now she’s probably not answering the phone, even when it really is ringing. With Elsie, I’d say that’s a healthy sign.”
Garth hung up, waited ten seconds, then dialed again. “I’m worried about her. I want to talk to her, make sure she’s all right.”
“Garth, let the poor woman sleep. If her ghosts were hassling her, she’d be over here just like she was last night. You’re starting to act like you believe in them.”
“I believe in terror, Mary,” Garth said evenly, hanging up the phone and rising. “That’s what I saw in Elsie. I had an uncle who died from what he believed, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to Elsie. I’ll be back in a little while.”
He quickly dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, took the flashlight from a shelf in the kitchen, then went out into the night, down to the beach. A full moon painted the river silver and silhouetted the Victorian mansion that loomed up out of the darkness into a sky of midnight blue as he approached it. He knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again, louder. When there was no answer, he retrieved the spare key he knew Elsie kept behind a potted plant on the porch, opened the door, and let himself in. He started as he swept the beam of his flashlight across the hardwood floor of the foyer and a moving, shiny carpet of cockroaches skittered away in all directions. There was a strong smell of rotting garbage.
“Elsie?!” he called. “Don’t be afraid! It’s Garth! I’ve come to make sure you’re all right!”
There was no answer. He reached to his left and flipped a light switch, but the house remained shrouded in darkness. From somewhere upstairs, barely perceptible, came flopping and scratching sounds, as if someone or something with long nails was hopping around and slapping bare hands or feet against the floor. He went to the foot of the stairs and the flopping and scratching sounds grew more pronounced.
“Elsie?!”
There was another flop, the crash of a lamp or dish hitting the floor, and then he heard a soft moan. He immediately bounded up the stairs, heading for the old woman’s bedroom on the second floor. The door was closed. He yanked it open, stepped into the room.
Garth Frederickson was a man who had faced death a hundred times, and he no longer feared anything, but he was thoroughly startled when something slimy, soft, and heavy smacked into the side of his head and claws raked his cheek. He stumbled and went down to one knee as the thing fell off him and leaped away into the darkness, landing fifteen feet away with a sharp slapping sound. But the shock passed as he realized almost immediately what the thing was, and even as his heartbeat rapidly began to return to normal, anger, swift-running and hot, rose in him.
He got back to his feet and swept the light around the room until the bright beam found Elsie huddled on the floor beside her bed, her arms wrapped around her. Her face was purple, and she was rapidly opening and closing her mouth in a desperate struggle to breathe.
“It’s Garth, Elsie,” he said, flashing the light on his face as he quickly went to her. He set the flashlight on a dresser, where it illuminated half the room, then lifted Elsie up and sat her on the edge of the bed. He braced one hand against her back, then gently pressed on her chest, released the pressure, pressed again. “Breathe, Elsie. Come on, now; breathe. I’m here now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“The ghosts...”
“I’m pretty sure your ghosts have finished their work for the night and gone home. If they are still in the house, I guarantee I’ll break their necks and make real ghosts out of them.”
There was a scratching sound in the half of the room still in darkness, and then a heavy slap. The woman’s eyes went wide, and she again began to hyperventilate.