5
Lyle was standing in the kitchen, tossing out the aluminum foil that had wrapped the leftover pizza slices he and Charlie had finished for dinner, when he heard the voice.
He froze and listened. Definitely not Charlie's voice. No… a child's. A little girl's. And it sounded as if she was singing.
A little girl… Gia had seen a little girl this afternoon. Was she back?
Lyle eased toward the center hall, where the sound seemed to be coming from. No doubt about it. A little girl was singing. The melody was tantalizingly familiar.
As he moved into the hall her voice became clearer, echoing from beyond the closed door at the end of the hall, from the waiting room.
And the words…
"I think we're alone now…"
Wasn't that from the sixties? Tommy somebody?
He slowed his pace. Something odd about the voice, its timbre, the way it echoed. It sounded far away, as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. A very deep well.
At the door, Lyle hesitated, then grabbed the knob and yanked it open. The voice was loud now, almost as if the child were shouting. The words bounced off the walls, seeming to come from all directions. But where was the child?
Lyle stood in an empty room.
He stepped over to the couch and looked behind it, but found nothing but a couple of dust bunnies.
And now the sound was moving away… down the hall he'd just passed through. Lyle moved back to the door but saw no one in the hall. And still the sound kept moving away. He followed it.
"Charlie!" he called as he passed the stairs. He told himself he wanted a witness, but deeper down he knew he didn't want to be alone with this. "Charlie, get down here. Quick!"
But Charlie didn't respond—no voice asking, Whussup? No footsteps in the upper hallway. Probably holed up in his room with his head stuck in a pair of headphones listening to Gospel music while he read the Bible. How many times was he going to read that book?
Lyle followed the voice, still singing the same song, into the kitchen. But once he reached there, the voice seemed to be coming from the cellar.
Lyle paused at the top of the stairs, staring into the well of blackness below. He didn't want to go down there, not alone. Not even with someone else, if the truth be known. Not after last night.
He wondered if this delicate little voice was part of whatever had written on the bathroom mirror before smashing it. Or was the house haunted by multiple entities?
"Charlie!"
But again, no response.
Lyle and Charlie had spent most of the morning talking about whether or not they were really haunted. In the warm light of day, with the shock and the fear of the night before dissipated, Lyle had found it hard to believe in such a possibility. But one look in the bathroom at the maniacally shattered mirror was enough to make him a convert.
The big question was, what could they do about it? They couldn't exactly call Ghostbusters. And even if such a group existed, think of the publicity: Psychic afraid of ghosts! Calls for help! A PR nightmare.
The voice was fading now. Where could it go from the basement?
Lyle took a deep breath. He had to go down there. Curiosity, a need to know, pushed him for an answer. Because knowing was better than not knowing. At least he hoped so.
Flicking the light switch he took the stairs down in a rush—no sense dragging this out—and found himself in the familiar but empty basement with its orange-painted floor, pecan paneling, and too-bright fluorescents. He could still hear the singing, though. Very faintly. Coming from the center of the room… from the crack that ran the width of the floor.
No… couldn't be.
Lyle edged closer and gingerly crouched near the opening. No question about it. The voice was echoing from down there, in the earthquake crevasse under his house.
He bent his head and rubbed his eyes. Why? This house was fifty-some years old. Why couldn't this have happened to the last owner?
Wait, the last owner was dead.
All right, the next owner, then. Why me? Why now?
The voice faded further. Lyle leaned closer. It was still singing "I Think We're Alone Now." Why that tune? Why a bubblegum song from the sixties?
And then the lights went out and the strange little voice boomed from an anemic whisper to a floor-rattling scream of rage that knocked Lyle onto his back. A noxious cloud plumed around him in the dark, the same graveyard odor as the night the crack first appeared, sending him scrambling across the floor and up the steps toward light and air.
Sweating, panting, he slammed the cellar door and backed away until his back hit the kitchen counter. This was getting way out of hand He needed help, and fast, but he hadn't the faintest idea where to turn.
Sure as hell couldn't call on a psychic. He'd never met one who wasn't a lying son of a bitch.
He had to shake his head. Just like me.
Okay, there were some who really believed in all the crap they fed their sitters, but they were deluded. And he'd found that people who lied to themselves were far more unreliable than those who simply lied to others. He'd take a con man over a fool any time.
Lyle stared at the door and calmed himself. Time to get a grip and face this situation head on. Because what he'd said this morning was true. He was not leaving his home.
He took a deep breath. So. Look at what he had: Assuming that some sort of spirit world was real—and he was being backed into accepting that now—it still had to follow some rules, didn't it? Every action had an effect. Every incident had a cause.
Maybe not. But that was the only way he knew how to approach this. If other rules applied, he'd have to learn them. But for now, he'd go with cause and effect.
That said, what had caused all this? What had awakened this demon or ghost or entity, or attracted it to his home? Was it something he or Charlie had done? Or was someone else behind it?
Those were the first questions. Once he had those answers, the next step would be finding out what, if anything, he could do about them.
6
"More kashi?" Gia said.
Jack held up his plate and said in his best Oliver Twist voice, "Please, ma'am, could I have some more?"
Gia had whipped up one of her vegetarian dinners. She was on a kashi kick these days, so tonight she'd fixed kashi and beans with sides of sautéed spinach and sliced Jersey beefsteaks with mozzarella. All delicious, all nutritious, all as good for a body as food could possibly be; and though he'd push away from the table with a full belly, these meals always left Jack feeling like he'd missed a course.
Jack watched Gia as she scooped more kashi from the pot. The old townhouse had a small kitchen with cabinets and hardwood floor all stained unfashionably dark. Jack remembered when he'd first seen the place last year. Vicky's two old spinster aunts had been living here with their maid, Nellie. The interior looked pretty much the same then, the furnishings hadn't changed, but the place had a real lived-in look now. A child will do that.
Jack let his eyes wander down Gia's trim frame, wondering when she'd start to show, to swell, marveling at the stresses women put their bodies through to bring a child into the world.
He shook his head. If men had to go through that the world would be damn near unpopulated.
Still looking at Gia, he noticed an uncharacteristic tautness in her posture. Her uncertainty over the weekend as to whether or not she was pregnant would explain the mood swings he noticed, but he'd have thought finding out and telling him would have broken her tension. Something else was bothering her.
Jack got up and pulled another Killian's from the fridge.
"You don't mind that I'm drinking, do you?"
This was his third Killian's while Gia was still working on her first club soda. The bottle of wine he'd picked up on the way over sat unopened on the counter. Gia had told him that, as much as she loved her Chardonnay, she wouldn't be drinking for the next nine months.