Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"Diana, what did you see?"

"Her. I saw her. Missy." Diana hadn't realized she was going to answer until she did, and when she did, she braced herself unconsciously for his reaction.

Except that Quentin didn't react at all, at least overtly. Still watching her with focused intensity, he said, "Describe what you saw. Exactly."

Diana was suddenly reminded of one of her many doctors, expressionless, determined to be nonjudgmental no matter what she said, even while mentally cataloging her neuroses, and the memory made her grit her teeth.

Might as well get it over with.

Rapidly, her voice toneless, she said, "There were flashes like lightning or a strobe light, and she was coming toward me, closer in every flash, and I thought she said 'Help us,' but her mouth didn't move, and it was cold and I was alone except for her—" She sucked in a quick breath. "And you, in the flashes but not the gray time in between. You were there, but only because I was touching your hand, keeping you partway — there."

"We were still on the veranda?"

She searched his face for signs he was humoring her the way some of her doctors had, and didn't know whether to be relieved or alarmed that she found none. "Yes."

"No one else was there? Just the three of us?"

"Yes."

"During the flashes. Were you completely alone out there between them?"

Diana nodded. "There was — I couldn't see anybody else in the gray time. None of the guests. Not you. Not her."

Quentin frowned suddenly. "It almost sounds like you were the one slipping into her world, which I believe is far more rare than the other way around. I've always thought mediums provided a doorway, but not that they passed through it themselves. Not that I've ever heard, anyway. I wish I knew more."

"What?" Even before he could answer, Diana was shaking her head. "No. Don't tell me you believe—"

"Missy is dead, Diana. If you saw her—"

"Obviously, I didn't. It's all in my mind." She heard her own voice rise, and paused a moment to collect herself. Being too excitable or emphatic about things got her into trouble, she'd learned that well enough. "Because it isn't possible to see the dead. There's no such thing as an afterlife. When you're dead, you're gone. Period."

"You really believe that?"

"I really do," Diana said firmly.

Ransom Padgett trudged up the narrow stairs to the attic of the main building, grumbling underneath his breath. Every damned time it stormed, something went wrong with this old place. Either there was a leak, or rain washed leaves and other crap into the gutters, or else the hotel's backup water supply — designed by a thrifty original owner to be replenished by rainwater carried down from the surrounding mountains — increased pressure on the old pipes so they groaned and rattled and disturbed the guests.

This time, at least three guests on the main building's topmost occupied floor, the fifth, started complaining about noises almost as soon as the first clouds darkened the skies.

Ransom thought most of them had too much imagination and ought to be warned by Management when they checked in that old buildings made noises, there was just no way around that. But handling the guests directly wasn't his problem, thank God. He just fixed things.

In this case, however, he doubted there was anything to fix. He'd had trouble with squirrels nesting in the attic over the winter, and since he hadn't yet discovered how they were getting in, he figured a couple had just come back inside to take shelter from the approaching storm.

So he was mostly up here to check his humane traps — which hadn't, so far, been successful in catching any of the canny squirrels — and poke around a little so he could tell Management he'd checked it out.

He used his key to unlock the attic door and then opened it, flipping the light switch just inside. The lighting consisted of bare bulbs in metal cages scattered around the vast expanse, and there were a lot of them, but the medium-wattage bulbs didn't do much to brighten the attic. Nor did the several dormer windows or even the big ones at the north and south ends, partly due to age-darkened stained and leaded glass. And with all the old furniture, trunks, boxes, and various junk stored in the space, the clutter didn't help.

Ransom had suggested more than once that the hotel's owners have somebody go through everything and get rid of what was obviously never going to be used again. He just didn't see the sense of holding on to things like old clothing and ancient linens falling to bits, and old tools and broken furniture, but, again, he hadn't been listened to.

"I just work here," he muttered to himself as he picked his way among the refuse of time and people's lives, trying to remember exactly where he had left those traps.

He found one up under the eaves on the west side of the building, still empty — but with the dried ear of corn he had left as bait gone.

"Little bastards," he said of the squirrels, baffled as to how they'd managed to get the bait without springing the trap. This thing was designed to trap squirrels, after all. He tested the spring and found it in good working order.

"Now I gotta go all the way down to the garden shed and get more bait. Shit." He thought longingly of the days when a little poison did the trick, wishing he dared disobey Management and just eliminate the rodents permanently.

He set the unbaited trap back in place and began working his way toward the next one, again automatically cursing the jumble of discarded junk he had to wade through, climb over, or push aside.

He was back in the main section of the attic and facing one of the fairly large stained-glass windows at the far north end when there was a deafening boom of thunder and all the lights abruptly went out.

Not wanting to break his neck falling over something in the darkness, Ransom waited where he was, confident that if the power didn't come back on in a minute or two, the generator would kick on. He made a mental note to either start carrying his flashlight when he came up here or else leave one by the door so he'd have it handy.

A brilliant flash of lightning abruptly illuminated the window, the grime-covered glass seeming in that instant to glow incandescent with colors.

Somebody was standing in front of it.

He'd caught only a glimpse in the flash, and Ransom frowned as darkness surrounded him once again. "Who's up here?" he demanded.

There was no answer, and as hard as he listened, Ransom could hear nothing beyond the rumbling of thunder and the scattered patter of rain on the roof above his head.

He waited, peering intently toward the window. And in the next flash he saw, as he expected, nothing.

"Trick of the light," he muttered. But he felt a building uneasiness, and not just because the lights had failed to come back on. It was normally fairly stuffy up here, generally on the warm-to-hot side this time of year, which it had been when he'd first entered the attic.

Now it was getting cold. Uncomfortably cold.

Not at all a fanciful man, Ransom had the sudden idea that if he put his hand to the nape of his neck, he'd find all the fine hairs there standing straight out in a primitive warning that something was wrong here. Very wrong.

A nearby floorboard creaked, and he spun around, but it was very dark, and all he could make out were looming shapes.

Looming.

That was... strange. He'd just walked across this space, following a clear if narrow aisle down the center of the attic. Now, as far as his straining eyes could make out, there was some sort of barrier there.

"I'm imagining things," he told himself in the sort of loud, emphatic, I'm-not-afraid-at-all voice of someone walking through a graveyard after midnight. "I just moved without thinking, is all. There's nothing else up here."