Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

"Then what did cause it?"

Miranda set her cup on the counter. "I was in the living room?"

"Yeah."

"Then whatever caused it must have been in there." She went into the living room and Bishop followed. They studied the room, which looked entirely peaceful and unthreatening.

Miranda sat on the couch, gazing at the Ouija board on the coffee table. "Why is this here? I could swear Bonnie told me they were up in her room when they used it."

"They wouldn't have carried it down here for any reason?"

"I can't think why they would have. Or why my housekeeper would have."

Bishop sat beside her. He reached out and idly moved the planchette to the center of the board. "If this is what they used to contact. .. whoever it was they contacted . . . then it's a literal doorway."

She looked at him. "And maybe Bonnie forgot to close the door."

"Or closed it too late," he suggested. "I don't know too much about this sort of thing; like I told you, we've had trouble coming up with any viable tests or measurements, and the research on the subject is shaky at best. But I seem to remember you telling me once that there was no way for a medium to control what came through an open door."

"As far as I know, that's true. Sometimes a medium can partially block a doorway to narrow the opening, but that's it. And the danger is that it's usually the angriest, most negative spirit that rushes through the first open door it sees."

"The most recently and violently killed."

Miranda nodded. "Usually."

"Which in this case is likely to be Steve Penman, or maybe Lynet Grainger. Both were killed more quickly than the other two, with less time to even try to accept what was going to happen to them."

"True." Miranda thought about it for a minute. "Bonnie confessed that she and Amy had tried once before to contact someone who could help us locate Steve. It was a brief attempt, stopped pretty abruptly — but the name spelled out as their contact was Lynet's."

"She didn't strike me as the angry sort," Bishop said.

"No, she was a ... very quiet, sweet-tempered girl." Miranda drew a breath. "But she died an adolescent, and the sheer emotional energy of that could easily be destructive. She could be desperate enough to live that she didn't stop to count the cost to anyone else."

Bishop tapped the board with a finger. "If this is the doorway Bonnie used, the place where she focused her energies, then her own mind was somewhat protected. Right?"

"Yes, especially if she raised her own shields immediately after they made contact. Kara and I taught her when she was very small how to protect herself as much as possible, and by now it's an automatic defense."

"Then what would happen if the doorway was open just long enough for a spirit to come through — but not long enough for it to find Bonnie's mind accessible?"

"Then the spirit would be... here." Miranda looked around. "In the house."

"Confined here?"

"Probably, at least for a while. Some are able to migrate to other places through connections with people they knew in life, but if this is where it came in, then it's stuck here until it gets its bearings and is able to gain and focus strength."

Slightly distracted by possibilities, Bishop said, "In that case, I hope the kid isn't a voyeur."

Miranda smiled. "According to Bonnie and other mediums I've talked to, spirits trapped in our world aren't completely here. They're only able to see the living people who are able to see them; the rest of us exist to them only as ... the flicker of shadows caught out of the corner of their eyes."

Bishop grimaced. "The way most of us see them."

"Exactly. They don't drift around watching the living because they can't really see us. We just happen to inhabit the same space, I suppose on different dimensional planes."

Bishop thought about that. "Okay, that relieves my mind, at least on that point. Now — Bonnie and her friends make contact and then promptly leave the house. The only person left here is your housekeeper, who is probably not psychic."

"Definitely not psychic."

"Then she leaves. And the next person to come in — is you."

"Yes, but my shields were — " Miranda broke off, the wheels of memory almost visibly turning. "Wait a minute. I remember now. I came in here after taking a shower, and something made me think there might be an intruder in the house."

"What?"

"The board. The Ouija board was on the floor. When I first got home it was here on the coffee table. I knew I should search the house, but I... I decided to drop my shields instead. Just for a moment, so I could check the house faster and more thoroughly."

"And you opened a door," Bishop said.

With the clinic all but empty, they'd had their choice of rooms, but Seth's father had casually asked his son and Bonnie to sleep in the four-bed ward with the youngest patients, two little girls, and "keep them company."

Whether it was for the sake of propriety or in case the girls needed them, neither Seth nor Bonnie objected. In any case, Seth didn't intend to close his eyes, not tonight. Long after the girls and Bonnie had settled into sleep, he sat in the lounge near the door and listened to the storm raging outside the dim, quiet room.

As the hours passed, he fought off drowsiness several times, jerking awake to peer around the room uneasily, to listen the way someone snatched from sleep by a nightmare would listen for the stealthy footsteps of an intruder.

If asked, he couldn't have explained just what he was feeling. Anxiety over Bonnie, of course, because he thought this spirit business upset her more than she was saying. Lingering shock over the tragedy that had all but destroyed her family, and lingering astonishment that Steve's body had been found just where that damned Ouija board had claimed it would be.

A Ouija board, for Christ's sake.

He didn't believe in any of that shit. Well... he hadn't. But something about Bonnie's attitude had told him loud and clear that he'd better readjust his thinking if his future included her — which it most certainly did. And the damned thing had been right , there was no getting away from that.

Brooding, Seth shifted restlessly in his chair at least twice before it occurred to him that something was wrong. He didn't know what it was at first, but when the storm stilled for several minutes, he heard it. The sound was so low he'd noticed it only subconsciously, but now the hair on the nape of his neck was stirring, and he felt a chill of unease so strong it brought him up out of his chair.

He checked out the ward, moving slowly, pausing often to listen and silently cursing the storm as it picked up again. It was difficult to hear anything else, but as he circled the room and ended up at Bonnie's bedside, he heard it.

A faint rustling sound, almost like . . . whispering. It was low and quiet, but rose and fell, teasing his senses as he tried to grasp it and understand what it was. An insect? A mouse in the wall? A voice?

Seth bent over Bonnie and listened, but the hushed, rustling sounds weren't coming from her. She was sleeping, apparently peacefully, and he had to fight the urge to wake her just to make certain she was all right.

He forced himself to leave her in order to circle the room once again, and again ended up standing beside her bed looking down at her. That whispering ... It wasn't an insect, and it wasn't a mouse, he was sure of that.

He was also sure of something else. Whatever it was, the sound was here. All around Bonnie. It wasn't coming from her, and yet... it was here. As if the very air above her relaxed, sleeping body contained something. ...

A deeper chill swept through him, and he reached out to wake Bonnie, suddenly convinced beyond all reason that she was in desperate, deadly danger.