The Third Floor Part 25

She watched him, waiting, wondering. The body turned sideways in a breeze Liz didn't feel, but a chill still ran up her back and gooseflesh rose on her arms.

The dead eyes still stared at her, but he hadn't moved again since she'd reached the landing. She took a cautious step down, ready to leap back again if he even twitched. Another step down and Dengler was still. But the eyes followed her. She imagined she could see the evil grin beginning to spread across his cracked lips, but another look proved her wrong; his face remained the same solemn, dead look.

She'd gone down five steps now and Dengler's body hung a foot from her face, her head even with his chest. Liz wished he'd vanish into whatever other place he'd come from, but it didn't look like he was going to, and she couldn't stay here all day, trapped on the stairs by a ghost. She swung her feet over the rail and used the overhang on the stairs to climb down, inching past him. She slid her hand down the rail and her feet off the edge of the step, down to the next one. Her eyes stayed on his body, watching for any sign of movement.

She kept trying to tell herself He's just a ghost, he's just a ghost, he's not really there, it's just an image, not real. But a smell came from him that contradicted that. And a heat washed over Liz's face when she pa.s.sed him. The body swung sideways again and she glanced up quickly. His face was only two feet above Liz's, and his eyes were still locked on her. She stared into them and this time she didn't imagine it; the lips really did part and he showed a row of ugly teeth sneering at her.

She gasped and her foot slipped off the stair. Her knee banged the banister and her arm flung out to catch something and keep her from falling and breaking her back.

Maybe that's what he wants, she thought, to kill us all so there's more of them.

But why, she wondered. What would be the point in that?

Maybe there isn't a point. Who knows? Who cares?

Right. Get out of here. That's all.

Her arm found the banister for the flight of the stairs leading to the bottom landing, right behind her, and she hauled herself backward over it, flinging her feet over and backing up toward the wall, then she looked up and saw Dengler was still hanging there.

His head was c.o.c.ked sideways, his face dead, his eyes staring at her, and his arms were outstretched, the fingers flexing, reaching, grabbing for her. She heard the knuckles pop when he curled the fingers. She leaped down the stairs to the landing, then took the last flight down to the first floor three at a time, trying not to trip over her feet and land on her head.

Is that what happened to Joey? He'd come up here that night and he'd seen something? What? Dengler? The little girl? Something worse?

What could be worse?

Nothing she could think of.

She stopped in the hall midway to the living room and put her back against the wall, her face in her hands, and she cried, as silently as she could. When she realized the torrent was too much for her, she went into the bathroom--the light was off now, and Liz had to turn it on--and closed door. She sat on the edge of the tub, bawling into her hands and wis.h.i.+ng all of it would go away. She thought she'd be able to handle it, that she was strong enough to deal with a ghost or two, but the scope of it turned out to be bigger than she'd thought.

This wasn't the ghost of some unfortunate person who'd died in the house, it was a man who killed his four children and then himself, and anyone who could do that wasn't someone Liz wanted to have to deal with.

She knew there were things she would have to do now, things she was hoping to avoid. If Jack didn't want to believe it all, that had been fine, but now it was getting to the point if she didn't convince someone else she was going to have a nervous breakdown.

Blessing the house hadn't worked. So what would? She'd have to find out. How? The library's resources had been limited and she'd come away with nothing.

Okay, maybe Jack would have something--he was good at thinking his way through things--once she convinced him. So that was the first thing.

What would make Jack believe the ghosts were more than just house-settling creaks or the wind or prank phone calls?

He'd have to see it.

From the living room, the sound of the ringing phone came dull through the walls and Liz got up, wiped her eyes, and went to answer it.

"Jack's probably at work, isn't he?" Allen asked.

Liz smiled. Finally, something familiar. She was homesick for Houston, and their old neighbors, and their old non-haunted house.

"Yep," she answered. "He said he might be a little late tonight, too. Do you want me to have him call you when he gets here?"

"That's alright," Allen said. "I didn't really want anything. I just had some free time and thought I'd see how Missouri's going for you. How's Joey?"

Liz almost said I'm not sure; he's not Joey anymore, but she caught the words in her mouth and changed them to, "He's fine. Do you want to talk to him?"

"Sure, for a second."

She handed the phone to Joey, then sat back in the chair, listening to Joey's one-sided conversation, asking if Allen was going to come up or if Joey could come down there. She smiled and breathed easy for a while, happy for the distraction.

The second Judy was in the door, she went to the phone. The front door stood open and she came back to shut it as she dialed, but the phone was her first priority. She had to call her brothers. Charley was first.

"It's me," she said. "I just came from the house."

"The house? How'd you manage that?"

"I saw the ambulance there last night--did you know the boy went to the hospital?"

"Yeah," Charley said. "I work with his dad, remember?"

"Right. Anyway, I met her at the park a few days back, talked to her a little bit. Told her today I wanted to make sure everything was okay, play the concerned neighbor type. She brought me inside and we went upstairs--"

"Did you hear it?" Charley asked. "That pounding in the ceiling?"

"No," Judy said. She went into the kitchen and poured some tea, then dropped a handful of ice cubes into it. "We were only on the second floor. She's really done a nice job on it."

"Yeah it looks great. No pounding, then? Did you see any of them? You know sometimes they're seen standing at the windows, especially Sarah."

"No," Judy told him. "That was the only problem, I didn't see or hear anything. And she didn't talk about it. She did ask me about them, though."

"What did you tell her?"

Judy pulled the phone away from her face for a second and took three long gulps of the tea. Then she filled in her brother on the conversation, at the end of which he said, "I wonder what she's seen. If she's asking about them, do you think that means she's seen the kids? He never talks about them, but I get the feeling he wouldn't believe it if he did. But I don't know her. What's she like?"

"She seems nice enough, I guess. I wasn't sure that first day in the park, but today she seemed a lot friendlier. But all she wanted to talk about was the house and the kids, so maybe she was just curious."

"But you didn't see anything?"

"Not a shadow." She sat on her couch and leaned back. She sighed. "You think that maybe it is all just talk?"

Charley was silent a second, thinking. Finally he said, "No, what I heard up there wasn't just talk. There was something up there. I know it."

"You could be wrong. Racc.o.o.ns?"

"Could be," he admitted. "But what I heard didn't sound like any animal. I swear it sounded like something knocking on the ceiling, trying to get it."

"But if they're there, then they're already in. Aren't they? What do you think it could have been?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know anything about any of it, except that I'm ninety-nine percent sure they're still there."

"I wish we could help them."

"I know. You gonna call Ron and tell him? He'll want to know, too."

"Yeah," Judy said. "I called you first, but I'm calling him next."

"You know, I took Jack to see Ron a few days ago."

"What for?"

"I wanted him to see that apartment. That guy is a rock. He came out of there thinking we'd played some trick on him."

"I hate that apartment," Judy said. She s.h.i.+vered.

"Yeah."

Judy got up and went to her front window. She looked down the street at the Kitch house, formerly the Dengler house, formerly the Keeper house. "But if those kids are still in there and that house is holding them, I hate it even more."

"You and me both," Charley said. "You call Ron.

Jack had a crisis and didn't even realize it. Aurora had called while he was gone and asked for twenty intercoms to be sent next day air. B.B. Whitaker had answered the call. He'd only been moved to Jack's department a few days earlier and hadn't had to deal with Aurora yet. He didn't know not to promise them something without discussing it with the cell in charge of that part first. Better yet, B.B. shouldn't have been promising them anything at all; that wasn't his job.

Granted, Jack had been nowhere around--still at the hospital at the time, or driving Liz and Joey home--but B.B. was new and should have pa.s.sed the phone to anyone else who'd dealt with Aurora before.

And just two minutes ago, Jack found out their UPS pick-up for next day air items had been moved back an hour. That gave them forty-five minutes to finish the intercoms and get them boxed and moved to the s.h.i.+pping area.

And all Jack could think of was the house.

He'd dreamed those things last night, that's what it had been. He knew it because, in his dream, the house had been cold, but that house hadn't been cold in weeks. He'd only dreamed he couldn't sleep. And that was an odd thing to dream, but given the things he dreamed he'd seen upstairs, it was nothing.

And that was why he was so tired today, because his sleep had been so troubled with nightmares, not because he'd been up all night trying to sleep. It had to be why because the alternative was to listen to Liz's claims and say the house was haunted, which it wasn't, because ghosts weren't real.

What about all the times you've gotten up in the morning and found the bathroom light on?

That doesn't mean anything. Joey could have went to the bathroom in the night and left the light on. His room is right across the hall from it.

And the sounds in the walls?

Squirrels. Mice.

The exterminator said there was nothing.

The exterminator's a moron.

The light you saw go out on the third floor that night?

That was a streetlight reflection. We've been over that one already.

While the cut-off for the UPS load got closer--Jack normally would have been on the floor helping get the intercoms done in the time crunch--he sat at his desk playing "What about" with himself, trying to convince himself the house might be haunted, then coming back with an explanation as to why that didn't mean the house might be haunted.

When he got home that night, Liz told him to come upstairs with her.

"I want to show you something."

He followed her, wiping sweat from his forehead. The heat the higher in the house you went was almost unbearable at times. If they ever moved anything to the top, they'd need an air conditioner up there for sure, maybe two.

On the stairs from the second floor to the landing, Liz skittered up them far ahead of Jack, once glancing over her shoulder as if she expected someone above her. Jack glanced up, too, when he pa.s.sed under the rail, thinking, That's the spot. If the story was right, that's where he hung himself.

At the top, Jack asked, "What is it?" He looked around, expecting to see something different, any noticeable change, but everything looked exactly as it did the night before. When he'd been up here alone, in the dark, when something touched him.

He repressed a s.h.i.+ver and told himself again that he'd dreamed it. Of course he dreamed it because this house wasn't haunted. Ghosts weren't real.

"This," Liz said, and he turned toward her, then squinted and backed away from the flash of light shot into his face. The Polaroid clicked, hummed as the picture slid from it.

"What are you doing?" he asked. He hadn't even noticed it in her hand before now.

"Just taking some pictures," she said.

"What for?"

She shrugged in answer and aimed the camera at him again. He blocked the sight with his open palm. "You're gonna blind me."

"You'll be fine," she said, and raised the camera. He moved his hand and turned away. Liz shot another picture, then set the prints on the top step while she shot a few more.

"You a photographer now?"

She shook her head, but took another picture, set it aside, and aimed the camera at him again.

"What are you doing?" he asked again. His voice had raised. He hadn't meant it to happen, but he was tired, he was hot, and he was stressed.

"I'm just taking a few pictures," she said. "Relax. I want to see something."

"You can't take them without me? I'd like to go sit down."

"No, I can't. I want you to be here when I take them."

"Whatever," he muttered and wandered into the bathroom.

Liz took another picture of the stairs while Jack p.i.s.sed. He flushed and came back out to another flash of the camera. His vision danced with colored lights. The heat pressed in on him. The air clung to the insides of his lungs, heavy and thick.

While Liz amused herself, Jack looked around, wondering what they would ever use this floor for, wondering why his wife was crazy, wondering why it was so f.u.c.king hot up here.

Finally, he threw a hand up and said, "All right, you can stay up here all night, but I'm sweating to death." He went down the first step.

"Wait," Liz said. "One more."

She aimed the camera next to Jack, toward the banister, and clicked off a final picture. She scooped up the others, glanced at them and saw they were almost finished developing, then followed Jack downstairs.

In the kitchen, Liz peeked out the back door and saw Joey wandering around toward the back of the yard. She set the camera on the counter and fanned out the pictures. Jack was in the living room, taking off his shoes and lying down on the couch.

The last picture was coming into final focus and she looked at each one in turn, moving her head out of the way of the light. There was Jack, looking surprised and annoyed, and the backdrop of the third floor's main room behind him. Her eyes roamed the surface, hoping for that outline, that spectral light, that bit of proof Jack would need in order to believe. But in this light, all she saw was Jack.