Part 15 (1/2)
David felt the weight of his dead grandfather's gaze on him, like a slight pressure on his forehead.
The apparition removed the pipe from his lips and spoke, the mellow voice unmistakeably clear.
”The time is coming, son. ”
”What?” David broke his paralysis and stepped into the room. Fear had been replaced by intense curiosity. ”What do you mean, Granddad?”
”You've got to fu fill your responsibility to the family. The Hunters' legacy. ”
”I ... I don't understand,” David said. ”What responsibility?”
”Stay strong, son ... stay stong.. .
The apparition began to fade.
”Wait!” David rushed forward. ”Don't go!”
Big Daddy vanished. David's hands grasped empty air.
With a cry of frustration, he collapsed into the chair. He pounded the armrest with his fist.
Big Daddy had been telling him something important, something absolutely critical, and he could not figure out what he meant. The time was coming for him to fulfill his responsibility to his family? The Hunters' legacy? None of it meant anything to him.
But it meant everything to his grandfather.
He had no doubt that he had seen a genuine ghost. A few days ago, when Nia had related her own story of spirits she'd seen at the Mason place, he had been skeptical. Not anymore.
Indeed, the rocking chair itself was cold; touching the wood sent a chill through his fingers.
David believed, fully. There was nothing like seeing a specter with your own eyes, and feeling the remnants of its presence with your own hands, to erase every figment of disbelief.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway. David's head snapped up.
King's familiar canine figure regarded him from the doorway. The dog chuffed, tentatively.
”Come here, boy,” David said. The dog trotted inside and pressed against him. David stroked King's furry neck, and the dog licked his fingers. Ordinarily David hated for King to lick his hands, but he didn't rebuke the dog this time. King's presence rea.s.sured him.
David looked out the window, at the crescent moon in the deep night sky.
Something major was about to happen in his life. Only a fool would choose to ignore the obvious signs.
But what was going to happen, and what was he supposed to do about it?
He would have to discover answers. Soon. He had the feeling that his life depended on it.
Thursday, Nia was on the floor of her bedroom, working through her last set of abdominal crunches, when the telephone rang.
She squeezed out another rep, then hopped to her feet and answered the phone.
”h.e.l.lo?” she said, breathing hard, trying to catch her breath.
Flat silence came from the earpiece.
”h.e.l.lo?” she said again.
More silence ... then, husky breathing. Like a man who was s.e.xually aroused.
A blade of ice lanced Nia's spine.
The beguiling, handsome face of Colin Morgan, the teacher who had stalked her in Houston, flashed like a red siren in her mind. She didn't know for sure whether he had called; the Caller ID display said ”Unavailable.” But her bone-deep intuition told her that he was the culprit.
Had he been paroled from prison already? If so, how had he gotten her phone number?
”Who is this?” she said, one final time.
The caller responded with heavy breathing.
Nia slammed down the phone. She stared at the telephone, as though willing it not to ring again.
But it rang. Again, the Caller ID display stated, ”Unavailable.”
She picked it up. ”h.e.l.lo?”
Quick, excited panting. Like a hungry wolf on the prowl.
She smashed the handset into the cradle with enough force to rock the table.
Hugging herself to ward off the numbing chill that had seeped into her body, she glared at the phone.
It did not ring again.
But her relief was short-lived. What if the caller really had been Mr. Morgan? What if he had been released from jail?
What if he was coming to get her?
”Don't get carried away,” she cautioned herself.
She ordered herself to put it out of mind. The caller was surely some harmless loser with nothing better to do than randomly dial numbers and hope that a woman answered. It wasn't worth worrying about. She should relax.
But she suddenly had so much nervous energy that she worked through an extra two hundred reps of crunches.
David spent Friday at home, determined to learn more about his family.
His encounter with the ghost and the growing mystery of his father's death convinced him that vital clues lay within the house. The challenge was to sort through everything, separate the items that seemed important, and figure out how they fit into the overall puzzle.
Nevertheless, he felt that he was slowly being drawn into something that went deeper than anything he had seen so far. He had only traced the surface. Intuition told him that more awaited him.
He only had to be patient. And alert.
While he was in the living room, flipping through the magazines spread across the coffee table, the doorbell rang.