Part 6 (2/2)
”Really,” Neville said, taking a bite of sandwich and looking away from c.u.mmings.
”There's . . . another thing.” Something in c.u.mmings's voice made Neville look up. ”I'm fairly sure-I think I saw a ghost.” He sounded embarra.s.sed.
”A ghost?”
”Two ghosts really.”
”Where was this?”
The intensity with which Neville asked the question startled c.u.mmings. ”Why, my room. My bedroom.” c.u.mmings told exactly what he had seen. The effect on Neville was amazing. His half-smiling mouth hung open, and his eyes widened like a child entranced by a new bedtime tale.
”And you really saw it? No dream, no hallucination?”
”It was no dream. And I've never had a hallucination in my life. I saw it all right, whatever it was. Do you want to go up there with me?”
Neville started to say yes, but stopped. c.u.mmings seemed almost too eager. How did he know he was telling the truth? And even if he was, did he want to meet these ghosts c.u.mmings had described, who rutted and strangled and vanished?
No. This house was full of ghosts. He knew it. And he would wait until they sensed his need and showed themselves to him. There was time enough for that.
”No, Mr. c.u.mmings. Thank you for the invitation.”
It was obvious from Neville's tone that he didn't wish to go anywhere with c.u.mmings, and the affront did not go unnoticed. You p.r.i.c.k, c.u.mmings swore inside. Okay, p.r.i.c.k, play your game. I'll find you out yet. Find what makes you tick. But he said only, ”I don't blame you. It wasn't a pleasant sight.”
Neville rose and left the room without saying a word. c.u.mmings watched him go. ”Nice talking to you too,” he said quietly to the empty kitchen. ”Better be nice to me, Mr. Neville. I'm going to be the only friend you've got.”
He started to finish his milk, but paused. There was something about the color of it that made him ill at ease.
He poured it down the drain.
Time pa.s.sed, though none of them could say how much. McNeely tried to keep track of it by counting both his sleeps and his meals. So far the sleeps numbered four, the meals seven. But he suspected that he'd been sleeping to pa.s.s the time, and that only three, maybe even two calendar days had gone by. During that time he'd played countless games of pool with Kelly Wickstrom, had had two good workouts in the gym, and had explored the library, which he happily found stocked with old and new fiction and nonfiction alike. He had seen nothing out of the ordinary. On the contrary, his surroundings seemed almost pleasant, a reaction which came as a surprise, considering his usually claustrophobic response to being confined. He'd run into c.u.mmings twice, once in the kitchen, where they cooked a steak together, and once in the gym.
c.u.mmings, McNeely learned, was a fitness freak, having a workout shortly after every second meal, regardless of his sleep pattern. He had a gymnasium body, functional, good-looking, confident in its motions. But McNeely wondered if it would bear up to any real exertion. He'd always trusted muscles shaped by working rather than those sculpted twenty minutes a day in a gym. On his own body he could count on his legs because he used them most in his work. Then his back and stomach, and finally his arms and wrists. McNeely wasn't musclebound by any means, but the muscles were there like thin bunched wires beneath the burnished skin, and he knew he could depend on them.
c.u.mmings seemed friendly enough both times McNeely had met him, but there was a deceit about the man that would not let McNeely feel at ease. It was as if he were holding something back. c.u.mmings had talked of trivialities, never about the house or the strangeness of the situation. Such total indifference had to be studied. Any mention of the house or of ghosts that McNeely made was carefully sidestepped, and when McNeely asked c.u.mmings if he'd run into Neville at all, he'd thought for a moment too long before he answered no. Still, he'd been outwardly pleasant, and it was that which irritated McNeely the most. Better outright hostility than a man not to be trusted as either friend or enemy.
McNeely hadn't seen Neville once. It struck him as peculiar, since The Pines wasn't so big that people could avoid each other for days on end-unless, of course, Neville planned it that way, staying in his suite while the others were about, coming out only when they were sleeping, if indeed there was any way he could tell that. Coincidence probably. He'd meet him again sooner or later. Still, it seemed odd.
He pushed open the library door and entered the room. The lights were on, as they were in almost every room, in a futile effort to recreate the total lighting of day. He walked to the bookcase on the far wall, chose a volume by Wodehouse, and turned around. It was then that he saw he was not alone in the room.
At first the phantoms of his mind identified the occupant of the chair as one of the hordes of spirits rumored to haunt The Pines, and he felt in one instant as if his heart had been trapped in a cage of frigid steel. But in the next second he saw that it was only Gabrielle Neville, her head c.o.c.ked to the side in an att.i.tude of sleep, a book open on her lap. He gave a half-gasp, half-laugh of relief that in the heavy silence was enough to wake her. Her eyelids fluttered, and she gave a little cry of alarm.
”Oh!” she said in embarra.s.sment as she recognized him. ”Oh, Mr. McNeely, I'm sorry, you startled me!”
”That makes two of us.” McNeely smiled. ”I turned around and saw you and thought...” He spread his hands.
”That I was a ghost?” she asked. ”Sorry to disappoint you.”
”Not at all disappointed. Happy to do without.” He sat in a chair near hers.
”How do you like your vacation so far?” she said.
McNeely shrugged. ”A bit dull. Thank G.o.d for the billiard room. Kelly and I've been keeping it busy. And how are you and Mr. Neville? Are you finding whatever you're looking for?”
She smiled tensely. ”People look for different things, Mr. McNeely.”
”All right then. You. How are you doing in your spectral search?”
”Not very well, I'm afraid. I've heard and seen nothing extraordinary since that first . . . time.”
”You were going to say day.”
”Yes. I was. I hate not knowing when things are.”
”I'm the same way. It's very disorienting. And how is Mr. Neville?”
She smiled again, but McNeely couldn't read it at all. ”He's . . . in his element, I believe. Utterly entranced by the place. Hardly sleeps at all.”
”I'd been thinking it odd I hadn't run into one of you before this.”
”Oh, I've been spending a lot of time in the suite reading. And I paint, and that's kept me busy.”
”Really? Where do you work?”
”In the playroom on the third floor front. It's quite large, and the walls are white, so it's the brightest room in the house.”
”Too bad the sun room's not open. Northern exposure, natural light . . . what do you paint?”
”Subject matter?” She laughed. ”Landscapes, but that's rather difficult in here. I've been doing still lifes.”
”Of what? Fresh fruit? Frozen meat pies? I've noticed fresh cut flowers aren't too plentiful in here.”
”Books,” she said.
”Pardon?”
”Still lifes of books.” She smiled. ”I know it must sound odd, but I love old bound books-the leathers, the binding cloths. It's a real challenge to get the colors right, the way the light s.h.i.+nes off that old burnished leather.”
”Like painting saddles, eh?”
”You're mocking me.”
”Not at all. Didn't William Harnett paint books? And N. A. Brooks?”
Her eyebrows rose. ”Pretty obscure. You know your art.”
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