CHAPTER 2
Anna Galloway pulled back the lace curtains of the bedroom window. A bit of dust rose from the windowpane at the stir of air. Sunlight spilled on her shoulders, the October glow warming the floor beneath her feet. The mountain air was chillier than she was used to, and even the roaring fire didn't quell her shivers. A painting of Ephram Korban hung over the room's fireplace, smaller than the one downstairs but just as brooding. The sculptor with the kicked-puppy aura was right about one thing: Korban had been thoroughly in love with himself.
She looked out over the meadows. Here she was, at long last. The place she was supposed to be, for whatever reason. This was the end of the world, the logical place for endings. She drove the fatalism from her mind and instead watched the roan and chestnut galloping across the pasture. The display of freedom and peace warmed her.
'It's so pretty, isn't it?' the woman behind her said. She'd told Anna that her name was 'Cris without the h' as if the lack of h somehow made her harder and less flexible. And since they were going to be roomies…
'It's wonderful,' Anna said. 'Everything I dreamed it would be.'
Cris already had her makeup kit, watercolor brushes, and sketch pads scattered across the bed nearest the door. Anna had nothing but a slim stack of books piled neatly on her dresser. Her attitude toward material possessions and earthly comforts had undergone dramatic changes in the past year. You travel light when you're not sure where you're headed.
The pain swept across her abdomen, sneaky this time, a needle poking in slow motion. She closed her eyes, counted backward in big fat numerals.
Ten, round and thin…
Nine, loop and droop…
She was down to six and the pain was floating somewhere above that far cut in the Blue Ridge Mountains when Cris's voice pulled her back.
'Like, what do you do?'
Anna turned from the window. Cris sat on the bed, brushing her long blond hair. Anna was glad the chemotherapy hadn't made her own hair fall out. Not just because of vanity, but because she wanted to take all of herself with her when she went.
'I do research articles,' Anna said.
'Oh, you're a writer.'
'Not fiction like Jefferson Spence. More like metaphysics.'
'Science and stuff?'
Anna sat on her bed. The pain was back, but not as sharp as before. 'I worked at the Rhine Research Center in Durham. Investigator.'
'You quit?'
'Not really. I just got finished.'
'Rhine. Isn't that ESP ghosts, and weird stuff? Like on X-Files?'
'Except the truth isn't 'out there.' It's in here.' She touched her temple. 'The power of the mind. And we don't do aliens. I was a paranormal investigator. Except I became a dinosaur. Extinct almost before I even got started.'
'You're too young to be a dinosaur.'
'Everything's electronic these days. Electromagnetic field detectors, subsonic recorders, infrared cameras. If you can't plot it on a computer, they don't think it exists. But I believe what I see with my heart.'
Cris looked around the room, as if noticing the dark corners and flickering fire-cast shadows for the first time. 'You didn't come here because of-'
'Don't worry. I'm here for personal reasons.'
'Aha. I saw you talking to that muscle guy with the canvas satchel, out on the porch.'
'Not that kind of personal reason. Besides, he's not my type.'
'Give it a few days. Stranger things have happened.'
'And I'm sure you're here to throw yourself into your art?' Anna pointed to the sketch pads. 'I won't give you my lecture on the artistic temperament, because I like you.'
'Oh, I think my husband is plooking his secretary and wanted me out of the house so they could use the hot tub. He sent me to Greece over the summer. New Mexico last spring to do the Georgia O'Keeffe thing. Now the North Carolina mountains.'
'At least he's generous.'
'I'll never be a real artist, but it gives me something to do on retreats besides chase men and drink. But my Muse allows me those little luxuries, too. Speaking of which, I noticed a bar in the study. Care for one before dinner?'
'No, thank you. I believe I'll rest a little.'
'Well, just don't walk around with a sheet over your head. I might mistake you for a ghost.'
'If I die, I promise you'll be among the first to know.'
Anna lay back on the pillow. A feather poked her neck. The door closed, Cris's footsteps faded down the hall, dying leaves whisked against the window. The smoke-aged walls gave off a comforting aroma, and the oil lamp's glow added to the warmth of the room. She felt at peace for the first time since No. She wouldn't think of that now.
The pain was back, a rude houseguest. She tried the trick of numbers, but her concentration kept getting tangled up with memory, as it so often did lately. Ever since she'd started dreaming of Korban Manor.
Ten, round and thin…
An image of Stephen slid into her mind between the one and the zero. Stephen, with his cameras and gizmos, his mustache and laugh. To him, Anna was the parapsychologist's version of a campfire girl. Stephen had no need for sensing ghosts. He could prove them, he said.
Their graveyard dates ended up with her wandering over grass and headstones while Stephen focused on setting up equipment. The night she'd sensed her first ghost, shimmering beside the marble angel in the Guilford Cemetery, Stephen was too busy marking down EMF readings to look when she called. The ghost didn't wait around for a Kodak moment, it dissolved like mist at sunrise. But before those evanescent threads spooled themselves back to whatever land they'd come from, the haunted eyes had stared fully into Anna's.
The look was one of mutual understanding.
Nine, loop and droop…
That had been her first investigation with Stephen. But the ghost-hunting circle was small. Her frustration was outweighed by her loneliness. They'd slept together on the floor of Asheville's Hanger Hall on a winter night when the wind was too brisk even for ghosts. And two weeks later, she'd overheard him at a party calling her a 'flake, but a lovable flake.'
So after six years of study and field research, she was little more respectable than an 800-hundred-number phone psychic. There were plenty enough skeptics out in the real world, between the hard scientists and those who were always up for a good old-fashioned witch burning. But the laughter of her own peers was enough to drive her to big, spooky, empty places where she could chase ghosts alone.
Eight, a double gate…
Then the pain came, and the first of the dreams. She had stepped from the forest, her feet soft on the damp grass, the lawn as lush as only dreams could paint it. The manor stood before her, windows dark as eyes, the trees around the house twisted and bare. A single strand of smoke rose from one of the four chimneys. The smoke curled, collected, gathered on the roof just above the white railing.
And the shape formed, and the woman's whispered word, 'Anna,' woke her up, as it had so many nights since.
Seven, sharp and even…
That was what the pain was, a seven, sticking in her intestines.
Stephen came over the day she found out the colon cancer had metastasized to her liver. He held her hand and his eyes managed to look dewy and glazed behind his thick glasses. The mustache even twitched. But he was
