stairs.
The codex.
Porter took it, still in its brown bag. The paper whispered to the cricket.
Sleep choked Porter’s brain. He tried to shake it away. Now was a good time for adrenaline. Gazing with wide eyes at the stairs, he saw the shadows of people rising from below.
Had the librarians gathered to mob the one student who dared to stay all night?
Unlikely.
Imagination.
But on his mission in Japan, Porter had learned to trust his feelings.
He took up his briefcase with one hand, slipping his notes into it quickly. He bit his lips with his teeth. He grabbed the paper with Albright’s death notice and dived into the shelves.
Through the volumes, Porter saw the men in black. Nice suits. Turtleneck shirts under the coats. Very stylish. But why all dark?
The guns weren’t hidden. Nine millimeter. Silencers?
Only two of them.
Had Porter served as a Marine, he might have opted to fight and find out who these men were.
But he was a scholar.
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but books don’t deflect bullets.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
April 22
1:40 a.m. PST
The ghost appeared that very same minute.
Alred couldn’t see it directly. It was a shadow in a raven black room. Standing. Breathing. Watching her rest.
She knew she’d been asleep, for a moment earlier she was in the grand Victorian house of her great aunt who lived in Peru, Nebraska. But the house wasn’t the same as it had been when she’d visited as a child. She was quite young again, but that didn’t matter. The walls were whiter than she remembered, the ceilings higher. The house swayed in the wind on a hill of green that hadn’t been there. And she wept deeply, seeing the grave stone bordered with pansies and other flowers, pink and yellow, which she didn’t recognize. Carved in the granite were the words, JACQUELYN ALRED.
Alred loved her great aunt. No relative had been so kind, making sweet cookies with peanut butter or chocolate chips on the rare occasions when she’d come over. She’d only seen the woman as many times as she had fingers on one hand. But Alred cried when she saw the stone. And tears covered both cheeks as she wandered round the mansion-three times bigger than she remembered it-with the soon-to-be new owners.
The house no longer belonged to the family. There was no more family. She had to leave.
Standing on the grass which leaned and relaxed repeatedly in the comforting breeze, Alred said her good- byes…
And was in her room again, awake and aware that something else phased in and out of the molecules of darkness around her.
She looked…but didn’t turn on her light.
Of course there was no one “Alred…”
The apparition stood where it didn’t, oscillating like a mirage of shadow, there…but not there…then…
“Alred, can you hear me?” said the fiend, the monster that shouldn’t be.
The door was closed, locked, the window sealed.
“I’ve come…to speak to you.”
She smashed her pillow with the back of her head.
Alred could smell sulfur in the musty air.
The phantom looked at her, waiting for a reply. It had no feet she could see, no facial features but those it created to look human, no hands at all for they were too complex to mimic well. It was a cold breeze holding still in the tepid room.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Alred…can you hear me?” said the ghost.
“Of course I can hear you,” she said before realizing the mouth of the monster didn’t move in conjunction with the words that came out. It was like an old film from a foreign country, poor black and white, with the actors shifting their tongue behind bobbing lips while no sound worked with them. Even now, the vaporous man opened his mouth and beckoned with unheard words. He spoke for nearly ten seconds before she heard anything.
With his arms at his side the shadow with features said, “I don’t dare touch you.”
“You got that right!” she said, realizing if she turned on the light he would cease to be.
“But I’ve…brought you something. And I need you to listen.”
“Go away,” said Alred, tears still in her eyes from her dream. But the words had no force by the time they left her throat.
The ghost stepped forward. Or was it a slide more than a gait?
Shrinking in the mattress, Alred couldn’t move.
Clink.
She looked at the oak nightstand to the right of her bed. Was something there, by the clock where nothing had been before? It looked more like a stain…a mark…of the ghost.
She could feel the apparition behind her now, close to her ear. Spinning her head around, she saw the ghost near enough to kiss.
“Just…”
She saw his mouth moving, saying words that didn’t reach the mortal world. Petrified, she listened.
“…tell…my wife…I’m…okay… She’ll know what this is for.”
Closing her eyes tight, she bit the inside of her cheek and tasted salt. She knew the voice now. She knew what the face was supposed to look like.
“I have to go,” said the spirit.
She watched the shadow, staring at her from the wall hidden in the darkness.
“Keep looking over your shoulder, Alred, ” he said, passing into nowhere, but visibly going away. “You’re in danger…and so is your friend…”
Alred awoke with an ache to speak in her throat. She let the words out in a whisper. “He’s not my friend.” Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she sat up and looked around the room.
Just another dream.
Of course. How could someone who was such a stickler for scientific process have failed to see her experience for what it was while it was happening?
She felt her quick pulse running through every part of her body.
She heard a whisper.
From the dark, the phantom lashed at her.
Alred screamed.
She caught the beast and scolded it quickly.
Just Samantha. It rubbed against her and meowed as she caressed the soft fur. “Don’t do that again.”
The cat jumped from her bed and went after the ghost that hadn’t been there.
Flopping back to her pillow, Alred moaned and closed her eyes. The lids opened to peek once at the clock, though she didn’t want to know the fiendish hour.
What she saw made her sit up.
On the nightstand, a small key waited like a child squirming to be lifted.
She leaned forward and swiped the cold metal.
Her light went on, and she traced the markings with the tip of her fingernail: 0417–2105.
