She made it through that night, persuaded she had imagined the shoe. But the next day Jack went to his office, leaving her alone at the house. There was still moving-in work to be done, putting things away, hanging a few paintings. A couple of friends called; she had nice chats with them. She turned on the kitchen TV, just for some noise. But the sense of unease grew again. There was a sense of something fluttering, some movement somewhere, but every time she darted her eyes to a doorway, window, or mirror, she saw nothing. It ate at her, nibbled at her calm, very nerve-wracking. Still, she managed to get the kitchen squared away, then went to the library to finish putting books onto the shelves. She also wanted to wax Daddy's old square grand piano, make the rosewood shine the way she remembered it.
She was working in the library when she heard a curious creaking sound. Not like wood, not like a floorboard, more like something under great pressure. A grating screech. It seemed a familiar sort of sound, but it wasn't until she'd listened to it come and go for a half an hour that she realized what it reminded her of. When her daughter Janine had been a teenager, she'd had a tooth-grinding problem, had to be fitted with a guard – some hormonal or peer-stress thing, the dentist said. Lila would hear it at night, a horrible sound, the sense of enormous pressure brought to bear in that poor girl's mouth. Skreeeeeeeak. That's what this sound was like: two hard surfaces grating together with tremendous force.
It seemed to be coming from the other end of the library, where two leather reading chairs bracketed her father's fine claw-foot table. She went over there to hear it better, worried that maybe it had to do with some structural problem in the old house, subsiding or something. Or termites – did termites make noise in the wood? When she got closer, she could tell it seemed to be coming from near the floor, but it stopped as soon as she bent to listen.
She waited, but it didn't start again until she resumed working. She made a mental note to talk to Ron about it and tried to put it out of her mind. It seemed to intensify, nagging like the fluttering motion, eating at her.
Jack came home, she cooked some dinner. Jack was in good spirits; he took a satisfied turn through the house to survey his new domain. Afterward they went to watch TV in the former music room, at the end of the east wing, which they'd set up as a den.
Sitting now in the bright, lake-facing sitting room, Lila was getting shakier, to the point where Cree almost interrupted her. Her empty teacup still hovered in front of her, wavering wildly. But obviously she was getting to something crucial, best to let her continue. Cree's empathic radar was going crazy, too, as some big terror moved into Lila like a gathering storm.
Much later, Jack asleep in front of the TV, Lila got up to go to the kitchen. When she passed the library, she heard the creak, louder now, and went to investigate. Down there near the claw-foot table. She bent down, hearing it so clearly she expected to see the damned termite, or whatever, right there. And then she saw what was making the noise.
The claws! Four carved legs of the table ending in eagle talons, each gripping a solid glass globe a little smaller than a tennis ball. The claws were alive. Lila saw the horny wooden fingers move, working their grip, clenching the glass with tremendous pressure, releasing, clenching. All four feet. The sound like teeth grinding. The table crouched like a horrible living animal suddenly transported into her house.
A sharp clack! made Cree jump. Lila's teacup fell to her lap, the slender porcelain handle still ringing her index finger. The tension in Lila's hands, just trying to tell this, had broken the little ear off the cup.
'Oh, God!' Lila whispered. She hastily retrieved the cup, set it clattering back on the tray. There was a spot of blood on her finger, and she dabbed distractedly at it with her napkin.
This was too much. Cree knelt beside her, took her shoulders, kneaded them, rocked her gently. 'You okay? Let's back away from it now. Maybe we can try again tomorrow, or whenever you're up for it We don't have to do this now.'
But Lila was still in that moment, staring sightlessly across the sitting room. She whispered, 'So of course I ran to get Jack. And I made it all the way to the TV room door before I realized I couldn't tell him. Because what I'd seen was crazy. That's what he'd say. That's what anyone would say – I couldn't tell anyone! And that was the moment I realized I was alone with this. This whole… problem.'
This close to her, Cree was feeling it all herself. Lila Warren's experience played in her chest, painfully poignant and terrifying. She could feel the curve of Lila's hopeless shoulders in her own spine, feel the woman's tremors twitch her own cheeks and brow.
One thing she knew for certain: This woman was as fragile as the teacup and starting to go to pieces.
Lila took Cree's hands in her two trembling hands. She looked desperately into her eyes and whispered, 'What do you think? Do you think I'm crazy?'
And to Cree's great relief at that moment there came a thump and clatter from below, and a man's voice calling upstairs: 'Peaches? Lila, darlin', I'm home. That ghost buster gal show up yet?'
So instead of having to answer, Cree settled for a look of sympathy and complicity.
'We're upstairs, Jackie,' Lila called shakily.
Still kneeling at her side, Cree quickly smoothed Lila's hair, then took a napkin and patted the tears from her cheeks, wiped away a smear of lipstick from the corner of her mouth. Got her in order as Jack's feet thumped up the stairs. And by the time he came in, a business-suited, ruddy-faced, chunky man just under middle height, they were standing on opposite sides of the coffee table and Lila was mustering a housewifely smile that almost worked.
'Hello, Mr. Warren, I'm Cree Black,' Cree said, offering her hand. I'm very pleased to meet you. But I'm embarrassed to admit that I've been kind of a bull in a china shop here – I've broken one of your teacups!' And she showed him the little porcelain ring.
6
That night, back at her hotel, Cree opened her laptop and took notes on the interview. She'd booked a week at the Clarion, on Canal Street, the backbone avenue of New Orleans and a good central location from which to conduct research. She had chosen it sight unseen from Seattle for its reasonable rate and had been pleasantly surprised to find the building clean and well appointed, her room big and agreeably modern. It had watercolors of French Quarter scenes on the walls, a queen-sized bed with a reasonably firm mattress, a well-stocked minibar, and cable Internet hookup. Best of all was the absence of too much psychic ambience, meaning it would serve as a place of respite from the rigors of her job. From her seventh-floor window, she had a good view of the traffic on Canal: six o'clock and though it was well past Mardi Gras, flocks of tourists were drifting toward the river and the French Quarter, wide-eyed couples holding hands and looking around with a mix of excitement and uncertainty. Cree had every intention of joining them once she'd gotten her notes done.
Do you think I'm crazy? The word crazy didn't quite mean anything to Cree. The world could be chaotic and so could minds. You could be absolutely rational in one part of your mind and utterly nutso in another, and the universal coexistence of the two was what made the human race so marvelously interesting – and so dangerous.
But the phenomena Lila reported didn't fit with any of Cree's expectations or experience. Lila's psychiatrist was absolutely right to insist on brain scans and blood work – a tumor or an unnoticed stroke could induce hallucinations not unlike schizophrenia and would need immediate treatment. The scariest part was that Lila had barely started to recount her ordeal. If what Cree had heard was just the tale of Lila's first forty-eight hours at Beauforte House, she shuddered to think what the rest of the month had been like.
Jack had been cordial, full of a Realtor's bogus bonhomie, but he'dalso been assessing Cree with a critical eye. When she'd left, he'd made a point of coming out to the driveway with her.
'Uh, Ms. Black, I don't know just how to say this,' he'd told her.
'But as you can see, my wife is not in the best condition at this time. We are all very concerned.'
' 'Understandably.
'Now, she's seeing a highly regarded headshrinker, and it's important to us that she follow through with her therapy. This ghost business – it's all just a bit much for me. I don't mind telling you I'm skeptical. Of people coming back from the dead and all that. And therefore, I'm skeptical of someone like yourself who claims to get rid of them. I don't believe any of it.' His accent was much stronger than Lila's: Ayund theahfoah, Ah'm skeptical…
