999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [320]
“Your hair was longer in the picture,” said Freeboard. “That’s the difference.” Once again she was fixedly staring at Case.
Case turned to her, smiling a little, and he paused. In his eyes some ambiguous emotion lurked, like a wanly affectionate, patient sadness. He held the Realtor’s gaze, then spoke quietly. “Yes.”
By late that morning, once again the rain had quickened and Freeboard was pacing back and forth in her room. She had a phone at her ear and kept irritably whipping the cord from her path. Again and again she breathed out, “This is nuts!”
In addition to an attic section and a basement, the mansion’s rooms were arranged on three levels. The investigators’ rooms were all a-row along a hallway on the second floor overlooking the Great Room. Freeboard’s suite was the closest to the staircase. Spacious and airy, it had its own fireplace, a high vaulted ceiling and heavy wood beams, but its only two windows were high and narrow, so that both of the bedside lamps were turned on, pouring light on a green leather Gucci suitcase wide open and half emptied out atop the bed, an ornately carved, quilt-covered wooden four-poster. Freeboard hadn’t yet bothered to change her clothes and was still in her stonewashed shirt and jeans. Once arrived in the room she’d thought hody, God we’re here! We’re really doing it! It’s actually happening! We’re here! Manically energized and elated, she had only taken time to tug off her wet boots and pull on a dry pair of fluffy white woolen socks. She stopped pacing and wriggled her toes in them now as she listened to the ringing at the end of the line; hypnotically regular and low, it seemed distant, as if it were ringing in some other dimension. Freeboard took the phone from her ear and eyed it, frowning and squinting in consternation. She’d dialed her office and no one had answered. And then she’d redialed again and again. On this try she had counted more than fifty rings. She breathed “Christ!” and then clumped to an antique desk where she slammed the receiver down into its cradle. “It’s freaking impossible!” she vehemently murmured. Hands on her hips, she stared down at the phone, and for a moment the lamplights flickered and dimmed before surging back up to their former brightness. Freeboard peered around the room, her eyes slits, as she grittily murmured, “Don’t try that crap on me!”
She heard a sound, a deep rapping from the wall beside the mirror. Expressionless, she shifted her glance to the spot.
Through the wall came the voice of Dare, low and muffled:
“Are you there?”
“No.”
“This wall sounds hollow to me.”
“No shit.”
“Does your room have any windows?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I feel smothered. And I keep hearing creaking sounds.”
“Stop walking. It’s an old wooden floor.”
“You have no heart, bitch.”
“No.”
There came a single loud rap from the other side.
“This wall is definitely hollow,” worried Dare.
Freeboard curled in her lips. Her eyes narrowed.
“Goddamit, that’s just what I was afraid of!”
Grimly, the Realtor strode out into the hallway and up to the door of the room next to hers, where she grasped the doorknob, threw the door open, walked in and loudly slammed the door shut behind her. “Listen here, Too Little, Too Latent,” she began.
Dare flinched. He’d been standing with his ear to a wall, a round stone paperweight lifted in his hand. He was clad in a full-length white mink dressing gown.
Freeboard strode across the room and confronted him.
“Do you remember why we’re here?” she demanded.
Dare looked down at her haughtily. “To break and enter?”
“We are here to clear this fyooking house’s fyooking reputation!”
Freeboard snatched the heavy paperweight out of Dare’s grasp.
“Knock it off with this rapping and shit!” she warned him. “I thought you were a total nonbeliever!