The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [74]
The noise came again, a bit louder this time. Scratching, as if something were trapped in the wainscoting. A rat? She didn’t like that thought.
It stopped yet again but Sinjun was tense, waiting for it to resume.
It did, louder now. There was another sound with the scratching. Behind it, sort of. It sounded like something dragging along the floor. Something like a chain, heavy and slow, dragging across a wooden floor but oddly muffled.
Sinjun bolted up in bed. This was absurd!
Then there was a moan, distinct, sharp, a human moan that made gooseflesh rise on her arms. Her heart pounded. She strained to see in the darkness.
She had to light the candle. She reached out toward the night table to grab the lucifer matches, but she knocked them to the floor instead.
The moans stopped suddenly, as did the scratching. But the chain, dragging slowly, was louder now, and it was coming closer, still muffled, but it was coming, closer. It was in the bedchamber now.
Sinjun knew such terror she very nearly screamed. But the scream stuck in her throat. There was now a flicker of a light coming from the far corner of the bedchamber. Just a flicker of very white light, almost like smoke, because it was thin and vague, too. She stared at that light and knew such fear she nearly swallowed her own tongue.
The moans came again, and suddenly the chain slapped hard against something or someone. There was a cry, as if it were indeed a person the chain had struck.
Oh Jesus, she thought. She couldn’t just sit here trembling like a twit. She didn’t want to, but she forced herself to slither off the bed. She fumbled to find the matches. They’d slid somewhere and she couldn’t find them. She was on her hands and knees when the moan came again, sharp and loud and filled with pain.
She paused. Then, still on her hands and knees, she crawled toward the end of the dais. She kept close to the floor. When she reached the end of the dais, she peered about the edge. There in the far corner the light burned more brightly. And the look of it was so very strange, so floaty and vague, yet so white.
Suddenly there was a horrible scream. Sinjun nearly leaped to her feet to run from the bedchamber. The hair lifted off her neck. She was shaking with cold terror.
Just as suddenly, the light was gone. The corner of the room was perfectly black again. There were no more moans.
She waited, so cold now she was shaking from that and not fear. She waited and waited, nerves stretched to the limit.
Nothing. No more scratching, nothing more.
Slowly, Sinjun reached up and pulled the covers down to the floor. She wrapped herself in them and curled against the dais. Finally she fell asleep.
It was Mrs. Seton who found her the next morning. Sinjun cocked open an eye to see the lady standing over her, saying over and over, “Oh, och! Ye’re hurt, my lady! Oh, och!”
Sinjun was sore and all stiff from her hours on the hard floor, but she wasn’t hurt. “Mrs. Seton, ah, please help me up. Yes, thank you. I had this dream, you see, a hideous nightmare actually, and it frightened me so I curled up down here.”
Mrs. Seton merely arched one of those tremendously thick black brows at her and assisted her to her feet.
“I’ll be fine now. If Emma could fetch some water for a bath, I’ll be downstairs soon.”
Mrs. Seton nodded and walked toward the door of the bedchamber, only to draw up short and stare at the floor. “Och, what is this, pray?”
It was the far corner of the bedchamber.
“What is what?” Sinjun’s voice sounded creaky and harsh.
“This,” Mrs. Seton said, pointing to the floor. “It looks like some sort of ooze from the Cowal Swamp, all black and smelly and thick. Och, there are even wee lumps of—” Her voice broke off and she stepped back. “My mither always said it takes a lang spoon tae sup wi’ the devil.”
Mrs. Seton, who normally spoke the loveliest English, had fallen into a very thick Scottish brogue.
She got hold of herself in short