Dance with the Devil

CHAPTER 4

She sat straight up in bed, her heart thumping in her chest like a quickly-beating drum. She blinked her eyes at the intense darkness until she remembered where she was. The bedside clock, in glowing numerals, read 2:10. She did not know what had awakened her, but she knew it must have been a loud noise to have cut through the deep and peaceful sleep she had been enjoying.

Pushing the covers away, she got out of bed, stepped into her slippers and went to the window.

The snow was falling as hard as before and had covered everything in a soft, woolly blanket. Here and there, the wind had drifted the snow forming curiously lovely curves and sweeps of whiteness.

The night, but for the relentless wind and the hiss of snow on the windows, seemed as still as a graveyard. Certainly, there were no prancing cultists around a bonfire…

Suddenly she heard something: like a man groaning… just beyond her shoulder, groaning in pain.

She recognized now the sound that had awakened her. It was hollow, bled by the susurration of the wind against the house, but still chillingly threatening.

Turning away from the window, she tried to place it, decided that it was coming from the corridor rather than the night beyond the glass.

As she walked toward the door, she recalled Yuri's concerned admonition to keep her door locked and to avoid going out of her room during the night hours, and she wondered, only briefly, if this strange moaning sound was one of the things that he had been trying to warn her about. Then she sighed in disgust at her even momentary consideration of the Romanian's superstitions, ashamed that she had let the gloomy, sullen mood of the chill night get to her so badly.

The moan came again. It was definitely in the main corridor and not too very far away from her door.

The sound was odd indeed, but within the realm of sensible explanation, she felt sure — not a vampire or a werewolf, not a banshee, not the beseeching call of a devil seeking souls — something altogether common and unharmful.

She opened her door and listened until the sound came again, like the soft cry of someone in pain. She placed it very near at hand, though she could see nothing close by.

Stepping into the hall, she silently closed the door. She let her eyes adjust to the deep darkness which was relieved only minimally by the very weak light that passed through the tiny casement window at the end of the hall on her right. In a few minutes, when she could see fairly well, it became obvious that no one else inhabited this half of the main corridor. The half of the hall beyond the stairwell was too far away and too dark for her to see clearly. But that didn't matter, for the noise was nearer at hand.

The cry came again, much longer this time but still tantalizingly indefinable. It might be someone in pain — or it might be nothing more than the wind blowing through a nook in the roofing.

Curiously, it sounded as if it were generated directly overhead, not more than a few feet away.

She looked up.

Nothing…

There was a door across the corridor, and it seemed the best place to look first. She knew, from Yuri's comments as he had lead her to her room earlier in the evening, that no one slept in that room — at least, he had not mentioned it to her while pointing out the bedchambers of other members of the household. She crossed to the door, pulled it open and found a set of dusty stairs leading upwards into a Stygian pool of darkness.

She had brought a flashlight with her, and now she was glad that she always thought of the little things when she packed. Returning to her room, moving silently so as not to wake anyone in the house if the strange noise had not already stirred them, she found the light and brought it back to the stairwell. She flicked it on, shone it on the worn, wooden risers which, judging from the patina of dust, had not been trod in several years.

The cry sounded again.

Standing in the open doorway, she could hear it far more clearly than ever, drifting down the steps from the unused third level.

It occurred to Katherine as she stood there at the bottom of the stairs that this was none of her business, this odd cry, and that she would be far better off if she turned right around, went back to her warm bed and tried to get some sleep. That would, however, be something of a concession to the doubts which Yuri had placed in her mind, a concession she was loathe to make. Superstitions. No one in Owlsden had any reason to hurt her. On the contrary, they had every reason to treat her well. Besides, her curiosity had been so strongly aroused that she could not deny it and then hope to find any sleep.

She started up the stairs.

They were so well-made that none of them squeaked under her.

At the top, she had still not encountered anyone or anything that could have been making the odd noise. She shone the flashlight behind her and looked at the scuff marks that her slippers had made in the virgin blanket of dust, then faced front again and examined the corridor in which she found herself. This one was much like the first and second floor halls, just as richly appointed, as high-ceilinged and as eccentrically inlaid with exotic woods. The carpet had been rolled up long ago and replaced by a carpet of brown dust. The furniture had been removed, she had the feeling that the rooms off the hall would be equally barren.

The air was colder up here than in the lower regions of the great house. When she touched the radiator that walled the entire end of the corridor to waist height, she found that it had been turned off and was icy.

The cry came again, directly ahead of her, across the hall. She went there, the light ahead of her like a sword, and opened the door of the room that lay directly over her own.

The sound rolled over Katherine as she pushed open the heavy door, so near that she jumped involuntarily, as if the sound had possessed a sharp physical impact.

“Who is it?” she asked.

She was answered only by silence.

She took a step forward.

“Is anyone here?”

She waited, took another step.

“Are you hurt?”

The cry came again.

She directed the flashlight beam to the left, passed it along the empty floorboards and undecorated walls where the antique, flowered wallpaper was peeling away in long, yellow-brown, snaky strips.

This time, when the noise came, she realized that it was more to her right, and she began to turn that way when she saw the yellow eyes watching her with cold, evident malevolence, each eye as large as a quarter and as fixed on her as if they were painted.

She almost screamed, but found that her throat constricted so tightly that she could do nothing more than emit a weak, hissing sound that would attract no one to her aid.

The creature moaned again.

Its cry suddenly sounded naggingly familiar, although she could not place it.

The eyes blinked, opened on her again, watching.

Back-stepping toward the door, she finally managed to put the light on the thing and, as she did so, to overcome the unreasonable, clutching fear that had so swiftly taken control of her. She was glad that she had not been able to scream, for she would only have made a fool of herself. All that she faced was a small, brown owl that sat on the bare floor with its wings hunched and its beak open, working out that soft, ululating whoing noise.

“Owlsden,” Katherine said to the owl.

It blinked.

She laughed just a trifle nervously, then shone the beam of the light around the room again. The ceiling here was open-beamed, taking advantage of the magnificent, polished oak rafters. Two places in those rafters, owls sat looking down at her, chinless as their white chests puffed up over the straight columns of their necks.

They cried out in unison, the great, empty room giving their voices an echo-chamber effect that explained how they had carried to her so well and had pulled her out of sleep.

One of the things she had meant to ask Lydia, but had forgotten, was why the house was so curiously named. Now she would not have to ask. It was a haven for owls, providing in its abandoned third floor a place of refuge from foul weather.

She left the room, closed the door behind her, went to the stairs and descended to the second floor. In a few moments, she was in her room again, tucked beneath the covers.

The owls hooted, as if sending her a special message of their friendship.

As sleep crept up on Katherine once more, she speculated that this small event was representative of the larger conflict of two main approaches to life — her optimism for which she had now and then been chided by other students in college, and Yuri's pessimism which easily made possible the silly superstitions he said he believed. There was nothing in Owlsden to harm anyone. Yes, there were Satanists in Roxburgh or somewhere in the outlying districts, holding their rituals of blood and hate, but one only had to think of them and deal with them as one would with spoiled, nasty children, and there would be nothing whatsoever to worry about.

She was not going to worry about demons, devils, and ceremonial dances of evil.

The owls hooted.

She realized, as she drifted into sleep, that she had already become accustomed to them and that she found the sound of their nocturnal cries somewhat comforting…