Phantoms

Chapter 4

The House Next Door The Santinis' stone and redwood house was of more modern design than Jenny's place, all rounded corners and gentle angles. It thrust up from the stony soil, conforming to the contours of the slope, set against a backdrop of massive pines; it almost appeared to be a natural formation.

Lights were on in a couple of the downstairs rooms.

The front door was ajar. Classical music was playing inside.

Jenny rang the bell and stepped back a few paces, where Lisa was waiting. She believed that the two of them ought to keep some distance between themselves and the Santinis; it was possible they had been contaminated merely by being in the kitchen with Mrs. Beck's corpse.

"Couldn't ask for better neighbors," she told Lisa, wishing the hard, cold lump in her stomach would melt." Nice people.”

No one responded to the doorbell.

Jenny stepped forward, pressed the button again, and returned to Lisa's side." They own a ski shop and a gift store in town.”

The music swelled, faded, swelled. Beethoven.

"Maybe no one's home," Lisa said.

"Must be someone here. The music, the lights…”

A sudden, sharp whirlwind churned under the porch roof, blades of air chopping up the strains of Beethoven, briefly transforming that sweet music into irritating, discordant sound.

Jenny pushed the door all the way open. A light was on in the study, to the left of the foyer. Milky luminescence spilled out of the open study doors, across the oak-floored foyer, to the brink of the dark living room.

"Angie? Vince?" Jenny called.

No answer.

Just Beethoven. The wind abated, and the torn music was knitted together again in the windless calm. The Third Symphony, Eroica.

" Hello? Anybody home?”

The symphony reached its stirring conclusion, and when the last note faded, no new music began. Apparently, the stereo had shut itself off.

"Hello?”

Nothing. The night behind Jenny was silent, and the house before her was now silent, too.

"You aren't going in there?" Lisa asked anxiously.

Jenny glanced at the girl." What's the matter?”

Lisa bit her lip." Something's wrong. You feel it, too, don't you?”

Jenny hesitated. Reluctantly, she said, "Yes. I feel it, too.”

"It's as if… as if we're alone here… just you and me… and then again… not alone.”

Jenny did have the strangest feeling that they were being watched. She turned and studied the lawn and the shrubs, which had been almost completely swallowed by the darkness. She looked at each of the blank windows that faced onto the porch.

There was light in the study, but the other windows were flat, black, and shiny. Someone could be standing just beyond any of those panes of glass, cloaked in shadow, seeing but unseen.

"Let's go, please," Lisa said." Let's get the police or somebody. Let's go now. Please.”

Jenny shook her head." We're overwrought. Our imagination is getting the best of us. Anyway, I should take a look in there, just in case someone's hurt-Angie, Vince, maybe one of the kids…”

"Don't." Lisa grabbed Jenny's arm, restraining her.

"I'm a doctor. I'm obligated to help.”

"But if you picked up a germ or something from Mrs. Beck, you might infect the Santinis. You said so yourself.”

"Yes, but maybe they're already dying of the same thing that killed Hilda. What then? They might need medical attention.”

"I don't think it's a disease," Lisa said bleakly, echoing Jenny's own thoughts." It's something worse.”

"What could be worse?”

"I don't know. But I… I feel it. Something worse.”

The wind rose up again and rustled the shrubs along the porch.

"Okay," Jenny said." You wait here while I go have a look "No," Lisa said quickly." If you're going in there, so am I.”

"Honey, you wouldn't be flaking out on me if you' "I'm going," the girl insisted, letting go of Jenny's arm.

"Let's get it over with.”

They went into the house.

Standing in the foyer, Jenny looked through the open door on the left.

"Vince?”

Two lamps cast warm golden light into every corner of Vince Santini's study, but the room was deserted.

" Angie? Vince? Is anyone here?”

No sound disturbed the preternatural silence, although the darkness itself seemed somehow alert, watchful-as if it were a crouching animal.

To Jenny's right, the living room was draped with shadows as thick as densely woven black hunting. At the far end, a few splinters of light gleamed at the edges and at the bottom of a set of doors that closed off the dining room, but that meager glow did nothing to dispel the gloom on this side.

She found a wall switch that turned on a lamp, revealing the unoccupied living room.

"See," Lisa said, "no one's home.”

" Let's have a look in the dining room.”

They crossed the living room, which was furnished with comfortable beige sofas and elegant, emerald-green Queen Anne wing chairs. The stereo phonograph and tape deck were nestled inconspicuously in a corner wall unit. That's where the music had been coming from; the Santinis had gone out and left it playing.

At the end of the room, Jenny opened the double doors, which squeaked slightly.

No one was in the dining room, either, but the chandelier shed light on a curious scene. The table was set for an early Sunday supper: four placemats; four clean dinner plates; four matching salad plates, three of them shiny-clean, the fourth holding a serving of salad; four sets of stainless-steel flatware; four glasses-two filled with milk, one with water, and one with an amber liquid that might be apple juice. Ice cubes, only partly melted, floated in both the juice and the water. In the center of the table were serving dishes: a bowl of salad, a platter of ham, a potato casserole, and a large dish of peas and carrots. Except for the salad, from which one serving had been taken, all of the food was untouched. The ham had grown cold.

However, the cheesy crust on top of the potatoes was unbroken, and when Jenny put one hand against the casserole, she found that the dish was still quite warm. The food had been put on the table within the past hour, perhaps only thirty minutes ago.

"Looks like they had to go somewhere in an awful hurry," Lisa said.

Frowning, Jenny said, "It almost looks as if they were taken away against their will.”

There were a few unsettling details. Like the overturned chair. It was lying on one side, a few feet from the table. The other chairs were upright, but on the floor beside one of them lay a serving spoon and a two-pronged meat fork. A balled-up napkin was on the floor, too, in a corner of the room, as if it had not merely been dropped but flung aside. On the table itself, a salt shaker was overturned.

Small things. Nothing dramatic. Nothing conclusive.

Nevertheless, Jenny worried.

:"Taken away against their will?" Lisa asked, astonished.

"Maybe." Jenny continued to speak softly, as did her sister.

She still had the disquieting feeling that someone was lurking nearby, hiding, watching them-or at least listening.

Paranoia, she warned herself.

"I've never heard of anyone kidnapping an entire family," Lisa said.

"Well… maybe I'm wrong. What probably happened was that one of the kids took ill suddenly, and they had to rush to the hospital over in Santa Mira. Something like that.”

Lisa surveyed the room again, cocked her head to listen to the tomblike silence in the house." No. I don't think so.”

"Neither do I," Jenny admitted.

Walking slowly around the table, studying it as if expecting to discover a secret message left behind by the Santinis, her fear giving way to curiosity, Lisa said, "It sort of reminds me of something I read about once in a book of strange facts. You know — The Bermuda Triangle or a book like that. There was this big sailing ship, the Mary Celesta…

this is back in 1870 or around then… Anyway, the Mary Celesta was found adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, with the table set for dinner, but the entire crew was missing. The ship hadn't been damaged in a storm, and it wasn't leaking or anything like that. There wasn't any reason for the crew to abandon her. Besides, the lifeboats were all still there. The lamps were lit, and the sails were properly rigged, and the food was on the table like I said; everything was exactly as it should have been, except that every last man aboard had vanished. It's one of the great mysteries of the sea.”

"But I'm sure there's no great mystery about this," Jenny said uneasily." I'm sure the Santinis haven't vanished forever.”

Halfway around the table, Lisa stopped, raised her eyes, blinked at Jenny." If they were taken against their will, does that have something to do with your housekeeper's death?”

"Maybe. We just don't know enough to say for sure.”

Speaking even more quietly than before, Lisa said, "Do you think we ought to have a gun or something?”

"No, no." She looked at the untouched food congealing in the serving dishes. The spilled salt. The overturned chair. She turned away from the table." Come on, honey.”

"Where now?”

"Let's see if the phone works.”

They went through the door that connected the dining room to the kitchen, and Jenny turned on the light.

The phone was on the wall by the sink. Jenny lifted the receiver, listened, tapped the disconnect buttons, but could get no dial tone.

This time, however, the line wasn't actually dead, as it had been at her own house. It was an open line, filled with the soft hiss of electronic static. The number of the fire department and the sheriff's substation were on a sticker on the base-.4of the phone. In spite of having no dial tone, Jenny punched out the seven digits for the sheriff's office, but she couldn't make a connection.

Then, even as Jenny put her fingers on the disconnect buttons to jiggle them again, she began to suspect that someone was on the line, listening to her.

Into the receiver, she said, "Hello?”

Far-away hissing. Like eggs on a griddle.

"Hello?" she repeated.

Just distant static. What they called "white noise.”

She told herself there was nothing except the ordinary sounds of an open phone line. But what she thought she could hear was someone listening intently to her while she listened to him.

Nonsense.

A chill prickled the back of her neck, and, nonsense or not, she quickly put down the receiver.

"The sheriff's office can't be far in a town this small," Lisa said.

"A couple of blocks.”

"Why don't we walk there?”

Jenny had intended to search the rest of the house, in case the Santinis were lying sick or injured somewhere. Now she wondered if someone had been on the telephone line with her, listening on an extension phone in another part of the house.

That possibility changed everything. She didn't take her medical vows lightly; actually, she enjoyed the special responsibilities that came with her job, for she was the kind of person who needed to have her judgment, wits, and stamina put to the test on a regular basis; she thrived on challenge. But right now, her first responsibility was to Lisa and to herself. Perhaps the wisest thing to do was to get the deputy, Paul Henderson, return here with him, and then search the rest of the house.

Although she wanted to believe it was only her imagination, she still sensed inquisitive eyes; someone watching… waiting.

"Let's go," she said to Lisa." Come on.”

Clearly relieved, the girl hurried ahead, leading the way through the dining room and living room to the front door.

Outside, night had fallen. The air was cooler than it had been at dusk, and soon it would get downright cold-forty-five or forty degrees, maybe even a bit colder-a reminder that autumn's tenancy in the Sierras was always brief and that winter was eager to move in and take up residency.

Along Skyline Road, the streetlamps had come on automatically with the night's descent. In several store windows, after-hours lights also had come on, activated by light-sensing diodes that had responded to the darkening world outside.

On the sidewalk in front of the Santinis' house, Jenny and Lisa stopped, struck by the sight below them.

Shelving down the mountainside, its peaked and gabled roofs thrusting into the night sky, the town was even more beautiful now than it had been at twilight. A few chimneys issued ghostly plumes of wood smoke.

Some windows glowed with light from within, but most, like dark mirrors, cast back the beams of the streetlanps. The mild wind made the trees sway gently, in a lullaby rhythm, and the resultant susurration was like the soft sighs and dreamy murmurs of a thousand peacefully slumbering children.

However, it wasn't just the beauty that was arresting. The perfect stillness, the silence was what made Jenny pause.

On their arrival, she had found it strange. Now she found it ominous.

"The sheriff's substation is on the main street," she told Lisa." Just two and a half blocks from here.”

They hurried into the unbeating heart of town.