o n e
I had gotten used to nighttime noises. When you live in a 150-year-old inn, you do. Guests bang around in their rooms, the pipes thump and clank in the walls, and the wind sometimes moans as it slithers past the eaves.
But I'd never heard anything from the attic before.
I sat bolt upright and glanced at the clock on the night table.
3:32. Biscuit hissed at the ceiling, her eyes glowing in the clock's greenish light. I fumbled for the bedside lamp and switched it on. The tabby's ginger-colored tail had puffed up to three times its normal size, and the fur on her back bristled.
Blood thundered in my ears as I sat motionless, listening. The waves slip-slapped against the rocks below the inn, and a stray breeze whispered past the window, but the ceiling above me lay silent. As the minutes stretched by, my body relaxed. It was prob-ably just the wind.
I was reaching to turn off the light when it happened again. A soft thump, right over my head. I jerked my arm back and grabbed a fistful of down comforter, pulling it up to my chin. There had been nothing in the "How to Run a Bed and Breakfast" manual about dealing with freeloading guests in the attic. Or ghosts.
Several months ago, as we sat in the warm yellow kitchen downstairs, my friend Charlene had told me that the inn was sup-posed to be haunted. Since the only annoying manifestations to date had been demanding guests who didn't pay their bills, I had shrugged it off.
The whole ghost idea had a bit more credence alone in my bedroom on a moonless October night. My tongue felt thick in my mouth as I swallowed. A moment later, the thump was fol-lowed by a creak from the boards above my bed.
Biscuit bolted from the bed and scrabbled at the bedroom door. A creak answered from above, and she made a low sound deep in her throat before abandoning the door to scuttle under the white dust ruffle of my bed. I wanted to cram myself in beside her, but I didn't think I'd fit.
My eyes shot to the phone on the dresser. I could call my neighbor, John. He was the island's deputy. He would be here in five minutes, and I could join Biscuit under the bed and let him deal with the attic.
It was tempting, but I hesitated. John and I had started seeing each other recently, and I didn't want him to think I was pulling the damsel-in-distress routine. I glanced down at my faded flannel nightshirt. If John did come over, it would be pretty obvious that seduction wasn't my goal. Or that if it was, I wasn't very good at it.
I listened for a few moments more, but whatever was up there had fallen silent. Why had I tossed out my pepper spray? When I lived in Texas, I kept a small canister in my night table drawer. While packing to move to Maine, though, I pitched it, along with several pairs of legwarmers and the paperback edition of The Smart Woman's Guide to Finding Mr. Right.
Tonight, as I slipped out from under the covers and eased my-self onto the icy wood floor, I was wishing I hadn't been so thor-ough. Another board creaked overhead. Adrenaline shot through me. Pepper spray probably wasn't effective on ghosts anyway. If it was a ghost.
The cold air on the bare skin of my calves made my goose bumps grow a few sizes larger as I slid open the night table drawer and dug for the flashlight. Power outages on Cranberry Island were common enough that I kept a flashlight by the bed, and my hand quickly closed on the familiar plastic cylinder. I flicked the switch. Nothing.
Cursing, I rifled through the drawer again. My hand closed on a matchbox and I was fumbling for a candle when I spotted an old book light in the jumble. I grabbed it and flipped it open. A weak circle of watery light gleamed on the floor. It would have to do.
I crept to the bedroom door and turned the cold knob. The door squeaked as it swung open, and something brushed against my ankle. A scream froze in my throat when I glimpsed a flash of orange tearing down the hall.
I was headed toward the attic, but Biscuit wasn't about to join me. For the first time, I wished I had chosen a large dog, some-thing in the Doberman family, instead of a chubby orange tabby cat as an animal companion.
As I tiptoed down the hallway toward the hatch in the ceiling, something clattered above me. Ghost, my mind whispered. Pol-tergeist. I hadn't thought about ghost stories for years, but now my mind churned up every spooky tale I had ever heard: the footsteps of small children, desperate to escape from phantom flames; the shades of women murdered by jealous husbands; tortured souls who had hanged themselves in a basement or an attic. An attic.
Nonsense. How could you walk across the attic if you were stuck hanging from the rafters? It was probably just a squirrel. A big squirrel.
As I reached for the pull cord, I reflected that I hadn't seen any squirrels around the Gray Whale Inn. The ceiling creaked again as my hand closed around the end of the string. If whatever was up there was a squirrel, it had been doing some major steroids.
I drew a ragged breath and jerked the hatch down toward me. The rusted hinges screeched in protest. I yanked the ladder open, and a black hole yawned above me. I thrust the book light up and played the feeble beam over the dusty rafters. Nothing. I fought the urge to run back to my room and bury myself under the cov-ers. Instead, I forced one shaky foot onto the bottom rung.
You're a thirty-nine-year-old woman. Whatever's up there, you can handle it. I climbed the ladder cautiously, and my head was soon immersed in cold, empty darkness. I shone the pale light all around the attic. The wavering beam illuminated two broken lad-der-back chairs, a rusted iron headboard, and a dilapidated hat-box. The air shuddered out of my chest. It must have been a squir-rel, after all.
Then I ran the beam across the floorboards above my bedroom.
I knew I had heard footsteps. But the thin film of dust on the floor above my room lay undisturbed. I woke the next morning with a start. It was 7:40; I had overslept by more than an hour. I hurled myself out of bed, wriggled into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and sprinted down the stairs to the kitchen. In the pale light of morning, last night's wild imaginings seemed far away. The early sun reflected off the antique pine floors, mak-ing the buttery yellow walls glow. As I filled the coffeemaker's glass carafe and glanced at the mound of sheets and towels peeking out from behind the laundry room door, I felt a twinge of misgiving. Polly Sarkes usually came and helped me with the laundry twice a week, but she hadn't shown up yesterday morning.
Polly had lived on the island her entire life. Her broad, cheer-ful face, surrounded by a halo of hair that frizzed up when it was humid, was a welcome sight in the mornings–and she was a housecleaning whiz. I'd hired her in July, when the number of dirty towels the inn produced started to give me nightmares about piles of soiled linens creeping up the stairs to smother me in my bed. Although the laundry had receded to a manageable level and I no longer needed help–in fact, I really couldn't afford it–I knew that Polly needed the work, and I couldn't bring myself to let her go.
In her early forties, Polly had never married, devoting her sub-stantial warmth and affection to the cats she cared for. Polly was practical, cheerful, and very thorough. Which was why I was wor-ried; it wasn't like Polly not to show up without calling, and she wasn't answering her phone.
My eyes lingered on the overflowing laundry baskets. If Polly didn't call this morning, I would go looking for her.
A few minutes later, the soothing aroma of freshly ground Moka Java and the reassuring gurgle of the coffeemaker filled the kitchen.
I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out eggs and butter for Peach Sunrise Coffee Cake, one of my favorite recipes. I glanced at the clock; it was already a quarter to eight. If I hurried, I could have the cake out of the oven just before nine. Breakfast officially started at 8:30, but with any luck, my guests would come down late.
The summer season at the Gray Whale Inn, the bed and break-fast I had started six months earlier, had been good, but the steady stream of guests had dried to a trickle after Labor Day. My stomach lurched when I thought of the unbooked months ahead. Between the heating bills and the mortgage, I needed at least a few guests over the winter if I wanted the inn to survive until spring. Maybe I would have to look for a part-time job. Doing what, I wondered? Knitting hats for the local gift shop? I didn't knit, but if the book-ings didn't start coming, there might be plenty of time to learn.
I was searching for the sour cream when the kitchen door creaked behind me. I whirled around, heart thumping, but it was only Biscuit. She gazed up at me with wide green eyes and me-owed as she sidled over to me, wrapping herself around my calves as if she hadn't abandoned me in my hour of need. "Traitor," I muttered as I bent down and rubbed her head.
As I filled a bowl with dry cat food and pushed the pantry door closed, the creak of the hinges sent a chill down my back. I thought what I'd heard last night had come from the attic, but could it have been something on the roof? I shivered slightly as I unwrapped the butter and plopped it into a large bowl. I didn't believe in ghosts, but last night had given me the creeps.
I glanced out the window. The rising sun had ignited the russet and gold of Mount Cadillac on the mainland, and the stretch of cold seawater beneath it was stippled with the pale peach of early morn-ing. I tore my eyes from the window and rooted through the drawer for the beaters. There would be plenty of time to admire the view later. I had just located the beaters when the kitchen door creaked again.
I turned quickly, brandishing a wooden spoon, and stifled a groan. So much for late-rising guests. Candy Perkins stood at the door, a pink tee shirt stretched tight across her ample bosom. He...
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
