“I could write here, I think,” Lance murmured, mostly to himself, but the Realtor perked up instantly.
“You’re a writer?” she said with what seemed to be polite interest, but after a moment Lance could almost see the gears turning and lights flipping on in the control rooms behind her eyes. “Oh my God! You’re Lance Metzger! Wow! I’ve read some of your books! I didn’t put two and two together until now. God I’m so dumb!” Carrie issued a high, annoying titter that made Lance’s teeth grate against one another, but he smiled nonetheless and nodded as Carrie’s face flushed in the light thrown by the afternoon sun. “So, you’re coming here to write a novel?” For the first time the Realtor seemed genuinely interested in Lance and what he had to say.
“Possibly, if everything works out. I do really like the place so far, but I’d love to see the rest of it.” He hoped that the gentle redirection wouldn’t hurt the woman’s feelings, and he was grateful when she smiled and continued walking through the living room.
“This is such a nice room—the bay windows looking out over the lake and the high ceilings. Just a really great room to mingle or have a little get-together in.” Carrie nodded while pulling her overly red lips into a grin that any clown would have envied. She turned and began to make her way across the living room, to the stairway that undoubtedly led up to the bedrooms on the second floor. Lance trailed after her, his eyes looking for another piece of the story to jump out at him when they landed on a darkly stained door set off to the north side of the room. The door looked odd to Lance, set in a recessed frame, uncharacteristic of the other remodeling the house had undergone. So flat and smooth. He strained to see a gap at any of the sides of the entrance. An oblong cast-iron door handle protruded from a steel plate, seamlessly fastened in the wood.
“What’s in there?” Lance asked, and Carrie paused, two stairs up from the main floor.
“Oh, that? That’s storage. I think the prior owner may have had some of his cooking equipment in there before moving. It’s locked. I have the key somewhere in my office, I believe.” Without hesitating, she turned and made her way farther up the wooden stairway to the second floor.
Instead of following, Lance walked toward the door and examined it further. It was even darker than he had initially thought and coated with an enormous amount of lacquer. The depth of the grain pattern in the wood was intricately layered and almost mesmerizing. His hand reached out to the doorknob. Could he feel cold coming off the iron, or was it his imagination? His fingers stretched out, a few inches from the black of the handle. Closer. There was definitely a chill coming off the knob. His hand circled to grasp it.
Lance.
The whisper came from the door. His hand froze over the knob and he looked back and forth to see if perhaps John had entered behind them without him noticing. The house remained silent around him, and he could no longer see Carrie at the top of the stairs.
Lance.
It came again, and this time there was no denying it. The sound had issued from behind the door. Lance knelt before the handle and peered into the small black keyhole below the knob. There was only darkness there; no windows seemed to grace the room inside. He leaned farther in. A soft stream of cold air filtered out of the hole, making his eye begin to water. He peered closer, straining to make out any features of the room beyond.
The darkness on the other side of the keyhole moved.
“Lance?”