She looked around for her purse—and her cell phone—then realized she’d left them in the kitchen. She had a landline from the cable company, but she hadn’t bothered to have them run it into her bedroom.
Of course, even if she had her phone, what was she going to do? Call the cops and tell them she’d heard a bang downstairs? And maybe it hadn’t even come from downstairs. It could have come from the street.
She walked over to the wardrobe, determined not to be a total coward. She reached in, past her clothing, and found her old softball bat. It was good and sturdy—and she knew how to use it.
Cautiously, she started down the stairs. When she reached the main hall, she saw no one, and nothing seemed to be stirring in the house. She looked out the front window, then stepped out to the porch—relieved to find that she had remembered to lock the door. A couple of tourists waved to her, and she waved back. For a second she thought they were going to ask about the house, even ask for a tour, but then they turned away and kept walking.
She went back into the house, feeling like an idiot. This was her home. She wanted to be comfortable in it. Deserved to be comfortable in it. She walked from parlor to parlor, through the library-to-be, the dining room and, finally, back to the kitchen.
The basement door was standing ajar. It hadn’t been open before…had it? Could someone—maybe Gary—have come back for some reason?
“Hello?”
She walked over to the open door and looked warily down the stairs.
There was a light on down there, a lone naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Over the years, the basement had been used to store bodies and as a hiding space for a totally different kind of spirit—booze during Prohibition. Now it was pretty much empty.
“Hello?” she said again, cursing the tremor in her voice.
She told herself that she wasn’t actually going to go all the way down the stairs, just a few steps so she could look around. And if someone was there-someone who didn’t belong—she would hightail it back up. She could just imagine Caroline reminding her that in bad horror films, only fools went down into dark basements alone.
She started down the steps, but all she could see were shadows cast by the stark light of the naked bulb.
Okay, that was it. She’d been determined not to be spooked out of her own house, but she wasn’t about to be an idiot, either. Time to return to the kitchen, grab her purse and head over to Hunky Harry’s. Later, with Caleb beside her, she would come back and try to figure out if anyone had even been there, or if it had just been the drafts common to an old house that had caught and opened the door.
If Caleb returned. It wasn’t as if he’d promised her undying devotion or anything.
If he didn’t…well, she had Will and her friends. She wasn’t alone here.
She had descended four steps, her softball bat in hand, when she heard the door above her creaking.
She looked up just as it slammed shut.
At the same time, that single glowing lightbulb below her flickered and went out, turning the world around her to black.
11
The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Association had been founded in 1894 by a man named George Colby. It wasn’t an actual camp, but spiritualist meetings had once been referred to as camps, and the term had persisted. There were only fifty-some homes in town, and at least half of them were inhabited by mediums.
Caleb had never been there, but he knew that Adam respected many of the inhabitants and had once explained to Caleb the way legit mediums, not the sideshow posers, operated. First, mediums weren’t fortune tellers. The best readings didn’t zero in on something that was about to happen but focused on what was, giving a person guidance to help forge his own future. And because mediums communicated with the dead, they didn’t always have instant answers—even the dead had to think about a question sometimes.
Martha Tyler was not just a medium but an ordained minister of a religious group called The People Faith, and she saw people at her home for readings. Caleb found the house without difficulty, a charming whitewashed Victorian. As he shut his car door, he realized with an inner smile that he felt as if he were going home to Grandma’s house—the porch boasted a swing, beautiful flowers in planters and vines twining through the railings, and two cushioned rocking chairs.
The sense of coming home to Grandma’s house grew stronger as he walked up the steps toward the door and smelled fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.
As he lifted his hand to knock on the wooden frame of the screen door, he found himself trying to picture the woman who lived here as a murderer who lured young women to their deaths.
“Hello? Mr. Anderson?” The voice from within didn’t sound like a murderer, either.
The door swung open, and Martha Tyler smiled at him in welcome.