CHAPTER TWO
Tess had heated a water bottle in front of the fire and taken it upstairs to the room she was using as her bedroom, for now. It was the most magnificent bedroom in the house and had been her grandmother’s for as long as Tess could remember.
The bed had an ornate, heavy wooden headboard and footboard, carved with curlicues and swirls. The dresser had a pink marble top and a mirror that was cloudy with age. Two bedside tables had similar marble tops, and on each sat a lamp with a dusty-pink stained-glass shade. It really was lovely. Tess was trying to decide whether to move this furniture into the owner’s suite she was getting ready to renovate for herself, or leave it in the room where it had always stood. She didn’t have a good answer for that yet. She wanted it for herself, but moving it seemed like a violation, somehow.
Curling down into bed, warmed by the hot water bottle in that chilly room, she pulled the covers around her. It had been a long day. Sleep came quickly. But it would not stay the night.
Scrrr, scrrr, scrrr.
Tess woke with a start. There it was again. The scratching. She had first heard it a few weeks prior, and sporadically since then. Not every night, but always in the middle of the night. Never during the day. It was coming from behind the locked door that led to the back wing of the house.
She slipped out of bed and grabbed her phone, which still had some battery life, off the nightstand. It read 3:47 a.m. She groaned. She hadn’t had enough sleep to feel ready for the day, but maybe just enough to keep her from falling back to sleep now. She switched on the flashlight feature on her phone to light up the room. She crept down the hallway toward the shuttered door, put her ear against it, and listened. Scrrr, scrrrr, scrrr.
“Get away!” Tess shouted, knocking on the door. “Go! Shoo!”
Scrrr, scrrr, scrrr.
Always in threes.
“This is my house!” Tess cried. “Get out!”
Scrrr, scrrr, scrrr.
It had to be some kind of infestation, she reasoned. A family of raccoons or squirrels. God forbid, rats. Please, let it not be rats. And she didn’t even want to think about bats. She’d have heard more than just scratching if it were a bigger animal making the noise. Some little critters were making a nuisance of themselves.
She had been hoping it would just go away. That the animal or animals would scurry off when the workmen came to open up the door and the back part of the house saw the light of day for the first time in a few generations. But she now realized she had to do something about it before whatever was behind that door got into the main part of the house. That was all she needed.
Tess made a mental note to talk to Jim about it in the morning and went back to her room, curling under the covers. She closed her eyes and listened to the scratching, wondering what it might be and what it would take to get it out of her house.
Sleep came, eventually.
In her dream, Tess was walking through Wharton at night. But not the main streets. The alleyways, the lots behind buildings. Through backyards. She peered through windows into brightly lit homes where families gathered, blissfully unaware someone was lurking outside.
It was a foggy, chilly night. Tess could actually feel the chill of it in her dream and taste the fog on her lips. She heard her own breathing, loud, almost aggressive sounding.
On the streets now, she watched people gathering in front of restaurants and pubs, coming and going. A night on the town! How nice for them. She took care to stand in doorways and behind trees, anything that would conceal her from view.
She scanned the streets, the mosaic of faces watery and indistinct, until one face crystallized. A young woman, leaving one of the pubs. Tess followed her for a couple of blocks, getting closer and closer still until the woman met up with a companion. A man. They embraced, laughing. Tess chuckled, too.
They locked arms and crossed the street, leaving Tess standing where she was. She watched the lovely, lovely duo until they disappeared around a corner. Then she turned and headed down toward the water, the sound of her steps on the cobblestones ringing in her ears.
Amethyst awoke to the sound of a snowblower. She opened her eyes and looked around her room in a vague sense of confusion until the previous night’s dreams dissipated. She had been having the strangest dreams lately, but that one had to take the cake, she thought. It was almost as though she’d dreamed that she was an animal stalking the streets. A wolf. Or a mountain lion.
She stretched, slid out of bed, padded to the window, and pulled aside the curtains. The sky was the kind of crystal-bright blue that came only after a massive snowfall. Wharton was covered in a blanket of white. Snow was everywhere, piled on roofs, obliterating sidewalks, making the streets impassable. She saw her neighbor Jim, already outside in his parka, hat, and mitts, pushing a snowblower slowly up his driveway, leaving a cleared path behind him and sending snow flying high into the air to the side. She noticed people doing the same at houses up and down the street. The plows hadn’t yet been by, having to come from Salmon Bay, which they were no doubt plowing out first.