Charon's Crossing
There it was again, that bone-chilling rush of cold air.
Could it be coming from the attic, as Olive had suggested?
It was the only place she hadn't checked. Well, she could do that now, before she showered, and spiders and their webs be damned.
The steps leading to the attic were at the farthest end of the East Wing hallway. It was the wing that had not been cleaned, the one Amos had said was in far worse shape than the rest of the house.
She'd made a quick circuit of it yesterday afternoon, during her search for the source of the draft. She hadn't lingered in any of its rooms. There were no broken windows but they all felt chilly and the lighting in them had seemed dimmer and even less dependable than in the rest of the house.
And the steps leading to the attic had seemed to rise up and up into the shadows, becoming distorted until they'd disappeared into the darkness...
Kathryn stopped and turned around. What she needed was a flashlight. Hadn't there been one tucked into one of the kitchen drawers?
She found the flashlight easily enough. A flick of the switch proved that it worked, even if the beam of light it cast wasn't as bright as it might have been. Then she made her way back to the second floor and the staircase that led to the attic.
It was really little more than a ladder, narrow, and steeply pitched with an insubstantial wooden railing. She clutched it firmly with one hand while the fingers of the other closed tightly around the flashlight.
The steps creaked and sagged beneath her feet. She took each one carefully; the wooden railing felt so shaky that she had no illusions about its ability to prevent an accident.
At the top of the stairs, she paused. The landing ahead of her was narrow and dark; the enclosed space, coupled with the shadowy darkness, gave the closed attic door a strange perspective, making it seem tilted and weirdly out of plumb.
Kathryn hesitated.
Maybe it made more sense to wait until Hiram came by. Or Amos. Or...
"Oh, stop it," she muttered. "Are you a woman or a wuss?"
It was only an attic. And yes, there had to be a broken window behind that door; she could see a space between the bottom of the door and the jamb and feel a cold breeze blowing across her feet.
The breath hissed between her teeth when she Closed her fingers around the knob. It was almost shockingly cold to the touch. A chill danced along her spine; she almost snatched back her hand...
Instead, she turned the knob, half-hoping it would be locked.
With a creaking sound, like a fingernail scraping down a blackboard, the door swung open into blackness.
The cold was much more pronounced. Kathryn hesitated. Maybe she ought to go back and get a sweater...
"Maybe you ought to stop looking for excuses," she said, and she turned on the flashlight and stepped forward at the same instant.
For one terrible, gut-wrenching second, she thought she had stepped into space. She cried out...
And recovered her balance. One low step led down from the door into the attic itself, and she'd just missed it.
Great. Just great! If she wasn't careful, she was going to scare herself to death. Hiram-the-Invisible would finally put in an appearance and he'd find her up here, stiff as a board, the flashlight clutched in her fear-frozen hand.
Kathryn gave a nervous laugh. At least she'd be rid of Charon's Crossing!
Or maybe it would be rid of her.
But, in the light cast by her flashlight, she could see that the attic was just an attic. The walls were unpainted, the floor wide-planked. Boxes and barrels stood along the walls; bits and pieces of old furniture cluttered at least half the floor space.
The flashlight beam swept over the windows. Both were shuttered, making it impossible to tell if the glass was cracked or broken.
She made her way to them gingerly. The windows opened easily but the shutters protested. Finally, she got them open and she could see that the glass was intact.
How to explain the draft, then? Although, strangely enough, now that she was inside the attic itself, it didn't feel very cold.
It was probab