The Night Visitors(53)
When I shine the light on the study door, I see it’s closed. “That’s funny,” Davis says. “I left it open.”
“It’s a drafty old house,” I say. “Doors swing shut on their own all the time. Sometimes they swing shut when there’s no draft at all.”
“Are you saying a ghost closed the door?” he says with heavy irony that fails to hide the tremor in his voice.
“There is something creepy going on in this house,” Alice says. “I saw something down in that crawl space.”
Did she? I wonder as Davis snaps, “Shut up, Allie. You’re always imagining shit like that, like the poltergeist you and Oren dreamed up to mess with me.”
I look back at Alice to see that she’s white around the mouth. She’s genuinely scared and not just of Davis. What did she see in the crawl space?
“Well, there must be a fucking key, Mattie.” Davis jabs me in the back with the gun. “Where the hell is it?”
I consider for a moment pretending not to have the key, but I have a feeling that Davis is about to snap. He really doesn’t like the idea of a ghost. There might be a way to use that to our advantage, and if it’s ghosts I need, the best place to look is my father’s study.
“It’s over here on the sideboard.” I swing the hurricane lamp toward the cut-glass bowl, which refracts the light into a kaleidoscope of prisms that dance over the wall and ceiling. It’s an unnerving effect and Alice gasps.
“Yeah, yeah,” Davis says, his voice high and nervous, “that’s a good trick. Cut it out and get the key.”
I obey, shifting the beam so that it doesn’t touch the glass as I withdraw the key with a shaking hand. For a moment I thought I’d seen something forming in the play of light too. When I put the key in the lock, something occurs to me. If the door slammed shut after Davis it shouldn’t be locked. It’s the kind of lock that needs to be turned with a key on either side of the door. But it is locked.
As I turn the key to unlock the door I feel an icy chill. I pause in the doorway, reluctant to cross the threshold, but Davis gives me a nudge with the barrel of his gun. I hold the lamp up, suddenly terrified that I’ll see my father sitting at the desk . . . but what I see is the broken window. Of course. This is how Davis got into the house in the first place. “We’ll freeze to death in here with that broken window,” I say.
“Draw the curtain over it and light that kerosene heater I noticed when I was in here earlier,” Davis says. “Here, I even brought the kerosene.” He draws a bottle out of his jacket pocket and gives it to me. While I pour kerosene into the heater, he nudges Alice into one of the straight-backed chairs in front of the desk. Again I think of how easy it would be to start a fire. Throw some kerosene on Davis, light him up. Burn the whole place down to the ground. But that would leave Alice, Oren, and me out in the snow, and we don’t even know where Oren is. If he’s holed up in the attic he could get trapped in the burning house.
When I’ve adjusted the flame on the heater I turn around. Davis is ensconced in my father’s chair behind the desk, his gun lying on the blotter in front of him. It makes me sick to see him sitting there, but whether it’s because of the insult to my father’s memory or that Davis is beginning to remind me of my father, I’m not sure.
“Have a seat, Mattie.” Davis gestures to the other straight-backed chair. “The show’s about to begin.”
I do not want to sit in that chair. It is where I sat when my father called me in, and I have not sat there again in all the years since my family died. “I don’t mind standing,” I say.
“SIT DOWN!” Davis bellows, pointing the gun at me.
I sit. Instantly I become the frightened little girl who’s done something wrong. When I wasn’t in trouble, my father would pat his knee and beckon me to sit on his lap while he read to me or showed me the constellations in the star globe. I knew I was in trouble when he motioned to the chair as if seating a witness in the dock.
I notice that I’ve folded my hands in my lap, the way I was supposed to when I awaited my father’s judgment. I am digging my nails into my palms as I used to. I pry my hands apart and spread them on my knees and look at Davis. His face is framed by the figurines of Lady Justice and Lady Liberty that stand on either side of the pen set, just as my father’s face used to be when I sat here.
“You two look like you’ve been called into the principal’s office for . . . hmm . . . let me see . . .” He strokes his goatee. “Oooh, I know! Diddling each other in the little girls’ room. Well, I’m gonna have to think of an appropriate punishment for that. But first, let’s look at these files I found in your daddy’s drawers . . .” He slaps his knee. “Ha! Get it? Your daddy’s drawers?” When neither of us laughs he frowns. “You’re right. This is a very serious business.” He picks up a file. “I was just looking for some credit card numbers, loose cash, et cetera, and of course the first place I think to look is the locked drawer in the desk. Luckily the key to it was sitting right there in that little statue.” He wags his finger at me. “You really ought to be more careful of your valuables, Mattie. I mean, sure, they look like just a bunch of old papers—I was kinda disappointed at first—but then I recognized the gold seal on them from my own judicial dealings with the great state of New York.” He turns the file folder around to show us the front. It’s stamped with the great seal of New York: Lady Liberty and Lady Justice holding up a shield containing mountains and a river, an eagle on top. The same image that is depicted in my father’s pen set, the same image—