Page 43 of Eldritch

As the women observed, Doug used a laser device and wrote the room measurement results in his notebook.

“This room is going to take a lot of cleaning.” Sybil grimaced as she looked at the curtains. “Those curtains will have to be sent to a specialty cleaner.”

“Well,” Pauline said as she sauntered closer to him, “we could use some muscle to take those curtains down.”

“Uh, no.” Sybil threw Pauline a quelling look. “We don’t have insurance coverage for someone who isn’t an employee of the company. If he fell off a ladder or anything.”

Before Pauline could reply, a rumble came from somewhere in the house, and Sybil caught movement out of the corner of her vision. She looked up. The chandelier above her twinkled dully as it swayed ever so slightly.

Doug snagged Sybil’s arm and pulled her back as the chandelier’s movement picked up. He didn’t release his grip.

Pauline looked up and also stepped back. “Damn.”

Instead of coming to a slow stop, the chandelier stopped as quickly as if a giant hand had snagged it.

“Okay,” Doug said. “That was weird.”

“What was that noise? An earthquake?” Pauline asked. “I’m going down and see if the ladies heard that.”

Pauline left and didn’t close the attic door. Her footsteps clattered down the stairs.

Doug released Sybil’s arm quickly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep a hold on your arm like that. I was afraid the chandelier would fall. Let’s move farther away from it.”

They stood closer to the door, and Sybil said, “The weirdness in this house keeps getting stranger and stranger. I heard a rumble earlier and thought it was thunder.”

He used his phone to type something out. “Doesn’t look like there’s been an earthquake reported.”

Sybil drew in a big breath. “If you’ve got all the measurements you need, let’s get out of here.”

“Yep.”

When they reached the Great Hall, Sybil didn’t see a sign of Pauline or the other women, so she continued toward the cellar with Doug in tow.

She stopped at the doorway to the cellar, uncertain and a hint of the apprehension she’d experienced the night she’d stepped up to this door and touched the door handle. The keys were cold and hard under her fingers. Her gaze fixated on the evil-looking face on the wood.

“You all right?” Doug asked.

She turned to look at him. “Yeah. I guess the swaying chandelier freaked me out a bit.”

She wasn’t exactly lying.

You know what it might be, don’t you? This place has got something wrong with it. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s all you. Maybe it’s just you that is wrong.

Sybil quashed the voice in her head.

“It was weird,” he said. “Those strange tracks on the floor made little sense, either.”

“Maybe we’ve got some seriously clever interlopers finding their way in and making all of this stuff, but I don’t see how they’re doing it without us seeing or hearing them.” She threw her hands up.

“You’d be surprised.” His slow grin eased the tension inside her a little.

“What you told Pauline...you weren’t in a sneaky unit in the Marines, were you?”

“Well, without getting all technical, Force Recon isn’t a part of official special operations.”

She nodded and smiled. “Okay.”

He lowered his voice. “But for all my training in the marines and as a cop, I’m not entirely sure what Pauline was playing at back there when she was in the attic with us.”

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