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commanding presence. A tall lady, with dark, almost fierce-looking eyes. I remember those eyes. They scared me.” He was silent for a moment and she could feel negative vibes coming from him.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Lucas?”
    â€œI was just remembering something. Trying to bring back something she told me about the house. I haven’t thought of it in years. I remember now. At the time, it scared the living hell out of me.”
    â€œMust have really impressed you,” she said with a smile. “What in the world was it?”
    He looked into her beautiful violet eyes. “Grandmother Bowers told me to never, never, go into that attic.”
    â€œAt the mansion?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDid you ever?”
    â€œEver what? Go into the attic? Hell, no! I imagined all sorts of creepy, crawly monsters and things up there. Rattling skeletons and ghosts and all sorts of things. You know how fertile the mind of a child is.”
    â€œAnything else you recall?”
    â€œYes,” he said with a sigh. “I remember she told me that someday I would understand . . . something about the mind and the journey it can take one on, if one has the proper mount to ride.”
    â€œWhat an odd thing to say. What did she mean?”
    â€œI don’t know. That’s all she ever said about it. I know that she never left the house—never. She would make Howard Hughes look like a gadfly.”
    â€œWhere is she buried?”
    â€œI don’t know. She insisted upon being buried at night. Precisely at midnight. And her body was not to be embalmed. And that’s all I know about my strange Grandmother Bowers.”
    â€œWell,” Tracy said. “We have another adventure awaiting us.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œGoing up into the attic.”

2
    â€œCrossing into Virginia,” Lucas announced. “God, I’m glad to get out of that traffic.”
    Tracy eased closer to Lucas. “Virginia is for lovers,” she said.
    â€œMother!” Jackie spoke from the back. “Please remember there are children present, and don’t get icky.”
    Lucas met his daughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Children? Oh?”
    â€œYes,” the girl said, pointing to her brother. “Him.”
    â€œBlow it out your ear,” Johnny told her.
    â€œThat’s enough of that, mister,” Lucas warned. “Where in the world did you hear that expression, Johnny?”
    â€œFrom Joe Gould,” the boy replied honestly.
    â€œGood ol’ Joe,” Lucas muttered, while Tracy smothered a giggle. Joe Gould, the first name of the firm of Gould, Sexton, Harris, McConnell, Seidman, Barris and Bowers.
    The family had gotten a late start, got snarled up in traffic, and were now just outside of Washington, D.C. They were in Tracy’s station wagon, and pulling a rented trailer. Carefully packed in the trailer, unknown to Tracy or the kids, was a Remington model 1100 shotgun and several boxes of #4 buckshot.
    While Lucas was not exactly an expert with firearms, he still had vivid memories of the bird hunts his Grandfather Taylor used to take him on up in Vermont, where Lucas had been raised until his parents’ deaths. Lucas had not fired a gun in years—he had missed the draft simply because his number was never called—but when he was a kid his grandfather had told him he showed a natural ability for handling firearms. And then the old man had proceeded to teach Lucas rifle, pistol, and shotgun.
    And something had been nagging at the back of his mind about the old Bowers plantation home. He could not bring it into clear focus, but it was . . . well, evil, he felt.
    God, how stupid! he mentally chastised himself. Evil. Jesus Christ, Lucas, you’re a grown man, not some silly kid who believes in hobgoblins.
    Impatiently, irritated at himself for thinking such stupid thoughts, he shoved them out of his mind and concentrated on finding a motel.