The Drifter Read Free Page B

it’s not so distant , she thought gloomily, it’s practically in our front yard .
    She could hear it churning forward at full speed … sounding for all the world as if it would crash over the house and swallow it whole. And then, after a moment, receding again … softening … going quiet and hushed, the calm before the inevitable storm.
    At this particular instant it was ebbing, and Carolyn braced herself for the onslaught to come. For the hundredth time she flopped over on her stomach and bunched her pillow around her head.
    It was no use.
    The ocean was just there —instead of birds or traffic or conversation or even silence. Just there going on and on forever.
    Carolyn groaned and sat up. She scooted back against the headboard and pulled her knees up to her chin, clasping her arms around them. Her heart ached with homesickness, for her friends, for Dad. She’d hoped for a cozy cottage on a sunny beach. Instead she’d gotten Glanton House and Nora.
    She sighed. “My luck.”
    Something thumped against the side of the house, and she stifled a scream. Throwing off the covers, she padded to the window and saw a loose shutter banging in the wind. The fog was so thick, she couldn’t even see the ground below.
    Carolyn leaned against the sill, staring out into nothingness. It gave her a strange feeling of unreality, this being suspended in a darkly swirling void. She stood there for a long time and tried not to give in to tears. And then at last she turned back to her bed.
    Halfway across the floor, she froze.
    She caught her breath and held it, and then she waited.
    And it wasn’t the sea she heard this time—not the sea or even the wind—but something different. Something hushed and hidden and muffled, coming from the floor above.
    As Carolyn stood there and listened, it hit the wall with a soft thud, and then it slid. Hit … then slid. Hit … slid.
    No , Carolyn thought wildly as her brain reeled to identify the sound— not sliding exactly — but rougher — more uneven —
    Scraping?
    Yes, that was it, she decided, more like scraping—no—like clawing —like something clawing at the wood of the walls—
    â€œ She keeps watch for him … and he searches for her to this very day .…”
    Carolyn pressed herself back against the wall, her heart slowly freezing. In her mind she quickly tried to reconstruct the lay of the house, the location of each upstairs room. Was it possible the strange sounds were coming from some other bedroom on this floor? She closed her eyes and drew a deep, slow breath. No … the sounds had definitely come from above.
    The widow’s walk?
    She tried to picture it as she’d seen it earlier that evening—the railed platform and the small wooden garret it surrounded—and she remembered thinking it must be a sort of attic, or maybe just an empty storage room—
    Except it wasn’t empty now.
    Carolyn spun around, her eyes groping through darkness. Quickly she found her bedside lamp and turned the switch.
    Nothing happened.
    She tried it again.
    Still nothing.
    Trembling now, she felt for the matches on the table and lit the candle beside them. A sickly puddle of yellow light spread out across the floor, sending macabre shadows along the corners and ceiling. She moved noiselessly out into the corridor, and then she stopped. She could see the wooden door at the end of the hallway—could see the latch upon it that had no key.
    She held her breath and waited.
    A gust of wind shook the house, rattling the windows in their frames. The ancient boards pulled and groaned, and the broken shutter crashed wildly against the outside wall of her room.
    It must have been like this that night the captain came home — only much, much worse because of the storm — the whole house heaving and swaying while the ship tore open on the rocks below and spilled her men into the sea —
    And