Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Hoping to distract herself from what she had seen—or thought she had seen—in the mirror at the Perles Mansion, Harper poured herself a glass of wine back at her apartment and threw herself into her work.
When she checked her email, she found a brief note from her student Jenny, giving her a link to her Creepy California podcast.
“You should check it out!” she wrote. “True crime, true creepiness!”
Jenny. What in the world did she and the others think they were doing breaking into the Perles Mansion and holding a ritual in the Reflection room?
Harper logged on to the college’s faculty portal and found Jenny’s phone number, then texted her: Meet me tomorrow at Plumes Coffee House 10 a.m.
Afterward, she stayed up until midnight working on her book outline until her eyes could no longer focus. When she finally went to bed, she immediately fell into a deep sleep.
She was roused by an unaccustomed sound. It took her a moment to realize what it was: footsteps on the wooden stairs leading up to her apartment.
The footsteps stopped, and she heard a scratching at her door and the rattle of the doorknob. Harper froze. Her heart pounded, her mouth went dry, and she was unable to move. After another moment, she felt the bedcovers being slowly pulled off…
She awoke with a start, shivering from the cold.
Her patchwork quilt lay on the floor, and the air was frigid.
The fire in the woodstove that heated her apartment had long since died out.
Looking around the small studio, she saw nothing, but listened intently, her heart thudding, her breath coming hard and fast.
Had she been dreaming? Or had she really heard something?
She told herself that the sense of panic must have been induced by sleep paralysis, a common, though terrifying, phenomenon. It was the only thing that made sense.
Harper got up and shuffled to the bathroom to use the toilet and splash water on her face. Usually she avoided the mirror, but in her half-asleep state, she looked at it without thinking.
And saw something.
Someone.
The same someone she had seen in the shrouded mirror in the Perles Mansion. But this time the vision was angry, crying, reaching out…
Harper opened her mouth to scream, and awoke. She was still in bed. It had been a dream within a dream. But…had she actually heard someone at her door?
She pulled on her robe and slippers, then grabbed her cell phone, pepper spray, and car fob.
Moving as stealthily as she could, she sidled up to the front window and peeked out the curtains.
Bright moonlight glinted off the water in Ellen’s birdbath, and dew on the blades of grass sparkled like diamonds.
But no one was visible outside on the driveway or the lawn, and no one was mounting the wooden stairs to her apartment.
No one at all.
That would have been comforting except that the landing just outside her door was not visible from this angle. Harper crept over to the front door, pressed her ear against it, and waited. Nothing. Taking a deep breath, she peeked out the peephole.
Again, nothing. Nothing at all. She always left her porch light on and should have seen its illumination, at least, but it was dark. Was someone—or something—covering the aperture?
Harper pushed the panic button on her car alarm. The horn blared loudly and rhythmically in the still night, no doubt waking the neighbors. She held her breath and listened for the sound of footsteps rushing down the wooden stairs.
Nothing.
Harper switched the car alarm off and punched 911 into the pad of her phone but did not push send.
Could she still be dreaming? Was someone really standing at the top of her stairs, holding a finger over the peephole?
Or was condensation or grime blocking her view?
After a day full of bloody crime scenes and talk of lingering spirits, she could hardly blame her imagination for running amok.
Returning to the front window, she peeked out the curtains again.
Where a woman was dancing on the lawn.
Visible in the light of the nearly full moon, the woman’s back was to Harper as she swayed, just barely, on the grass. She was barefoot, dressed in a long white gown with a Mexican shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders.
Ellen?
The woman suddenly twirled and stared up at the apartment window, as if she knew she was being watched. Harper could not make out her features under the rebozo, but her eyes appeared to glow in the dark.
Harper felt rooted in place, petrified by the strange gaze.
The woman threw her head back as if gazing at the moon, held her arms out to her sides, and started moving back and forth, holding her hands out wide, then bringing them in toward her chest, as if failing to grab what she was reaching for before collapsing into herself.
This was not a joyful dance. Instead, her movements put Harper in mind of sorrow, of unbearable loss.
Harper heard music in her head, starting quietly, then surging to a searing volume: a desolate requiem.
The same music she thought she had heard when she was in the mansion.
Then Harper noticed the back door of Ellen’s bungalow stood wide open.
She relaxed. Her elderly friend must be sleepwalking, or…
sleep-dancing? Harper had found her sister sleepwalking on more than one occasion, and their mother had explained it was important not to wake a somnambulist but to gently guide them back to bed.
She quickly pulled on her boots and strapped the pepper spray to her wrist, just in case.
She approached her front door, took a deep breath, and again looked out the peephole. This time there was nothing blocking the view. There was no one on the landing and no one on the stairs. Just an old woman sketching her dance of sorrow on the lawn.
Harper opened the door and called out: “Ellen?”
The woman kept swaying.
Harper hurried down the stairs, but as she started across the lawn, the figure scurried to the house and ducked through the back door.
Good. She must be headed back to bed. To be sure, Harper entered the bungalow and crept down the dark hallway to Ellen’s bedroom.
The door was ajar, and Harper peered in.
A faint light from the streetlamp sifted through the bedroom window’s sheer curtains and illuminated Ellen’s peaceful face.
She was snuggled under her handmade wedding-ring quilt, snoring faintly.
Bright red numbers on the clock on her bedside table read 3:17 a.m.
Harper breathed a sigh of relief. Safe and sound. If her sister’s sleepwalking episodes were any indication, Ellen would have no memory of this incident in the morning.
Harper went back outside, found the house key in its hiding place on the garden shelf, and carefully locked the rear door. As she replaced the key, she glanced at her apartment. Her front door stood ajar.
She hadn’t left it that way. Surely. Or…had she?
Again, she considered dialing 911. But how foolish would she feel if the police arrived, and the open door was the result of nothing but the absent-mindedness of a tired college professor?
Even in a sleepy town like Monterey the police had better things to do at three in the morning.
Harper had been so intent on helping Ellen that she must have left her own door open, that was all there was to it.
It had been a long, weird day, and she needed rest.
But when she reached the stairs to her studio, she hesitated, one foot on the bottom tread. What if someone really was inside?
Harper knew the code to Ellen’s gun safe and was familiar with weapons, thanks to her father. He hadn’t taught her much in life except to trust no one and, perhaps relatedly, how to handle a gun. At this point, Harper would sleep better with a weapon by her side.
She returned to the bungalow, retrieved the house key, went in, and locked the door behind her, then quietly crept into Ellen’s bedroom to remove the gun from its safe.
The elderly woman continued softly snoring.
Harper checked to see if the gun was loaded and was relieved to find that it was not, but slipped a clip into her robe’s pocket, just in case.
Then she did a quick tour of the house, ensuring that the doors and windows were all locked and bolted.
Feeling a little silly but still shaky, she checked the bathroom, the closets, and behind the long window curtains.
She was not up for more surprises tonight.
Satisfied there was no one but Ellen and herself in the house, Harper made up a bed on Ellen’s living room couch and fell into a fitful sleep.
“Harper?”
Harper awoke to find Ellen standing over her, looking puzzled. The woman’s snowy hair was an unruly mop, and she wore a hot-pink flannel nightgown, decorated with turquoise flamingos.
Harper stared at the flamingos.
The dancing woman had worn white.