Elsewhere by William Peter Blatty

Author:William Peter Blatty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466834781
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER SIX

SMOTHERING, SHRIEKING IN terror, trapped in a narrow dry prison of night, Freeboard wakened abruptly from a brief, light doze and sat up on the bed with a whimpering cry. She put a hand to her forehead. It was chilly and damp. “Shit, that stupid dream again!” she muttered. She waited, then at last she swung her legs off the bed, stood up, trudged into the bathroom, turned on a tap and splashed cold water onto her face. Drying off with a towel, she looked in the mirror. Get a hold! she admonished herself. It didn’t work. The dream was recurring and always disturbed her, yet she couldn’t remember when she’d started to have it. Involuntarily, she shivered. She needed to be out of this room, to be with people. She hurried from the bathroom, picked up a clean ashtray and banged it once sharply against the wall. “You in there, dickhead?”

Freeboard waited. Nothing. Silence. She put back the ashtray, strode to the door and walked out into the hall. There she looked up and down but saw no one. It’s so quiet, she thought. She walked to the railing and glanced down at the Great Room. It was empty and still. The sconce lights were on.

“Terry?”

Freeboard waited. Then she heard something, voices, to her right. They were low and murmury, indistinct. She turned toward the sound. It was coming from the long empty hall that ran past Dare’s and Trawley’s rooms. At the end was a door. Freeboard stared at it, puzzled, then strode toward it purposefully as she heard the low voices again; they seemed to be coming from that direction. She got to the door and pushed it open, and as she did the voices ceased and there was sudden, deep silence. Freeboard frowned. She was peering down a long windowless corridor at the end of which stood another door. “Terry, you flaming asshole,” she called, “is that you screwing around in there?” Freeboard heard a door softly closing behind her. Turning quickly, she saw Trawley coming out of her room. The psychic saw her and approached, looking tense and troubled. “Something in there?” she asked. She was looking past Freeboard into the darkened inner hall.

“No.”

Freeboard closed the hall door.

“Joan, I thought I’d take a stroll around the island. Want to come?”

“Yes, I’d like that a lot,” said Freeboard. “Yes!”

It would prove to be no ordinary walk on the beach.

* * *

“YOUR HEALTH,” toasted Case.

“You keep saying that,” said Dare.

The author’s voice was faintly thickened and slurry.

They were sitting across from one another on the library sofas, close to the crackling of a fire. Case was leaning across a pine coffee table pouring scotch into Dare’s tall glass.

“No one’s forcing you to drink,” Case observed.

“I wasn’t bitching, I was merely observing; that’s a thing that we painters can do so awfully well.”

“Oh, you paint?”

“Must you challenge almost everything I say?”

Slightly inebriated, feeling loose, the author sipped at his glass and savored the scotch. And then the earth seemed to shift in a quick, sharp jolt.

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