Page 17 of The Ghost and the Graveyard (Knight Games 1)
She sounded old. Maybe she was confused. "This is the hospital phone service. Are you in trouble? Do you need help? What's your name?"
"My name is Prudence, dear."
"Prudence, are you ill?"
"Oh no, I'm not ill."
"Can I help you with something?"
"Are you the sorter?"
"I don't know what that is, ma'am."
Click. The line disconnected. My hand reflexively shot forward and hit the button on my computer to log out.
"Freaking weird," I said. I wondered what kind of situation the lady was in. Maybe she was an Alzheimer's patient or something. She certainly wasn't making any sense.
I was in the process of removing my headset and making plans for a long, hot bath when the sound of a door swinging open on squeaky hinges made me turn toward the stairs. The sound was coming from up, way up. I rose on shaky legs and took three big steps toward the foyer.
I'm not sure what I noticed first, the woman herself or the light that surrounded her. She had the curly gray hair of a grandmother, round cheeks, and a black button front sweater over a high lace collar. Her face was a scowl and below her waist ...nothing. Tendrils of mist-that was it. The glowing torso of an old lady leered at me from the top of my steps. I stopped breathing. I blinked once, then twice. She locked eyes with me.
"Are you the sorter?" she asked in a voice lined with static as if the air between us was causing a bad connection.
I stared, eyes wide and voice mute with shock.
"Do you seek the book and blade?"
Her tendrils wormed lower, onto the next stair. I still couldn't form words, so I shook my head.
"Are you the sorter?" she asked again.
Sorter? "N-no," I stuttered.
The parchment colored skin of her face began to glow above her high lace collar, then tightened like shrink-wrap to her skull. Her eyes became burning embers in their bony pits, and her teeth elongated.
"Get out of my house!" she bellowed.
What the fuck? A cold wind powered toward me, a whistling cyclone of fury that made the floor quake and the shutters bang against the walls from their place outside the windows. The pots and pans, hinged to the pot rack in the kitchen, crash-boom-banged in the mounting interior-tornado. My laptop crashed to the hardwood floor. Papers fluttered by, my notes and work forms, circling like misguided snowflakes. In the dining room, the chairs took turns pulling themselves out and then pushing themselves back in at the table.
Anyone in her right mind would have run, but I couldn't move. My muscles and vocal chords froze from fear, and my feet weighed two tons each. I couldn't even breathe.
The torso descended the stairs, weightless but menacing, piercing me with that monstrous gaze. "Get out!" she bellowed again.
This had to be a nightmare. I'd fallen asleep at the computer and was having a nightmare. Why weren't my muscles moving?
Closer, she drifted. I had to make a run for it. I had to move. My jaw sagged. I was still holding my breath.
A man stepped between the ghost and me. Where did he come from? He lifted two fingers over his shoulder, and the wind stopped, the pans clinked to a rest, the shutters halted their wicked cacophony.
"Oh thank God," I said and let the air rush out of my burning lungs.
He turned toward the ghost, held out his hand, and said, "Prudence, come on. Knock it off. You're scaring her."
"She doesn't belong here!" the old lady yelled.
The man turned a gentle smile and warm, green eyes toward me. His sandy brown hair was unkempt, and his chin was covered in stubble that somehow seemed to add to his character. He put his hands on the hips of his jeans, flipping the sides of his sport jacket back, arms akimbo like he didn't know what to make of me.
"She's not hurting anything, Prudence. Please. Go back to the attic." He waved his arm.
