Natalie found him by his car, panting for breath. “I should have told you,” he said when he got his breath back. “The place is haunted.”
“Oh, I see.”
He frowned, looking at her as if she was mad. “Why didn’t you run when he screamed?”
“When who screamed?”
“The spirit that haunts the place. Why didn’t you run from him? Everyone else does.”
“I never understood that. Everyone always runs from ghosts. If all he’s going to do is slam the odd door and scream every once in a while, I reckon I can live with it. I’ll take the place.”
“You’ll take it?” Now he really seemed to think she’d gone mad. “You would willingly live in a haunted castle? Have you any idea of the risk? That scream, it chills me to the bone every time and yet you would willingly go back in there?”
She nodded.
“But why? I don’t understand. Aren’t you scared?”
“Of a ghost? I stood in the living room and waited after that scream and do you know what happened?”
“What?”
“Nothing. And do you know what?”
“What?”
“I got the feeling that ghost wants somethingand the only way to find out what is to have a talk with him.”
Drayton shook his head as he unlocked his car. “Mad, you’re quite mad.”
“Will you let me live here?”
“Sure, why not. You and the ghost will make a great couple.” He started his engine. “Come to the office and sign the paperwork and the place is yours but mark my words. You won’t last a day. I’ve tried to get him to sell, to accept no one wants a haunted house. Six tenants it’s had in the last year and none of them lasted longer than a day. You won’t last twenty-four hours. No one does.”
“I will see you at your office tomorrow morning.” She closed his door for him, watching him drive off, his head still shaking as he muttered to himself.
When he was gone she turned and looked up at the castle. Was there really a ghost in there? If there was, what did it want?
She’d seenThe Sixth Sense.She knew that if spirits were hanging around after death, it was to get Haley Joel Osment to do something for them. Well, they’d have to get used to her doing it instead.
In the castle, down the stairs, in the darkness of the dungeon, a figure stirred. His eyes opened. Shewas here at last. The final descendant of the MacCallister line.
It was time to fulfil his vow, to bring his worst enemy back through the centuries. Then, he would be free and his father would live.
His smile broadened. The wait was almost over.
5
Time was a strange concept.
Wallace had never really considered it before. More than a few centuries in the dungeon of MacCallister Castle had given him plenty of time to catch up on the philosophy of it all. Was he alive? Dead? Both? Neither?
He had no answers. If he had been told the tale of his own incarceration he never would have believed it. The barefoot man had left out one crucial element of their deal. His death.
He remembered vividly looking down at his own body, laid beside the skeleton of his father. He saw the barefoot man leave. How was that possible?
At first he thought he was dead, about to ascend to heaven, hopefully not in the other direction.
Nothing happened. He blinked and his feet were solidly on the floor. He tried touching his body but his hand passed through it. He tried again, concentrating this time.
