House Haunted by Al Sarrantonio

ahead.”
    â€œThat's too much,” Jan bluffed, remembering the old blind woman's warning about the proprietor being a skinflint. “When my friend stayed he said it was ten for the room.”
    â€œTwenty.” Edward shook his head. “Costs go up.”
    â€œI could stay at the other hotel.”
    â€œGo on, then,” Edward said, but he added, “all right. Ten it is for the room. In advance. And ten more for not reserving.”
    Remembering the blind woman's other words, Jan said, “I want a room in the rear of the hotel.”
    Edward looked momentarily surprised; his surprise quickly turned to impatience. “Fine,” he said. “Just pay in advance.”
    Jan paid him and was taken to a small room in one of the back corners of the third floor. It was hot. It looked out onto an oppressively close stand of oak trees. What little light reached the room filtered through the sway of branches. Looking out through the small window, he saw the entire back of the hotel was suffocated by encroaching trees. Damn old woman. So much for her advice about morning sun.
    When Edward had left him, Jan lay on the bed. He found it lumpy, tilted annoyingly to one side. It smelled of old feathers and mildew. He laced his hands behind his head, finding with his fingers a rip in the pillow. He stared at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing, to make this day, what had happened to his life, vanish. But it would not. He saw it all again, as if played on a television screen: the haunted look on Jozef's face as he approached them on the bridge with his news; the smug visage of the man in the trench coat, sure of his job and his prey; and his mother's face, looming over him, telling him to get up for work, then weeping alone in her room after the police had gone, her rosary clutched in her praying hands, kneeling over the quilt, crying and praying to God crucified over her bed on his crucifix
    He pushed himself up on his elbows at a sound of movement, and there at the end of his bed was a girl he had never seen before, holding her hand out to him. She was short, her pale face suffused with freckles, her hair straight and red. She did not look Polish. But when she spoke, she spoke Polish to him.
    â€œDon't worry, Jan. My name is Bridget.”
    He reached his hand out to her, and she took it in her own. Her touch was gentle, but in the fingers he felt a fierce hardness. He sensed that, if she wanted, she could grip him so tight it would feel as though his hand were in a vise. And yet she held it now as gently as a lover.
    â€œCome with me,” she said, in her beautiful, soft, enigmatic voice, letting his hand go.
    He rose from the bed. She walked into the far corner of the room. He thought she had disappeared. But then he saw that the shadows in the corner lengthened and the walls did not meet. There was a door there.
    Jan entered the shadows, leaving all but faint tendrils of light behind. He felt the walls with his hands. Abruptly, there were stairs. He climbed. Above him, the stairway ended, and he faintly saw the girl.
    â€œCome, Jan,” she called tenderly to him.
    He reached the doorway. Inside was an attic, dimly lit by red light falling through a small, round, stained-glass window. At first he did not see the girl, but then he located her at the far end of the room. The girl was standing over a bed, a mattress laid on the floor, covered in silken sheets. She smiled at him. Wordlessly, not taking her eyes from him, she removed the shoulder straps of her gown. The gown fell to her feet, revealing her naked to him. She was a mixture of girl and woman. Her face, the perfect white lines of her body, were childlike, yet the rise of her breasts, the V of deep red hair below her belly, the loving smile and the magnetic sexuality of her look and stance aroused him deeply. She held her hand out. He went to her, and as he took her hand she lay back on the bed, pulling him down above her. She lay