Black Evening by David Morrell Read Free Book Online Page A

and he listened. "Honey?" But he really didn't think there'd be an answer. He walked through the living room to the kitchen, looking for some sign that she had been there. But the kitchen was the way it should be, and he continued to the stairs down to the basement. Maybe she had fallen. When he took a breath and opened the door to look down, though, the concrete floor below was silent, and he almost didn't go down, but he knew he should be thorough. So he checked the basement, even looked behind the furnace and the washer and the dryer they had sold with the house. He glanced inside the crawlspace. Then he went upstairs and checked the closets, the two bedrooms, the small bathroom, but he didn't see a sign of her, and now he didn't know what else to do. He almost went back to the front door before he thought of the attic, and for reasons he didn't understand, he felt a chill.
    At first he just dismissed it. Then he thought that she would have had no reason to go up there, and he almost left the house. But he'd been determined to be thorough, and he knew that failing to check the attic would soon nag him, so he walked back to the hallway, moving toward the trapdoor. When he stretched, he barely touched the ring, but then he had it, and he pulled, and the fold-out steps came down to reach the floor. He waited just a moment longer. There was something like the coo-coo-coo of pigeons up there, one on top the other, faint and soft and gentle, and it sounded just enough like laughter that he guessed this maybe was what people had been hearing. Not exactly laughter, more like giggling. Coo-coo-coo. And then it stopped.
    Of course. Some birds had somehow gotten into the attic, and they'd heard him, going silent. She had gone up there to look, and maybe she was hurt. He didn't think until later that the trapdoor would be open if she had. He knew only that he needed to look, and quickly, so he scrambled up, and there was nothing. Insulation, cobwebs, wiring. But no sign of her, no birds, no laughter, nothing. There was must all through the close stale air, and he checked in the corners, sweating, and he still found no sign of her. He thought too late that he had climbed around up there without first looking for a disturbance in the dust. Now, with the smudge marks where he had knelt among the rafters, he could never tell if someone had preceded him. He listened for the cooing, looking for some explanation. When the sweat became too much for him, he eased back, leaving.
    Outside, he was puzzled. He checked with the neighbors again. There'd been a man she talked to. Someone now remembered that. But everyone was certain that she'd been alone when she'd returned to the house. He walked back, looking. Then he asked if he could use a neighbor's phone. He called other friends. He called the hospital and on an impulse the police. No help, no sign of her, and since there was no evidence of something wrong, he learned that no policemen would be coming out. "Just give her time. She'll be back."
    He left the neighbors, returning to the house. But this time when he studied it, the dusk now gray around it, he was conscious of a sound, no, something less than that, something on the other side of hearing, more a presence than a sound, coming from the house. He took a step. The thing subsided. A moment later, it rose again, closer, stronger. He could almost touch it, hear it. He continued toward the house. Music, unseen, unheard, faint and tinkling, merry, far away, yet close. When he reached the door, he recognized the coo-coo-coo, and yes, he did hear laughter, children's laughter, but he burst in, and the house was dark, and there was no one. The laughter stopped, although it hadn't really been there. It was all in his imagination.
    He has heard it many times since then, however, and he comes back often just to stand and wait and let it happen, so much so that now he owns the place again. He lives there with his children, who don't remember her. The