Chapter 3
When he woke up the next morning in Gina's bed, Randy had a sudden, startled moment before he remembered that the soft, warm body pressed against his belonged to his secretary. For a second he looked down at Gina's sleeping face. She wore a blissful smile, and fulfillment had given her skin a fresh new glow. Her breasts lay exposed above the sheet. His eyes took in their rounded firmness, the satiny texture of their skin. The man who married her would find waking up beside her every morning a very pleasant way to start each day. She stirred sleepily and held out her arms, but he got out of bed before he let himself be carried away again. A glance at his watch on the bedside table showed him it was already ten o'clock.
"We've got to get going, Gina," he said, shaking her gently.
She opened her eyes, and smiled. "Come here," she commanded softly.
For an instant he wavered, then remembered Sherry Swanson's fearful eyes.
"No," he said firmly. "Let's shower and get out of here as quickly as possible. We've already overslept."
She sat up with a sigh. "All right, Doctor. Business first, as usual."
Thirty minutes later, having breakfasted at a nearby restaurant, they were back on the highway. The day was a typical aftermath of a storm, bright and sunny with cloudless blue skies. He'd tried to call Sherry again at the restaurant, but the lines were still out. He kept the speedometer at the local speed limit, driving in thoughtful silence. Gina sensed his brooding mood, and carefully avoided interrupting his train of thought. She wore a light summer dress that enhanced her high pointed breasts and narrow waist. From time to time, she glanced at Randy, eyes still smoldering with the vivid memory of the night before. He drove with his eyes riveted to the highway, a taut, worried expression on his clean-cut features.
'If anything has happened to Sherry Swanson,' he rebuked himself, 'it's my fault. I should have gone on driving in the rain last night. I could have made it to her house, even if it took me three or four hours.'
Not that he regretted the night spent with Gina. Quite the opposite, in fact. Beneath the superficial worries that nagged at his mind, the memory of last night was as fresh and vivid in his mind as it was in Gina's. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her long, shapely legs and almost feel them twining around him again. Once or twice he had to fight the powerful urge to abandon his trip to Sherry's house and just go back to the motel and spend the entire weekend with Gina. But his sense of duty was stronger than any wild impulse.
There would be other weekends, he told himself. And other nights.
A few minutes later, he turned onto the side road indicated on the map Sherry had given him. The going was slow and rugged, the car almost bogging down completely a few times in the thick, sluggish mud. At the end of a mile, the road curved sharply upward, and he saw the house at the top of the hill. The sight nearly made him stop the car.
It was an old, decrepit mansion, dilapidated with age and the batterings of countless storms. There was a lurking, menacing air about its high peaks and gables, even in the bright light of the day, and for a second he had the uneasy impression that the house was actually staring back at him with malice.
"Gloomy old place, isn't it?" Gina said.
"It's not exactly reeking with good cheer."
He swung the car onto the gravel road leading to the front entrance, cruising slowly so he could study the house. Wide columns, graceful once but cracked and dirty now, fronted the large old house. Any sentiment for the house Sherry Swanson's mother had felt had not spurred her into giving it the slightest attention. The whole place exuded an air of neglect and decay.
Randy parked the car at the front entrance, and he and Gina got out, surveying the grounds for a moment. A tangle of grass and weeds covered everything, even a classic-looking statue, a reproduction of a Greek runner, Randy judged, in the front yard. They went up to the massive old door, and he knocked loudly. A minute later, the door creaked slowly open.
A surly-faced man in his thirties stood facing them. His craggy features were etched in a permanent scowl, disapproving everything and everyone. His black hair was a tangle of shaggy neglect, like the rest of the place.
"What do you want?"
"Are you Groton?" Randy asked.
"Maybe." He spat the word out. "What of it?"
"Sherry Swanson invited us here for the weekend. Is she home?"
Groton transferred his hostile gaze from Randy to Gina. His eyes raked over her body with naked, lustful hunger. Gina instinctively clutched Randy's arm. A smile distorted Groton's face.
"What's the matter, lady? Afraid I'll bite? If I do, you might like it, believe me." He reared back his head and laughed.
"If you do," Randy said in a grim voice, "you won't have any teeth left for another bite. I asked, is Sherry Swanson home?"
Groton ran his eyes defiantly over Randy's powerful frame, comparing it to his own rugged physique. When he finished, his eyes lost their truculent look.
"Yeah, she's home," he said, stepping back and opening the door to let them in. "In bed, upstairs. Second door to your left."
"Is she sick?"
"Yeah, she's sick," Groton said with narrowed eyes. "Sick with fear. like other people will be, if they stick their noses in where they aren't wanted."
"Is that a threat?" Randy asked in a deceptively soft voice.
"There's things here you wouldn't understand, mister. Things no human is capable of understanding. Things that make your hair stand on end, and turn your bones to jelly. Things," he whispered in a hoarse voice, "that'll drive you into a lunatic asylum. Remember that before it's too late."
Groton turned on his heel and shuffled away, across the wide expanse of tiled floor and through a door.
"Happy sort of bastard, isn't he?" Gina said. "He gives me the creeps."
"That little speech he made was supposed to make us turn tail and run," Randy said. "Pretty transparent, too."
Gina followed him up the curved staircase, There were old oil paintings on the walls and miniature statues almost everywhere. The ceiling was ornately designed, with writhing nudes trying to escape the eager clutches of naked, ferocious-looking men. In the center of the ceiling hung a massive, elegant chandelier. Randy wondered if the one that had fallen near Sherry had been the same size.. The chain that held it looked sturdy enough, but if it ever fell, it would crush anything that happened to be unlucky enough to be underneath it.
At the top of the stairway, they turned left down a gloomy hall furnished with more oils, portraits mostly. In the dim light, Randy saw that some of them resembled Sherry vaguely. He stopped at the second door and knocked. After a minute he knocked again, more loudly. A minute later, the door opened a crack.
'Who is it?" a shaky, feminine voice whispered.
"Randy Garten, Is that you, Sherry?"
"Thank God, it's you," sighed Sherry, opening the door. "I thought you weren't coming."
She hugged the robe tighter around her petite body. Her hair hung in disarray around her face, which was pale and taut, and her large, apprehensive eyes showed traces of a sleepless night. When Sherry saw Gina, her face grew puzzled.
"You didn't say you were bringing her. You said a colleague."
"There weren't any available for the weekend he said, "so I brought Gina. She's a keen observer and familiar with my researches. You don't have any objections, do you?"
Sherry self-consciously ran a hand through her uncombed, blonde hair, suddenly aware how she must look in comparison to Gina, who was smoothly groomed.
"No, no objections whatever," she said, but without much conviction. "Come inside."
They entered the room, and Sherry locked the door behind. them, peering down the hallway first. Her behavior made Randy glance significantly at Gina.
"Afraid of something happening in the daytime, too?"
The small blonde shivered. "It's getting to the point where I'm afraid to leave my room, period." She went over to the old four-poster bed and sat on it Indian fashion, her legs curled beneath her. She lit a cigarette with slightly shaky fingers before she spoke.
"Last night was the worst. There was the horrible crying and laughing again. And it whatever it was tried to break into my room. It hammered on my door until I thought I'd go mad." Tears glistened in her eyes. "I don't know if I can stand another night here. I'm afraid I'll lose my mind."
"Where was Groton at the time?" Randy asked.
"I don't know. In his room asleep, I suppose."
"And your sister?"
"Ava was locked in her room. She told me this morning it woke her, too."
"Did it try to get in her room, too?"
"Yes. She did the same thing I did. Snuggled under the covers and held her breath until it went away."
"Where is Ava now?"
"I heard her car leave about an hour ago. She's probably in the village. picking up groceries. Nothing scares her for very long."
Gina interrupted with a question. "This caretaker, Groton. How well do you know him? His background, I mean."
"I don't know him at all, really. Mother hired him two years ago. I don't know anything at all about his background. Just a drifter, I suppose. He's not very bright, or very friendly, either."
"We've already found that out," Randy said. "I don't trust the man. If my instincts are correct, he's as shifty as a sewer rat. He tried to throw a scare into us a few minutes ago."
Sherry took a thoughtful puff on her cigarette. "Well, whatever he told you, take my word for it that he wasn't exaggerating. How do you go about your work, Doctor? I mean, when do you get started? The sooner you get to the bottom of this, the sooner I can get this tomb sold and get out of here."
"I can't do anything until the phenomena start, of course, but I'd like to take a look around the place first. Are you sure there's no history of poltergeists inn thee house?"
Sherry's delicately shaped forehead crinkled with a frown.
"Poltergeists?"
"Noisy ghosts," Randy explained. "Mischievous little devils."
"Oh. No, never to my knowledge."
Randy tapped his teeth thoughtfully with a finger. "Funny it all started just when you came back to sell the house."
"When Mother died, you mean," corrected Sherry.
"Yes. Could you show us to our rooms now, Sherry? If possible, I'd like to have Gina's room next to mine, too."
Sherry got off the bed raising an eyebrow at the statement. "Combining business with pleasure?"
Gina's face flushed. "Would it bother you?" she said in an acid voice.
Sherry's lips curved in a catty smile. "Not really. It looks like there's enough of him to go around for everyone, doesn't it?"
Randy cut in quickly. "I'm concerned with Gina's safety as well as yours. That's why I'd like to have her near me."
"Well," said Sherry, brushing past him on the way to the door, "I only hope I get a fair share of that concern."
Nostrils flaring, Gina followed Randy and Sherry out into the hallway. Sherry opened the door of the room next to hers.
"This will be your room, Doctor. If you don't mind my familiarity. As you can see, it has an adjoining door to my room. Convenient, isn't it?"
Randy nodded absently, studying the room. It was furnished about the same as Sherry's, with an old, four-poster bed and hideously colored wallpaper.
"As for your room," Sherry said to Gina, "the best I can do is the one across the hall from Randy's. Not so great a distance if you really need him, is it? Depending on what you need him for, of course."
"I can control my needs pretty well," said Gina. "Yours are more desperate, obviously."
The two exchanged sharp glances, and Gina followed Sherry across the hall to her room.
Randy was unpacking the light suitcase he'd brought when Sherry stepped back in his room and shut the door behind her.
"I don't think your secretary is too fond of me," she said. "But I never did strike it off well with women. I've never had any trouble with men, though. As a psychologist, you ought to be able to tell me why."
Randy smiled. "A sense of competition, probably. I wouldn't let it worry you."
"It doesn't," she said, coming to within a few inches of him. "The bathroom is that door over there. We share it."
"Fine," he said. pausing in his unpacking to stare down at her. There was a slight flush on her cheeks now, replacing her earlier pallor. Only the hungry, naked expression of lust in her eyes betrayed her innocent smile. Randy found himself wondering if what Gina had said about her was true. He was suddenly aware that she'd stopped hugging her robe to her body, and it hung carelessly open. With a shock, he saw that she was naked underneath. He saw the inner surface of her small, firm breasts, silky smooth, and the beckoning softness of her pale, golden belly, disappearing into the shadows of her thighs where the cunt mound swelled.
He swallowed hard. "Your robe slipped open, Sherry."
She looked down with mock surprise. "Why, so it has. How careless of me." She closed it again. "I suppose I'd better shower and get dressed for lunch. Don't expect me to compete with your secretary where grooming is concerned, though. She's quite a woman. You must have your hands full."
"We're here on business," Randy said in a stiff, cold voice.
"But looks aren't everything," she said, ignoring his remark. "A girl with experience real experience, that is can frequently put a gorgeous chick like her to shame. There are tricks and tricks," she murmured, running her pointed, pink tongue across her lips.
He turned away from her and resumed unpacking. "I won't dispute that statement, but as I said, this is a professional visit. Please keep that in mind, Sherry."
She went over to the door and turned with her hand on the knob.
"Whatever you say, Doctor. I never fight nature, myself. Lunch is at one. See you in the dining room."
When the door closed, he straightened up and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. In spite of himself, she'd managed to arouse him easily with that brief, tempting display of her body. There was no doubt in his mind that Sherry sincerely liked him and meant to do something about it, but he was determined to limit his activities to Gina. If, he corrected himself, he had any time left for that sort of thing.
But try as he might, he still couldn't get over his curiosity about Sherry's petite body. Was she small all over, he wondered, or was there some glaring irregularity in that promising petiteness?
Gina, for example, was a tall, statuesque woman, but she had a surprisingly small cunt.
He had to admit to himself that the trouble with being a scholar was that he simply had to gratify is curiosity. He went over to the bathroom door and listened. The shower was on. He tried the knob. it was unlocked. He started to open the bathroom door when a loud knock at his bedroom door made him jump.
He went over to the door and opened it. Gina stood there, her lovely face as pale as chalk. She held out a paper bag gingerly at the end of her thumb and forefinger.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong, Gina?"
"I was unpacking my things, putting them in a dresser drawer, when this ... this thing crawled out of it. I killed it with a shoe. Take it, please. I can't stand them."
Randy took the paper bag and opened it, peering inside. He recognized it at once. It was a large, hairy tarantula.