Charnel House Read Online Free PDF Page A

“That noise? All that power? I couldn’t believe it. It’s never happened before.”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe some kind of pressure release. Maybe you’ve got some kind of air pressure that sometimes needs to get free. I don’t know what the hell it is.”
    â€œDo you still think it’s a ghost?”
    I glanced at him. “Do you?”
    Wallis thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “If it’s a ghost, then it’s a damned powerful ghost. I never heard of a ghost that could lay people flat.”
    He looked down at Dan’s pallid face and bit his lip. “Do you think he’s going to be all right?” he asked me.
    I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was shrug, and kneel in that dingy library, and wait for the ambulance.
    He was sitting propped up in bed when I went to visit him the following morning. He had a bright green-painted private room overlooking the Bay, and the nurses had filled the room with flowers. He was still pale, and the doctors were keeping him under observation, but he was cheerful enough. I gave him a copy of Playboy and that morning’s Examiner , and I pulled up a tubular steel-and-canvas chair.
    He opened the Playboy centerspread and took a quick and critical look at a brunette with gigantic breasts.
    â€œJust what I need,” he said dryly. “A short burst of over-adrenalization.”
    â€œI thought it might work better than Benzedrine,” I told him. “How do you feel?”
    He laid the magazine down. “I’m not sure. I feel okay, in myself. No worse than if someone had knocked me on the head with a baseball bat.”
    He paused, and looked at me. The pupils of his eyes, even behind his Clark Kent glasses seemed unusually tiny. Maybe it was just the drugs they’d given him. Maybe he was still in a mild state of concussion. But somehow he didn’t look quite like the same Dan Machin that I had met for a drink the previous evening. There was something starey about him, as if his mouth was saying one thing but his mind was thinking another.
    â€œYou don’t look yourself,” I told him. “Is that what you mean?”
    â€œI don’t feel myself. I don’t know what it is, but I feel definitely odd.”
    â€œDid you feel anything strange when that explosion happened?” I asked him.
    He shrugged. “I don’t even remember. I remember the breathing, and the way it built up, but after that, well, I just don’t recall. I get the feeling I was attacked.”
    â€œ Attacked ? By what?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Dan. “It’s real hard to explain. If I knew how to tell you, I would. But I can’t.”
    â€œDo you still think it was a ghost, or a spirit?”
    He ran his hand through his crew cut. “I’m not too sure. It could have been some kind of poltergeist, you know, the kind of spirit that hurls things around. Or it may even have been an earth tremor. Perhaps there’s a fault directly under the house.”
    â€œSuddenly you’re looking for rational explanations again,” I told him. “I thought of that, and there’s no tremor reported in the paper today. I asked around at the office, too, and nobody else felt one.”
    Dan reached over and helped himself to a glass of water.
    â€œIn that case I haven’t a clue. Maybe it was a ghost. But I always believed that ghosts were pretty harmless, on the whole. You know, they walk around with their heads under their arms, clanking their chains, but that’s about it.”
    I walked over to the window and looked down at the midmorning traffic crossing the Golden Gate. The fog had lifted but a last haze still clung around the uprights of the bridge, smudging them like a watercolor painting.
    â€œI’ve arranged to go back to the house this evening,” I said. “I really want to take a good look all around, and see what’s