Father Panic's Opera Macabre Read Online Free PDF Page A

for a moment in the open doorway, smiling warmly at him before she turned to leave. "Make yourself at home here. I'll see you again in a little while."
     
    He smiled back at her. "I look forward to it."
     
    Neil stood and listened as the sound of her footsteps faded away, and then he surveyed the room again. There was a queen-size bed with ornate dark woodwork, an armoire, a chaise and one other chair, a clothes rack and a couple of small end tables. A bedside lamp and a standing floor lamp provided the only light, but they would do. A threadbare rug covered much of the plank floor. The walls were bare, and had been whitewashed so long ago that they had turned grey. He noticed an unlabeled brown bottle and two drinking glasses on one of the tables. He removed the glass stopper from the bottle, took a sniff, poured a few drops and tasted it-grappa. He splashed a little more in the glass. A nice touch.
     
    Neil went to the window, rested his arms on the stone casement and leaned forward to look outside. He suddenly realized that his room was in a wing that had been added on to the main body of the house at some point. It was toward the rear of the house and on the far side, which explained why he hadn't noticed it either when he first approached the place or later, when he was sitting on the patio. Directly below him now, a drop of almost thirty feet, there was only a narrow curling path of ground between the house and the rim of a deep rocky gorge.
     
    Neil finished the grappa and set his small travel alarm for forty-five minutes. He took off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. The mattress was soft and comfortable, and the large down pillows were lightly scented with cedar. Neil shut his eyes and dozed off almost immediately. When the alarm beeped he got up, gathered a few things and went into the bathroom. There was a huge old tub, a toilet with a water tank above it, a sink and mirror. The stone tile floor felt cold through his socks. Neil washed his face, shaved quickly, brushed his teeth and changed shirts. He felt better, clean and awake again, refreshed by the nap.
     
    As Neil stepped back into his room, he heard a noise. It struck him, because until now he hadn't heard any sounds in the house other the ones he and Marisa made walking. This sound was raspy and grating, repeated in a steady rhythm, as if one piece of metal was being scraped against another. It sounded quite close by, so Neil walked the short distance into the corridor to see if he could find where and what it was. He still had a few minutes before Marisa was due to come and fetch him. Neil vowed not to embarrass himself by getting lost.
     
    It was almost completely dark outside and very little light penetrated this inner corridor. He saw a few widely spaced electric candles mounted in sconces on the wall, but they were not turned on and there was no switch to be found in the immediate area. To make matters worse, once he was in the corridor Neil could not get a true sense of direction on the metallic noise. It was still there, somewhere around him, but elusive.
     
    As his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, he began to discern a very faint shaft of light not too far down the passage to his right. Good enough, he thought. He would check it out and then return to his room.
     
    Neil was still wearing only socks on his feet. The floorboards felt weak in places, almost spongy, and they groaned softly beneath his weight. It would be a real surprise if dry rot and woodworms hadn't already taken over large portions of the interior of the house, particularly in the rooms that were closed and unused, dark and damp.
     
    The light came from a recess in the wall. Four steps led in and up to a landing with a wooden ceiling so low that Neil had to bow his head slightly when he got to it. There was a very small open area on the right, an alcove with a narrow built-in bunk. The pale light came from several votive candles in blue glass jars that stood in a