Nightwalker Read Online Free PDF Page A

find the house she had rented
    before night fell.
    As soon as she left the main streets of the little town the houses became
    scattered and sparse. The few she passed seemed to crouch in the wind,
    gazing broodingly down at the crashing surf far below. The area was
    perfect for what she had in mind. If a woman couldn't discover her true
    creative potential amid all this desolate splendor, where could she discover
    it? Cassie began watching for the house pictured in the photograph that
    lay on her lap. She slowed the car a little more, peering through the
    gnarled, windswept trees that lined the narrow road. In another twenty
    minutes it was going to be quite dark.
    A few fat drops of rain hit the windshield and Cassie automatically
    switched on the wipers. Predictably enough they refused to function at
    first, but after Cassie punched the mechanism with her hand a couple of
    times they ground into action.
    Everything around her began to look gray in color. The stormclouds
    rolling in off the ocean had picked up no tints of orange or red from the
    sun that had disappeared a few minutes earlier. The twisted pines on the
    cliffs couldn't really be described as green. They, too, were gray. The
    occasional weather-beaten house was also part of the monochromatic
    color scheme. The rain was obviously settling in for a long stay and soon it
    obscured most of the scenery. The candy-red hood of the Ferrari was the
    only bright spot in Cassie's field of vision.
    She slowed the exotic car even further, anxiously watching for the
    turnoff that had been described by the real estate agent. She had climbed
    a good distance above the sea now and the road became even narrower
    and more convoluted. The headlights picked up no more than a few feet of
    roadway as the rain closed in more thickly. Perhaps she should turn back
    toward town, Cassie thought, and find a motel for the night.
    The Ferrari's heater seemed to be malfunctioning. She kept setting it
    higher and higher in an effort to ward off the chill that lay over the
    landscape.
    "Damn heater," she muttered feelingly. "Spend a fortune on a car and
    the heater doesn't work. Ah-hah!" The last exclamation was elicited by a
    brief glimpse of a towerlike structure off to the left. It disappeared back
    into the fog as quickly as it had appeared, but the sight of it was enough
    for Cassie. She'd found the house in the photograph. Hastily she began
    searching for a road that would lead toward the place.
    In the end she almost overlooked it. The twin stone pillars that had
    originally marked the driveway entrance were almost entirely concealed by
    a clump of scraggly vines. The drive itself was unpaved, and shortly after
    she'd turned onto it Cassie realized that if the rain persisted throughout
    the night, it would be a quagmire by morning. Good thing she hadn't
    decided to stop at a motel.
    From what little she could see of the three-story structure perched on
    the cliff, the house was as promised: a huge, eccentrically ornamented
    Gothic mansion complete with a tower, a porte cochere and a heavy,
    brooding atmosphere. According to the real estate agent, it had been built
    by a nineteenth-century lumber baron for his wife and daughter. The
    lumber baron had died at the turn of the century. The wife had lived a
    reclusive existence in the rambling structure until the early 1900s. After
    her death the place had apparently gone through a series of owners, none
    of whom ever retained the mansion for long. A few recent ones had
    modernized the plumbing and added electricity.
    "Costs a lot to heat an old place like that," the agent had explained,
    "and there are always a lot of repairs that need doing. People get tired of
    trying to keep up with the demands of an old Victorian mansion. It's really
    not in very good shape, from what I understand. Third floor was designed
    as a ballroom and is unfurnished."
    "Should make a good place for painting," Cassie had said happily,
    picturing herself in a lofty,