Free The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks by Josh Lanyon Page B

scratch of tree branches against the window. Identified, he could dismiss these sounds. But there was still something….
    Then he heard it. A strange sound, like…brushing. No, more like someone dragging a heavy weight down the hallway.
    Throwing back the covers, he stumbled through the dark to the front door and peered out the peephole. He had a bird’s-eye view of discolored carpet, somber paneling, light that had a bleached, aged quality. Even the dust motes looked old.
    The hall was empty.
    He listened tensely. The sound seemed to have stopped.
    Perry stood shivering a few minutes longer, then gave it up and returned to his still-warm sheets.
    Slowly the adrenaline drained and he sank into a velvety darkness -- only to start awake as something bumped against the wall of the bedroom.
    “Who’s there?” he called.
    Silence. That listening silence he was coming to recognize.
    Perry turned on the bedside lamp.
    The room seemed all deep corners and dark shadows.
    His glance fell on the detective novels he had brought down from his room. A snarling man in a fedora faced down a trio of goons. The man in the fedora looked vaguely like Nick.
    Don’t be a dweeb, Perry told himself. What would Nick do in this situation?
    Nick would go check it out.
    Perry considered this glumly. He cheered up when it occurred to him that more likely Nick would tell him the noise was all in his imagination and to go back to sleep.
    He turned off the lamp and listened.
    Nothing.
    Maybe he had dreamed it.
    He turned on his side. Slowly he drifted out on the tide.
    When the dragging noises began again, Perry was too deeply asleep to hear.

    48 Josh Lanyon

    * * * * *
Monday afternoon found Perry sitting in a small room at the Fox Run Gazette studying the projected images from pages of back issues as they appeared and disappeared on the dingy walls.
    NEGRO STUDENTS SIT AT WOOLWORTH LUNCH COUNTER read the headline for the February 2, 1960 issue of the Gazette.
    Perry sighed. He clicked the projector. He had nothing else to do. He was officially on vacation with nowhere to go. The dream he had centered his life around for the past months was over. The memory of those imagined Sunday brunches and walks along the beach, the anticipated trips to museums and art galleries…recalling those treasured fantasies was even more painful than the humiliating reality.
    Which was saying something.
    In fact, he had never felt less like a holiday. He couldn’t even work up enthusiasm for painting -- the one refuge that had never before failed him. He was too anxious to work. Too uneasy. Between Marcel and his overstrained finances…he needed something to occupy his mind, and in a weird way, the eerie occurrences at the estate provided a useful distraction.
    Jane had dropped by his room for breakfast that morning. Ostensibly, she was there to borrow a cup of milk, but he suspected she thought he needed cheering up. Actually, maybe Jane was the one who needed cheering up, because once settled on his sofa she had seemed to have nothing to say, restlessly surfing the TV channels with the remote control.
    “Aren’t you going to work today?” he asked, surprised. He’d never known Jane to call in sick to the realtor’s office where she worked.
    She lifted a negligent shoulder. “They can do without me for a day or two. I don’t like the look of those clouds. I’d hate to get stranded on the other side of the bridge. In fact, if I were you, I’d think twice about going into town if you don’t have to.”
    She did have a point. The bridge occasionally flooded out, but the idea of sitting around in Watson’s rooms all day…no thanks. He’d prefer sleeping in his car.
    Watching Jane impatiently clicking buttons on the remote, he asked on impulse, “Did you ever hear of the ghost of Witch Hollow?”
    Jane tore her gaze away from truTV. “Ghosts before lunchtime? Oh, sweetie!”
    “But didn’t you tell me something about this place being haunted?”
    “How