Free American Gothic by Michael Romkey

broke out on Peregrine’s neck as he realized he was hearing
exactly
the same sound he had heard at Yu’s. He did not know how this could be, or if there really was a wind chime outside the house on Chestnut Street, or if it was all inside his mind. What he did know was that she was able to play tricks with the night, controlling events and perceptions with a power that seemed nothing short of wizardry.
    Only a fool would contend with such a being without expecting to pay a severe price.
    Peregrine began to take a step toward the door but stopped himself.
    The other side of the coin was that only a fool would think he could step willingly into the black widow’s web, then change his mind, turn around, and leave without paying the consequences.
    Peregrine’s eyes looked out through the screen. The Spanish moss moved gracefully back and forth in the night breeze, either beckoning him to come or mocking him for his predicament.
    If he stayed, he died. If he left, he died. Peregrine was a king in check. The mistake was in the earlier moves, now too late to recover from. All that was left was to see how long it took the endgame to play itself out. Escaping checkmate was not even remotely possible.
    He saw a subtle change in the darkness outside the door, the shadows moving across one another. He thought it was just the moss swaying in the wind until the shadows coalesced into something solid. He heard the scrape of shoe leather against wood as the shadow turned, directing its attention away from the street to focus inside the house. Peregrine would not close his eyes for even a fraction of a second. There was someone out there, looking in at him through the door.
    Another sliding footstep. A face took shape in the darkness, but it was not the woman. It was someone as big as Peregrine, perhaps bigger. A shock of black hair emerged in the reflected light, then an arching eyebrow and curling upper lip.
    It was Safian.
    That decided the matter for Peregrine. His reaction was purely tactical, like a general arriving on the field to find the advance blocked and his position untenable. Without the least expression of haste, he turned away from the door and started to climb the stairs, toward the upper regions of the mansion on Chestnut Street in search of the woman he had come there to find.
    The broad staircase curved around like the shell of a nautilus, depositing Peregrine in a hallway running the length of the house. The doors along either side of the hall were closed except for the last door on the right, which stood ajar a few inches. A pair of ornate iron stands, whose design might have been copied from an Egyptian tomb, framed the door, shoulder-high oil lamps the only light in the hallway. The windows on either end of the hall were open, their gossamer draperies moving in the breeze with motions as sinuous as Turkish dancing girls. No sound of the gaiety below penetrated the house’s second level. The Garden District mansions were built solid as tombs, with stout brick walls and floors made from thick planks of cypress or oak.
    Someone had dropped a woman’s white scarf in the middle of the hall. The breeze stirred the silk, fabric so fine that it seemed to have no more substance than a whiff of smoke. As he stood on the landing, the scarf lifted a few inches from the floor and fell back. It stretched itself, like a snake uncoiling after sleep, and edged toward Peregrine, as if possessing both will and purpose. He watched it rub itself against his foot the way a cat does when it wants to be scratched. His wife had once owned such a scarf, a memento of their honeymoon in St. Louis, traveling there on the newest steamboat in the Peregrine Mississippi & Ohio Line.
    The scarf rose unsteadily and levitated in the air in front of his face, twisting and turning, until Peregrine’s hand shot out and grabbed it. Or so he thought. He stared at his empty hand. The scarf was gone.
    “Ohhhhh.”
    The moan came from the door on his