Free Ghost Music by Graham Masterton Page A

glass, and then farther, to seven or eight more doors.
    The apartment was warm, but very stuffy, and silent. I took off my overcoat and hung it over the back of a carved wooden chair. Kate had promised that she would arrive not long after me, and she had told me that I should make myself at home, but all the same I couldn’t help feeling as if I were trespassing. A silver clock chimed a quarter of four, with a very fussy, elaborate melody.
    I opened the double doors and stepped into the living room. Three table lamps had been left on in here, too, and I began to feel a little more welcome. The living room was at least forty feet long, with a bay window and two side windows, and a huge fireplace with a stone surround. It was furnished with three large couches, in pale Scandinavian oak, all of them upholstered in blue and gold, as if they had once belonged to some minor Swedish royalty. Between two of the couches stood a walnut table with a checkered top and chess pieces on it, and it looked as if the players were coming close to the end of their game. I picked up the red bishop and, strangely, he had his hand held over his eyes, as if he were grieving, or didn’t want to look at me.
    I wandered around the apartment for a while, unsure of what I should do, cautiously opening doors and peering inside. The first door opened into a cloakroom, with at least a dozen coats and padded jackets in it, including three long black furs and dozens of different walking sticks and two pairs of snowshoes. The next door led into a broom closet, smelling of furniture polish. Then I discovered a restroom, with a mahogany-seated toilet that truly deserved to be called a throne, and a sepia stained glass window. The cistern was gurgling softly to itself, and the faucet was dripping.
    Four doors along the corridor I found the kitchen, which wastiled floor to ceiling with blue and white ceramic tiles. Against the left-hand wall stood a stainless-steel range with a polished brass handrail, like a Central Pacific locomotive, and almost the same size. Scores of ladles and sieves and shiny brass saucepans hung from the ceiling, and on the massive oak hutch there was a gathering of antique kitchen gadgets whose purpose I couldn’t even guess at.
    I picked up one of the gadgets, which looked like a French press, except that it had a double-jointed brass handle attached to it. I tried pumping the handle up and down to see what it was supposed to do. It made a sharp squeaking noise, but I still couldn’t work out what it was for. Slicing coleslaw? Churning yogurt? But as I pumped it faster and faster I thought I heard somebody crying. I stopped, and listened. Silence, for a moment, but then I heard it again. A child’s voice. A young girl’s, very high, very distressed.
    I carefully put the gadget down, and went to the kitchen door. I could hear a child talking and sobbing at the same time, although I couldn’t understand what she was saying. It sounded as if she were down at the far end of the corridor, where one of the doors was slightly ajar, and I could see a dim light flickering, like the light from a candle.
    I thought: go easy now, dude. If there’s a young girl in this apartment, you need to be extremely careful, especially if she’s hysterical.
    I walked along the corridor until I reached the room where the crying had been coming from. I knocked, and called out, “Hello? My name’s Gideon! I was invited to spend the week with your parents! Is everything okay?”
    I waited, but the crying had stopped now, and there was no answer. I knocked again. “Is everything all right in there? I thought I heard somebody crying.”
    Still no answer. The poor girl probably didn’t understand a word I was saying, and was sitting there terrified. Very slowly, Ipushed open the door, and said, “It’s okay . . . I’m a friend of your parents. I won’t hurt you, honestly.”
    Inside the room