Free Time After Time by Antoinette Stockenberg Page A

the ransacked box
of Dunkin' Donuts. "You didn't want this last chocolate one, did
you?" she asked, lifting it out. "I'm feeling very insecure right
now."
    Their kaffeeklatsch was
strictly hit and run. Liz had some photocopying to do and dozens of
jokes and riddles to assemble for the Taco Bell birthday gig. After
that she had to pick up Susy from kindergarten because she'd
promised her that Mommy, not Gramma, would go with her to the
dentist for her cleaning. And after that, she had to retrieve her party
gear from East Gate.
    But for now, Liz was
bursting, after a night of tossing and turning, to finish her tale
of fear and woe.
    "You brought the pin?" she
asked unnecessarily. It was in plain view, on Victoria's frilly
white blouse. "Can I have it? I want to try something."
    Victoria gave her friend a
puzzled look but said nothing as she unfastened the pin and laid it
in the palm of Liz's hand. Liz frowned, studying the bauble
intently, listening all the while for strange heavenly sounds. She
felt and heard nothing. It wasn't surprising; she had as much
psychic ability as a potato.
    She took the red-lacquered
box that was sitting next to the Dunkin' Donuts box and slipped the
garnet pin back into its black velvet lining. It was, she supposed,
a vague attempt at being scientific. But the results were
disappointing; she could not induce the maddening sound, no matter
how many times she opened and closed the lid.
    Liz shook her head and
swore under her breath. "It must be like some kind of genie," she
muttered. "Once it's out, you can't get it back in." She removed
the pin and handed it back to Victoria.
    With a look almost of
relief, Victoria pinned the gold heart through the fabric that lay
over her own heart. "That had nothing to do with Caroline's birthday
party," she said shrewdly. "What's going on, Liz? You're as tense
as a cat in a kennel."
    Liz sucked in a lungful of
air, then blew it out through puffed-up cheeks. "It's too dumb to
tell, really," she said.
    She meant it. With
sunlight pouring through the big uncurtained windows, and a warm
west wind fluttering through the lofty, spreading branches of the
leafed-out trees, and the sweet-smelling promise of summer wafting
through the screen door — on a morning as gloriously normal as
this, it was embarrassing to remember how she'd trembled with
terror in her bed just a few eerie, foggy hours earlier.
    But remember it she did.
"I ... um ... think I may have seen a ghost," she confessed, gently
closing the lid of the red-lacquered box.
    "Excuse me? As in
Casper?"
    "He wasn't nearly so
cute." Liz shuddered and closed her eyes; she could see it all so
well. "His clothes were spattered — with blood, I
think."
    Liz was able to describe
in detail the fleeting apparition that she'd seen by the
grandfather clock in the entry hall of East Gate, but she had
infinitely more trouble explaining the chiming sound that she'd
first heard in the locksmith's shop.
    "It's like a ringing in
the ears," she said, struggling with the concept, "but it's a more
beautiful sound — enchanting, even. I think the sirens' song in
Greek myth must've sounded something like it."
    "But the locksmith
couldn't hear it? And no one at East Gate?"
    Liz shrugged. "I guess
not."
    "What happened after the
chime-sound?"
    "Who knows? I shot through
the doors like a bat out of hell.''
    "This is wonderful," said
Victoria, clapping her hands together. "You hear about these ghosts
in Newport mansions all the time, but you never know what to
believe. If you saw a ghost, though, then all the other stories must be true
as well," she concluded cheerfully. Apparently she meant it as some
kind of compliment.
    Liz shook her head,
bemused by her friend's logic. "Could I have a multiple-personality
disorder, you think?"
    Victoria laughed and said,
"Can you afford more than one?"
    Suddenly it hit Liz: What
if someone decided she was unstable? Would they take Susy away? The
thought was more horrific than anything Liz had