A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror by V. J. Banis Page B

closing itself. She stood frozen, watching it until it had slammed shut with a loud crash that echoed through the house, hurrying from room to room just as she had done. She thought, why I’m like an echo. I’m no more real than that sound. I’ve never been real. I’ve never been more than an echo of life, of reality.
    That door had been closed before, she was sure of it. All of the doors had been closed, all the way through the crazy house. Why should this one be an exception?
    She moved slowly across the room, stubbornly fighting down an urge to run, to scream, to do something other than remain calm. It took her a full moment to cross the room, and that long again to summon the courage to reach for the knob.
    The door was locked. No, that wasn’t possible. The locks were the old fashioned sort that would require a key to operate, to lock or unlock. There were no night latches here at Kelsey House. The door could not have been locked without a key, and there was no key in evidence. Unless the key were on the opposite side, in which case she had only to stoop and put her eye to the keyhole, and she would see it. But she remained standing.
    She tried the knob again. The knob turned, just as a knob should do; but the door remained locked.
    â€œIt’s stuck,” she told herself. “It isn’t locked at all, it’s only stuck. Doors do that. When it’s wet, the frames warp, and the door jams shut.”
    Of course, it wasn’t wet at all, but dry and dusty in the house.
    â€œA good tug will open it. All I have to do is hold the knob firmly and yank the door toward me.”
    She brought her hand back from the knob. She held her breath, listening. She was imagining things, she must be. It sounded as if there were someone breathing on the other side of the door—but it couldn’t be, no matter how much it sounded like it.
    There was a perfectly logical explanation. There was probably a window open in the next room, and the wind was blowing the curtains, and the curtains were those wispy affairs that sounded, when they rustled in the breeze, like someone breathing. It was the same breeze that had blown the door open, and then shut again, and now the door was merely stuck. And she was being overemotional and not a little bit silly.
    Except, there was no breeze stirring.

CHAPTER SIX
    â€œOh, there you are.”
    Jennifer jumped at the unexpected voice. Her eyes wide, she turned, expecting to see the devil himself standing behind her. It was only Aunt Christine, smiling brightly at her.
    â€œI couldn’t find the dining room,” Jennifer explained lamely. She knew that it sounded foolish, but what was she to say: that she had been lost in this silly old house; that she had been frightened out of her wits by a little breeze? That she had thought she heard someone breathing?
    â€œWhy you were practically there,” Aunt Christine told her with a small chuckle, although Jennifer saw little humor in the situation. “But then this house is large and not too well laid out, I’ll admit. You really shouldn’t wander about like this until you’re more accustomed to it.”
    And there, through the next door, was the main hall, and Jennifer hadn’t gone very far at all. Three or four rooms, she would have thought by the distance. But she had taken a wrong turn somewhere and had gone off down a wing of the house, circling about. If she had kept on, she would have found her way back in another moment or two.
    They crossed the hall, entering a door on the opposite side and almost to the end, and they were in the dining room. There were a number of people in the room. At a glance Jennifer saw that all of them wore the same robes as Aunt Christine and Aunt Abbie, with one exception. There was an old gentleman seated near the end of the table, and he wore ordinary-looking trousers and shirt.
    With a flush of embarrassment, Jennifer realized that the family were