One of the ghosts must have snuck up to the top of the stairs on silent feet, cruelly allowing us to believe, however briefly, that they were gone. I imagined an evil grin on the rotted face as he reached out one bony hand to shatter the illusion with a fatal painfulness.
The knob moved slowly, as if our foe was trying to see if it was locked. It was, but it was only one of those slender turn-key locks. Far to frail to keep out evil if it was determined. There was a sudden bang against the door. He must have realized it, too.
We bolted away from the door, coming to stand dead center in the room. Not too close to the windows, not like all the movies in which a hapless victim gets too near to one, and flails backwards and through the piercing glass in their fright. Even then my mind was on movies. This sort of thing only happened in movies. Oh, I wanted desperately to believe it was a movie or a dream...
Mulder's right hand twitched towards his waist, and I realized he must have been thinking about his gun. It fell away in defeat; a gun was ineffective against someone already dead. The first experimental blow was followed by several more. A veritable rain of them. Our pirate was determined.
The lock held better than I thought it was going to, and the assault seemed to switch to kicks. Strategically placed, they landed in the middle of one of the door panels, where the door was structurally weakest. Again, and again, and again. The wood began to moan as it gave up its fight to stay together. It began to splinter. It would only be seconds before a thick boot crashed right into our haven, and only a minute more before they fell on us like jackals. I whispered my apologies to Markie as I held him tightly, and either Mulder or Scully began to cry with soft sobbing noises. I didn't turn my head to see who, I didn't need to know.
bang
bang
The kicks went on forever, in time with our heartbeats. Our last heartbeats...both got louder and louder, fighting for our attention.
Bang
Bang
BANG
BANG
I thought I saw the ghastly white toe of a boot showing through the break in the door, the crack that was growing. Two or three more kicks...
BANG
BANG
All of the sudden the sun rose, shining spectrally through the five windows.
Even in our terror, we had to give the sunrise its due, and it stole away all of our attention for one second. It was so still...quite. We whipped around to look back at the door, bemused at the absence of the terrible pounding that had become so familiar. Nothing.
It was a trick. Another trick. It had to be.
We stood there staring at the door, waiting for the kicks to resume, for what seemed like hours. It probably was only 5 or 10 minutes, but it seemed far longer. As it was it was long enough for our hearts to resume their normal rates, and for Markie to calm down. When his sniffles dried up, we began to hope.
By silent consent, we opened the door. If the ghosts were laying in wait for us to do so, we no longer cared. Waiting had become the worst thing, even worse than the danger of dying. Nothing was there.
Scully rushed to one of the windows, then ran from one to another. " The ship is gone!" She sounded esthetic. We'd glowered at the ship from those windows before, so we believed her. They were really gone.