"I don't know why you talked me into this. We know what we have to do and going to this gala isn't one of them." Eyal holding the car door open for Annie. "You just like seeing me squirm like a caught fish."
"Come now Eyal or George whatever, you know we have to make an appearance, you know, carry on the ruse for the sake of keeping Blair happy. If doesn't see you at the gala she will know something is up and she would be right."
"She would only be happy if you vanished and we had that dinner I promised her. Damn Annie can't you for once help me out here."
"You know I will, just need to have a bit of fun away from all the dagger looks I'll receive tonight. If her eyes could kill..."
"Sorry about that." Eyal couldn't take his eyes off Annie dress in her costume and particularly her legs as she climb into the Audi. "You are looking especially jazzy tonight, love the 20's Flappers style - sexy. Nicely put together right on down to the silk stocking with those tiny little arrows on the side."
"And you my friend also looking dashing as the Count of Monte Cristo. Fitting of your shady background - a mystery to be solved." And he did look so very dashing she thought, if only there was more to their relationship, a little more than friendship - stop it Annie. It is the aura of the evening that is play with your dreams of Eyal and she quickly brushed it off.
The grand ball room was filled with costumed party goers, another charity event and this time for the Royal English Society of Arts. All the costumes were expensive as if from a theatrical wardrobe department and beautiful. This being one of the main galas of the year and the only one of the elite masquerade balls held in London. No matter how old one gets they never out grow the desire to play dress-up. A small orchestra providing the music and champagne at every turn. Eyal handing Annie a glass of bubbly as they mingle with the multitude, stopping for small talk and exchange of pleasantries.
"There she is. Your girlfriend in all her glory." Annie pointing out the entrance of Blair Vogel and one nice looking young man.
Eyal looked over to see Blair dress as Persian Princess in a royal blue exquisite costume with detail elaborate gold threads embroider in fine craftsmanship. Her makeup was refined with sophistication using the right amount of dark eye liner and thicker well-shaped eyebrows. Her jewelry reflected the middle-east influence and costly. A delicate head veil finished off the striking outfit. He had not seen her looking so good but yet she was still Blair Vogel - a nymphomaniac.
"Well that young buck should keep her busy tonight." Eyal's only remark.
"You sound a bit jealous."
"Not jealous just relieve she will be too involved to care about us and the McMillan estate. Sure hope he ate a pile of oysters for dinner, he'll need it."
"Don't think I want to hear any more of this. Shall we hit the hors d'oeuvres table before we go? Stock up on some nourishment for midnight meeting with the ghost of Trotter Castle." Annie half chuckling.
Leaving the gala around ten and a quick change of clothes, grab their coats and Annie and Eyal were on their way to the southern coast.
"These are delicious." Annie eating some of the hors d'oeuvres she had somehow lifted from the gala and Eyal with a newly opened bottle of champagne - also compliments of the festive gala. To set the mood as if they needed too, Annie started telling some ghost stories she had been told as a child. Eyal with his own additional tales and that is how they entertained themselves for an hour and half drive. A light fog was rolling in by the time they made their way to Trotter Castle the old McMillan estate.
"A bit spooky isn't it?" Eyal watching the headlights from his car reflect off the thickening fog. Parking the Audi about a half mile from the estate they set out on foot.
"Eyal," Annie whispered as he led her into the McMillan's back yard and towards the back door. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Eyal looked over at her with an odd expression on his handsome face. "What do you mean? Annie, we need those files, and those files are in this house."
"Yeah, I know. But isn't there some other way? I mean in the daytime?"
"You can't be terrified of the dark, not the Annie I know. Besides I already told you." Eyal fought to keep his voice even and his temperament calm. "Blair Vogel will most likely never let us near this place again if she can help it. We have no other choice but to do it this way. Not to mention that neither Mossad nor CIA has the right to go snooping around in the UK anyway. "
"But this place looks… haunted." She protested, as her brown eyes darted nervously around the yard, noting the too many dark shadows. Has this being Halloween night, one too many slips of bubbly or the ghost stories gotten to the normally calm, cool and collected Annie Walker a bit up tight. Certainly tonight was not the Annie Walker that could risk it all for a mission was having doubts about a vacant old mansion - but it is All-Hallows-Eve when evil spirits and dead souls were to roam aimless about grave yards and vacant buildings haunting those still living. Maybe Annie being a little fallacy.
Eyal stopped and gave her an irritated frown. "Haunted? Annie, there are no such thing as haunted houses and ghosts. This place is just old, that is all. Besides we were in there this morning and nothing happened, did it?"
Reluctantly, Annie shook her head. "No." She didn't want to say anything about hearing piano music but she was sure he had heard it too.
"Well, then nothing will happen tonight. Now, come on, and watch your step once we get in there. Remember how cluttered that place is." Eyal's tone was exasperated but looking around at the desolate looking house and property, he kind of understood what she meant.
Risking another look around the forbidding looking back yard, Annie took the hand Eyal offered her, swallowed hard and followed him to the back entryway. Just as Eyal got the door opened, a howl could be heard coming from somewhere behind them. Both heads jerked up and glanced around but the farther regions of the property were too shrouded in darkness and fog to offer much of a view.
"Just a neighbor's dog." Eyal said, as much to reassure himself as Annie.
"There are no neighbors near here and it didn't sound like any dog I've ever heard."
"It's nothing Neshema, trust me."
"Yeah sure thing oh mister know it all. Trust me as I lead you into the pits of hell."
"Come on Annie get a grip." Eyal giving Annie a reassurance hug, "Nothing is going to happen."
The back door hinges screamed loudly in protest when Eyal pushed the door open and headed in, pulling Annie in behind him. After closing the door, Eyal and Annie clicked on their flashlights and pointed the beams down to illuminate their way towards the basement door.
They had almost reached it, when a cup, sitting across the room on a counter, seemingly flung itself, from its resting place, to the floor, landing unbroken just inches from their feet. Annie gasped as she wildly swung her flashlight around the room, seeing nothing out of place other than the flying cup which now rested innocently on the floor. "Eyal?"
"Oh, Annie," Eyal said as he bent down and picked up the cup and set back on the counter. "It was probably sitting close to the edge and our footsteps caused just enough of a disturbance to push it over."
"Uh, huh." Annie said, not convinced in the slightest. "How come nothing else fell and how come that didn't break?"
"I don't know." Eyal asked in irritation. "Now, come on and stay close."
Following his instructions perfectly, Annie practically glued herself to his back, running into him when he stopped suddenly after taking only three steps down towards the basement.
"Neshema," Eyal looked back at her. "Stay close but not that close."
Annie sighed. "Got it."
Shaking his head, he aimed his flashlight back behind them for a moment, pausing on the counter the cup had been sitting on. He could've sworn he heard something right in that area, but nothing moved and he saw nothing to cause alarm. Deciding it was just Annie making him a little jumpy; he directed his light back down the stairs and started down again.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, Eyal waited for Annie to reach his side, and then followed the beam of his flashlight back towards the old desk. They had only taken a couple of steps however, when Annie tugged at the back of his coat.
"Eyal? Do you hear that?"
Eyal stopped, his senses in overdrive, straining to hear anything besides the groaning of an old house in its death throes and Annie's labored breathing. But there was nothing. "Hear what?" He was, by now, getting used to Annie's sometimes, overactive imagination and he realized they were in a spooky old house at night and on Halloween, so he tried to stay patient.
"There's someone upstairs." Annie whispered with a small touch of fear.
Eyal frowned at her and stopped again, listening intently, but he still heard nothing. "Amen…" He stopped when the sound finally reached him. It sounded like… like… almost like… someone walking with a cane. First a solid step, then a sliding noise as though dragging a foot accompanied by a tap as the cane hit the floor.
The footsteps, if footsteps they were, seemed to traverse the floor above from one end of the room to the other. Step, slide – tap. Step, slide – tap. Step, slide – tap. Step, slide – tap. Step, slide – tap.
Looking back at Annie, he understood the frightened look on her face. Pushing her behind him, he pulled his gun and headed back for the stairs. "Stay here."
"Are you kidding?" Annie eyes widened. "Not on your life, Mr. Lavin." She swallowed hard. "Or on mine."
Eyal decided against arguing. She wouldn't stay there anyway, and he knew it. "Stay behind me, then."
As he headed back up the stairs, Annie grabbed a hold of the back of his jacket causing him to stop and look back at her. "Annie."
She let go but she didn't move away. Searching for her gun, the one she had left in the hotel room when she hastily changed clothes. This she would never tell him as he was use to her not carrying a gun.
Eyal cautiously ascended the stairs, pausing just at the doorway. Raising his gun, he threw himself from the doorway into the room above, shining his flashlight around as he did so.
No one was there. No one.
Confused, he stood perfectly still for a few moments while his heart slowed down and he double checked the room. He knew he heard someone walking. It simply couldn't have been his imagination. Deciding who ever it was must have gone to another part of the house; he looked back at Annie and moved silently into the main hallway to search the front parlor.
At first he saw nothing, then something dark caught his eye just at the edge of the room. Raising his gun, once again, he took careful aim and pinpointed the thing with his flashlight, his finger on the trigger. But when the light hit it, he immediately took his finger off of the trigger and lowered his pistol. It was a cat. A large black cat with brilliant green eyes, hissing menacingly at the intruders.
"It's a cat." Eyal took a deep breath. "Just a cat."
But Annie was not inclined to agree with him. "Eyal, I know what I heard and what I heard was not a cat. Besides cats don't make any sounds when the walk. What I heard was a person with a cane and he wasn't in here, he was in the kitchen."
"Annie," Eyal said as patiently as he could. "We were just in the kitchen. No one was there. It had to be the cat. I mean, as big a thing as he is, he probably just sounded like a human from down in the cellar."
"Eyal," Annie rolled her eyes at him. "I know you don't think much of me as an agent…"
"That's because you're only a CIA agent." Eyal pointed out.
"But," Annie ignored the comment, "I do have very good hearing and I heard a man up here. Not a cat."
"How do you know it wasn't a woman?" Eyal asked with a smirk. Now that he knew it'd been a cat making the noise and possibly knocking cups off the counter, he was relaxed enough to tease her.
"Okay," Annie said in exasperation. "A person then. It doesn't matter whether it was male or female but it does matter that is was human, Eyal. It was not a cat."
"Alright." Eyal waved her off. "Then it was a person. But obviously that person is gone and we still need to get those files. Now, are you coming back down with me to get them or would you like to stay up here with the cat and watch for ghosts?"
Annie glared at him, but turned around and headed back for the cellar stairs. "Smart ass." She muttered.
"I heard that." Eyal chuckled as they went back down below.
The cat had remained upstairs and they heard not another sound from it when they returned to the basement. And though they did hear the occasional screech or creak, they attributed that to the age of the house and most likely mice. The only thing that really troubled them was the cold.
Granted, it was late October outside, and the dilapidated old house had no heat, but it still seemed sharply colder in some spots than others. Both of them noticed it but neither of them wanted to speculate on why it was that way. Instead they pulled their coats tighter around them and went to work, doing their best to ignore the noises, the cold and the shadows that seemed alive somehow.
For the next few hours, Eyal and Annie combed the basement, avoiding the boxes they'd looked in earlier that day and concentrating on the area where Eyal had found the one file he now had stuffed in a box along with several others. Twice, Eyal reached for a carton to go through it, only to find another one directly in front of him when he swore it hadn't been there a second earlier.
Both of those cartons contained old newspaper clippings but nothing he was looking for. However, Eyal's instinct told him those clippings could be important as well. Stuffing as many of them as he could into the one box he wanted to take with him, he finally stopped and assessed the situation.
He wanted to look through everything but he knew it would take a lot more time and a lot more man power to do that. Besides, both Eyal and Annie were tired and their flashlight batteries were rapidly growing weak. He had located the vault behind the old desk but it had already been open and empty. Whatever had been in it was long gone.
Annie stretched her back as she leaned over to hand Eyal a thick stack of papers. "Here are some more papers you should look at when we get back to the hotel."
Eyal reached for the papers, but suddenly something small and black flew right between them, causing Annie to shriek and drop the papers to land across the cold damp floor. "What was that?" She asked with a tremor to her voice.
Eyal grabbed his flashlight to shine it around the room but his weakened batteries chose that moment to die leaving them in the faint glow of Annie's flashlight. "Don't suppose you brought any extra batteries, did you?" Eyal asked half in jest.
"Yes, I did," Annie answered as she reached into the small backpack she had brought. In a couple of minutes she had replaced the batteries and switched the flashlight back on with a smile.
Eyal just shook his head. "I should've known." Taking the light from Annie, he turned, slowly illuminating as much of the damp basement as possible, but they saw nothing.
"Hmmm" he muttered. "Well, it was small and it could be anywhere or it could have been nothing. Come on, let's get these papers picked up and then get out of here."
"Yeah," Annie whole heartedly agreed.
As the two bent to the floor, another rush of frigidly cold air brushed against them. Both stopped and looked at each other, but after a second, shrugged and went back to gathering papers. They had just picked up the last piece when the footsteps came again. This time they seemed headed in their direction. Step, slide – tap. Step, slide – tap.
"Eyal?" Annie's voice rose in pitch but lowered in volume.
Hastily shoving the papers in the box, he grabbed it and then swiftly pulled his gun. "Stay behind me." He whispered. Leading the way back to the stairs, he paused when he saw, what he swore, was a light at the top of the stairs. Switching off his flashlight, he turned and handed it to Annie. "Don't move." He told her.
The look on his face, told Annie how very serious he was and for once she listened, briefly anyway.
Grabbing a hold of the banister, Eyal hesitated for just a moment then launched himself up the stairs and onto the top floor. As before the room up above was empty, save for the furniture and the smell of decay. No light, no movement. "Annie," he whispered down the stairs.
"You find anything?" She asked from right behind him, causing him to jump.
"I thought I told you to stay put?" He said irritably.
"You told me not to move." Annie corrected him. "And I didn't, at least for a couple of minutes. But you can't expect me to stay down there alone."
Rolling his eyes, Eyal took the box that Annie had brought up and tucked it under his arm. "Let's just get out of this place, okay?"
Annie nodded and followed Eyal closely, bumping into him again as they turned the corner and he stopped abruptly. Eyal glanced back at her in exasperation then looked around the room. He swore he heard something that sounded like very faint crying. "You hear that?" He asked.
Annie cocked her head and listened intently but heard nothing. "No." She answered. "What am I supposed to be hearing?"
Eyal didn't answer for a moment, hoping he would hear it again and he could identify the source. But the sound didn't come again. "Nothing, I guess." He answered. "Come on."
Annie agreed as she put her backpack around her right arm and started for the door behind Eyal. But before they could take two steps more, something snagged the backpack and pulled back forcefully, causing Annie to stumble backwards and land on her backside on the floor.
Eyal whirled around with his flashlight but saw nothing but Annie on the floor, trying to get back up.
"What happened?" He questioned.
"I don't know." Annie said with a tremor in her voice. "It felt like something grabbed my bag and pulled back on me. Eyal, I want to get out of here."
Eyal nodded in total agreement. "I do too." He said. "Let's go now."
With another glance behind them, Eyal and Annie completed the distance to the door and pulled it open, only to have it pulled from their hands and slam shut. "What the…?"
"Eyal, I don't think this place wants us to leave." Annie uttered with her brown eyes darted around the room.
"Don't be silly, Annie." Eyal shook his head. 'This house is not alive. It's just old and things don't work the way they used to. Here." He handed her the box. "Hold that and I'll get this door opened."
Annie took the box while Eyal turned back to the door, pulling with all his might but it wouldn't budge. "I may have to break a window." Eyal said and pulled his gun to do that just as they once again heard footsteps. This time they seemed to be coming up from the basement below and they weren't the same.
"Eyal?" Annie's distress was clear and Eyal had to admit, he was feeling a little concerned himself.
With his gun in hand, Eyal raised his fist to towards the glass pane of the door but stopped when it suddenly swung open as though to usher them out. Without a backwards glance, Eyal grabbed the box from Annie and the two ran as fast as they could off the grounds of the old house and the half mile back to Eyal's parked car. Where dead souls following them as they ran?