Sunday, May 18, 2014

Dreams and Nightmares Anthology

Adderley's Bride - Danita Minnis 

Excerpt:

He wasn’t upstairs. She could feel him - feel something - downstairs.

With the tray under her arm, she walked to the staircase. She looked over the white spindled balcony and had a view of the main hall all the way to the front doors. Wind whipped around the porch outside, slapping the glass windowpanes. 

For the first time this weekend, she considered what Bree told her about being in a house of this size alone. When Bree couldn’t scare her with the ‘fifty rooms, for God’s sake!’ she appealed to legends of the Hudson Valley, of which Sofie was sure her sister knew nothing. Something about the Algonquin Indians still walking the land or riding their ghostly horses all night to scare the foreign settlers away.

Well, that was clearly the wind she heard outside Wynter Estate, not Indians on a rampage to kill the settlers who had taken Algonquin land over three hundred years ago.

Bree had probably looked up the legends for scare tactics. Or made them up. Every door and window was secure, they had even checked the basement and attic.

“You are losing it.”

The tall man in her room must have been her imagination playing tricks on her. But the expression on his face had seemed so real. Compassionate…no, passionate.

She was just emotionally exhausted and needed some sleep but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around. She headed down the stairs.
The front doors were locked tight.

She flipped the switch by the front doors and the crystal chandelier in the foyer banished the darkness. She couldn’t help feeling like she was being watched and leaned her back against the front door to scan the wide foyer. It led off to several different directions and she carefully inspected the dark vaulted archways.

Bang! Bang!

Sofie shrieked, dropped the tray and was halfway to the stairs when she spun to face the main salon. She stood wide-eyed with her hands up in a defensive gesture trying to make sense of the banging sound coming from the dark recesses of the huge room.

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